Chronomancer (Time Mage Saga Book 1)

by Mackenzie Morris

  "Jack, what are you doing? Jack!"

  Jack watched the flames take hold, sending up smoke and tiny orange embers like an offering to the sea of stars above them. The windows filled with flames and the second story floor collapsed, burying the body of his father inside the clay grave. The walls crumbled and turned to dust as the blaze grew higher and hungrier on the desert breezes that blew into the village from the far-stretching sands across the glassy river. When he had seen enough, Jack scooped his sage up into arms. He turned his back to the makeshift funeral pyre and took off into the night with his sword on his hip and his Time Knight solemnly following in his footsteps towards an unknown future.

  Chapter 26

  Dean whistled Christmas songs as he stepped out of the elevator and into the hallway. He smiled at a lady in a fur coat who rolled a stroller past him, feeling slightly embarrassed by the paper bag that had obviously come from a liquor store. He blushed, but continued towards the hotel room where Leo, Shay, and Marjorie were waiting for him to return. The boys were asleep with Thyme in the bedroom, so the four of them decided to have an adult night filled with card games, drinking, and Leo's award-winning cheese dip.

  It was a nice change, to be able to look forward to relaxing for an evening instead of leaving bombs at a friend's house or being forced into shooting up a police station. There was too much evil going on in the world for him. Even with everything he had seen during his career in law enforcement, the old detective could only handle so much death or conflict. He had seen too much abuse and cried himself to sleep on too many lightless nights. It was no way to live.

  Dean stopped outside the hotel room and called to his new friends on the other side.

  "I hope you're ready to lose, Leo. I once won five grand in one night in my buddy's garage. Poker is one of my specialties."

  The smell of cheese dip greeted him from the other side of the door.

  Dean balanced the paper bag with a twelve pack of dark beer and a bottle of honey whiskey on his knee while he slid the keycard through the sensor for the hotel room door. He pushed the handle with his elbow then kicked it open. "I got your favorite booze, Marjorie. Hope this means you'll play with us. The more, the merrier."

  The ticking of the wall clock kept time with the pattering of rain against the windows. Silence met him with a deafening force as he walked into the suite. Only the white light from the city outside lit the room that should have been bright with the football game on the television and lights in the kitchen for Leo to cook by. Pieces of porcelain plates and broken glass crunched beneath the soles of his boots until he flipped the light on.

  The paper bag fell from Dean's arms and the beer bottles shattered on the tiles.

  Blood. Dark, nearly black lifeblood had sprayed up the walls, soaked into the carpet, and dyed the sofa. The cushions had been sliced open, the cabinets had been raided, and silverware had been dumped out of the ransacked drawers. Dean slid in the blood as he slowly tiptoed into the living area where the majority of the carnage was put out on gruesome display.

  Marjorie was face-down on the coffee table that had been smashed in half, her torso split open the entire length of her spine. Her rib cage had been cracked in half and pulled through her back, making it look like she was some sort of macabre angel. The blood covered any other injuries she may have suffered, and Dean was too far in shock to investigate.

  He glanced around for any sign of the others. Shay's white robe lay in a lump on the floor in front of the television, shredded with knife cuts. Leo's boots sat beside the table. When Dean spotted the bloody boot prints leading out from the closed bedroom door, he feared the worst. Had this attacker butchered Marjorie then gathered the rest of them in the bedroom with the boys and wiped them out? Would he find their bodies in a mangled mess on the bed? The image of an eight-year-old boy tortured to death in that manner made the seasoned detective grab onto the counter as he vomited violently.

  Dean closed his eyes, unable to view the execution scene in front of him any longer. It was a massacre. He had seen death before. Victims of homicides, serial killer dump sites, and his fellow officers slain in shootouts, but this was something on a different scale. Whoever did this gained joy in the suffering of the victims, not just joy, though. Ecstasy. An hourglass had been draw on the wall above the kitchen table with smeared blood. They made a mockery, a spectacle out of the killing.

