by Steve McHugh
“He’s not happy with me.”
“Actually, no, not at all. As you know, he likes you very much, but he does not like your employer. You sending him bodies is barely thought about. But these are Avalon bodies. And we both know that once Avalon gets wind of what happened here tonight, they’re going to send more people to investigate.”
“I’ll be doing the investigating,” I said. “Whoever killed them attacked me and Alan. We’re going to figure out who did it and then deal with him.”
Diana laughed. It was a beautiful sound. “You and I have history. Good history.” The word history was accompanied with a smirk. “Alan and I have the kind of history where he stole something he shouldn’t have, and I’d like to tear out his lungs for it.”
“What did he steal?” I said with an audible sigh.
“One of my arrows. Caught the bastard red-handed and he tried to use his manly charms on me. So I kicked him in the cock, but he got away before I could cut it off and stuff it in his mouth. I did get the arrow back though.”
Diana was an incredible hunter, but part of her ability to hunt was her arrows. Legend had it they were blessed by the ancient Norse dwarves themselves, using runes to ensure that they always killed what they hit. Those arrows were one of the things she cherished the most, considering it an utmost honor to use them when she hunted. The dwarves were no longer around, having vanished many centuries previously, and her arrows were one of the few weapons made by them that still existed in the world.
“I’m not going to say that he’s even close to being trustworthy,” I explained. “But I saw what he went through tonight. He’ll be with us until he gets his revenge. Once that’s over, all bets are off and he’ll run like a spooked gazelle.”
“Good enough for me, but if he steps out of line, I will hurt him.”
“You make it sound like you’re joining us.”
“I am. This is Brutus’s city and someone has spent the last few months murdering women in this area. And now also in Whitechapel someone kills two SOA agents. I’d like to believe they’re not connected.”
I told her about the From Hell that the murderer had written on my forehead.
“You know that was written in a letter to the police by the man they believe to be Jack the Ripper,” she said softly.
I nodded. “I think it’s the same man, or at least someone who wanted to copy those murders. I think his kill was disturbed and he took his anger out on those who’d disturbed him.”
“We’ve had nearly a month with no murders. If this Jack the Ripper has resumed his crimes, and that’s a pretty big if, we can expect more. And soon.”
“We need to find him. Alan saw a tattoo on his arm.”
“Lots of people have tattoos.”
“This one was of an eye.”
“Again, not narrowing it down much.”
“That was my sentiment too. But it’s what we have to go on.”
“There was a scythe,” Alan said as he opened the door and waved at Diana. “It was over the eye. I’ve just remembered it.”
Diana had an expression that suggested she might hit Alan with the glass she held in her hand, but decided to place it on the floor beside her feet instead. “An eye with a scythe? Still doesn’t mean anything to me.”
“It does to me,” I said, and really wished it didn’t. “If it’s who I think they are, then that’s the tattoo of the Reavers.”
“Umm,” Alan said after Diana and I had been silent for about half a minute. “Any chance you could expand on who the Reavers are?”
“The Reavers work for Avalon,” Diana told him without taking her gaze off me. “You think they could be involved in this? You know what that would mean.”
“I don’t,” Alan interjected. “I’d quite like it if someone fucking well told me though.”
“Have you ever heard of the Harbingers?” I asked him.
“Sure, they’re the best of the best. The toughest, brightest, most dangerous agents in Avalon are given special training and turned into an elite fighting force. They’re not exactly people I’d like to bump into.”
“They’re sent to situations that Avalon considers to be out of control. They stop uprisings, or go in and deal with problems that other branches of Avalon have failed at. Usually when Avalon casualties are involved. The Harbingers go into other realms too. They help the leaders keep control of any problems they might have. To say that they work in the shadows is an understatement. Normally they hit without warning, leave no witnesses or targets alive, and then vanish again.”
“What’s this special training they undergo?” Diana asked, clearly very curious about the subject.
“No one really knows,” I told her. “I’ve been told it’s some sort of mental conditioning. A psychic puts them into an unconscious state and then they live out their lives in that dream world, while learning new skills at an astonishing rate. How true that is, I don’t know. Apparently during the day they live in the dream world, and when they’re sleeping, their bodies are put through conditioning in our world. Like I said, how much is truth and how much is fairy tale, I couldn’t tell you. Whatever they go through, though, it’s so classified that not even I’m allowed to see it. Nor are the knights of the realm.”
“What do the Harbingers have to do with the Reavers?” Alan asked.
“Not everyone passes the Harbinger trials,” I explained. “And once you’ve failed, that’s it, you can never try again. Some simply go back to whatever they were doing before. But others banded together, and formed the Reavers. Originally they did it off their own back, but it didn’t take long for them to get Avalon backing. I have no idea what they do, or who they report to, but they work for Avalon and they’re meant to be fiercely loyal.”
“So, why are they killing SOA agents in some dark little patch of grass?” Diana asked.
I didn’t really know the answer to that. “It’s perfectly possible it’s not the Reavers who are involved. But they’re the only ones that I know of with that tattoo. It could be an ex-member, or someone who tried out for them and got rejected. Decided to muddy their name.”
