Heart's Darkness

by H D A Roberts

  Tethys let out a little whimper and nipped my ear, which made me shiver. Kandi looked at her and grinned like the Cheshire cat before settling back in her spot.

  "You take him by the hand into that big bedroom of yours, he asks where the girl is and that's when you pounce. He resists at first, but you're insistent and his Magic is no use against you. He can feel your desire through his Empathy, and soon it becomes his own, and he surrenders to you completely."

  Tethys emitted a moan, and then she was in motion, and Kandi squeaked as she was pulled onto Tethys' shoulder.

  "We'll see you later, Mathew. Kandi's going to be busy for a while," Tethys said.

  She turned, and Kandi grinned at me, waving as she was carried off.

  "Now, Honey," Tethys said as they walked around the corner, "what do you suppose that Mathew would be wearing? I'm picturing some sort of monk's habit."

  "Ooh! We have one of those," I heard Kandi say, which made me snigger.

  Those two would be the death of me, but oh, what a nice way to go...

  "You three get weirder every time I see you together," Cassandra said from off to my left, startling me.

  "How much of that did you hear?"

  "Enough to know that you are in so much trouble," Cassandra said with a grin.

  "How's that?"

  "That Succubus is getting more and more attached to you as time goes on, and the girl isn't far behind."

  "And?"

  "Oh nothing, just don't say I didn't warn you," she said, walking off.

  "You didn't actually warn me!" I protested as she vanished.

  Her laugh was my only reply.

  Chapter 30

  I was home for ten days after the Revenant attack without any sign of Solomon, and no attempts on the house. I spent a lot of the time relaxing, sleeping and eating, getting my health and weight back up.

  But I hadn't been idle.

  The first thing I'd done, on the night Maggie died, was to have Tethys start looking for the Warlock and his girlfriend. I knew that searching for Solomon was almost certainly a lost cause. His Black Magic, combined with his Celestial nature, meant that he didn't need easy things to track like food, a place to sleep or a car. But those two did. They had expenses, they had to live somewhere warm, they had to eat; they had to get around, pay bills...

  And that's how Tethys found them.

  She had been cultivating a number of law enforcement contacts lately, and one of them worked in the Stonebridge Police's Fraud Department. All we needed was the little weasel's birth name (Orion Paris), and they could hunt him down, though it took quite some time.

  They had been tracked to an address in one of the more swept up parts of Stonebridge, a twenty-storey hotel of glass and chrome, where the smallest room would set you back five hundred pounds a night. They were holed up in one of the better suites on the eighteenth floor.

  I kicked in the door... well, I tried, hurt my leg and fell on my arse before sending a Shadow to do the job, hoping nobody had seen me.

  The main room was full of comfortable and expensive furniture, all in light pink and gold. I immediately sensed the Black Magic in the room and adjusted my defences accordingly. There wasn't enough to indicate the presence of Solomon himself, but he'd definitely been there, and recently.

  I found her in the smaller bedroom.

  Solomon had peeled her open and left the room coated with her remains. What little of the paintwork I could see told me that the room had once been white and green, but there wasn't much of that colour left. I turned away having great trouble controlling my stomach.

  That was bad enough.

  What he'd done to Orion was far, far worse.

  The room was similarly coated with viscera, but, lying on the bed, was Orion's head, heart and lungs...

  And he was still alive. He was staring horribly at the world around him, his mouth opened in a silent scream. I could feel Black Magic flowing through his remains, keeping his parts alive... and alert.

  "You..." he gasped, revolting me. I could actually see his voice box shake as he spoke.

  "What happened?" I asked, trying to conceal my disgust.

  "The Master... he didn't approve of our failures."

  "What failures?"

  "Couldn't find what he was looking for, couldn't keep the Revenant from escaping. He had plans for her. Please... please, kill me?"

  "Don't you want revenge, first?" I asked, "Don't you want him to pay?"

  "Y-y-yes!"

