by Cas Martin
Blood Inheritance
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All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, either living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Published By Rogue Hedgehog Media
Copyright © 2015 C.K. Martin
This edition 2017
All rights reserved.
1
'So you're the daughter of the great Professor Hastings huh?' the man across from Elizabeth asked through a mouthful of doughnut. They were sitting in a diner popular with cops and truckers but just about nobody else. The coffee tasted like diesel fuel and even the sugar-coated pastries couldn't mellow its bitterness.
'Yes I am.'
'You have to understand, he was a legend. Always will be to a very select group of us. I never realised you were going to follow in his footsteps.'
'Neither did I until very recently. You could say my career took a very sudden change in direction.' That was the understatement of the century, she thought.
'Sometimes we used to call him Professor Helsing,' he chuckled, dipping another doughnut into the black sludge. 'Sometimes, even when there were other people around. He used to go crazy about it. Said we could never be sure who was listening. He was right, of course, but we were young and stupid. Took us a little while to learn that lesson, but believe me, it was a lesson you don't forget in a hurry.' He put the rest of the doughnut in his mouth, a much more sombre expression on his face now. It was as if the chuckling man had disappeared altogether and been replaced by someone new. Elizabeth could imagine what that lesson was. She looked away. When she looked back, he was draining the dregs of coffee from his cup and signalling the waitress for a refill.
Elizabeth watched in silence as the woman walked over, pink chequered dress and coffee pot making her look like an extra from an unimaginative country music video. Elizabeth placed her hand over her own cup; any more and she wouldn't be sleeping for days.
As the waitress wandered off, the man opposite turned to Elizabeth with inquisitive eyes and asked the question she'd been waiting for from the moment he had walked through the door. 'So why have you come looking for me now? Why not before?'
'Now was just the right time I guess,' Elizabeth tried to be non-committal without sounding like there was more to it than meets the eye.
'Your father never told us to expect you. In fact, he told us just the opposite. You have to admit, after all this time, it seems odd.'
'I had a lot to come to terms with.'
'I understand. But you have a lot to learn, and you've got no experience whatsoever. No offence intended.'
'You're not telling me anything I don't already know. I suppose you were going to say that the greatest teacher isn't even around to show me.'
'Well, it would be the truth. Your father was the greatest at what he did. He had a great mind, but it wasn't just that. He had an instinct. He thought like a hunter, but he could act like the prey. That was a great skill. Probably one that kept him alive for a lot longer than he should have been. Tell me Elizabeth, do you think you have that instinct? Because I'm telling you now, if you don't, then you should get out, before you get in too deep. This isn't a game, no matter how glamorous it may seem right now.'
'I don't find the thing that killed my father glamorous. Or a game for that matter.' Elizabeth felt her anger begin to simmer under the surface. It was an issue she was still struggling to master. Struggling, and not always succeeding.
'I understand you're not liking the way I'm giving you a hard time. But it's better if I ask all the difficult questions now. And you still didn't answer the important one. Do you have the instinct for it?'
Elizabeth reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a leather cord with a pendant hanging from it. She gripped it tightly, as if afraid she would drop it, as the light sneaking through the half-closed blinds glinted off the gold. She heard him take a sharp intake of breath; part shock, part awe.
'Yeah, you've got the instinct,' he breathed.
2
Oxfordshire, England, Two Years Earlier
Elizabeth forced herself to sit in her father's chair. Even in the immediate months after he died, she never got into his seat, scared it would make him feel even more gone. As if she was actively pushing him out.
Everything about her father's death seemed unfathomable — not just because she was in a state of shock. Everything about it felt wrong somehow, like an itch that kept moving every time you scratched it. There was no peace of mind for Elizabeth. No justification. The police had said it was just a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. She had found out later that it was very much more than that.
Her father had been obliterated.
Professor Jonathan Hastings had carefully planned what was supposed to happen if his worst nightmares came true. Every facet of his life that had been hidden was to remain secret, especially from his daughter. He did not want her to think, to know, what his life had been like. He did not want her to have to make the same sacrifices. He had lived in fear of a death he did not want her to face. His fears had been well founded. Ultimately, his death had been as brutal as he had imagined in his darkest moments. The only thing he had miscalculated, grossly underestimated in fact, was the number of people he would take with him.
As a result, the papers and secrets that were supposed to have been neatly erased from view finally came directly into Elizabeth's domain. Whilst logic tried valiantly to tell her that her father must have been a crazy old man, her gut instinct told her that it was all true.
All she had to do was piece together the events.
Then she would be able to find her father's killer, and revenge was the only thing on her mind.
