Fallen

by Christina Skye

  “Maddie, wait.” Izzy turned, scowling at her.

  Lyon’s face was just as hard.

  “My heart, we need to resolve this now.”

  “My heart? Try that again. You said you two just met, Maddie. What’s going on here?” Izzy looked angry and baffled.

  She shook her head, suddenly tired and with no tolerance for this macho display. The headache was getting worse. Her hands, numb before, had begun to tingle and burn as sensation returned. “Like I said, I’m leaving. Do whatever you want. I’ll be downstairs in the kitchen, assuming that I can find it. There’s a cup of Earl Grey somewhere calling my name.”

  “Damn it, Maddie, you can’t—”

  She shrugged and strode right past Izzy, giving a little wave. “Roll with it, Teague. Whenever you want to work, let me know. I seem to recall there’s a code you wanted me to break. That might be a more productive way to spend your time.”

  She was very satisfied to hear nothing but stunned, angry silence as she stalked out of the room.

  Lyon’s eyes snapped with anger. He crossed his arms, glaring at the man Maddie called her boss. “You are wrong. I am here to guard her, not hurt her.”

  “Yeah, is that right? Well you’re going to have to prove it to me, pal.”

  “If anyone failed in his duty, it was you. She is young and inexperienced, a stranger to this country. You should have protected her.”

  Izzy’s eyes flashed with impatience—and more than a little guilt. “That’s between Maddie and me. I’m not about to explain my actions to you. Because this whole thing seems a little too convenient. One moment she’s wandering around in London and then you just happen to find her and rescue her? That’s crap.”

  “But it is also true. I followed her to the museum where you were making your illegal entry. The police came and she might have been picked up if I had not gotten her away. I also saved her in the cemetery. By my reckoning, that makes twice that I have saved her life.” Lyon did not mention the other two times. Once when the Fallen ones had sensed her presence and again when Maddie had begun her Change, caught helpless, unable to breathe.

  Izzy frowned and then slowly lowered the weapon. “I was wondering how she got away. We didn’t expect the police or that fire across the street. But I’m still going to need some papers and identification. Maddie is a valuable government asset.”

  Lyon’s eyes hardened. “She is a most rare and wonderful spirit, not an asset,” he said coldly.

  “Well.” Izzy gave him a new, assessing look. “Sounds like this just got personal between you two.”

  “Oh, it has been personal for a very long while. Understand me—I would protect her with my life.”

  Izzy considered this for a few moments and then blew out a frustrated breath. “There’s no need to worry. Maddie’s in my protection. I’m not going to let anything happen to her.”

  “I am glad that you have her interests at heart. But if you are truly fixed on protecting her, understand this. A much older danger waits out in the darkness. And it is not human.”

  “Not human…” Izzy said slowly. “I’m afraid you lost me there.”

  “I am not surprised. It is a difficult concept for many. But I think Maddie’s suggestion was best. We will discuss this over tea.” Lyon shot Izzy a hard glance. “And if you ever harm her or threaten her again, you will soon regret it. Mark my promise well.”

  And for a second time Izzy was left staring in frustrated silence.

  Lyon strode away after Maddie.

  “I found the tea. I’m not sure I know how to use that old fashioned stove, but I think I managed to boil the water okay. I’m not much of a cook. Lyon, why don’t you find some cups? Any idea where there’s some food around here, Izzy?”

  Lyon though she seemed calm, controlled, as if her anger had been put aside. And she seemed to enjoy ordering them around the kitchen.

  “There’s a pantry over to the left.” Izzy pointed to a recess beyond a cabinet full of priceless glassware. “Usually the butler, Marston, handles that kind of thing, but he’s up north with Viscount Draycott and his family. I’ll have a look.”

  “Something chocolate would be nice, too. Chocolate with a whole lot of calories and heavy cream. You British are big on heavy cream, aren’t you, Lyon? Just don’t slip in any of that nasty stuff.”

  Lyon raised an eyebrow. “I do not understand you.”

  “Oh yes you do. I’m talking about the kidneys. The brains. That stuff the Scots eat too, Haggis.” Maddie grimaced.

  Lyon simply shrugged. “Food is food. In difficult times there may not be a great deal of choice. I think that people of this century do not understand how lucky they are.”

  “Of this century?” Izzy turned slowly, studying Lyon with fresh suspicion. “You’re not trying to imply that—”

  “Don’t get him started.” Maddie waved her hands. “Go find us some chocolate. We have work to do, remember?” She strode past the two men and attacked a drawer, searching for a teapot and tea bags.

  There were no bags. Somehow she expected that. But she found a big box of loose tea that looked expensive.

  “Let’s get to work, shall we?”

  Izzy set a box of truffles on the table.

  “First your pal Lyon here is going to explain what he meant about not human. After that, I want to know what he meant by not of this century.”

  Maddie shook her head. “You’re not going to like it. You’re probably not going to understand it either. I know I didn’t.” She shot a glance at Lyon, whose face was expressionless. “You’d better tell him everything he needs to hear. At least, coming from you, he might believe it.” She cradled her cup of steaming tea and savored the rich, smoky smell. “After that, I’d really like to get to work.”

