by Sean Stone
I thanked Marie for healing me and told her I needed to go. She provided me with some fresh clothes. A jumper and pair of trousers made out of matching brown hemp. I didn’t care, I was just glad that I didn’t have to walk through the Dregs in the buff. She returned my keys and phone to me. My phone was beyond repair, but my keys were fine, if a little blackened.
‘The power of the river will still be healing and protecting your body for about a day or so now. Feel free to come back any time!’ she said before I walked away. It was a nice idea. Sitting there chatting to her had been serene. It made a nice change. If I had some free time on my hands one day I’d be sure to visit. That was if I could bring myself to drive through the Dregs. But for now, I needed to find Drew.
I walked back towards town, hoping that my uncle wasn’t dead.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I had a Wraith house nearby so I went there to grab some much needed cash. Then I got a taxi to take me home. When I walked into my apartment I was stunned to see Leah sitting on my sofa. I recognised her just in time to stop myself from flinging spells at her. A good thing I did recognise her otherwise things would have got pretty messy. She might have hit me with a river.
‘How did you get… never mind,’ I said as I remembered that I hadn’t restored the protection spells. I’d forgotten too much lately. The protections spells, Drew’s ring. I was becoming a pretty sloppy assassin.
‘The shit’s really hitting the fan. That’s why I came here,’ she said, standing up and going to the kitchen to pour me a drink. ‘Nice clothes.’ She nodded her head at the hemp trousers and shirt I was wearing.
‘Thanks, your sister gave them to me,’ I replied with a knowing smile.
‘Jasmine gave you…’ her voice faltered and died as she caught on. ‘You know.’
I nodded. ‘You’re a nymph. Marie healed—‘
‘Marie? She took a human name?’
‘Yeah, I helped her choose it.’
‘And you chose Marie?’ She raised an eyebrow at me.
‘I couldn’t think of anything better.’
‘God help any daughter you might have in the future.’
I gave her a sardonic look. ‘Anyway, she healed me completely. Why didn’t you heal me after I burned my arm. You left me with Drew’s crappy salve!’
‘It worked, didn’t it?’
‘Not the point.’
‘My powers aren’t as strong as Marie’s. She’s stronger because she hasn’t left the river. Whilst I’m in the city my powers are weaker. I would’ve had to take you down to my river to heal you.’
‘Ah, kind of like how I don’t have access to energy if I move too far away from a power source.’
‘Yeah, except you could draw from nature if you just got your act together.’
‘You sound like my uncle,’ I quipped. I grabbed my drink and took a hearty gulp. The rum was delicious and I didn’t even care how early in the morning it was.
‘Drew is right.’
‘It’s not that easy. I can’t do it,’ I said testily. I was sick of people telling me how deficient I was. I was trying my hardest for god’s sake.
‘It actually is that easy. I knew Tristan, the first wizard. I taught him to convert energy into magic. So I know how it works. The only thing stopping you is your own head. You just need to find a way to break through your block. Humans are so closed-minded sometimes.’
‘Hold up. Tristan. You knew him? And why did Jasmine think I was him? You’ve got some explaining to do.’
She sighed and ran a hand through her long, luscious hair. ‘Okay. You look like Tristan. Not exactly. His hair was more ginger whereas yours is dark. But your face is so similar. My guess is you must be descended from him but I cannot find any records confirming it. Tristan never had any children so the relation would be distant. He did have a brother.’
‘Is that why you started working for me? Because I look like Tristan?’
‘Well, you didn’t really think I wanted to cook your books, did you? I wanted to solve the puzzle. Plus, you’ve kind of grown on me.’ She gave me a sly smile.
‘So, you say you taught Tristan to draw energy from the elements. But what about controlling them?’ I explained to her about how I’d controlled the weather the night at Monkeys.
‘I didn’t teach Tristan that and as far as I know he couldn’t do it. Sorry, Jacob, but I don’t know how you managed to pull that off. No wizard in this city has ever done such a thing. No human that I know of has and I’ve been here since before the city was built.’
