The Hidden Key (Second Sacred Trinity)

by S E Holmes

  “Grace?” he rasped.

  “We don’t know the extent of her injuries. Whoa, stay down.” If only he’d listened to that advice in the ring. “Please.”

  “Thank you, Jay.” This time, Fortescue was too incapacitated to disobey.

  “Grace is right. No outsiders. We will heal,” Hugo spoke from the front seat.

  Fortescue grunted agreement. Yet no matter how well practised his impassive facade, even he couldn’t hide the doubt. An impressive haematoma formed on the side of his bald head and was probably the least of his hurts. They should have waited until Bear was at full strength before embarking on so rash a venture.

  “We’ll be home in five minutes.” Bickles did his best to hurry smoothly.

  Still, the closer they drove to the warehouse, the greater Hud’s trepidation. Andie’s hysteria meant that Mrs Paget was in a sorry state. The lovely, frail lady didn’t look as if she’d handle a stiff breeze, let alone a gunshot. And Andie had hinted at other unwelcome revelations.

  They finally pulled up by the entrance to the warehouse. Hud helped Fortescue from the van, coaxing him onto his back in a rescue hold. The old boy groaned in agony, his feet dragging, with his belly against Hud’s spine. As they made their way gingerly inside, the van peeled off for the garage.

  “Hud!”

  Andie ran towards him through the ground-floor collection. Blotches glistened on her black catsuit and her hands were stained bright red. Quivering and distraught, she reached him as he passed the parade of urns, silently getting behind him to collect Fortescue’s ankles. They muscled their patient up into the kitchen.

  Upon entering, Hud couldn’t help but gasp. Mrs Paget stretched out on the kitchen table, her face waxen and chest barely rising and falling. Blood marred the table’s wooden surface, dripping to pool onto the usually pristine tiled floor. She’d been shot in the stomach, an injury he’d heard was agonising, especially if stomach acids leached into the peritoneal cavity. If death from blood loss didn’t occur, infection would finish the mortal duo.

  “Damn it! We need a hospital. We need specialists.”

  They hustled through to the TV room and placed Fortescue on the divan, making him as comfortable as possible under the circumstances. Disaster was the word that kept repeating in Hud’s mind. Not only had they not managed to rescue Tiffany, it was unclear if Riven would wake with amnesia. And he still had no idea if Andie had achieved any of her objectives, or what had happened to Rebel.

  “Did you at least get the wasp?”

  “We didn’t make it inside the building before we were ambushed,” Andie said miserably.

  The two of them returned to the kitchen to stand beside Mrs Paget, just as Bickles arrived, carting Priscilla over his shoulder like a rolled carpet. He’d put a bag over her head at some point. She struggled and kicked, yelling through her gag. Hugo stumbled in, his face showing uncharacteristic emotion on spotting Mrs Paget. He clung to the doorframe for support.

  “No,” he said. “No.”

  Hud steeled himself, lifting a sodden wad of gauze from the lower right side of her abdomen. There was a sucking black hole, but as far as he could tell with his limited early degree training, the bleeding had slowed. He had no clue if the bowel had been nicked, and no way of finding out. But shrapnel aside, he was at least fairly sure the liver and stomach were not implicated. Shock was the foremost concern, her pulse weak and thready. He pressed the material back, feeling hopeless. Her eyelids flickered open.

  “Jay,” she whispered. “Jerome?”

  “Broken ribs, I think. His heart stuttered for a while. Could also have a concussion … I’m guessing.”

  “Watch for a collapsed lung. If his breathing decreases, needle aspiration. Check visual reaction to light, uneven dilation of pupils, bleeding from the ear. My room, medical gear,” she croaked. Her eyes were no longer twinkling, rheumy and scrunched by the effort to speak. “Saline drip. Lavage and pack this wound. I think it’s a through and through. Morphine and vitaver for both of us.”

  Needle aspiration? Hud took a quelling breath and nodded. She probably needed a transfusion. And if he knew it, Mrs Paget knew it too. Ty had dumped Priscilla in the corner on the floor where she writhed about caterpillar-style in futile resistance. If things were otherwise, Hud would find her perseverance admirable. Andie and Ty spent several moments melded together in greeting.