Diana stood. “Wait here.”
She left the room and a short time later the front door opened. Alan remained standing, but leaned up against the wall.
“Why would one Avalon group kill members of another?” he asked, mostly it seemed to himself. “It explains why he let you live though. If he recognized you as Merlin’s errand boy, I mean.”
“Alan, is now really the time to start trying to piss me off ?” I asked.
Alan raised his hands in mock surrender. “You’re right, sorry. Force of habit.”
The shutting of the front door signified Diana’s return. She reappeared in the drawing room’s doorway holding a box, which she passed to me before retaking her seat.
“And this is?” I asked as I opened it and saw a lot of pieces of paper.
“Those are copies of Brutus’s case file for the Jack the Ripper murders. They have things in them that aren’t in the file held by the police. He wanted the murders looked into, he felt something was off about them.”
I removed a handful of documents and passed the box to Alan, who did the same. It didn’t take long for both of us to come across crime scene photos of the victims, and the horrific way in which they had been killed. Detailed information on their wounds came with them and I was suddenly very grateful that I hadn’t been one of those first police officers who’d found the bodies. There’s a big difference between finding a normal dead body and discovering one mutilated by someone for their own amusement or perverse satisfaction. Both leave memories of the event, but the latter is liable to leave a mark on your soul, and years after you think you’ve moved on, something will flash into your head and it’s like reliving it all over again.
About halfway through the stack that I’d taken I came across something that wasn’t macabre or full of details of the murder of young women. It was a drawing of a rune. One I’d never
seen before. It was a wash of dark lines that started with very little space between them as they crossed over at the bottom of the rune, but ended with much thinner lines at the top. It was an odd, and very complex, pattern. Not the type of things drawn in a hurry by someone who didn’t know what they were doing.
“What does this mean?” I asked, gaining the immediate attention of Alan as he found two more drawings in the pile he was checking through.
“Each of these was drawn at a different murder scene,” Diana told us. “There are eight in all, going back six months.”
“There are only five Ripper killings,” Alan stated.
“Officially, yes. But our people inside the investigation believe there were several more. And now two SOA agents.” Diana removed a folded piece of paper from her pocket and passed it to me. I opened it to see a drawing of an identical rune. “It was found drawn on the alley wall near where you were attacked.”
“It’s identical to the others,” I said, mostly to myself. “What the hell is this rune?”
Diana glanced at Alan. “Can you give us a second?”
“You don’t trust me?”
Diana shook her head. “Not even slightly.”
Alan laughed, but didn’t complain and dumped the files back into the box, dropping it to the floor with exaggerated finesse, before leaving Diana and me alone.
“You might want to work with him, but I don’t trust him,” Diana said when she saw the expression on my face.
“I don’t trust him, but I also don’t want to alienate him. If it comes down to needing his help, I don’t want to wonder if he’s going to put a knife in my back so he can make his escape.”
“Well, he doesn’t need to know this, anyway. In fact, I’m not sure if Brutus would be happy with you knowing.”
“Spit it out, Diana.”
“That rune is dwarven. One of the original twenty-one that they created.”
I absorbed the information as if swirling an aged Scotch slowly around my mouth, assimilating every aspect of it before digesting it. The original dwarven runes were thought long lost in the annals of time, something I was fully aware that Merlin wanted to ensure. They were powerful in a way that made normal runes, even those created by an exceptionally powerful enchanter or sorcerer, look like something used by children. I’d met very few people who knew any of the dwarven runes, and even fewer who thought that using them was remotely close to a good idea.
“What does it do?” I asked, hoping for, but knowing I wasn’t going to get, good news.
“It takes someone’s soul and captures it, placing it inside an item of the rune wielder’s choosing.”
“That sounds complicated. Why not just use a necromancer? He could have torn the soul out and put it in something. I’ve seen Hades do it.”
“Yes, but there are two problems with that. Firstly, they would need a very powerful necromancer, and secondly, the condition of the soul in question. This rune will ensure that the soul is always put inside the vessel in an undamaged condition. It’s painted near the body, but not on it. The rune draws the soul from the body and then it’s absorbed by the vessel. No matter how badly damaged the body is, the soul always remains intact. That doesn’t happen with necromancy.”
She had a valid point. A necromancer could remove a soul and place it in a container, but any damage done to the victim would be reflected in damage to the soul in a serious way. The soul would be tainted. Being able to ensure the soul was in one piece meant they were taking the souls to use in some way.
“So they’re killing these people in such a horrific manner, knowing their souls will still be usable. That means they’re hurting them for fun. It also means someone is using these souls for something.” Even I had to admit my theory was vague.
Diana nodded. “You can see why Brutus wants it kept quiet that someone is running around the city butchering women and using an old dwarven rune to capture their souls. People are scared. There are more murders than this Jack the Ripper; bodies found in the Thames with pieces missing, people bludgeoned to death for no apparent motive. We don’t need to create more fear.”
“But we need to find out who’s killing these people, why, and what they’re doing with the souls they take.”
