Viola tried to concentrate, wondering if her eyes were playing tricks on her or if the newborn pain was clouding her judgment.
The spear rose, serpents of cold fire splashing onto the head of her attacker, illuminating his face. When she saw his eyes, the woman realized she would not be playing Nancy in tomorrow’s performance.
Viola Jillian would never be a star.
Monday, October 26
2
Another one,” Judith Walker said to her cat, Franklin, as she opened a can of tuna. Despite being rescued from behind a garbage can, her tabby was a food critic and snubbed anything other than canned fish. Judith tried to find some solace from her beloved feline, but he was too busy eating.
Another death, and this was the one she had been dreading.
Judith had met Bea Clay seventy years earlier when they were wee little children, and the pair had remained steadfast friends throughout the decades.
Judith had taken the train down to London just last month, where they had met for tea before traipsing around the National Gallery like a couple of giggling teenagers. Theirs was a relationship closer than sisters. They had remained close through the marriages and divorces, children and grandchildren, and indignities of approaching old age. Letters had evolved into e-mails, and they’d kept up a regular correspondence that had brought them closer together than if they had lived next door.
Judith had first met Bea in Wales when they were both children, evacuees together during World War II, and they had formed an instant friendship. Whenever Judith thought of her friend, she remembered a beautiful young girl with jet black eyes and matching hair so thick, it would sparkle and crackle with electricity every time she combed it.
Poor Bea. There had always been so much pain, so much loss, in her life. She had buried three husbands and had outlived her only child. She had a granddaughter living in New York City whom she never saw, and she was lonely.
At seventy-four, most people were lonely.
Bea seemed to always draw the short straw. She had lived through the hungry years and the recession, and then, when property values had spiraled and she’d finally had a chance to make some real money, she’d waited too long to sell her home, gambling that prices would continue to rise. When the next recession had hit hard and prices had tumbled, she’d been forced to move into a tiny flat in a building occupied primarily by students and artists several decades her junior. In her last e-mail, she had been talking about possibly leaving London, cashing in her meager savings and seeing out her days in a nursing home up in the Cotswolds.
Judith had joked that perhaps she would join her. It was getting harder and harder for her to navigate around her cottage with her arthritic hip, and nursing homes were usually on one level. In one of their recent e-mails, they had joked that they would end up being the terrible twosome of the home, causing havoc with their equally stubborn sensibilities. And side by side, they would live out the rest of their days in the peaceful beauty of the north: living an uncomplicated life of reading, playing cards, and basking in a deliciously simplistic tranquillity.
The old woman sat down, suddenly overcome by emotion. “Too late now,” Judith Walker lamented to Franklin, who had wandered in from the kitchen and leapt up to stretch out on the windowsill, ignoring her. She smiled grimly: When she died, she would like to come back as a cat and merely sleep and eat all day. Almost reluctantly, Judith picked up the paper and reread the story in The Guardian. The bloody death of an old woman, and it rated half a paragraph on the third page.
Pensioner and Good Samaritan Slain
Police in London are investigating the brutal slaying of Beatrice Clay (74) and the neighbor, Viola Jillian (23), who went to her assistance. Police investigators believe that Mrs. Clay, a widow, disturbed late night burglars in her first-floor apartment, who tied her to the bed and gagged her with a pillowcase. Mrs. Clay died of asphyxiation. Police suspect that Ms. Jillian, who lived in the apartment upstairs, heard a noise and came to investigate. In a struggle with one of the burglars, Ms. Jillian was fatally stabbed.
Judith pulled off her glasses and dropped them onto the newspaper. She squeezed the bridge of her nose. What did the report not say? What had been intentionally suppressed?
From inside her knitting bag she pulled out a newly sharpened pair of scissors and carefully cut out the story. Later she would add it to the others in the scrapbook. The obituary list was growing.
Bea Clay was the fifth death. The fourth in the last two months. Or at least the fifth that she knew about. If the murder of an elderly woman in London rated less than eight lines, then the death—accidental or otherwise—of a pensioner would probably pass unnoticed by most people.
