Dead Ground (Harbinger P.I. Book 4)

by Adam J. Wright

  “Of course not,” Victoria said. “We can send as many people as can fit inside the circle. Anyway, it will be five passengers, not four.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “I’ll be coming too,” Victoria said.

  “Oh?” I asked, a little confused. “Don’t you need to cast the spell?” When they’d sent Leon and me to Bodmin Moor, both witches had been chanting the words of the spell, each chanting in a different language.

  “The spell does need to be cast by two witches,” Devon said, “but we think one of the witches can be in the circle.”

  “You think? You mean you don’t know?”

  “Alec, don’t worry, everything will be fine,” Victoria said in a soothing tone. “Now, let’s get on with it.”

  As we walked through the empty shop to the room at the back, she said, “As I told you on the phone, Devon and I sometimes use faerie magic and invoke the name of the Lady of the Forest when we cast our spells. Faerie magic is rare; there aren’t many spell books around that deal with it. So, I thought that if I helped you rescue the Lady of the Forest…” She trailed off, not needing to finish her sentence.

  “She’ll give you a secret faerie spell or something in return,” I said.

  “Well, I’m sure she’ll be grateful. And if I mention that I’m a practitioner of the art, then maybe she’ll share a little something with me.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe. Anyway, you’re welcome to join us. The more of us there are, the better our chances.”

  We got to the room where the magic circle and the altar were set up. The smell of marigolds and hawthorn berries hung in the air, emanating from the smoking cauldron on the altar. Devon passed around the silver bowl from the altar and five daggers and we all put a drop of blood into the bowl.

  Devon returned to the altar and began to chant. Victoria, who was standing next to me, also began to chant in a language different to the one Devon was speaking. As before, the words seemed to deflect off each other and echo around the room, as if the two languages we warring with each other.

  The energy in the room became electric, as if lightning were revolving around the circle’s edge at an ever-increasing speed.

  Then, both witches spoke words that—despite the different languages—seemed to mingle and fuse together. When that happened, Devon poured the contents of the silver bowl into the cauldron and smoke became blood red.

  The room around us vanished and was replaced with the ruined stone walls of a church. There was no roof and the blue sky above us was stained orange from the rising sun. The air tasted salty and I could hear the sea crashing against rocks somewhere beyond the ruined church.

  Victoria was beaming. “Welcome to the island of Dia. I believe that is the Mediterranean Sea we can hear in the background.”

  “Great job,” I said. Then a thought struck me. “How are you going to get us home if you both have to chant the spell and you’re halfway across the world from each other?”

  She dug into the pocket of her black lace dress and produced a cellphone. “We’ll cast the spell together over the phone. We may be witches, dear, but we aren’t Luddites.”

  A second thought struck me but I didn’t voice it. What if we lost Victoria in the battle ahead? How would those of us who were left get home?

  That led to a third thought that there might not be any of us left. I pushed that thought away and tried to stop thinking.

  Instead, I went to a place where a section of the stone wall was missing and looked out at the island of Dia.

  The ruined church was surrounded by the ruin of what had once been a village but all that was left of the place now were wind-eroded walls and scatterings of rubble. The village was situated at the northern tip of the island.

  To the south, an old ruined road led to the southern tip of the island where the mansion we’d seen on the Internet sat looking out over the deep blue Mediterranean Sea. The dawn light picked out other islands in the heat-hazed distance.

  The landscape between here and the mansion was a flat, rocky wasteland, the only area of interest a harbor situated halfway between the village and the house. Two small yachts were docked there, probably the only means of getting on and off the island other than by magic.

  The sun was rising above the eastern horizon, casting its light over the island. If we could free our friends and get them out of the mansion, the vamps wouldn’t be able to follow us. That should give Victoria and Devon time to cast the spell to get us out of here.

  Of course, we’d still have to deal with any demons on the island because the sunlight didn’t affect them. But at least Korax and Damalis would be taken out of the equation.

  I looked at my band of adventurers and figured we might just have a chance to pull this off.

  Felicity and Leon were armed with swords and I knew they were both capable of using them.

  I reminded myself to put more time into training Felicity in armed combat. Because she was so skilled at research, I tended to use her more in that capacity than as a fighter but that should probably change. As she had said, if she was going to become an investigator, she needed to be expert in all aspects of the job.

  Michael was armed with a shotgun. The cartridges contained fragments of wood as well as the usual steel shot. The ex-military man was an expert in the use of the firearm, as I’d seen on a number of occasions.

  Victoria looked the most unassuming, dressed in her retro black dress and carrying no weapon at all. I knew that despite her appearance, she had a lot of magical power. She and her sister had managed to close down a gate that would have let a pantheon of dark gods into the world.

  I didn’t know how well Victoria would operate without her sister around but I had no reason to doubt her solo abilities.

  There was a look of grim determination in everyone’s eyes. I trusted these people with my life and I knew they trusted me with theirs. I told myself that I must not let them down.

  “Everyone ready?” I asked them.

  When they all nodded in reply, I said, “Okay, let’s go.”