  “That depends on your friend Lyon here—and how good his explanation is,” Izzy said grimly.

  Maddie forced herself not to interrupt Lyon’s calm, methodical explanation. She wondered if Izzy was buying his story.

  She really hoped so. If these creatures—or things—that Lyon mentioned came calling at Draycott Abbey, Maddie was going to need Izzy’s help. He would be a lot more effective if he believed the threat was real.

  When Lyon finished, she rested her elbows on the table and studied the man who had arrested her five years before. “He’s telling the truth, Izzy. I don’t care if you believe it or not. There’s too much weird stuff going on for it to be a lie. And since we don’t have much time, let’s simply agree to disagree, shall we? I see you’ve got your laptop and briefcase in the corner and I hope that means you’ve got an update on my assignment. What happened at the museum?”

  Izzy looked at Lyon, “This doesn’t leave the room, understood?”

  Lyon nodded.

  “Okay,” Izzy rubbed his neck.

  We found what we went in for. I’m hoping you can help me understand what it means, Maddie.”

  “So it’s some kind of artifact?”

  “Not exactly.” Izzy hesitated, and then opened his briefcase, pulling out a heavy canvas bag, which he rested carefully on the table between Lyon and Maddie. “No discussion outside this room. Not now. Not ever,” he said roughly. He looked at Maddie, who nodded slowly. When he looked at Lyon, his eyes held a glint of challenge.

  But Lyon simply nodded.

  “Here it is. Tell me what you make of it. If there’s a pattern or a message in it, I sure as heck don’t see it.”

  Maddie’s breath caught as he opened the brown canvas sack and pulled out a circle that burned and shone in the kitchen light. It appeared to be finely hammered gold worked in thin concentric lines. But it was too clean, too pristine, for an artifact, Maddie thought. “It’s a replica, I take it? Not the original.”

  Izzy nodded, his mouth hard. “The original is far too precious for me to get transport clearance from the museum.”

  There was something else he wasn’t telling her, Maddie sensed. She leaned down, running her finger carefully along the sur
face of the metal replica. “I’m assuming you don’t want an archeological or historical assessment here. I couldn’t do either one. There’s a message or information you want me to find, is that it?”

  Izzy nodded, but said nothing.

  Maddie took a better look at the fine circles, assessing the rows and the numbers and the spacing of the designs. She let the designs flow through her consciousness and waited for a pattern to emerge.

  It was the way she always worked. It didn’t matter if she was working with computer code or a mathematical formula or any other kind of data.

  She saw patterns in things, patterns that other people did not. It was just a gift she had, something in the way her brain had been wired. The real work came later, when she had to figure out what the pattern was supposed to mean.

  The way Maddie had had to figure out what the paintings meant up in the Long Gallery.

  There was something going on with this piece all right. The circles were all slightly off, not perfectly symmetrical. Since the design was so carefully crafted, Maddie didn’t think that asymmetry was a mistake.

  She pushed out her chair and stood up, walking slowly around the table, studying the exquisite golden replica from every angle. She didn’t bother to ask Izzy questions about date or location or method of manufacture. All that was irrelevant. All that was what people thought it should mean.

  Maddie dealt with the raw fact of what it did mean.

  “What does it—”

  Lyon made a low warning sound and cut off Izzy’s question. He probably could feel Maddie’s force of concentration. They were definitely linked somehow. Even the slightest emotion would race between them instantly, Maddie realized.

  She kept walking around the table slowly.

  And then she saw it.

  Right there.

  Right in the center.

  Or where the center should have been but wasn’t.

  “What’s that symbol?” Maddie looked at Izzy. “The one that looks like two small X’s on top of each other.”

  “It’s an Anglo-Saxon sign. These are called runes.” Izzy started to say more, but Maddie held up a hand and shook her head. She didn’t want details. She needed to work cold and observe the data objectively.

  That symbol—or rune—appeared in six spots on the artifact. They were equally arranged around the piece, but off center.

  She was betting there was a meaning in that placement. Also in the frequency of the runes. She studied the placement of the symbols as if it was a code, looking for repetition or meaning and a pattern to the frequency of occurrences.

  The double X symbol occurred in the sixth position in every sequence of symbols.

  It could be some kind of an ending marker. Maddie focused on the other symbols.

  “I need a pencil and paper.” She kept walking around the design and barely noticed when Izzy held out a notepad. She felt Lyon’s hands curve around hers as he slid a pencil against her palm. She smiled at him, feeling his encouragement. When his fingers curved, sliding over hers.

  No words were needed.

  Maddie shook away all distractions and sat down. Writing quickly, she noted every symbol except the double X in the order of their occurrence. Then she made a quick calculation of how many times they occurred.

  Two symbols were used most.

  One of them looked like a B. The other one looked like a vertical line with a little triangle on the top, like a flag.

  Each of these occurred six times, always together.

  It wasn’t a simple substitution cipher.

  Possibilities came to Maddie in a rush.