And Judith had known all of the victims.
Millie had been the first. Ten years ago, Mildred Bailey had died in her home. The invalid, who lived with her nephew in a farmhouse in Wales, was the victim of a terrible accident.
Later, Judith would come to realize that these were no accidents.
Millie had never left Wales. Her parents were killed in the Blitz and she’d been adopted by the Welsh couple who cared for her. Judith remembered Millie, the oldest of the group of children, as extremely practical. At eight years old, she’d taken it on herself to look out for the ragtag group of evacuees, especially the younger children who were no more than four and a half at the time of Operation Pied Piper, when three and a half million children were evacuated to the country in three days. In the early years of World War II, it was believed that German aircraft would bomb all the major cities, and the only way to keep the next generation alive was to evacuate them to the countryside. Four hundred were evacuated to Pwllheli in Wales in the far west of the country, and a small group of thirteen, including Judith, ended up in the mountainous county of Madoc. Twelve of those eventually returned to their homes, but Millie remained. The obituary read that Mildred had somehow fallen out of her wheelchair, tumbled down a flight of stairs, and impaled herself on the steel banister.
Judith had written it off as a horrible event.
Unfortunate. Unexpected. Untimely.
Until the next death.
Judith had never liked Thomas Sexton. Tommy had been a bully as a child. A fat boy with curly red hair and brown piggy eyes, he used to torment the younger children, teasing them incessantly. Tommy had grown up to become an even bigger bully, earning his living as a debt collector in his youth and, after retirement, making a living as a collections agent and moneylender. Two months ago, he had been slain in Brixton in what the police called a gangland killing. The brutality of his murder had excited some press interest: His chest had been opened from throat to crotch, and his heart and lungs had been removed. MODERN RIPPER STALKS LONDON, the headlines read.
Judith hadn’t been surprised by Sexton’s murder. She had always known that Tommy was going to come to a bad end. She remembered one night when he had been caught shining his flashlight up into the sky as the enemy bombers flew over, trying to attract their attention. One of the grown-ups had caught him and beaten him silly. Later, he boasted to the others that the punishment was worth it; he’d been hoping they would bomb the town because he wanted to see a dead body.
When she had learned of Georgina Rifkin’s death in Ipswich three weeks ago, Judith had felt the first icy trickle of fear. The death of two people who knew the secret was a coincidence. The death of three was something more. Officially, Georgie, a retired schoolteacher, had fallen into the path of the National Express. Later, Judith had discovered the online rumor that the old woman had been tied spread-eagled to the train tracks.
Only four days ago, Nina Byrne had died in Edinburgh. The press reported that the retired librarian had accidentally tipped a pan of boiling oil over herself as she cooked in the kitchen of her apartment. Judith knew that Nina never cooked.
And now Bea.
How many more were going to be savagely killed?
Judith Walker knew that they were being systematically slaughtered, and
she wondered when it would be her turn.
Judith stood, lifted a sun-faded picture off the mantelpiece, and carried it to the window. Tilting it to the light, she looked at three irregular rows of thirteen smiling faces. It could have been a classroom photo, with the elder children standing in the back and the younger ones kneeling and sitting in the front. The black-and-white photograph had long faded to sepia, and it was difficult to make out any detail in the faces. Mildred, Georgina, and Nina were all standing in the back, asserting their eight-year-old independence with their arms easily slung over one another.
A smirking Tommy was kneeling to Bea’s left. Judith was sitting cross-legged beside her; the two girls were wearing identical floral dresses, with their black hair in matching ribboned headbands, hanging in loose ringlets around their shoulders. The small dark girls looked alike enough to be taken for sisters.
Five of those children were now dead.
Walking slowly, leaning heavily on the cane she’d sworn she’d never use, she moved around the small terraced cottage, double-checking that all the windows were locked and the doors were bolted. She wasn’t sure how effective a barrier they would prove when they came for her, but perhaps it would delay them long enough for her to swallow the prescription tablets she carried with her.
