by Steve McHugh
"Nate?" Olivia said, crouched before me, concern in her eyes.
I told her about the photo and what it meant.
"So, he's a fifth generation psychopath."
"Someone gave him these notes on how to become a lich. I'm glad we've got Sky here to help with this. Otherwise, we wouldn't stand a chance."
"Peter Jarvis was a misogynistic coward, who couldn't even kill those weaker than he unless they were tied up and powerless."
"He's not going to need to tie us up to kill us anymore," I pointed out, and threw the journal onto the desk.
"Yet he still has to tie women to trees in order to kill them. And he's now so physically hideous that he has to enlist someone to bring the women to him. He sounds pathetic. And he will be even more so once Sky gets done with him. You and Sky have history, I assume."
"You could call it that, but we're just friends." I didn't really want to discuss it, but was grateful for the excuse to get off the topic of liches and their psychotic tendencies.
"Sure, friends," Olivia said with a smile. "I'm going to check in on Tommy and get some more agents in this building. I want Peter's home gutted and searched from top to bottom."
She walked out of the room to make the call, leaving me alone with my thoughts. And with the fear of what was out there, waiting. I pushed it aside as I'd learnt to do long ago. "Fear is just a tool to be used like any other emotion," Merlin would say. "You need to control it. Do not let it control you."
It was a lesson he'd drilled into me, over and over again, making me face my fears until I could control them. But I never stopped feeling fear. No one can do that. No one sane anyway.
The vibration of my phone shook the memory away.
"Hello, Nathan," Peter's voice, his actual voice, was deep and wispy, the sort of voice you'd imagine a snake would have.
"I figured you might call at some point," I said. "You want to brag about something really impressive? Killed a few more defenceless werewolves or something?"
"Are you really upset over Neil's death? He was a rapist, a murderer and generally the scum of the earth. I did you a favour."
"Is that why you paid for his nice penthouse?"
"Paid for?' His laugher sent shivers up my spine. "I think you're overestimating the cash-flow of a man who recently returned from the dead. You need to look elsewhere for that answer."
"The answer will wait, then, I guess. So, what do you want, Peter?"
He laughed again, a humourless, evil noise that would have made fingernails on a chalkboard sound like a symphony of elegant beauty. "How's Olivia holding up?"
"She wants you dead. Again. Preferably on a more permanent basis."
"We both know she can't do that, but I'll give her the opportunity to try soon enough. But the reason I'm calling is you, Nathan. I warned you to leave this alone. That it didn't involve you. I warned you to run away and never come back. And you not only ignored me, you brought a necromancer with you to end my plans."
"Sorry about her, her father just insisted I bring someone along to kill you."
"Her father?"
"Hades," I said. "Her father is Hades. So even if you do manage to get away from Sky, what do you think Hades will do to you?"
There was silence for a few heartbeats. "You think I fear him?"
"That shake in your voice tells me you do, yes. You're not stupid. You hurt Sky, even by accident, and Hades will rain down horror on you that you can barely comprehend. He will tear your soul in two and keep the pieces as a plaything for when he gets bored."
Peter chuckled. "He can't come onto English soil. Not without starting a war."
That surprised me. And the shock of his knowledge quickly turned to concern when I realised that someone had to have educated him on matters of Avalon court. I decided to take a gamble. "Your friends in Avalon tell you that?"
"My friends tell me all sorts of things. They tell me that you stumbled into this from loyalty to your friends. That was the only reason I was going to give you an out. But you wronged me, and now it's time to pay the price. I warned you."
"Are you about to blow your old place up?" I asked flippantly as I quickly searched around the room for anything that might suddenly explode.
"I left you a gift, something very important that I think you're going to want to see. I'm looking at it right now. The cliff that lets you look down over the forest. Apparently this place is special for you. Your gift is here. And you might want to hurry. I don't think it's going to keep long." And the phone went dead.