‘How old are you?’ I asked. Neither she, nor any of her sisters, looked a day over twenty-five and yet here she was telling me she was a couple of thousand years old at least.
’There’s more pressing matters to worry about right now. Like I said…’ she tossed a piece of paper with scruffy writing on it onto the kitchen counter. ‘…the shit has hit the fan.’
I snatched up the note and read the words scrawled on it.
I have your uncle. Come to the Duelling Patch at 6pm of you want to see him alive again.
It wasn’t signed but I didn’t need it to be signed. Kagen had kidnapped my uncle to make sure I walked into whatever trap he was setting. I had the day to prepare for whatever he had planned.
‘At least he’s not dead,’ I said.
‘There’s that. And if you handle things properly tonight he’ll stay not dead. But that isn’t all that’s happened.’
‘What else?’ I said. I doubted it was going to bother me more than my uncle being kidnapped. I didn’t really care about anyone else in the city. Except for Leah and she was standing in front of me.
‘The mayor is in hospital. He was almost killed by a burglar last night.’
‘What?’ I said, in literal disbelief. No burglar would try robbing the mayor. He lived in one of the most secure houses in the city. Dorian had obviously tried to kill him. But it was unlike him to fail.
Leah looked at me with a sombre expression and I knew there was more. ’His wife and daughter were home. They’re both dead.’
‘Fuck,’ was all I could say. This was on me. Dorian had attacked Harper’s family because of what I’d said. Dorian wanted Harper alive, that was why he had survived the attack. His wife and daughter had been the message. It was hard to push back the guilt that was attacking me. I’d caused the death of a child. An innocent little girl. I downed the rest of my drink.
‘There’s more,’ Leah said, her voice a hushed whisper. She didn’t want to push my mood anymore. It was already dangerously low and she could tell.
‘What?’ I clamped my eyes shut and waited for the next guilt-ridden piece of news to hit me.
‘Artemis Saxon is dead.’
I opened my eyes. That really didn’t bother me so much. Not even the fact that it was undoubtedly my fault. He’d made his bed when he chose to go against Dorian. Harper’s wife and daughter had made no such choice. They were innocent.
‘How?’ I asked.
‘His body was found with fifty-two knife wounds.’
‘Wow.’ That was an impressive amount. I guess when you’re taking down the Prime Wizard the more wounds the better the chance of success. I wondered how many of these stabs he’d been alive to feel.
‘You okay?’ She reached across the kitchen counter and gripped my wrist. Her touch was more comforting than I thought it would be. I didn’t usually like people touching me but the warmth of her fingers was a blessing on such a dire morning.
‘Yeah. But I’m going to need another drink.’ I pushed my glass across the kitchen counter to Leah. She looked down at it, one eyebrow raised. She withdrew her hand slowly and stood up to her full height.
‘I’m sure you would, but I’m not your employee here and even if we were at work I’m not your waitress.’ She did pass me the bottles of rum and coke so I could pour my own drink.
‘You know, sometimes I think it would be easier if I hired a more compliant manager,’ I told her, a sly grin on
my face to let her know I was joking.
‘Your business would fall apart without me. You don’t know how to launder money properly, remember?’ she shot back. She even gave me a cheeky wink.
I chuckled. ‘That reminds me. Of all the things you could’ve done when you came to try out living in the city, you chose accounting. Why? In fact, why did you come to the city at all?’
‘Well, how about you pour me one of those drinks and I’ll tell you all about it?’ She strutted past me and sat on my sofa, curling her legs underneath her. It was nice seeing her looking so at home in my apartment. It was only when I was halfway through pouring the drinks that I realised I was now playing waiter to her. I shook my head and laughed. Cheeky bitch.
I placed the drinks down on the coffee table and flopped down onto the sofa next to Leah. ‘So, what brings you to the city?’ I asked as if I was meeting her for the first time in a bar.