  “We’ll get the stuff,” he said over her shoulder. They broke apart and trotted from the kitchen.

  The two returned in short order. Andie pushed a paramedic’s trolley, Bickles trailing, his arms filled with gauze swabs and banana bags. Hud gloved up and worked quickly, hooking up the IV and ticking off her instructions. Once he’d done all he could for Mrs Paget, including attaching a vitals monitor that would alert him if anything went awry, he tended to Fortescue. Forty-five minutes later, with both patients resting and stable for the moment, Andie ushered Hugo, Bickles and Hud out onto the mezzanine at the top of the stairs.

  “Will Mrs Paget be okay, Hud?” she asked, her tone laden with stress.

  Bickles clasped her hand, his face a mask of concern. Hugo slumped with his back to the wall. He’d seen fit to don a black t-shirt, but had avoided the standard muscle-hugging variety which spoke volumes about the state of his pain. He’d refused even paracetamol.

  “Well, as I’m a second-year pharmaco-botany student and don’t have a medical degree, it’s hard to say. Put it this way, little old ladies who get shot usually head for intensive care.” They glowered at him and he raised placating hands – still powdery with latex. He’d had no chance to tend his own injuries, which were stinging like a bastard. “She’s lost an awful lot of blood.”

  “We will heal,” Hugo muttered through his teeth.

  “I’m not convinced even you can replenish that much body fluid. We’ll need Jesus to descend on heavenly sunbeams and convert water into blood. I’ll be requesting a cask or ten of wine. In any case, I can’t leave her for long.”

  “Downstairs,” Andie said.

  Fatigue started to get the better of Hud and he fantasised about lying down for a decade. Instead, the four of them crammed into the lift and headed to the temple corridor in the depths of the warehouse.

  She explained on the ride. “They must have already been there scoping the place out when we arrived. Rebel and that awful sycophant, Quint. They bailed us up at gunpoint in the shrubbery at the back entrance. We swore innocence, claimed we’d taken a wrong turn on the way to a marshal arts convention. But with both of us in catsuits and infrared goggles slung around our necks, anything we said seemed far-fetched.” Andie hiccoughed a sob. “It devolved fairly fast. Mrs Paget blew some sort of toxic powder at them and we made a run for it. Not fast enough. Quint is dead.”

  The difference was obvious as soon as the doors slid apart onto the temple corridor. Facing them at the very end, where Daniel’s curtained portal had originally been, was a cell reminiscent of the glass-partitioned jail of Hannibal Lecter.

  “Bloody hell. If Enoch’s here and has the time to go creating jail cells, why doesn’t he help Mrs Paget?” Hud fumed.

  It seemed a guy who could magic up new rooms at will would surely possess the ability to heal the sick and injured. Enoch was maddeningly selective in his choice of interventions.

  In the middle of his creation, Rebel was gaffer-taped upright to a lifting dolly from below her nose to her calves. She was unconscious, a bloody gash transecting her left eyebrow.

  Hugo huffed a long, weary breath. “Now, we’re really in trouble.”

  Twenty-Nine

  Slipping out, I tiptoed to the middle of Raphaela’s lounge room. I waited with my knife poised in a shaky hand, but the expected attack didn’t occur. The Sentinels just kept aimlessly swaying upon the ceiling, as if in a holding pattern. Malachi’s hound occupied itself with the hunt, nose to the ground, before rounding the corner and disappearing along the kitchen hallway. I crept towards the foyer, reaching the connecting
doorway as Malachi started after his dog.

  “Not every Keeper is dead,” I whispered, behind him now.

  He spun, squinting into the murk. “Who’s there?”

  The Sentinels’ activity increased, their ruined heads jerking on mangy necks. One broke from the pack, scuttling down the wall and plopping with a squelch to the floor, barely three metres away. It snuffled avidly, seeking for the source of the alien sound. More dropped to the ground, advancing like a pack of fetid zombie scorpions. To my left, Malachi’s focus darted about, clued in by the disorganised motion of the creatures.

  “Skull, return,” he commanded.

  Silently, I glided to his other side and softly hummed a bar of ‘Ding Dong The Witch is Dead’ from the Wizard of Oz. He twirled, lashing out with a meaty fist and swiping only air. Three Sentinels converged on my spot, but I’d already vacated. This was fun. My biggest concern? Running into one of those fiends in the increasingly cramped space.

