The Thirteen Hallows

by Michael Scott; Colette Freedman

  There was a loaded gun in the safe behind his desk, shotguns in the cabinet on the wall, ammunition in the drawer underneath. All he had to do…

  The water gurgled, bubbles bursting. Fenton turned. Max’s head had floated to the surface, bobbing like an obscene buoy.

  Richard Fenton had no doubt that whoever had done this to Max had come for him. He’d made too many enemies in his long life, cut too many sharp deals, and on more than one occasion he’d been forced to take care of people who got in his way. But that had been a long time ago. He hadn’t really been active in many years….

  Yet people had long memories.

  Richard Fenton padded barefoot to the double doors and peered out into the circular conservatory that connected the main body of the house with the swimming pool. The Spanish tiles were speckled with dark blood. Whoever had killed Max had carried his head out here to throw it into the water…which meant that they had watched him…which meant that they were still in the house…which meant…

  Maybe he’d forget about the gun. If anyone was waiting for him, they’d be in his study. He could cut across the hall, through the kitchen, and into the garage. The keys were always kept in the cars.

  Crouching low, he darted across the tiles and stepped up into the hallway. After the chill of the tiles, the carpet was warm beneath his feet. And moist. He lifted his foot. It came away sticky with gore.

  Fenton turned. He clapped both hands to his mouth, trying to keep from crying out, but it was too late. His shriek echoed through the empty house. Jackie dangled upside down by one leg from the curtain rail. Her caramel throat had been cut so deeply that her head dangled too far back, exposing tubes and the hint of bone. Her face was a red mask, her honey hair black and stiff. She was still wearing her Kate Spade glasses.

  “Why don’t you come into the study, Mr. Fenton?”

  Richard whirled around. The door to his study was open. He glanced toward the hall door. Thirty, maybe forty steps away. He was in good condition. He’d make it.

  “It was not a request.”

  Through the door, down the cobblestone drive, and out onto the main road. The nearest house was a hundred yards away, but he’d make it. A naked old man running down the road would certainly attract attention.

  The hall door creaked, then opened slowly, shafting afternoon light along the length of the highly polished floor, picking out the dust motes spiraling in the still air. A suited figure stood in the doorway, a long, elongated shadow growing along the floor. Richard frowned, squinting shortsightedly. There was something about the figure…something wrong.

  The figure swayed, then toppled forward. Richard realized then that it had no head. He was looking at the decapitated body of Max.

  “Come into the study, Mr. Fenton.”

  Defeated, Richard Fenton crossed the hall and pushed open the door of his study. He stood in the doorway, arms wrapped around his thin chest, shivering, blinking in the gloom. The curtains had been pulled and the ornate desk lamp turned to face the door, blinding him, leaving the figure sitting behind the desk in shadow. The harsh light made Fenton’s eyes water, and he rubbed angrily at the tears on his cheeks. The old man felt the sting in the pit of his chest and for once welcomed it, knowing that it might save him the pain he knew was coming.

  “You have something I want, Mr. Fenton.” It was a male voice, soft, accentless, precise, controlled.

  “There’s money in the safe,” Richard Fenton said quickly. “Take it.” Maybe this was nothing more than extortion, a Young Turk out to make his reputation by ripping him off. He’d give him what he wanted…and then hunt him down like a dog.

  “I don’t want your money,” the shadowy figure said, his voice tinged with amusement.

  There was movement beside the curtain, and Richard realized that there was a second person in the room. Although the air was rich with meaty blood and the odor from the hide chair and ornate leather bindings, he thought he detected the scent of flowers. But there were no flowering plants in this room. Perfume? A woman?

  “We have come for the chessboard.” The woman’s voice was soft, albeit clipped, the vowels touched with the hint of an indefinable accent.

  “I have many chessboards,” Fenton began. “I’ve collected them all my life. Take what you want.”

  “Oh, but this one is not on display. We’ve come for the Chessboard of Gwenddolau.”

