Stones of Power- Hellstone & Maelstrom

by Jenna Grey

  CHAPTER TWO

  Polly watched the police car pull away, sheer relief making her so giddy she had to lean against the door lintel to stop herself from toppling. The police had arrived on the doorstep mid-morning – two plainclothes officers, who certainly hadn’t just come to tell her the bad news of her uncle’s death. Polly had never been good at lying, and she’d just spent the last hour stammering out what must have been the biggest lot of tripe these two hard-nosed detectives had ever heard in all their years of service. They didn’t believe a word of it, of course; the look they had given her as they walked out of the door had been eloquent. Polly hadn’t had any real sleep at all for what seemed like forever. She had dozed in the car on the way back from the warehouse, her head resting on Finn’s shoulder, his arm wrapped around her like a comfort blanket, but it had been a fitful doze, broken by troubled and feverish dreams. Whatever her kidnappers had used to knock her out hadn’t quite worn off, and she felt as if she were watching the world through a mist of unreality.

  She stood in the shop doorway for a moment, just staring out at the rain-spattered pavements, aware of the sound of rattling china behind her. Dear old Bert was already making another cup of tea, even though she still had the taste of the last one in her mouth.

  “Come on now, sweetheart. There’s no point in torturing yourself, they’ve gone, and you did very well. I’ve put the kettle on, and I’ll make us a nice cup of tea.”

  Bert’s voice was gentle in her ear, but she barely heard it. She turned to see Finn standing behind her, a tight-lipped smile stretched across his face. He looked annoyingly fresh, just a bit ruffled, as if he’d just got up from a good night’s sleep; his mop of dark hair was hopelessly tousled, the Star Wars tee-shirt so wrinkled that Han Solo looked more like Yoda.

  “They didn’t believe a word of it,” Polly said.

  She moved towards him and let him wrap his arms around her in a consolatory hug. Pressed against his body, she could feel his heart pounding against hers, his breathing just a little ragged. She pulled back from him and gave him a whisper of a smile, a smile that she knew wouldn’t alleviate any of his concern.

  “They’re trained not to believe anything anybody tells them,” he said. Polly knew he meant well, but if she was hoping for any kind of reassurance from him, she was going to be sorely disappointed. She could tell from his face that she must have done an even worse job of lying to them than she’d thought. He’d almost convinced her that they had spent the night at home watching the Ghost of Frankenstein and Curse of the Werewolf, instead of butchering seventeen people and driving a malevolent deity back to Hell. It was easier for him, though, he hadn’t witnessed any of the mayhem last night, blissfully unconscious as the nightmare played around him. It was easy for him to lie.

  All she could see when she closed her eyes were those seventeen corpses, lying scattered across the warehouse floor, like broken toys; the corpses of the people she had murdered. She was still in shock; she knew that. Later when she was alone, it would all come pouring out of her in a torrent of misery, but for now, just for now, she knew she had to keep it together for Finn and Bert’s sake.

  “Well, let’s face it, even if they don’t believe me, they could hardly accuse me of murdering those people using magic, now could they?” she said.

  “It wasn’t murder, it was self-defence,” Finn protested, his usually gentle voice just a little sharp around the edges. “You didn’t have any choice.”

  Polly gave him the look that remark deserved.

  “I know what I’ve done, Finn. Most of those fools were just standing there with their mouths open, not knowing what to do or what was going on. You didn’t see them. I can’t get them out of my head. Yes, my uncle and Winchard deserved to die, perhaps some of the others did as well, but not all of them – they were just idiots who thought it was clever to play at magic.”

  Finn couldn’t hide his exasperation.

  “They were going to sacrifice you, Polly, and they did sacrifice at least one other innocent, they killed Bram – you remember the big Scot that we all knew and loved that was skinned alive?” His voice was full of such venom it made Polly wince. It wasn’t like him to be so vicious. The dreadful sight of Bram’s flayed body smashed into her, that giant of a man stripped down to blood and flesh in just seconds, his skin lying beside him like discarded wrapping paper.

