He shrugged. "That explains the consortium. It doesn't explain Asher."
"Unless, he's linked with them somehow. Maybe he benefits from putting you guys out of business?"
"Your guess is as good as mine. Both made it clear they want nothing to do with us. The last time I visited Asher to try and negotiate peace, he arrested me. Locked me in a metal cell. I felt many pairs of eyes watching me. They made it hot, then cold. Dark, then lit with so many different colors I lost count. I'm not sure what he expected." Owen rolled up his sleeve. An ugly burn scar circled his arm from his wrist to his elbow. "Apparently, they wanted to see how well my skin healed after burning."
I pulled his arm closer to me. I winced. Thick scarring showed where multiple burns had seared through his skin. Nothing justified such cruelty. "You're here. So, he let you go?"
Owen laughed again. "No. A soldier, a cousin of mine, found out they planned to burn me alive. He found the key and released me."
His voice held no bitterness. No anger. But resentment swirled in my gut. I sensed no evil in this man, no hidden agendas, nor any egotistical urges. "Is that all you're doing here? Working on the train?"
He cast a steady gaze over my face. "You're dying to ask I know."
I jumped to my feet. Strode across the room with my hands gesticulating. "How are you doing it? I see spirits stronger than any that I've met. I see corpses as fresh as if they just died, and fuller of humanity than many of the living. Yet I've also seen a couple of corpses decayed, perhaps dying all over again."
He nodded. "Hundreds of years ago, when such things mattered, Brimbank was built at the intersection of two pronounced ley lines. With the right magic, it's the perfect place to foster and support us."
"I've read about ley lines. I'd kill to get my hands on my library now." I jolted to a stop. "Figure of speech. I wouldn't really kill anyone."
He cocked his head to one side again.
"Only if I had to. And there was no other choice." I glowered back at him.
A smile sparkled in his eyes. "We have a small library, and we count two earth witches among our number. Between the books and their knowledge, we understand the power of the ley as well as anyone ever has."
I twitched at the mention of old and experienced earth witches. Father taught me necromancy, but my mother wasn't around to teach me her magical skills.
He noticed the jerk in my steps, but didn't mention it when he spoke. "The belief these lines possess spiritual power is not new."
"I've never attributed any supernatural significance to leys. I thought they were ancient trade and ceremonial pathways, possibly dating back to the Neolithic, certainly pre-Roman—"
"These lines resonate with psychic and mystical energy." He circled his fingers like Glynn did when he wanted to hurry the conversation along. "Here the crossroad gives enough psychic energy to sustain both spirits and the bodily undead."
"So where is this leading? Soldiers attack. You hide them away. You say you'll move when you finish your work. But the psychic energy? What will sustain you if you move? Where will you go?"
He shrugged again.
This wasn't right. Who were they hurting? What drove Asher? I had to find a way to persuade him to leave them alone. Owen still stared into my face. Waiting for another question, or perhaps waiting for me to take some sort of punitive action.
"I've seen Aidan is in good health. He seems happy too, in his own way. I'd like to check on the soldiers you have here."
Owen's eyes flashed. "You don't trust me?"
Good question. The answer was no, not yet. "I'd say we trust one another equally. I need to check on the prisoners myself."
As soon as I let Glynn know the men were safe, he'd be prepared to talk, I knew he would. I had to get back to the base. Assuming this morning's raid didn't succeed.
I struggled to keep my face blank. I didn't want to give-away a hint about Glynn’s early morning raid. Hopefully their search bought them nowhere near Echo Den. "To succeed in dissuading Glynn and his colonel from attacking you again, I must convince them the missing men are unharmed."
"You'll need to convince them of more than that." Owen tilted his head, his chin jutted out.
"Help me." Quivers of frustration swirled in my belly. "Let me help you."
He laughed again. "You might be able to command some of us. But how do you plan to work your magic on the living who want us gone. Permanently?"
"I don't know. Yet. But I know Glynn. He won't wage war against you if you aren't a danger to the people here. But I must convince him the missing soldiers are okay. So, you need to convince me of that."
