A Queen To Come

by Frances Ellen

  A phone started ringing.

  “Hang on,” Matu said, digging into his jacket pocket and pulling out his mobile phone. “Axel? Soto and Benanti are dead, so is Logan Brown. Soto’s body has already been sent back. Orla and Eli are nowhere to be—what?”

  The other Asters stayed quiet as they watched Matu listen to whatever Axel had to say.

  “We’re on our way.” Matu took his phone away from his ear. The Aster of Strength faced his siblings. “Another family in this time zone hasn’t sent through their signal. The Jasman family in Makassar, Indonesia. They weren’t a high-risk family; haven’t been in real contact with the Small Council since Amisha’s husband, Taman, passed away seven years ago. No Watchers were posted.”

  The Asters exchanged glances as Matu started tapping the screen of his phone, and then tossed the phone to Sky, who caught it easily. Nathan looked over Sky’s shoulder and found that Matu had opened up a world map on his phone, which was now focused on a specific area. No street seemed to be nearby, just a footpath. Sky zoomed out and back in once to make sure he knew where he was going.

  “You, Sophie and Lian go and see if anyone is still there. Nate and I will join you after we’ve finished searching here,” Matu ordered.

  “You’ve got my blood?” Sky asked.

  Nathan patted against the small vial on the inside of his jacket, nodding once.

  Sky nodded back. Sophie and Lian stepped beside him and each placed a hand on Sky’s shoulder. Sky was still looking at the screen in his hands when the blue light appeared and the three of them vanished.

  “So they don’t have their information up to date after all,” Matu muttered.

  “Is Axel setting up a new protocol?” Nathan asked. The two of them turned their attention back to Benanti’s body and started working on the rope that tied him to the chair. It had taken years of practise, but Nathan could shut out the horrible smell coming from the bodies, and it no longer did anything to him, seeing what had been done to them.

  “Uh-huh,” Matu said. He handed his torch to Nathan, so he could use both of his hands. He unsheathed the knife at his belt and cut through the rope, not bothering to try and untie it. “Every family that has even been in close contact with the Small Council or any of the other Islands’ Councils are now at high-risk. Now that even the Watchers don’t seem to be helping I expect many of them will be arriving on Saluverus soon.”

  “Do you think Josephine will be coming, too?” Nathan didn’t stop to wonder if this was a question Matu wanted to hear. They were out on a mission and emotions never got in Nathan’s way. Though Nathan knew Matu would already be thinking about what all this meant for his girlfriend.

  “She might not,” Matu said through gritted teeth. “Even though her mother is one of the highest-ranking Watchers for the Small Council she has no open contact with Axel as far as anyone outside of Saluverus is aware. She might think retreating to Saluverus could blow her cover.”

  Nathan could hear the concern in Matu’s voice. It was true. Eileen Stewart was one of the most respected Affinites in the world. She had an affinity for sensing darkness and light, and usually wound up detecting an uprising before any of Saluverus’ sensors picked it up. Eileen and her daughter Josephine were on Saluverus often. Josephine had been introduced to the Asters years ago. She was already close friends with Sophie when she started a relationship with Matu.

  In theory Nathan understood Eileen’s possible breaking of cover if she were to retreat to Saluverus right at this moment. But that didn’t stop him from wondering what it would do to his brother to find Eileen dead on a chair and Josephine missing in the Underworld somewhere. Nathan knew for certain that Matu had already thought about that scenario. And now that the two of them were on a different continent than Africa, the scene of the first attack, and their siblings were on yet another continent, it was safe to say they had no clue which King was behind this.

  The deathblow caused by an axe was their only clue…

  But Sophie was right. That could be a false lead. They would only know for sure if they had a look at the exact weapon.

  Once Matu had cut through the rope, he held it up in front of him and Nathan angled the torches towards it. Matu swore in Swahili and threw the rope away.

