A short while later, during which Smithy showered and changed into a full set of pyjamas this time, I lay in a foetal position on my bed with my thundering head in his lap. A towel draped Smithy’s knees and a bucket rested on the bedside table, just in case. Although the only thing left to bring up was bile.
“I’m really sorry, Smithy,” I mumbled for the umpteenth time from my prone position. “I don’t know what’s come over me. I swear I only had two little glasses. How can anyone do this on purpose? It’s no fun at all!”
“Don’t sweat it. We’re even now. Besides, I’ve endured much worse from people I like far less. And drinking’s not always about fun. It probably affected you so badly because you hadn’t eaten. Never drink on an empty stomach.”
He minimised movement so as not to provoke my rebellious stomach. The room slowly revolved and my mouth felt as though I’d eaten a fistful of sand.
“Do you think you can stay awake long enough for us to suss out what this package contains?” His fingers peeled open to reveal Raphaela’s gift. Wrapped in brown paper and tied by string, it was the size and shape of a large green apple. Oddly, the comparison made me think of the Garden of Eden and I hoped it wasn’t a bad omen.
“There’ll be no sleep until the urge to hurl subsides. I’ve never felt so ill. I thought sea-sickness was bad.”
Bea stalked into my room, giving me a disdainful onceover. “Just desserts, Winsome. I hope this teaches you never to accept illicit substances from strangers! You are fortunate there is no chance presently to deliver a lengthy, very timely lecture on disobedience. You can expect it at the first opportunity.”
Mrs Paget and Fortescue filed in at her rear. “In Winsome’s defence, Bea,” Fortescue said. “She was not to know the drink Seth gave her was cinnaber.”
He dragged my desk chair closer and offered it to Mrs Paget, who gratefully sunk from her feet, Fortescue himself remaining staunchly upright behind.
Bea perched stiffly on the end of my bed. “Jerome, it does not matter whether the item in question is a puppy or boiled lollies. I would have thought Winsome grasped the concept of stranger-danger long ago.”
I hated it when they talked about me over my head like I was a two-year-old. But who had the energy to complain?
“What about if the item in question is a parcel from Raphaela, whom I’ve never met?”
She ignored my cheek with a cranky huff. “Not to mention contradicting instructions to come straight back after the Temple, once the initiation was complete. When Enoch arrives, I am considering requesting he leave Winsome with an instructive hangover.”
“I’m already far too familiar with hangovers. Thanks.” I moaned to stress the point.
Bea was aghast. “Has my faith in you been so misguided? Since when did you become an expert on the effects of alcohol?”
I would have rolled my eyes, but feared the movement might cause a shooting sliver of misery. “Not my hangovers. I’ve seen Seth’s lifestyle in visions. He seemed perpetually under the weather.” Smithy bristled on hearing his name and I hastily moved on. “And I guarantee I will never drink again. I’m aiming to conserve my only remaining brain cell and avoid cirrhosis of the liver.”
“I bet that’s not the only thing he wanted to show you,” Smithy muttered. “Fortescue, what did you say that scumbag forced Bear to drink?” Pointing out this was not technically true and I’d been a willing consumer was definitely the wrong fact to share with any of them, especially Smith.
“Cinnaber,” said Fortescue. “It is made from an ancient recipe that soothes and bestows acceptance in those who are naive to its use. Individuals who regularly partake gain clarity of thought, but only at very low doses. High doses result in total amnesia, higher still – paralysis. Mrs Paget keeps stills for our personal supply. She is a master distiller of potent liqueurs from recipes lost to antiquity.”
Mrs Paget shrugged modestly. I knew why Seth abused cinnaber, trying in vain as he was to forget his tortured past. And to the numerous suspect dealings of my ever-surprising minders, we added illegal alcohol production. They were bootleggers. I wondered where they kept the vats.
“Winnie was at his mercy. He could have made her believe anything he says or forget everything he does?” Smithy asked, outraged. “He should be jailed at the bottom of the deepest sea trench and that still wouldn’t be far enough away. Here’s an idea, what about the moon?”
