Crimes Against Magic (Hellequin Chronicles Book 1)

by Steve McHugh

  "So, Agamemnon got what he wanted, a powerful psychic. That doesn't explain how it links to what's happening now."

  "That's because I haven't gotten there yet," she snapped. "The voyage back to Mycenae was long and difficult. Agamemnon's own daughter died on the trip, she'd stowed away when they'd first set sail and had served as a nurse during the war. But when they finally reached home, Agamemnon's wife, Clytemnestra, hated that not only had her daughter died during her husband's war, but that he'd brought home a young, beautiful woman to be by his side always.

  "Clytemnestra had already begun an affair with her husband's cousin and was trying to figure out how to remove Agamemnon from power. The idea of having a psychic around didn't go over well. Although Agamemnon was human, Clytemnestra was a sorcerer. Not a particularly good one, in fact if anything she'd have been utterly average, but she was determined, and eventually figured out a way to turn Cassandra to her advantage. So she arranged her husband's murder and set her plan into motion."

  "And that plan was?" I asked.

  The woman smiled slightly, obviously enjoying my need for information. "She realised there were blood magic spells that, when used on a psychic, had interesting results. So she sacrificed some of her people and placed a blood magic curse on Cassandra. With enough death, even an average user of magic can perform incredible spells, and she had more than enough.

  "Unfortunately, her remaining children, both sorcerers themselves, hated their mother for what she'd done to their father and murdered Clytemnestra and her lover. But Electra found the dozens of scrolls left behind and deduced what her mother had been trying to do. Clytemnestra was breaking one of the rules of magic—she was trying to re-create the Fates."

  It was possible that my jaw dropped open—it's hard to remember, as my brain had been turned to a kind of mush by the news. "As in, the three Fates of Greek mythology?"

  The woman nodded. "Clytemnestra would have needed to wait years for Cassandra to have a child, and then a grandchild. But she was a sorcerer, so it wasn't as if she didn't have the time. Or would have, if not for her murder. But the plan was already set in motion. Except it didn't take a few years, it took a few thousand before three of the same bloodline were found, who were not only psychic, but capable of surviving the blood magic ritual."

  My mind raced and I barely noticed the door opening, as both the girl and woman from outside walked into the room and stopped. I looked up and immediately recognised one of them. Age-wise, she sat comfortably between the other two, maybe in her late twenties or early thirties. "You were at the tube station in Whitechapel," I said. "You brushed past me."

  She nodded. "I needed to touch your hand, just enough to start the ball rolling. My name's Grace."

  "You're the Fates," I said.

  "My name is Cassandra of Troy," the woman who had been telling me the story said. "And you..." Cassandra walked toward me and placed one slender hand on my cheek. "You need to remember who you are."

  Chapter 33

  Ten Years Ago.

  "You should just kill him and be done with it," a man said. His voice held the hint of fear in it. I was curious who was speaking, but I didn't want to open my eyes and give away that I wasn't unconscious anymore.

  "That's not your decision though is it," a second man commanded. His tone made it clear that he wasn't used to people refusing his order.

  "He's dangerous," the first man exclaimed. "You're being personal."

  There was a noise of flesh striking flesh and a grunt of pain. "Do not argue with me," the second man said. "He's tied to a table, with runes inscribed into it. Nathan Garrett is at my mercy. And I need to know what he discovered. After that, I intend to rend the flesh from his bones. Now leave."

  There were footsteps on the tiled floor, and a gust of air when a door was open, and then silence.

  Unfortunately it didn't last. "You can open your eyes, I know you're awake," the second man said.

  I did as was asked and stared at the man who stood by my feet. He hadn't changed a day since I'd last seen him, in fact no matter how many times I'd seen him he never changed. "Hello, Mordred," I said. "You should really listen to your friend."

  "Employee," he corrected with a sigh. "He might want to think of himself as a powerful and dangerous man, but he's nothing but a bloody fool. He wants to call himself Achilles, can you believe that? Achilles? Proud, arrogant asshole. But he's a good bullet sponge, and does as he's told, for the most part. Gargoyles are rare, so if it doesn't work out I can always sell him for parts."

  "You want to know where the Fates are, I assume."

  “I'm going to rip the information out of your head. And then find out who you told about them. Achilles is scared that some friends of yours will come rushing through the front door to try and find you. But you didn't tell anyone, did you? You don't trust too many people these days, that's what I heard."

  I turned my head to look at the thick rope holding me against the table. "The rope's a little old school, isn't it?"

  "I didn't exactly have time to do anything else, and besides the runes will stop you from trying to kill me." He picked up a large bowl and placed his hand inside, drawing it out a second later and flicking the liquid it contained at me.

  A deep, white, rage built inside me. "A sacrifice," I said as Mordred flicked more warm blood at me.

  "A secretary from upstairs, made the mistake of saying hello to me in the lift. Well she won't be doing that again, although I understand some people upstairs are pissed off. She was a good secretary." He upended the bowl over me, drenching me in sticky redness.

  "I will kill you," I said.

  "I'm going to lobotomise you, and then I'm going to torture you to death. It'll be good. For me anyway, not so much for you."

