Crimes Against Magic (Hellequin Chronicles Book 1)

by Steve McHugh

  I walked to the nearest public bathroom to wash Lee's blood off my hands—before we made our way to the intensive care ward. We caught Mark just leaving Holly's room. Lyn had arrived back well before us, thanks to Francis' call, and I could see her sitting at her daughter's bedside, stroking her hand. "You got a minute?" Mark asked.

  I got the impression that he wasn't asking, since he didn't even wait for an answer, but just walked off toward one of two waiting rooms on the floor. I decided it best to follow him without comment.

  He waited until we were both inside, and then he closed the door, turning the small catch to lock it. For the briefest of moments, I wasn't sure if Mark was going to try and finish what he'd wanted to do earlier in the day. I really hoped not, because there was no way in hell he was going to pin me up against the wall by my throat again.

  Mark placed his head against the door and took a deep breath. I readied myself for a fight. "How long did my wife give Lee to run before I go after him?" he asked

  The question took me by surprise, something he must have noticed. "I know my wife," he said. "Lee and you run off down the corridor, and then Lyn brushes off my questions. She wouldn't have done that unless she hadn't thought of a good lie."

  As much as I liked Lyn, I held no allegiance to her son. "Twenty-four hours."

  Mark nodded as if that was what he'd expected. "So he really was behind it all."

  "Not all of it. But he did get the people who hurt Holly involved. It was some sort of revenge for what I did to him."

  That got Mark's attention. "What did you do to him?"

  I explained what had happened in the alley all those weeks ago. It felt like I was talking about something that had happened in another lifetime. When I finished Mark remained silent, staring at his hands.

  "I'd hoped giving him responsibility would help," he said eventually. "Twenty-four hours. If that's what he was told I'll honour it."

  I couldn't help myself. "And then what?"

  "Lee will be in Ireland within the next few hours. He'll spend just enough time there to get a new ID, probably using my name to get it faster. We have family and friends there.

  "When he's done, he'll fly to the States, probably Boston, and make a good show of meeting everyone over there who knows the family. Then he'll use his secret ID, the clean one he's had for years, and vanish. He'll continue moving across America until he arrives in California."

  I was astonished that Mark had already considered the possibility of Lee running away. "How do you know he'll do any of that?"

  "I always knew Lee would fuck up at some point. I'd hoped this move would be done with my blessing, to escape the law, or a rival gang, but I trained him to have a clean ID and always be ready to leave in a hurry.

  "California will be his destination, because it's big enough that he can get lost in it, and very few people there know him. It's a fresh start. Besides it's the opposite end of the country from where he thinks I'll expect him to go. My son is many things, but his unpredictability is, unfortunately, utterly predictable."

  "So what will you do?"

  "I'll leave it twenty-four hours and then start to put feelers out. Let everyone know that anyone who meets Lee and doesn't let me know will have to deal with me. None of the big families in the States, the Italians or Irish, will want to work with him. They need London for importing and exporting, they wouldn't be too happy if I started interrupting their cash flow. If Lee wants work, he'll have to go it alone, or join one of the less stable members of the criminal community."

  "What if you find him?"

  Mark glared at me, his eyes hard and cold. "He's responsible for my daughter being tortured within an inch of her life. Because of him, I lost six good men. If I find Lee, I'll kill him."

  "Good," I said and noticed Mark tense a little. "Sorry, Mark. But after what he's done..."

  "I know," he interrupted. "But if he dies, it'll be by my hand." The implied threat was obvious.

  A knock on the door caused Mark to slowly turn away from me, as if unsure he was safe in doing so. He unlocked and opened the door, revealing Lyn. "Everything okay?" she asked and looked passed Mark to me.

  "Just chatting," Mark said and then left without another word.

  To Lyn's credit she didn't ask any more questions. But she did thank me for my help with everything that had happened and allowed me to go say my goodbyes to Holly by myself. I was grateful for it. I wasn't sure if either one of us would live long enough to see each other again.

