Then I heard a giggle, a loud laugh somewhere in the tunnel. The Keres let go of her last few breaths. A second later she was dead and burning. I looked up to see a girl watching me. She had a knife in her hands and she was most definitely a human, dressed in leather pants and leather waistcoat.
There was something familiar in her features, but I couldn’t quite pin down what it was exactly. Her dark tar hair was swirled in a ponytail, and she had striking dark eyes.
“Good, I’m glad that someone finally killed this thing. The beast murdered a lot of my friends,” the girl said, staring at the burning corpse with a strange gleam in her eye.
I lost my balance for a second, probably from the loss of blood or the fact that I drank that damn elixir too quickly. When I gathered myself, the tunnel ahead was empty, and the girl was gone. For a split second I wondered if maybe I was hallucinating. After all, the Keres nearly drained me. My head felt like it was split in two.
I left the creature on the tracks, knowing that in a couple of minutes her body would turn to ash.
My feet started moving. I hoped to get back to that abandoned platform and find Zach. The wound in my neck dried out and at least I wasn’t losing any more blood. The elixir must have sealed it off.
I wiped the knife off on my trousers and put it back, wondering if there were any other ancient creatures hidden in the tunnels, ready to strike back.
I was also thinking about my mother. That vision from earlier on was still fresh in my memory, and I desperately tried to hang on to it.
The demon that was with my mother was someone important. None of this seemed like it happened for real, but I felt his power, his strength deep in my bones when the Keres was draining me.
I slapped myself hard, and my legs nearly gave underneath me. This wasn’t the time or place to be nostalgic. Yes, Morpheus could have been my father. He told my mother that I was special, that I was going to make bad decisions in the future. God, this felt so surreal.
I kept walking, telling myself that the Keres implanted those thoughts into me and they might not necessarily be real. Moments later I saw Zachary sitting on the edge of another platform. His face was scratched, smeared with blood.
“Are you all right?” I asked, knowing how stupid I must have sounded. Zach flinched, took out his gun, and pointed it at me. When he finally recognised me, he lowered it.
“I caught up with one, but the bastard had a stun gun. He hit me a few times after that,” Zach explained, shaking his head. His thoughts were murky, dark, he didn’t remember exactly what had happened to him.
“I got attacked by something, a dog or, I don’t know, a wolf,” I lied, not even knowing if this story would hold together. A second later, Zach exhaled loudly and looked at me filled with pure joy and excitement.
“My sister is alive. She was here, and I bet she’s been living here amongst others with Nameless,” he said, fully convinced that he was right, that this wasn’t any kind of coincidence. As I stared back at him, I finally realised what was so familiar about the girl in the tunnel. It was Zara, Zach’s missing sister.
Chapter 12
“The secret of getting things done is to act!” Dante Alighier
I bit my tongue, knowing that I couldn’t tell Zach that I saw his sister just a second ago. Zach’s mind was in havoc. Part of me knew that it was definitely her; she was the spitting image of him. I began to wonder if she had been hidden in the underground tunnels all these years when everyone was looking for her. Was she part of Nameless’s gang? Was she his accomplice or his lover? I didn’t want to believe that she’d chosen magic over her family, that she chose to abandon her own daughter for a half demon.
Our plan was suddenly worthless and the only other lead was Gjöll—the place filled with a lot of myths, to which the entrance was forbidden and most likely guarded by other supernatural beings.
“Come on, we have to get out of here. Nameless Thief abandoned these people. They are stuck here without him,” I said, wondering if I should dwell on the subject of his missing sister. We never really had a chance to discuss what happened when she vanished and Zach had no idea that I knew her story.
We needed to get outside to face reality, but I didn’t want to bring unnecessary attention to myself. My clothes were covered with blood and my cut face needed to be looked at. The tunnels were out of the Watchers jurisdiction, so I didn’t have to worry about exposure or being questioned for breaking the protocol yet again. Zach’s thoughts were filled with images of his sister, and he wasn’t in the right state of mind for me to ask any questions about what happened earlier.