  “Regular rope,” Nathan observed. Disciples and Kings usually made everything themselves. Each weapon or object had something that indicated in which territory of the Underworld it had been made. Even rope, surprisingly. Nathan remembered at least three different kinds of rope that were used for torture and hanging that were made in the territories of the various Kings.

  That was why seeing the actual axe used to kill Benanti was crucial. Using any axe to lead the Asters to the wrong King was easy. Stealing and using the actual weapons from that King with its specific markings and gemstones to give a false lead? That was well-nigh impossible.

  “They know what they’re doing,” Matu grumbled.

  Nathan gave Matu’s torch back to him. “I’ll go and look around. See if one of them dropped a weapon.” He doubted it, but he didn’t want to leave any stone unturned. The fact that neither of the Watchers could get any information back to Felix Hauser before getting attacked said something about the planning that had gone into the attack. The thought. The precision. The odds of one of the attackers leaving behind a weapon was small. Next to nothing. The Disciples had known of the Watchers. They knew that after the Okoth family in Kenya there would be extra precautions set up by the Small Council to try and track down which King was responsible and in which Underworld territory the abducted Affinite parents and children would be held captive. It was a good plan, attacking on each continent. The only problem was that, just like Reth Okoth, Orla Brown also had no idea where Gayle Mendosa lived. That was the one small mercy the Asters had going for them right now.

  Nathan finished investigating the kitchen. There was nothing unusual about the ransacking of that room. All the doors had been pulled open so forcefully that half of them had one or both of their hinges broken. Kitchen knives and smashed crockery were all over the place. There was blood on the counter and the floor there, too. Nathan had no idea what state Orla and her son would be in. He didn’t let himself think about how the two of them were forced to watch while Logan Brown was being tortured and Benanti was being killed.

  Nathan let his mind go blank as he descended the stairs. He wondered what he would find on the ground floor, if anything. He wondered what the rooms were used for, since the living room and the bedrooms were on the middle and top floors. Lian had said something about a study being ransacked.

  The answer came soon enough. At the bottom of the stairs Nathan stepped into the hallway. There was an open glass door in front of him. He shone his torch through it, only to find the study. Or what used to be one. Tall wooden cabinets spanned two of the four walls. A large desk stood underneath the large window with a computer on top. The keyboard of said computer was lying somewhere on the ground, together with hundreds and hundreds of loose pieces of paper. All the cupboards had been ripped open. Plastic folders that were used for sorting had been emptied and discarded on the floor, along with several ring binders and maps, all open and paged through.

  Nathan pushed the glass door open and stepped into the study. The paper under his feet crunched as he moved through the room. He reached for one of the cupboards and pulled open the half-broken door. Nathan didn’t find anything inside. Literally everything had been thrown onto the floor.

  After a few minutes Nathan realised there was nothing in the study that would help him figure out from which territory these Disciples had come. He stepped back out into the hallway and looked over to his right. The door leading to the back room was open. It was a small room that, by the looks of things, had been turned into a home gym. By the light of the streetlamp outside, Nathan could just make out a cross trainer and a rack filled with different sizes of weights. The gym seemed to have been left alone. With how the living room and probably also the bedroom
s looked, Nathan would have expected that at least the weights would have been thrown across the room.

  Then something snagged his attention.

  Nathan narrowed his eyes and started to walk towards the home gym room. There was something that reflected in the light of the moon as the clouds parted for just a moment. Nathan moved to the door and opened it further. In the doorway, he sank down to a squat to see what had caught his eye.

  Right beneath the rack of weights was a weapon. The bottom of the hilt was silver and the hilt was mostly black. Ever so thin red lines wrapped themselves around the black hilt of the double-bladed axe. Even from this distance, Nathan could see the red stone in the centre in between the two blades, and the red carvings on the blades themselves.

  They no longer needed to speculate which King was responsible.

  Nathan stepped forward, ready to go and retrieve the axe so that Sophie or someone from the Small Council could confirm the same conclusion he had about its origins, when suddenly he noticed something else.