  *****

  Jerry was already waiting in the car park by the time Dani and I left the hospital. He didn't appear to be happy. "You're gonna be late."

  "I just said good-bye to my seriously injured best-friend," I snapped. "They can wait."

  Jerry wisely shut up then and the drive was done in relative silence, only the low volume on the radio stopped it from feeling uncomfortable.

  When we reached our destination, I honestly wasn't sure what Jerry had been so uptight about. The drive took mere minutes, even in the rapidly increasing London traffic. He pulled over in front of a small bookstore, Le Tre Donne. "The three women," I said to myself.

  "Be careful," Dani told me as I got out of the large four wheel drive Volvo.

  "I'll see you soon," I said and closed the door, wasting no time in making my way to the bookshop's front door. A small bell above the door chimed as it opened. I stepped inside, but didn't see anyone in the immediate vicinity. After closing the door behind me, and noticing that Jerry had already left, I took a look around the shelves of books.

  They were stacked from floor to ceiling, which was a good few feet above my head. A small metal stool sat beside one of the shelves, next to a moveable ladder, which allowed a person to get to the books out of reach.

  Most of the books appeared old. Certainly the shop didn't cater to the usual reader who wanted the latest popular piece of fluff. There was philosophy, poetry, and some copies of Charles Dickens and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's work that looked original. I removed a copy of The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, and was about to look through it when a throat cleared behind me.

  "You could just say hello," I said without turning around.

  "My apologies, Nathan," a woman said.

  I gently replaced the book and turned around to find a woman sitting on the stool I'd seen earlier. At first glance I would have put her age at mid to late fifties, but she actually looked a few decades younger. Her olive skin appeared flawless, presumably a testament to whatever anti-aging creams she used. Her dark hair was tied back into a ponytail, and she wore a green dress, which stopped just above the knee. She was utterly captivating in her beauty. In short, she wasn't the sort of person I'd have expected to be running a book store.

  I offered my hand, which she took and shook gently. "And you are?" I asked.

  "Oh, now where's the fun in just telling you." She smiled and glanced behind me at the book I'd been looking at. "That contains the Final Problem, the one where Sherlock was meant to die fighting his nemesis, Moriarty. Sherlock's death didn't last long though, he was too popular."

  "Is this to be a lesson in classical literature, then?"

  She smiled and ignored my question. "Let's go into the back room, we can talk freely without concern for interruption." She stood and walked off to the rear of the deceptively long shop, where she opened a light blue door, leading to a lengthy corridor.

  Beneath a window at the far end, two more women sat playing cards. Both had light-brown hair with olive skin, and they could have passed for mother and daughter. The younger of the two looked about the same age as Dani. In fact, she looked a lot like Dani in almost every respect. She glanced up at me and appeared incredibly sad, her eyes hiding a lifetime of pain. A forced smile broke her lips. The second woman placed a loving hand on her shoulder and whispered something. The younger girl nodded and went back to her card game. The woman with me ignored them both, opened a second door and stepped inside. I joined her a second later and was utte
rly astounded by what I saw.

  Compared to the drab hallway outside, the room beyond was a haven of tranquil beauty. Indoor water fountains sat around the room, all in various guises. Some were small mountains, where the water trickled through carved rock. Another depicted several large stone carp, water moving across them in a display that probably took the designer years to perfect.

  "They're beautiful aren't they?" the woman said as she stood by a third fountain—a miniature representation of a Japanese garden. The water moved under a small bridge and passed several cherry blossom trees.

  She motioned for me to take a seat on one of chairs dotted around the room. Each one was made of black leather and looked about as comfortable as you could make a chair. I sat down, and they felt as good as they looked.

  The woman sat on the chair next to mine, barely a finger's width between us and stared at me intently. "Why are you here?" she asked.

  "You had Francis steal a copy of the Iliad. I need to know why."

  She moved back in the chair. "Let's be honest here. Because without honesty you'll discover nothing. Francis didn't steal anything, you did."