3
Manhattan, Present Day
David followed Elizabeth from the diner and out into the harsh sunlight. A few blocks further down and the same light would only fall on one side of the street, intermittently, as the buildings grew higher and higher until they became the Finance District. She had only been in America for two weeks and the place was taking some getting used to. It had a different quality to the cities of Europe that she had spent the previous few months travelling, almost like a TV show coming to life.
She was aware of him falling in step beside her, keeping up with her pace, formulating a thousand questions. Instead, she asked him one of her own. 'So how did you get to know my father?'
'He taught me, of course. That was how everyone was recruited. He was very selective. Had to be. If he'd said the wrong thing to the wrong person, he would have been up in front of the Head of the Faculty accused of being crazy. Mentally unbalanced.'
'So how did he know who the right person was?'
'I'm not sure. Over the ten years I knew him, he only selected the four of us. Thousands of students must have gone through his course, but only four passed whatever test it was. There are only three of us now.'
'So how do you find more people?'
&nbs
p; 'We don't. Well, I haven't. Not yet anyway. It's been too hard. I don't have the right contacts.' He looked at her meaningfully.
'Does that mean you think that I do?'
'We've never had access to your father's belongings. When he died, we were supposed to get them, but…' he trailed off, emotion temporarily squeezing his throat. 'Obviously everything inadvertently passed to you and we had no way of getting them back. Short of burglary or imposing on your grief. Besides, your father led us to believe that there were ancient magics placed upon his personal effects, which would be invoked at the time of his death.'
'And you believed him?' snorted Elizabeth.
'Why shouldn't I? I've seen more than enough in this world and know better than to doubt anything your father said.'
'Are you being serious?' She stopped in her tracks and turned to face him.
'Deadly serious. Elizabeth, you may be your father's daughter, but this is still all new to you. Tell me, now you've seen the unbelievable, why do you think you get to pick and choose what is real and what isn't?'
'I…'
'You have your own experiences which are no doubt pretty crazy if you told them to anyone other than me. There are things we can't even begin to understand. Your father knew that. He just kept digging deeper and deeper.'
'Okay then,' she resumed walking, 'if that's the case, then how come I got to read all his notes?'
'Maybe, no matter what he told us, you were supposed to get all of his notes, his research, his journals too. Or maybe you're right, and there was no magic.'
'His journals?' She felt a stab in her chest the final thing clicked into place. There it had been, at the periphery of her vision since his death. Finally it had come into full view. 'I never received his journals.'
'So it's true.'
'What's true?'
'There had been rumours that your father's journals were stolen when he was murdered. That's why you're here in New York. Isn't it?'
'No. I'm here because I had some expiring air miles and New York was on a bonus offer. Damn. I've been through his office a hundred times since. I've never come across a single journal.'
How she had missed such an obvious thing before seemed ludicrous now. She had known her father kept a journal. She had visions of him on family holidays, sitting, writing, musing. It was so in keeping with his role as an academic. There must be at least thirty years' worth of journals and she had not found one of them. The closest thing was a stack of spiral bound reporter notebooks that had set her off down this road to begin with. 'What did he write in them? Do you know?' she demanded. 'I'm guessing they didn't contain accounts of daily life and trips to the dentist, did they?'
'No. His journals were where he worked on his ideas. Things he hadn't yet proven. He refused to write anything speculative in his notes. Things out of the ordinary were recorded in his journal. Ideas and themes. His secrets.'
'His secrets? You mean there might be something even worse than all this?'
'He was a secretive man.' David shoved his hands into his pockets and stared ahead as they walked. 'There were some ideas he simply wasn't ready to share with us. Things he didn't want us to know. He hinted a couple of times, said one or two things in passing, but never actually divulged anything until he was ready. We had a theory, but it's nothing more than that.'
'And the theory was?'
'We had a feeling that he was pulling together something huge. Not just something they had kept hidden from us, but something they didn't even know about themselves.'
'Do you think he ever managed to tie everything together? To unlock the big secret?'
'I don't think so. But he was getting close. Very close.'
'So wherever those books are, they're like a time bomb waiting to go off?'
'Yes,' he nodded. 'With a very, very big bang.'
4
Elizabeth shut the door of her hotel room and leant back against it, pressing her head to the hard wood, as if it could take the ache away. Since her conversation with her father's protégé, the tension had been creeping through her body, silent fingers knotting the muscles in her neck and shoulders until they screamed in pain. She longed to be in her own bedroom. Not that there was much sanctuary there anymore these days either. Yet it was even harder to relax in a space that was not her own. She never felt safe. She took a deep breath and willed herself across the room past the queen size bed. More than anything she wanted to close her eyes, sink down into the bed and sleep. She could not remember the last time she had woken up feeling rested. Each night, even if she wasn't plagued by nightmares, her sleep was still light and uneasy.