“Calm yourself, Vegas. Seth can do no damage to Winsome or anyone else while restrained in my artifice,” said a mild, yet authoritative voice.
I begged to differ and had the DT’s to prove it, which was probably another observation I should keep to myself. Enoch stood framed in the doorway. He was even more nondescript in physical reality, wearing the same immaculate black suit and plain tie. If I looked away, it was impossible to recall the shade of his hair or the colour of his eyes – his features were so utterly indistinguishable.
“Bear has defences you do not, Vegas. She will not sustain a lasting bewitchment. However, we must not let him in your head,” Enoch said. “He has come too close already, even if through Winnie’s eyes.”
“Pardus maculas non deponit,” said Fortescue.
“The leopard does not change its spots,” I translated.
“Gold star, Winsome.” My butler was delighted his worst student of European languages, who could faithfully swear in several tongues but mangled anything more demanding, had developed a new talent for Latin.
Enoch wasn’t as easily impressed. “Seth can be a threat, but I beg you not to view him as the enemy. Of all of us, he is the direst victim of Finesse’s machinations. He deserves our compassion. Our true rivals will make themselves known soon enough.”
I did not need to see Smithy’s face to know this advice would earn a sulky pout. Bea straightened, her countenance as hard as diamonds.
“Are you Enoch ‘the blind and inept’ Watcher?” she asked softly. “Seth and Raphaela cavorted under your nose for undetermined years. You did nothing, despite the obvious threat to all the Sacred Trinity has stood for across centuries of sacrifice. The time is nigh for you to pick a side, Enoch. I will not have my grand-niece jeopardised further by your equivocation.”
Ouch! Bea was more furious at him than she’d been at me for my intoxication.
Mrs Paget turned to Enoch. “I concur.” Fortescue nodded once, firmly.
Sighing resignedly, Enoch braved their united hostility and entered my room, coming to stand at the end of my bed. Without breaking eye contact with any of the others, he gave me a sad smile. It was as though he had five faces. The throbbing pain in my head and nausea instantly lifted.
“As I have asserted in the past, I am not infallible. Raphaela’s skill grew beyond my capacity to see. I cannot observe your path at all, young Keeper. From this point forward we are not forewarned by my prediction.”
Bea massaged the bridge of her nose. “It appears you really are Enoch the blind. Can you monitor the whereabouts of the Crone, still?”
“Her activities will always be my purview. I fear the occasion for hiding has passed. You, Winsome, must find a way to best her, or we are all condemned.”
“No pressure then,” I said.
“I may not be able to predict the future, but I can sense the other Bloods descending on Sydney like a biblical pestilence,” a voice rang from the doorway.
“Hugo.” I leaped out of bed and ran to hug him. He was solid and broader than a huge redwood, looking none the worse for his ordeal. “I’m so glad you’re safe.”
He returned the embrace with gusto, almost snapping my spine. “It is wonderful to be back, Dumpling.”
“You’ve been keeping secrets from me, Hugo.”
A guilty look appeared on his face, as I crossed back to bed and snuggled against Smith. They exchanged a grudging nod. Bea’s set expression indicated she was not done with Hugo’s account of events. He loitered in the doorframe, keeping his distance, and sensible enough to realise no amount of muscle would protect him from what he had coming. I did not envy him a night spent in interrogation with my enraged great-aunt.
Smith dropped the parcel into my palm with a loaded look. As soon as he did so, whatever was inside sent a hum through my veins, a tingle of vital, pulsing energy up my arms. Unburdened by a hangover, I could feel the power speaking to me, almost as clearly as I often heard the whispers of past Keepers in my mind. The message was one of urgency and … incompleteness, as though the contents were missing an essential part.
“Shall we open Raphaela’s gift?” I tugged at the string, eager to understand the puzzle within.
Mrs Paget gasped at a hint of gold, as I peeled away layers of paper. Everyone’s gaze turned to her shocked but excited face.
“It cannot be,” she said, as the final layer came free. Nestled within the wrapping cupped in my hands like an open flower, was a triangular trinket box made of gold and studded rubies, covered in the now familiar repulsive demon carvings. “To shield.”
