Band of Demons (The Sanheim Chronicles Book 2)

by Rob Blackwell

  It had been useful information, data she used in tandem with Buzz’s notes to write the best stories of their careers. But it had also been profoundly disturbing. Seeing Lord Halloween’s thoughts… she felt like it had left a stain in her own mind. Like she had taken some part of him, no matter how small, and let it in permanently.

  She had watched Quinn sleep. They were intimately connected now—two bodies with one mind and one soul—but she knew he hadn’t sensed the taint. Some things were apparently still hers alone. It was in that moment that she conceived the idea.

  Her anger at the police was still acute. They had failed Leesburg and Loudoun County. It was Kate and Quinn who put a stop to Lord Halloween—and what price would they pay for it? As Quinn had warned time and again, the abilities they now possessed didn’t feel like something good.

  So she decided to send them a message. Just as Lord Halloween had done to Tim Anderson, she wrote the police a letter. Something that let them know who and what had stopped the murderer. She wanted them to understand that something else was now stalking Loudoun County. If the police couldn’t protect people, then the Prince of Sanheim would.

  When she wrote the first draft, though, it was confused, disjointed—not at all like something Kate would write. She tore up the first two versions. Finally, she had an inspiration. Instead of trying to use her own words, she would use Lord Halloween’s.

  “Some of what we tell you will be lies,” she wrote, repeating the first line of Lord Halloween’s letter to Anderson.

  As soon as she wrote it, it felt right. This was how to get their attention. The rest had poured out of her. She had taken credit for killing Lord Halloween and issued a warning to the police: “The monsters are out in force.”

  The ending was so natural she never stopped to consider it. She had repeated Lord Halloween’s initial missive word for word, but then added a twist: “We are night. We are October. We are flesh torn and rent. We are the rider that was promised long ago, the harbinger of fall. We are death, riding on a black horse. You can call us the Prince of Sanheim.”

  She had known Quinn would think it was a bad idea. Some part of her also understood that the letter would only antagonize the police and, worse, tip them off to their existence. But she had sent it off anyway, without his knowledge. She wanted the police to know they were out there. Instead of a serial killer, there was now a demon on the loose—and the police were to blame. Their failure had made the Prince of Sanheim necessary.

  It wasn’t until much later that she wondered if the letter was a sign of something darker. What if she had borrowed Lord Halloween’s words because she really had been corrupted by looking into his mind? In those moments before he died, Kate had seen everything about the man. Did some part of Lord Halloween live on in her? Was that why she sent the letter?

  Since that day, she had pushed the letter out of her mind. She didn’t want to think about it anymore. It wasn’t until Quinn mentioned it that it all came bubbling back up to the surface.

  “Yes,” she said simply, but she looked away. She was ashamed of the letter now and desperately wished she hadn’t sent it.

  “Well, I’m sure the police haven’t forgotten,” Quinn said. “If we’re supposed to get information on the real killer, it’s the only clue they have.”

  “No,” she said.

  “Kate, what choice do we have? Tim wants us to find the real killer. Well, you invented one for the police. Why not use that?”

  She shook her head.

  “Don’t you get it?” she asked. Her words came out much harsher than she meant them.

  “Get what?”

  “The letter… it’s only going to make Summer look right. She said someone was working with Lord Halloween and…”

  “Okay,” Quinn said and sighed. “I get it.”

  It wasn’t the response Kate had expected.

  “Now I’m lost,” she said.

  “That’s why you’re so angry, isn’t it?” he said. “It isn’t that we got scooped on our own damn story. It’s that Summer Mandaville accused us of being in league with Lord Halloween—of being his partner.”

  She opened her mouth to deliver a retort before she stopped herself. The dangerous part of being so intimately connected with someone was that you couldn’t dismiss anything they said anymore. She couldn’t say, “Well, you just don’t understand.” The problem was that Quinn did understand her. Apparently better than she did herself.