  Polly pulled back her shoulders and glowered at him.

  “Yes, funnily enough, I do remember, I watched you bury what was left of him!”

  Finn sighed and sank down onto the arm of the chair, deflated.

  “I’m sorry, ignore me, but Polly, they deserved to die, don’t ever doubt that.”

  There was such certainty in his voice, Polly almost believed him. Polly wanted to believe him, desperately wanted to believe that wonderful lie, but who was she to judge whether or not those people deserved to rot in Hell or not?

  Bert looked so dreadfully tired, his usually tidy white hair unkempt, his eyes rheumy and his skin almost grey. He was usually so well turned out, dapper in his own eccentric way, his hair Brylcreemed, his moustache neat and his chin shaved to within an inch of its life. Now he looked spent, totally drained and ten years older than he had yesterday. He had used up far too much energy last night helping to save all of their lives.

  “The reason you had such a hard time of it just now, my dear, is because your guilt got the better of you,” Bert continued. “You must believe that you’ve done nothing wrong, and then you will find it much easier to persuade others of your innocence. How can you convince them you are innocent if you don’t believe it yourself? You really must stop feeling guilty.” He gave her a sad little smile, and Polly gave a half-hearted nod back.

  “What about all the evidence I left behind? My fingerprints were all over the cellar; they’re bound to realise sooner or later that I was there.”

  Bert tutted.

  “Friends went in the moment we left and got rid of all the evidence,” Bert reassured her. “There is nothing at all that could connect us to it. We really are quite safe.”

  “Couldn’t your friends have got rid of the bodies?” she asked.

  Bert gave a little chuckle.

  “Oh, my friends are very good at what they do, but asking them to dispose of that many bodies at such short notice is asking a bit much, even of them.”

  “It’ll be all right, love. I promise, it will be all right,” Finn said, slipping his arm around her. But she knew that it wouldn’t be all right, that it would never be all right again. There was a gentle waft of cologne, just a lingering ghost, a slightly musky smell that she knew Finn would never have worn. He hadn’t had time to shower this morning before the police came, and she felt a sudden wave of misery as she realised that it wasn’t his cologne, it was Liam’s.

  “I still can’t believe that Liam is gone,” Polly said.

  Finn’s face suddenly twisted into a moue of misery.

  “I know,” he said, the words tightening his throat and making him choke for a moment. “Me neither, but trust me, he has gone. “I can’t feel him here any more. Wherever he is, he’s well and truly moved on.”

  “Now, let’s try to forget about it for a while,” Bert said, “and get some sleep. Just thank God that we’re still here.”

  Polly agreed, but it was easier said than done. Finn and Bert were used to remarkable happenings; she’d been thrown into this nightmare world of the supernatural without a lifebelt and no swimming lessons. She was so tired, though, she felt as if she could sleep for a hundred years.

  “Dad and I have to go over to Bram’s to make sure there’s no incriminating evidence there,” Finn said. “There’s no way the police would have been able to link us to him yet, but they will eventually and we need to get in there and make sure it’s all okay. Do you want to come with us, or would you rather stay here?”

  Polly was desperately torn, she didn’t want to be left on her own, but her brain was overloaded; she just n
eeded time to get some sort of balance back, come to terms with what had happened.

  “Do you mind if I stay here? I think I could use some alone time. I’m still in shock, I think. I haven’t really had time to get my head around it.”

  “I can give you something to help you sleep if you like. I have a little potion that will knock you out cold and give you hours of peaceful, dreamless sleep.”

  “No thanks, I am tempted, but I think I need to deal with this in my own way. Would it be all right if I did some tidying up in the shop? It could use a good clean if you don’t mind me saying so. It will do me good to keep occupied.”

  “No, that’s cool – I don’t think it’s been cleaned since we opened.” Finn chuckled and looked a little sheepish. “We won’t be long.”

  “What if anyone sees you?” she asked.