  "Then tell me where he is."

  "He's still hunting Vampires. He's looking for someone, he never told me who. That's where he's been when he's not planning to kill you. It's something to do with the Hyde, but that's all I know."

  That was no lead at all. There were Vampires everywhere in groups large and small. My next port of call would be Price, maybe she'd be able to predict where the bastard was going.

  That just left the poor creature lying in front of me.

  I made a decision and pulled out my phone.

  "Hi Matty!" Palmyra said brightly, "How's my favourite pincushion?"

  "Hi Lucille. Uh... can you come to the Watson Hotel? Room 1812?"

  "Sure... why?"

  "I have a... patient for you. I don't know if he can be helped, but if anyone can..."

  "I'll be right there," she said, all lightness gone from her tone. I hung up.

  "I have someone coming," I said to what was left of Orion, "she'll do what she can."

  "Just kill me, I don't want to live like this!"

  "What happened to Maggie?" I asked him, mostly to keep his mind off his... condition, but also because I wanted to know.

  "Why does that matter?" he snapped.

  "It might help me get Solomon."

  That might not have worked if he wasn't half mad from his treatment, but he answered. I was, after all, his only hope for release from his pain.

  "If you say so. I called her, told her that I wanted to talk, to help against the Master. When she arrived we triggered a gas bomb. Cyanide. She survived it, somehow. We had to fight her; it took both of us to bring her down. She broke half of Greta's bones, even half dead from poison, but in the end, we managed to hold her down long enough for me to cut her throat."

  It felt like my heart had stopped. I hadn't expected... this. Sure, he may have been a brute and a bully, but I'd never thought that he...

  I trembled in rage and grief.

  "You killed her?" I rasped.

  His eyes went wide, then. He'd realised his mistake.

  "I-I-"

  I pulled my phone out again, walking away.

  "Yes, I'm coming!" Lucille snapped.

  "Never mind, Lucille, sorry," I said, not looking back, "False alarm."

  Orion's agonised wail followed me out the door, which I used Magic to seal behind me, leaving him to his pain, his madness and his loneliness.

  He deserved no less.

  I went home. Nobody seemed to mind that I'd left Orion like that. Maggie had been well liked, and Orion's fate was thought to be well deserved. I'll say this for Solomon, he may be a monster that needed putting down in the worst possible way, but he knew how to punish people. I could take a leaf or two from his book when I finally caught up with him.

  I contacted Price about what I'd learned and she promised to come up with some ideas for me, and she was true to her word. Over the next week, Price fed me reports about attacks on five small Vampire Covens in Paris, Madrid, Florence, Milan and Rennes. At each one, the attack was carried out by a man matching Solomon's description, right down to the black wings. Nobody knew what he was looking for because... well, nobody who'd been close enough to hear the conversations had survived.

  These victims were all attached to one of the larger Vampire Houses, which was naturally hopping mad that their people were being picked off. Price later discovered that this was only the tail end of a recent spate of attacks from all over Europe and western Russia. The secretive Houses hadn't shared this inform
ation, naturally, so nobody knew they were all facing the same problem until Price told them so (and for a hefty fee, I might add).

  Opinions about where he'd strike next were many and varied, but the consensus appeared to be that he was zeroing in on something in and around Paris, where there was the largest concentration of Vampires in Europe.

  And he did attack there, slaughtering everyone in a safe house near the Pont Neuf on the Ile de la Cite. I was informed that there were six very old vampires there for a meeting when he struck.

  After that, he just... stopped.

  Tethys figured that he must have gotten what he was looking for, but there was no way to confirm that. So we just kept waiting.

  We figured that he'd come looking for me eventually, and we were even putting together a few tentative plans to hang me out as false-bait. But never, in our worst predictions, did we think that the bastard would attack somewhere he'd already failed to take, much less a place where I could be expected to show up at all but instantly, and in force... like the Red Carpet.

  More fool us.

