by Steve McHugh
“I won’t be long,” I told him, but he didn’t appear to care one way or the other.
I walked up to the massive iron gates, which barred the entrance to the property. They were attached to a ten-foot-high stone wall. It was all very imposing and certainly gave the impression that whoever was behind it didn’t wish to be bothered in any way.
I pushed open the gate, which made a noise that made the inside of my brain hurt, accompanied by the exact same noise when the gate sprung closed after I’d taken a few steps.
The garden was overgrown, but the grass and plant life didn’t impede anyone walking toward the house. The vines that ran up over the front wall of the house moved in such a way as to suggest they were meant to go there; they gave the appearance of being messy and uncared for while being the exact opposite.
I reached the large oak door and used the brass knocker to announce my presence. After a few seconds, I found that the door was unlocked and pushed it open, stepping into the dark mansion. The foyer was lit by only a few gas lanterns that sat on either side of an ornate staircase that ascended up to a small platform before splitting off to go in two different directions to the floor above.
“Why are you here?” a voice boomed from the darkness beyond.
“Felix, it’s Nathan Garrett. Cut the theatrical bullshit. If we were a threat your troll friends would already have torn us to pieces.”
There was a moment of quiet, followed by the sound of footsteps making their way toward me. It didn’t take long for Felix to come into view, walking down the stairs as the lights flickered to life.
The entire mansion would have made most museum curators blush with envy—it was full of old paintings, ancient pieces of art, and furniture that actually seemed to look better as it got older. There was no dust, or anything to suggest that the interior wasn’t kept as immaculate as the exterior. It would have taken a lot of effort. Sometimes giving the impression that you want to be left alone is more work than actually making people leave you alone.
“You promised you’d never be back,” Felix said as he strolled toward me.
“Sorry, needs must,” I explained.
Felix Novius was old enough that he saw the Romans move from small beginnings all the way to controlling a large portion of Europe, Asia, and Africa. And then watched it all crumble down to nothing not that long after. He had long white hair, but was clean-shaven. He wore a dark suit more appropriate for fine dining than sitting all alone in an empty house. He’d long ago lost his Roman accent and had replaced it with a nondescript English one.
“They’d better be some damn good needs, boy,” he snapped. “Last I heard you still work for Merlin, and he still wants me dead.”
I bristled at the use of the word boy. Felix was fully aware of how the word annoyed me, but never did seem to care enough to not use it. “We’ve got a lot of dead bodies in the city with ties to the Reavers.”
“You mean the Reavers are murdering citizens of this city? This is the first I’ve heard of it.”
“You’ve heard of Jack the Ripper, I assume.”
The shock on Felix’s face was easy to see. “You’d best tell your friends to come in then.”
“Are you sure you trust him?” Alan asked as we followed Felix through his mansion to the rear of the property.
“More than you,” I pointed out.
“You still don’t trust me, Nathan?” Alan asked with a grin. “I’m hurt. Wounded. My heart cleaved from my chest and tossed aside like—”
“Do you ever shut the hell up?” Felix snapped without turning back to us.
“Old man, I’ve had a shit few days,” Alan said, an edge of anger in his voice. “I might take shit from Nathan here, because I actually understand why he doesn’t like me. And I may take a whole lot of things from the very beautiful Diana, but I’m damned if I’ll have some old fossil tell me what to do.”
Felix stopped and turned back to us. Alan tensed for a fight and I could see Diana getting ready to break them up. Felix walked toward Alan until they were only a few feet away from one another. “I like you,” he said and laughed as he resumed walking.
“Is he touched in the head?” Alan whispered.
I shrugged. To be honest I wasn’t entirely sure anymore.
Eventually we made it to a large library, the shelves completely overfilled with books. A desk and a red leather armchair sat in one corner, piles of paper and books atop the desk.
“You’re probably wanting to know who the Reavers are?”
“Already know that,” Alan pointed out. “Nathan here gave us the information. People who didn’t pass the Harbinger tests and all that.”
“I bet you don’t know what they were formed to do,” Felix said, and all three of us shook our heads. Felix pointed to an old couch, which had clearly seen better days. “Sit, I’ll explain.”
We all sat while Felix uncorked a bottle of Scotch and removed four glasses from one of the drawers on his desk, passing each of us a drink.
“Not for me,” Alan said. “Don’t touch the stuff.”
“Then hold the glass and at least try to look like a man with his own set of balls,” Felix said, much to Diana’s amusement.
Alan knocked back the drink on one go. “I don’t like the stuff, didn’t say I can’t drink it.”
Felix laughed and poured Alan a much larger, second drink.
“You both done?” I asked.
Felix knocked back his own drink before turning to me. “You of all people should be in no hurry to find out more about the Reavers.”
“Why?” I asked, genuinely confused.
“I’ll explain in a minute. First, you need to know that the Reavers’ soul mission is to keep Arthur alive.”
“Wait,” Alan said. “How do you know these people? I mean, this could all just be some made-up fantasy you’ve been living in your head.”
“I was one of the founding members,” Felix told us all and promptly knocked back a second Scotch.
