Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Darkness Falls
About the Author
DARKNESS
FALLS
BLOOD HOUND: VOLUME THREE
BY
J.M. ROBINSON
Terror in the Night
Copyright © 2018 by J.M. Robinson
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The rights of J.M. Robinson to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this publication are ficticious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
CHAPTER 1
THE CURTAINS WERE CLOSED BUT THEY GLOWED WITH the last touch of daylight. The book cases along the walls were cloaked in shadow. Maps of Lunden were open on the desk, piled on top of each other haphazardly. More maps covered the chair beneath the window, held down by books about churches and the city itself.
Graham sat with his legs crossed in the middle of the faded floral carpet, between the desk and the chair. His eyes were closed and his hands folded in his lap. He breathed steadily and didn’t move.
He was smaller than he had been. More than a month had passed since he’d escaped from The Grigori and in that time he’d frequently been too busy to eat. He’d spent long days and nights in the mind space searching for Bridget until one day he’d found her.
The apartment was new. It wasn’t big but it was somewhere to call his own. Somewhere that he could base his search from and somewhere, he was increasingly coming to believe, that he would be able to bring Bridget home to.
His lips began to move but no sound came out. In the mind space he had found her again. He couldn’t see anything but he knew that Bridget could. He waited in darkness for her to speak.
‘Father,’ she said. Her voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
‘I’m here Bridget,’ Graham said. ‘How are you?’
‘They’re treating me well. How are you?’
He was tired but their communications always renewed his strength. He missed her but this was closer than they had been for a long time. ‘I’m well. Do you have any news for me?’
Each time they met their conversations followed a similar pattern. First he asked how she was and she always told him that she was well, that she wasn’t being mistreated. At first he hadn’t believed her, had thought that she was protecting his feelings, but each time they spoke she told him the same thing, regardless of how much he pushed her.
‘We moved again last night,’ Bridget said.
‘How far?’
‘I don’t know. We were travelling for less than an hour.’
‘By carriage?’
‘Yes.’
They had been moving her more often recently. ‘What’s this place like?’
‘It’s dark. Gothic. There’s a lot of old statues and carvings.’
It could have been a description of any of the buildings she had been held in recently.
‘Did you see anything on your way there? Or when they took you in? Did you see the outside at all?’
‘No,” Bridget said. “I’m sorry.’
‘It’s not your fault honey,’ Graham said. ‘Did you hear anything? Like running water?’
‘Maybe. I’m not sure.’
‘You need to be sure honey. If you heard running water then that narrows it down.’ He thought about his list of churches and how many he could cross off if he knew that this one was near a river.
‘Yes,’ Bridget said. ‘Yes I did hear water.’
Graham smiled. ‘Is there anything else you can tell me?’
She didn’t reply at first. He thought, for a moment, that the connection had been broken. It wouldn’t have been the first time that it had happened suddenly and without warning. Usually it was when something distracted him and he lost concentration but occasionally it was a disturbance at Bridget’s end.
‘No,’ Bridget said. ‘No there wasn’t anything.’
Speaking in the mind space was strange. Sometimes he found it difficult to know whether she was telling the truth or not because he couldn’t see her facial expression. Other times he found he knew more about what she was saying than he needed to because he had a direct connection to her mind.
‘Are you okay?’ Bridget said. ‘Are the men still watching you?’
She meant the men from The Church and The Grigori. He had found them both in the streets outside his building in the last few days. He wasn’t sure they knew about each other but they certainly knew he was there. They followed him wherever he went.
‘They’re still there,’ Graham said.
‘How will you get past them?’
‘You let me worry about that. No one’s going to stop me coming to get you.’
‘I don’t want you to get hurt,’ Bridget said.
‘You don’t need to worry about me,’ Graham said but he wasn’t sure how true that was.
They spoke for a few minutes more. Graham was keen to start work on narrowing down the list of possible locations she was being held in but he wouldn’t let her go until he’d told her that he loved her.
‘I love you too,’ Bridget said and then she was gone.
Graham remained in the mind space for a while longer. Feeling the absence of his daughter in the darkness and trying to use the hollow sensation to spur him on. Being able to talk to her was useful but it hurt as well. He would work through the night trying to find out where she was being held but it would leave him physically exhausted.
He opened his eyes and stood. The room was darker than when he had gone into the trance. His legs ached after being crossed for so long.
It was not uncommon for him to forget about eating and become so engrossed in his work that he went for days without food. He felt as if he had enough time not to rush tonight. Usually Bridget was kept in the same location for two or three days and she had only just arrived. Once he had finished writing his notes he got up and went into the kitchen.