  I'd assumed that Francis had already told her about my involvement. "Yes, I stole the book. I want to know why you wanted it in the first place."

  "I could tell you I'm a collector, or that it had been stolen from me, but as I want you to be honest, I guess I should be too. I wanted that book, because I want to destroy it."

  "You spent two hundred and fifty grand to get a book, just so you could destroy it?" I couldn't believe my ears. "I thought you were being honest."

  "Oh, I am, Nathan, very honest. After receiving the book and verifying that it was the one I wanted, I incinerated it. I smiled the whole time too, it was very cathartic."

  That wasn't the answer I'd hoped for. I'd wanted to examine the book. That tome of words and paper had started everything, and I'd wanted to examine it to see if it held any answers to what was happening. Instead it felt like the bottom had fallen out of my hopes.

  Before I could gather my thoughts, she asked. "Do you have a nemesis? Like Holmes?"

  I stood. "I don't have time for this."

  The woman moved like a snake, grabbing my hand. "Sit, you might learn something."

  I stood for another few seconds and thought about how much effort it had taken to get this meeting in the first place. If the crazy lady beside me could answer my questions, my journey would be worth it. So I did as she asked.

  The woman nodded and removed her hand, before standing and wandering around the room. "The Illiad," she said. "The story of Troy." She smiled again when she saw the surprise on my face. "That's why you're here, yes? To learn why everything that's been happening is linked to a book that's about a five thousand year old war?"

  "Did Francis tell you that?" I asked.

  She tapped the side of her nose and continued as if I'd never spoken. It was a trait in her that I was beginning to find annoying. "The version that almost everyone knows is based on Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, but everyone is wrong." She opened the drawer of a side table and pulled out a book, identical to the one I'd stolen. "This is now the only remaining copy of the original Iliad. We keep this one, because one day people should know what really happened all those years ago, and why so many people had to die for one man's insane vision."

  "You've lost me."

  The woman put the book back on the table and re-took her seat next to me. "The story of Troy, as you and pretty much everyone else knows it. Is that Paris and Helen eloped, drawing the anger of Agamemnon and his brother who, with a massive Greek army, raced to Troy to get revenge. Thus starting a decade-long war. A war that only ended with the use of a giant wooden horse containing hidden Greek soldiers, who at night massacred the sleeping inhabitants of the city. Sound about right?"

  I nodded. "You've missed a fair bit, but that's the backbone, yeah."

  “Hundreds of years after the war, Homer wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey, two epic poems, retelling the story of the Trojan War and its immediate aftermath. What you may not know, is that there are in fact eight books telling the events of the Trojan War. Although, the other six were written by different authors."

  "So why not destroy them too?" I asked.

  "Because they don't exist anymore," she said with a smile. "The six other books are lost to the annals of time. But the Homer epics were too popular, and removing them from circulation would have been impossible. But they contained something more dangerous than mere tales. Information.

  "You see, Homer wrote the stories with help. He thought he was writing fantastical tales based on fact, but whoever helped him, and we don't know who it was, told him the exact details of why the war took place and what really happened.

  "Over the centuries, Avalon realised what the books contained and went about getting them removed from circulation. Peisistratus, a Greek Tyrant during the sixth century BC, was charged with this task. He changed the stories, outwardly saying that he wished for them to be more consistently in line with one another, but in reality he was changing the story to omit anything that Avalon wanted to be censored. That is why copies such as the one you stole are so rare. They were mostly destroyed thousands of years ago."

  "So these books, poems, contain the entirety of what happened at Troy. And you, along with Avalon, don't want that information getting out?"

  "Avalon stopped caring a millennia ago, when they believed every original copy was either in safe hands or destroyed."

  "So what really happened in Troy? And how does that relate to what's happening now?"

  The woman got up and rang a small brass bell that sat on a nearby table. A young girl came through the doors seconds later. She was one of the two I'd seen at the end of the corridor outside. "Can you fetch us some tea, please."