So, reluctantly, she walked towards the next best thing, just beyond the mini bar. From a bag in the corner of the room she pulled a bottle of bourbon she had bought duty free on her journey over, now half-empty. She poured the sticky amber liquid into a warm glass — unable to find the enthusiasm to head down the corridor to fill the ice bucket from the machine — then crossed the room to the bed, kicking off her shoes as she did so. Drinking was never going to provide any escape, not the oblivion she craved, but it would do for now. She had too many thoughts going through her brain, too many questions. When she did manage to come up with answers, she never liked what she found. Answers that spawned more questions. It was a never-ending circle that was threatening to spiral out of control. Just like her life, once so neat and ordered, was spinning; violently and with ever-increasing speed.
Just how had her father managed to lead such a double life? Or had she been so blind that she had missed what had been staring her in the face for all those years? Had her mother ever known? It was too late to ask now. Elizabeth felt the bourbon slide down her throat — only mildly more abrasive than the coffee she had consumed earlier that day — and tried to will the stress and tension away. It was never going to work. She drained the glass. A shower before bed was a last resort that she already knew was doomed to failure from countless nights before.
5
In her penthouse overlooking the river, Monica Carletto sipped a glass of red wine and looked at Dennis sitting on the couch in front of her. His grey suit was creased from a night in the office, but his face was smooth apart from a few troubled lines across his brow. He looked every inch the young executive, just as she was the perfect CEO. A real high flyer, she had reached the top with alarming speed. She was a woman unfazed by anything, but there was a hint of trouble in the way she swirled the wine in the glass. Dennis was not a regular guest at her apartment, so him being here was itself an indication of just how serious he thought things were.
'I can't say I'm particularly pleased by the news you've brought me tonight Dennis. But it's not a complete disaster.'
'It's not?' Dennis managed to look both wary and disbelieving. He had been the very reluctant bearer of bad news. She could tell by the way he shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Not that anyone had ever seen her lose her temper. Not like the old leaders used to. Of course, this would be her first real test. It was going to be quite the challenge. There were a lot of people watching and waiting, even hoping for her downfall.
'No Dennis, it's not. Are you absolutely certain that Elizabeth Hastings is here in the city?'
'Positive. Several confirmed sources.'
'Several? She's clearly less discreet than her father.'
'She's still learning.'
'She's going to have to learn a lot faster.'
'It's to our advantage if she doesn't.'
'But your other news leads me to believe it will be more to our advantage to have her alive and well. So remind me about her father's journals.' Monica crossed the room and sat next to Dennis. She acted as calm and composed as she could, and Dennis certainly seemed to be buying it, but deep down she was worried. Very worried. Too many people wanted to see her fail. With the company merger due to take place in the next few months, every area of her life was straining to breaking point. News of Elizabeth's arrival was just another thing to deal with.
'It
appears that when the great Professor Hastings was murdered, his journals were also taken.'
'We had long suspected as much Dennis. Tell me something I don't know.'
'Whoever took them has been biding their time, Monica. Several families have hinted the journals were no longer in England. Elizabeth Hastings arriving here has to be more than a coincidence. I think whoever has the journals has been waiting for her to get here.'
'So she is in the city, and the journals are here too?'
'Maybe not here, but close by.'
'So what's your theory?'
'We, all the families, have known for a long time that Professor Hastings' journals probably hold some sensitive information. Dangerous, even. In the wrong hands it could be lethal to us. But no one has attempted to use them or expose them since they were taken, right? So my theory is that whoever took them didn't know how to make full use of the information that was in them. Either that, or…'
'Or?'
'Or they need Elizabeth's help to unlock whatever's inside. She's not as safe here as she is in England. If we know she is here, then we can be certain every other family knows too. No matter where in the world they are based.'
'I want to meet her.' Monica placed her empty wine glass on the table.
'What?'
'You heard me Dennis. Arrange a meeting with Miss Hastings. As soon as possible. I don't care how you have to do it, what strings you have to pull, or what tricks you need to perform to convince her, but I want a meeting.'
'Are you sure?'
'Arrange a location that is mutually beneficial and secure for us both. Advise me when it's done.'
'Yes Monica.' Dennis stood up to go, understanding that he'd been dismissed. 'I'll let you know tomorrow how it's going.' He walked towards the door, turning around as he placed his hand on the knob. 'Will you be going to the club tonight?'
'I don't think so. I have too much I need to do here.'