I don't even remember leaving the apartment. The next thing I knew, I was on the stairs, sprinting to the building's front door as Olivia's calls for me to slow down rang out behind me. I jumped onto my bike and started the engine.
"Nate," Olivia tried again as she ran down the outside stairs.
I forced myself to stay and tell her about the call.
"I'll get help, they'll follow my GPS," she said.
I opened the bike's throttle, speeding off toward my destination, weaving between traffic and ignoring traffic cameras and stop lights alike. It didn't take long to reach the outskirts of the forest I'd taken Sara to.
I pulled into the clearing, my heart pounding a beat in my throat. At first I couldn't see anything out of the ordinary. I stopped my bike and climbed off, ignoring the calls in my head to run and find whatever Peter had left for me. The more rational side of me insisted that the lich could still be around, waiting for me to make a mistake.
But my rational thought lost out the second I saw the woman tied to the tree, a hood pulled over her head so that I couldn't make out who it was. I sprinted toward her and pawed at the hood, tearing at the poppers holding it to her coat, ripping it off and throwing it aside.
Sara's beautiful face was untouched apart from a slight bruise on her cheek. But her eyes were closed and I had no idea if she was dead or alive. I forced myself to calm and searched for a pulse on her neck, finding it to be slow, but steady.
I used a small measure of wind magic to create a hardened blade of air and remove the cable ties that held her arms behind her, around the tree trunk. She sagged forward, but I caught her, lowering her to the ground as sirens exploded all around me. I couldn't see any obvious injuries and there were no marks on her bare legs or blood on the blue and white dress.
Olivia's car skidded to a halt near my bike, followed closely by an ambulance. It hadn't been too long ago that I'd had to watch another friend of mine, Holly, be carried away in one of those with life-threatening injuries. It wasn't something I wanted to do again.
The paramedics moved me aside and got to work on Sara. One of them, a young woman, sat with her and asked her questions, tapping her on the shoulders and shouting in her ears in an effort to get a response.
The whole event was a bit like a terrible dream. I watched with horror as nothing the young paramedic did, appeared to rouse Sara from whatever stupor she was in. And then, just as my thoughts turned to the darkest corner of my mind, Sara coughed and opened her eyes.
A flood of emotion crashed down over me and I had to place a hand against the tree until it had eased. Peter, and whoever was supporting him, had taken Sara as a message to me. And for that someone was going to suffer.
Sara's scream from the rear of the ambulance had me sprinting toward it.
"Nate," Sara said, her voice groggy and soft.
I climbed into the ambulance and sat beside her, as she forced a smile.
"They didn't do anything to me," she said softly. "You need to know that. You need to know that nothing that happened here was because of you. I know that's what you're thinking. This is not your fault."
I nodded, but daren't say anything.
"They're going after Tommy..." she started to say more, but she passed out again. Olivia retrieved her phone from her pocket and started calling.
"It's okay," I assured her. "Sky and your agents are with them, they're safe."
She nodded, but made the call anyway, walking
off to talk as I left the ambulance and watched it drive away, before glancing over to the tree to discover a small black bag beside where Sara had been held.
I picked it up, hoping to find something that might tell me where Peter and his men were hiding. I didn't really expect to find anything, but it was either do something pointless that took my mind away from Sara, or I start hurting people to get the answers I needed. And Olivia probably wouldn't have liked that very much.
I glanced up in time to see Olivia's face turn to one of horror as she sprinted toward her car.
Chapter 35
Olivia was in the car and off like a rocket, before I'd even had time to ask what had happened. I raced over to my bike and followed her. Unfortunately, she had a good thirty seconds head-start, but that was soon cut down as I sped through the traffic to catch up. Olivia had her lights and siren going, something the LOA rarely use. Clearly whatever she'd been told was enough to spook her into charging off.