"You put me in an impossible position. How can I trust you? Yet how can I stop you from doing whatever you damn well want to do?" He lifted his palm to silence me. "Oh yes, your fame has spread. Maybe not among the living, but many here tell the story of how you raised the entire cemetery at Winterhurst."
While I'd been talking to Aidan, had he quizzed his entire group to find out what he could about me? I let out a small gasp. I should have expected it I suppose. "Those were exceptional circumstances."
He lifted his eyebrows. "Tell me about it."
I stepped closer to him. "You knew this about me, and yet you only just mentioned it?"
"You don't deny it?" He stood, and towered at least a foot taller than me.
I craned my neck to maintain locked stares. "It's a long story. Complicated."
"I'm not going anywhere." He sat down again, crossed his legs, and made that annoying motion with his fingers like Glynn did to tell me to hurry up and answer the damn question.
"You can twirl that finger all you like. I'm going to find your captives." I stomped to the doorway.
He leapt from the chair and grabbed my arm. "Not so fast."
Definite sparks this time. My own power eddied in my abdomen. I faced him. "You are a witch yourself."
He backed away. "No, not a witch. I have limited healing powers. A blessing before Dr. Graham joined us."
What else hadn't he told me? I pushed out with my senses, he squirmed in response to my probing. Still no malice, no anger. We stood a few feet apart, wary, waiting. I huffed out a peeved breath and rubbed my temples, a headache niggled.
After a couple of minutes, he lifted his hands in surrender. "Okay, let's visit the captives."
In a well-lit corridor, I trailed behind Owen. He had good reason to be cautious about anyone, let alone a necromancer with the possibility of controlling and interfering. He didn't know anything about me, except the stories he'd heard and what he could see with his own eyes. Still, the headache chafed and threatened to grow worse.
Back in the main hall, he spoke quietly with a decaying corpse working on a small metal box. This one was skin and bone, his eyes sunken in his face, his leathery skin stuck to his bones, tufts of hair dotted across his scalp.
His eyes narrowed as Owen spoke to him. He nodded at Owen, and glowered at me. He wiped oily fingers across his shirt and lumbered toward me. With cloudy eyes, he stared into my face as if daring me to command him. His anger pounded against my body. I ignored the power surging in my chest, damped down an instinct that told me to command him. We stood staring at one another for several seconds.
"What do you want to see the men for? Our word not good enough for you?" He dropped his gaze to the floor. "Sure, I'll take you to them."
He pivoted unsteadily on one heel, balanced himself and marched to yet another dark corridor. I darted after him and groped my way along the wall. Symbols carved at hand height stood out. I didn't recognize all of them, but my fingertips found the runic alphabet, pentagrams, triquetra of many sizes, and a double spiral that turned into a huge maze. It felt like a giant exercise book in stone.
The man loped ahead, one leg dragging behind him.
"I don't know your name," I said.
"You don't need it," he answered.
"Why are you more decayed than the others?"
He stopped suddenly, I almos
t smacked into his back.
He spun and pushed me against the wall, his arm across my throat. He let out a sound that was almost a giggle. "Don't you know?"
"I'm not trying to trick you." I struggled against the weight pressing on my throat. "I don't know why some of you are more decayed than others."
"You expect me to explain it all, do you?" Sunken eyes stared at me, intelligent despite the decaying flesh around them.
The bony arm pressed across my throat. If I could have swallowed I would have gagged on the stench of rotting flesh and moldy bones. I kicked against the man's legs, dug my fingernails into the rotting flesh. I pushed the command to release me into his head. He pressed even harder against my throat. If I didn't get air soon I'd pass out. I bundled my anger and frustration into a swirling black arrow of energy and thrust it into what remained of the man's brain.
15
The decaying man recoiled, hands pressed to his temples. I slid down the rough wall gasping for breath. His screams echoed the length of the corridor. Footsteps sounded and strong hands lifted me. Someone stood me up against the wall. I heard my name but from far, far away. Someone thrust a flask of water to my lips and dripped a few drops into my mouth.
