by Andy Hyland
“Bloody hell, Patrick, what do you think I’m going to do? Rush the place with a mob? Get real. I come alone, I face you, I confess and give myself up, and you can parade me around to your heart’s content.”
“I’m failing to see what you get out of this.”
“It’s simple. I want your word that you will give free passage for all my people to leave New York. You get the city, they get to go elsewhere and make new lives.”
“If they don’t go?”
“Then you’re free to act as you will. But you have to let me talk to them, give me a chance to persuade them.”
“In person? Not likely.”
“No, of course not. I’ll make it part of my confession. Just see the word gets out. I’m sure you can manage that.”
He thought about it for a few seconds. No reason it should take longer than that - I was handing him everything he wanted on a plate. It might as well have been his birthday.
“Very well. I accept your terms. When?”
“I’ll be walking into the Clover at dawn. Make sure you’re ready for me. I don’t want to drag this out.”
“Oh I promise you, Malachi, we will be ready. See you soon.”
He hung up. I let my phone slide to the ground and leaned back, looking up at the dark sky and wondering just how soon the gray threads of dawn would come creeping.
Manhattan starts buzzing early, if indeed it ever stops. I nodded to some familiar street cleaners and coffee cart vendors as I made the walk to the Upper East Side and my eventual destination, the Clover. The Silvian knots were shielding me against magical detection, I kept my collar turned up and an eye out for any cops, and for the first time for a while I didn’t have to worry about the Mage-born catching sight of me.
By the time I was within two blocks of the Clover I’d spotted fifteen of the suits. Three were tailing me at a discreet distance, obviously aware that I’d seen them, and not at all bothered. Then there were the static viewers posted on corners and first floor windows, letting their gaze follow me as I passed, speaking into microphones and calling in my position. As yet none of them had tried to make a move on me. Wise on their part, and it showed good faith on the part of Patrick. So far, at least.
One final suit was standing at the front entrance to the clover, holding the door open for me. Nice touch. He glared at me as I moved inside, which made me wonder if he was one of the ones I’d somehow damaged on my last visit. No way to tell. They all look the same to me. The receptionist was the only staff member around that I could see, and she pointed over to the right. “Mister English. Just down that corridor, last door on the right. Mister Everheart and the others are expecting you.”
“Thank you,” I said, nodding to her and smiling. Good manners should always be returned in kind, even in the direst of situations. They cost nothing and make the world a better place.
Half way down the lushly carpeted corridor, my stomach started twisting itself into knots, and my legs began to ask serious questions about whether they wanted to continue to be involved in my little enterprise. Not having any of it, I told the various parts of my body to get their shit together and do what was asked of them. Reluctantly they agreed.
Hand on the doorknob time. Damned if I was going to knock before going in. This was my show. I took a breath, steadied my nerves. Thought about offering up a quick prayer, but on balance it would be a shameless piece of desperation, and I had no doubt that whoever might be listening would see straight through it. Onwards, then.
“Malachi, good to see you. Some of my colleagues thought you might not show, but I had every confidence in you. They haven’t seen you at close quarters. Haven’t had a chance to see the twisted little noble streak that runs through you.”
Patrick was leaning back in his chair, trying in vain to stop a wide grin breaking out all across his face. I’m sure he would have preferred to exude a reserved and cool confidence, but bless him, he was loving this. We weren’t in the same grand room as last time. This was smaller, more intimate, but no less luxurious, with oak panelling and vintage wallpaper vying for attention. No chair for me - I got to stand, apparently.
A single oval table stood in the center. Patrick’s chair was in the middle, the perfect position for this morning’s master of ceremonies. To his right were Elissa Mayhare, with her pinched face locked into a waspish leer of pleasure, and another elderly woman who I couldn’t name. She was in Julie’s playbook of photos that I was meant to have memorized, though, so she was definitely a key player. Three men were to Patrick’s left. Caesar Lamarchand, bearing none of the grace or good humor of Max. Then someone I couldn’t place - possibly a newly ascended family member owing to casualties of war. Finally, on the end, without a chair and simply perching on the table itself, was Edmund O’Neill, maintaining a stiff, condescending frown.