I wasn't worried about Tommy or Kasey; they had Sky and Agent Reid with them, along with half a dozen other agents. And no lich is going to willingly attack somewhere that a powerful necromancer happens to be staying. But Peter wasn't just a lich, I thought. What he had against Olivia was personal. And personal shit often overrode any sense of self-preservation. I opened the throttle further and the speedometer shot upwards, the front wheel of the bike lifting off the road slightly for a moment.
The journey probably didn't take long, but it felt like a lifetime as all of the horrific things that could have happened ran through my head. I had to keep telling myself that everything was fine, over and over again like some sort of mantra.
I arrived at Tommy's house soon after Olivia, who was already out of her car and sprinting toward the front door, as I switched off my engine and... noticed the front window was broken. I dropped my helmet onto the ground and ran to join Olivia, just as she pushed the unlocked door open and stepped inside.
The house was eerily quiet, and Olivia drew her gun as we walked down the hallway toward the living room, the room where the window had been broken. It looked as if there'd been one hell of a fight; plaster was missing from the walls, which had huge dents. The dining room table was in pieces, and I counted three bullet holes in the ceiling. Someone had fired shots as a warning. A note had been stuck to the TV screen... We left you a DVD.
I almost had to drag Olivia away, but the rest of the house needed to be searched, in case someone was hiding. Be it friend or foe.
We went to the kitchen first, as it was closest, and found Agent Greaves with his face pulverised. A bullet hole sat right where his heart would be and blood soaked the front of his body, making a substantial puddle beneath where he'd fallen. In the middle of the puddle sat a pair of silver knuckle-dusters, probably discarded after his killer had finished with them. A second agent was slumped beside him; he'd been decapitated with something sharp. His head had rolled under the counter and blood had sprayed up the wall and ceiling.
We left the kitchen and finished searching downstairs, but found only the bodies of yet more dead agents in the den. There were four of them and, unlike Greaves, they'd been torn apart. Ghouls had been at work on them. The rest of the search was exhausting, and not because of the size of the house. I could tell from her body language and silence that Olivia was doing everything she could to hold it together. I hoped she could keep that up until we knew what was going on.
The four upstairs bedrooms were all empty, and all immaculate, no one had been searching for anything. But the bathroom held the body of the babysitter in the bath. A bullet hole in her head, and another in her heart. There was blood splatter up the blue tiles. She'd been standing in bath when the first shot had been fired, and then shot a second time as she collapsed into the tub.
Olivia’s phone started to ring and she answered it immediately. I left her to talk and went back downstairs to give the front room a more in-depth search. Claw marks had defaced one of the walls, leaving deep gouges in the brick. It was then that I remembered that Tommy had a shed outside.
I pulled open the patio door and walked through the conservatory. The back garden was as much of a war zone as the front room had been. Two more dead agents lay on the ground, teeth marks in their throats and deep gouges in their chests. More ghoul kills. But someone else had put up a hell of a fight against the intruders. I stepped over destroyed plants and an upturned bench, making my way toward the huge shed at the end of the lengthy garden. Someone had piled up garden furniture in front of the door, but a blast of air sent it spiralling away. I ignited a ball of fire in my hand as I opened the door... and immediately extinguished it as I found a bound and gagged Sky lying unconscious on the cold wooden floor.
Silver cuffs adorned her wrists, and a thick rope had been used as a gag. I unfastened the gag and tossed it aside. I'd need keys for the cuffs, so had to leave them on for now. That's when I noticed the sorcerer's band on her left wrist. I'd never seen one used on a necromancer outside of a prison before, but it was on the other side of the cuffs, and so impossible to remove without magic. And using magic would cause whatever runes were inscribed to ignite, possibly removing Sky's hand along with it.
I felt for a pulse. Like Sara's it was slow, but strong. I needed to get the cuffs and band off of her before she woke. It would be easier and faster to let her healing ability do the work. So, I picked her up in my arms and carried her back to the house, as a cold rage swirled inside of me. First Sara and then Sky. Someone was going to pay dearly for that.
The front room was empty, but I heard Olivia talking outside to the agents who had arrived in double-quick time. If your director calls and says her family was attacked, you make it your new mission in life to make sure that it gets dealt with.
