The Circle Gathers (Veil Knights Book 1)

by Rowan Casey

  Still, he seemed harmless enough. And she couldn’t stand there all night on her own.

  “It certainly is,” she said, with a smile of her own.

  “I’m John. John Seton.”

  She took his proffered hand, noting his accent as she did – Irish? Welsh, maybe? - and shook. “Jessie Noble.”

  “Pleasure to meet you, Jessie. Tell me, what’s a pretty lass like you doing with a motley crew like this?”

  She laughed; she couldn’t help herself. That was probably the first time she’d been called a “pretty lass” by a man ten years her junior, never mind by one so genuinely charming to boot.

  “I’m guessing I’m here for the same reason you are.”

  He nodded sagely, exaggerating for effect.

  “So you’re a winner of a gold ticket, too, then?”

  His question brought Jessie up short, for she had absolutely no idea what he was talking about.

  “I’m sorry? Golden ticket?”

  John studied her a moment, probably making sure she wasn’t pulling his leg, and then said, “You know, Willie Wonka? The kid buys the candy bar and finds the...”

  “...golden ticket inside, which gets him in to see the Mr. Wonka and the Chocolate Factory!”

  John nodded, seemingly pleased she’d gotten the reference.

  To her surprise, Jessie found herself liking the guy. She wasn’t normally the type to take to someone on such short notice, but something about him felt familiar even though she was certain she’d never met him before.

  When she glanced over at him, she saw that he had a somber expression on his face.

  “What?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. I’ve just got this ominous feeling, you know. I can’t help thinking that we might be the ones holding a golden tickets, but I’ve got to be honest, I’m not sure if that makes us the lucky kid who wins the prize at the end or the naughty ones who get punished along the way.”

  Before Jessie could say anything in reply, a set of previously unnoticed double doors suddenly opened at the far end of the room, revealing Dante Grimm standing there with an uncharacteristically stern expression on his face.

  “Please, ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “This way.”

  The group began shuffling in his direction. Jessie and John looked at each other, shrugged, and then followed suit, bringing up the rear.

  The room they all entered was round and fairly large, about the size of small conference room in a hotel, but oddly devoid of furniture with the exception of several folding chairs arranged in a half-circle facing the spot where Grimm was now standing.

  “If you’d all take a seat we can get started,” Grimm said, waving a hand at the chairs in front of him.

  Jessie, along with the others, moved to do as he asked. She headed toward a seat close by, but as she drew near to the chair something about it felt wrong. Just an odd little itch, like she didn’t belong in that seat but in another. She frowned, glanced up, and spotted an empty chair three over from the one she had been about to select. She moved to that seat, instead.

  She had just sat down when John Seton slipped into the chair on her left.

  “Fancy meeting you here,” he whispered with a wink.

  While waiting for the others to take a seat, Jessie looked around. Racks filled with ancient weapons lined the walls, everything from maces and flails to great axes and war hammers. There were swords, too. Lots of swords. At first she thought they might be replicas, but given Grimm’s vast wealth she decided that they were probably all real. She wasn’t an expert, but she imagined the collection would rival that of many museums across the world, given its extensiveness.

  Grimm wasted no time getting down to business once everyone was settled.

  “Thank you all for coming. Your presence here this evening, even though you might not realize it yet, is vitally important.

  While I’ve spoken to each and every one of you, I know that you are, for the most part, strangers. That will quickly change, I assure you, but for now, if you wouldn’t mind, perhaps some introductions?”

  Grimm looked directly at Jessie when he finished, so she took that as a cue to start. She stood, glanced around at the others, and said, “I’m Jessie. Jessie Noble,” and sat back down again.

  One by one they went around the room and she did her best to keep track of the names. Seton she’d already met. The angry looking fellow on Seton’s right was named, surprisingly, Nick Fury. The thirty-something chick with the pixie haircut was Jaz Archer, while the roguish-looking charmer sitting on the other side of her was Sam Drake. Next came the hillbilly twins, Perce and Dani Pellin, followed on their right by a young – she couldn’t have been more than sixteen, Jessie thought – black woman named Hannah Price. Hannah was pretty tight with a teenage boy with curly brown hair who gave his name as Daniel Montgomery. The final two men at the far end of the half-circle were Rex Bishop, who Jessie pegged as a cop or law enforcement of some kind, and last but not least, a non-descript fellow named Bryn Mathias.

  They were, she thought, a rather eclectic group.

  Grimm glanced over their heads at something or someone behind them.

  “I believe you have all already met my associate, Mr. Hautdesert.”

  Jessie spun around to find him standing a few feet behind the arc of chairs, near the center of the room.

  Grimm went on.

  “I’ve spoken privately to one or two of you, explained what this is about. Others have seen my show. For the rest of you...” Grimm launched into an explanation that was, for the most part, a retelling of the first act of the performance Jessie has witnessed the other night. He told them about how mankind had discovered the Demimonde and the realms within it, of how they had allowed the beings that inhabited those realms to enter our own through doorways rashly opened, of how the Nine Races, as they came to be known, began to prey upon the less protected humans.