Smithy leaned closer to ask in an undertone, “Keeper’s motto, or something?”
I shushed him and spoke directly to Mrs Paget. “The Amulet?”
She nodded vigorously. On its top was a Delta, the central area within the triangle free of engravings. The box seemed to be hollow, but I could not find a way to open it. I gave it a couple of experimental twists and tugs, but it was a wasted effort.
I inspected the trinket box in minute detail. There had to be a secret catch. There was not a sound in the room, the tension palpable. I rubbed the smoothness inside the triangle on top, clasping the bottom and pushing my thumb into the middle. There was a chink as the inner part sunk inwards and a split travelled around the top to form a lid that could be pried free. Rotating the cap, it came off in my hand, a thick wedge of folded parchment underneath the rim. I set the sheaf aside on my doona.
Inside were two red-velvet lined compartments. Mrs Paget impatiently thrummed her fingers on her knee. One section held a small piece of petrified bone, so worn by time that I could not determine its species or anatomy of origin. The other section contained a pendant. Pulling it out, I held it up for all to see: a heavy rope spun from gold with a downward-pointing triangle the size of my palm. Inside the triangle dangled a large, round ruby.
“The Amulet indeed,” Bea said, astonished.
Smithy’s face clouded. “Er, not to sound remedial, but what does having the Amulet mean?”
“At the moment, we are only truly protected from exposure by our enemies if we remain within the defensive wards of this warehouse,” Bea explained. “We have never before, since the very first Keeper was charged with guarding the Stone, been so vulnerable to its corrosion. Because there has never been a gap in the Keeper’s mastery over the Stone, the line has remained unbroken for over a thousand years. This Amulet shields us and allows freedom of movement outside, until Winsome can recover her birthright and master the Stone in a sacred Claiming Ritual. The Amulet’s power also provides a temporary solution to the problem of our waning health.”
Enoch continued. “Not only that, but without your predecessor, Winsome, there can be no transference of powers from the ancestral line. Raphaela was your only access to this history and talent. We must find another way to conduct the Ritual.”
“How, Enoch? How did she find the Amulet?” Mrs Paget said. “It was lost, along with the other two articles.”
“The answer is of utmost importance. I shall find out what I can. We may need to send one of you to Lafayette to search the grounds of Raphaela’s house.”
We lapsed into silence, each lost in his or her own thoughts. Smithy’s hand reached for mine, his heat reassuring.
“Winsome, you must wear the Amulet to activate its power.”
I had never been partial to Snoop Dogg’s bling, nor to jewellery capable of puncturing my chest, but desperate times called for desperate measures. I reluctantly placed the long chain over my head and watched in amazement as it shrunk to a dainty size and twisted so the V sat comfortably between my breasts. It was actually very pretty. The Amulet vibrated and grew so warm that I feared it might burn me.
“Bear,” Smith murmured. “Look.”
We stared at my minders. The years fell away from all three of them, so fast that within several blinks they stood before us with unbowed backs, strong bodies, plumper complexions and features glowing with relief.
Bea smiled broadly. Her fingers, which were no longer crooked with arthritis, smoothed her lustrous auburn bob. “I have not before so thoroughly appreciated never having to dye my hair.”
Enoch prepared to depart, addressing me. “The Amulet will not come off unless you deliberately remove it.” I had no intention of ever taking it off, if the Keeper’s jewellery could buy Bea and Mrs Paget and Fortescue enough time to fix this mess.
“And Winsome, you are Raphaela’s sole beneficiary. She left her entire estate to the last Keeper. The paperwork awaits downtown at Bea’s offices. Do not delay. There is much to do and little time, before our enemies gather in Sydney. Let wisdom and providence guide you.”
“Wait.”
“Yes, Winsome?”
“If the Amulet’s protection is fleeting, how long do we have?”
“You have a week or two before the effects wear off and your guardians’ physical condition returns to this extent of deterioration.”