  She looked out at the parking lot. She hated April. Indeed, she now hated all months except October. Being the Prince of Sanheim was exhilarating, liberating. She had never felt more powerful or free. But when that power was gone… It was like seeing the sun and then having to live the rest of your days in the shadows. She should be grateful to have some sense of normalcy, but she wasn’t. She had been part of the Prince of Sanheim for only a brief time, but there had been no doubts, no fears. Now fear and doubt were all that was left.

  “You’re right,” she said softly, and looked at him again. She was still ashamed, but he would love her anyway. Forever. She took some comfort in that.

  “It’s stupid, though, Kate,” he said. “We stopped him. We’re the good guys.”

  “Are we?” she asked. “I wonder about that. And don’t tell me that you don’t too.”

  “Maybe, but we don’t have time for regrets,” Quinn said. “We’re in a box and we need to find a way out. Your letter—even if you regret sending it—will allow us one.”

  “So what’s the plan? Publish it and hope they don’t notice we wrote it in the first place?” Kate asked.

  Quinn smiled.

  “Come on,” he said. “We can do better than that. The police will be in such a hurry to prove Lord Halloween is dead, if we ask the right questions, we can weasel the existence of the letter out of them. After that… we can ‘obtain’ a copy. Who knows? They may be so desperate, they actually give us a copy of our own letter.”

  “And what then, Quinn? Ask people in town if they’ve seen the Headless Horseman lately?”

  She said it as a joke, but the look on his face was deadly serious.

  “Why not?” he asked. “I know at least a couple already and there are bound to be others that saw me racing by that night. Let’s tell people that there is a new player in town—and it’s not Lord Halloween. Your letter was quite clear that the innocent don’t need to fear us. That doesn’t sound like Lord Halloween to me.”

  Some part of her still insisted it was a bad idea, but she had to admit she was warming to the notion.

  “Spread the legend,” she said, and she smiled in spite of herself.

  “Exactly,” he said. “And when next Halloween comes around…”

  “Make a few guest appearances?” she said.

  “There’s already buzz out there,” he said. “It’s quiet now, but I’ve seen a few mentions on Internet forums. All we need to do is give them a name and a voice. And I guarantee that any bad thing out there in this terrible world will want to stay as far away as possible.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “You heard Janus. He warned us not to raise our profile. If we do this, that’s exactly what’s going to happen. Whoever is hunting us will know just where to look.”

  “It’s a risk, but what choice do we have?” Quinn asked. “Our careers are on the line. If we don’t respond to it, everyone will think we screwed up. And we can’t very well make up another killer. Besides, can you imagine the look on Summer’s face when we scoop her on this? She’s going to throw herself off a building or something.”

  Kate laughed at that.

  “Okay,” she said. “We can try it. But only if we can legitimately get the letter from someone else. We don’t need the police to suspect us anymore than they already do. And for the record, I’m still not sure this is a great idea.”

  “Deal,” Quinn said. “We’ll be careful.”

  *****

  Implementing the plan was easier said than done.

 
Quinn spent several useless hours calling police sources, none of whom could help him. Kate trolled the Internet, looking for possible sightings of the Headless Horseman. While she found plenty of mentions, mostly it was of a “friend” who saw the legendary ghost, not the actual witness.

  And time was running out. All day, Rebecca and Tim fielded calls from other media organizations asking the same question: Do you stand behind your story? Is Lord Halloween dead? Was there a secret partner?

  The breakthrough didn’t come until Kate called Johnny Redacker, her father’s friend who remained on the Loudoun police force.

  “How come you only call me when bad news hits the papers?” he asked.

  “If I called you every time there was bad news, you’d hear from me every day,” Kate replied. “Bad news is our stock and trade, you know.”

  Redacker grunted in response.

  “I don’t know how much I can tell you,” he said. “We—like you—believe Thompson acted alone.”

  “Okay, then who killed him?” she asked.

