| |
It had only been a week since I had seen my father but it was as if years had passed instead of days.
He was haggard, his eyes sunken with dark bags beneath them. Deep wrinkles had formed at the corners of his eyes and on his furrowed brow. His pace was slow and purposeful, but felt like it might have been better supported by a cane.
Knowing my father, he’d rather be dead than reliant on anyone or anything. Seeing him like this caused my breath to catch in my throat.
Without a word, he crossed the study and sank into his seat behind the desk. Looking around the room, he licked his seemingly parched lips. “Don’t stop on my account.”
I stammered, unable to ignore how much his condition had deteriorated in so little time. “What on earth happened to you?”
He looked up at me. “Do you really need to ask?”
I could sense the fatigue in his every word. The Frank Caldwell I’d grown up with had been indomitable, but the man before me looked utterly worn down and at his wit’s end.
“The curse?” I muttered.
“Indeed, it seems our ancestor is intensifying her efforts. Holding her at bay is taking far more will than I am used to.”
“Why now?”
“I was hoping you could tell me. She certainly seems to have a sense of urgency about it. I had thought it might be because we are getting closer to rooting her out of our lives.”
It was a good theory. Given the information Kasey had shared, we could well be closer than we’d ever been to a cure. If Aleida was paying attention to our progress, it would give her reason to be concerned.
My father’s gaze gravitated to the wrinkled and bloodstained piece of paper I was holding. “Is that it?”
I nodded as I held it up. “I know it doesn’t look like much, but her family are Welsh Druids. They know more about blood magic than anyone else alive. This is what she told me.”
He cocked his head to the side. “And your first instinct was to bleed all over it?”
“We ran into a little trouble in New York,” I said.
“It seems to follow you around.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” Dizzy chimed in.
My father and I hadn’t always been on speaking terms. Clearly, she was worried our relationship might be getting a little tense.
“Anything I should know about?” my father asked, leaning back in his chair.
“Just a sore loser from The Trial. Thought he could come and settle the score.”
“And...?”
“The Sidhe are devious little bastards, but I put him in the ground. Permanently this time.”
A tingle of wintry pain ran through my arm. He’d certainly left his mark. I just hoped it would fade with time as I didn’t have the bandwidth to deal with the lingering pain right now. Not while I was still up against my curse, and not while I had Lynch breathing down my neck.
“Good.” My father nodded. “That tends to solve most problems. Shame it hasn’t solved ours.”
Indeed, it seemed our forebear, the High Priestess Aleida, had only grown more belligerent since her death.
“No, it hasn’t, but it does give us perspective. Combined with what I learned from Kasey, I have a few ideas on how we might put an end to this.”
“What did the Druid have to say?” My father leaned forward, tapping his fingers on the desk. There was a dismissive, almost derisive, tone in his voice.
I let it go and grabbed a whiteboard marker off the desk.
“She had a bit to say, actually.” I made my way over to the whiteboard. “Considering just how skittish everyone else has been on the topic of blood magic, she was a breath of fresh air.”
“Provided she was telling the truth,” my father countered, “and not just trying to get you off her back.”
I had a good feel for people. It was one of the things that had kept me alive through the years. From the day I’d met Murdoch, my gut had told me I could trust him. Tadashii, too. Even in a place where everyone had wanted me dead, he’d turned out to be a friend.
My gut told me Kasey was telling the truth.
“I watched her wipe out the Feudal Court in an afternoon. If she wanted me off her back, there are easy ways to do it.”
“Not for an idealist with a hero complex,” my father said.
The second time, his tone was harder to ignore. It was almost as if he’d had business with her, but that seemed unlikely. He hadn’t left the country in a year and Kasey didn’t seem to get enough time to breathe, let alone vacation overseas.
The memory of my first conversation with her came back to me. It was hard to forget it; I’d been cuffed to a chair at the time, and the only thing she’d been more interested in than what I was doing in her apartment, was the Brotherhood.
I tightened my hold on the whiteboard marker. “What do you have against her?”
“Her, who?”
“Kasey. Don’t play dumb with me. I thought we were past this.” I fidgeted with the cap on the marker.
When it came to the Brotherhood, it was difficult to believe my father and I were on the same page.
My father sighed, and the sound had a ring of disappointment to it. Back on familiar ground it seemed.
“Or is it the Brotherhood that has a problem? It’s difficult to tell at times.”