  Grimm told them of the leader that had gathered a group of champions together and trained them to fight back against the darkness, of how, once the war had ended, they had used their power to seal the Demimonde and the Realms it contained behind a mystical Veil that would forever act as a barrier between this world and the others out beyond the Veil.

  Jessie, having heard it all before, spent the time watching the faces of the others gathered in the semi-circle in front of Grimm. Their expressions said it all, and she could tell just from looking at them who thought they’d stumbled into the greatest adventure of all time and who thought Grimm was utterly, completely barking mad. Near as she could tell, the group was split about fifty-fifty. She was leaning heavily toward belief in what he was saying, which made her wonder about her own sanity.

  Grimm wasn’t deterred, however. “My ancestor was the man who gathered those Knights together and who led them into battle against the forces of darkness. Ever since that time a member of my family has stood watch and called the Circle of Knights together when the situation has demanded it.”

  He looked them over, one at a time, making sure that he had their attention before continuing.

  “I have called the Circle together, brought you here this evening, but each and every one of you are the living avatars of those Knight of old and I desperately need your help.”

  One of the twins, Dani, raised her hand.

  “What was your ancestor’s name?” Dani asked. “The one who started it all.”

  Dante smiled. “He was known as the Merlin.”

  Seton coughed and when Grimm glanced over at him, said, “And so that would make us...”

  He couldn’t seem to finish the thought, but Jessie had no such difficulties, at least in her head.

  The Knights of the Round Table.

  19

  “Bullshit!” one of the others said.

  Jessie tried to remember his name. Fury, wasn’t it?

  Grimm turned to face him, his expression darkening. “Excuse me?”

  “I said bullshit. You’re making all that cr
ap up and you expect us to believe it? What is this a reality TV show or something? A modern version of You’re On Candid Camera? You got guys hiding behind more secret doors, waiting to come rushing out with cameras so millions of Americans can laugh at us for being so fucking gullible?”

  Jessie watched as Fury stood up, no doubt intending to walk out, but then Grimm used that voice on him, the one he’d used on her in the office the night before.

  “Sit down, Mr. Fury. Now.”

  Fury did so.

  He fought it every inch of the way, but it was crystal clear to Jessie that Fury was no longer in control; Grimm was.

  Fury sat down, folded his hands in his lap, and sat there silently.

  Damn! How the hell does he do that? Jessie wondered.

  To her horror, Grimm glanced in her direction and his voice echoed inside her head without him moving a muscle.

  “Years of practice,” he said.

  He looked at the rest of them, one after another.

  “All right,” he said, with what sounded to Jessie like an air of resignation. This apparently wasn’t going the way Grimm had hoped.

  “How many of the rest of you think I’m full of shit?”

  No one moved.

  “Come on, now. Don’t be shy. Cards on the table.”

  About half of those assembled tentatively raised their hands. Jessie noted that Seton was not one of them; he seemed bored with the discussion and appeared more interested in the shiny mirror-like piece of metal he was now holding in his hands.

  Grimm nodded. “Alright, looks like a demonstration of my veracity is in order, then.”

  He flipped his right hand over and suddenly there was a small box sitting on his palm. It was about the size of a Rubic’s Cube, a few inches square, and was covered with an odd series of ornamental sigils. It reminded Jessie of a Chinese puzzle box or, better yet, the Lament Configuration, that terrible artifact from the Hellraiser films that when properly solved by twisting it this way and that in a certain sequence acted as a doorway to the planes of Hell.

  The sight of the box in Grimm’s hands sent chills running down Jessie’s spine. She didn’t know what it was, but was certain that it didn’t bode well for them.

  “Don’t you think...” she started to say, but never finished.

  The box in Grimm’s hands began to twist and move of its own accord, sections rising and falling and twisting about the others. Faint blue bands of energy, like self-contained arcs of lightning, began to crisscross the box in different directions. As the others stared in fascination, Grimm bent down and rolled the box out of his hand, watched it tumble across the hardwood floor and come to a stop a few feet in front of Mr. Fury’s chair.

  Grimm’s voice echoed inside Jessie’s head again.

  “Prepare yourself,” he said.

  Prepare myself? For what?

  Jessie’s question was swiftly answered.

  The box suddenly began to increase in size, growing taller and wider over the course of a few swift seconds. What started as a few inches square turned into a three-by-three foot cage. Even worse, there was something moving inside of it.

  As Jessie leaned forward trying to get a better look behind the bars to the creature inside, the blue bands of power surrounding the cage flared once, brightly, and suddenly disappeared, taking the cage with it.

  Leaving the creature it once contained standing by itself in the middle of the room.

  It was about three feet high and humanoid in shape, but no one would ever mistake it for a human being. Its flesh was a dark, charcoal color and covered in a mass of bony spurs and occasional patches of coarse, black hair, for starters. Its eyes were a dark yellow in color, sunken into deep sockets beneath a protruding brow that matched the outward thrusting snout filled with sharp teeth below that. A third eye stared out at them from the center of its forehead, framed between long curling horns like that of a ram that rose from either side of its skull.

  The creature – demon was more like it, Jessie thought – took one look at Fury, smiled, and dove for him with outstretched claws and a snarl like a buzzsaw with a loose blade.

