by Alan Baxter
Six men and two women sat around an oval mahogany board table. The harried man just made it into his seat as Darvill planted his hands on the table. ‘So who’s going to tell me what the fuck is going on?’
The group looked to one another, all too nervous to speak.
‘You’ve explored the Lazarus Protocol?’ Darvill asked. When no one spoke he pointed to the man who had arrived late. ‘You. Have you?’
‘Y-yes. Yes, we have.’
‘Well?’
The man shuffled his papers, pulled out a printed sheet. ‘In the event of my death or disappearance,’ he read in a shaking voice, ‘full control of Black Diamond Incorporated passes to my son, Claude Darvill. Should Claude Darvill approach the company in my absence and invoke this Protocol, the entire company will treat him as they would treat me, until I return.’
Darvill nodded, pulled out a chair to sit. ‘Right. So we’re all clear on that.’
‘Well, there is something else …’
‘What’s your name?’
‘John Turner.’
Claude poured himself a glass of water from a pitcher in the centre of the table. ‘Right, Turner. What else?’
‘Well, the Protocol does have a threefold method of identifying you.’
Darvill scowled.
‘We didn’t even know you existed,’ one of the women said. ‘This is all a big surprise for us.’
‘Name?’
‘Jean Chang.’
‘Well, Chang, do you know what the three methods of identification are?’
‘You should have a company laminate, with your picture and an encoded chip.’
Claude flipped the laminate he had shown the security guard onto the table. ‘Pass it around. Number two?’
Chang looked briefly at the laminate and passed it on. ‘You have a tattoo on your chest of a dragon.’
Darvill pulled his shirt up to show the Chinese emperor dragon, twisting between clouds and waves, which covered his body from navel to collarbone. Once everyone had had a good look he dropped his shirt back down. ‘And number three?’
Chang looked to her colleagues, ran slim fingers nervously through her jet-black hair.
‘Don’t be a fool, woman, are you a Black Diamond board member or a bloody schoolgirl?’
Chang pulled herself up, her face hardening. ‘Number three. You will perform an act of magic.’
Darvill smiled at her. ‘You know the nature of our business. We deal in mystical treasures. My father made his considerable fortune trading those tools. He didn’t much care for the arcane himself; he was more drawn to the wealth. But me? I’ve always pursued the esoteric skills. You people haven’t heard of me for a reason. I’m an insurance policy. My father’s business would always expose him to considerable danger, so he kept his most valuable asset, his son, secret from everyone. Even Sparks knew nothing of me. I’ve worked outside of this business for years, collaborating with my father on … acquisitions. And that’s how I like it. I don’t want this company. I want to stay out there. I want to further my own studies. I want my father back where he should be, sitting here, talking to you lot. So let’s make that happen.’
He stared at Chang, pinning her back in her seat with the force of his gaze.
‘The … the act … of magic?’ she ventured.
‘Good girl. This company needs strength at the helm.’
He stood and pulled a handful of desert sand from his pocket. He let it trickle into a pyramid on the dark tabletop. Muttering under his breath, he moved his hand in a small circle. The pile of sand reduced, the grains disappearing from view. Everyone around the table leaned forward, sharp intakes of breath and murmurs. John Turner began to cough.
Darvill continued, channelling the slippery magic of translocation, until all the sand had gone. John Turner gasped and spluttered, clutched at his throat. Other board members jumped up to help, asked worried questions. Turner hacked again and gagged. He stood, red-faced and wheezing. He fell forward, put his hands on the table to catch himself, and retched. A splat of wet sand hit the dark wood. He coughed and gagged again, more wet sand spattered out. He gasped, retched and spat, until finally he could breathe again, the table before him a mess of sand, spittle and traces of blood.
Darvill sat down, leaned back in his chair. ‘Don’t ever be late to a meeting with me again, Turner. Is that understood?’
Turner slumped into his chair as the other board members returned to theirs. He nodded dumbly, out of breath, hatred plain on his face.
‘Now then,’ Claude went on. ‘Where the fuck is my father?’