  It was a Saturday, now well into November, when the package came for me.

  I'd just finished my breakfast, and was full and happy, looking forward to a lazy day with Tethys, who was planning a movie marathon.

  One of the valets placed a box in front of me. It was wrapped in brown paper, tied up with white string. I opened it, not really paying attention. That changed quickly.

  It was full of hair.

  Tiny locks of it, each one held together with spots of dried blood. Dozens of them.

  I knew their energy signatures, one in particular.

  Crystal.

  There was a note.

  Where it all began.

  Midnight.

  Alone.

  Or I send you their eyes next time.

  It wasn't even ten in the morning, yet!

  There was no way I was waiting that long.

  I didn't even think, I just opened a Gate and jumped into the Shadow Realm. I was at the Red Carpet in seconds, and it was all I could do not to go rushing right into the trap Solomon almost certainly had ready for me. He had to expect me to come running; there was no other reason for him to send that package fourteen hours before he'd told me to arrive.

  So I forced myself to be calm as I walked through the Shadow corridors of the Red Carpet, listening carefully. It was as quiet as a tomb, until I heard the whimpers.

  They were coming from down below, in the basement levels.

  There were several large storage areas down there; one was full of wooden boxes, stacked neatly next to a row of freezers, no luck there. The next one along... that's where I found the casino's customers.

  They were all dead, about a hundred of them, and they hadn't died quickly. There were men and women of all ages, most in suits and dresses, all had been well turned out and dressed for a good time. There was blood everywhere, torn flesh and shattered bone, staring eyes and faces frozen in the agony of their death throes.

  I saw all this through a small Gate and shuddered, barely holding in my now over-large breakfast. I moved on, towards the source of the sounds.

  The girls were all alive, but they'd been restrained with silver, and each had a small cut that hadn't healed (probably to provide the blood for my lure). They were a collection of Vampires, Shapeshifters, Ghouls and Weres of various stripe; the silver would be hurting the latter most. They were dressed for work, that, combined with the clothes of the customers told me that they must have been taken some time last night. About two thirds were in lingerie of some sort, some of it barely qualifying as enough for a handkerchief, much less underwear. The rest wore elegant dresses or business suits. They were largely unharmed as far as I could tell, apart from the cuts, but most could regenerate all but the most terrible wounds.

  The room was bare concrete, with a few storage crates and plastic sheets against one wall. The girls were up against the far wall to the door, huddled together, heads bowed, some crying. Price was in the centre of them, head held high, a look of fury on her face.

  I was about to exit the Shadow Realm so I could free them when I sensed... something in there with them. I stopped and looked very carefully, searching the room with both my eyes and my Mage Sight...

  There!

  Whatever it was, it was oozing along the ceiling. It was about the size of a pony, a mass of thick tentacles and oily black flesh. It had no eyes, or mouths that I could see, but its underside was hidden from me. I had no doubt that if I entered the room, that thing would drop on my friends, and I was fairly sure that Solomon wouldn't have left something guarding them if it couldn't kill them all with the slightest provocation.

  Bearing in mind Solomon's predilections, it almost had to be a Demon, which was a problem; Demons were not to be underestimated. Its movements were smooth and almost graceful, leaving an oily residue as it moved around a broad circle, like a dog leashed to a post in a garden. I could feel its mind, and it was a dreadful, slimy thing, full of hunger and malice; but it was also simple, animalistic. I might be able to interfere with it. That was the easiest way to deal with the problem, and safest for the girls.

  But it was a risk to touch something of the Pit, the deep Black, with my mind...

  I did it, anyway.

  But not before I arranged a little insurance. I took a few minutes to craft what you might describe as a Magical Emissions Sink. Mage senses worked by detecting the residual Magic let off by a Spell. Some people were more sensitive than others, but most Magical beings had some ability to detect such things. I had to assume that, wherever Solomon was, he was in detection range of this room, so I had to make sure that anything I did would go unnoticed, at least until I could get the ladies away.