  We moved south along the rubble-strewn road as the sun rose higher in the sky and bathed us in its light.

  Chapter 28

  When we reached the mansion, I was surprised to find that it was modern. Built of stone with huge windows, it had three levels above ground and, I guessed, more beneath. No self-respecting vampire lived in a house that didn’t have a basement, and most lairs had a dungeon.

  We met no resistance on our way to the house from the ruined village and that was probably because the vamps didn’t expect intruders on the island. The place was feared and avoided by the locals.

  Up close, it was easy to see the metal shutters behind the windows. They were closed tight, keeping out the sun. Maybe we could open them and increase our chances against the vamps.

  The house was accessed by a set of heavy-looking wooden double doors carved with an intricate pattern of letters and symbols.

  “Shall we see if it’s locked?” I said, stepping forward.

  “Wait,” Victoria said. “It’s warded.” She closed her eyes and muttered a few unintelligible words before pointing both hands at the door. Green sparks ran around the carved patterns for a couple of seconds before sputtering out. “It’s safe to enter now,” she said.

  The door handles were two large steel rings. I grabbed one, turned it, and pushed. The door opened with a slight creak. The square of light that shone through the open doorway illuminated a marble floor but nothing else. Darkness shrouded the interior of the house.

  There was a slight smell of sulfur hanging in the air. “Watch out for demons,” I whispered, stepping inside and unsheathing my sword. Leon and Felicity did the same. The enchanted glow cut through the darkness and lit up the foyer around us.

  There were no furnishings, simply a large marble staircase that led up to the next level.

  “Should we go up?” Leon whispered.

  I shook my head. “Vampires are usu
ally traditionalists. If they have prisoners, they’ll be holding them in a dungeon beneath the house.” I pointed at a closed wooden door that led farther into the house on this level. “Let’s try through there.”

  We made our way across the foyer slowly and carefully, expecting an attack at any second. The fact that we’d made it this far without meeting any opposition made me wonder if the demons and vampires were lying in wait somewhere within the house, ready to spring a trap on us.

  I opened the door and stepped back, ready to fight whatever came rushing at me from the other side.

  But the room beyond was as quiet as the grave.

  I stepped through the doorway into a lavishly furnished library. Every wall was covered with bookshelves. There were reading lamps set on side tables next to plush leather armchairs. The lights were all off at the moment and our glowing swords were the only illumination. The library was so large that the corners of the room were hidden in shadow.

  A door in the opposite wall was the only way out of the room except for the door we ‘d entered by. I figured that if we were going to find a door to the basement, dungeon, or whatever was beneath the ground level, we’d find it in the kitchen or one of the rooms at the back of the house and that door seemed to lead in that direction.

  I went ahead and opened it slowly. The room beyond the door was pitch black so I thrust my sword forward to cast some light in there. The blue glow showed what looked like a large ballroom. The wooden floor was polished to a smooth sheen, displaying a floral pattern made of darker wood in its center.

  The ceiling was arched and decorated with reliefs of vines and flowers. Crystal chandeliers hung over the dance floor. The walls were hung with paintings of people dressed in costumes from various historical periods. There were six windows in this room but all had been shuttered.

  I went over the nearest shutters and looked for a way to open them. But the heavy metal sheets were bolted into place, so it looked like they couldn’t be opened at all, even at night.

  “Damn it,” I said. “If we could open these, we’d have a better chance of survival.”

  Victoria stepped forward and examined the shutters closest to her. “I can open them with magic but it will be very noisy. Loud enough to wake the dead.”

  I considered that. We’d made it this far without being discovered. If the vampires were sleeping somewhere in the house, I’d rather not wake them. The element of surprise might be our only advantage and I didn’t want to waste it.

  “We’ll keep quiet for now,” I told Victoria.

  She nodded in understanding. “Of course. You just tell me when you want them taking down and I’ll do it right away.”

  A number of doors led from the ballroom. I went for the one that led in the same direction we’d been moving since we’d entered the house and opened it to find a dark dining room furnished with a long table, stone fireplace, and more paintings and shuttered windows on the walls.

  The next room was a kitchen that could have come straight out of the eighteenth-century. A large stone fireplace dominated one wall, cooking pots hanging within it. The fire was dead at the moment. I tried not to think of what might be cooked in those pots when the fire was burning.

  “It’s as if the house gets older the deeper we go,” Felicity said. “The entrance was modern, the library a little less so, the ballroom and dining room more antiquated, and now this.”

  “So let’s hope our next stop will be the medieval dungeon where we’ll find our friends,” I said, opening a door that revealed stone steps leading down into darkness. “Yeah, I think it’s this way.”

  I followed the steps down, followed by the others. The air turned cold and the smell of damp and decay rose up from below. When we reached the bottom, I estimated that we’d descended thirty or forty feet beneath the house, into the bowels of the island.

  Torches set in iron sconces on the walls provided light. There were two passageways; one that led straight ahead and a side passage that led to our left.

  “We could split up,” Leon suggested.

  “We’re not going to split up,” I said. “We’ll go straight ahead. If we don’t find Gloria and the others that way, we’ll come back here and take the other passage.”

