Then the action began.
Wearing a red robe with a white cross as a coat of arms, the priest waved his audience forward. Unsure of her role, Dianne watched the men rise and hoped to remain a bystander.
The hunters stood, and Liam called to her. “Come on.”
She rose to her feet and followed him. Climbing a few small steps brought her before the priest, and she somehow ended up in the middle of the trio, a hunter flanking each shoulder.
With her hands clasped in front of her, she listened as the priest shifted to English with a think Italian accent. “And you, Dianne, have been chosen to wield the blessed sacramental against all powers of darkness.”
The robed man twisted and grabbed a wooden box from the altar. He faced her again and revealed the contents.
Her dagger.
And it was hers. When she had held it three weeks earlier, it had demonstrated a life of its own. Overcoming a martial arts expert in hand to hand combat, she’d used the artifact as a mystical, superior weapon.
The priest closed the box and handed it to her. “When you touch the weapon, it calls upon divine powers. But it also gains the attention of the powers of darkness. Use it only in times of dire need.”
She found the advice logical. “I understand.”
The priest surprised her when he twisted and grabbed another box from the altar. He turned and handed it to the older hunter, Connor. She gazed upon it as the lid flipped open and revealed a copy of her dagger.
Half the straight blade reflected the room’s light, while the other half showed its coppery color. A crossguard protected the user’s fingers on the handle, which was cast with grooves to tighten the grip. Engraving in an ancient language labeled the dagger, but she sensed something odd in the Aramaic lettering.
Although unable to read the old writing, she recognized the characters were different than those on her knife. Confused, she listened to the robed man’s explanation.
“It’s a rare honor to stand before knights who have defeated the enemy. It’s an even more rare honor to have a surviving virgin sacrifice present with the dagger.”
Frustrated by the fixation on her sexual history, Dianne wanted to tell the three men to stop announcing her chastity. But since they seemed to revere her for it, she let the issue go and focused instead on the priest’s other point.
Knights? If she could manage to keep Liam’s interest, if it existed, she could marry a man with a cool title.
Unfazed, the elder hunter-knight answered while Liam presented the robed man with a box he’d held under his arm.
“My son and I consider it a rare honor to retire a cursed dagger. We consider it an even more rare honor to inherit the weapon of our fallen comrades.”
The priest intoned a prayer in Latin while drawing a crucifix in the air with his hand. He then placed on the altar behind him the box the younger hunter had carried.
When he faced his audience again, the robed man held a vial and moved in front of the younger hunter. He traced a cross of oil on the hunter-knight’s forehead with his thumb. “Liam, I bless you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. May God protect you and guide you in all your dealings with Satan and the other evil spirits.”
“Thank you, Father.”
Dianne lowered her head and accepted the same blessing.
“Dianne, I bless you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. May God protect you and guide you in all your dealings with Satan and the other evil spirits.”
She wasn’t sure about a triune deity and a devil with pointy horns, but she figured the good wishes couldn’t hurt. “Thank you, Father.”
After the priest blessed Connor, he brought the ceremony to a quick end.
“Congratulations again, to all of you. It was truly a pleasure meeting you all, but I must leave you now.”
In the Land Rover, Connor drove while Dianne sat alone in the back seat. The three-story shops of the Glengarriff downtown presented a brief distraction to the questions encircling her mind. As the last store passed, yielding the southern county’s lush green hills, she gazed at the high rugged mountains.
Turning towards the backseat, the young hunter anticipated her confusion. “You’ve taken in a lot the last few days.”
His sparkling green eyes impressed her.
She remembered being held hostage in preparation for a ceremonial sacrifice before he’d broken into her prison to deliver the enchanted dagger she’d used to overpower her kidnapper. She also recalled ghosts visiting her to coach her through using her newfound powers of telepathy. “I’ve taken in a lot in the last few months.”
“Months, yes. I stand corrected.”
He seemed interested in her. Had he gone above chivalry? Did he feel a connection to her, as she hoped? “But yeah, I’d like to know what just happened.”
“I’m still learning. I think Father is also.”
“Indeed, I am, strangely. I believe we’ve been so successful in our endeavors that we’re entering uncharted waters.”
“Uncharted for us, but not for your order.”
“It’s our order, lad. You’ve been knighted within it after your first hunt. Technically, Dianne is a lady of the order as well.”
The elder hunter removed his eyes from the road, which appeared to disappear over a rocky cliff into the Atlantic Ocean. “But you’re under no obligation or expectation to render service to the order, young lady. You’re free to return to your life.”
She pondered the impossibility, even her reluctance, to return to her pre-Liam life.
Connor aimed his weathered face back to the windshield and continued with a somber tone. “You’ve been through enough already.”
She jumped on the premise of his statement as a starting point for her inquiry. “But you and Liam are under some sort of obligation?”
“For us, the ceremony in the church was also a commencement.”
“I thought that was just a celebration?”
“Yes and no. Yes, we are celebrating. All three of us accomplished a rare feat by disposing of the wraith that intended to kill you. But we’re not the first, and for those who succeed… well, the reward for good work is more work.”