  It wasn’t a Caesar cipher or shift cipher, in which each letter of a message was replaced with another letter that shifted by a fixed number of spots in the relevant alphabet. She had read that Julius Caesar used this cipher to protect the security of his private letters. Maddie had been fascinated by that fact and had scoured everything on the subject she could find.

  But maybe…this was a polyalphabetic cipher. The technique had first been described by an Italian called Giovan Bellaso in the sixteenth century, using shifts of letters or symbols as indicated by a keyword. She had found the technique fascinating; for a few months she had even played with her own variations.

  Was that the pattern here? Maddie looked at the row of marks she had written down. She didn’t know what the letters meant, but she didn’t have to know.

  Izzy could hand that part. All she had to do was to pick up the pattern.

  In a piece of this age, the creator would not have access to advanced forms of technology or computers to generate complicated number sequences. Maddie was pretty sure that no cipher discs had existed before the fifteenth century either. All of that limited the possibilities greatly. But she wasn’t going to rule out anything yet. Instead she let the symbols drift and slide through her mind. If there was a pattern here, she would find it.

  An hour later, Maddie had half-a-dozen sheets of crumpled paper were scattered over the table in front of Maddie. She sensed that something was still missing, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.

  “Tell me about this symbol—the one with two X’s on top of each other. It might be some kind of marker, or it may simply indicate a shift.” She tapped on her paper. “If you noticed, these other symbols always come together.” She drew a line around what looked like an N with two lines through the center and another symbol that looked like a capital R.

  “There has to be significance to that repetition.” She rolled her shoulders, feeling a headache begin.

  “Izzy, do you have my computer?” Maddie ignored the squeezing pressure at her forehead. “I want to run some numbers. While you’re at it, any chance of getting me some super strength Advil?”

  But nothing worked.

  Maddie played some hunches and crunched some numbers. She tried turning the symbol upside down to see if a pattern would be revealed on simple rotation. Again, no luck. Just as before, she had the sense that something was missing. What was she overlooking?

  Maddie sat up straighter. She jammed a hand through her spiky hair.

  Obvious.

  “This artifact—is it incomplete? Was there ever a smaller piece that fit in the center?”

  Izzy frowned at her. “I don’t have a clue. I’ll check ASAP.”

  “While you’re at it, ask your source at the museum if there are any marks on the back of the original. This replica only has marks on one side. I need an exact photograph of corresponding markings on the back of the original piece.”

  Izzy drummed his fingers quietly on the table. “I can’t do that.”

  “Why not? If you still don’t trust me, Izzy—”

  “It’s not that I don’t trust you. I can’t do it because our source is dead.”

  “Dead?” Maddie repeated the word slowly. “How?”

  “He was found in his apartment four days ago. There was a suicide note, but our people turned up details that indicated a struggle had taken place.”

  “Cause of death?”

  “Compression of the carotid artery. And…other things.”

  “What other things?”

  “You don’t need to know,” Izzy said grimly.

  Maddie took a deep breath, pretty sure he wouldn’t give her any other details. “Are there any more photographs of this object—better yet, can you look at the object yourself?”

  “I’m afraid not. The original vanished a week ago, probably stolen from the museum by my contact. He also removed every museum record and description of the piece. It was a new discovery, one that had never been fully cataloged. But even the accession notes from the field team have vanished.”

  Maddie blew out a slow breath, thinking hard. “Can you find any similar pieces? The museum must have others like this. I need an idea of any markings that might have been used on the back. Something from the same place and time will give me an idea of symbol sequences.”

  “I’m on it.”

  Maddie rubbed a kn
ot in her shoulders. She wasn’t surprised to feel Lyon move behind her, not saying a word. He could feel how tired she was, how frustrated. Maddie could feel his own impatience and frustration. She remembered that this mission was not his mission. He had a deeper duty—and another enemy waiting somewhere in the darkness.

  But there was no point in thinking about those things she had seen in the cemetery. No point at all.

  “She has done enough for now.” Lyon looked at Izzy. “While you gather the information she needs, I am taking her upstairs to rest.”

  Maddie looked up, frowning at him.

  “Do not even try to argue with me. You are exhausted. You need a break from this work.” The hard determination in Lyon’s eyes told her that he would not be dissuaded.

  Maddie closed her eyes as the tension in her forehead turned into a sledgehammer force headache. If she didn’t rest, she wouldn’t be able to think.

  Lyon had no doubt sensed that also.

  But Maddie felt angry and impatient, her thoughts chaotic. She looked down at her hand, fisted on the table, and was shocked to see it was trembling.

  This was far more than exhaustion.

  She frowned at Izzy. “I have to rest. I’ve got the mother of all headaches. Give me an hour. I’ll start again with whatever new information you find.”

  “I thought you were supposed to be a genius at this stuff, Maddie. What’s wrong?”

  “This isn’t magic, Teague. I need data to work with or I can’t find a pattern. So get me those pictures and a description of the original object. Get me photos of any related pieces. Do it fast. Then I’ll give you all the magic you want.” She rubbed her eyes, tired and frustrated and struck with growing uneasiness.

  Something was wrong. For a person who specialized in reading patterns, she was suddenly unable to read her own.