She sipped her drink thinking about the question. ‘Boredom. Do you know how old this city is?’
I shook my head. ‘I know the Romans built it so it has to be at least two-thousand years old,’ I said.
‘About that,’ she agreed. ‘I was born long before the city was built. This land has always been inhabited by magical beings that were here long before the humans settled here. The Celts knew of these beings and avoided them. These were dangerous parts.’ She put on a mock terrified face even though I knew she was being deadly serious.
‘My mother told my sisters and I to broker peace between the species. The land was divided up using the rivers as a borderlines. Pretty much all of this land was covered in forest back then, except for the bogs of course. The Fae took the North.’
‘The Fairy Woods,’ I said. It was still called that today and everybody knew to stay out unless you had something to offer. The Fae were partial to babies.
She nodded. ‘Those woods used to come right up to the river.’ It had been pushed back significantly now and a good thing too otherwise the poshest part of the city would be full of fae. ‘The East was taken by the Elves, and the South, the Bog Lands, was taken by the Goblins and their ilk.’ I knew some of this from my history lessons when I was a kid. The Elves had lost all of their forests and those that had stayed in the city had been forced to live in the human society. It was a big change for the tree-dwellers.
‘We forced them to stay in their own lands and crossing the river was recognised as an act of war. The inhabitants were always at war with each other for more land and the only things they hated more than each other was outsiders. Humans. If any humans made camp in these lands they died. That’s how the city got its name.’
‘Sangford?’ I didn’t see the connection.
She sighed and shook her head at me. ‘Your uncle is right about you. You should really read more history books.’
‘Oh, don’t you start.’ I gave her shoulder a playful shove and she giggled as she leaned a little closer toward me. She was sitting closer than I’d realised, our arms were almost touching. I thought about shifting a little further away but didn’t.
‘When the Romans first made camp here it was on my stretch of river. They stopped at the Ford which now has—’
‘The Blood Bridge on it.’ I did remember that the largest bridge in the city had been built on top of the ford that the city had been built around.’
‘They stopped on the Fae side of the river. By the time the sun rose the river was red with blood. So they called it the Sanguis Ford.’
‘Sanguis being Latin for blood.’
‘There we go, you do know some things,’ she said with a teasing smile.
‘Shut up.’
‘Eventually when the Romans did manage to settle they named the place Sangford.’
‘How did they manage to settle if the Fae kept killing them?’
‘Easy. They settled on the other side and made a deal with the Elves. After the humans learned magic they had a much easier time fighting the Fae.’
‘You taught them magic. That means you helped them conquer this place?’ I asked.
‘Not directly,’ she blushed. ‘I taught one man magic and the humans were initially acting out of self-defence. And despite what you hear about humans being the deadliest predator they are far from it. The Fae are vicious little fuckers and the Elves were duplicitous. They all got what was coming to them. Not long after the humans settled here another war broke out. My sisters and I had to bring everyone to the peace table again. A new treaty was signed in blood making it almost completely unbreakable.’ Blood magic was one of the strongest forms of magic and the only real way to get around it was by finding loopholes.
‘The original factions upheld the original treaty and the humans agreed to stay out of Fae lands. Any lands that humans had already claimed they were allowed to keep. By that time the Elves and the Goblins had already invited them into their lands so they could hardly revoke the invitation. Besides which, the war was mainly against the Fae anyway. Everybody seems to hate them.’
‘Hang on, how does this incredibly long history lesson explain why you came to the city? You’re not going to walk me through the entire two thousand years, are you?’ There was no way I was going to be party to that. I know I had some time to kill before I had to walk into whatever trap Kagen had set for me, but I could think of better ways to kill time than a history lesson.
‘I’m just trying to give you an idea of how boring it was for me!’ I couldn’t not chuckle at that. ‘I spent two millenniums just watching over this city from my river. I wanted to know what it was like to live. I wanted a human life. So I took one. I went to college and I worked my way to where I am now.’
‘But, why accounting?’
