It was cold and there was something in the air tonight. He was happy for the money, but it would be better if they finished up before the cops—or anyone else—showed up.
“Just a little more time,” Ricky responded and he didn’t even look up.
Stefan had to admit he was getting nervous. They had done this three times already and it was only a matter of time before the police became more interested. The actual level of gang activity in Sterling—or the whole of Loudoun County—was limited to the occasional stabbing at an out-of-control party. But that didn’t stop the media and politicians from being insanely interested in the topic. If Ricky and he got caught, Stefan was sure he would be trotted out as the latest symbol of gang violence, despite the fact that the worst he had done was spray paint a few buildings.
Stefan was, of course, already finished. Ricky always wanted to linger over his paintings, like they were being admired in an art gallery. But Stefan eyed his watch and worried.
“Come on, Ricky,” he said again.
He should have worn a jacket. It was colder than he thought it should be in September. It felt like just a few days ago it was still summer break. But now fall was coming on strong and there was a chill in the air.
He hopped up and down on his feet.
That was when he heard the sound. At first he couldn’t believe it. Who the hell would be riding a horse out here? He knew there were a lot of rich folks out west, but Sterling wasn’t like that. It was home to mostly working class families and maybe a few yuppies over in Cascades. Certainly not people rich enough to be riding horses.
“Yo, Ricky!” Stefan said again. His voice was insistent enough that he got his attention.
“Hang on to your panties, man,” Ricky replied. “I’m almost done.”
“The horse?” Stefan said. “Don’t you hear the horse coming toward us? Come on.”
“Who cares? Cops don’t ride horses, remember?” Ricky said.
“I’m going, man,” Stefan said. “No way am I getting caught.”
“Go if you want,” Ricky replied absentmindedly. Then, under his breath, he added, “Pussy.”
Stefan wanted to scream, but he held his ground. Fine, they would both be caught by the police. See what Ricky called him then. What was the worst that could happen? Could you go to jail for graffiti?
The sound of the horse became even louder and Stefan had to brace himself not to start running. It would be fine. It probably had nothing to do with them.
But he was wrong about that.
A moment later, the horse and its rider came bursting through the parking lot. Stefan didn’t even wait to see if it was coming after him. He took one look at the cloaked figure and started running.
Only when it was nearly on top of him and he turned around in panic did he recognize what it was. Stefan screamed.
In answer, the figure seemed to laugh. The sound bounced off the walls of the nearby buildings and echoed in Stefan’s head.
Stefan tripped and fell to the ground. He looked to see where Ricky was. He had some desperate hope that Ricky might save him. But when he looked toward where he had been moments ago, there was nothing there but the symbol. Ricky had taken his stuff and gone.
Stefan didn’t think about their gang aspirations, how the two had pledged to stick together in this exciting new enterprise of their lives. He was too frightened. Instead he realized that his last hope had fled. He was a dead man.
The Headless Horseman dropped off his mount and drew his sword from his scabbard. A ringing sound reverberated in the night air.
Stefan didn’t understand how this was possible. The thing facing him was from a made-up story. But he didn’t doubt for a second it was real. He had no thought that it might be someone dressed up as the Headless Horseman, either. The ghost was—somehow—here and about to kill him.
“Please,” he said, and he held up his hand as if it could block the sword strike he knew was coming. “Please no.”
The Horseman stopped.
Tell us what we want to know, a voice in Stefan’s head said.
He didn’t wait to figure out where it came from.
“Yes,” he said out loud. “Whatever you want.”
Who hired you to paint the buildings?
“I don’t know,” Stefan said, and the Headless Horseman took another step forward. “No, please! Please! I don’t know. I would tell you if I did.”
Describe him to us, the voice said.
All at once Stefan’s mind was a complete blank. He tried to think of what the man looked like, but he couldn’t. The Horseman took another step and held his sword high in the air.
“I don’t remember,” Stefan croaked. “I’m trying.”
Just picture him in your mind, the voice said.
It took a moment but Stefan did it. It was a week ago when the man approached him. Ricky and he had just spray-painted their first stop sign and Stefan had at first assumed he was caught. It was a cop.
But the man hadn’t been a police officer. Instead, he had been some lunatic religious nut. Brown hair, blue eyes, average height, but otherwise indistinct in every way. He had just wanted these symbols painted around Sterling. He had given Stefan seven of them.
“Just make sure they’re big and noticeable,” the man said.
Picture them in your mind, the voice said.
Stefan thought of all seven immediately: snakes, bear, spider, flaming sword, a bow, a flute and a horse.
The man had offered to pay. He had given $250 upfront with the promise of $250 more once the job was completed.
“How will you find me?” Stefan had asked.
“Don’t worry about that,” the man had said. “All you need to do is fulfill your end of the bargain.”
Stefan had taken the deal. Of course he had—who could pass it up?
It was only when he was walking away that he had regrets. The man had called him back.
“Oh, and Stefan,” the man said, and he realized the man somehow knew his name. “Make sure you follow through. I wouldn’t be… happy if you just took the money and didn’t make good on our little deal.”