“What sort of work? You told the priest you were honored to inherit the dagger of the fallen comrades.”
“I can probably explain it best by showing you when we get home.”
At their house, Dianne followed the hunter-knights through a living room with a high ceiling and a stone fireplace while the lifeless eyes of wall-mounted animal heads stared at her. Square windows gave a view to a verdant slope leading to the rocky County Cork coastline.
The men’s strides were long, like children hastening towards a tree on Christmas morning, and Dianne trotted to catch them. She tripped over her small feet but regained her balance at a heavy oaken door.
Connor unlocked a latch. “We call this room the observatory.”
Inside the space, the stone cylindrical silo stuck her as being incongruent with the name. The only views in the windowless alcove were four vertical lines of whitish mortar set ninety degrees apart, marking what she assumed were cardinal directions. A waist-high circular limestone table rose from the cobblestone floor.
Installed in ancient recesses that once held torches, electric diodes illuminated the space as the team followed Connor’s orders. “Dianne, please take the blessed dagger and place it in the center of the table.”
“How precise do I have to be?”
“Don’t worry about it, young lady. It will take care of itself. Just point it that way, towards Israel. It’s best to aim at the last known location.
He handed her the wooden box and then turned his back to her, as did Liam. If her memory served her, the hunters needed to avert their eyes to avoid invoking life into the charmed knife.
She opened the box, wrapped her fingers around the handle, and felt nothing.
It relieved her to grab a dagger that didn’t attach itself to her.
Holding her breath, she leaned forward and placed the weapon on the table, trying to center it. “Okay, guys. It’s on the table.”
The hunters faced the knife, and it assumed a reddish glimmer.
“Let me turn down the lights a bit to make this easier to see.” The elder hunter-knight dimmed the bulbs, and the sanguine illumination looked brighter. In the low light, Connor’s wrinkles revealed his age, and the tight space’s mustiness smelled stronger.
Liam noticed discrepancies. “It shouldn’t be glowing red.”
“Not unless there’s still a victim’s blood on it, no.”
“Shouldn’t it also be moving?”
“Patience, lad. It might be moving too slowly for human perception. There’s definitely something amiss with this dagger. Give it time. I don’t know if this is as silly as it sounds, but perhaps it’s wounded.”
“A heartbroken dagger, Father?”
“Imagine how our old dagger, Dianne’s new dagger, would have reacted had we died rescuing her in Traverse City.”
“I don’t think I can imagine a piece of bronze having emotions, no matter how blessed it is.”
But Dianne could. To her, hers had a living spirit. “That makes sense. It might even be scared, if its last hunters were killed.”
The elder hunter’s tone was reverent. “They were close to victory, but horrible luck had them gunned down by an Israeli Defense Force platoon. Their wraith was hiding with PLO raiders to commit his atrocities, and they were unfortunate victims of the Israeli retaliation in a Beit She’an kibbutz.”
“And now their dagger is your dagger?”
“Indeed, young lady. And their wraith is now our wraith. While we’re waiting for it to move, perhaps now’s a good time to mount the compass.”
“Of course, Father.” Liam reached towards a metal annulus leaning against the wall and hoisted it over the table.
The ring of metal appeared made of bronze and designed as a perfect fit over the table. Four small grooves in the flat surface matched with notches in the annulus, setting its orientation. As Liam slid the metal over the stone, Dianne noticed engraved ticks on the bronze, marking it as a compass.
Connor pointed towards the ruler laying against the wall. “Place the straight edge over it. Perhaps we can measure imperceptible movement over time.”
“Yes, Father.” Liam rested a meter-long wooden ruler over the dagger to add precision to the direction it faced.
Though she found the effort crude, she realized it would prove if the blade rotated.
Connor clarified his expectations. “The dagger will adjust to the last location where the wraith offered tribute. The order suspects he’s drawn blood recently.”
The order remained a mystery to Dianne. A hasty church ceremony had shed little light, generalities from Connor were cryptic, and Liam seemed as confused as she was. “So, we know nothing about his location?”
Connor frowned. “That’s unfortunately correct, although we do know his schedule. This is recent news even to me, but none of the seven known cursed daggers share the exact same calendar. By divine providence, we were able to defeat our wraith in Michigan with spare time to face this new threat.”
The young hunter stepped back from the central stone table. “What he means is that we have an opportunity to save other potential victims. The timing with this wraith places him in his killing cycle right now.”
“And you both just became available to hunt him?”
“Yes, and we’re needed. Apparently, being a hunter is something special, and there aren’t many of us, right, Father?”
The elder hunter clasped his son’s shoulder. “We can only be replenished from our own lineage, and that’s a bit of a murky history. We don’t know who our successor is until the order finds an infant with the possible connection and tests him for candidacy.”
The statement confused her. “How do you test an infant? I mean, today, I’m sure they can use DNA tests. But when they brought Liam to you twenty-five years ago, it was still a new science.”
The elder hunter-knight removed his hand from his son. “Right again, young lady. The tests are secret exercises in divine discernment to assign the son to the father. There was also divine discernment used in our inheriting the responsibilities of the broken hunter line. The order didn’t just assign this to us out of desperation.”