One of the other men cleared his throat while people either side of Turner helped the man wipe the table before him and gave him a glass of water. ‘My name’s Clarke,’ the man said. ‘International liaison.’
‘Go on.’
‘Well, there’s really not much to tell. We’ve been trying to track Mr Hood for some weeks. It’s not unusual for him to disappear for extended periods, but there’s usually some contact. He’d been rather obsessed with one particular issue right before he vanished and we can only assume that’s the issue still at hand.’
‘Explain it to me.’
‘Well, it seems Mr Hood learned of a man who had a couple of very powerful items, and decided he wanted them. It took some work, by all accounts, but he ended up finding the man. He flew out with Ms Sparks, then nothing.
‘We tracked the plane and the pilot said Mr Hood hadn’t made any contact since landing. We sent reps out there and found absolutely nothing. The hostess on that flight did a runner, but it turns out your father … er … well, he asked things of her during the flight out there that she … er …’
Darvill waved a hand. ‘I know all about my father’s deviant sexual proclivities, Clarke. So this hostess walked?’
‘Yes, sir. And that’s about it. The trail is dead. Both Mr Hood and Ms Sparks have vanished into thin air.’
Darvill nodded, rested his chin on interlocked hands. ‘Well, it seems to me that whoever my father was tracking rather got the better of him in one way or another.’
‘That’s our fear, yes.’
‘So the obvious path is to track down whoever my father was after.’
‘Yes, sir, exactly what we’ve been trying to do.’
‘And?’
‘Your father keeps a lot of secrets, so no one really knew who he was chasing. We know he employed the Subcontractor, but he’s gone. Jackson is also gone. It seems anyone close to your father has fallen victim to this situation. But our IT folk managed to crack the encryption on Ms Sparks’s laptop and have finally found some relevant notes. It seems your father had been after an Australian fellow, name of Alex Caine.’
Darvill stood. ‘Right then. Get me everything you can on this Caine. Do we know where in Australia?’
‘As far as we can tell, he lives not far from Sydney.’
‘Then I’ll contact you again when I get to Sydney. By then I want to know everything there is to know about Alex Caine.’
3
Nicholas Haydon, Darius Grabowski and Salay Armand sat in soft moonlight among the almost perfect circle of the stones of Sunkenkirk. They shivered in the winter cold, breath steaming, mist drifting around the grass in questing tendrils. Facing each other, hands linked, they began to chant, at first low and sonorous, and their magic swelled. Combining their power, the tone of their mantra rose, the pitch and intensity increased. The magic rose with it. Their eyes flickered open, jet black and glassy, stared at nothing in the night.
Nicholas spoke, his voice not his own. ‘Found some more power, and with it direction.’
‘The light leads the lines leads the mages three,’ Darius continued in the same voice.
Salay opened his mouth, the strange voice taking its turn with him. ‘Follow the light and the line all the way, to the nexus, the power, the danger and revelation.’
The men’s heads dropped and they gasped, eyes returning to normal. ‘What did that mean?’ Sa
lay asked.
Darius opened his mouth to speak but Nicholas silenced him with a raised hand. His finger trembled, pointing behind the other two men. His heart hammered as he enjoyed being right. They turned to see a ghostly line of light, undulating like a dragon breathing softly in its sleep. It disappeared directly away from them, unbroken, arrow straight. ‘I think that’s what it meant.’
Haydon was no fool. He knew something new empowered their practice, something not entirely friendly. Occult studies, summonings and entreaties had yielded barely verifiable results in the past. Now he felt a fresh and intoxicating energy coursing through him. They had conjured physical manifestations of their will. Or the will of whatever they had uncovered. It excited and scared him.
‘We follow it?’ Darius asked.
‘Yes, but not literally perhaps.’ Nicholas dug around in a backpack, pulled out a map. He unfolded it, laid it out on the damp grass, turned it. ‘I feel it’s more of an indication, a direction, don’t you?’ He had noticed his friends’ rather literal interpretations of this magic from the outset and wondered if it would be a problem. But finding compatriots in this game was not easy. ‘Here. It seems to match this one.’