  “We really don’t have a clue,” Redacker responded.

  “That’s not true,” Kate said, and then decided to take a leap. “We have an inside source that says someone took credit for the murders.”

  There was a long, pregnant pause.

  “What else do you know?”

  There were two ways to play it. Kate could seem like she knew everything—which she obviously did—and ask him to confirm information. But that was risky and potentially suspicious. Very few on the police force knew anything about last year’s letter. If she said too much, it would be like firing a flare in the sky to announce who the Prince of Sanheim was.

  But she hated the other method, even if it was a trick reporters had used since the dawn of their profession: playing dumb. It worked so often because it took advantage of a fundamental truth of human nature: people want to show off. If they know more about a subject, they like to demonstrate it. In this case, it was the safer play.

  “Honestly, Mr. Redacker, that’s all I know,” she said. “The source I talked to said they overheard something once that made it sound like there was someone who had claimed responsibility for Lord Halloween’s death. But they didn’t know who or even how long ago.”

  There was another long pause. Kate could practically hear the wheels turning in Redacker’s head. This was a make-or-break moment for him.

  “All right,” he said. “I’m going to tell you something I shouldn’t. But… in all honesty, I think it would help at this stage. The panic has already started, Kate. The phones are ringing off the hook. I don’t think this town has ever really believed Lord Halloween is dead. He’s not just a serial killer to them—he’s the goddamned bogeyman.”

  “But he is dead,” Kate said. “That much I know.”

  “Yes,” Redacker replied. “This isn’t like last time, when we knew there were lingering doubts about Holober. We’re sure about Thompson.”

  “So the person who killed him?”

  “He, or she, I suppose, though that’s less likely,” he said, and Kate was glad he couldn’t see her smile, “sent a letter. It took responsibility for killing Lord Halloween.”

  “I don’t suppose it was signed?”

  “Actually, it was,” Redacker said. “But I’m going to make you a deal. I want you and Quinn to come down to the station.”

  For just a moment, Kate’s heart was in her throat. He knows, she thought. He’s known all along. Her mouth went dry.

  “Why?” she asked in as calm a voice as she could manage.

  “Because I can’t give you more details without Brown’s approval,” Redacker said. “Before you start protesting about confidentiality, he knows we’re family friends, Kate. And I’m one of the few people who knows the right details here. If you printed anything I told you, he would know instantly who gabbed.”

  Kate started breathing again. She hadn’t even realized she was holding her breath.

  “You think Brown would willingly help us?” Kate asked.

  “He’s changed since last year, Kate,” Redacker said, and his voice was low. “I don’t think you realize how hard the whole episode was on him. The calls today, the media attention… he wants it to go away. I think I can talk to him, bring him around. If anyone can make it go away, it’s you two. You practically wrote the book on Lord Halloween.”

  They made arrangements, Kate thanked him and then she hung up. She went to find Quinn.

  *****

  They had agreed to meet at 6 p.m. If they got the story they wanted, they would be pushing it to make it into the Chronicle’s print edition.

  But as they drove to the police office, Quinn wasn’t sure how much that mattered anymore. During his first staff meeting, Tim had emphasized the importance of the website over the print edition, calling it “the wave of the future.” Quinn was deeply uncomfortable with the idea—there was something pleasant about flipping through a broadsheet paper, even getting an ink smudge on your fingertips. But he wasn’t sure Tim was wrong either. The world was changing but the fundamental rule of survival stayed the same: adapt or die. It was still up in the air for the newspaper business.

  Already he couldn’t imagine doing his job without the Internet or e-mail, and he had been in journalism long enough to remember cutting out stories, waxing them, and then carefully placing them on storyboards to be photographed and printed. Now it was all digital. He had hated the waxers when he used them, had constantly complained that they jammed and left his fingers covered in goo. And now he found he missed them.