Slowly, I remembered Echo Den and what I was doing there.
Owen laid a cold hand on my shoulder. "Sip it. Gently now."
"He tried to kill me." The words croaked out of my bruised throat. "I didn't want to hurt anyone."
"I'll deal with him. He knows better than to attack a guest here."
"All I did was ask him why he is so decayed."
"A sore point I'm afraid." Owen held the flask to my lips while I drank.
"He shouldn't be permanently damaged. But his brain was already badly scarred and shrunk."
Owen didn't need to know I tried to command the man and failed, that it hurt me to push pain points into his brain. Owen was a little scared of me. Or at least a little wary. I wanted to keep it that way.
"It's not just water?"
"A soothing concoction from one of our witches."
The pain in my throat eased with every sip. "Why a sore point?"
"He was an addict before he came to us. He was killed in a military raid, but they missed his body and left to rot in the sun."
"That led to his current decay?"
"Honestly?" Owen shrugged." We don't know, but it seems to be a factor. Can you walk?"
"I'm fine." I drank the last of the soothing liquid.
"Then I'll show you to our guests myself."
Someone led the still whimpering man away. I stroked my throat, swallowing seemed to work fine again, the concoction worked a treat. If I got a chance after seeing the captives, it would be great to meet with the earth witches Owen mentioned. But first, check on the soldiers.
With his hand at the small of my back, Owen guided me to the end of the dark corridor. Cursing like a sailor, he struggled with an old key in a rusty lock. When the lock opened, he shouldered the heavy door open and we exited the tunnel into a regular square-shaped room lined with plaster and filled with bluish light from globes on the ceiling.
"This room is different to the rest of the cavern—"
"Built as part of the original underground train loops." Owen pulled another key from his pocket, opened an iron grill, and motioned me through. The same blue light flickered in this room.
"Keep walking this way." Owen pointed to a dirty brick wall about ten paces away. "We turn left, then right, the men are in there. In good health. Just like I told you."
If I was crazy to trust this man, I was about to find out. I strode to the brick wall and turned left, followed another corridor a few paces then turned right.
The blue light shone brighter here, into a room the size of a large dormitory. Two men lay on beds at one end of the room, another three lounged on an old sofa at the other end. Another man tended a large pot bubbling on a gas stove in the center of the room. The smell of chicken soup wafted to my nose.
Two men sat at a table playing cards. That made eight out of nine missing men accounted for.
The man cooking soup pointed to the battered table surrounded by mismatched and equally battered chairs. "You want some?'"
I shook my head. "I'm not hungry. But thank you."
"How did they catch you?"
"I came with Del, she is looking for her husband and son. I found Aidan. Now I need to find Ed."
One of the men on the beds swung his feet to the floor. "Sergeant Tanner at your service, ma’am." With a wince, he jutted out his chest. "Del is here? Where is she? With Aidan?"
Owen sauntered to the sofa to chat with the men there. It could have been a soldier's dormitory anywhere. Owen behaved more like a friend than a jailer.
I crossed the floor to sit at Ed's bedside. He scrubbed his fist across his forehead. "I suppose Del came looking for Aidan. Why isn’t she here?"
"We had a minor confrontation with a bunch of twitchers."
"Minor? What the…" He stood, hands stiff at his sides. "What the hell where you two thinking? Where is she?"
"In the hospital, here. She's going to be okay."
"What happened?"
I gave him a condensed version of our run in with the group of twitchers, though not about my healing of her wound. "Glynn covered her in special sticking plaster, and now Dr. Graham is tidying everything up."
"At least you had the sense to take Buckley with you. You’re with him?"
I nodded. It wasn't exactly a lie, Glynn might not have wanted me here but, hey, here I was. "Are you okay? Are they looking after you?"
He dropped back onto the bed, beads of sweat lined his upper lip. "They've done what they can. A fever is lingering, that's all."
