But it’s well-known the origin of the werewolves goes back to much darker times and darker struggles. Until then, I hadn’t realized just how dark. I guessed Anubis had something to do with it.
“Nothing seen or heard down on the street.” It was Joe. “What’s with the kid?” He’d appeared at the door again and was looking at Dan’s prone form stretched out on the bed. He had a slight swelling on his jaw.
“I punched him.”
“Lovers’ tiff?”
“Ha-not-very-ha,” I said. “He was freaking out, and I needed him out of it, that’s all.”
“Couldn’t you have, you know…?" He made a gesture with his hands, wiggling his fingers to suggest a magic trick.
“Expediency over style in this case,” I said. “Now listen. Grandma called. And, much as it bugs the hell out of me to admit it, I owe you an apology. It’s more than a bunch of kids taking a walk on the wild side. We’re dealing with an ancient demon cult. Moratu is probably behind it. The girls are possessed, and he’s going to turn them into werewolves tonight. He’s using them to invoke his beloved master of bloodthirsty human-hunting, Anubis.”
“The jackal-headed guy from the Egyptian tomb paintings?”
“Yes. But apparently, he’s more like a werewolf than a jackal. And he’s a powerful demon.”
“Okay, I now officially hand the case over to you,” Joe said, miming wiping sweat from his brow. I gave him a comradely punch in the arm, but there was no way I was letting him off the hook now.
“Listen, this is what you’ve got to do,” I said, holding his gaze. “Get Dan home. When he comes round, just make sure he stays home and doesn’t get into any more trouble. Tell him he’s on house arrest or under police protection or whatever you people do. He’ll believe you.”
“And you?”
“I’ll follow the pack.”
“The werewolves?”
“I don’t think they’re werewolves yet. At least they haven’t shifted. And with any luck I can stop that happening before this thing gets out of hand.”
“You mean it hasn’t already?”
But I was at the door. “Just be a good boy and look after Dan, will you?”
“Sure thing,” he said, going over to Dan and hitching him up over his shoulder. “I always wanted to be a nurse.” He smiled. Just as I was turning away he called me back. “Hey, Lia,” he said. “You might want this. A little something from my bag of tricks.”
He tossed a revolver across the room. I caught it. It was heavy and cold.
“Loaded with silver bullets,” he said. “Just in case.”
“I really shouldn’t kill my fellow students.” But I slipped the gun into my pocket anyway. “Call me when you’ve dealt with Dan.”
Then I turned away and out the building.
Okay Lia, time to hunt the hunters.
CHAPTER SIX
DOWN ON THE STREET I realized I’d have to trace them as fast as possible. I hope I can catch up with them before it’s too late. They’d had a good head start on me. Even if they’d gone on foot, they could have made it from the University to Highgate Cemetery within half an hour, running. My best bet would be a taxi.
I got lucky. A black cab swung round the corner only moments after I emerged onto the street. Once the old lady had gotten out, and the driver had unloaded her shopping, carrying it to the door of her block, I jogged over to him.
“Where d’you want to go, love?”
“Highgate Cemetery.”
“It’s locked up at 5 o’clock, you know.”
“Yeah, I know. I’m just meeting a friend at the west gates.”
“Hop in, then.”
I jumped into the back of the taxi and pulled out my ‘phone. I had no calls I wanted to make, and there was no message from Grandma, but I didn't feel like talking to the cabbie.
He picked up the hint, and after a few false starts at conversation, he switched on the radio. I kept a keen eye out the window as we wound through the London streets, heading pretty much straight north on the east side of Regent’s Park, passing near the zoo, and out toward Highgate.
The spire of St. Michael’s Church was illuminated at the top of the hill. Dark woodland sloped away beneath the old building.
I opened a search engine and tapped in Highgate Cemetery, scrolling through the page I’d found.
They’d built the cemetery in the 19th century to cope with the overflow of corpses in need of a decent burial, which the cramped quarters of the urban graveyards could no longer accommodate. It housed famous tombs, too - including those of Charles Dickens and Karl Marx. It was no longer used as a cemetery. Not that many people went up there. It was derelict now and the ornate, overgrown graves and mausoleums were enough to spook most people out - aside from its reputation as a haunt for drug addicts, petty criminals and ghosts.