“Please go on,” Diana told him, glaring slightly at Alan.
Felix nodded graciously. “As Nathan will tell you, I used to work for Merlin. What he doesn’t know is that I was responsible for the Harbinger training program. It was my job to ensure that everyone who came into the program made it to the end. That was through either passing or failing the experience, and in some cases, not living through it.”
It was common knowledge that anyone who decided to try and become a Harbinger didn’t take the decision lightly. I’d known several people who hadn’t passed its difficult tests and more than one of them who hadn’t come back at all.
“As you probably know,” Felix continued, “the Reavers were created to allow those who failed the tests to still be of great use to Avalon. They were still highly trained and, for the most part, a group of people who wished to do good. They had one job. To harvest souls for Merlin to feed to Arthur.”
Diana and Alan glanced at me. I could feel both of them wanting to ask if I knew.
“No,” I said softly. “I had no idea.”
“Nor should you have,” Felix said. “Merlin wasn’t exactly thrilled that the souls of the slain were helping to keep Arthur alive, and that they were much more effective than his own magic.”
“How did it work?” Diana asked, as I sat dumbstruck.
I’d been in the room with Arthur a hundred times, seen him floating in that glass coffin, his body encased in magically enhanced water. I’d seen Merlin feeding his own magic into the coffin, giving Arthur his power to sustain him. I’d helped Merlin break away, weak and exhausted from continuous magic use. My anger boiled over and I stood, kicking a book across the room and into a pile, which spilled over the floor.
“Feel better?” Felix asked.
“How did it work?” I asked, repeating Diana’s words. “How do the souls help Arthur? I saw Merlin use his own energy to sustain him.”
“The souls only ensure that Arthur’s body remains alive. Merlin’s magic is what
keeps him active. Without Merlin’s magic, he’d go insane.”
I almost crashed back to the ground. “Arthur is conscious?”
Felix shook his head. “He’s in a state of deep sleep. From what Merlin told me, Arthur’s brain is unable to wake him. He can’t communicate with anyone. One day in every seven, Merlin must spend at his side. Any more than that and it would burn him out. That’s where the paladins come into it.”
The paladins were people who surrounded Arthur day and night. Twelve heavily armed men and women who stood guard over their fallen king, waiting for the day he awakes.
“Originally the paladins fed him too,” Felix said. “Each of them was linked to Arthur every day. It’s why there are over a hundred of them. They had to rotate every week so they didn’t all burn out and die.”
“And the souls?” Diana asked.
“A few hundred years ago, Merlin discovered that the soul of a being was much more powerful than having the paladins constantly feeding Arthur. A soul would sustain Arthur for years, with minimal input from the paladins. So Merlin changed things. He fed the soul of the deceased to Arthur and had the paladins help feed the magic inside his coffin instead. It meant that Arthur had more people giving him stimulation and hopefully a larger chance to wake up.
“Souls were easy to come by. There are no shortages of enemies of Avalon, and mostly the Reavers just waited about until those enemies came to them. There’s always someone in Avalon who has a price on his, or her, head. They’d take the souls and Merlin would ensure that they were fed to Arthur.”
“Does it work?” Alan asked.
“Arthur’s vitals appear to be stronger, but there’s no change in anything you can see. Merlin seems certain that what they’re doing is working.”
“And at what point did they go from taking the souls of enemies to murdering women in the street?” I asked.
“Merlin. Merlin’s what changed things.”
“In what way?” I asked, already dreading the answer.
“It was his plan to have the Reavers take souls in the first place. His plan to feed them to Arthur. And now it’s his plan to take the souls of innocent people and feed them to Arthur. Merlin’s the one who sent the Reavers to London.”
CHAPTER 7
Winchester, England. Now.
I left the hospital and made my way toward my home in the New Forest. The journey was an unpleasant one, as my magic had to be used constantly to ensure I didn’t pass out from the jorōgumo venom, which still coursed through my body. I’d settled for using my air magic—just a tiny amount to make me slightly faster and more agile than normal—but wasn’t entirely sure how much the small amount of magic used would hold back the venom. Hopefully long enough. I needed to find out why the Reavers had returned. I couldn’t do that from a hospital bed.
I got out of the cab I’d taken home and took tentative steps toward my house. When there were no obvious attacks, and my house was still in one piece, I opened the door, disarming the security system before enough toxins were pumped into the hallway to knock out a charging rhino. Sometimes it pays to be overly careful.
I needed to figure out my next move. Tommy, Olivia, and Kasey were in Camelot, so calling them was out of the question. If I wanted to contact them, I’d have to contact the island of Avalon and have them relay the message through the realm gate to someone who could find Tommy and company in Camelot.
I’d gone upstairs and had a shower, trying to get my brain to work out what my next step would be, when someone knocked on the front door. It was a polite knock, the knock of someone who probably wasn’t going to bust the door down or try to shoot me. Those people don’t normally knock first anyway.
I used my fire magic to instantly dry me, and then quickly pulled on some jeans and a T-shirt, before answering the door and finding Doctor Grayson standing in what was quickly becoming a rainy day.
