by Steve McHugh
At one end of the room, in a portion devoid of the blood that covered so much of it, stood Agent Reid.
"I thought you were off healing up?" I said as I got closer.
"One sec," he said, and then started counting. He stopped at thirty-two. "Shit."
"Thirty-two bodies?"
"Thirty-two bodies which are identifiable without serious medical knowledge."
"Where are all of the Avalon agents? I thought there'd be dozens of you in here."
"They've got to wait for the docs to finish in here," he said. "Doc Grayson didn't want anyone else going through here until his people had finished. I don't envy their job."
"So why are you here?"
"Waiting for the doc to come back. Director Green wanted a count of the bodies, but there's too much mess in here to give an accurate number."
"What do you know so far?"
"These people were torn apart," Agent Reid said. "Grayson said he thinks ghouls did it. The barren wouldn't have left any flesh for us to find, his words, not mine."
"So let's say forty people died in here. Where are the rest of the prisoners?"
"Forty-seven," Doctor Grayson said as he entered the hall wearing dark blue coveralls that even covered his shoes.
"And you know that how?" Agent Reid asked.
"I have a very special sense of smell, Agent," Doctor Grayson said, tapping the side of his nose. "Nice to see you again, Nathan."
"You, too, Doc, although this isn't exactly how I thought I'd be spending my day."
"On that, we can agree," he said with a forced smile. "Forty-seven dead down here-a further eighteen upstairs in the library, it's quite the display of brutality."
"Were they all killed in the same way?"
"Partially eaten, yes. But that's not all. I believe Director Green has something to show you in the main hall. You may wish to steady yourself for what you'll see there."
"Olivia said the same thing about what happened in here, how much worse can it get?"
"Ah, Nathan, now you know it can always get much, much worse."
More people arrived to help clean up, or tag the bodies, or whatever horrific job they needed to do, and I for one was happy to leave them to it.
"You never answered my question," I said to Agent Reid, who'd received the information he'd needed and had left the hall with me via the nearest door.
"I can't really sit on my ass all day when there's someone out there doing this," Reid said, removing the shoe coverings from his boots and placing them, and his blue latex gloves, in a yellow hazard bag that had been left outside the hall.
I removed my own covers and shoved them in the bag, then used fire magic to heat up my hands, burning off any blood that might have remained on my fingertips.
"Nice trick," Agent Reid said.
"It's sort of depressing that I need a trick to get rid blood on my hands."
"You think what we're about to see really is worse than that?" he pointed to the hall behind us.
I didn't answer right away. Instead we followed the directions of several agents who said Olivia was searching for me, until we came to a room that was guarded by two more LOA agents. They moved aside to let us in, and I immediately realised that I was wrong. It could get worse.
The room we entered housed a large TV, a pool table, and a few other games for the inmates to enjoy, including a collapsible table tennis set that had been folded in half with someone inside still it, crushing the man to death. Three massive couches had been upturned and thrown to the sides, exposing a large, empty section of floor. A lone arm, torn off from the shoulder, sat in the very centre in a pool of blood.
At the far end of the room, the TV had been torn from the wall and tossed aside. In its place was a body. Or at least the remains of one. Two pool cue ends protruded out of his chest, and blood had sprayed from his torso where his arms should have been, drenching the wall in red on either side of him. Identification was difficult since the victim’s head was missing.
"What the fuck happened here?" I asked, not sure if I wanted to know.
Olivia turned away from talking to one of her agents. "The best Doctor Grayson can determine is that, Neil was nailed to the wall by those pool cues, after having his arms and his head ripped off and thrown into the nearest bin."
" That's Neil Hatchell?"
Olivia nodded.
"So, the lich did this," I said. "But how? Surely Neil would have transformed to at least fight back. He'd have still lost, but there'd be more evidence of a struggle."
Olivia passed me a clear bag containing a bracelet. "This is how."
"A sorcerer's band? You mean he couldn't defend himself?"
"We had to make him wear one. He was in a human prison, we couldn't exactly have him running around turning into a wolf whenever he liked."
"Why was he in a human prison at all?"
"He implicated members of Avalon. We had to put him somewhere anyone involved wouldn't find him. Looks like it didn't work."
"I hate these damn things." Sorcerer bands were narrow bracelets with runes etched into the silver, which prevented the wearer from accessing their abilities. Neil would still have been fast and strong, and his innate ability to heal wouldn't have changed, but he wouldn't have been able to access his wolf form at all. I'd worn a sorcerer's bracelet for a while a long time ago, and it had felt like I'd lost a part of myself. They're horrific things, and to compound my dislike, each one has a rune inscribed that sits against the wearer's skin. If the band is removed by the wearer, or by someone else with a band on, the runes ignite with the equivalent of magical napalm. The rune can be changed depending on what will hurt the specific person the most, but the end result is always the same. Death.
"You and me both," Olivia said.
"Wow, this is not what I was expecting."
I turned at the sound of the newcomer's voice, watching as LOA Agents darted to the room's entrance, barring her from entering.
"It's okay, she's with me," I said, and the guards parted.