“Here we go, love,” the cabbie said, flicking off the meter. I shoved a handful of bills in his direction. He’d pulled up right near the west gate.
“Keep the change,” I said, opening the door and stepping down into the lamplight.
“Take care now,” said the cabbie. “This is no place for a young lady alone after dark.”
“My friend will be along any minute,” I assured him. “And I have my ‘phone.”
He nodded, and pulled away, the taxi vanishing into the night.
What started out a crisp, starlit night had changed in the few hours since Joe and I had left Grandma’s, in the way only a London night can. A thick, fall mist swirled over the ground, surrounding me in ghostly shadows. The brutal, cast iron gates, were locked and chained; the fog behind painted a lurid yellow by the sickly light of flickering street lamps.
There was no-one around on a chilly fall evening. Above the fog, the shimmering disk of the full moon glimmered, making the marble of the few tombs visible from where I stood glow with an ethereal shimmer.
If you want spooky, I thought, this is as good as it gets.
I considered opening the lock with telekinesis, but that would use up precious minutes I didn’t have to spare.
Mustering my strength, I lowered into a crouch and then jumped, leaping up over the gates and taking the impact with bended knees, arms out to hold my balance, landed on the other side.
As soon as I’d crossed the boundary, my moon-crystal heated, the milky white glow shifting into red, like watered down blood. On the right track, then. I felt in my pocket for Joe’s gun. Now, which way?
While it was the first time I’d been in Highgate Cemetery, I remembered now that Grandma had mentioned it once before. She’d told me the mausoleums where the kings of the London vampire clans took their uneasy rest were here.
Vampire clans were rarely a problem. In the twenty-first century, the spiritual plight of the undead was well understood. New laws and district regulations worked to everyone’s benefit. The vampires got legal blood from donors, and the public could rest in their beds knowing that no black-caped Transylvanian Count would crop up at the window looking for a suck-fest.
Inside the cemetery the psychic energies were so ancient and complex it was hard to discern a direction to follow from the resonances my moon-crystal picked up. But I had a good hunch about where to look, based on what Grandma had said about the Egyptian cult, and something I’d found online in the cab.
At the heart of the cemetery was a place known as the Lebanon Circle. Built around an ancient tree, a cedar from Lebanon, it was haunted by the spirits of ancient eastern magi. You could get to it through an ornate portico built in the Egyptian style. Beyond it stretched a somber avenue of tombs and mausoleums.
If I wanted to invoke an ancient Egyptian demon in twenty-first century London that would be the place I’d choose. I mean, bad guys have a sense of the theatrical, you know? And if Grandma was right, I knew which bad guy we were dealing with. Judging by my last experience with him – he’d constructed an elaborate occult temple underneath a Victorian theater in Soho – Dr. Moratu, the Dragon-born magus
-gone-bad, was our man.
My instinct was to run, but I needed to compromise speed with caution. I jogged up the steep slopes of the overgrown avenues. Graves, tombs and shadowy, dark trees loomed and vanished through the swirling fog. Stone angels, with their noses missing or their wings snapped off, leaned out of the dark. The names of people long-forgotten carved on tombstones. A fox jumped out from a tangle of ivy, its eyes flashing green, its hackles raised. It vanished again into the dark.
At last the Egyptian portico materialized in the gloom. I jogged to a standstill, regaining my breath. My crystal was boiling, glowing deep vermillion like congealed blood.
My hunch had been right. Even with the psychic interference normal to any graveyard, the portico buzzed with disorientating evil.
Having a predictable enemy was no bad thing, but I knew better than to rest on my laurels. I didn’t know how powerful this demon Anubis would be. And I wasn’t armed for demon-slaying. Excalibur remained at home in its psychically sealed casket.
Why didn’t I trust Joe at the start? I could get in too deep here.