  We moved forward as one, past side rooms that had been cut out of the rock. The rooms were empty so they held no interest to us. The passage terminated at an open archway. I stopped and signaled the others to do the same.

  The room beyond the archway was lit by torches and in their guttering light, I could see three coffins, each lying within a crypt cut into the rock wall. One of the coffins was open, its lid lying on the floor in front of the crypt. I assumed that one belonged to Davos, who would never be returning here. The lids of the other two coffins were closed.

  If Korax and Damalis were asleep inside, we could end this here and now by destroying them. Once they were out of the picture, we could search for our friends and only have to worry about any demon minions that were in the house.

  The problem was that we’d have to open the coffins to deliver the kind of attack that destroyed a vampire. A stake through the heart had to be accurate; we couldn’t just thrust a stake through the side of a coffin and hope for the best.

  Cutting off the vampires’ heads would be next to impossible without opening the coffins first, and as soon as we removed the coffins from the crypts, the vampires inside would wake up.

  I slowly backed away down the passage. I wanted to strike now and take out the enemy but our friends were somewhere in this dungeon and we’d let them down if we got ourselves killed and weren’t able to save them just because we made a rash decision.

  We went quietly back to the point where a second passage led to the left.

  “Man, we should have taken them out while they were sleeping,” Leon said.

  “We can’t risk it,” I told him. “We’re here to rescue our friends and get out of here. Gloria said that when she has her torc, she can defend her forest from the Cabal. That’s all that matters right now.”

  I set off along the second passageway, certain now that this was where we’d find Jim and the others.

  We came to a wide set of steps that took us down to a locked iron gate. Beyond the gate, I could see a passageway lined with cells. I couldn’t see who—if anyone—was inside the cells but I did see movement in the shadows at the far end of the passageway.

  “Victoria, can you deal with this gate?” I asked.

  “I can but it will be noisy.”

  “That’s fine. The time for stealth is over.” I could see the figure at the far end of the passageway more clearly now. It was a demon holding a sword and peering at us as if it wasn’t sure who we were. Once it realized we were enemies, it would raise the alarm, attack us, or attack the prisoners. We had to get in there as quickly as possible.

  Victoria spread her hands toward the gate and mumbled something under her breath. The gate buckled, pulling against the bolts that fastened it to the walls. It toppled forward and crashed onto the stone floor.

  The demon rushed toward us, brandishing its sword. When it reached me, it swung its blade overhead, trying to finish me with one swift strike. I dropped to one knee and raised my sword above my head, blocking the attack. The sound of metal clanging against metal echoed off the stone walls.

  The demon stepped back, preparing to strike again. I thrust my sword forward into its belly, feeling the enchanted steel slice through skin, muscle, and bone.

  The demon’s eyes went wide. It dropped its sword and went limp. I angled my blade so that the creature’s body slid off it with the help of gravity. The black blood that oozed from the corpse bubbled as it touched the stone floor.

  “Alec!” Jim’s voice came from a cell to my right. I went over the bars and peered in. “You okay? Where are the others?”

  “Everyone’s here,” he said, “except Gloria. The keys are over there on that table.” He pointed at a small table set against the wall where the demon had been
standing.

  Michael, who was closest to the table, grabbed the keys and began opening cells.

  When Detective Frasier was released, she came over to me and said, “I’m worried about Gloria. The vampires took her away.”

  “They’ve been taking her away and torturing her regularly,” Girard added. “But the last time they took her, they didn’t bring her back.”

  I swore an oath to myself that if Korax and Damalis had killed the faerie queen, I’d make them pay. I wasn’t Gloria’s biggest fan but she didn’t deserve to be killed at the hands of sadistic vampires just so they could take over her forest.

  “We’ll find her,” I said. “The vampires are asleep right now, so they must have her confined somewhere in the upper levels of the house.”

  “They aren’t asleep,” Jim said. “They were talking about somebody important coming her today, somebody high up in the Midnight Cabal. There’s no way they’re sleeping.”

  I cursed myself for not checking the closed coffins.

  “Gloria told them where the torc was hidden,” Jim said. “Davos went to get it. He never came back. They don’t know what happened to him but they know Gloria told you where the torc is and they assume you have it. Because of their failure to get it, someone from the Cabal is coming here to take over. The vamps can’t decide whether to take orders from the newcomer or rebel against the Cabal.”

  “Hopefully, we’ll be long gone by the time they decide,” I said. “If there’s someone high up in the Cabal ranks coming here, we don’t want to stay and introduce ourselves.”

  “So let’s find Gloria and get the hell out of here,” Frasier said.

  We made our way back along the passage to the ruined gate. “Are you guys okay?” I asked. “Did they torture you too?”

  “No, they left us alone,” Jim said. “They were only interested in Gloria. I think they were just going to kill us eventually, probably serve us up as dinner for their esteemed guest.”

  We ascended the two sets of steps that took us to the kitchen. The house was still quiet. If someone important was coming here, it didn’t make sense that there was no activity, no sign of life.