I rummaged in my satchel, pulled out the squares that Glynn had given me. "Will this help?"
"Can't hurt." He turned his back to me and lifted his shirt.
I stuck a square on either side of a thick bandage. "Who shot you?"
He settled onto his back with a grimace. "I don't know. But one of us. An accident in the confusion."
A cold draft brushed across the back of my neck. A soldier sat on the next bed. I turned my gaze from Ed to the newcomer and found myself staring into the glazed eyes of a new corpse.
I guess this is missing man number nine.
"What's happened to me?" the dead man asked me.
"Powerful magic works here." I rested my hand on his knee. "At this intersection of ley lines, people die but then live again, either as corpses or strong spirits."
"I don't like it," he whispered.
A tear rolled down his cheek; he wiped it away with a broken hand. "Help me."
"I'll try and help."
I tried to swallow, I couldn’t look him in the eye. If he were a spirit and wanted to die properly, I could take him back to the Shadow Glades if that’s what he wanted, or even to the Realm of the Dead. But this guy was a living dead. I’d have no choice but to kill him again with either fire, or a fatal blow to his head. I'd done it before. But that didn't mean I enjoyed it.
A distant, coarse, metal–on–metal grating sound interrupted my thoughts.
"That's the gate," one of the men said.
A broad-shouldered man strode into the room and whispered to Owen.
"As you can see Meagan." Owen circled his arm around the room. "These men are well cared for. And now I suggest you get a nap while we prepare for another attack."
He marched to the exit. I ran after him. "What do you know about an attack?"
At the metal door, he glanced at his watch. "Will be a regular squad, in around three hours. I've heard, Buckley will be leading it himself. My sources are good, are they not?"
"They haven't found Echo Den yet. What are you preparing?"
"You do ask a lot of questions. We can't risk an attack here after everything we've worked for. Fear not, your friend Major Buckley is in no danger from us. I'll lead a small group to divert them away from here."
"Let me com
e with you. I'll talk with Glynn."
Owen's eyes flashed with amusement. "You are an expert in combat as well, are you?"
"We must avoid combat. I must talk with Glynn. As soon as he knows the men are here and unharmed, he will talk rather than shoot."
"Not to me, I’ll wager." Owen crossed his arms, his stare boring into my face. "Perhaps we are tired of running diversion tactics. Perhaps we will fight back. Do you still want to tag along?"
"I'm not letting that happen." In the narrow dark tunnels, it would be mayhem. Completely understandable that Owen and his people grew tired of the continual attempts to attack and capture them. But it wasn't happening, not on my watch. The previous attacks against them may have failed. But this one had Glynn in charge. People would get hurt, on both sides. I pressed fingertips to my temples as my headache ratcheted up a notch. "Let me help you."
"Why should I believe you want to help us? You. Of all people. What's in it for you?"
"What can I do to make you believe I'm not like any other necromancer you've ever met, or heard of? I admit I want to make sure Glynn isn't harmed as well."
"You just seek to understand." Owen parroted my own words back at me. "Give me one good reason why I should even consider helping you to talk to Glynn."
"Because we need to end the conflict, not escalate it."
I resisted the temptation to try and push an order into Owen's head. He was strong. Stronger than the decayed man who had resisted me. Even attempting it would show Owen I couldn't be trusted. He waited for me to try something—the look in his eyes challenged me to.
After what seemed like an age, he nodded once. "If you even try to lead the squad here, we will kill you. Or at least die trying."
"I've no reason to do that." Stuck in the middle of this conflict, I felt like I was the only one who wanted no-one harmed.
"Show her to a bed." Owen spoke to the broad-shouldered man. He rested his hand on my shoulder. "It's time we trusted one another. I give you my word we will wake you, so you can join the diversion party."
He marched away. The man pointed back down the corridor to the dormitory. He followed me and pulled a folding bed from the wall. I glanced around the room. Ed and the other soldiers stared at me with hope in their faces. I didn't want to see any other soldiers accidentally shot with friendly fire either.
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