The map showed a network of ley lines. Haydon’s finger indicated one. He traced the map, just east of north, following the line until his fingertip stopped at Keswick. He looked up, one eyebrow raised.
‘What?’ Darius asked.
‘You know the stones and lines,’ Salay said, annoyed. ‘Don’t expect us to understand.’
Nicholas shook his head, amused at their consternation. ‘Just outside Keswick is Castlerigg, and there lies another very powerful stone circle.’
‘So we go there and do the ritual again?’ Salay ran his long fingers through his beard. Nicholas noticed that habit more often lately and had begun to associate it with the Hungarian’s nerves.
‘I think so, yes. It seems this entity is guiding us somewhere, using stone circles and ley lines.’
‘Why doesn’t it just tell us?’ Darius was frowning, another habit Nicholas had logged. This one manifested when the Polish mage worried he was being played. It had taken Nicholas some effort to convince him of the ritual in the first place and that frown had featured regularly.
Nicholas shrugged. ‘Perhaps it’s playing with us. But think about what got us here. Those archaeology students thought they’d uncovered an ancient carved manuscript, preserved in the peat beneath the Avebury stones. I managed to convince them it was just a modern hoax when they brought it to me. A clever hoax, but nothing of any value. I took that risk because I saw the real value of it. My professorship, all my studies, all my life, has been leading to a moment like this. We have something amazing, my friends, we know that. Even if it is gaming with us, don’t you want to know why?’
Darius’s frown stayed put, but his eyes softened. ‘It could be dangerous.’
Salay shrugged, standing suddenly. ‘Of course it is. It told us so itself. So what? We can assess the danger as we go along and stop if we decide it’s too much. For now, let’s see where it leads.’
Nicholas smiled, turned his attention to Darius. He could always rely on Salay’s fire and enthusiasm, even if he was a worrier. ‘Are we in accord? It takes the power of three, we know that.’ He stood, reached down to help Darius up.
Darius took the offered hand. ‘Yes, we are in accord.’
Nicholas kept hold of Darius’s hand, taking Salay’s in the other. ‘Mages in accord, uncovering ancient mysteries. We need a name. The Accord. Yes?’ He ignored the niggling voice at the back of his mind, the cajoling that made his stomach squirm in fear.
Salay laughed. ‘We tread carefully, but we see this through together.’
Darius let his frown melt slowly. ‘The Accord. Very well.’
Nicholas laughed, slapped his friends on their shoulders. ‘Good! Let’s get to Castlerigg and try again. As I understand it, we can only operate this ritual between midnight and three. Wherever we’re directed from Castlerigg we can follow up tomorrow.’
He turned his friends and they trudged across the cold, damp grass back towards the road and Nicholas’s Toyota. Occultist, they had called him. Dabbler, madman, weirdo. He knew the other academic staff at the university laughed at him and his hobbies, unbecoming for a professor of anthropology. But he would have the last laugh. Those students at Avebury had found far more than they had realised, and their disappointment was palpable when he told them it was worthless. He rubbed his hands together, as much from excitement as to combat the biting cold.
As they passed from the circle, heading back across the fields to the car, something dark slipped around the stones like a shadow, laughing softly as it watched them leave.
Alex and Silhouette lounged on the veranda, soaking up bright summer sunshine, coffee mugs and toast crumbs scattered across the table.
‘This is what you get when it’s winter in London?’ Silhouette said. ‘I could get used to it.’
Alex laughed, slumping deeper in his chair. ‘We get winter too. July and August are pretty cold.’
‘How cold?’
‘Well, cold by Aussie standards.’
‘Snow? Ice?’
Alex laughed. ‘No. Very occasionally we get a frost.’
‘Fuck you. I’m never going back to London.’
‘Famous last words. You never …’ Alex stopped speaking, eyes narrowed.
‘I feel him too,’ Silhouette said, scanning the gardens of Alex’s acre in the country.
Alex stood, headed into the house. ‘He’s at the front.’
Moments later he returned with John Doe.
‘Morning,’ Doe said, with a slight bow.