  The old man was not surprised. He’d always known that someone, someday, would come for the cursed pieces of crystal or the gold-and-silver board. Indefinably old, it was one of the most beautiful things he possessed, yet he never displayed it with his other antique boards for reasons he could never fully explain.

  “We want it,” the woman whispered.

  Richard Fenton started to shake his head.

  A knife snapped open.

  “You will tell me, sooner or later,” she purred, and Fenton had no time to react as the woman threw the knife and it thudded into the polished wooden floorboards between his bare feet. Looking down, he saw the sliver of polished steel vibrating.

  “Why don’t you have a seat, Mr. Fenton,” she asked politely.

  He started to shake his head and then immediately felt white-hot pain in his thigh. Looking down, he saw the hilt of a second wafer-thin metal knife protruding from his flesh, inches from his shriveled groin. Bizarrely, there was no pain, only heat.

  “In fact, while we’re waiting for you to tell us the exact location of the Chessboard of Gwenddolau, we’re going to play a little game of chess. Winner takes all.”

  The beautiful woman stepped out of the shadows. Fenton tried to focus on her face, which was so ethereally beautiful that she almost didn’t look human. Her face was long and narrow, lips full, and eyes slightly slanted. A mane of jet black hair flowed down her back. He tried to make out her eye color, but the reflected light painted them bronze and metallic. She looked young, early twenties, perhaps; however, she had full breasts and the soft, curvy belly and buttocks of an older woman. A light green silk gown stretched tight across her full figure.

  Gently, she prodded the injured Fenton into a chair and nodded at her shadow-wrapped companion. He stood, and the old man realized he was tall and broad, like a bodybuilder. As his arm moved into the light, Fenton saw that the man was holding a short stabbing spear in his left hand. The head was wet with black blood.

  The Dark Man moved around the room, perusing the cabinets of chessboards, pulling out one of the more ornate boards, a six-hundred-year-old treasure from the Alhambra carved in the Arabic style. He placed it on the small table in front of Fenton before taking up a position standing behind him.

  “Play,” he commanded.

  The exotic-looking woman sat facing the old man. Her smile was feral as she quickly laid out the pieces. With black-painted nails, she gripped the pawn and moved it, her eyes never leaving Fenton’s face. He tried to make sense out of what was happening, conscious now of the growing pain in his leg, aware that he was probably going to die in this room. “Your turn,” she whispered.

  Automatically, he moved a piece.

  “Ah, the game begins,” the woman whispered. It took her less than a dozen moves to trap Fenton’s king, white teeth pressed against her lips, the tip of her tongue protruding between them. “I thought you would be a better opponent. Shame, you could have bought yourself a few more hours.”

  Her smile was savage. “Checkmate.”

  9

  Iinsist,” Sarah said firmly.

  Judith Walker shook her head slowly but remained silent. She needed this young woman to think that she was making her own decisions.

  “I’m afraid I would be an enormous imposition,” Judith proffered weakly.

  Sitting in the backseat of the police car, Sarah nodded emphatically, convincing herself that this was a good idea. “Where else are you going to go? You can’t stay here, not until the place is cleaned up.” She smiled wanly. “I’ll have to warn you that my mother may be a bit difficult, but
we’ve definitely got the space. Stay the night, and in the morning, I’ll contact your nephew and together we’ll help you get your place back together.”

  “Really, I really—”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Sarah interrupted, but without the same insistent certainty. What was she doing? She’d met this woman only hours earlier, and now she was offering her a bed for the night…. Her mother was going to go ballistic.

  Judith heard the sudden indecision in the young woman’s voice and touched the hilt of the newspaper-wrapped sword, drawing power from it. She then reached out and squeezed Sarah’s hand. “It’s an extremely generous offer.”

  Sarah smiled, her dimples accentuating her understated beauty. “I’ll have the police drop us at my house in Crawley.”

  “You need to phone your office,” Judith suggested quietly. “They’ll be worried about you. You’ve been gone all afternoon.”

  Sarah nodded. There was no sense even trying to go back to work. “I’ll tell them I can’t make it back by the end of the day,” she added, pulling out her phone.