She shrugged. ‘You think of accounting as boring, but nothing about human life is boring to somebody who has never lived it. The way I saw it was that numbers seem to be the foundation for everything the human race does. Those tiny little numbers were behind everything. I wanted to study them.’
‘And do you now have a greater understanding of the race from your studies?’ I asked.
‘No,’ she said meekly. ‘Numbers are pretty boring but if I went and started again that would be cheating. Humans don’t have that option. Maybe I’ll do something more interesting next time. Like biology.’
‘Wow, you never learn, do you?’ I laughed.
She gave me a cheeky punch to my arm and without thinking about it I reached out and tickled her side. She laughed and then fell against my shoulder. She felt warm even through my hemp outfit. I could smell the fruitiness of her hair.
‘I like your shampoo,’ I said like an idiot.
‘Umm, thanks,’ she said. She shifted away from me, her cheeks a little red. Sensing that something weird had just happened I stood up from the sofa and stretched my arms up above my head as if I had a cramp.
‘I need to get changed out of these horrible clothes,’ I told her indicating the hemp nastiness that Marie had provided me with.
Once I was changed we grabbed lunch and brainstormed how tonight was going to go down. The Duelling Patch was in the North woods. Not quite in the Fairy Woods but close enough. The patch had been created to settle disputes between… well anybody who had a dispute. There was nothing magical about it, but a couple of centuries ago it was law that the winner of the duel was the legal victor in all ways. Nowadays there was no such law and the Patch was largely a hangout for kids on the weekend. Any fights that took place there were technically illegal.
The first thing I did was tell Dorian what was going to go down tonight. If I didn’t inform the big guy what was going on it would come back to bite me in my arse. It was going to be out of sight of the city but who knew whether the fight might travel into the city proper. It was actually Monroe who I called who said he’d make the top dog aware. A part of me had been hoping he might offer some help but no such offer was made.
‘You’ve got three options,’ Leah said, as we glanced down at the hand drawn map she’d created for ou
r war meeting. ‘Option one, you attempt to take him in a straight fight in the Patch. Problem there is that he undoubtedly has some trickery planned. You’ve killed him several times already so you know you can. The only issue will be dealing with his remains before he regenerates.’
‘I’ve got more lead boxes to toss his ashes into. This time I won’t let them out of my sight,’ I promised. ‘What are the other options?’
‘Option two, lead him south towards the river. The river is strong enough to douse his flames and I’ll be stronger the closer we are to the river.’
‘Oh, no,’ I interjected. ‘Leah, you aren’t coming.’
‘Excuse me?’ She planted a hand on her hip as one of her perfectly shaped eyebrows rose in inquisition.
‘Kagen’s already got Drew. I’m not going to risk your life too.’
‘My life is my own to risk. I thought we’d already had the talk about you not making decisions for me. I’m coming. End of.’
‘Fine,’ I huffed in defeat.
‘Option, three,’ she continued. ‘The Fae lands are just West of the Patch. If you lead him in there there’s a good chance they’ll take care of him for you. I’d be willing to bet they know how to put him down and keep him down. The downside of that is they might kill you too.’
‘Well, a combination of one and two sounds best. I don’t fancy my chance with the Fae. We won’t be able to figure out a surefire way of beating him until we know what he has planned.’
‘Which we won’t know until we get there,’ she finished.
Five pm rolled around faster than I expected and the two of us headed down to her car. It was time to put the Phoenix-Born to bed.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Leah drove us as close to the Duelling Patch as her car could get. Emergency circumstances or not I was still embarrassed at being driven in her horrid little beetle, but my car was a smoking wreck. The little dirt road ended at the edge of the trees through which we would find the Patch. We both exited the car. I took several deep breaths to calm my nerves. My line of work usually involved sneaking up on someone and killing them. I always had the element of surprise. Never in my career had the target given me the time and place. There was every chance that I would be the one dying this evening. And I was not okay with that. I liked my life and I had no intention of seeing it end just yet.