He returned a few minutes later with tea and messy pieces of bread and ham. In due course he would get a housekeeper but, for the moment, he couldn’t afford the disruption, or the cost. He needed to focus on the task at hand and not worry that anything would be misplaced.
He picked up an overflowing sandwich with one hand and reached for a book about gothic churches with the other. Tonight, as every other night, he would search through thousands of words and hundreds of pages, checking details on the churches and locating them on maps.
It wasn’t a very scientific method. Usually he was left with a dozen buildings and no way to choose between them. He might have time to visit two or three of them before she was moved on again.
He worked until his eyes hurt and he could no longer sit up straight. He scribbled notes about the churches that matched Bridget’s description until his hand began to cramp.
The room was being warmed by the first light of day by the time he finally climbed out of his well worn seat. He stretched and his bones cracked. He hobbled out of the door and down the corridor to his room.
He slept fitfully. The events of the last few months haunting him in dreams that he could not quite remember. When he woke, in
pools of sweat and shaking with fear, he considered it a blessing that he didn’t know what had provoked the reaction.
CHAPTER 2
DARKNESS WAS ONCE MORE UPON HIM WHEN HE woke. Graham lay on his back blinking up at the ceiling. At some point during his journey he had switched to a nocturnal sleep pattern. It still left him confused for the first few moments upon waking.
He climbed out of bed. The little room was barely bigger than Carol’s had been.
He arched his back and stretched the final few aches of the previous night out of his body. He ran a hand through his hair and wondered if it was starting to get thin. He wouldn’t mind if it did.
In the kitchen he fried an egg on the small range and then found out that he hadn’t bought bread. He sat at the small table and drank tea while he ate.
He had a short list of places he was likely to find Bridget. It consisted of just three churches. The fewest number so far. It gave him hope that tonight might be the night. The churches weren’t far from each other so he could visit them all if he needed to.
Graham dressed in one of the new suits he had bought. He picked up the list that he had made the previous night and left his apartment.
Green mist hung in the cold air. The world took on a sinister glow. His building was on a cobbled road. Opposite it an abandoned inn. An unlit oil lamp hung from its wall.
To his right, at the end of the street and little more than a silhouette beneath the full moon, there was a church. A light glowed faintly in the clock tower. It was one of the few buildings that Graham had visited more than once but he’d never found a thing there.
Graham kept his collar up and his head down. The mist became a thick fog so that he could barely see across the road. It would have been easy to believe that he was alone but he could hear mumbled voices and footsteps close by.
He didn’t find anything except the happy clappy sort at the first church. The second was hidden by fog. He stood on the road outside but he couldn’t hear a thing.
The gate was locked but that was no deterrent to an eager man. Graham checked to make sure no one was watching and then he jumped and grabbed the top of the wall. He was fitter and stronger than he had been but he was still a man of thirty-six. He heaved and pulled himself over.
On the other side the ground was higher so he didn’t have far to fall. Nevertheless he still managed to turn his ankle as he landed. He cursed under his breath and leaned against a crumbling tombstone as he stood up.
The path to the front of the church was long and winding. It was several minutes before he could see the dark shape of the building through the marshy fog.
The door was closed and locked. There was no light coming from within. He walked around the outside and tried each of the three doors but none of them opened. A ground floor window had been boarded up and written on in a language that he didn’t understand. The letters were images, pictograms like the Chinese used, but unfamiliar.
He stopped at the front door and considered making another circuit but decided against it. The building seemed abandoned. He was sure that if there were people inside he would have known. If he really thought Bridget was inside he would consider breaking a window but it seemed unlikely and he still had another church on his list.
He walked back along the twisting path slowly, limping slightly. The fog began to clear. He nodded to a man walking a dog but didn’t receive a response. It seemed to be the default in the city and he found himself missing the friendliness of Odamere. Maybe, when all of this was over, he would take Bridget back there.
By the time he reached the final church on his list he was tired and the pain in his leg had gotten worse. The fog had cleared and he could see all the way across the sparsely populated graveyard to the large building beyond.
Graham stopped by the gates and caught his breath. His ankle throbbed but he ignored it. The sky exploded with an almighty light which was gone as soon as it had appeared. Another flash came and the sky remained as brightly lit as mid day for several seconds. When it happened a third time Graham realised that the light was coming from the church itself.
The great arched windows at the front of the building were lit as if there was a fire inside. The smaller windows either side of it projected beams of light through what remained of the fog.
The flashes of light became more and more frequent. Graham forgot about his doubts and the pain in his leg and pulled open the gate. He hobbled up the three wide steps onto the path towards the building.