He blessed us all with a flash of brilliance and then was gone. A week? So little time! Enoch’s final message was only for me; the words echoed despairingly in my mind. “Singly they stand afore the onslaught. Guard your heart, Winsome. The Keeper stands alone.”
Bea rose. “At first light tomorrow, we shall outline our strategy for Louisiana. It will be a tricky endeavour, given Anathema no doubt crawl the surrounds of Raphaela’s property on the hunt for their mistress. It is time for you both to begin your training.”
She kissed Smithy and me on the cheek, before Mrs Paget took her turn to do the same and then left the room with Hugo. He blew me a jaunty kiss on the way out and Smith scowled murderously. In reply, Hugo blew him a kiss too. Surprisingly, Fortescue lingered to hug me hard and gruffly shook Smith’s hand prior to joining the others. Aunt Bea paused briefly in the corridor, her finger raised in reprimand.
“I mean it. Sleep only.” She shut the door.
“I can’t believe Aunt Bea trusts me to do as she says. After all the rules I’ve broken.”
“She doesn’t trust you, Bear. She trusts me.” He winked and I burst into laughter, getting comfortable in his arms.
“We’re in serious trouble, if you’re the yardstick for reliability.” I played with a button on his pyjama top. “You never did tell me what you usually wear to bed.”
His eyes twinkled with mischief, fingers caressing my cheek. “Nothing.”
“I’d like to see that,” I said. He didn’t stop me as I traced the chiselled contour of his chest and undid the top button.
“I rest my case,” he said huskily. “You’re the on who’s going to get us into serious trouble, Bear.”
It was true. Us. Enoch’s words flashed my brain and I pulled my hand away.
Smith frowned, clearly disappointed. “What’s wrong?”
“A Keeper stands alone, Vegas. I’m a danger to all of you. Once I’ve claimed that Stone, I’ll have to go.”
He appeared genuinely bewildered. “Go where?”
“I don’t know. Away from you, away from Bea and Mrs Paget and Fortescue. Away from anyone who’ll get hurt.”
“Bear, how many schools have you been kicked out of?”
“Pardon?” He didn’t seem to be taking my decision to leave at all appropriately. I’d expected a heated objection and was more than slightly miffed. I tried to put distance between us, but he just scooted closer.
Smoothing my cranky brow with his fingertips, he said gently, “Humour me. Please.”
“I lost count after exhausting all my fingers.”
He smirked, the feel of him a temptation difficult to fight. “And how many laws, regulations, curfews, municipal ordinances, public offences, heavenly virtues, sins and so on, have I broken or committed?”
“Well, we’d have to line up everyone who lives in the warehouse, including the cats, count all their fingers, toes and collective limbs and it probably still wouldn’t be sufficient.”
“You didn’t have to agree quite so enthusiastically.” He hurried on in response to my dark expression. “Do you remember when the judge threw that cocktails-and-grovelling session for his uptight legal leeches? We mortified him by sabotaging the DJ and moshing to The Prodigy’s ‘Smack My Bitch Up’.”
“I thought it was Marilyn Manson. The judge’s junior clerk quit. He must’ve been more the Hillsong type.”
We’d pogoed wildly about beneath the banner advertising the evening’s theme: ‘Twenty-five years maintaining political correctness in the courts’. After a few too many, Judge Bennet had thrown off his suit and joined us on the dance floor, tie about his forehead, gigantic, hairy pot-belly jiggling over his Y-fronts.
“How about the legendary Ruby Tuesday incident? Man, that still cracks me up.”
We’d exploited my horrific lack of singing talent at one of Bea’s relic auctions at the Sydney Museum. These evenings were always packed with pretentious bores in tuxedos and tiaras. Smithy played piano as I stepped to the microphone. It was highly amusing as everyone pretended to enjoy my performance – optimistically likened to beating a bag of possums – because Bea had made a generous bequest to the museum. She’d pronounced it the highlight of the evening.
“Yes, and? Aside from the fact we’ve been complete brats over the years. No prizes for guessing why the judge often locked himself in his study with a bottle of brandy.”