“Don’t be a child, Seth. She might have stopped Akihiro and saved some lives, but in doing so she dragged the Supernatural world into the spotlight. The cost of which hasn’t even begun to be realized. But if you want to laud her as a hero along with all the simpletons, don’t let me drag you down. I doubt I’ll still be here to endure the consequences, anyway.”
Well, that was morose.
“So, the Brotherhood didn’t try to have her killed?” I couldn’t help myself. After everything she’d said, I was curious.
“No, why would we? It was Akihiro’s agenda she was disturbing, and we shared a common foe there. My only issue is with her reckless idealism.” He looked at me. “I can see why the two of you got along.”
“Yes,” Dizzy said, “don’t you hate good people?”
“One day you’ll learn how the world works,” my father replied. “You can take the helm and help steer it, or play in the wake and hope you don’t drown. I’m done trying to convince you of the Brotherhood’s merits. It’s your life. We both know you’ll do as you please.”
I couldn’t help but wonder if he was privy to the discussion I’d had with Lynch. If he was, it would explain why the two of them appeared so in sync. If he wasn’t, his guilt trip was remarkably well timed.
“Well, let’s see what the reckless idealist had to say,” I muttered as I tapped the board to gather their attention.
I wasn’t in any mood to rehash the merits of the Brotherhood’s existence. With all the resources in the world, they had either been unwilling or unable to help my family cure its curse in spite of all my father had done to prop them up. I was beginning to think our circumstances suited their agenda.
Reading from Kasey’s note, I scribbled on the board as I went. “There are three ways to break any ritual. One, rob it of the power that fuels it. Two, redirect its focus. Three, overwhelm it with a greater degree of power than was used to form it.”
Making my way back across the board, I scrawled the note Kasey had scribbled, seemingly as an afterthought.
Twice in my life I have heard another’s voice in my mind. Once it belonged to a supreme being making its will known. The other was a disembodied spirit I had the misfortune of sharing the same physical space with.
By the time I was finished writing, the room was almost silent. Everybody was staring at the board. The only sound in the room was Dizzy’s foot tapping against the carpet. It was the first time I’d shared the paper’s contents with anyone.
“She is an unusual woman,” Dizzy said, her voice little more than a whisper.
“Are we truly to believe she has heard the voice of God?” my father asked with skepticism.
“I have every reason to believe she chose her words carefully.” I shrugged as I set the marker down. “And no reason at all to doubt her. She has spent time beyond the Veil, as I have. There I met beings that have been worshiped as gods so long the world has almost forgotten them. Zeus, Hera, Hades. They are no more myth than you or me. Perhaps she has treated with similar entities from the Supernatural world. In any event, it’s a lot more than we had a week ago.”
“She could be on to something.” My father leaned back in his seat. “When I hear Aleida’s voice in my head, it takes an effort of will to drive her out. The only time I’ve had lasting relief from her presence was when you went to Panama. And we know that was because she was troubling you. It certainly supports the conclusion that she can only be in one place at a time. Perhaps she chose to trouble you because she feared you would succeed in thwarting her curse.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” I replied.
I’d spent weeks reflecting on the experience. Now Kasey’s note cast it in a new light.
“The question is, did I stop hearing her voice because I drove her out?” I tapped the word power on the board as I spoke, but then dragged my finger down to Kasey’s final note. “Or did she depart of her own will, perhaps fearing that we or the creature the inquisition summoned might destroy her for good?”
Lara stood up. “If she was here, occupying the same space as you, would we not be able to see her?”
“Spirits move through our world every day,” Dizzy replied, “on their journey to their next existence. At times, they can choose to be seen but most often they remain hidden. Not a difficult task given they have no physical form. They are just an essence, a shade of their former selves.”
My father rubbed his chin. “I must admit, I’d always considered her voice a part of the curse rather than evidence of her enduring presence in our realm. If she is a disembodied spirit, it’s possible I’ve been going about this all wrong.”
Those were words I’d never heard out of my father’s mouth. In my shock, I almost tripped over the trash can beside his desk.
“So, she could be here right now?” Lara asked, looking about.
A chill ran down my spine. It was an unsettling proposition.
“It’s a safe assumption,” my father replied. “She isn’t troubling me, which probably means she wishes to go undetected.”
“How can we expect to beat her if she knows what we’re doing?” Dizzy asked. “She’ll always be a move ahead of us.”