“No, I have to find that man. He knows where Zara is,” Zach said, still pumped with adrenaline and desire to go after Nameless’s ex-associates.
I was drained, barely keeping myself in a standing position. The Keres had a feast on my blood, and I had to regenerate my strength. I didn’t have time to argue with him, and there was no way I would use my abilities to tamper with his already messed up head. I had to try to convince him in the most natural way.
“Look at us, we need to get out of here and you need to get more officers down here. These people outnumbered us. Nameless isn’t here, Zach,” I said, more forcefully.
Then Zach brought his hands to his face and let go of a painful roar. His emotions hit me like a bullet. Anger, pain and regret, he was blaming himself that he gave up on her, sobbing quietly. It was heartbreaking. He had lost hope and now she was here, hiding in the tunnels. I stood there, watching the man that had never shown any weakness, the man that had pushed me to get a grip, crying his heart out.
No, this wasn’t happening. I couldn’t take it. He was tougher than that.
“Zach, please stop. Get it together. We will find your sister,” I said, reaching out and squeezing his shoulder. I didn’t know how to act. I never had a man break down in front of me like this.
“She was here, Max. I never told you about her, and I should have. The whole family is convinced that she’s dead,” he said, lifting his eyes to look at me. His pain affected me. I’d never seen anyone so torn with guilt, apart from me. We were affected with the same darkness, the same sorrow from the past. It slowly began to consume us both.
“How are you so sure that these thieves were talking about her? There are thousands of other Zaras in London,” I said, knowing that I shouldn’t be taking the hope away from him. Zach wanted to reunite her with her daughter, but Zara wasn’t the same person anymore. She was influenced by magic, sucked into the demonic world.
“I know her. She is my flesh and blood, Maxine,” he kept saying, looking around, ready to leave me and penetrate these tunnels by himself until he found her. I couldn’t bear his pain. We’d both lost someone that we cared for, but I couldn’t let Zach forget about our case and just look for her. I was certain that I saw her in the tunnel; it wasn’t an illusion created by the Keres. She spoke to me, standing in the middle of the tracks like she owned the tunnels.
“Fine, I understand, but we can’t stay here right now. We need to get out and find Nameless. Remember what the others said: the girl is with him,” I said, placing my tired hands on Zach’s shoulders once again and sending tiny sparks of energy through his system. It was a simple calming vibe that would put his thoughts back in order. It wouldn’t harm him in any way.
“She was here, Max,” he pressed, shaking his head. When he got up I exhaled with relief. We finally started walking together, heading to the way out. It took us over an hour to reach the exit tunnel. My head was banging, but this time it wasn’t because of tequila. I had lost so much blood that my energy was running on empty barrel.
A few of the underground workers surrounded us once we showed up on one of the platforms. I wasn’t surprised. After all, I was covered with blood. Zach became unresponsive. He kept repeating that he had to go back to the tunnels, that his sister was still there. The rail staff insisted on calling the police and an ambulance.
I used my own phone to call Ricky
, hoping that he would show up before anyone else. This whole adventure taught me that creatures from the underworld were willing to fight in order to survive, and that they adapt to human surroundings. I couldn’t afford to wait and be questioned by Zach’s crew, but at the same time I didn’t want to leave him alone.
Moments later when no one paid attention to me, I managed to sneak away from the platform and ask Ricky to meet me in one of the bathrooms. When he showed up, I’d washed most of the blood off my face and looked like a human being again. My reflection in the mirror told me that I needed a blood transfusion. I was pale, my skin almost translucent.
“Let me guess, you were on the case risking your life and being selfish?” Ricky asked, walking into the ladies lou. A few of the women stared at him in shock. I’d asked him to bring a change of clothes from my flat. I hated that he had to see the state I currently lived in, but that was the least of things I needed to worry about right now. Ricky was judgmental, but he wasn’t my father.