And Stefan had believed him.
All this passed through his mind in a flash.
Good, the voice said.
Stefan watched as the Headless Horseman moved suddenly, sheathing his sword in the scabbard. He turned and walked away, as if Stefan didn’t interest him anymore.
Stefan wasn’t sure what made him say it, why he was talking at all.
“I have to finish the paintings,” he said out loud.
Yes, you do, the voice in his head said. He watched as the figure in front of him mounted his horse, which snorted. But don’t mention us to him. Or we will find you again.
The movement was so fast he never saw it. One moment he was staring up at the Headless Horseman and then fire exploded nearby. He looked to see a burning pumpkin on the ground nearby.
The Headless Horseman laughed, his horse reared up and he practically launched himself over Stefan.
Stefan, who was shaking all over, lay on the ground and wept.
*****
The Headless Horseman rode all night, moving from Sterling to Purcellville and then up toward Waterford, covering miles of roads, forest and streams without rest.
Through it all, he was searching, moving with restless energy as he looked for signs of another horse and rider, one who was pretending to be him.
But the Horseman found nothing.
In Waterford, he rode through the quiet streets of the Civil War-era town, finally returning to Union Cemetery at the top of the hill above the town. The graveyard was old—long predating the War Between the States. Most of the stones had their inscriptions washed away by weather and time.
The moon hung high in the air as the Headless Horseman moved slowly through the graveyard.
At the edge of the cemetery, he saw her. She stood by the fence, looking out over the long field next to the graveyard. Beyond it, in the distan
ce, stood Phillips Farm, where Quinn had fought and defeated the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow—and seized his mantle for himself.
The horse padded to a stop behind the woman. Its rider dismounted and moved to stand behind her. She didn’t look back, but continued to gaze ahead.
That’s where it all began, she thought.
The Headless Horseman didn’t respond immediately. Words were difficult for him. He was a creature of emotion and power, not reflection.
I could see the boy’s thoughts, she said. Why? How?
The Horseman didn’t respond and he seemed uninterested, as if the mechanics of her situation weren’t important. She leaned back against him. He smelled like moldy earth and decomposition—and yet it didn’t repulse her. Quite the opposite, in fact.
What is happening to me? What am I becoming?
This time there was an answer.
Something unique. Amazing. Beautiful. Deadly, he thought and his voice had a faintly German accent in her head.
She looked down at herself. Outwardly, she was the same Kate Tassel who had arrived here last year. And yet in the past week alone, she had been talking with ghosts, digging up graves and was now standing near a fictional specter. Ever since that night in the cemetery, she had gone to a different graveyard each evening, hoping to find another spirit that would help her understand.
She could sense them, that was the thing that taunted her. There were ghosts here, but not as many as she expected or hoped for. Despite her attempts to interact with them, there had been nothing like the woman a week ago.
And other than a brief flash into Tim Anderson’s mind—if that had really even happened—her mental powers had been restricted to Quinn and Lord Halloween. She didn’t understand how she had seen into the murderer’s mind last year. She had begun to wonder if it was a fluke.
Until tonight.
As soon as the Horseman arrived by the near-deserted shopping mall, she could sense the minds of both kids without any effort. When he approached the boy, Stefan, she had seen everything about him. It was just like it had been last year with Lord Halloween. Only this time it hadn’t been just one-way. She could ask him questions in her mind and heard him respond. With his help, she had seen the boy’s memories of the man who hired him.
Could she enter the mind of anyone near the Headless Horseman? Was that the key? Or was it something different? Both Lord Halloween and the kid were important to her goal. In Lord Halloween’s case, she had been chasing him for weeks. As soon as she had the powers of the Prince of Sanheim, his mind had been like an open door to her. As for the kid, she had been desperately trying to find the graffiti artist when the Horseman came close to him. Did that matter at all?
It seemed like every time she got close to an answer, there were just more questions. Were they any closer to finding out what chased them? It felt like instead she had uncovered just another mystery. The book was the key—but to what? Who was the person trying to send them a message?
More frustratingly, the Horseman had been riding through the county for hours—they had assumed their opponents might show up. After all, he or she was clearly trying to goad them by murdering someone and pretending to be them.
What are they waiting for? They are out there somewhere, laughing at us.
The Horseman, who had listened to her mind impassively, responded to that.
Not for long. I promise you that. Not for long.
Chapter 13
September 23, 2007
Quinn should have been exhausted. It was 6 a.m. He had ridden through Loudoun County for most of the night and only slept for two hours.
Instead, he felt strangely invigorated, as if he had slept for 12 hours. He seemed to draw energy from becoming the fictional phantom.
He let Kate sleep and stepped into the shower. For some reason, she was the more fatigued of the pair. Quinn wasn’t sure why. She had been standing in the cemetery for most of the night.
Quinn quietly got dressed and moved into the living room, shutting the bedroom door behind him. On the desk in the corner, there were the four photos Bill had taken of the graffiti.