  The second he stepped into the room, a little red light by his feet started flashing. At first the light was flickering slowly, but it didn’t take long before the flickering started to speed up. Without a second’s thought, Nathan raced out of the room, into the hallway and up the stairs.

  “Matu!” he screamed as he fumbled for the vial of Sky’s blood in his jacket pocket, dropping his torch in the process and running up the stairs in complete darkness. He didn’t have time to do it carefully; he put the vial to his lips and took a whole gulp of his brother’s blood. It tasted metallic, and Nathan winced as he swallowed.

  Nathan dashed up the stairs and into the living room. Matu was staring at Nathan with a mixture of confusion and shock.

  “Excipe magica celeritatis!” Nathan exclaimed as he reached his brother. There was a tingling on his skin and a replica of Sky’s Band with the symbol of an angel’s wing on the inside appeared on Nathan’s wrist right next to his own.

  Matu didn’t resist as Nathan clasped a hand around his wrist and focused on the foreign magic now pulsing through his veins. He didn’t know exactly where in Indonesia the others were, so Nathan merely forced the magic to find the person it officially belonged to, and hoped it worked.

  The last thing Nathan saw before the blue light filled his vision was an orange flash, and he and Matu vanished just in time before the triggered bombs went off that would destroy the entire house.

  Chapter 9

  It was quite an adjustment from the luxury home in Perth, Australia, to the jungles of Indonesia. Sophie blinked, but saw nothing in the darkness. She reached for her torch and turned it on.

  They were on the very outskirts of Makassar; she knew that much. She remembered being told about the Jasman family a few years back. Amisha and Taman Jasman had two children: Citra and Banyu. There was quite an age difference between them, Sophie seemed to remember. Amisha had found out about her second pregnancy after her husband had died. Sophie couldn’t recall what had killed him.

  Sophie angled her torch towards the house in front of her and started walking towards it. It was more a cottage than a house. It was made entirely of bamboo. The windows were open; they contained no glass, so the Disciples wouldn’t have had to put in much effort to break in.

  There were no other houses in sight. The cottage was completely surrounded by the jungle, with a single path leading up to the front door. Sophie guessed the nearest home would be at least a mile away.

  It was hot and sticky here, even though the sun had set hours ago. Beside Sophie, Sky slapped himself on his neck and swore. Tiny insects were flying around them, attacking them at will. Sophie attempted to bat them away as she, Sky and Lian hurried up the stone steps that led up to the front door.

  Sophie tried to push it open, and found that it was unlocked.

  “That is not safe,” Lian murmured.

  “There are easier ways in than through the door,” Sophie said as they stepped inside. She shone her torch to her left, illuminating the open space in between the bamboo frame where they would’ve expected glass windows to be.

  “They really should’ve put in more effort to secure the house,” Lian said.

  Sophie looked around the silent space. “Amisha hasn’t had anything to do with the Council for almost ten years. Disciples don’t go rogue anymore to kill random Affinites. She thought she was safe.”

  “Well, she certainly wasn’t,” Sky said. He had taken off in a different direction to Sophie and Lian. The bamboo house was an oval shape. In the middle of the space in front of them was a staircase, which probably led up to the bedrooms. Lian and Sophie had gone to the left side of the staircase, finding three bamboo chairs around a small bamboo table. Small red cushions were still on the chairs, untouched. Sophie allowed herself the time to look at the two picture frames that were standing on the low table. In the left-hand frame was a photograph of the Jasman family after Taman’s death. There were three people in the photograph: a girl of about fifteen years old with dark brown hair was standing next to a young boy about the age of eight. His dark hair was cut very short. And Amisha Jasman, their mother with long straight hair as black as night, was standing above them, her arms draped around her children’s shoulders. All three of them were smiling at the camera.

  The right-hand picture was a portrait photograph of Taman Jasman. His shoulders were relaxed and his chin was raised. He looked like a proud and serious man, even though he was smiling at the camera.

