The Hidden Key (Second Sacred Trinity)

by S E Holmes

  But most of all, he’d inherited her absolute serenity. A deep acceptance for what was to be, borne on the patience of millennia, nurtured by the honour of her position alongside Bea and Fortescue, their unquestionable love for Winsome and dedication to the Trinity. Mrs Paget’s hand unclenched, a lingering feeling of bliss her last farewell to him.

  He blinked moisture from his lashes and stared in wonder as her physical form collapsed and diffused in a cloud of tiny stars, the empty nightgown left in her place. He should be gutted, but it was difficult to feel anything other than peace at the rightness of it all. The great wheel turned, indifferent to fleeting human trifles.

  Remember our enemy. Never forget what we battle.

  For the longest time, Hud sat staring at Mrs Paget’s bloodied nightie. Fortescue joined him unnoticed. He was just suddenly there, his head bowed, silent tears splashing the tabletop. He’d changed into a black tuxedo, white tie and white gloves, bringing with him an exquisite orchid bouquet that he arranged reverently where the hands of his constant friend through the centuries would have lain across her chest. Paphinia herrerae. Her favourite rare and fragile bloom, which Hud thought a fitting metaphor for the lady herself.

  “The ones we love never truly leave us,” Fortescue murmured.

  Hud didn’t insult the old boy by telling him he should be resting. His face was a patchwork of nasty colours, one eye still semi-closed, and his ribs warranted more fortified painkillers than liberal doses of vitaver, which was the only narcotic Fortescue allowed past his lips.

  Eventually, he straightened. “We cannot dally. There is much to be done.” Hud started to protest that he couldn’t bear to leave her, when Fortescue placed a forestalling hand on his arm. “This is a young person’s war. Grace gave all she had. Now is your turn to shine. I will see to a fitting memorial.”

  The phone on the wall bleated. Hud nodded, rising to answer it. He knew it was Hugo and what he wanted before lifting the handset from the cradle.

  “I’ve woken her up. Get down here.”

  Fortescue called to him as he headed for the stairs. “Spare them for the time being.”

  Hud met Hugo in the Trinity temple. The frosted glass fronting the cell at the end of the hallway meant they could come and go without her notice, Rebel unbound and pacing behind. Hugo took one look at Hud’s face and decided against asking the question he so evidently wanted to, saying instead, “I’ve dosed her well and good. If the serum works, she will have forgotten you and we’ll know Riven won’t remember a thing either. I’ll wait here. There’s too much Anathema between us for her to forget me.”

  Hud wasn’t scared. And although he went to confront the vile woman who’d killed Mrs Paget, he remained free of hate. He felt pity for any who chose a life of spite in order to fill the nothing inside, whose singular motivation was to destroy. Their ruthless motivations made no sense to him and he would not waste psychic energy on something he didn’t understand. He situated in the middle of the window-wall and waited while the glass automatically cleared. Rebel stood directly opposite, mere centimetres from the barricade. They regarded each other, he with a mask of neutrality, she with a mutinous sneer. Her white hair flattened on her scalp, pink skin visible beneath, her dark jumpsuit crumpled.

  After several minutes, she squinted at him and the recognition they’d hoped was gone, dawned. “Well, well. Did my brother send you here with a posy for me, flower-boy?”

  Refusing her the satisfaction of a reply or a display of disappointment, Hud turned heel and retraced his steps. Rebel’s increasingly strident abuse and threats followed him along the corridor as he headed back upstairs to the kitchen.

  “My brother will come for me! And he’ll bring the hordes of the damned on his heels.”

  Hud couldn’t prevent a glance at the kitchen table where Mrs Paget had so recently died. Fortescue had added dozens of colourful orchids to its scrubbed surface and fat white candles burned in tribute, the air perfused with sweet chrism balm. Her nightgown was folded to hide the stains, softened by the ambient flickering of flames. There were no traces of blood on the floor, sick-room equipment cleared away. Hugo entered moments later. His gaze lingered sadly on the shed nightgown, before he squared his shoulders and the pair adjourned to the lounge room. Both sunk gratefully onto the settee.

  “Interesting that I find myself consulting with you on our next moves.”

  “Which are?” Hud said, well aware of their shrinking options, but hoping to ease Hugo’s loss by distraction.