Sure, I had the handgun loaded with silver bullets that Joe had given me. But I’d never even held a handgun before, let alone fired one; and still less fired at a living target. I could only use it as a last resort. Even if they’d become renegade werewolves, I’d be shooting my classmates whichever way I looked at it. I couldn’t justify that to the law or to myself. My best bet, even with the urgency of the situation, was caution.
Firelight glimmered at the end of the avenue beyond the portico. Who the hell’s lighting fires back there?
Keeping deep in the shadows, I urged myself forward along the avenue of tombs, with their indecipherable plaques and ivy-grown, darkened entrances barred from the living by thick grilles of iron bars. At the end of the avenue, the Circle of Lebanon, fronted by smaller porticoes leading into Victorian mausoleums and family tombs, arced off to the left and right.
But I stopped short, heart pounding. The girls had already gathered.
They had gathered at the base of the huge, ancient tree, although they seemed little more than shadows beneath the low sweep of the vast, thick branches stretching above them.
I craned to get a better view. How had they gotten up there?
Straight ahead the rusted gate of a tomb stood ajar, pushed outward through the thicket of nettles grown up at its base.
A light flickered inside, and an acrid smoke mingled with the chilling fog. I scuttled across the avenue and peered around the corner of the mausoleum. Seeing and sensing no-one there, I crept inside the building.
Marble plaques lined the walls, marking the places where the coffins were interred. I frowned. Instead of names and dates they bore Egyptian hieroglyphs and arcane symbols.
A small ornamental altar of cracked marble stood at the end of the corridor of graves, suffocated by rank tendrils of creeping ivy. If I’d expected to see a crucifix or a statue of the Madonna on that altar, I’d have been wrong. A basalt statue, sleek and black, representing a human form with a dog-like head occupied altar: the figure of Anubis.
Icy fingers closed around my gut. I drew in a sharp breath. I guess up to that point I’d still harbored a secret hope that Grandma had been wrong. But now the evidence was piling up, and my moon-crystal burned with a dark red flame beneath its faceted surface.
Behind the altar, an opening in the floor revealed a flight of stone steps descending into the earth. More than anything, I wished I’d brought Excalibur with me.
I wondered how Joe was getting on. Right then I missed him. I wanted Joe by my side. Not that he’d be any defense against a demon, or a powerful Dragon-mage, but still…
I wondered what I was doing there alone, without my sword or any certainty about what would happen other than if I didn’t stop it things would be bad.
Do or die, Lia.
Either side of the statue of Anubis, six candles burned in brass holders. I snatched one and started down the stairs.
Weird shadows danced on the dank walls. The smell of burning wax mingled with wood smoke, incense, and fear.
At the foot of the stairwell, there was a tiny chamber which gave way to another stone staircase, but this time going up toward the Cedar of Lebanon. My palms were sticky with sweat. I didn’t know what I hoped to achieve, but I knew I had to see for myself what was going on up there. And, terrified as I still was, I had learned to overcome my fear and do stuff anyway.
My crystal was hot against my breast; its color now a red so deep it was almost black. The potent dissonance of demonic energy buzzed around me. I could hear rhythmic movement, a dull thudding on the ground above, the crackling of fire, and a low, steady hum. They’ve started the ritual, I thought.
I drew a deep breath, held up my small, flickering candle in one hand, the other closed around Joe’s pistol, and pushed on and up through the dark.
CHAPTER SEVEN
FIRES HAD BEEN LIT around the circle, casting the girls in a phantasmal glow between deep shadows. The scene reminded me of eighteenth century illustrations of witches from one of Grandma’s books of demonology. The girls’ bodies were weird, flickering shapes, part of this world and part of another.
They were singing. Okay, so maybe singing isn’t the right word. More like rhythmic, discordant chanting. I’d known a few witches back in New York and considered them harmless enough. And their songs were sweeter than what I was hearing now.
The chanting transformed into a shrill, crazy, ululating wail. If it hadn’t been for the dangerousness of the situation and the powerful psychic dissonance throbbing in my temples, I might have laughed.