“The judge has no one to blame but himself. He could’ve taken up racquetball, rather than boozing and womanising with generation why-not. Hell, he could have even got ingenious and taken up parenting. I’ll never understand why he fought so hard for custody, maybe just to win, competitive wan—”
“Moving on,” I broke in. I had sympathy for Smithy’s predicament, but this was not an opportune moment for an extended dissection of his father’s many failings.
“Yeah, sorry. More importantly for us, my point is this: since when do you or I follow other people’s rules? I have no intention whatsoever of abandoning you. I don’t care if Satan himself orders me away. I am not going. A Warrior doesn’t stand in the distance behind the one he protects. A true Warrior stands close, in front. And that’s where I will always be.
“And, I think you’ll find Bea, Fortescue and Mrs Paget are not going AWOL, either. They’ve put a lot of energy into securing this place. No where’s safer for you to be. This is a completely novel phase, what with Raphaela deviating from the Trinity programme and you being the Last Keeper. It we fight, and your guardians think we must eventually, we do it together.”
His unwavering faith touched me deeply. Of course, I didn’t believe it would be so easy to contradict traditions enforced over centuries. “Thank you, Smithy.”
He held me tight and stroked my hair. “Since I’ve banished foolish ideas of you running away, what do you want to do now?”
“I’m going to read every single one of those histories in Bea’s study. I want their stories fresh in my mind, so I will never forget the lives the Crone has taken. She’ll pay for the loss of each of them,” I said resolutely. It was a bugger, that foolish optimism.
Smith cleared his throat. “That’s very admirable, Bear.” He hooked a finger beneath the strap of my singlet, sliding it aside to feather his lips across my collarbone, triggering a shiver of pleasure deep inside my belly. “But I meant what would you like to do right this instant?”
He peered up at me with a seductive glint in his opal-green eyes. I grinned and bit my lip, feigning thinking. “I’m not sure we properly investigated that new way of making a pledge without bleeding.”
Across the world, Horace Joliet of the St Martin sheriff’s office sat alone in the dining nook of his mobile home, an empty shot glass and a quarter-full bottle of whisky in front him. His loaded police revolver rested next to the bottle, free of its holster in readiness for cleaning. Normally, he’d never have had the gun out of the safety locker with bullets in the chamber, but there was no one here now that he had to protect from an accidental shooting.
He was not usually a drinker, but the bourbon had no effect, even though he’d lost count of how many he’d swigged. He’d left his sister, May, up at the house a few hours ago. Heavily sedated, she had finally succumbed to sleep.
Horace unscrewed the cap on the polishing compound and poured another double nip of whisky, which he gulped half-heartedly. What was the point? His nephew, Davey, was dead and gone and no amount of alcohol-fuelled forgetting would change that. His funeral of earlier that day had passed in a blur of disbelief. The asthma that had dogged the kid throughout his childhood, but seemed to improve in adolescence, had returned with a vengeance for one final slap-down.
The doctors were at a loss how to help him. Despite the most advanced treatments and a gargantuan effort by the emergency room staff, they’d failed. Horace would never shake that last desperate image: the medical team bustling him and May out of the way to swarm Davey where he’d lain on a narrow hospital cot, tubes snaking from his arm and oxygen prongs in his nose.
He’d thrashed, blue and choking, his hands pawing futilely at his neck, eyes wide beyond fear. Before the doctors and nurses could react, his throat had collapsed and rejected the breathing tube with a powerful malice.
And Horace instinctively knew the truth, his gut contorting over the knowledge. That godforsaken Baptiste place had contaminated Davey, infiltrated his system like those South American worms that penetrated flesh and ate a victim from the inside out. But he hadn’t listened when his nephew tried to broach the subject on that first day, driving back to the station from the weirdest crime scene he’d ever witnessed.
“Did you get a feeling out there, Uncle Horace? A really bad one?”
“It’s just a crime scene, son. You’re just a little spooked because it was so bizarre. We had to chisel three feet of concrete and use a motorised lift to get the poor woman out of her own house. And I’ll be damned if I can explain why Forensics can’t get a single photo.”