  “Return!” Malachi bawled.

  His dog was either terribly disobedient or otherwise engaged. I prayed for the latter; maybe impaled on the end of Smithy’s long military knife. Smithy: where was he? And where was Daniel? Had he found Maya?

  Momentarily distracted, I didn’t watch where I was going, and tripped over the spindly leg of a Sentinel, smashing into a porcelain bust on a plinth by the stairs. It wobbled in freeze-frame increments, finally toppling to shatter across the floor with a melodramatic crash. The Sentinel gyrated in a blink to lunge for an invisible adversary, pincering the back of my calf and ripping my pants as I fled. Malachi too, had reached my location and pounced, arms extended wide enough to hug a bear. Of course, not all enemies are sizeable and this arrogant belief spared me by a millimetre. Dodging beneath his embrace, I stabbed the horrid beast in its gaping maw. My calf throbbed unbearably, but I considered it a reminder to be more alert. A blood trail signposted my path, advertising my smugness. The Sentinels would be on me fast and I had no one to blame but myself.

  “Skull, you useless cur. Get back here!” Malachi’s coal-black eyes glittered calculatingly. “We have more special quarry than little mousies.”

  The wounded Sentinel flopped onto its back, thrashing and spraying yellow fluid across Raphaela’s once-beautiful foyer. Its squeals died to a sputtered gurgle and then nothing. Some of my own blood got lost in the melee, giving me a tiny reprieve. Its colleagues chattered angrily, adopting a new strategy and spreading out at intervals with their serrated limbs wide. They formed a snarling, seething grid, difficult to negotiate – unless one was skilled at parkour.

  Grabbing the lip of a stair tread, I vaulted up to the outside of the banister and began to sidle higher with my back against the spiralling rail, while keeping the heaving things below in view. Malachi spat obscenities at his tardy dog.

  “Skull!”

  Suddenly, a grey blur hurtled a trajectory overhead: the sunken hide of his felled pet, its huge head thumping hollowly at his feet, its throat slit from ear to ear, pink froth lining its gums. Its owner howled in fury. He wheeled towards where Skull originated at the inner entrance to the foyer. There stood Smithy, a defiant smirk on his face. My heart jumped for joy.

  “Good dog,” he said. “Lie down and never get up again.”

  With whiplash precision, Smithy hurled his knife. The blade embedded to the hilt in Malachi’s chest. I cheered, provoking the en masse attention of the clustered fiends. Whoops. Surprised, Malachi’s hands went to the knife handle. He looked back at Smithy.

  “No mortal can kill us. No … mortal. Unless …”

  Recognition dawned on his slackening features, as his life drained from the hole in his heart. He staggered sideways, before his body went rigid. He rattled a croak and a black raven’s feather eddied aloft from his throat.

  “Bear.” Smithy beckoned me urgently to his side, alarm clear in his tone.

  I didn’t need further encouragement. The Sentinels cowered, ignoring me as I dashed across their backs to land next to Smithy. Evidently, I was reserved prey for a more dominant predator. One that now had its eye fixed firmly on us. Malachi groaned. The sound lengthened and became an earth-shattering rumble that shook the very foundations of the house. Smith grabbed my wrist and dragged me behind him, relieving me of my knife and facing down this latest challenge.

  Malachi’s head flew back, horizontal on his neck. His mouth gaped impossibly wide. For a second nothing transpired and then, the tip of a razored beak poked heavenwards between his lips.

  “Let’s get out of here.”

  Smithy’s voice woke the Sentinels and a phalanx of them rushed up over the ceiling, gathering at our backs to block our way out and herd us deeper into the space. Their claws clacked a warning whenever we tried to reverse. Smithy hacked at shells and limbs, yet for every one he vanquished another materialised in its place. Without a weapon, I was useless. A gun or flamethrower would have been welcome, and I silently cursed Daniel for this lack. The monsters didn’t bother to defend themselves, merely ensuring we stayed put.

  A manifestation rapidly squirmed free from Malachi’s body: wicked crimson eyes glinted from a featherless head, its drooping cowl red and raw, a sinuous neck of feathers so black they shone iridescent, and then the rest of the vast bird slid from the casing it had made of a man’s flesh, broadening wings to take flight. It issued an evil cawing sound, flashing pointy teeth. Unconstrained by the hell-vulture’s talons, Malachi collapsed like an emptied sack.

