“I will need one of your horses.”
“So you have failed at your one duty and now you are requesting the use of one of our horses.”
“Unless you would like to explain to Adam why I was delayed, then yes.” Now I was laying it on thick, but if I backed down now, there was no telling if I would make it out of this room intact.
“Dimitri, get your horse ready.” One of the men beside him stood and strode toward the door. As he went by, he made sure to slam his shoulder into mine.
“I have my carriage being prepared. One of you can ride back with my things.”
The man bristled at the thought of him or one of his men being relegated to watching over my possessions. I was going to pay for that later, but watching the pulsing vein in his forehead had become just too fun for me to stop making it pulse now.
“Your horse awaits. Good day.” He spun on his heel and turned back to his seat. The three remaining men crowded around him, and they began talking in hushed whispers. Every now and then one of them would look up at me and then turn back to the group. With nothing left to do but leave, I turned smartly and headed for the door.
I stopped to thank the doorman and to press a coin into his hand. “Do you know the families of the guards who haven’t been seen today?”
“I do, milord.”
“Can you see that each one of them receives one of these packages?”
He took a moment to look at the gold coin in his hand. “I would be more than happy to do so.”
“Understand when I tell you this—if those packages do not make it to the families of those men’s families, I will come back here and kill you myself.”
“Understood, milord.”
I flipped him another coin. “Just see that it is done.”
It didn’t feel like enough, but the least I could do was offer those families a little gold. It wouldn’t bring their sons or husbands back, but it would make the next few years easier. No one would know what happened to those men, and those families wouldn’t be receiving any help from anyone else with them branded as deserters. I found Dimitri waiting in the courtyard, his horse saddled and ready to go.
“I expect her to be waiting for me in good condition when we catch up with you.”
“I promise you that I will do my best to make sure it is so.”
Dimitri held out his arm. I stood there for a second, shocked by the offer. Clasping his hand, I said the phrase of our order. “I am the flame against the dark.”
“May you burn ever brighter,” he intoned, before saying, “Safe journey, Brother.”
“And to you,” I said, releasing his arm and swinging myself into the saddle.
Exhaustion almost forced me from the saddle as our base came into view. I had taxed myself by using my gift to keep the horse running for the last twenty-four hours straight. Riding directly to the front of the building, I was surprised to find a valet waiting to take my reins. Jumping from the saddle, I started to head inside.
The valet called out, “Adam is waiting for you.”
“I will see him after I clean the grime of the road from my clothes.”
“He requested that you attend to him immediately.” He watched me intently as if waiting for an answer.
“Make sure this horse receives the best treatment possible.” I turned and stormed away.
The long hallway extended further than I remembered from my first visit to Adam’s office. Every step toward his office seemed like an additional weight was placed on my shoulders. The next step I took faltered, and I was forced to rest against the wall for a moment. Had I made the right decision in not telling our team what had happened the night before? Would the delay in delivering the information make Adam even more upset than the loss of the artifact alone? There was only one way to find out. I forced my legs back into motion and tried to steel myself for what was coming next.
Adam opened the door as I approached. “Don’t dawdle in the hallway. Come in and tell me what in the hell happened.”
“Yes, sir.”
Adam didn’t wait for me to follow; he just turned and walked away. I closed the door behind me as I entered and quickly followed him to his desk. He hadn’t killed me as soon as he saw me, so things were already looking up. He motioned for me to take a seat, and I obeyed as quickly as I could. There was nothing to be gained by my normal flippant attitude.
His eyes burned with a fire that they hadn’t during my first meeting with him. That put me a little more on edge than I should be for just a general report. This wasn’t just any report, though. This was the one where I told Adam that I had witnessed the dead walking. We would see where the chips fell, when I lay that little beauty at his feet.
Adam’s intense gaze burned into me when he said, “No reason to wait on ceremony. Just tell me what in the hell happened.”
I had a problem meeting his eyes for longer than a second or two at a time. “Ah, sir, it’s a little more complicated than I would have hoped. Where should I start?”
“Where all good stories start, at the beginning.”
I let out a little forced laugh. “I think I will leave out the drinking and the dancing, and just start with the attack on the chateau.”
“That seems like a good idea.” His eyes bore into me.
I swear I saw a little bit of flame actually move across his eyes when I managed to make myself look up again. His body language made him look tense; I felt as if he was waiting for a chance to jump out of his chair and throttle me. He made a motion with his hand in the air, indicating that time was wasting and I had better get started because he didn’t have all the damn time in the world.
“The chateau was attacked by a group of Lycans.”
“I find that odd. The Lycans would have no use for what was being stored there,” he said, cutting me off.
“Well, I didn’t get a chance to tell you about the best part.” He made another motion for me to continue. “The Lycans that attacked weren’t behaving like any that I had ever fought before. They charged at me without trying to dodge any of my attacks. After a closer examination, it appeared they might have actually already been dead for some time.”