  Without looking in the bedroom, Dean stumbled over the cluttered floor to the front door and shut it behind him. He made sure it locked so it would buy time before the police came to investigate. He hoped they wouldn't link it to him being there. He was a wanted man and they would use anything they could to bring him to justice, even if that justice was false. There had to be answers somewhere, but then was not the time. Dean ran down the hallway to the stairs and descended, tripping as he went. With his trenchcoat collar pulled up to hide his face, he raced out into the icy rain that pelted the city.

  Pink, yellow, and green neon blurred together in the wet reflections on passing vehicle windows. The faces of lonely citizens passed him, their eyes empty with their own personal struggles. A truck honked as it sped past, splashing the crowded sidewalk with a wave of rainwater. Dean turned down a side street to get away from the throngs of people who could have been witnesses to his supposed crime. More than that, any one of them could have been the murderer.

  Dean took out his phone and dialed Sasha's number. He walked into the darkness where a soaked cat was curled up below a fire escape. He heard a click on the other end of the call. "Sasha? Hello, Sasha? It's Dean."

  "Dean! Where the hell are you? Do you know what's going on here in Mana Glen? Memphis is a war zone. Soldiers patrol the streets. They've been shooting people, Dean. I've taken in some homeless families who were burned badly when the alley they were living in had been set on fire with napalm."

  How much overkill did someone need to take out a group of helpless homeless people? "Napalm? Dear God. Sasha, I need you to do something for me."

  "Are you crazy? Do you know what I'm juggling down here?"

  "I know you can do this. You're the only one I have left."

  Sasha groaned then huffed. "What do you need, sir?"

  "I need to know the fastest way to get out of Seattle and back home without having to go through any kind of security scans or checkpoints."

  "Seattle?" Sasha asked, the sound of typing accenting her question.

  "Yeah. And I have to get out ASAP."

  "What's going on? Did something happen?"

  "There's someone killing people. A murderer. And I think I'm on his list. I had a hotel room with six other people, including the Mana Glen boys and an eight-year-old child. I came back from shopping to find . . ."

  "Dean?"

  He rubbed his eyes. "They're dead."

  "All of them?"

  "Yes. I think so. One of them was tortured and killed in an awful way. There was so much blood, Sasha. If I had been there ten minutes earlier, he would have killed me, too. I can't think about what's in that hotel room. Right now, I have to focus on getting out of here."

  "I'll see what I can-"

  Dean held out his phone when the call turned to static. "Sasha? Can you hear me? Sasha!"

  No one answered.

  He shoved his phone back into his pocket just when the sound of scuffling footsteps approached from the end of the alley. Dean reached to his belt and discretely drew his pistol from its holster. When the footsteps drew closer, he turned and aimed at the darkness. There was nothing there, aside from the rain from a gutter pattering on an abandoned dumpster and a hazy streetlight. Even the poor cat was gone.

  His hairs stood on end as a chill tingled at his spine. He lowered his gun, but raised it almost instantly when a dark figure passed in front of the streetlight. In the blink of an eye, it was gone. "Who's there? I am a detective and I have a gun. I will shoot if you are deemed a threat. You don't want to die in this alley."

  An airy voice like the br
eeze filtered in, barely louder than the rain. It was so quiet and ephemeral that he couldn't be certain he actually heard it. "Neither do you."

  Dean kept his Glock in hand as he backed his way down the alley towards the main road. The rain continued to fall while the traffic began to die down in the entertainment district of the sleepless city. He took in every detail of his surroundings. The red sleeping bag that some poor soul called home, the discarded produce crates stacked against the brick wall of an apartment building, and the blinds that rapidly closed when he looked at the first floor window.

  Someone, something, was watching him. A low rumble of thunder echoed overhead and a page from a newspaper blew past on the dying storm winds. Out of the corner of his vision, he spotted a shadow pass across the metal door to a warehouse on the other side of the alley. He jumped and pointed the pistol at it, but the door remained shut. Was he seeing things that weren't there? Was the stress wearing on his mental state? Had he really seen what happened in the hotel suite?