  Surprisingly, the big man laughed. “You know as well as I what task awaits us now. The chance for flitting in the shadows has past. We must roust the rats from their nest. Can your tech friends triangulate the location of Riven’s apartment using landmarks obvious in their recording?”

  “Hundred per cent they can. But we don’t need them to.”

  Hugo raised his eyebrows. “If Riven doesn’t know now that Rebel and Quint are missing, he soon will. He’ll hunt us, not if but when. And he’ll bring an army of fighters. The girl, Tiffany, is still entangled with him. He’ll be angry and more unpredictable, putting an innocent in grave danger.”

  “Tiffany hasn’t been innocent since she sported nappies and sucked on a dummy. I didn’t say I disagreed with that plan. All we have to do is ask Priscilla for the address. She’s been to their apartment.”

  Hugo sat back, appraising Hud. “You masquerade as a moron to hide your intelligence. It is a compelling disguise.”

  “Gee, you’re really great at compliments. How much time do you think we have before more like him arrive?”

  “The time it takes for a plane to travel here.”

  “Is it too late to … intervene?”

  “Radical action is now our best course. We have an even slimmer gap of opportunity if the Priestess deems a visit a priority. In that case, we have no time left. And what we face will be far worse than Riven. We do not want the Keeper to waltz home straight into the arms of the enemy. We need to give her as much time as possible to gather the lost articles.”

  “I guess that means sleep is out of the question. Fortescue is worried he’s not heard a peep from Bea. It seems a bad omen.”

  “Bad omen or not, to the last soldier standing, we do what we can to make our base safe here.”

  “You’re also lousy at inspiring confidence. I’ll get Andie and Bickles up to speed.”

  “I will speak with Priscilla.” Hugo lumbered to his feet with a groan, and peered down at Hud. “I am sorry Mrs Paget made the ultimate sacrifice. There was no finer Trinity Warrior. But proper mourning must be postponed until we win. And win we will, for there is no other choice.” He thrust out his fist for a bump. “Where do we live?”

  Astonished, Hud obliged. “On the edge.”

  He could hear Hugo chuckling all the way out along the balcony, until he reached Daniel’s study where Priscilla was imprisoned, slamming the door behind him. Phoning Andie and Bickles’ room, Hud woke them, steeling himself for the job of giving bad news. Their voices outside preceded them.

  “He sure is a stubborn coot.”

  “Careful what you call him, Andie. He may be from the dawn of time, but Fortescue’s got bionic hearing,” Bickles said. They stopped dead in the doorway, surveying the table altar.

  “She’s gone on,” Hud said quietly.

  “Gone on?” they asked in unison.

  “To where?” Bickles said. “Where has she gone, Hud?”

  Hud told them of Mrs Paget’s passing, glossing over the suffering. He tried to convey that she had been ready and was at perfect harmony with her fate. Andie leaned against Bickles in the doorframe and wept. They hugged for a long while, until Hud could spare them no more time. On hearing the potion had failed to wipe the twins’ memory, the pair seated on the other side of the servery window, looking in from the lounge room. No one had to voice the opinion that gathering at the table right now was very poor form. Or maybe they’d never sit there again.

  With
puffy, red-rimmed eyes, Andie dabbed at her nose. Soggy tissues made a small mound in front of her, which Hud thought very unhygienic. The catsuit was likely incinerated in favour of tights and an oversized tee emblazoned with a motto only a robotics engineer would understand: Keep your end effector away from my force sensor.

  “Is that in Elvish or Klingon? I can never tell the difference,” Hud said.

  “Are you okay, Hud?” Andie asked, ignoring his lame attempt at a joke. “We know she was your favourite. You had so much in common.”

  Perched on his stool with arms crossed over his chest, Bickles maintained a familiar stoic expression next to her. It meant he exhausted all effort to keep it outwardly together.

  “Actually, I’m cool. Mrs Paget will always be with me, you know?” Andie and Bickles nodded sympathetically, clueless as to what Hud really meant.

  On the kitchen side, he busied himself making cups of tea, bringing out a raspberry clafouti and Chantilly cream from the fridge, avoiding the table in favour of the bench. Bickles watched leerily as he served them, topping their slices with a dollop of cream and a decorative sprinkle of icing sugar. He knew exactly where in the cupboard the sugar was stored and the location of the sifter.

