Twilight Heart

by Adam J. Wright

  We walked across the grass to the circle.

  Meyer and Chance were still deep in conversation.

  “Hey,” I shouted at them. “Are you coming?”

  They both nodded and walked toward the circle.

  “I don’t like this,” Leon said. “They’re definitely plotting something.”

  “Keep your eye on them. There’s no way they’re going through that gate just to loot the place. They have something else in mind.”

  Meyer and Chance stepped into the circle. I shivered slightly and it wasn’t only because of the November chill.

  “Are we ready to begin?” Victoria asked.

  “Before we go,” I said. “We need to discuss bringing us back. The room is underground so we won’t be able to call you.”

  “Oh,” she said. “What do you want us to do then?”

  “Give us two hours. After that time, bring us back.”

  She nodded. “All right. But we can only bring you back from the room we’re sending you to. So make sure you’re all in that room within two hours. Now, shall we begin?”

  Everyone nodded but no one spoke. A solemnity had descended over all of us.

  Devon Blackwell took a silver bowl from the altar and came forward with it, along with eight ritual daggers. She handed a dagger to each of us and held out the bowl. “A drop of blood from each of you, please.”

  I cut my finger and let the blood drip into the bowl, which contained herbs and leaves. Devon moved from one person to the next collecting the blood. Victoria took the daggers from us and the two witches returned to the altar.

  They began chanting in strange languages that had creeped me out every time I’d heard them in the past and did so now.

  The perimeter of the circle began to spark with energy. The sisters increased the pace of their words and I felt the energy move inward, filling the circle. It felt as if it were spinning, gaining speed and power. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. The world beyond the circle seemed to shimmer.

  Devon moved to the brazier, the silver bowl in her hands.

  The words the two women spoke mingled and twisted together.

  Devon tipped the contents of the bowl into the brazier. The white smoke turned red.

  The world beyond the circle vanished and was replaced in an instant. We were no longer standing in Frobisher’s Glade; now we were inside a large room whose walls were made of huge sandy colored stone blocks. The ceiling was at least twenty feet high. A wide set of stone steps led up to a dais. Standing upon the dais, the Pillars of Khonsu waited.

  They looked just like Tia’s drawing.

  I tightened my grip on my sword. Meyer and Chance had gotten what they needed from us. If they planned to take us out and go through the gate alone, now would be the time to strike.

  But they didn’t do that. They both ascended the steps to the pillars. Chance checked his watch. He looked at Meyer and said, “It is time.”

  They began chanting and drawing magical shapes in the air with their fingers.

  I turned to Carlton. “When the gate opens, place the Janus statue halfway into it. That will prevent it from closing until we’re back.”

  He nodded solemnly and gave the Box of Midnight to Mallory.

  The two Cabal members were still chanting and now I could see a blue light emanating from the space between the pillars. “Come on,” I said to the others. I ascended the steps with Leon, Michael, and Mallory. Carlton and Amy hung back.

  Meyer and Chance seemed to have completed their spell. Between the pillars, a bright blue square of crackling energy had appeared.

  “That’s it,” Meyer said. “That’s the gate. We simply step through and we will be in the realm where Rekhmire is imprisoned.”

  “After you,” I said, gesturing to the blue portal.

  He nodded, stepped into the blue sparks, and disappeared. I followed him. As I stepped forward, the energy overwhelmed my senses for a split second and then I was suddenly underwater. The dark liquid was cold against my skin and I couldn’t see anything. I didn’t even know how far it was to the surface.

  Kicking my legs, I swam upward and broke the surface. I breathed in a deep lungful of air to find it tasted slightly sulfurous. I was in a square man-made pool that was ringed with large flagstones. At one end of the pool, a huge stone structure rose into the air. Its shape was that of a pyramidal stepped temple.

  Beyond the pool and the structure, red desert sands stretched as far as the eye could see. The sky was also tinged red with billowing clouds of purple in the distance.

  I swam to the edge of the pool.

  Meyer was standing on the flagstones, staring at the building. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

  That was one word for it, I supposed. But where he saw beauty, I saw danger. We had no idea what was in there.

  Mallory surfaced in the pool and I took the box from her as she climbed out. Leon was next, then Michael, followed by Chance.

  When the six of us were all standing on the flagstones, we checked our weapons and prepared ourselves for whatever might lie ahead.

  There was no entrance into the structure at ground level. Near the apex, hundreds of feet up from where we stood, a square doorway had been cut into the stone.

  “Looks like we have some climbing to do,” I said.

  Because the sides of the temple were stepped, we didn’t have to actually climb but it was going to be a tough ascent. I just hoped that nothing was waiting in that doorway to kill us when we arrived up there with aching legs and our energy depleted.

  We walked to the base of the structure and began our ascent. As we went up, I asked Mallory how she was feeling.

  “Fine,” she said. “Why?”

  “I know how Tia reacts whenever Rekhmire is mentioned. Now that we’re here where he lives, I thought she might be seething with emotion.”

  Mallory shook her head. “No, she’s gone quiet.”

  I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.