“Which explains the trouble our ancestors faced. If she can observe our progress, she can intensify her resistance. Perhaps they too reached these same conclusions, but not in time to save themselves from her maddening influence.”
“Well, then, we’re ahead of the curve,” I replied. “Because we both know, and she can’t plague us both at once. She can’t be in two places at once.”
Lara paced by the window. I could almost see her mind working. She might not have been a member of the supernatural community, but she was accumulating knowledge on it at a rate of knots.
“What prevents her from taking more direct action against us?” Lara asked.
“She has no physical form,” I said. “So while she might know what we’re doing, she’s an incorporeal voyeur.”
“A dangerous one,” my father added. “She has had four hundred years of practice and has killed our forebears without fail, incorporeal or not.”
A grim thought, but one I wasn’t going to let get in my way.
“So she can’t possess someone, like in the movies?” Lara asked, not content until she had dug up everything she could on ghosts.
An uneasy silence met the question. I looked at Dizzy who shook her head. My father too was silent.
I let out a sigh. “I don’t know.”
“If she can, she’s never tried,” my father said. “I presume one would have to be fairly weak-willed to allow a spirit to take control of their body.”
“Or frail,” I suggested as another theory formed in my mind. “What if our forebears didn’t kill themselves? What if she simply wore them down until they could no longer resist her, at which point she possessed them and had them take their own lives?”
“If we know the danger exists, we can help guard against it,” my father said. “You’re right, this has been most illuminating.”
I looked at him, wondering if that was sarcasm, but the compliment seemed genuine enough, which was even more disconcerting.
I could never utter the thought aloud but there was a part of me that was mindful that if Aleida could in fact take possession of us, I had no way of knowing if my father was truly himself. He certainly looked pretty worn down. Even now, there was a chance she could be in control. I was going to have to exercise caution in what I shared with him.
My phone vibrated in my pocket, but we were making too much progress to be interrupted now. I ignored it and focused on the problem at hand.
In the event Aleida was present, I needed to give her more to focus on, keep her busy while we tried to break the binding that held her in our world.
“Fortunately, we know more than our ancestors ever did,” I said. “We’ve been to Panama. Entered her temple, found her remains and the knife she used in her ritual. We know what we’re dealing with.
“When I used the ritual knife to kill a priestess of Hera beyond the Veil, it tore her spirit from her body. There I could see her form, then Charon the ferryman came and took her spirit into the realm beyond. She tried to fight him, but his power was too great. Spirits aren’t meant to remain here. Their destiny is elsewhere.”
“Didn’t you face her again in The Trial?” Lara asked.
“I did, but I was in Hades’ realm, and she moved in accordance with his will. Each Champion faced someone from their past, but again her spirit seemed at the mercy of others. Aleida has far greater autonomy than the priestess of Hera ever showed.”
“Why do you think that is?” Dizzy asked. “They both died by the same blade, did they not?”
“So I thought.” My gaze wandered back to the whiteboard. “I found the knife buried in what was left of Aleida’s body. I suspect her spirit was separated at the time of death, too. Unlike Hera’s minion, though, she died at her own hand and likely had time to make other preparations. I think she discovered a way to anchor herself here in our world.”
Lara paused her pacing. “If a ritual was used to anchor her in our realm, it would seem Kasey has given us a blueprint for shattering the chains keeping her here. Nature would take its proper course, right?”
Lara was right. If we could break those chains, Aleida would be dragged to the realm beyond. We’d finally be free of her.
I stared at the board. We had three ways of doing just that. All we had to do was work out how and what she had bound herself to.
My phone vibrated once more, just a message rather than a call this time.
Pulling the phone out of my khaki slacks, I noted that the missed call had been from Murdoch.
There was also a brief text.
The Tea House, Covent Garden.
Don’t pack light.
“What is it?” Lara asked.
I handed her the phone. “It’s Murdoch. He’s in trouble.”
“What?” My father rose to his feet. “I thought he was sleeping off the flight.”
“No, he left the manor to check on something. This is the first I’ve heard from him since then.”
Lara held up the phone. “What makes you think he’s in trouble? What does ‘don’t pack light’ mean?”
“It’s our code,” I replied. “When we travel without baggage it means we’re expecting no resistance. Similarly, packing light is something the pair of us expect to handle easily.”
“So that means...” Dizzy said.
I looked at the message on the phone. “All hell is about to break loose.”