Silhouette nodded, said nothing. Alex watched her expression. She clearly didn’t trust this guy and he didn’t either, but there had been nothing but honesty thus far. At least, that was the way it seemed. He would be wary but open and see what happened. With the power of the Darak a part of him, his knowledge and experience so much more than he had ever imagined, and his growing mastery of elemental magic, he could hardly get a job in any normal field and feel even slightly fulfilled. But he needed to make a living and Silhouette’s Catwoman lifestyle of stealing and coercion didn’t appeal to him. He needed to provide for himself, and perhaps Silhouette too. Maybe occasional pay cheques from this Armour group was the way to do it. If that pay was enough.
‘Considered my offer?’ John Doe asked.
‘How much will it pay?’
‘Depends on the job.’
‘I made a very good living cage fighting. I need to make a living again.’
John Doe smiled, sat opposite them. ‘Trust me, the money you made fighting is chump change compared to what you’d make working for us. You’d be on expenses, so you’d incur no costs. We’d pay you lump sums for subcontracted jobs that’d pay off this house in a flash.’
‘This house is paid for already.’
Doe lifted his palms. ‘Then you’re laughing. Any time you go on any job for us you automatically score a base payment of twenty-five thousand pounds. And that’s just the beginning. We are a wealthy organisation.’
Alex and Silhouette exchanged a glance. Her eyebrows and smile confirmed his own thoughts. They could survive easily on one or two jobs a year and maintain a comfortable lifestyle. ‘I’ll listen to your proposal about this first job then, and see how I feel from there.’
Doe nodded once, stood. ‘Good. That’s all I ask for now. Let’s go.’ He pulled a phone from his pocket.
‘Go where?’ Alex asked.
‘Armour Regional HQ in Sydney. I’m just a runner on this one. We can only brief you at base.’ He dialled a number, paused, then said, ‘This is three ninety one. Let’s go.’ He looked down at Alex. ‘Won’t be a moment. Shall we?’ He gestured to the back lawn.
Alex and Sil exchanged another grin and shrug and followed him out onto the grass. After a moment a deep thrum disturbed the summer peace and resolved into rhythmic rotors. A h
elicopter swung in over the house and settled a short distance away. John Doe ducked and headed over, shouted back over his shoulder. ‘Here we go then.’
‘I’d better lock up,’ Alex said and ran to the house. Silhouette followed and they gathered phones and wallets, checked the locks and headed to the garden.
Silhouette put a hand on Alex’s shoulder. ‘Got everything you need? We might not be back for a while.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Just a hunch.’
Alex pursed his lips. ‘If I learned anything with you recently, it’s that I really don’t need much. Even passports and stuff are pretty irrelevant now.’
Silhouette smiled, kissed his cheek. ‘Attaboy, Iron Balls. You’re getting it.’
Alex smiled, though a part of him lamented his lost life. His human existence. Everything he had ever worked towards seemed suddenly pointless, the rug pulled out from under him. It was liberating too, exciting in its own way. He had little choice but to run with it. ‘You got your healing powder?’
Silhouette patted the pocket of her short leather jacket. ‘Right here.’
They ducked under the barrage of downdraught from the rotors and joined Doe on board. The chopper powered up and away, over Alex’s house, and headed north. The pastoral land undulated beneath them, the Pacific Ocean glittered to their right. Not bothering to talk over the engine noise, Alex took Silhouette’s hand and they watched the country slide by. Rolling hills became scattered towns and suburbs and before long they were scudding over the densely populated southern Sydney urban sprawl. The chopper swept over the central business district and headed towards the harbour. They were treated to a beautiful summer view of the Harbour Bridge and Opera House before they dropped down among trees and landed in the Botanic Gardens.
John Doe hopped out and they followed. He waved to the pilot who took off again without a word. Crowds of Sydney-siders and summer tourists watched in surprise.
‘This can’t be a legal place to put down,’ Alex said.
‘We have some privileges,’ Doe explained. ‘We’d get in trouble if we pushed too much, but we have a kind of diplomatic immunity thing happening to help us get around. Bit of a walk now, I’m afraid. This way.’