  “Look out!” someone shouted, but they were way too late to do anything. Jessie watched as Fury, apparently back in control of his physical capabilities, pushed off with his feet, throwing himself and his chair over backward even as his hands came in contact with the demon’s body. He used the creature’s forward momentum as well as his own to give it more kinetic energy, throwing it over his head and across the room even as he crashed, chair and all, backward to the floor.

  The demon hit the floor, rolled into a somersault, and popped back up again. It spun about without hesitation and rushed right back at Fury!

  The rest of the group was seemingly paralyzed at the sight of the thing, but Jessie’s recent encounters had, unwittingly or not, allowed her to come to grips with such things. While the others fought to figure out what to do, Jessie leapt to her feet and rushed to the nearest wall, knowing that she probably wouldn’t be in time to save Fury, but needing to do something anyway.

  She grabbed the closest weapon, an evil-looking mace with an iron head and a wooden handle, yanked it down from its rack and turned back, determined to enter the fray.

  Jessie was just in time to see Seton pull a long quarterstaff from the middle of that mirror-thing he carried and step between the still struggling Fury and the oncoming demon!

  The demon rushed forward, issuing a horrible snarl, claws extended and grasping for flesh. Seton waited until the last moment and then spun his quarterstaff, whipping the weapon through the air and lashing out at the creature with a powerful strike designed to knock the thing into next week.

  Which would have been great, had he actually connected. The demon turned out to be quicker than he was, however, and parried the blow with one of its thick horns, practically knocking the staff out of Seton’s hands. Before John could recover, the demon used one of its arms to fling him out of the way, sending him crashing into some of the others who were just now starting to scramble away from their chairs. The whole lot of them went down in a heap.

  Fury was on his feet by now, a wicked looking knife which he’d seemingly pulled out of nowhere in his hand. He stood in a knife-fighters crouch, the blade gripped in his fist and running down the length of his forearm, ready to slash or stab depending on whatever opening he could manage. For just a second his gaze carried over the demon’s shoulder and met Jessie’s own; he gave her the slightest nod.

  Jessie didn’t need any more encouragement.

  The demon finished its charge and engaged Fury, slashing at him with its claws. Fury fought back, using the blade to parry the worst of the strikes but still taking a few hits on his arms thanks to the speed and ferocity of the creature’s attack. As good as Fury was, it was clear that he wasn’t going to be able to keep the thing at bay indefinitely.

  That was when Jessie rushed forward and, with a battle cry of her own, and smashed the mace into the back of the demon’s head!

  She expected a big mess, blood and brains and bone shooting in every direction as the big, spiky ball on the end of the handle cracked the demon’s skull open like an egg. Unfortunately for her, expectations didn’t meet reality.

  Far from it, in fact.

  The mace crashed into the demon’s skull and bounced off of it, doing little to no damage as far as Jessie could see. What it did do was get the demon’s attention.

  It snarled and spun about, all of its attention now focused on her. Its three eyes blazed brightly in anticipation as it took first one step, and then another, in her direction.

  Oh, shit!

  The demon, however, had forgotten about Fury. While all its attention was on Jessie, the demon’s former prey took a few steps forward and rammed the knife in his hand deep into the creature’s back.

  The demon howled in pain and reached behind it, trying to grab the blade that was now embedded to the guard into its back. That left the front of its body unprotect
ed, which Jessie capitalized on, gripping the mace two-handed and bringing it back around for another blow, this time right between the eyes.

  The mace sank deep this time, sending black blood flying, and the creature jerked its head to the side, wrenching the mace out of Jessie’s hands.

  It’s one remaining good eye focused on her.

  That’s when the twins, Danni and Perce, shoved the halberds they had wrenched down off the wall near where they were sitting directly through the demon’s less-protected torso, pushing them so deep that they literally crossed each other along the way and came out the other side.

  Blood flowed out of the demon’s mouth as it gurgled once and then died. Seconds later its body burst into flame and consumed itself, leaving nothing but a pile of ashes.

  As they all stared at it in astonishment, Grimm’s voice rang out through the room.

  “Perhaps now we can get serious, yes?”

  20

  Hautdesert collected the bloodied weapons and disappeared through a pair of doors at the back of the room while the rest of them returned to their chairs. Jessie tried to get Fury to let her look at his injuries, but he waved her off.

  “I’m fine; just a few scratches. Nothing I can’t handle.”

  “You’re sure?”

  Fury nodded, then looked at both Jessie and Seton. “Thanks. I think you just saved my life.”

  “No worries, laddie,” Seton replied, his accent a bit thicker in the wake of the action they’d just experienced. “I suspect we’re going to be seeing more of that kind of thing in the future. You’ll get your chance to repay us.”

  They settled into the seats with the rest of them and waited for Grimm to continue.

  “That, my friends, was a Horned Demon. Not altogether that intelligent, as you no doubt figured out, but they have a healthy appetite for human flesh and a certain tenacity that makes them hard to pin down and kill. They are just a sampling of the kinds of creatures that we will have to deal with should the Veil fall.”