The worst of it was that Horace had lied. In all his years investigating death and mayhem, he’d never been more unsettled, his intuition screaming to flee the Baptiste crypt and not stop running until he was several states over. But after so many mistakes and wrong turns in life – two divorces, a bankruptcy that forced him into a trailer on his sister’s farm – he no longer trusted himself and had ignored the warning. He heard it now, though. Bullhorn-loud and laughing at his arrogance.
His head lolled and he let the grief flow, tears dripping down his nose to splash onto the formica of the scarred tabletop. It was all his fault. The kid had wanted to teach, but instead he was browbeaten into joining the force by an uncle’s pride. And the lack of an heir to carry on the policing tradition. Davey would have made a great teacher too. He had a way with youngsters and a contagious passion for history.
Instead, like the good kid he was, he’d yielded to the emotional blackmail and joined the sheriff’s office, signing his death warrant. Horace didn’t know if he could live with the guilt. Consistent with the many poor decisions he’d made, it was too late for a bandaid fix now. The gun reflected a jaundiced lustre by lamplight. Horace reached for it, stroking his thumb across the grip. He jerked his hand away. There was no answer there.
May had suffered enough with the early loss of her husband and now, her only son. She needed him. He sat back, disgusted in himself for the lapse. Time to brew some strong, black coffee. And then Horace realised that was the last thing Davey had brought him that awful, fateful morning. He resolved never to drink the stuff again.
Something warm trickled down his upper lip and he swiped irritably at it with the back of his hand. His forearm came away bloodied. Squinting in surprise, pain pulsed his temple. He leaned forward to cup his fingers beneath his nostrils.
“Ah, crap.”
Blood pooled into his palms, both hands inadequate to capture the flow.
Pick up the gun. Make the pain stop.
What? He blinked repeatedly, the mild effort causing untold agony. His head felt like it was cleaving in two, vision turning red like fire-tinted cellophane over a torch. Pain wracked his flesh.
“What the hell?” The sound of his voice sent nails through his brain.
Shoot yourself.
It hurt so much. Desolation was a voracious cancer eating the town these past days. Why fight it? He and his colleagues – anyone who’d set foot inside the Baptiste place – they were all dead anyway. He knew that for sure.
The pitiful corona of the forty-watt bulb overhead seemed to highlight the blood streaming from his nose to swirl with his tears on the bench top. He lifted his arm, alarmed to discover the cotton of his shirtsleeve leaching blood that spread more red as if ink on a blotter. A river of it seeped from his pores and spilled forth over the cruddy fake marble. He grabbed his Sunday suit jacket – only the best for Davey – draping the seat next to him. Balling the coat, he mopped frantically. Blood smeared wide across the table’s surface. The gun beckoned.
“No,” he groaned.
He tossed the coat to the floor, dragging himself upright from his seat. If he could just make it to the phone, get away from the weapon, get someone down here. He didn’t want to die alone.
It’s all over anyway. You’ll bleed out, the pain will be unendurable.
As soon as the words stained Horace’s perception, the torture coursing his body increased. He bent double on rubbery legs, gripped the edge of the table and waited for it to pass. But it would not. And beneath, in his direct line of sight, lay the gun.
May Joliet overdosed two days after her brother was found shot dead. Horace was seated in his pressed Sunday-best suit in his pristine dining nook with no outward sign of the bloodbath ordeal of his last hours. Aside from the wall at his rear, painted by brain matter and bits of skull shattered by the close range explosion of a bullet. No one ever could have predicted that the stoic, tough, career cop, Horace Joliet, would abandon his grieving sister, to whom he was unflinchingly devoted. The poor woman had discovered her brother’s body, frozen in purpling rigor mortis. The tragedy of it even silenced exclamations of ‘I told you so’ from the gossips at the BI-LO, who’d warned repeatedly about the evil stain of that Baptiste ghost house.
But the Crone’s wrath was not so easily sated. Her time for vengeance drew near.
If you enjoyed this book by S E Holmes, please visit www.seholmesauthor.com for more of her work. Thank you for reading.