Chapter 25
The following morning, police were swarming all over a crime scene in a Brooklyn Heights townhouse. A family had been brutally slaughtered and butchered. A 7 pointed star had been painted in blood around the corpses, and their hearts carved from their chests. It was a particularly gruesome and horrifying scene, given that two of the corpses belonged to children who appeared to be about 5 or 6 years old. One of the dozen or so officers taking stock of the situation was vomiting in the toilet.
The NYPD detectives arriving at the scene quickly surmised that this could be the work of a circle of Occultists which they hadn't come across before. Their superiors called the FBI for some Profilers and a team was already on its way from Quantico. The coroner determined that the murders had occurred sometime around midnight.
By the time Alecto and Amycus had finished performing the dark ritual at midnight, it had been too late for it to do anything more than reveal a general vicinity for Potter and his friends-which was the entire city of New York. Unplottable charms had already been placed on wherever it was in New York that he was staying. Alecto cursed as the arrow on her map bounced from location to location.
That meant they would have to wait until Potter was on the move. The spell would keep the map activated for 24 hours. But Amycus was more sanguine about the turn of events than his sister. He was feeling particularly satiated. He had finished washing off the blood in the shower and was drying himself. Alecto was just on the other side of the open door, in the master bedroom, already cleaned up, dressed, and ready to go.
Amycus wrapped a towel around his waist and stepped out from the bathroom looking for the clean muggle clothes he had set aside to wear after vanishing. He smiled at his sister who was angrily looking at the map.
"Relax," he drawled. "Don't you feel better now? I know I do. We'll get Potter eventually." He snickered loudly.
It was true. Normally dark magic was very cathartic, especially blood rituals. Blood rituals weren't merely designed to perform the required spell, but also to absorb the life-force of the sacrificial victims.
But Alecto was focused almost obsessively on Harry Potter. She had plans for Harry which she hadn't yet told her brother about. She would tell Amycus eventually of course, but only at the right time-after she had taken Potter's power for her own.
"Shut it!" She snarled at her brother, who was used to being bossed around by her, "We can't relax. American wizards may seem like undisciplined fools. But we are fools if we think they are. They managed to create and hide a WHOLE BLOODY DIMENSION from not only the muggle world, but from most of the rest of us too."
Alecto glared at her brother as he dressed, but Amycus just ignored her as he always did when his sister was being like this to him. She would get over it soon enough; the pair were inseparable. Shortly before dawn the siblings apparated to a new location, leaving the scene for the muggle authorities to deal with.