  “Bummer. No fresh raspberries to go with my clafouti.”

  “Your what?” Bickles grimaced. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  It seemed fitting they toast Mrs Paget by enjoying the fruits of her favourite activity. Hud paused, an ornate silver cake slide suspended in one hand, a sieve in the other.

  “Fine. Why?”

  “Er, no reason.” Bickles’ focus slid to Andie and they exchanged a worried look. “No reason at all.”

  Hud cocked his head. “Listen.”

  A solo violin raised in song, its haunting melody flooding the warehouse. The three weren’t particularly hungry, but ate in Mrs Paget’s honour, to the accompaniment of Fortescue pouring out his grief in poignant celebration of her life.

  “Bach’s ‘Chaconne from Partita No. 2 in D’. Beautiful, isn’t it?” Hud said dreamily, once the music had faded.

  “That’s it!” Andie exclaimed in alarm. “Who are you and what have you done with Hud?”

  “The guy who’s cooking skills extend to lifting a pizza-box lid,” Bickles said. “That cake was delicious, by the way.”

  “Flan … it’s really more of a flan.”

  “Whose knowledge of ancient music goes back as far as Echo and the Bunnymen’s ‘The Killing Moon’.”

  “No need to go past that song, Andie. Nothing will ever top it.”

  “Hud!” she shouted, clearly on the verge. “Should we hire a grief counsellor? You’re acting weird. Remember last time …?” She stopped, guilt-ridden at bringing up the sensitive issue of Hud’s father’s death and the reminder of his depressive spiral.

  He sighed. “I meant to be taken literally when I said Mrs Paget will always reside in my heart. I’ve inherited her. She’s in here.” He tapped his chest. “And up here.” He tapped his forehead. “Everything she ever knew. Her history, her studies. All of it. I am now the Trinity Archivist.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Bickles, narrowing his eyes as Hud stacked the dishwasher and wiped down the benches, scrubbing a particularly stubborn spot. “What now?”

  Extracting a cloth and furniture polish from beneath the sink, Hud replied, “Hugo wants a demonstration of our martial-arts skills. And then he’ll teach you how to fire weapons, throw knives, generally impart skills aimed at shortening an enemy’s longevity.”

  “You? As in … not us?”

  Hud tapped his head again. “It’s already up here.”

  “Are you going to buff them to death?” Andie asked, evidently unconvinced of his mental resilience.

  “Tidying as you go is much easier in the long run,” he said. “Go on. Head to the basement and learn how to kill things. I am sufficiently proficient at dispensing our foe.”

  “Or at least bringing them to a high shine,” Bickles snickered.

  Andie nodded, grinning. “You’ll render those bastards dustless and lustrous.”

  “After they’ve accessed a dictionary.”

  “It’s true,” Hud beamed. “My vocabulary is no longer quotidian.” Symbiosis with a nine-hundred-plus-year-old woman sure had its advantages.

  Thirty-Three

  There was no retracing the missteps and foolish detours sending me deeper into the maze. If only those I loved weren’t forced to accompany me. Had I stayed wrapped in Raphaela’s drapes instead of taunting Malachi, would Smithy have endured torture to the point of catatonia? Had I not let go of his hand, would I still be whole, my spirit and corporeal selves bonded? Instead, the astral tether stretched and fragmented under the strain, separating me forever from my true self. The boy I loved was trapped in purgatory, just as I was, no way out. Nothing aside from awareness stood between the Crone and her Stone.

  A mere wisp, I lingered on the footbridge that swayed perilously. Rubbery time snapped elastic and many incidents converged as one. The club heaved under the onslaught of the explosion, its structure disintegrating. A chandelier plunged to the bandstand in a tinkling fusillade, scattering violinists, who abandoned their instruments, statues ripped from plinths and smashing in a halo of chipped stone. The buckling floor tossed partygoers into the air, before imploding, a fissure opening beneath their feet in a tumult of booms and snaps. Finesse’s huge black-velvet day bed tipped and disappeared down into the spreading cavity. Beautiful revellers uncaged the ugliness within, scratching and trampling each other, fistfuls of hair, jewellery and clothes flying in their madness to flee.