  We kept going. The muscles in my legs were feeling solid now and I knew that soon they’d be full of lactic acid and cramping up. I looked over at Meyer and Chance. If they were planning anything underhanded, that plan had probably been overridden by the pain they were feeling. They both had their heads down and were covered in sweat.

  Leon and Michael were powering through it, marching up the steep steps with determined looks in their eyes.

  “How are you guys doing?” I asked them.

  “No problem, sir,” Michael said.

  “How about you, Leon?”

  “The air smells of farts,” he said.

  That lightened the mood. Even Meyer and Chance chuckled.

  When we finally got to the top, we were out of breath, sweaty, and aching. Luckily, nothing came out of the doorway and tried to eat us.

  After I got my breath back, I went to the doorway and peered inside. A set of steps led down, curving out of sight.

  “Everyone ready?” I asked. The others got behind me and I descended, sword ready in case anything should come rushing up the steps toward me. The stairs took us to a large stone-floored room that was lit with flaming torches on the walls. Statues of jackal-headed warriors stood beneath the torches. Each was dressed in gold mail and held a kopesh—a sword with a sickle-like blade—in its hand.

  “This isn’t creepy at all,” Leon said sarcastically.

  At the far end of the room, another set of steps led down into the bowels of the structure.

  Cautiously, we advanced across the room. I’d seen enough movies to know what was going to happen next. “Those statues are going to come to life aren’t they?” I whispered.

  When we were exactly halfway across the room, the flagstone beneath my feet clicked as I stepped on it. “I’ve triggered a trap,” I told the others.

  The jackal-headed guards began to move, advancing toward us, their swords gleaming in the light from the wall torches.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I knew the statues would come to l
ife.”

  19

  Felicity got to the cemetery at eight and parked the Focus in the empty car park outside the gate. The night was cold. She was wrapped up in a padded jacket, beanie, and gloves but she still felt the bite of the frosty air through her clothing. Her breath clouded in front of her face.

  She pushed on the gate and it opened. Charlie had been true to his word. Felicity slipped inside and closed the gate behind her.

  Away from the streetlights, the cemetery was lit only by moonlight. Felicity stood with her back to the gate for a few seconds, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the difference in light values. The headstones seemed bleached in the moonlight, like rows of gray bones.

  She followed the path to the point where Jessica had taken her and then walked across the grass between the graves, looking for the headstone that bore Linda Dean’s name. She knew it was by the trees somewhere but the cemetery looked different at nighttime and she had to search for almost twenty minutes before she finally found Linda’s grave.

  She wasn’t sure what to do now she was here. Just wait around she supposed. She wished she had an EMF meter. At least then she could check the grave for abnormal readings. But she didn’t have such a device so she just had to stand here in the cold.

  Welcome to the life of a P.I.

  But she wasn’t a P.I. Not really. She’d given her life to the Society of Shadows and they repaid her by giving her a false promotion so they could catch some target. Most of what she’d heard in the van hadn’t even made sense. Why would they set her up as bait? Who would try to make contact with her? She didn’t really know many people in England anymore. Not people the Society would be interested in, anyway.

  Once this case was solved, she was going to resign. There was no point in working for an organization that treated you this badly. She’d loved working for the Society once. It had been her entire life. But the organization had become splintered by politics. There were factions within factions. Spies. Traitors. Half of the Society seemed to be made up of Cabal members these days.

  She sighed and wrapped her arms around herself to keep warm. This ghost had better turn up soon or she’d freeze to death.

  Something pale stepped out from the trees. Felicity took a step back. She felt suddenly silly for not asking Jessica to show her a photo of her mother. How would she recognize the ghost? Then she felt silly for having that thought. How many ghosts could there be in this cemetery?

  The figure that stepped out in front of her was partially wrapped a shroud. Felicity looked at the face and found that of a woman in her sixties.

  “Linda,” Felicity said, steeling herself even though her heart was fluttering like a butterfly trapped in a jar. “Do you have something to tell me?”

  Linda raised one arm and pointed at the perimeter wall.

  This was the same action Jessica had described seeing in her bedroom.

  “What are you trying to show me?” Felicity asked, stepping forward and letting her gaze follow the ghost’s pointing finger. There was nothing there except trees, the wall, and shadows.

  Why would Linda try to show Felicity something in the cemetery and try to show Jessica something through her bedroom window? Unless the same thing could be seen at both locations, it didn’t make sense.

  “You’re not pointing at something are you?” she said to the ghost. “You’re pointing in a direction. Do you want me to follow you?”

  The ghost didn’t reply but merely flickered out of existence for a split second. She reappeared by the wall. She pointed in the same direction, only now, her hand disappeared into the bricks of the wall.

  “All right,” Felicity said. She obviously had to leave the cemetery because Linda was pointing in a direction beyond the wall. She went back to the path and followed it to the gate, which she opened and slipped through, remembering to close it behind her as she’d promised Charlie.

  The ghost was on the street now, beneath one of the streetlights, waiting.