  Judith listened as Sarah tried to explain to her puzzled boss why she was taking the rest of the day off. She could hear the man’s irritated grumbles across the line, and she watched the girl’s exasperated attempts to placate him. In any other circumstance, Judith would have felt guilty about using the power of her will to manipulate Sarah in this way; however, this was a special situation.

  She had to protect the sword—at all costs.

  LATER, WHILE she was lying in the strange bed, watching the reflection of the streetlights dancing on the ceiling, Judith Walker listened to the vague sounds of voices drifting up from the kitchen below. She recognized Ruth Miller’s strident clipped delivery drowning out Sarah’s softer protestations and knew she was the subject of the heated quarrel. Judith reached beneath the pillow and touched the paper-wrapped sword, concentrating on Sarah, trying to pour a little strength into her. She felt a strange sorority with this young woman, a kinship, which even after seventy-four years of experiences she didn’t quite understand.

  The Miller family had welcomed Judith’s presence with cool politeness. They lived quiet suburban lives in a quiet suburban neighborhood and obviously resented this bizarre intrusion.

  Tea had been a frostily civil affair.

  Ruth Miller had engaged Judith in brittle inconsequential conversation, while James, Ruth’s latest lover, had barely spoken. Sarah’s younger brothers, obviously warned by their mother to be on their best behavior, had nattered in hurried whispers throughout the meal and ignored the stranger at their table. Much to everyone’s relief, Judith claimed exhaustion following the events of the day and retired immediately after tea. She had been given the youngest boy’s bedroom, a tiny box room decorated with posters of NASCAR drivers, football stars, and a scantily dressed tween rock star whom Judith Walker didn’t recognize. In the middle of the floor sat an elaborate train set and a scattering of stuffed animals. She found the contrast between the burgeoning testosterone-driven sexuality of the posters and the plush toys vaguely disturbing; she guessed the boy was no more than ten. Another sign of the times: Innocence was one of the first sacrifices to the modern age.

  Sitting up on the bed, Judith unwrapped the sword and ran her fingers down the rusted metal. Holding it by the hilt, she brought the broken blade to her lips and felt the familiar surge of power that tingled through her hands and into her arms.

  Old magic, ancient power, rising.

  Judith felt the warmth flood through her body. Aches and pains from stiffened joints vanished; tired, worn muscles relaxed; her sight grew sharp and her hearing distinct as her senses expanded. She was young again. Young and vital and…

  Old magic, ancient power, fading.

  The power left as soon as it had arrived, and her newly keen sight swiftly dissolved to an unfocused blur. Her hearing became muted. And the aches and pains returned.

  Sighing, she wrapped the sword in a faded cotton nightdress and tucked it beneath her pillow. When she lay back, she could feel the hardness of the old iron against her skull. As a child, she’d slept with it beneath her pillow every night, and the dreams…the dreams then had been extraordinary. The sword had been her gateway to portals of imagination, lost worlds, and wondrous and magical adventures. Those dreams had shaped her early imagination and sowed the seeds of her later career. When the book critics lauded her wonderfully detailed imagination and fully realized worlds, they had no idea that she was simply repeating and reporting on the places she’d seen.

  As she grew older, Judith had hidden the sword away in her brother’s old woolen military jacket that hung at the back of the closet. The dreams then came only sporadically, and she began treating them clinically, divesting them of their chilling powers by converting them into marketable fantasy and adventure books for children. There were times when she almost forgot about the power of the Hallow that had so shaped her life.

  Almost, but not quite.

  But someone still believed that the Hallows were powerful; someone was prepared to kill in order to acquire the artifacts.

  And Sarah, where did she fit into the overall scheme? Was her appearance, her intervention, more than coincidence? Even dormant, the Hallows attracted certain types of people—either those sensitive to the tremulous aura they exuded but unaware of their powers or those who deliberately sought the ancient objects of power still scattered throughout the world. Over the years, she’d encountered her fair share of both. And Sarah…Judith was convinced she was the former, but there was more to her. There was a strength to her that even the young woman did not recognize.