  Shirking her human limits, Finesse shrieked. Her scream was a dagger to the senses. Any nearby planted their hands over their ears, while scrambling from the monster taking shape in their midst. Of humanoid form, her skin stretched like a jaundiced drum skin over an emaciated carcass until she towered more than two metres tall. Thin serrated wings split from her jutting shoulder blades, huge knobbly curved horns spiralling forth from her temples. She was a demonish incarnation from biblical legend, with glowing red eyes and a lipless mouth full of spines. Her tongue lashed out, a long, flaming whip with a barbed tip. Her best description was half Lucifer, half warped dragon.

  She swatted four jagged valleys across Latoya’s waist, reaching up to jerk the blade from her leathery neck. With my Keeper’s vision I could see rips in the creature’s being, stars spinning in infinite iteration in the emptiness beyond. And behind that vastness, another indistinct glimpse of a ragged, dark-haired little girl running for her life out into the endless dunes of the desert. She turned to look once over her shoulder, showing me the puckered scar where her right eye had been.

  But as soon as Finesse cast off the knife, the image vanished, leaving the impression I’d imagined it all. The Keeper’s dagger came to a halt on the metal landing at my shoes, but I was too insubstantial to collect it. Halcyon crumbled like lavish cults of old, whose greed and vanity corroded them from within.

  Latoya staggered and doubled over, holding in the wreckage of her gored middle. The witch-demon hoisted her in a single clawed hand, hurling her into the back corner of the hall where she landed in a crooked heap as if a discarded toy. Too late, Daniel tackled the beast with a cry of hatred. They tumbled together on the tilted ground, a churning mass of limbs heading for the chasm, which plummeted many floors below. The roof began to collapse, brick walls folding inwards.

  Oblivious of the destruction, Daniel tore at her with his bare hands, shocking her with the savagery of his loathing. Not for long. Her reptilian maw stretched wide, displaying putrid grey gums. Her fangs were hollow and filled with black ichor.

  “It is time I give you what you want, puny man,” she lisped with the mouths of many, a guttural rumble.

  Daniel was on top, wrestling with her. Black worms split from her flesh, wriggling along the desiccated tissue of her forearm. He clutched Finesse’s throat in a chokehold, his face millimetres from her snapping jaw.
Her snakish tongue lashed out, forcing Daniel to relinquish his grip, grabbing the meaty protuberance instead. The barbed stinger’s spines peeled open with a horrid slurp, seeking to bury themselves in the flesh of his neck. Worms swarmed over his hand. He yanked hard and she garbled a yelp, her tongue retracting.

  “We’ll descend the abyss together,” he said in disgust.

  She snickered. “As you wish.”

  Their battle continued with renewed spite, Daniel pushing two fingers into her blazing red orbs. I hovered to Latoya, a spectral observer unable to help, unable to offer solace, pitiful and impotent. Somehow she perceived me, her features slack with pain and blood loss. Staring up at my ephemeral being, her eyes brimmed with disappointment.

  “You are all that stands between us and the pit?” She wheezed for air. I reached to steady her, my hand passing through her body. “It’s all been for nothing. We are lost.” A tear leached onto her cheek, before she exhaled her final breath. “My brother.”

  Latoya died despairing, and I would never be brave enough to tell Hugo it was my fault. His sister was right: I was a woeful Keeper, a rock-bottom failure. There was so little left of me that I was unable even to straighten her broken body or close her ever-staring eyes.

  Daniel was no match for the witch’s size or her malice, which fuelled her inhuman strength. His trunk was a mass of bloodied ribbons from talons and lashing horns, her black infection veining his skin. Their fight edged the two closer to the breach, but at this rate, Daniel would be dead before the fall. He was clearly weakening. Futility consumed me. I had to do something. But what?

  Above the commotion, that buzzing grew insistent. The vibrations originated from a hotspot on my thigh. Finally, I realised it was not just another abrasion, but the neglected Keeper’s Key Velcroed in my pocket. Tugging the parcel out, I unfolded the oilskin, a heavy double-sided gold and ruby studded triangle fitting on my palm. One I had no difficulty manipulating in my phantom state. This object held no Trinity record: past Keepers had not touched its surface or activated its power. But this mystery must wait until we were safely free of the Crone’s lair. There were finger grooves on what I speculated was the top. What did I have left to lose?