"Nate, it's been a while," she said with a smile, sweeping past the guards without a glance, her high-heeded boots clicking on the linoleum floor.
"And you are?" Olivia asked, taking the bagged bracelet back from me and passing it to a nearby agent.
"Ah, you must be Director Green. I've been sent here to assist you with your lich problem."
"Olivia," I said. "Let me introduce Sky. She's our necromancer."
Olivia's expression softened and she shook Sky's hand. "Good to have you on board. I hope we can figure out how to kill this thing."
"I'll be doing that," Sky said. "The lich killing, I mean. But first bring me up to speed on what happened here, and why that man has no head."
For the next few minutes we did just that, explaining about the ghoul attack on the prison, and everything that came before it. Sky didn't ask questions, but occasionally glanced at the headless body as it was removed from the wall by some of Doctor Grayson's men.
"This lich is strong," Sky said when we'd finished. "I heard that you killed a ghoul with magic, Nate. The lich will want revenge for what you did, you should be careful."
"Then we'd better hurry up and kill it," I said. "What's the plan?"
"How many prisoners are unaccounted for?" Sky asked Olivia.
"Nearly four hundred."
"Then we've got a few hours before we'll have to deal with four hundred new barren as well as a lich and probably five ghouls. Not great odds."
Another agent called Olivia over and she quickly ran off to find out what they needed.
"I've been wondering something," I said to Sky. "How did four hundred men disappear at once? Where'd they go? And how did the lich get them there without a fight?"
"You kill a few of those who want to fight back, and everyone else becomes very complacent. Besides the thought of freedom is a big motivator," Sky suggested.
"How many guards are missing?" I asked one of the agents.
She flicke
d through several sheets of paper on a clipboard before answering. "Twenty-two, ten are confirmed dead and fifteen were locked in the comm or guard's room. Apparently there was no communication with the outside world for an hour, and all internal alarm systems were shut down. One of the guard's wives got worried that she couldn't get through to her husband on his mobile and called the police. The police notified us two hours later, and we gained entry and secured the building an hour after arriving."
"Why let any of the guards live?" Sky asked.
"They were on a break," the agent said. "They weren't in the wing when the attack commenced. My guess is they locked themselves in to stay alive, and they weren't important enough for the lich to bother with."
I did some quick maths in my head. "I need to speak to Olivia. Now."
"What's got you all worked up?" Agent Reid asked, as Sky and I made our way over to him and Olivia.
"They were in here for an hour before anyone was even notified that something was wrong," I said. "What time did you actually gain entry?"
"Half eight this morning," Olivia said.
"It was light then, yes?"
Sky tapped something into her phone. "Dawn was at 06:58. So they would have been gone well before then. But that still means they had the place to themselves for three hours at least. By the time they left, all of the prisoners would have been pretty much on the way to becoming husks."
"How do four hundred husks leave without anyone noticing?" I asked. "That's what doesn't make sense."
"I'll be back in a second," Olivia said and marched off toward where I'd seen the guards being interviewed.
"The lich will have a home base. He'll want to go there, although if he has four hundred people about to turn into husks, it must be somewhere big. He'd have known the LOA would be all over this place after his attack, and he wouldn't want to be left vulnerable."
"That still doesn't explain how the hell he got out of here with all of those prisoners in tow."
"Maybe I can be of assistance with that," a middle-aged man in a very nice, immaculate, grey suit said, as he arrived with Olivia. He glanced at Agent Reid and me and then extended a hand to Sky, apparently we weren't important enough. "Maxwell Perkins," he said with a smirk.
"Okay, so who are you and how can you help?" I asked as Sky rolled her eyes once Maxwell had decided to stop staring at her.
"He's the assistant warden," Olivia said for him. "You need to listen to what he has to say."
Maxwell straightened his already perfectly straight tie, and I resisted the urge to hang him with it for being a pompous ass. "As I was explaining to your lovely director, there are tunnels under the prison. The whole building was built during the Georgian era, and those tunnels were never permanently sealed up.
"You have a set of open tunnels under a prison?" Sky snapped.
"They're not open, my dear." The smugness oozed out of him like oil. "A very large, thick steel door bars the way. And there's no prisoner in existence that has ever gotten even close to it. And even if they did, the exit is sealed with a three foot concrete wall."
"How long is the tunnel?" I asked
"Two miles, it ends near a selection of woodland."
"Why would the original architects have built a two mile tunnel under the prison?" Olivia asked.
"The tunnel was designed to move people in and out of the prison in a discreet manner. There are rooms down there where they used to torture people, and the tunnel made it easier to dispose of the bodies."
"Can you show us the way?" Agent Reid asked.
Maxwell beamed. "Of course, follow me. And ladies, you'd best stay close, don't want you to get spooked by anything."
Chapter 30
We followed Maxwell down the corridor to the solitary confinement cells, which had lost none of their creepiness from when Olivia and I had walked past earlier. Some of the gore splattered cells still had bodies inside where the ghouls had attacked and spared no one.
"These men were helpless," Agent Reid said.
"They were serial murderers and rapists," Maxwell said. "I would feel more pity for their victims. These men paid for their crimes with their lives in as brutal a fashion as they had done unto others."