  I glanced over to the large window behind my captor. "How high up are we?"

  Mordred looked at the window and back, a smile plastered to his face. "That's your escape plan? Jump through a window?"

  I shook my head. "You're going to let me go."

  Mordred laughed so hard, he had to put one hand on the nearest wall to steady himself. "And why would I do that?"

  "Because killing me like this nets you nothing. You've wanted me dead for over a thousand years. I know you. I know how your twisted little mind works. You want to beat me, to look me directly in the eyes and know you're my better."

  Mordred stopped laughing. "I'll live with just knowing you're dead, and I'm not." He raised his hands above me and began to chant, as black glyphs appeared on his palms and arms.

  Pain racked my body, and I screamed, desperate to break free, to stop the barrage of torture that was inflicted. Then suddenly, the agony stopped.

  Mordred stared down at me. "I've done enough that in about ten minutes you'll forget your own name. I want to see that fear of not knowing what's happening, before I crack your mind like a walnut. Then when I'm finished, I'll untie you and gut you like a fish."

  "Mordred," I whispered. "I'll always be better than you."

  His rage exploded and he dove for me, his hands around my throat, choking the life from me as he screamed obscenities in my face. Part of my mind panicked, but the part that knew what I was doing, smiled. And I kept that smile on my face as Mordred's turned bright red with hatred.

  "I fucking hate you," he screamed.

  "And I know you." I positioned the blade of the sword cane I'd removed from Mordred's belt to cut through the rope. I'd almost succumbed to the darkness, when the rope gave way and a surge of magic rocked through me.

  His shock that one of my hands was free lasted about two seconds, before a sledgehammer of air wrapped around my fist slammed into his temple. He rocked back and I kicked him off me, using the brief moment to cut the other rope and roll off the table.

  "I've always been better than you," I said and forced every ounce of strength into a blast of air that would have flipped a truck. It hit Mordred in the chest and drove him back, and through the window, accompanied by an explosi
on of noise as the thick glass shattered.

  I wasn’t going to have long before my memories faded. I grabbed the sheath for Mordred's sword cane, which had clattered to the ground when he'd left the building, and replaced the sword inside. It wasn't much of a weapon, but it might still come in handy. I took my gun from a nearby table; and looked out the window. The river Thames was just below me, maybe two hundred feet. A survivable distance, so long as my fading memories didn't take my magic with them.

  The decision was made for me when armed guards burst into the room. I jumped out into the abyss, falling rapidly until my air magic slowed my descent and I hit the water as if jumping from only a few feet above it.

  I part swam, part drifted in the strong current, allowing it to take me as far as I dared. The whole time everything became increasingly difficult to remember. When I was far enough from danger, I forced myself to swim to one side of the river, using an old metal ladder to climb up and into an abandoned parking lot for a derelict warehouse.

  I took one last look at the deep, dark water. I needed shelter, Mordred was not easily killed, and fighting him in the state I was in would not end well for me. I found an old black biro pen on the floor and some paper, the pen was broken and the paper torn and damp, but it allowed me to write my name before I put the paper into my pocket and dashed into the building. A few seconds later darkness took my mind.

  *****

  I opened my eyes to find myself in the same room I'd been in before my brain had gone nuts, a feeling I was becoming depressingly familiar with. I looked around and noticed Cassandra sitting alone by one of the many water features. "What just happened to me?"

  "My daughter, granddaughter, and I are Fates. Each of us holds a mastery over the past, present or future. As the oldest of us, mine is the past. I unlocked one of your memories, or at least allowed it to become clearer."

  "I fought Mordred. I escaped from him and that asshole Achilles." I shook my head in a futile attempt to clear it. "What do you want from me? And what did your daughter mean when she said she touched me to get things rolling?" I searched the room for the two other Fates. "Where are they anyway?"

  "Gone outside, it's easier if I explain everything." She picked up a bottle of water from the table and offered it to me. "You should drink. Visions can have some tiring effects on people."

  I took a long drink of the cool water. "Now, please explain."

  "The Fates are not merely powerful psychics. As I said, we have mastery over a person's past, present and future. Between the three of us, we can see far into the past or future of someone we touch. My daughter sees the present, but doesn't need contact with a person to have a vision. She has flashes of what is happening now, usually within a few months before or after the current date. We'd wondered what had happened to you since you rescued us and had tried to find you, but with little success. A few months ago my daughter had a vision of you in Whitechapel and realised that your memories had been blocked.

  "A plan was put into motion to help you. We knew where you'd be and what day, so it was easy for my daughter to bump into you and touch your hand. That small contact started bleeding your blocked experiences into you."

  "So the reason I started knowing how to kill people was because of that touch?"

  Cassandra nodded. "Grace used a lot of power to do that. She passed out in the car and didn't wake for three days."

  "What else did you do?"

  "Nothing," she said. "We knew that your friend's brother would betray you and involve our old captors. That you in turn would meet Jenny, and that she would spark your memories to come through."

  "How did she do that?"

  "My daughter, Grace was responsible for that, as well. Allowing your experiences to trickle through into your conscious meant that any further contact with a psychic would widen the hole. Jenny is very powerful. Her touch was all that was needed to accelerate the flow of memories."