The five seated members all had half-drunk cups of coffee in front of them. Perfectly understandable and expected, given the ungodly hour they’d been woken and called together. It doesn’t matter how magical, trained or disciplined you are - there’s nothing like a good shot of caffeine to get you set up for a hard day’s work. Only Edmund, perched as he was, lacked refreshment.
“We should kill him now,” said Edmund. “Without ceremony. And display his body somewhere prominent.”
Patrick sighed, but tried to keep his tone respectful as he answered. “But, as we’ve discussed, that would complicate matters unduly. We would make him into a martyr. Instead of ending the conflict, it would intensify and escalate. We’re also dangerously close to having an unacceptable police interest in our activities. Only our long-cultivated sponsorship of certain individuals has kept them from our door for this long. If Mister English confesses and hands himself over freely, as he is currently actually doing, then we avoid all this. We use him as we need to, and then hand him over to the police in a suitably altered state, and they can take it the rest of the way.”
Edmund clearly wasn’t happy, but faced with impeccable logic and clearly outvoted on the matter, he wasn’t going to push things any further. Instead he grunted and nodded. “And then…?”
“And then we can obviously deal with the other matters that face our little community.”
Elissa Mayhare flicked her gaze over towards Patrick at this point. “I thought that had been…settled.”
“You thought wrong, my dear,” Edmund said, with the thinnest of smiles.
“Succession and leadership can be dealt with at another time,” said Patrick, looking slightly flustered for the first time since I’d entered the room. “For now, let’s stick with the matter at hand, if you please.”
“So, to make sure we’re clear on terms,” I said, “I give you the confession you need, you stop the war, let my people go, and I go quietly to whatever unpleasant fate you’ve got picked out. Correct?”
“Don’t presume to lay down terms,” Edmund spat. “You’re ours now. We’ll do as we wish.” His fingers started flexing.
“That is what we agreed,” said Patrick, his eyes boring into Edmund. “And that is what will happen. It suits all parties.”
“Well, not me,” I pointed out. “I’d rather be somewhere else, quite frankly. Still, since we’re here, and because I need to know if today is the day I finally go down, could you all please stand up. Come on, on your feet.”
Brows furrowed and glances were exchanged as five of them struggled to their feet. Edmund looked round at them. “What the…?”
I felt the tension drain out of me. “And now, your names please. Roll call, left to right, starting with you, Elissa.” And one by one, through gritted teeth, they complied.
“What have you done?” asked Patrick.
“You know exactly what I’ve done. Right?”
He nodded, and looking in his eyes I saw the fear welling up.
“Explain, now,” roared Edmund, jumping to his feet. He would have gone for me, right there and then, if a waiter, who’d entered the room, hadn’t grabbed him in a tight headlock.
> “Patrick, why don’t you explain,” I suggested, starting to genuinely enjoy myself for the first time in ages.
“You used the eggs,” he spluttered, still fighting hard. “But there was only ever one.”
“Or so you’d been told,” said the waiter, clamping down on Edmund’s throat now. “That kind of talk drives the price up. I’ve done it myself a few times. Well, more than a few.”
“Easy Zack, you’ll break him,” said a waitress, entering the room with a coffee jug. “Top-up, anyone?”
“I don’t think any of you have met my family,” I said. “There’s Zack here, Arabella who served you that delicious coffee when you arrived. Can you guess what was in it? And - here she is - your other waitress this morning, the lovely Julie Fairchild. That’s your big weakness, for what it’s worth. You never really look at the little people. It’s not something that you’ll ever get the chance to correct.”
“Let me tell you -” gasped Edmund, before Zack ramped up the pressure on his neck.