She could go to the police, but who was going to believe the ramblings of a mad old woman who lived alone and was famous for talking to her cat? What was she going to tell them, that five of the children with whom she had been evacuated during the war had been killed and that she was certain she would be one of the next victims?
“Tell us why someone would want to kill you, Mrs. Walker?”
“Because I am one of the Keepers of the Thirteen Hallows of Britain.”
Judith paused at the bottom of the stairs, smiling at the thought. It sounded ridiculous even to her. Seventy years ago, she had been equally skeptical.
She climbed slowly, making sure she had a solid grip on the banister, planting the cane firmly before moving onto the next step. She had broken her right hip two years ago in a bad fall.
Seventy years ago; a glorious war time autumn. Thirteen children had been billeted in the village in the shadow of the Welsh mountains, and in the months that followed they had become a makeshift family. For most of them it was the first time they had ever been away from home, the first time they had been on a farm.
It had been a grand adventure.
When the old man with the long white beard had come to the farm in the summer of 1940, he had been just another curiosity, until he had started telling them his wild and wonderful tales of magic and folklore.
Judith turned the key in the spare bedroom and pushed open the door. Dust motes spiraled in the late afternoon sunshine, and she sneezed uncontrollably in the dry, stale air.
For months the old man had teased them with secrets and fragments of tales, hinting, always hinting, that the children were special and that it was no accident that they, specifically, had come to this place. “Summoned” was the word he’d used.
Judith opened the closet, wrinkling her nose at the pungent smell of mothballs.
For weeks he had called them special, his young knights, his Keepers. But as the summer closed and autumn approached, a new urgency had entered the old man’s stories. He began speaking to them individually, telling them special stories, disturbing, frightening stories that were strangely familiar, as if they had always been present in their subconscious and he were merely unlocking them. She still thought about him this time every year when October 31 approached, the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain: All Hallows’ Eve.
Judith shivered. She could still remember the story the man had told her. It had created echoes and stirred resonances that had never been stilled. For the last seventy years, her dreams were peppered with fragments of vivid images and startling nightmares that she had used to forge a successful career as a children’s writer. Putting the fantastic images down on paper seemed to rob them of a little of their daunting power and, in turn, gave her a little power over them.
Judith Walker reached into the closet and pulled out a Military Bridge overcoat that had once belonged to her brother and had gone out of fashion in the sixties. After hanging the gray coat on the back of the door, she lifted a paper-wrapped bundle from one of the enormous pockets and carried it to the bed, where she slowly, and with great reluctance, unwrapped the parcel.
It took a great deal of imagination to realize that the chunk of red-rusted metal nestled in the yellowed newspaper was the hilt and portion of the blade of a sword. But she had never doubted it. When the old tramp had first pressed it into her hands, he had whispered its true name into her ear. She could still feel his breath, spicy and rancid against her small face. All she had to do was call the sword by its true name to release its power. She hadn’t spoken its name in years….
“Dyrnwyn.”
Judith Walker looked at the lump of metal in her hands. She repeated the name: “Dyrnwyn, Sword of Rhydderch.”
Once, it would have come trembling to life, cold green flames shooting from its hilt, forming the remainder of the Broken Sword.
“Dyrnwyn,” Judith called a third time.
Nothing happened. Perhaps there was no magic left in the Hallow anymore. Maybe nothing had ever happened and it had been only in her imagination. The eager dreams of a prepubescent girl mingled with the fading memories of an old woman. She dropped the rusted metal onto the bed and brushed flakes of rust from her lined flesh. The rust had stained her skin the color of blood.
Millie, Tommy, Georgie, Nina, and Bea had also possessed one of the thirteen ancient Hallows. Judith was convinced that they had been tortured and brutally slaughtered for those artifacts. And what about the others she’d lost touch with? How many of them still survived?
Seventy years ago, the old man’s last words to each child had been a distinct warning: “Never bring the Hallows together.”
No one had ever thought to ask him why.
3
It was so much more than just sex.