“There’s more. Brutus’s investigation has shown that at least three people are carrying out these murders. One calls himself Jack, we’ve had several letters from him, taunting the police. None have been released. He mentioned that he and his lads will continue to do their work.”
“Could just be bluster.” Even as I said it, I doubted very much that the man who’d written From Hell on my forehead did anything for bluster.
“Possibly, but then there’s one of the bodies.” Diana got up and flicked through the pile of paper in the box on the floor, passing me a document.
As I read it, my head began to hurt and I wished I’d never come to London in the first place. It stated that while several of the marks on the victim—a twenty-two-year-old woman, who hadn’t been linked to the Ripper killings—were clearly from a small-bladed knife, there was one mark that appeared to be similar to the bite of a lion. It had been delivered after the death of the victim. The coroner had served overseas in Africa and had seen several people inflicted with such bites.
“Werelion,” I said after finishing the document and passing it back to Diana. “So we have a sorcerer and a werelion. And the third killer would be?”
“We don’t know. One of the three could well be Jack himself. But one witness, a policeman out on his beat, said he saw a hooded man attacking a young prostitute. When confronted, the man turned to the policeman and hit him in the chest with a blast of water. Possibly an elemental or another sorcerer. The rune was drawn on the wall behind the victim’s head. They’d gone down a nearby alley to, we assume, carry out a transaction.”
“At least three then,” Alan said as he re-entered the room. “Probably.”
Diana opened her mouth to speak.
“Don’t look so shocked and angry; listening in on other people’s conversations is part of my job.” Alan turned to me. “Three vicious murderers who are killing in a horrific way for fun, and then tearing the souls away from the dead and placing them in some sort of container. That about sum it up?”
I nodded.
“Well, that’s just a massive kick to the bollocks. So, any idea where we go to first?”
I nodded again. “I might know someone in the city who could help us.”
“How?” Diana asked.
“He’s got knowledge of the Reavers, he might be able to point us in the right direction, or at the very least tell us why some of these people are doing this.”
“There’s a downside, isn’t there?” Alan asked. “There’s always a downside.”
“Yeah, the downside is he isn’t the most friendly of people and he’s a little paranoid about members of Avalon trying to kill him.”
“Why?” Diana asked, probably already knowing the answer.
“Because members of Avalon regularly try to kill him. He’s a wanted man. He tried to kill some people he shouldn’t have, an act that Avalon declared treasonous.”
“So, how is he going to be of help to us?” Diana asked.
“Because he was one of the founding members of the Reavers. And he owes me a favor or two.”
“Why?” Diana and Alan asked together.
“Well, when I say someone went to kill him, I meant me. I was the one sent to kill him.”
CHAPTER 6
November 1888. London.
This doesn’t strike me as being the best idea anyone has ever had,” Diana mentioned as our carriage pulled up outside the gates of an old mansion that from the outside appeared to have had better times. Diana had contacted someone, who supplied a driver.
The ride to our destination in South London had taken just over an hour to complete, and as the sun had begun to rise, more and more people either left home to go to work, or arrived at home after being out all
night.
“This park is called The Grove,” I told Diana and Alan, motioning to our surroundings.
“I’ve been here before,” Diana said. “I don’t know anyone who goes here willingly though.”
“I thought Brutus ruled London,” Alan said with just enough condescension to annoy, but not enough to be turned to paste as he sat beside Diana.
“Brutus does,” Diana snapped. “But he’s named this off limits to pretty much everyone. He says it’s because he’s made a deal with the people who live here that they can keep the place to themselves.”
Alan looked out of the dark windows, as rain began to beat against the roof of the carriage. “And your friend lives here?” he asked me.
“I wouldn’t call him a friend,” I admitted. “He’s more of a. . . .” I paused. I wasn’t exactly sure how to categorize him. “He used to be my trainer when I first started working for Avalon. He’s an old soldier who deserved better than the bullshit Merlin allowed Avalon to pile onto him.”
“So he’s not a traitor?” Alan asked.
“If he’s a traitor then something bad must have happened.”
“But Avalon sent you to kill him,” Diana pointed out.
“That they did. It’s why he lives in London now, under Brutus’s protection. Officially I was unable to complete my task. Merlin wasn’t best pleased.”
“There are things out there in the trees,” Alan said, finally looking back from the window. “What the hell is running around this park?”
“There’s a clan of wood trolls who live in the park. Felix Novius is someone who inspired a lot of loyalty in a lot of people. Even after his exile from Avalon.”
I pushed open the carriage door and stepped out into the rain, pulling the collar of my long coat up to stay as dry as possible, as the rain fell at unrelenting speed.
“Wait in the carriage,” I told Diana and Alan, neither of whom seemed inclined to argue that they wanted to come out and get drenched.
I felt a twinge of guilt for the carriage driver sitting in the pouring rain and scanned the surroundings, my gaze flicking back and forth every few seconds when something else caught my eye in the woodland not too far from where I stood. The driver glanced down at me, although I could barely see his face due to the shadows that covered it. He dropped to the increasingly soggy ground and gave some food to the two horses.