“No, I’ll do the telling,” I said, staring at each of the Mage-born council members in turn. “The four of you, everyone bar Patrick - you’re going to go back to your families and tell them how he set you up. How he played you against each other and caused all their problems. Then you’re going to find the most sensible mage you know of in your families - someone who loves calm and peace, someone of good character - and you’ll wreck their lives by putting them in control of your entire, twisted community. As for us being here, this entire meeting - it never took place. Just another one of Patrick’s ruses, except this time he was aiming to take you all out. Oh, and mention that Patrick also killed Max. I think that ties up everything nicely. Does everyone understand?”
They gazed at me with glassy eyes. I thought about the creatures even now writhing and crawling about beneath their skulls, and shuddered. But only a little, because the bastards had it coming. “Be your absolute best,” I told them. “Put on a show. Because if the Mage-born take one more step against the Aware, I will personally come for your families.” One by one, they turned and left, in a strange, stumbling gait. “Act normally,” I shouted after them. “Don’t stumble about like zombies. Head up, shoulders back.”
“I did not kill Max,” Patrick spluttered, fighting to get the words out.
I shrugged as I turned to him. “Julie also thinks you didn’t. And on the whole I trust her judgement. At this point, to be brutally honest, it doesn’t matter much who did kill him. Someone on your side did, I reckon, and you may as well take the fall for it, because you’re taking the fall for everything else.” I walked closer to him, so that we stood only inches away from each other. “I need something else from you. And I’m going to enjoy it. Because you are stone-cold. I kill because it’s necessary. You kill because you can. And I bet that the little cease-fire we’ve got going on was only ever going to last until you had me at your mercy. Letting the Aware leave freely was never going to happen was it?” To his credit he managed to summon the strength not to speak, but he couldn’t keep the truth out of his eyes. “Okay, Patrick, here’s how it’s going to go. You are also going to forget about this meeting. And you will forget any knowledge of magic you ever had. You will be just a man. Though I doubt you can raise yourself quite that far. And you will go to the nearest precinct, turn yourself in, and confess to the murders of the two cops at the hospital, and to Edmund O’Neill in the Clover hotel.”
“Malachi, no,” said Julie, but I ignored her, turning to Edmund.
“If it’s of any comfort,” I told him as he writhed and struggled against Zack’s grip, “this wasn’t in the plan. I asked Patrick to bring four council members with him. We only had five eggs left, you see. And it looks like you got the uncontaminated coffee – if you drank any at all. So now this becomes inevitable.”
“You don’t have to do this. We don’t,” Julie insisted.
She tried to walk over to me, but Arabella took her arm. “Has to be done, Jules. Really. That’s what inevitable means, you know.”
I took Edmund’s cane from where it rested against the table, unsheathed the spike, and without ceremony or warning drove it up under his ribs into his heart. Then I looked into his eyes as the light faded. Once it was over, Zack let him drop. I turned to Patrick. “You understand your role?” He nodded. “We’ll never meet again, Patrick. I’d like to say it’s been a pleasure, but we know it hasn’t. Enjoy what time you’ve got left. It’ll only get worse from here on in.”
He too stumbled out, and I closed the door behind him. Zack and Arabella were subdued but calm. Julie wasn’t in a good way, though. Kept staring down at Edmund’s body, and wouldn’t meet my eyes. At the end of the day I wasn’t a champion or a hero. I was just a killer, no matter how good the reasons were. Nothing I could do about that. Not now.
“Shit, man, I can’t believe that worked,” said Zack, walking up and pulling me into a hug.
“Nor can I,” said Cadence stepping through the rear door. “I was making a mental list of everything that could have gone wrong. I was up to forty-two by the time you finished. And it’s not over yet. We’ve still got to see whether -”
“Yeah, I get it,” I told her. “But we’ve done all we could. Even if it doesn’t roll out exactly as we’d like, at least we’ve changed the game. Nothing to do now but wait. I don’t know about you guys, but I need a drink.”
Zack and Arabella’s faces lit up. Even Cadence managed a wry smile. But Julie, she was already walking out the door.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“And the effect of caffeine on the creatures,” Cadence continued, as we turned the corner in Harlem. “We’ve only ever transmitted them in water to the host before. Cold water at that.”