  “They won’t,” Bert said, with a rather self-satisfied smile.

  “Magic?” Polly asked.

  Bert just tapped the side of his nose and made for the door.

  Polly had to admit that she was glad to see them go, she needed some alone time so that she could drop the facade she’d worn ever since they’d returned home. They seemed to have been able to take everything that had happened with such careless acceptance. Was it really so easy for them to blithely move on from the traumas of the last few days as if they were nothing? They spoke of demons the way some people might speak of hooligans hanging around on street corners, about ancient deities as if they were corrupt local politicians who had been fiddling the books. She’d witnessed her first demon just a few days ago, and she had never felt terror like that in her entire life. Her grandmother had always told her these things existed, but to Polly it had all just been a game until now.

  All she wanted to do was to get back to normal, to a world she understood, where the most exciting thing that happened to her was going down to the local shop and seeing what the special offer was on chocolate that day. Now she had to accept that her life was never going to be normal again.

  She had the mother of all headaches, a thousand little wasps stinging her behind her forehead, probably the residue of whatever drug they’d used to knock her out when they kidnapped her, although being throttled by Dalbert Winchard and having her head smashed against concrete probably hadn’t helped a great deal. Her hand was still hurting a little but was almost completely healed, thanks to some lotion that Bert had put on it.

  “Polly Nightingale, you have got to deal with this. Pull yourself together!”

  She walked out into the shop and groaned. She didn’t doubt Finn for a minute when he said that it hadn’t been cleaned since man first landed on the moon; layers of dust covered everything, so thick in some places that you could have grown sweetcorn in it. She suspected that Shelob might be lurking somewhere in the cobwebbed shadows behind those cabinets. She found some furniture polish in the cupboard, which still had 1980s prices on it, but which seemed usable, and went around the shop, dusting and polishing every bit of wood she could find into a conker-bright shine. She choked as clouds of dust rose up from every neglected object. After a while Polly realised that she was starting to feel better; perhaps she did have some things to be grateful for after all. She had to move on.

  She got a bowl of hot water and soaked the ceramic dragons and crystal balls, washing off layers of grime from them, getting a certain satisfaction from seeing them drip dry onto the towel to be reborn again, bright and shiny. She settled them back on the wooden shelves, restoring everything to its place and she felt satisfied. The place was positively glowing by the time she’d finished. Polly, on the other hand, was positively rank; she was covered in dirt and cobwebs, her hair a tangled bush, but she felt so much better, as if a dreadful weight had been lifted from her shoulders.

  Now all they needed were some customers. Polly was pretty certain they didn’t get many of them because the Magic Emporium was tucked away in Clanger’s Lane, a tiny little alley that never really seemed to have any pedestrians passing through. It was sandwiched between a rather tatty looking art supply shop and a book shop, whose window contained a very uninspiring assortment of old books.

  The Magic Emporium itself wasn’t exactly inviting. A hotch-potch of arcane miscellany cluttered the shop window: ceramic dragons, crystal balls and tarot cards that made it look like a garage sale at Hogwarts. Polly couldn’t help but wonder where Bert got his money from because it certainly wasn’t from this shop – she was pretty sure that she’d been their only customer since the Beatles split up.

  She got the impression, though, that he and Finn weren’t short of money. Why would Bert have chosen to open a shop like this, when he knew that there was real magic, and this, all of this was just fairground tat that had no magical properties at all? But even as she thought it, she realised that this place did hold some kind of magic – she could feel it in the air, a sort of warm thrum that seemed to charge the atmosphere. More than that there was the wonderful smell of age about the place, the smell of incense and old paper. It was a good smell, good in the way that fresh-baked bread or roasting coffee was good. The old station clock sat in the shadows of one wall, its mellow tick, a solid weight in the silence.

  And now this was home.

  She turned when she heard the tinkling of the doorbell, to see a young man standing in the doorway. She hadn’t realised that the door was unlocked and the ‘Open’ sign still displayed. She should have turned him away, but a customer was a customer.