I laid Sky on the mostly undamaged sofa and went outside to find someone who might have keys.
Olivia's talking had turned into a full blown rage as she demanded that her agents find out everything about what had happened and report back to her and her alone. She saw me and sighed.
"Get to work," she told everyone and the agents dispersed without a word.
"Did you find anything?" she asked me with more than a little anger. I doubted it was aimed at me, so I let it drop.
"Sky was in the shed. Bound, gagged and unconscious. Someone put a sorcerer's band on her wrist. I need keys to some cuffs so I can remove it."
Olivia fumbled in her pocket and passed me a set of small silver keys. "A sorcerer's band?" she asked, almost to herself.
"Whoever did this has access to Avalon tech," I pointed out as we walked together back into the living room. I unlocked Sky's cuffs and removed them, almost tearing off the sorcerer's band from her wrist and throwing it across the room a moment later.
"We should watch whatever message they left us," Olivia said, switching on the TV and ripping the paper from the screen. "How long will Sky be out?"
"I don't know," I said, moving her arms so they were no longer behind her. "Probably a few minutes. She's not going to be happy when she wakes up."
"She can join the fucking club then, can't she?" Olivia flicked the TV onto the right channel and started the DVD.
Agent Reid's face came into view. "Hey, boss," he said. There was a cut above his lip and blood trickled down his chin. Another was just below his eye. He'd taken one hell of a punch.
"Actually, I guess it's time to tell the truth. You're not my boss. I don't work for you. I work for someone else; someone considerably more powerful than you, my pretty little director. And they want this lich to have his way. My job was to make sure that happened. And when he decided he was going to take your family, well it was my job to make sure that he got exactly what he wanted there, too."
He motioned off camera as one of the ghouls dragged Kasey into the room, pushing her onto the couch. Reid turned the camera slightly to reveal a semi-conscious Tommy on the same couch, his face a bloody mask. A sorcerer's band adorned his wrist. "Your bloke here put up a hell of a fight,"
Reid continued, touching his swollen lip. "He had to be taught how to be civilised, and it's amazing how quickly one learns with a gun to your child's head."
Kasey started shaking her dad, begging him to get up, to help. To not be dead.
"Will you shut up, you stupid little bitch," Reid snapped, delivering a swift kick to Tommy's chest.
Kasey screamed and positioned herself in front of him, protecting him from further damage. Tommy glanced at her through one good eye and I saw tears roll, cleaning some of the blood from his cheeks.
Reid watched all of it with a humorous smile on his face. "Brave little fucker, isn't she?" he looked back at the camera. "So, I guess you want to know what's going to happen next. Well, at midnight tomorrow, you're going to come to a place of our choosing, we'll let you know where, and then you're going to hand yourself over to Peter, and he's going to kill you. If you do all of this, he may let your boyfriend and kid go. Probably not, but at least I'll make sure they die quick. You will die very slowly, I'm almost certain of that.
"Oh, and sorry about the mess with Greaves, but he was a useless fucking idiot and I basically did you a favour." He laughed to himself. "Seriously, I couldn't have hoped for a partner who was less observant. Not once did he question why we got the calls when a murder took place. He was just happy to take a lead on the investigation.
"And now onto Nathan Garrett. Nate. Do you want me to tell you something that no one else knows about you? You're not a member of The Faceless. I know that with a hundred percent certainty. And do you want to know, how I know?" Reid brought the camera closer to his face. "Because I'm part of The Faceless," he whispered. "And we know our own."
I felt Olivia's eyes burning into me as the truth was revealed, but Reid wasn't done yet.
"Oh, we didn't kill the necromancer. Hurt her quite a bit, I had to remove her from the issue first as she'd have killed the ghouls. But having Hades after us for killing his daughter would go against our plans. I hope she takes this as a hint to go home, because if she doesn't, and she goes up against Peter, he will kill her before she kills him."