Adam looked as if my story confirmed something he already knew. He shook his head for a moment as if to clear it and then looked back up at me. His expression was grim when he said, “Go on.”
“After I had dispatched the Lycans, the dead guards rose and stormed the house. I was able to dispatch most of them before the hooded figure showed up.”
“And this man in the hood, did you ever see his face?”
“As a matter of fact, I did.”
“And?” he said with impatience.
“I hate to report that I have seen the man at least one other time. In fact, it was the day that I met you for the first time. He would have barreled into me on my way to see you, had I not moved to the side of the hall. He said his name was Gaston.”
“That bastard!” Adam slammed his fist down on his desk in a bout of fury. A flame actually flew up from where his hand impacted the desk. I watched him with horror. He seemed to be speaking to himself when he said, “Gaston, you arrogant ass, the secrets of the Jar were for us to unlock together.”
“Sir?”
“I’m not even sure I should tell you anything about what is going on, but since you have seen the dead reanimated, I feel like I owe you a small explanation. Gaston was one of our most promising adepts. His work with the elements and pushing the boundaries of the gift itself have been nothing short of remarkable. When he came to me saying that he had been able to animate a dead mouse, I should have put an end to it right then. Instead I was fascinated by what he could do.”
“Controlling a mouse is hardly what I saw last night. He had control of at least eight Lycans and, when they fell, about five soldiers. I can tell you that fighting something that doesn’t feel any wound and has no fear is disturbing. If he could animate enough of them, it would be an overwhelming force.”
He
looked at me with a wry smile on his face. “It seems that he has grown stronger than he ever let on.” Adam sat back into his chair and removed the pair of reading glasses he had been wearing. “In the beginning, it was about seeing what we could bring back to serve us, and for a time, that was enough. Then we moved on to trying to find any practical applications for what we had done. A mouse wasn’t very intimidating, but it could sneak around, and with just the right magic being cast, we could see through its eyes and hear what it was hearing. That in and of itself was an amazing breakthrough, but also something that was forbidden to study long ago.”
“I can see how once it was discovered, it would have been hard to stop expanding your knowledge. It is, after all, one of our tenets to never stop learning.”
“I knew I picked the right man for the job when I sent you. Not everyone would be so understanding of our trespasses.”
“I could see where many of our order would have considered it an abomination, that it would be an affront to the gift that we have been blessed with.”
“That is why we have always worked in secret. What started with a mouse moved on to other creatures, and finally a full Lycan. Gaston implored me to allow him to animate a human corpse, but the line had to be drawn somewhere. That is what started the rift between us. I pushed for more knowledge, more control before we took that next step he thought we were ready for.”
“So why is it that the reanimated seem almost mindless in their pursuits? Why do they not act as they would when they are alive?”
“That is what we needed to find out. Our powers could reanimate them—the force of our will was enough to make them move, and with enough effort, we could expand their senses. What we could never do was make them act or control them as if they were alive. After enough research, we came to the conclusion that once the soul had left the body, it was just a shell. We could control and manipulate it, but it was nothing like what it had been when alive.”
I sat back in my own chair for a moment while Adam continued to talk about some of the things they had done. The testing they had done sounded extensive, but most of it was beyond my understanding. The thought of working with dead bodies creeped me out and for some reason filled me with a sense of prolonged dread. Would someone use my body to do some dreadful act after I had moved on? As a scholar, I understood the need for knowledge; as a man, I felt a sense of loss that my order had been corrupted in such a way.
With a sigh, I asked the question that I had been dreading. “So did you try and find a way to keep the soul attached to the body at death, to make the corpse easier to control?”
“Gaston suggested there was a way to do that, that with enough time he could find a way to end a life and keep the soul in the body. That is when our relationship soured completely. I forbade him to experiment on live animals or people to bring his new ideas to fruition. That was a line even I wasn’t willing to cross. I had my doubts about Gaston, though. Even if I could never prove it, in my heart I knew he never gave up.”
“So just what was I being sent to guard? Why was he so upset?”
“I have to go back a bit further in our tale before I get to that. When I forbade his research on live victims, he continued to research into the more occult uses of the gift. He found mentions of necromancy going back a thousand years. Through all of his research, there was one powerful item that seemed to come up again and again in his research. Each telling of it shared just enough of the same facts that it had to be the same item. It was last seen in Egypt and was given the name the Jar of Souls.”
“So what did this Jar do exactly?”
“The writings indicated that it trapped the souls of the dead and that someone with control of the Jar could force those souls into empty bodies and control them.” He pushed a journal into my hand. It was titled The Jar of Souls and had dates and copies of text from his research documents. “The object was feared, and those who came into its possession often faced violent deaths. For everything we found, there was no mention of it ever being destroyed. Gaston told me that if I would finance his search for the object that he would drop all his other research.”