  The shadow passed over the street light again, dimming the orange glow momentarily.

  Dean almost squeezed the trigger when his phone buzzed in his pocket. With a shaking hand, he fished it out and answered the call without checking the caller I.D.. "Hello?"

  "Detective Amethyst, you look cold out there in the rain."

  "Who is this?"

  The deep voice chuckled. "A friend. Why don't you put that weapon away and we can talk in person?"

  "Why the hell would I want to do that? Are you the one who killed my friends back there? Are you the one who murdered an eight-year-old boy who had never done a thing to harm anyone in his short life? Are you that monster?"

  "So, you did see it."

  Was this the murderer? "You're him."

  "No, but we now have a mutual enemy. Please, Detective, put your gun away and come inside where we can talk like gentlemen."

  He holstered his gun, despite his better judgment. "Inside?"

  The metal door to the warehouse next to him rattled open as it slid into the roof. The moment it was high enough for a person to walk inside, hands reached out and grabbed his arm. Dean yelped when he was pulled into the brightly lit open room with a second level of steel walkways lining the tall walls. Men in long white robes with red stoles embroidered with golden axes stood guard. They held assault rifles at the ready, glaring harshly down at him.

  Dean found himself standing in the middle of the warehouse with a spotlight shining on him. Two inquisitors stood at his sides as another closed the door behind him, trapping him with them.

  An elderly man in a crimson robe with a pointed gold crown on his wrinkled brow sat in a wooden throne. Sparse grey hairs were slicked to his vein-laced forehead with red and purple veins popping through the thin pale skin and like spiderwebs on his gaunt cheeks. The man tapped his bony fingers against the thick wooden arms of the throne, his golden rings thumping with each hit.

  Dean flinched when a soft towel was placed around his shoulders. He graciously began drying himself.

  The man's voice was surprisingly deep and full for his advanced age. "Welcome to the temporary field base of operations for the Inquisition of Purity. You must be Detective Amethyst."

  "And you are the Inquisition leader."

  "You may address me as Father. I brought you here for a reason. We need to put aside our differences in opinions. I won't mince words with you, Detective. We have a problem. It's a mutual problem that you are now invested in fixing. How many bodies did you find in that hotel room?"

  He shifted uncomfortably on his feet. "At least one. A Syndicate agent. There was blood everywhere. I didn't check the other rooms of the suite. I was too afraid. I've worked numerous crime scenes during my career, but I haven't seen anything like that. I don't know if they're all dead. Are they dead?"

  "So, you have seen the unfortunate aftermath. Marjorie Dunley is the only confirmed fatality. Leonardo Valentino and our own Shay Terringer are missing, possibly together. Due to the amount of blood, we believe one or both of them was injured during the attack."

  "And the boys?" Dean asked, hopeful that they knew something he didn't.

  "Their bodies were not found at the scene. They were either taken by the attacker or killed in the hostel suite and their bodies were dumped somewhere else. The sage boy might still be alive because of how valuable he is on the black market. Xander would have known that."

  "Xander? I've heard that name before, I believe."

  Father sighed. "Chronomancer Xander Sutcliff. Until recently, he was a high-ranking member of Sand. Half Kenyan, half pure Iskaydrian. He broke Jackson Carer out of Syndicate custody where he was being held in Base Mark 16, Venice, Italy."

  "Opal Arrington is his Time Knight."

  "She was his Time Knight. Opal is currently awaiting execution in D.C.."

  "When?" Dean asked.

  "Within the week. The government has turned ruthless and blood-thirsty since those bombs fell. They view their own citizens like enemy combatants, thinking each one of them could start an uprising at any moment. Anyone caught being involved in anything is given a mockery of a trial and thrown to the wolves."

  This was sounding more and more like some dystopian science fiction novel. "Immediate executions by a military state. Have we lost all semblance of our constitution?"