  The argument downstairs finally ended with a slammed door, then stairs creaked. There was a gentle tap on the door.

  “Come in, Sarah,” Judith Walker said softly, sitting up in the bed.

  Sarah Miller stepped into the room, smiling sheepishly. Her cheeks were red and flushed, and her hands were trembling slightly. “I just came to see how you were,” she said quietly.

  “I’m fine, thanks to you.” Judith patted the bed. “Sit for a moment.”

  The young woman perched on the edge of the bed, her eyes moving about the familiar room, looking anywhere but at Judith’s face.

  “I’m afraid I haven’t made you very popular with your family.”

  Sarah shrugged. “I’ve never been popular with them. But they’re fine. They were just a bit surprised, that’s all.”

  “I imagine your mother suspects I’m here for the rest of my life.”

  Sarah shook her head quickly, though Ruth Miller had indeed suggested that very idea. “Once these people move in, they never leave,” she had preached.

  “No. Nothing of the sort,” Sarah said.

  Judith reached out and touched the girl’s hands. In that instant, she felt a tinge of regret for what she had done—using the girl to provide her with a secure shelter for the night, a place that couldn’t be traced. “What you did today was something you should be proud of,” she said, her voice low and insistent. “You acted in the finest traditions of old; you came to the aid of a damsel in distress.” She squeezed Sarah’s fingers and smiled.

  Sarah nodded, suddenly feeling confident and sure about her actions. She had been sure she’d done the right thing—they had seemed right… until her mother had explained the hundred different reasons why she should have left the situation alone. Ruth Miller simply could not comprehend why her daughter hadn’t looked away and crossed the street.

  “Do you believe in a higher power?” Judith asked suddenly.

  Sarah shrugged. “We’re Church of England.”

  “No, I’m not talking about a church. I’m not talking about a god or gods or anything so specific. Do you believe in a Being, a Spirit, a force for Good?”

  Uncomfortable with the direction the conversation was taking—maybe her mother was right; maybe the old woman was mad—Sarah shrugged again. “I suppose. Why?”

  “Because what you did today w
as right. It was good. Do not allow people to belittle what you did.”

  “Honestly, I’m not sure why I did it,” Sarah admitted. “But when I saw them attacking you, something happened to me. I just got so angry. I couldn’t walk away….”

  Judith smiled, deep wrinkles crinkling along her eyes and mouth. “In my youth, the elderly could walk the streets in safety,” she said. “But that was a long time ago.” She laid down and closed her eyes, indicating that the conversation was over.

  Sarah sat with the old woman until her breathing deepened and slowed to whispered breaths. Suddenly, the young woman was acutely aware of the house around her. She felt odd, as if a sixth sense had been granted to her. She was able to tangibly experience the feelings swirling about her: her mother’s radiated anger from the kitchen below, her brothers’ dull annoyance, especially little Freddie, who had to give up his room. Sarah smiled grimly, returning to her reality. She’d managed to do it again; she’d managed to alienate them all in one go. It was a gift. Christ! Her mother’s words came flooding back: She had it all, and yet she still managed to fuck it up; she was twenty-two, in a good job, with a great future, and earning a good salary.

  Sarah Miller’s smile turned bitter.

  She was twenty-two, in a lousy, dead-end job she hated, and she handed over most of her salary to her mother. She should have gotten a flat when she’d had the chance. But she hadn’t taken it, and in the last couple of years she’d begun to think that maybe she never would. She’d watched her friends move away from home, get apartments in the city, find boyfriends and girlfriends, and live. Some of them were even married now.

  Sarah gently disengaged the old woman’s fingers from her hand and stood looking down at the frail, tiny woman in the bed. Today, she’d done something positive, something good…and her mother had scolded her like a naughty little girl. Well, maybe she shouldn’t have brought Judith Walker home, but she couldn’t leave her in that horrible house, and somehow, bringing her here had seemed like the only decision to make.