“Yeah, there were a couple of difficulties down in the tunnels. One of the underworld creatures, a Keres, nearly drained me of my all blood,” I explained, grabbing the bag with my clothes.
He brought my usual jeans and a T-shirt, plus my favourite jacket. He ran his hands over his jaw, not believing that I had managed to escape unharmed.
“Is Zach all right too?” he asked, when I was done changing. I still needed a shower, or maybe a bath, well, something that could get rid of that overwhelming smell of blood. I felt like the Keres had marked me.
“I don’t know, something happened whilst we were down there. One of the people associated with the thief mentioned his missing sister and Zach went slightly ballistic,” I said, pulling my hair into a ponytail and hoping to put a hood on when we got outside. Sometimes I wished that I could go to the office in heels, wearing a nice blouse and skirt rather being battered on the streets, pretending to be tough and shit. “Then we got separated. I came across the Keres. She drained my blood, and she made me remember stuff, Ricky.”
Ricky walked up to me and placed his hand on my shoulder. I felt the energy flowing through me. He was replacing my strength that the Keres took. He most likely sensed that I was barely standing, acting like I was totally fine. I got a glimpse of his thoughts and saw a red-haired woman. She was probably the one that he had mentioned a few times. His latest date. Sometimes it happened when we were connected.
“None of this sounds good, Max, and how the hell come no one knew that Keres were flying freely through the tunnels of London?”
“I don’t know, it’s some sort of crossover… These people down there, they didn’t seem a hundred percent human. Watchers don’t know about it. Nameless Thief created a tidy nest for himself down there. He must have exposed some of his abilities to his group, keeping it away from others,” I said. “Anyway, Zach was in bad shape when some of the underground workers got to us. He kept talking about his sister like she was alive.”
“You didn’t mention that your lover had a sister,” Ricky muttered. I rolled my eyes.
“It’s complicated, anyway … for a split second I thought I saw her in the tunnel, but now I’m not a hundred percent sure.” I thought about this girl’s features. She did look like Zach, I didn’t doubt that, but my mind had been playing tricks on me ever since I could remember. “The Keres let me see a memory about my mother. I don’t know, I must have been around two when she was talking to a strange demon in my nursery.”
“Max, it’s the past. Do you really want to dig up this stuff? Your mother died of cancer,” Ricky pointed out.
“I know, but this was different. She made me remember every detail of that conversation, which is impossible. I was only two at the time. My mother was aware of our world. A demon named Morpheus was telling her that she had to look after me, that he couldn’t do it or something.”
“That’s impossible. Your mother was human. She didn’t have any knowledge of who you were,” Ricky added, sighing loudly. He knew everything there was to know about me.
“I have no idea what to think. I have a lead, a name. Morpheus. He was the demon that I saw in my memories,” I explained, feeling dejected about this whole thing. “Come on, let’s get back to the office. I think I look decent enough, so I can walk through the streets without attracting too much attention.”
Ricky didn’t want to argue with me, but he didn’t believe that my memory was real. On the way back we chatted about what happened in the tunnels.
It was just after six o’clock in the evening when we arrived back to the office and my head wouldn’t stop throbbing with dull pain. I went straight to my room and shut the door. In the bottom drawer I had a small bottle of vodka. Another thing I kept in case of emergency. Zach was still on my mind while I poured some of it into my throat, and I felt slightly guilty that I left him alone.
He wanted to find his sister and I had to track Nameless Thief, who most likely wasn’t in London any longer. Getting back the letters was crucial, but Gjöll was the only place that I wouldn’t be able to access. For starters, I had no idea if such an entrance even existed on earth.
I had no idea how Nameless managed to even find the way in. He must have realised that the letter gave him an advantage, that he was in possession of something that could save his future.