  "In one word, yes. We ran our background check on you, Mr. Amethyst. Wanted in Tennessee for sexual assault, sexual harassment, and escaping from custody. They've also pinned the murders of the officers at the Mana Glen Correctional Facility on you. If you're caught, you won't be going away for a long time. No, you'll find a noose around you neck or be blindfolded in front of a firing squad the next morning."

  "I did what I had to do to survive after I found out that Olivia Morningstar was a Syndicate agent. Shay Terringer is the one who took out the officers."

  "Of course." Father laced his fingers together on his lap. "My point in all this is to tell you that the world is in ruins. You'll end up like Marjorie if you go alone out there. We can help you get your answers. We can protect you from Xander and whatever he has planned. If you want to find those three boys who might still be alive, the Inquisition of Purity is your only chance at doing that."

  "And what do you want from me?" Dean asked.

  "You have proven yourself to be a promising initiate, Mr. Amethyst. We need your law enforcement expertise and your knowledge of the Mana Glen boys. We just want you to be a consultant, for now. You were also friendly with Marjorie Dunley before her death."

  But for what reason? "Why did he kill Marjorie? He seemed to take joy in butchering her."

  "According to our inquisitors in the field, Xander Sutcliff has joined forces with powerful members of the Zurvan Syndicate. They helped him get out of FBI custody."

  "I thought the Syndicate had agents in the FBI. Marjorie was one."

  Father smirked. "They did. Now they're dead. The Syndicate has suffered a fracture. It has split into two factions and one of them has been wiped out. The Syndicate that remains has sided with Xander, rallying behind him like he's some sort of deity to be followed. I don't know how much you've been told about Mr. Sutcliff. He is rumored to be immortal. He is one of the only Chronomancers to have traveled forward through time. He has been known to rip open tears without concern for the lives he ends by altering time in such an extreme way. It is Chronomancers, sorcerers like him, that the Inquisition of Purity has been fighting against since its foundation. The Syndicate is full of evil. We call them sinners. They're witches, wizards, apostates. They use their powers for evil. They use them like witchcraft or demonic possessions. They do evil with them."

  Dean popped his collar again and started towards the door. "I can't help you."

  Father called out to him. "They have Ellie."

  He stopped. Dean let out a sigh as he turned back around. "Tell me."

  "She was sold to Sand by the less threatening sect of the Syndicate that Ms. Dunley was a member of, but Xan
der took her back and helped to slaughter the remaining members of that sect. It was a coup. Director Elric Mason has gone missing. Xander has assumed the position of Director. We believe this was his goal all along."

  "And he's holding Ellie as a bargaining chip. For what, though?" Dean asked.

  "What's the one thing Xander keeps trying to do?"

  "Niki. He keeps trying to kill Niki. He wants to separate him from Jack."

  "So Jack will be vulnerable. He hasn't made a dedicated move against Jack because he knows how powerful Samuel Carter's blood is. If Jack's abilities fully awakened, he would be able to eliminate Xander one on one, no question."

  He growled in frustration. "Why? What does Xander hope to get out of this?"

  "Maybe this can help." Father snapped his fingers, sending one of the inquisitors forward with something flat on top of a silver tray. "Read it and tell me what your detective mind deduces from it."

  Dean took the ivory envelope with the embossed filigree on it and opened it. He slid out the heavy card stock that was adorned with shiny blue butterflies and curly cursive writing. Grinding his teeth together, he read over it, his heart sinking with each word.

  You are cordially invited to attend the holy marriage ceremony uniting Xander Sutcliff and Elizabeth Erin Dawson at the Royal Opera House in London, April 25, 1893 at 8 o'clock in the evening. Dress is formal in blues and silvers. Guests are asked to not bring gifts and to leave all weapons in the present. Anyone found carrying a weapon will be escorted from the premises and not allowed to reenter. We look forward to seeing all of our friends and family to help celebrate this union of the happy couple.

  Dean's stomach lurched into his throat at the thought of a forced child wedding. "A wedding invitation. He's forcing Ellie to marry him. Why?"