“Doc,” I said and held the door open. “Want to come in?”
“No, I’d rather talk out here,” he told me.
I stepped barefoot onto my porch, the rain beginning to make the roof above my head sound like I was walking into a hurricane. “Why are we out here?”
“Safer,” he told me. “Avalon likes to bug people’s homes.”
“Avalon hasn’t bugged mine,” I assured him. It was true too; I had it checked every few months by some of Tommy’s employees.
“Just humor me,” he said with a slight smile.
“Okay, Doc, the floor is all yours.”
“I contacted Olivia and informed her of what’s happened here.” He raised his hand to stop me arguing. “Yes, I’m aware you asked me not to. But Tommy would yell for a very long time if he’d not been told. He asked if you needed help and I said you’d let him know. I think while he’d drop everything to come back here, it would be a strain on Kasey. She’s there for her naming ceremony after all. Not every day you get one of those.”
While I could use Tommy and Olivia’s help, Kasey was down there for a reason. Besides, they were safer away from me if people were trying to kill me.
“Anything else?” I asked.
Grayson placed his leather briefcase onto a nearby black metal flowerpot stand, and opened it with a loud click. He removed a piece of paper and passed it to me. “The information on the hostages.”
I read through the list of names and their details—dates of birth, addresses, and a smattering of personal information—but nothing jumped out at me. “Okay, I don’t get it,” I said after reading it again just to make sure I wasn’t missing something. “I was certain the Reavers were there for more than me. It was such a huge risk to take otherwise.”
Grayson reached into his briefcase once again and passed me another piece of paper. This one contained only two names. The first was a seventy-six-year-old woman by the name of Liz Williams, and the second was for an eighty-two-year-old man by the name of Edward Williams. I compared the lists and the names appeared on both. “I don’t get this either.”
“The first list was the names of everyone there, compiled by the human police. I had someone run all of the names through a human database and that’s the information we got. The second list was compiled by a friend of mine in the SOA.”
“These two are Avalon?” I asked.
Grayson nodded. “Their files are sealed though.”
That was interesting. I didn’t know many people who had sealed files; normally that was reserved for people deep undercover, exceptionally powerful individuals, or those who had left Avalon.
“I assume you’ll want to visit them,” Grayson mentioned when I hadn’t said anything for a while.
“I think that’s probably a good idea.” I pocketed the paper and re-entered my house to grab a set of car keys, and put some more clothes on.
“You know, you pissed off a lot of people by killing a man in the hospital,” Grayson called from the doorway.
“I thought you were worried about bugs,” I shouted back, as I picked up some shoes and socks and finished getting dressed.
“They already know you killed someone. Probably a lot of people by now.”
“I haven’t killed a lot of people since this morning,” I said as I made my way back toward him.
“I meant, a lot of people know about you killing the Reaver.”
“I know what you meant,” I told him. “He came to kill me in a hospital. And he was a Reaver. I really don’t have a problem with killing him.”
“Me neither, but I wanted to let you know it annoyed Heather and some people who work at the hospital.”
I glanced past Grayson at the orange and black Fiat Panda on my drive. It was the newer version of the car, so it no longer looked like the world’s ugliest box. Instead it appeared like someone had taken a bigger car and squashed it. Then added chrome in an effort to make people forget about the rest of it. In short, it wasn’t what I’d have called a looker. “Is that yours?”
“It’s my work car. You’d be surprised how easy it is to
damage your car, working with injured werewolves and the like.”
“You want to follow me, so I can pretend I don’t know you? Or do you just want to take my car? I’ll drop you back here after.”
“It’s a very good car.”
“Okay, but it’s also a Fiat Panda.”
Grayson held my gaze for a short time. “You’re a bit of car snob, aren’t you?”
I nodded and clicked the button on the garage door opener. One of the three doors slowly moved up, revealing a Jaguar F-Type R, in British racing green. Otherwise known as dark green. It looked how a sports car should look: sleek, sophisticated, and sexy. Everything about it was as close to perfection as a car could be. It helped that it drove like a dream, as if the wide grille on the front of the car ate the road as it went.
I turned to Grayson as we reached the garage and he saw the Jaguar in all its glory. “Yes, I’m a bit of a car snob when given the option. You want to go out in your Panda, or in this?”
Grayson glanced over at his small car, and then back to the Jag. “Is it fast?”
I unlocked the car and we both got in, where I turned the engine on and allowed the sound of the V8 to wash over us. “Is it fast?” I asked. “A bit.”
There are few cars that sound or look as good as the Jaguar, and from the smile on Grayson’s face as we made our way toward the elderly couple on the list he’d given me, he agreed with me.
The constant use of my air magic while driving was an odd experience. I had to keep it activated until I was certain the venom had left my body, which would take several days. I was very aware that just one slip in concentration meant the venom would once again attack my body, and that would be very bad when driving at seventy miles per hour. It was a concern that I was sure Grayson shared as I felt him glancing my way every few minutes, and I was happy to leave the motorway and get back to city speed limits.