  I cast the Sink, formed a Mental Probe and lanced it straight into the Demon's tiny mind all in the space of a second. Finding its movement centres was difficult as they were spread out and hard to lock on to. It fought me very hard, but my practice with Porter paid off, and I quickly made progress.

  The Demon wanted to go for Price, but I managed to interfere with it enough to lock it in place while I tore through what the monster had in place of mental architecture. The design of its brain and neurons was very redundant, with many clusters of tentacles controlled by a smaller brain, each of which I had to disable to stop it attacking one of the girls.

  It was smart enough to know that it was under attack, and that it was losing. I felt it gather itself to scream for help, to summon its Master, and I barely stopped it. I thanked God for the piece of luck that had me attacking its mind. If I'd tried attacking it externally, it would certainly have gotten a warning off.

  I attacked all the harder, throwing out neural shredders that tore its mind apart, millions of delicate mental strands were obliterated and smashed, and it didn't last long after that.

  Finally, it died, its essence returning to the Pit, the body turning to ash and dust. I let out a breath; that could have gone very badly...

  I stepped out of the Shadow Realm and into the room, which was dimly lit. The ladies made as if to scream, but they were smart, and quick. They recognised me and settled down, more than one sagging in relief as I came across to Price. I used my Will to snap her bonds, and then moved on to the next while she started peeling the silver away from the others. Tethys's sister Karina smiled at me as I passed and I returned the expression.

  "Where's Crystal?" I whispered to Price.

  "He has her elsewhere," she whispered back, "insurance, he said. To make sure we wouldn't try anything. He mentioned the penthouse, but that may have been a lie, or a bluff."

  I had to admit, it was a clever plan. Use Price and her girls as bait, making sure they wouldn't try to escape by taking one of their own; lure me in to rescue them, at which point a Demon would drop on my head and start eating me, which would in turn alert him in time to come finish me off.

  Very neat, very crafty.

  Wow, did I get lucky!

  And
it would have worked, too, if I hadn't become more sensitive to the Black. If he'd done this even a few weeks ago, before my exposure, I wouldn't have felt the creature before entering the room, at which point it would have been too late.

  It took us a few minutes to free everyone, and they huddled together as I turned to Price.

  "I'm going to open a Portal back to my place," I said, "Get everyone through as quickly as you can, I'm still new at it."

  "Won't he feel it?" Price asked, her voice trembling a little as she spoke of the man who'd imprisoned her in her own home.

  "I'm shielding this room. It'll work for a little while yet. Do you understand what you need to do?"

  She nodded, and I concentrated hard; praying that I didn't screw it up.

  A patch of air shimmered and then brightened before opening like an eye to reveal my front lawn.

  "Go!" I rasped, my concentration wavering as my emotions started getting the better of me. After all, the last time someone I cared about ended up in Solomon's hands, I'd had to fight their corpse.

  The ladies didn't need to be told twice and ran, two by two, straight through. Price was last and cupped my cheek.

  "Don't be too long, Mathew Graves," she said.

  I nodded and she darted through. I let the Portal close and opened a new Gate into the Shadow Realm. I wasted no time heading up to the top floor. Lie or not, the penthouse suited Solomon's ego, and it was the natural place to start.

  As soon as I'd reached the Shadow counterpart of the top floor, I heard sobbing through a Shadow and headed towards the source.

  "What could you possibly want?!" I heard Crystal scream, pain running through her voice.

  I had to stop myself rushing in there, but I knew that this would end badly if I did things stupidly.

  Solomon chuckled nastily.

  "Nothing you can give me, I'm afraid," he said, evenly, like he was discussing the weather, not torturing an innocent girl, "The only thing you can give me is some amusement. You might provide a nice distraction for the Shadowborn when he arrives, but I doubt it'll come to that. It shouldn't be too much longer now. The package should be there in a little while."