“So you agreed.”
“I did. I had hoped that with time he might come to see the error of the path he was on. Instead, he became more and more dedicated in his quest to find the Jar. I never thought he would actually succeed in finding it, but then a month ago he did.”
“So if he found the Jar, why are the corpses he reanimates still so lifeless?”
“I said he found it; I didn’t say he had it. When he came to me with the news, I knew I couldn’t trust him to retrieve the Jar himself. He was overeager to test it, to use it. Knowing just what could happen if he did, I sent a team to retrieve it. When he found out, he was livid, and when I wouldn’t tell him where it was being stored, he overreacted.”
“So that is when I saw him leaving your office?”
“No, this was about two weeks before that. When you saw him leaving the other day, he had come to me and begged me to let him have the Jar one last time. I refused. I told him that once the Jar had been moved to a more secure location that we could test it together, that we needed to approach this as scholars, not with our emotions. He laughed at me and said that one way or another, the Jar would be his.”
“So you expected an attack.”
“I did.”
“And yet you only sent me to guard it.”
He let out a long sigh. “I didn’t think he knew which location the Jar was en route to. I also didn’t think he would go to such extremes to get it when I had already promised him access to the artifact. It seems all of my estimations of him were wrong. It also seems that two of our other locations were attacked that same night. Both of those locations reported attacks by animated corpses. That means not only was I wrong, but over the last year, he has recruited followers. Now with the Jar in his possession, he will be a formidable foe.”
“So what are we going to do?”
“That is truly the question, now isn’t it? How do we stop him?” He seemed to sit back into his chair and think, leaving me wondering why I was still there. “I can’t bring this to the order as a whole—it could shake us to our very foundations—but if you and I were to handle the problem . . . Yes, that might just do it. If we could retrieve the Jar, then no one would have to know.”
“Sir, are you asking me to keep this from my brothers, to follow you in search of a madman in possession of a weapon we know almost nothing about?”
“I believe I am.”
“It seems as if that might likely lead us to our premature deaths.”
“Indeed it does, but I’m not ready to give up living just yet. Are you?”
“Not at all, sir. I would be honored to join you.”
“First things first. A promotion will be in order for you. Once we have that out of the way and have gathered a little intelligence, we will hunt down Gaston and put an end to the Jar of Souls once and for all.”
“Sir?”
“Yes.”
“Just how much does running into the face of certain death pay?”
“I would think that if we are successful, you would never have to work again.”
“Ah, then it seems I am indeed the right man for the job!”
Adam let out a little chuckle. “Get cleaned up and order some additional traveling clothes. We won’t be riding in style, so make sure they fit and can take a beating from the elements.”
“I will do my best.”
“See that you do.”
3
Jackson
Present
Sarge was really pounding us into the ground this morning. I was on hour three of my elliptical session and still had a sparring session to look forward to. The puddle of sweat under the elliptical seemed to have grown to epic proportions. My legs burned, and my arms had started to feel like dead weight an hour ago. At least if I worked myself into complete exhaustion, I might be able to finally sleep through the night.
Ever since my birthday, the dream about my parents’ death seemed to haunt me almost nightly. It had to be more than me feeling bad about not being able to stop the people who killed them. I’d never had the same nightmare so many times in a row my entire life. Even now I could relive the entire nightmare without having to close my eyes. I wasn’t sure what I could even do about it. How would I ever find the killer when I was tied to this place? Maybe if there was time, I could ask Adam about it. It was always possible he might have some insight into the dreams. Until then, I would have to find a way to cope until they went away.
Sarge walked over to my elliptical. “Jackson, you’re done for the day. Hit the showers and head to Adam’s office.”
“Any idea what this is about?”
“Above my paygrade.”
“Thanks, Sarge.” I looked over at Britta and gave her a wink before I took off. I felt bad leaving her. We had plans for lunch, but those were going to be on hold now. She smiled at me, and I knew the missed lunch would be forgiven.
When I walked into Adam’s office, it was the same as I remembered it from the end of last semester. It was a comfortable room with a desk and two chairs as well as a sitting area with a couch and a fireplace. It reminded me of a cozy cottage or something I would expect some professor to have at a smaller college. Books lined the walls, and in one corner there was a small bar built into the wall. Adam was sitting at his desk, and there was a man I had never seen sitting across from him.
The man had short black hair that was done in a current style. He must not have been here long because he still had his coat on. I wondered just where he had come from. It didn’t seem cold enough here to need the scarf he was wearing. Adam’s eyes moved to mine, and the man sitting in front of him turned slightly in his chair so I could see his face for the first time. He looked foreign, maybe from somewhere in Europe originally. There was a serious expression on his face, but at the same time, his eyes sparkled with mischief.
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