  Sophie looked away and followed Lian. On the other side of the staircase was a small kitchen. There were two countertops, a fridge and an oven. So even though they lived with minimal supplies and in the jungle, the Jasman family still had electricity.

  “Over here!”

  Sophie and Lian hurried around the corner towards where Sky was standing. Immediately they understood what he meant by Amisha not having been safe. On the floor, strapped to a chair that had fallen over, was a woman. Sophie didn’t need to check the woman’s pulse to know that she was dead. She had a similar horrific wound to Benanti back in Perth. Across her chest, under her rib cage, a great force had cut straight through her body. Sophie didn’t need to examine the wound to know that this was again inflicted by an axe. Either someone was really trying to lead them to start a fight with the wrong King, or the King in charge of these attacks was finally making himself known.

  Sophie hoped for the former. She wanted nothing to do with the King whose signature weapon was the double-bladed axe, if she could avoid it.

  Next to her, Lian swore as he saw the damage done to the woman on the floor. Sky muttered something under his breath. Sophie shook her head. They were too late again. Again they had walked in hoping to help, only to find a body instead. This time the body of a woman. A woman with wavy hair that in the torch light seemed more brown than black, and…

  Sophie frowned. She looked down at the woman on the floor. She shone her torchlight at the woman’s face. The woman did have brown hair. And it wasn’t straight, it was wavy.

  “That’s not Amisha Jasman,” Sophie realised out loud.

  Sky looked up at Sophie, back to the woman, and then back again at Sophie. “What?”

  “That’s not Amisha.” Sophie rushed to the other side of the small bamboo cottage. She snatched the picture frame off the table and hurried back to where her brothers were still standing in the same spot.

  “Look.” She held out the picture frame for both Lian and Sky to see. Her brothers strained their necks to see the photograph. Sky then turned back to the woman at his feet, knelt beside her and pulled some of the brown hair away from her face.

  In that moment Sophie knew it for sure. The nose was different. Amisha’s was smaller and pointier than the nose of the woman lying before them. And the mouth. Amisha’s was thinner. This woman in front of them had fuller, thicker lips.

  The woman before them was not Amisha Jasman. And still this woman had been bound to the chair and tortured before she had been g
ruesomely killed. Sophie hadn’t failed to see the other cuts along the woman’s arms, and the bruising on her face.

  Lian grunted. “Then where the hell is Amisha Jasman?”

  “And where the hell are her kids?” Sky added.

  “Just… see if you can find anything on her body, or maybe the ropes, that can tell us anything—”

  “She was killed by an axe, wasn’t she? Doesn’t that say enough?” Sky interrupted.

  Sophie cast him a pointed look. “We’re not jumping to conclusions again, all right? If this hadn’t happened you’d be running around in the African Underworld right now.”

  Lian’s head shot up. “What?”

  Sky narrowed his eyes at Sophie. “We,” he reminded her.

  Sophie ignored him. She turned to Lian who was staring at Sky with a mixture of confusion and surprise. “Go and look around outside, maybe one of the Disciples dropped something. Sky, call Axel and then do a full sweep of this floor. I’ll look upstairs, see if anything was disturbed there.”

  Lian and Sky responded with sounds of agreement before turning to their individual assignments. As Sophie headed for the stairs she heard Lian whisper, “Africa?” and Sky snap back, “Let it go.”

  Then she heard Sky typing in a number on his phone – or maybe it was Matu’s phone, since Sky still had that one, too. As she ascended the stairs, she heard Sky talking to Axel about the woman they had found. She was soon out of earshot and wouldn’t be able to hear who the woman was who had unluckily been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  When Sophie reached the top of the stairs she stepped onto a tiny landing. It wasn’t even large enough to fit two people. In front of her, and on either side, were doors. Three in total.

  Sophie opened the door in front of her first, and found that it was the bathroom. She shone her torch inside and saw that nothing had been touched. The bath towels were neatly folded and the drawers under the sink hadn’t been ripped open like they had been in the Brown and the Okoth houses.