  Felicity walked toward Linda. Again, the ghost flickered out of existence and then reappeared farther along the street. Felicity wasn’t sure if she should follow on foot or in her car.

  Deciding to try the car, she got in to the Focus and drove along the road toward Linda. The ghost moved forward at a rapid, flickering speed, constantly disappearing and reappearing farther along the road.

  Felicity followed.

  When they came to crossroads, the ghost flickered left. Felicity turned left.

  Ten minutes later, during which time the ghost had taken Felicity through parts of town that were busy even at this time of night, they arrived at an empty gravel car park by the canal.

  Felicity got out of the car. She was certain no that only she could see Linda’s ghost. They’d traveled through some parts of town where there were people walking along the pavement in the areas where Linda had flickered in and out of existence. None of those people had seen her.

  Whether that meant Linda had chosen to reveal herself to Felicity—as she’d chosen to reveal herself to her daughter—or just that Felicity was sensitive to this sort of thing, she had no idea. All she knew was that a ghost had led her across Manchester to the canal in which her body had been found.

  Felicity knew that this must be the place where Linda had been killed.

  She looked at the ghost and said, “Show me.”

  Linda turned toward the canal. She didn’t flicker this time; she floated toward the bank.

  Felicity left the car park and made her way over the grass to the water’s edge. This area was overgrown and the grass reached up to her knees. The ghost had stopped and was pointing at the ground a couple of feet from where Felicity stood.

  Crouching down and carefully brushing the grass aside, Felicity saw something glimmer in the moonlight. She didn’t touch it. Instead, she took her phone from her pocket and used its light to confirm her suspicions.

  Lying in the grass was a silver heart-shaped necklace with a broken chain. Felicity could see the engraving on the metal. LD.

  Linda Dean.

  “I couldn’t show this to Jessica.” The voice made Felicity jump. She turned to face Linda’s ghost. “I couldn’t show Jessica,” the ghost repeated. “This would be too upsetting for her. I can show you.”

  Swallowing back tears she felt suddenly threaten, Felicity nodded. “Yes, you can show me. I’ll make it right.”

  She stood up and checked the area. She needed to get the police her somehow, needed them to find this locket. Then they could examine the crime scene and get one step closer to finding Linda’s killer.

  She spotted something in the car park that made her heart skip a beat. A CCTV camera mounted on a pole. It’s function was obviously to monitor the parked cars but it looked like the view from its lens might extend to this patch of grass as well.

  Felicity went back to the car and turned on the GPS. She got the location of the car park and called the police. She left no name and simply told them that the detectives investigating the murder of Linda Dean should investigate the patch of grass by the car park. She gave them the exact location and ended the call.

  As she drove away from the area, she looked in the rearview mirror and saw the ghost of Linda Dean watching her from the canal bank.

  Linda raised a hand briefly in a wave of thanks.

  20

  I raised my sword to ward off the kopesh that was slicing through the air toward my skull. Steel clashed with steel and sparks flew. The same ring of steel on steel filled the room as each of us fought for survival against the jackal headed temple guards.

  Just as I deflected the attack from above, another came from the side. I dived out of the way of the arcing blade. The stone floor rushed up to meet me and I angled my body so that my momentum sent me rolling away from my attackers.

  Springing to my feet, I hacked at a guard that was attacking Michael. My sword dug into its shoulder and as I pulled it free, Michael delivered a fatal blow to the creature’s neck with his own sword.


  “Thank you, sir,” he said, bringing up the barrel of his shotgun and dispatching a guard with a blast right between the eyes.

  My two attackers caught up with me. They struck at the same time, one from the left, the other from the right. I deflected the blow from my left with my blade, a move that resulted in a loud clang as the two swords met and a shower of sparks that scattered away like crazy fireflies.

  The attack from my right sliced through my shirt but I managed to angle my body so that it was otherwise harmless. As I pirouetted, I drove the point of my sword into the guard on my left.

  The one on the right was still moving forward with the momentum of its swinging sword. I smashed my elbow into its snout and while it was still reeling, I advanced and sliced the edge of my blade into its neck.

  With both of my attackers dealt with, I looked at the fray around me to see if anyone needed my help.

  Mallory was fighting off one of the guards but I saw she had things well in hand as she thrust forward like a fencer and pierced the creature’s chest. It went down like a sack of rocks.

  Michael was blasting away with his shotgun and had already taken down five of the guards as far as I could see.

  Leon was taking on two of them so I evened the odds by killing one of them for him. He thanked me and drove his sword into the eye of the other.

  I looked around the room. The jackal guards were all dead.

  Meyer and Chance seemed to know how to handle themselves. It looked like they’d killed six between them.

  The air was filled with the coppery tang of blood.

  We moved quickly across the room to the steps that led deeper into the pyramid. After triggering the trap in the jackal room, I moved more cautiously. It took us a while to get to the next room because of that and because we had descended a long way. In fact, I guessed the we might actually be underground.

  The steps terminated at a doorway that was bordered with gold edging etched with hieroglyphs. Whatever was beyond this door was probably important. Keeping my sword ready, I advanced through the doorway carefully.