  Quinn pulled into the police station and parked in a visitor spot. The two of them were about to get out of the car when Kate noticed a figure walking across the parking lot.

  “That bitch,” she said.

  Summer Mandaville was heading toward them.

  Kate was out of the car before Quinn could stop her. She rapidly crossed the parking lot and practically rushed the Post reporter. Summer, a petite woman with short, curly brown hair, looked alarmed, took a step back, and then got angry.

  “What are you doing here?” Summer demanded.

  “Trying to repair the damage you did this morning,” Kate replied.

  “What damage? All I did was report the truth.”

  “You lied and panicked the town,” Kate said.

  Quinn came running up.

  “I’m just raising questions,” Summer replied. “Questions you two ignored. I don’t deny you got a great scoop a few months ago. But I don’t think the situation is quite as tidy as you claimed.”

  “I swear I’m going to…”

  “Kate…” Quinn said.

  “What?” Summer said. “You’ll what? You know, I’m tired of you acting like you are God’s gift to journalism, Kate.”

  “Why, because that’s your job?” Quinn cut in.

  “Face it, you’re mad because you got beat,” Summer said. “Grow up.”

  Kate was breathing so hard, Quinn was worried she would actually physically attack Summer. The look on her face was murderous.

  “We’re mad because your story was dead wrong,” Kate said. “Lord Halloween is dead. He didn’t have a partner.”

  “So you say.”

  “So I know,” Kate said. “Did you know he killed my mother?”

  “I read your articles, Kate,” Summer said. “We all know that.”

  “Your sympathy is overwhelming.”

  “It’s irrelevant,” Summer said in a clipped tone. “My job is to report the truth. And that’s what I did. There are a lot of questions around his death. If it wasn’t a partner, who was it? Why didn’t they take credit for it? Why hide?”

  Kate glared at her rival but had nothing to say.

  “It’s not that simple, Summer,” Quinn said. “You have no evidence that Lord Halloween was colluding with anyone. The police think he was acting alone. You raised questions for the sake of raising them. You didn’t provide any ‘truth,’ you just spooked a bunch of already scared
people.”

  Summer looked imperiously at Quinn.

  “I did my job,” she said simply, but he thought his comment had stung her nevertheless. “And I hope you aren’t thinking the police are going to help you. I’ve been here half the day and they aren’t saying anything.”

  It was Kate’s turn to look smug.

  “Maybe they’ll be a little more willing to talk to us,” she said. “You know, since we broke the original story and all.”

  Summer’s face was so red it looked for a minute like it might explode. Instead of responding, she turned on her heel and stomped off to her car.

  “I’m going to miss her,” Quinn said, quoting one of Janus’ favorite movie lines. “I’m going to get her a nice fruit basket.”

  Kate watched her go.

  “One day I hope she gets her comeuppance,” she said.

  “Be careful what you wish for,” he said. “Come on, we’re late. We need to get inside.”

  *****

  The meeting went surprisingly well. Redacker was waiting for them in his office. When they walked in and sat down, he stood.

  “Before I begin, I want to set some ground rules,” he said. “Everything I say can be attributed to a ‘police source,’ but I can’t be named. The document I’m about to hand you, however, can be used as you see fit.”

  “What document?” Kate asked.

  “First things first,” Redacker said. “Do you agree?”

  Kate and Quinn both nodded.

  With that, Redacker handed Kate a letter in an envelope. Kate opened it and was unsurprised to find the letter she had written six months earlier staring her in the face—the one from the Prince of Sanheim. She mentally forced herself to remember she had never seen it.

  “Who’s the Prince of Sanheim?” Kate asked.

  Quinn shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

  “We don’t know,” Redacker said, “but please understand we’re looking into it.”

  “Another serial killer?” Kate asked.

  “We don’t think so,” Redacker said. “Our theory is that someone discovered Lord Halloween’s identity, killed him, and then is using this alias to cover their tracks. For whatever reason, they don’t want to admit it.”