No one made any further comment about what we saw as we made our way by the cells and up to a door which had the word "Maintenance" in big red letters. Maxwell entered the code into the keypad next to it, and the door lock clicked open.
"The tunnel is through here," he said. "But it won't do you any good, the end is blocked."
"Still worth a look," I said, and opened the door fully to reveal a set of stairs that led down, where a row of low-level lights lit the wall as far as I could see. "Are these lights on all the time?"
Maxwell nodded. "It’s easier to leave them on, than to turn them off and on every time we go down here."
"What do you come down here for?" Olivia asked as we all descended the steep stairs into the tunnel.
"A lot of the cables and pipes that run through the prison start down here, and occasionally we have a few glitches with the electricity or hot water. And we use the empty rooms to store supplies."
We made our way along the dingy tunnel, with Maxwell and Olivia taking the lead and Agent Reid following behind Sky and me. Occasionally, we passed locked doors where the handles had become rusted through lack of use, or open ones showing stacks of boxes. But there certainly didn't appear to be anything down here except for the five of us. After a half hour of walking at a steady pace, we arrived at the remains of a concrete wall. Something had punched its way through the concrete to get to the old exit beyond, leaving pieces of broken wall all around.
"I think we've found how the lich got everyone out of here," I said.
I stepped over the pile of rubble and pushed open the rusted, iron gate with a squeak. The lock had been torn off by someone, ripping part of the gate in the process.
The rest of the group followed me out into the clearing near an area of woodland.
"So, these bastards could be anywhere?" Olivia said as she exited the tunnel.
"And they had maybe three hours to start the transformation before they left here," Sky said. "Tonight is when the shit is going to start hitting the fan."
Maxwell laughed. It started as a slight chuckle, but soon made its way into a full-throated roar of laughter. "You have no idea what's happening," he said after everyone had turned to stare at him. Blood trickled from his mouth and nose, dropping onto his shirt.
Agent Reid's Glock was out of its holster in an instant and aimed at the assistant warden who regarded him with mild indifference. "This bag of meat is already dead," Maxwell said. "He was the first to die when I turned up to claim what was mine."
"You're the lich," Sky said.
"And a brownie point goes to the American, although technically I'm still just a useless human."
"Puppeteer," Sky whispered.
Maxwell clapped his hands and laughed. "That's right, aren't you a smart one? Bet you haven't seen this before."
"You controlled Maxwell all this time."
"From the moment I arrived to kill that snitch, Neil, until just now, Maxwell has been my puppet to control as I wished."
"Where are the rest of the prisoners?" I asked.
"I warned you to stay out of this," he said to me. "I told you to let it happen and nothing would befall you. But you ignored me. You killed my ghoul, and now I find you here trying to help them catch me once more. You can't kill me, sorcerer. You can't even hurt me. For your disobedience and for killing my ghoul, you will feel my full wrath."
His mention of the ghoul I'd killed reminded me that I'd had his blood on my hand. "The men in the farm basement, you turned them to ghouls."
"I look forward to feasting on your heart and having my ghouls tear you limb from limb."
"Well, you're down one ghoul already, so it'll probably take longer than it would have if I hadn't killed it."
Maxwell spat bright red blood onto the grass.
"You will regret those words, sorcerer."
"You know, it's funny," I said," but everyone who says I'm going to feel their wrath tends to die a horribly violent death. Guess I can add one more to the list."
Maxwell's head turned slowly to face the director. "Olivia Green." His voice was full of venom and barely contained rage. "How I've longed to see you again."
"If you'd have waited long enough the other night, I'd have put a bullet in your face to remember me by," Olivia said.
"You stupid little bitch. You ruined my life, do you know that? Destroyed everything I'd worked so hard to achieve, turned the woman I loved against me. And now, I'm going to do the exact same to you. I'm going to burn your life to the ground and make you watch as the embers are finally extinguished one at a time, until all that's left is destruction. And then you'll die. Slowly. I'm very much looking forward to it."
"I'm going to make sure you stay dead this time," Olivia shouted, as she shook with rage.
"I'm so glad you remember me," Peter said. "I came back because of you. My hatred of you brought me back here, the need to feel your skin burst open as I carve into it. The need to feel your hot blood down my throat was all that kept me going."
"And those women, the friends of Vicki and Amber, why kill them?" I asked, hoping to get his attention off a clearly upset Olivia.
Unfortunately, it didn't work and Maxwell continued to stare at Olivia. "I have something to show you, a gift." He removed a small camera from his pocket and tossed it onto the soft grass by Olivia's feet. "I took some photos for you."
Olivia picked the camera up and used the viewing screen on the back to scroll through the photos it contained. After viewing a few of the photos I noticed a tear trickle down her face.
"Olivia," I whispered and she passed me the camera.
I flicked through the photos and quickly realised that they were a timeline of Vicki's transformation from living enchanter to ghoul.
"Turning Vicki was the most fun I'd ever had," Maxwell said. "And now she'll serve me for all eternity. Her pain and suffering is nothing compared to what I'm going to do to you, Olivia."