  “Sorry, I didn’t realise the ‘open’ sign was up. I was just having a clean – well, I think you can probably tell that by the state of me, but you’re welcome to look around. I’m not sure if everything is priced, but I’ll work something out for you if you see anything you like the look of.”

  The intruder smiled, nodded and said:

  “Cool. You get on, and I’ll let you know if I need anything.” His voice was deep – it didn’t seem to match the rest of him somehow. Polly gave him a clandestine appraisal, pretending that she was still dusting. He was pure Goth, tall and angular, dressed in a rather tatty leather jacket over a V neck tee shirt and jeans, all of it black; around his neck was an arsenal of silver jewellery. His wild mop of dark hair was in serious need of a good wash and brushing, a great mane of shaggy curls that brushed his shoulders. He was handsome in a rather odd kind of way, full-lipped, sensuous. It was his eyes though that captured her attention, bright, clear, almost unnaturally blue. She could feel little ripples of negative energy coming from him – nothing too heavy duty, but enough to make her edgy.

  She tried not to be too obvious, but she felt compelled to check him out a bit more. As he moved around she got a better look at the necklaces he wore: all occult, a swastika, most certainly not a Nazi emblem in this instance but a luck symbol, and there was the sigil of Baphomet, just about as Satanic as you could get.

  Was he just wearing them for effect, though, something to shock and awe, or did he really walk on the dark side? Probably just playing at it, thought it looked cool to wear chunks of Satanic hardware. There was no real reason for her to be suspicious of him, but there was just something about him that made her very uncomfortable. Could it be that not all of her uncle’s minions had been killed in that warehouse last night? No, she was being paranoid. This sort of shop was bound to attract all kinds of people. What did she expect?

  “So, do you own this place?” he asked, picking up a ceramic unicorn and turning it around in his hands. He put it down again, obviously not at all interested in it.

  “No, my boyfriend and his dad. I’m just helping out.” Polly couldn’t help but wonder why he’d asked. He gave her a bland smile, but it never reached his eyes.

  “I’m looking for some decent tarot cards. Something a bit different,” he said.

  Polly moved out from around the counter.

  “We haven’t got anything that special, sorry; There are only a few of the standard packs.” Polly led him over to the shelf, which in truth held the most depressing coll
ection of tarot cards Polly had ever come across.

  The Goth looked across to the small table that Liam had always used to do his readings. His pack was still lying there, wrapped in green velvet. She supposed that the last time Liam had used them was when he did the reading for her – and if she had only known how much truth it had held, she would have run and never looked back.

  “Someone here reads the cards,” he said, tipping his head towards them. Polly felt a little stab of misery nip at her heart.

  “Oh, there was someone, but he’s not here any more,” she said, fighting back the lump in her throat.

  He walked over to the table and Polly moved in front to try and stop him, but she was too late.

  “Please, I’d rather you didn’t,” she said, as she saw him reach his hand out towards the pack.

  He ignored her and flapped over the cloth, looking down at the cards, his face morphing into an expression of real interest. They were in disarray, where Liam had flung them back into the cloth, terrified by what he had seen in them. They lay, some face-up, and the card on top was the card that had made Liam smile. The Lovers. There is something good in store for you – you’re going to need a few pleasant surprises. She felt the prickle of tears but fought them back.

  “How much for them?” he asked.

  “No, sorry, they’re not for sale. Please. I’d rather you didn’t touch them.” It was too late. He’d already picked up the Lovers card and was studying it with interest. It was beautiful, Liam’s own pack, unique, and part of him. It showed a man and woman locked in passion; they looked so much like Finn and Polly that she almost had to wonder if it was a coincidence. Whatever, she didn’t want anyone touching it, especially not this man. He put it down when he saw the expression on her face.

  “I’m sorry, the person that owned them was someone you loved?” he asked.

  “I don’t think you needed the cards to work that out,” Polly said, forcing a smile. “Yes, someone I cared about very much. I can’t sell them, sorry.”