“Was he alone?”
“Yes. Now open a portal,” Benally commanded.
“Yes, Elder.” I connected with the esoteric plane and chanted, “Miraculin sepulcrum ibidem solus novum. Domum rotundam vivtorie construxit!”
A glowing portal appeared over the butte.
“Go in peace to meet the creator,” I said.
The instant Elder Benally’s ghostly form shot through the doorway, it vanished.
Jake glanced around. “The other victims have already passed over?”
“They have.” A cold pit formed in my stomach as I surveyed the crime scene. “Cantor considers shamans a threat and he’s determined to kill us all.”
General Jones frowned. “How many shamans are left?”
“My father and me.”
“You’re not leaving my side,” Jake declared.
“I can take care of myself and I now have this swell body armor.”
“Cantor’s a formidable warrior and crazy to boot.”
I raised an inquiring brow. “You think you can beat him?”
“I know I can beat him,” Jake shot back.
“Fuck!” General Jones spat.
We both turned to look at the General.
“Cantor left the sword behind to implicate Zarek.”
Jake scanned it. “Damn, it’s over six hundred years old and it does have Zarek’s clan markings on it.”
“How did Cantor manage to get ahold of Zarek’s sword?” Okay, I was being nosey, but I really wanted to know. I flinched as tremendous power crashed over me and Zarek suddenly appeared.
“I lost that sword in the Great War,” Zarek replied. “And I will find out how Cantor came into possession of it.” He examined the bodies for a long moment. “Walk with me General.”
I watched them hike up the butte. “Do you think Cantor is working with Giovanni and Earth First?”
“It’s a possibility,” Jake answered. “Let’s process the scene.”
I nodded and locked down my emotions. It was the only way to deal with the carnage. I tapped my scanner and started photographing body parts. “Tell me what you know about Cantor.”
“I’ll start at the beginning. Six hundred years ago, the Coletti race was almost wiped out in what they call the Great War.”
“Yeah, I know. The citizens of the galaxy got tired of the Coletti warriors raiding their planets and declared war,” I said, avoiding a pool of blood.
“Not exactly true. The Great War was started over a single female. There are several versions of her story. One is she committed suicide when she was captured by a horny as hell warlord. The other account says she deliberately disabled her ship and seduced the warlord when he showed up.”
“This Mata Hari got a name?”
“I’m sure she did, but all records of her were destroyed,” Jake replied.
“So, Mata was after Zarek?”
“No, his grandfather. Mata was mated to an Alliance general named Samor Tigres. When he couldn’t provide her with the good life, she set her sights on Zarek’s grandfather who ruled a good portion of the galaxy.
“Ah. Gotcha. Mata wanted to be queen.” I put a victim’s belonging in an evidence bag Officer Nez had brought for us.
Jake ran his scanner over the jeep. “She did. General Tigres didn’t take her betrayal well. He wanted her and her lover dead and decided to eradicate the entire Coletti race at the same time.
“Testosterone and male pride aren’t a good combination,” I said.
“General Tigres was also quite mad. He dropped several dozen Gall bombs on Tanith, the Colettis’ home world. The lethal radiation poisoned the surface and vaporized the seas.”
“Wait a minute. Isn’t the Alliance a Coletti ally?”
“Six centuries ago, they were deadly enemies. Can I continue?”
“Sure.” I waved Jake on. Who knew history could be this entertaining?
“The planet dying and their cities in ruin, Zarek, a young warlord at the time, gathered the survivors and moved them into a system of underground caverns. Almost single-handedly, he rebuilt the Coletti Empire into what it is today,” Jake ended with a flourish.
“And where does Cantor come into this?”
“Cantor was Zarek’s grandfather’s battle commander. He was in lust with a seductress named Tia. She and Mata had a lot in common.”
I snorted. “Let me guess. Tia wanted to be a queen too.”
“She did and she slipped Zarek a drug that induced the mating bond.”
“Yikes! Zarek was stuck with her? Like forever?”
“He was.”
I plucked Elder Benally’s turquoise necklace off a bush and placed it in an evidence bag. “How long did it take Zarek to realize he had been drugged?”
“Several months. After the original mating, he was out raiding the galaxy for supplies to keep his people alive.”
I snickered. “And poor Tia found herself living in a cold, dark cave with little food or medicine.”
“That’s when fate stepped in. Tia and her family were killed by an Alliance hunter when they tried to flee Tanith. Cantor blamed Zarek for their deaths,” Jake responded.
“Did the moron attack Zarek?”
Jake removed the comm-links from the dead tourists’ severed arms. “No, the moron was captured by an Alliance patrol and spent two hundred years in one of their prisons.”
“That explains the rage. I take it Cantor finally got out.”
“He did and promptly decided to kidnap Detja.”
“And his revenge didn’t go as planned,” I said.
Jake laughed. “Detja kicked his ass.”
“I would have loved to have seen that. I’m surprised Zarek let him live.” Taking a deep, calming breath, I moved over to the heads.
Jake’s mouth tightened into a hard line as he scanned the woman’s mangled head. “That bastard still had friends in high places. He was sentenced to three hundred years on Vesta, a penal colony. He had served two hundred years of his sentence when he escaped a year ago.”
“Did he go after Detja again?”
“No. He simply vanished.”
“You think his friends in high places helped him disappear?”
“We do, but there’s no evidence to support our suspicions. Zarek sent Jivo to find him.”
“And here we are.” I carefully examined the area to see if I had missed any evidence. Nope. All body parts had been bagged and tagged. “Did we miss anything?”
“No. Another memory download and we’ll get your investigative skills up to Coletti standards.”
I gave Jake the stink eye. “I’m already a dammed good investigator.”
“For someone working in a Podunk police department,” Jake replied.
“And the jackass is back.”
Jake shrugged. “As