I snuffed out the candle, and flexing my fingers around the pistol, I took another few steps. I pressed myself against the damp, narrow wall of molding, musty stone. It was hard to tell what was going on from the darkened stairwell. The firelight whipped the shadows into a demonic dance; the fog swirled, and the moonlight glimmered on the marble edging of the circle.
My heart pulsed, and the blood pumped in my neck. What the hell are you doing, Lia? I thought. So you’re here, but now what?
I edged just a little further. Beneath the ancient tree, a stone slab formed an altar. I let out a slow breath when I saw it didn’t have a sorry virgin stretched across it. The girls danced in a circle, pagan-style, their clothes discarded. From the shadows beneath the tree, behind the altar slab, and dressed in elaborate black robes, a dark figure watched the girls with glittering, lustful eyes. The fingers of his right hand flexed on the hilt of a talon-like sacrificial dagger. A film of sweat slicked his brow.
Moratu.
He circled the tree, his arms outstretched toward the full moon, silvered light glimmering through a gap in the fog, illuminating the magic circle with lurid, eerie light.
Top marks for showmanship, I thought.
The girls stopped dancing and stood in a circle, facing inward, although from where I crouched I couldn’t see all of them. Moratu stopped in front of the tree, opposite my hiding place. His face masked by darkness, he lowered his hands and intoned, in a deep, resonant voice, “Come, my daughters! Come, my little she-wolves! Come!”
My classmates, stripped naked, huddled around him like a pack of fawning puppies. They were on their knees, pawing at him with their hands, licking his robes with raw tongues. He chuckled.
The scene turned my stomach. It reminded me of a hypnotist show I’d seen back in New York. The guy had hypnotized a bunch of high school kids and gotten them to mime all kinds of lewd and unpleasant acts for the audience’s entertainment.
Moratu lowered his hands and patted the thirteen girls on their heads, stroking their hair as if they were his pets.
“Now, my puppies! Make obeisance to the great god, Anubis! Prostrate yourselves before his magnificence!”
They lay down, stretched out around him.
“Good girls!” he said. “But first, before the Master comes, we must groom you and prepare you, and give you a form more pleasing to hi
m. You have behaved well. Now you will receive your reward!”
The hood fell away from his face. He had the head of a jackal. My heart jumped and my breath caught in my throat. What the freak? But as he stepped out of the shadows, I realized he was wearing a ceremonial mask. He raised his hands and threw back his head.
“Behold! Oh Anubis! Behold the gifts thy servant has brought unto thee! Come, devour these souls! Feast on this nubile flesh and make it thine own!”
The tree burst into flame.
Moratu laughed. The girls writhed and twisted on the grass. The wounds on their thighs were raw and bloody, as if only just cut.
At first I thought it was part of their ritual dance; part of the ceremony of invocation. But they were in real pain. Choking and tears replaced the chanting. Then they screamed in agony; the agony of tortured flesh and twisted bone.
I could see three or four girls on the grass above me. They rolled over, back and forward, their muscles in spasm, engorged with blood, bulging. Their skin swelled and rippled, their limbs twisted. Coarse hair ripped through their skin, erupting from their flesh, leaving spots of blood where the overgrown follicles split the tender surface.
Beneath thickening skin, new muscle formed, slabs of sinew wrapping around broad and lengthened bone. Tails thrust from their lumbar regions. Their hands furred, claws breaking from the ends of their fingers. Skulls cracked as ears sprang from the tops of their heads and canine-looking jaws thrust forward from their destroyed faces. Their teeth became long, yellowed and sharp. Saliva dripped from their jowls.
Holy crap. They’re turning into freaking werewolves.
I’d experienced shifting once before, only from the inside, on the night of the Dragon Moon - my initiation. The experience had been blissful, joyous, exciting, an awesome liberation. I’d become my true self as my hidden Dragon genes expressed themselves in physical and spiritual life. But I am a Dragon. The challenge for me is to stay in human form.
These girls were all human pure-bloods. I’d never imagined the suffering and the pain they’d have to experience to undergo this transformation, to have it forced on them.
Wolf Moon: Lia Stone: Demon Hunter - Episode Two (Dragon-born Guardians Series Book 2) Page 4