Ricky was leaving work early tonight to take care of personal business, well, most likely to shag his new date. I didn’t ask any questions, as I had other things on my mind. Lucky for me Arthur hadn’t been in touch, and I was happy that he was giving me some breathing space. After today, I was glad to be alive, but worried about Zach and his state of mind. A moment later, Emma knocked on my door, so I quickly hid the bottle back in the drawer.
“Hey, I just had a strange phone call,” she said. I forgot that she was still pretty fresh in the whole demonic department.
“Who was it?”
“The woman on the phone said that her name was Sister Mary and she was calling from Tyburn Convent in Hackney,” Emma explained, sounding confused. My pulse automatically spiked, and I stood up, still feeling slightly dizzy. Tyburn Convent. It was a name from my past, from years ago, when I was still a child.
My throat was slightly dry, my hands sweaty. I had never visited the nuns after I left the orphanage. After my eighteenth birthday I had an opportunity to start my own life, and I never looked back. The nuns couldn’t have known that I was running a detective agency.
“All right, tell me everything she said,” I asked Emma, acting like this wasn’t a big deal.
Emma shifted her weight to the side.
“Sister Mary first asked if you were working here, and when I said yes, she said to tell you that you need to visit them. Something happened in the monastery.”
“Did she asked about me specifically?”
“Yes, she knew your name,” Emma added. “But when I asked her if she wanted to talk to you, she said no.”
I took a deep breath, wondering what this whole thing was about.
“Max, I think you have to head over there. I heard someone talking in the background about a break-in. I don’t think it’s, you know … demonic business, but that nun was pretty freaked out on the phone.” Emma looked at me with concern. I was still amazed that she was taking this whole thing so calmly. Ricky and I were waiting for that moment when she’d run away and check herself into a mental institution.
My knees felt like paper when I crossed the room to pick up my stuff. After eight years, I was going back to the place where I grew up. I was going back to visit the nuns who’d raised me.
Chapter 13
“There is no greater sorrow. Than to be mindful of the happy time. In misery.” Dante Alighieri
Emma was curious about the phone call, but I wasn’t ready to reveal details about my past, so I told her that I had to leave early to take care of another case. There was dried blood in my hair, and my skin felt sticky and dirty. At first, I went back to my flat and had a shower, the thought of the Ke
res’s dead corpse making my stomach quiver. I didn’t want to show up in the monastery looking indecent. It’s not like I cared about people’s opinions these days, but going back to the place where I grew up made me a little nervous.
Most of the paps had abandoned their post and left. I sneaked out upstairs using the back entrance. I’d had enough excitement for one day, and talking to whoever was left outside on the parking lot, hunting for their next breakthrough story, would only push me over the edge.
A cold shiver passed over my spine when I sat in the tube station going over what happened in the tunnels. Ricky was wrong—that memory was real. It was vivid and Morpheus existed.
My stomach was in knots, and after my visit in the monastery I was certain that I would head straight to the Broken Shoe. There was something unsettling about the phone call that Emma took earlier on. First some demon was advising me to look into the death of my mother, then the Keres used her abilities to bring back that lost memory, and now I was going to speak to the nuns. There were so many questions about the identity of my father, but I had no family, no one that I could ask about him. Deep down I knew that I was only a mongrel and there was nothing special about me.
I reached Hackney forty minutes later. The old cathedral was still there. I’d read somewhere that a couple of years ago the nuns were forced to moved to the other side of Hyde Park. The old Gothic church became unstable and the monastery didn’t have money to take on extensive renovations. Shortly after I started my own life, the nuns stopped looking after orphanage kids. The British Council set up state-run homes and took over most of the duties from the church. Well, I had no idea if that meant kids would get a better upbringing, but a lot of mothers still chose to abandon mongrel babies. Most of them were lucky if they were raised in the foster system.
Doomed Cases Series (1-3) Demonic Triangle Diabolical Quest Infernal Initiation Page 33