  “What are you doing? Move!” Daniel urged from somewhere behind in the shadows. The cats were with him, two sets of yellow eyes slotted in wrath.

  He got to work chopping a path for our escape, joined in the frenzy by Cherish and Vovo. Smithy redoubled his efforts this side, eventually forging a slim alley. He pummelled me through a jagged parade of claws, the cats either side. I lost Smithy’s hand, whirling too late to regain the bond.

  “In your pocket.” With a determined look, he shoved me the rest of the way and stepped back. The breach snapped shut. Smithy stopped fighting and allowed himself to be lifted on a tide of Sentinels into the middle of the lobby.

  “Go get him!” I turned on Daniel.

  He shook his head. “Can you not hear that, Bear?” Grunts and growls reverberated from the front of the house, and the tramping of many feet. “They are not Echoes.”

  “I don’t care.” My panic mounted. “We have to save him!”

  Daniel, the betraying bastard, tightened his iron hold around my waist. I fought and kicked and shouted, until he pulled a syringe from one of his many pockets, stuck it into my neck and depressed the plunger. An icy sensation seeped my veins, numbing my defiance. My body went limp in his arms.

  Was there an ugly ebony bird soaring around the vestibule? It couldn’t be, because the vulture swirled to become a column of boiling fumes, from which a ravishing woman took shape. She had shiny black tresses and was adorned in a splendid cape of black plumage that swished her ankles and bare feet. Her eyes morphed from a startling red to darkest brown. Deep inside a listless haze, I remembered that I did not like her. She was about to steal something more precious from me than anything I’d ever possessed. What could it be? But the apprehension proved fleeting, its meaning slippery.

  I did not get to see the rest of the show, embarking on a dreamy voyage where I seemed to speed from a grand plantation manor from high above, buoyed on my very own floating carpet of smoke. Grotesque beasts surged in our wake below, their thick-sinewed arms bulging to rip clods from the ground as they sped in pursuit, roaring hatred from jaws with impossibly large fangs. I saw it all, insensate and detached.

  Raphaela’s mansion brooded on the retreating horizon. First a trickle of dark smoke curled skyward and eventually, yellow tongues lit the deepening sky before expanding into blossoms of orange. Then oblivion descended and I no longer saw anything at all. For a while.

  My knees went to jelly. The ground beneath me pitched and fell away, dissolving into a boundless pit. The world
was askew in her presence, deformed somehow. For she did not belong here. She was utterly other, everyone I loved and everything I had ever known dissolving in her foul presence. I found myself adrift in infinite space. Just me and her floating to an empty backdrop of star-filled cosmos. She giggled, her hair spread in inky tentacles, her figure a formless black so impenetrable she obliterated light.

  “Enoch’s weapon.” Her voice ebbed in the void, one minute a thunderclap, the next a murmur so that I strained to hear. “I profess disappointment – a millennia of experimentation and you are all? I was so looking forward to the challenge when we eventually meet.”

  I frowned. Were we not meeting now?

  “We shall arrange an exchange. Ostendes tuum et ostendam meus. Whoever says I am incapable of fairness?”

  I’ll show you mine, if you’ll show me yours.

  “Come and find me if you decide not to sacrifice those you love to save your own worthless hide. Or cower in hidden comfort, another pathetic quitter like the Keepers before you. I might play with him a little. He is rather juicy.”

  “Touch him and your Stone is history.”

  How did she grasp my relationship to Smithy so fast? I struggled to work out if this phantom witch was conjured from my own addled mind or if she actually possessed the knowledge.

  “Love is weakness,” she sneered. “It hobbled your predecessor and it will destroy you, too. I’d like to stay for the bonfire. Alas, fun awaits.”

  The twinkling panorama guttered, replaced by another scene. Smithy and I together in my bedroom at the warehouse, lying on the bed, bathed in golden afternoon sunshine.

  “You promised not leave me.”

  Tears formed to spill down my cheeks. I sounded like a pitiful child, crying for her mother at the preschool gate. He rolled onto his side, reaching to kiss away salty damp.