Quinn pulled out a blank piece of paper and quickly sketched the other three that had been in Stefan’s mind. In addition to the snakes, bear, flaming sword and spider, there were now a horse, bow and, oddest of all, what looked like a flute.
Crowley had 17 drawings in his book, including those seven images. But why had Stefan been asked to complete just these particular drawings? Quinn paged through the book looking for any kind of special significance. But despite the fact the animals and symbols were depicted, the text never seemed to refer back to them in any kind of clear way. Indeed, the text was verbose and unclear, almost totally incomprehensible.
He tried approaching it from a different angle. The serpents, he saw, were at the start of the third chapter, while the bear was at the start of the second.
Quinn stood up and went to his small Ikea bookshelf in the corner of the room. Crowley had published three books himself—all poetry. After his death, Horace Camden, his devoted follower and admirer, had published a single collection of the books.
Quinn felt sure he had seen most of the drawings in there.
He took the book and sat back down at the desk. He flipped through mostly sonnets and love poems until he found them. The same 17 drawings were all in this book, but in different places. Except…
How could he not have seen this before? The bear was at the start of Chapter 2, just like the book they had taken from Zora’s office. On Chapter 1, the symbols were different in each book—a tiger in one and an eagle in the other.
But for Chapter 3, they were the same again—the serpents. They were different again for Chapter 4, but the spider appeared at the start of both Chapter 5s.
Throughout the book, only the seven symbols the graffiti artist had been asked to draw were at the same place in both books. The bow was at the start of Chapter 7, the flaming sword at Chapter 11 and the flute at Chapter 13.
The final chapter in both books, Chapter 17, was topped with a drawing of a horse.
Quinn stared at the books, suddenly understanding what he was looking at.
“My God,” he said.
“What is it?” Kate said behind him. She had woken up a few minutes ago, but hadn’t wanted to disturb him.
“It’s more than a code,” Quinn said.
“What are you talking about?”
“This is a history of the Prince of Sanheim,” he replied. “These represent the forms they took. The bear was the first, I’d stake my life on it. The drawings represent the cennad of each Prince of Sanheim. The bear, the serpents, the spider, the bow, sword, flute and…”
Quinn stopped. He pointed to the horse.
“That’s us,” he said quietly.
“You’re right,” Kate responded. “It’s not a code; it’s a prophecy.”
*****
They pored over the books all day.
“How could he possibly know?” Quinn asked. “How could Crowley have seen what I would become?”
“How could you become the Headless Horseman in the first place?” Kate said. “Crowley clearly was tapped into something – he had knowledge and history about the Prince of Sanheim that we lack. Somehow he knew the future, or at least saw a glimpse of it. It can’t be a coincidence.”
“What was his cennad?” Quinn said. “The only stories we’ve dug up on him are that he disappeared on Halloween night. But no one ever mentioned what he was.”
Kate shook her head.
“No idea,” she said. “Presumably one of these last ones.”
Kate’s finger traveled over the images, now placed in order. She put it squarely on the flaming sword.
“That one,” she said. “I’d stake my life on it.”
“Why?” Quinn asked.
“Just a hunch.”
“Which leaves only the flute and us.”
Something tugged at the edge of Quinn’s memory then. I
t was the same feeling he had when there was a word on the tip of his tongue but he couldn’t think of it. There was something he wasn’t remembering that would be helpful. But for the life of him, he couldn’t think of what it was.
It was Kate who had noticed the significance of the numbers: 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13 and 17 were all prime numbers. But why Crowley had put such importance on them was unclear.
“Are we the 17th Prince of Sanheim?” Kate asked.
“Doesn’t make sense,” Quinn replied. “Sanheim—or whoever he was—made it sound as if this had been going on for thousands of years. He mentioned Julius Caesar running into a Prince. Even if you assumed one per century, we should be past 17. And I got the feeling this happened a lot more often than that.”
He stood up and walked around the apartment. The feeling was unshakeable. There was something they weren’t seeing. Quinn picked up the pencil and flung it across the room in frustration.
“I’m sure that will help, honey,” Kate said without looking up.
“I can’t help it,” he said. “It’s like writer’s block. You know when you have a great story, you’ve done all the reporting, but it’s just not coming out for some reason?”
Kate nodded.
“We have enough pieces to the puzzle,” he continued. “We should be able to start putting them together.”
“So why don’t you use your writer’s block unblocker?” she said.
She smiled at him.
“You want me to juggle?” Quinn asked in surprise.
He hadn’t thought of it. Juggling was a skill he had picked up in high school—in drama class—but it had never really been useful until one day he tried it out when he was stuck on a story. For some reason, focusing on balls flying through the air and forgetting everything else had helped to focus him in a way nothing else could. The result was that he could suddenly think clearly again. He didn’t have much need for them, but he kept a set of juggling balls at home and at work for just such occasions. It didn’t always work, but usually it helped him regain concentration.
“All right,” he said, “you’re on.”
Band of Demons (The Sanheim Chronicles Book 2) Page 12