  "So eventually I'll remember everything?"

  "Sort of," Cassandra said and raised her hands to subdue my next comment. "They will continue to come out, but you will have no frame of reference for them. You won't be able to put them in chronological order, or even distinguish actual memories from dreams or fantasies you may have had. The only way to totally recover your memories is to have the blood magic curse removed."

  "And how do I do that?"

  Cassandra looked nervous, almost as if she didn't want to answer my question. "There are two ways. The first is the most difficult—find the sorcerer who originally placed the curse, and have him remove it."

  There was more chance of me landing on the moon than getting Mordred to remove the curse. "I think we can skip that one," I said.

  "The other way is to have another blood magic user remove it. This isn't always easy. If the user isn't powerful enough, it could jumble your existing memories up with the blocked ones, and turn you into mindless husk."

  "What aren't you telling me?"

  Cassandra sighed and closed her eyes. "The first requires only the original caster of the curse. The second will require blood. Not necessarily human blood, I might add, but something must die for the curse to be removed."

  "So to remove the curse, whoever does it may have to kill someone?" That wasn't even close to being an option.

  "Not necessarily," Cassandra argued. "If you can convince the person to use animals, then the spell to remove the curse may not be as powerful, but it should get the job done."

  "So, to get my memories back, I need to find a blood mage. Which Mars Warfare probably has in spades."

  Cassandra nodded.

  "And then what? Why did you do this for me? What do you want out of it?"

  She didn't speak for some time, and when she did her words were spoken softly, a hint of pleading behind them. "For a decade we have run from place to place, hiding who we are in an effort to stay one step ahead of the world we left behind. We are tired of running, we like living here, we like our lives, and we like ridding the world of the knowledge of how to create more Fates. We need your help. We need you to stop those people from finding us. But to do that, you need to be whole again."

  "You want me to get grabbed by Achilles and his psychotic friends?"

  Cassandra hesitated and then nodded once. "We can't think of another way. And I know that what we ask is a lot, but Grace's visions say that you must give yourself over to these people."

  A horrible thought occurred to me. "Did you know that Holly was going to get hurt?"

  "You have to understand," she said. "The timeline is flexible, there are many versions of events that could unfold, and we don't always see what happens."

  "Did. You. See?"

  "Yes."

  Anger bubbled to the surface. "You mean, telling me would have changed your precious path."

  Cassandra met my gaze and never wavered. "Yes, it would have. Telling you what was going to happen would have gotten you and Holly killed. Those were the only alternatives—let her become injured or let you both die. Do you have any idea what it's like to know that if you try and stop something horrible, some unmentionable evil from happening, that it might make things worse?"

  The fury that Cassandra put in her words took me aback. I couldn't imagine living with the knowledge that allowing a horror to take place was the better of two evils. "You should have told me," was all I could manage, my anger having vanished.

  Cassandra's face softened. "No, we couldn't."

  "So why tell me now? Why explain what I need to do."

  "Because if you don't, we'll be dead within the week." Cassandra looked away and held a hand to her eyes, unwilling to let me see tears fall. "Achilles will find us, and he will rape and murder my daughter and granddaughter. He will do this in front of me, saving me till last. My daughter saw this, and at nearly three thousand years old, she still wept at what she knew would happen."

  "But don't they need you alive? They want me to tell them where you are so they can take you back and go on controll
ing their own destiny."

  "They do want us back, that's true. But for some reason the visions have changed, either we go free or we die. I don't know why that is."

  "I can't just walk in there," I said. "They'll kill me and then Dani. And I won't let them take Dani."

  Cassandra opened her mouth to speak, but a knock on the door changed her mind and she closed it. "You should go. My daughter says that your friends will need you."

  "How..."I started.

  "The three of us are linked, what one sees, we all see if necessary. And you're needed back at Francis'."

  I started to ask another question when my mobile rang. I hastily answered it. "Francis..."

  "Nate," Laurel said, breathless and pained. "They came for her, Nate. They took Dani."

  Chapter 34

  The door to Francis' subway home was destroyed. Pieces of it hung uselessly from its hinges. It could no more stop a man than a light breeze. I ran past it and down the steep staircase, dread and fear building up inside me, threatening to stop my legs from moving, less I see something I wished to forget.

  "Francis," I called out as I reached the bloodstained platform. Smears of red adorned the walls and floor, some ending at the side of the platform. At least two bodies lay on the disused train tracks, both of them in the same uniforms as those who worked with Achilles.

  "Francis," I shouted once more after stepping into his work area, which now resembled a bomb blast. Anything that hadn't been nailed down covered the floor, most of it broken, none of it replaceable.

  "Nate," a female voice called out from Francis' office.

  I found Laurel kneeling on the floor, covered in blood; Jerry lay next to her, his head in her lap, his eyes looking up at the ceiling as fear wracked his face. One arm, from just below the elbow, was missing, leaving jagged lumps of bare flesh. A belt had been wrapped around his bicep, stopping the loss of more blood, but he needed a hospital. And soon.