  The young girl glanced over at me, and her eyes held a sadness that made my heart ache. Then she vanished. "Do you recognise her?" the woman asked.

  I shook my head. "Should I?"

  The woman ignored me yet again and waited for the girl to come back with the tea. When she returned, she carried a large tray, containing a red tea-pot decorated with pink lotus flowers and two small bowls, that matched the pot. The woman helped the girl set everything on the table. Then the girl turned back, giving me a final sorrowful glance, before leaving the room.

  "She knows me," I said to the woman. "Is she your daughter?"

  The woman poured some tea into each of the bowls and passed me one. The fragrance was intoxicating. "Troy first, questions later."

  I motioned for her to continue as I blew on the steaming hot liquid.

  The woman nodded and sipped her tea before beginning. "In the years building up to the war, King Priam was one of the most powerful men in the known world. Troy was rich and bountiful, and Priam enjoyed showing that wealth off at every occasion.

  "Another thing he enjoyed showing off was his daughter, Cassandra. In the story as you know it, she's cursed by the God Apollo with visions of the future that no one believes. But in reality, King Priam believed every word. He would get her to tell him every morning; what he should expect of the day. And then at parties, he would drag her out to give the guests something to talk about." The woman looked suddenly weary and there was real emotion in her voice as she spoke.

  "So she wasn't cursed then?" I asked and drank my now warm tea.

  She shook her head. "Not that I'm aware of. Cassandra's mother was from a very special bloodline and passed the gift of foretelling on to her daughter." She drank her own tea and poured herself and me some more. "Priam continued to show off the power wielded by his own flesh and blood, for years. Cassandra was paraded about, telling fortunes until she could barely stand from the visions. And then one day Agamemnon was present, and King Priam decided to give the Mycanae King his own private reading, away from the ears of his other guests.

  "Cassandra was fourteen at the time, still a child in today's eyes. But back then, old enough for many to have asked Pri
am for his daughter's hand. Something he had always refused. Agamemnon was not so easily dissuaded, and after the vision, Cassandra was all he wanted."

  "What did she see?" I asked.

  "Death, fire. The destruction of Troy at Agamemnon's hands, King Priam dead on the steps of the city. Psychics cannot lie, and Priam was furious with what he'd heard. He removed Cassandra back to her room at once, ending the party in a violent temper. And, all the while, Agamemnon had already begun to plan and plot. He wanted the girl for his own, but he couldn't just invade, or attack. It would be suicide. So he thought of a way to get what he wanted, something that took time. It also allowed him to establish why Cassandra was so powerful."

  "And the answer was?"

  "She was one in a million. Her abilities far exceeded those of a normal psychic. One of her power comes along rarely, but it does happen. Agamemnon discovered this, and so he went to war.

  "He arranged for Helen to seduce Paris. He knew full well that Helen was hard to resist, and that Paris was never one to turn away a beautiful lady, no matter whom she was married to. And it worked even better than he'd hoped, when Paris and Helen actually fell in love. The young idiots gave Agamemnon the perfect excuse to go to war."

  "Why didn't Priam know what was going on?" I asked. "I mean, his daughter was a powerful psychic."

  "After Agamemnon, he never asked for another vision and barred anyone else from hearing them under pain of death. Cassandra saw everything that was about to happen; the horse, the death of her brother Hector, but no one was allowed to hear it. Troy was destroyed because of King Priam's foolish pride."

  "So Troy was still destroyed?"

  The woman nodded. "Burnt to the ground, its contents pillaged, its people raped and murdered until there was nothing left to give. Even Cassandra didn't escape the Greeks' fury. She was found by Agamemnon as Ajax the Lesser raped her on the steps of Athena's temple." An expression of utter loathing washed over her face. "The story suggests that Ajax the Lesser was eventually killed by Athena and Poseidon for this act. That isn't what happened. Agamemnon, in a rage, had him skinned alive. He conjured the tale of the gods' vengeance as a way of keeping his men in line."