As he got closer he began to hear things. Voices that didn’t make sense. A loud explosion tore through the air. He jumped back and narrowly avoided being hit by falling masonry.
A large hole had appeared in the side of the church. Vibrant gold light spilled out like high pressure water. Graham approached cautiously, as if it was on fire.
Graham walked up to the hole in the wall. There were people inside the building. They were moving around too quickly for him to see properly. They darted like flies, jumping high enough to touch the ceiling and bouncing off walls and the balcony that hung over the hall.
He couldn’t tell if they were fighting or dancing.
Two of the figures were of a similar size but the third was much larger. If it was human then it was like nothing Graham had ever seen. It was green and scaly. It reminded him of Alec but many times the little antique dealers size.
Its naked form was a mass of sinewy muscles and veins that looked ready to burst through its paper thin skin. Its eyes were red balls without visible irises. It stared in Graham’s direction but didn’t seem to notice him.
Graham stepped back but even the movement didn’t draw attention to him. The creature turned around to face the two human sized shapes. It ran towards them, an angry howl filling the air. The two figures ran together to meet it and the three of them collided with a flash of light which was so bright Graham had to turn away.
It was a fight but not one that Graham could follow. He backed away from the church wall and wondered if this was something to do with Bridget. Was she being held in this church? Or was this something entirely unrelated? It seemed unlikely but not impossible.
He turned and hurried away as quickly as his injured leg could carry him. He went along the side of the church to the first door he found. The flashes of light came more frequently now and the church yard was lit up like noon. He had no trouble seeing where he was going. He pushed open the door and went inside.
The noise and movement of the fight made the walls and ground shake. He walked quickly through the bright passage on unsteady feet. If Bridget was being held in the building then there was no need for him to engage with the people who were fighting. They might actually work to his advantage. While they were busy trying to kill each other they were neglecting his daughter.
He tried the first door. It opened on a storage cupboard. He continued along the passage, opening each door that he found but there was nothing except cupboards and empty offices behind them.
The noise and flashing lights stopped. The ground stopped shaking and the walls were once again solid imposing stone. Graham counted to ten and then cautiously approached the hall.
The pews had been reduced to timber and sawdust. All but one of the windows were broken and there was a large hole in the side of the building that let the moonlight in. The two people, a man and a woman, sat side by side on the alter step. They were too far away for Graham to identify. The creature they had been fighting was standing in front of them, pacing back and forth, muttering to itself or them in a language that he didn’t understand.
Graham crept towards them, hiding behind chunks of wood and stone. He stopped and listened. They had been fighting just moments ago but now they sounded calm and reasonable. Even the creature spoke peacefully.
The woman had straight black hair and big dark eyes. She wore a revealing black dress. The creature had its back to him. The man was Arthur Park.
Park stepped away from the woman. “Kable? What are you doing h
ere?” Park said.
“What do you think I’m doing here?” Graham said.
Park shook his head. “Of course. I’m sorry.” He walked towards Graham with his hand out.
Graham shook his hand.
“This is Lucy,” Park said.
The woman smiled and offered her hand.
“This is Sabnack,” Park said.
The creature growled.
“What’s this all about?” Graham said.
Park looked at the woman but if the glance contained any communication it was too subtle for Graham to pick up on.
“With me Sabnack,” Lucy said. She walked past him and the creature followed her towards the hole that had been blown in the side of the church.
Graham watched until they were out of sight and then turned back to Park. “What’s going on?”
Park bowed his head. “There’s a war coming.”
“A war?” Graham said.
Park nodded.
“I’m not interested in a war. I’m looking for my daughter.”
“And I hope you find her,” Park said. “It will mean all of this in unnecessary.”
“This has something to do with Bridget?”
“If The Church manage to complete the ritual then the war between Heaven and Hell will come to Earth.”
“Then you’re looking for her too?” Graham said.
Park shook his head. “I hope they’re wrong, but the people I’m working for think it’s too late to stop the war. They’re building an army.”
“An army?” Graham said.
“The angels that sided with Lucifer are our only hope to defeat Jehovah and save the world.”
“That creature was an angel?” Graham said. He found it difficult to believe that a creature that ugly had ever been an Angel.
Park nodded. “When they sided with Lucifer they changed. Sabnack didn’t always look like that.”
A cloud passed across the moon and the two men were plunged into darkness. Graham felt that it was time for him to leave but it had been so long since he’d spoken to anyone about Bridget that he stayed.
Darkness Falls (Blood Hound Book 3) Page 1