They had practiced the ancient ritual until it was perfect. Their damp, naked bodies teasing and arousing each other by any means possible until they would each tremble on the brink of orgasm.
And then stop.
She enjoyed intense pain, while he thrived on hedonistic pleasure, and each knew the exact buttons to push to propel the other to the edge of ecstasy. Then the lithe, athletic young woman, known as Vyvienne, would lie with her toned arms and long legs spread-eagled atop an ancient stone altar stolen from a desecrated church. The man, known as Ahriman, would enter her, male and female becoming one, power flowing together, unstoppable.
They enacted the ancient ritual, generating the most powerful of the magical elements to aid them in their quest, to seek out and find the location of the spirits of the Keepers. And when they discovered them, they went forth to do battle with them.
And destroy them.
Decades ago, it would have been inconceivable to go up against the Keepers of the Thirteen Hallows, but times had radically changed. Now the Keepers were nothing more than tired old senior citizens, untrained and unskilled, most of them blissfully unaware of the treasures they possessed. Although it took much of the sport from the hunt, there was still the kill to be relished. But now with All Hallows’ Eve fast approaching, they had recently hired others to help them complete the rest of the butchery.
Nine Hallowed Keepers were dead. Four to go.
Vyvienne watched the man carefully, gauging the tension of his well-defined muscles and the pulsating rhythm of his shallow breathing. Her powerful legs locked around his taut buttocks, keeping him deep inside her but initiating no move that would bring on his orgasm.
That would be disastrous.
In that instant, the moment of power would escape. It would then take them three days of bodily purification—no red meat, no alcohol, no sex—to reach this critical point again.
“The chessboard.” She whisp
ered the words into his open mouth.
He swallowed her words. “The chessboard,” he repeated, sweat curling down his stubbled cheeks, dripping onto his hairless chest.
They were close now, so close.
Vyvienne closed her eyes and concentrated, every sense heightened, alerted to the possible smells and sounds that would lead them to their treasure. The sensations in her groin were almost too much to bear as she repeated the next object of their quest—“The Chessboard of Gwenddolau”—forcing him to concentrate, to visualize the next Hallowed object.
Ahriman squeezed his dark eyes tightly shut, moisture gathering in the corners like tears, which rolled down his face and splashed onto her belly and heavy breasts. She felt their liquid touch and gasped, and the sudden involuntary ripple of stomach muscles brought him to a shocking, shuddering climax. He cried aloud, passion and anguish inextricably entwined.
Vyvienne stroked his hair. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
When he raised his head, his smile was savage…and triumphant. “No need. I saw it. I saw the crystal pieces, the gold-and-silver board. I know exactly where they are.”
Vyvienne then drew him deep into her body, hands and muscles locking him in place, in order to satisfy her own desire. She whispered wickedly into his ear, “Then let us do this for pleasure.”
Tuesday, October 27
4
Sarah Miller had never done anything extraordinary in her life.
At twenty-two, Sarah still had dreams of greatness. They had been instilled in her by her father despite the fact that her overbearing mother had done everything in her power to make sure that those dreams would never reach fruition. The oldest of three children, Sarah had been ushered into a job the day she finished her A levels. “To support your family,” Ruth Miller had snarled, guilting her eldest child into an unsatisfying job in the same London bank where her father had worked for thirty years. Rather than pursuing her dream of going to university, she had taken the job and put on the regulation blue blazer and khaki skirt every day for the last four years. It was a dead-end job without prospects, and she realized she would probably be stuck there for the rest of her life. Or laid off in the next round of job cuts. Her father had spent his entire life in the bank as a midlevel clerk. Forced out by compulsory early retirement and unable to spend any length of time in the house with his overbearing wife, he’d taken to gardening. Six weeks after he’d left the job, he was found dead in her mother’s prized flower bed. Heart attack, the coroner’s report said. Sarah thought her mother was more upset by the flowers he’d destroyed when he’d fallen into them than by her husband’s death.
The Thirteen Hallows Page 2