She glanced at the unmoving dagger. “But you don’t think this dagger you inherited is working because it’s not pointing towards the site of your new wraith’s attacks?”
Showing optimism, the elder hunter smiled. “It’s resisting for the moment, but it will oblige us.”
The younger hunter sounded anxious. “It needs to hurry. We were following a twelve-month schedule while looking for Dianne. Our new wraith works in a four-month window. He’s active now and will seek his sacrifice on the full moon in July.”
Connor took a stern tone. “The dagger will help us when we need the help.”
“Yes, Father.”
“And this is a young wraith. He will make mistakes. He’s only had his dagger for one hundred years.”
Dianne had absorbed enough to recognize her value in the new hunt. “How can I help?”
“You’re under no obligation, young lady, and I can’t bear the thought of saving you from one savage only to have you victimized by the next.”
She needed to be with Liam, whatever it took. She’d find a way to meet her obligations, such as paying the rent and caring for her autistic brother, Josh. “I want to help you hunt him. I know what it’s like to be the next victim.”
The elder hunter surprised her with his resistance. “But how could you help?”
“I’m not sure, yet. But I have an enchanted dagger that reacts only to me, and I have some pretty good telepathic powers. You guys need me.”
Liam was nonchalant, hopefully hiding his excitement about her joining them. “She has a point, Father. We never would’ve succeeded without her help last time.”
“Please don’t argue with me. I appreciate your youthful exuberance, but my ruling is, that as a survivor of a past wraith’s attack, Dianne cannot again be placed at risk.”
CHAPTER 3
An hour before making a late evening pot of tea, Liam had mounted a camera over the new dagger and had run an Ethernet cable under the observatory’s door. As he heated the water, he checked the knife’s view in his phone.
Lifting the device’s weight stimulated the dull throbbing under his cast, but the hairline fracture of his humerus allowed him freedom to use his elbow. Wiggling his thumb across the touchscreen imparted unexpected torques across his broken bone, causing deep stings.
He bore the pain, but seeing the unmoving dagger incited his swearing. “Bloody hell.”
He marched to the observatory and tapped keys on the laptop he’d balanced on the bronze compass. Quick work captured the stored video and allowed him to run it at one hundred and twenty times the speed of reality.
His hunch was right. The dagger was moving.
Starting where Dianne had placed it, as close to bearing one-zero-four as she could, it still pointed towards Israel. But during the hour, the blade had rotated an eighth to a quarter of a degree–his eyes lacked the precision to quantify it–and its counter-clockwise creeping provided a clue.
The dagger’s fractional motion ruled out Portugal, Spain, Africa, and the Americas as the location of the wraith’s latest triple homicide. Coaxing more information from the knife could help find the killer’s prior crime, but even if he could determine the location, he’d still be guessing about the next attack.
He hated hunting from two steps behind his prey, but prior success boosted his confidence.
In stopping the savage who’d sought Dianne, he’d proven to himself he was an effective tracker. Based upon the extended, full-year killing cycle, he’d saved nine innocent lives by killing her wraith. He’d hoped to learn he’d set a record among his brethren, but the priest, the only
member of the still-semi-secret order he’d met, had been curt with the accolades.
He didn’t complain about the lack of glory, humility being one requisite in his calling.
Chastity was also a qualification, and it became an uncomfortable one as he returned to the kitchen and saw Dianne’s curves jutting from the stove.
When she turned in his direction, her long straight black hair bounced. He noticed her pleasing face, with expressive thoughtful bright eyes, and sharp and long nose. He like her defined lips, long neck, and her soft, smooth skin.
Then he noticed the whistling pot he’d ignored. “Bloody hell. I’m sorry about that.”
She scolded him, but it seemed affectionate, like the mother he’d never known or the wife he couldn’t have. “I swear you two need a lady watching over you so you don’t burn this place down. And would it hurt to update the curtains? They’re, like, from before your dad was born. You’re in bad need of a lady’s touch.”
“I couldn’t agree with you more. About your touch. I mean, a lady’s touch, indeed.”
He pursed his lips to stop yammering. Although he’d grown up with contemporaries of the opposite sex in his school and social life, he’d sensed a divine force giving him the strength for curbing any romantic desires.
But Dianne unsettled him. “If I stay long enough, I may make some improvements.”
“I’m sure Father would approve.”
She poured water into waiting cups. “Where were you?”
“Oh, yes. I almost forgot. It’s almost imperceptible, but the dagger’s moving.”
“No kidding?”
“No kidding. You can’t see it with the naked eye, but the video on the laptop shows it.”
After he’d developed the rescue plan and had placed himself in front of bullets to save her, he expected instant respect from her. But she seemed to overlook him in favor of paternal authority.
Or was he just becoming hypersensitive in her presence?
“We need to tell your dad.”
Dianne walking behind him, he entered his father’s study.
A plethora of shelved books covered the room’s walls. Liam considered the collection outdated, but he knew some old volumes carried valuable secrets, like the ancient tome of his lineage and that of Dianne’s that shared a decryption scheme despite descending through different lines for centuries.
Prophecy of Blood Page 2