“I get it,” I said for the fifteenth time. “But it worked.”
“We don’t know that,” she insisted, but I was wearing her down. She’d give up arguing soon. Cadence was dedicated to the scientific method and concepts like evidence and proof. I was dedicated to luck, and relentlessly hoping for the best. She didn’t stand a chance.
“What’s going on?” said Arabella suddenly. I followed her eyes. Liberty and Eric were outside the Mal-cave. Liberty was bent over, hands on his knees, sending whatever he’d had for lunch spewing out onto the sidewalk. Eric was still upright, but even he looked flustered and unnerved. We broke into a run.
“What’s up?” I demanded as we reached them. A few people were around now, heading off to work. They gave us a wide berth but we were attracting attention that we didn’t need.
“Nothing to see here,” Zack called out to a few spectators. “Come on, move along. Give the guy some room.”
Liberty stared up at me. The guy looked lost. Utterly, hopelessly lost. His eyes flicked back towards the door. “Stay here,” I told him. “Julie, Arabella, talk to him and Eric. Zack, you’re with me.”
Either Liberty or Eric had locked the door when they’d left. I palmed the rune, and heard a series of clicks as the security systems gave way. “This isn’t going to be good, is it?” said Zack. I didn’t even bother answering.
The lights were out, and I fumbled for the switch, eventually finding it and flicking it on. One by one the strip lights lit up the room. We were standing in the curtained-off area. Everything was completely silent, which wasn’t normal these days. At any given time, someone was in enough pain to cry out, or troubled enough in their sleep to mumble warnings and threats. But now - quiet. And not the good kind.
I pulled the curtain aside and stepped through into what was the hospital and recovery area. “No,” I said softly as I walked forward in a daze. “Oh please, no.”
“What is it? What?” Zack demanded, pushing past me. “Oh shit. Oh shit.”
Thirty two of them. I counted, silently walking past each one. Laid out in their cots. Bodies empty of their former occupants. Some still bore the scars and marks of the war - burns and lacerations. But that wasn’t what had taken them in the end. A knife was buried in each
chest, right up to the hilt. Thirty two knives in thirty two bodies. Whoever did this had systematically and carefully murdered each of them in turn.
“Malachi, over here,” said Zack. I turned towards him. I’d been so fixated on the bodies in the cots that I hadn’t looked up at the tables. Josephine, arms and legs spread, looking like she’d been thrown across the boxes and tools. Eyes wide in terror, words on her lips that would never be spoken. And a knife sticking out of her chest.
“Check downstairs,” I told him. He jogged off and I just stood there staring at Josephine, wondering how many live she’d saved over the years and how many people would die in the future because she wouldn’t be there.
“Empty,” said Zack, running back up. He looked around. “What do we do now?”
I grabbed a blanket from one of the cots and lay it gently over Josephine’s corpse. It wasn’t ideal, but it would have to do for now. Then I turned to the nearest body on a cot and pulled the knife out, inspecting it closely. “Nothing special,” I concluded. “No runes, no markings. Chipped and well-used.”
“They’re all different,” said Zack, moving along the row and pulling out knives one by one. “If I had to guess, I’d say these guys had their own knives used against them. Hang on – son of a - this one’s a kitchen knife.”
“So the killer wasn’t bothered about the knives themselves. Just making a point.” We looked at each other, the same thing going through our minds.
“So?” said Zack eventually.
“Let’s get out of here.” He started looking at the shelves and boxes, but I shook my head. “No. We leave, immediately. I doubt there’s anything here that could help us now anyway.”
Outside, I approached the others while Zack sealed the door. Liberty had got his stomach under control, and now Eric looked the worse of the two. He was fidgeting, and talking to himself under his breath in a constant stream of words that nobody could make out.
“You were here?” I asked.
Liberty shook his head. “No. Went out to grab some food. Getting pizza delivered didn’t seem like a good option. Then we got back and - well, you saw it yourself.”
