Hunters (Out of the Box Book 15)

by Robert J. Crane

  Zack just shook his head in the darkness of my mind. There has to be more than you just being a silent sentinel against the forces of…whatever. Crass stupidity and wanton criminality.

  “And yet…there’s not.”

  Your friends…you haven’t even talked to them once since you came over here.

  “I’ve been busy,” I said, not even bothering to get defensive. “We’re good. We left it in a good place. I made my peace with them. And I’ve talked to Zollers!”

  Once. Two, three months ago. And you didn’t even contact any of the people you know here—Janus, Karthik…that British detective you acquainted yourself with last time you were here.

  My cheeks burned at the realization I was discussing a former lover with another former lover. “Those guys are all busy living their lives. And as for my friends, well…a conversation with Zollers goes a long way,” I said, finishing my packing. I didn’t have much, and once I’d put my new Scotland Yard ID in my pocket, I was basically ready to go. “Besides…I don’t feel isolated and alone. I feel…fine.” I didn’t have to consider that very long before adding a caveat. “Ish.”

  There she is, Harmon said. She’s ready. And she doesn’t need you distracting her right now. Remember what happened last time?

  “Yeah, remember what happened last time someone distracted me or lied and withheld important info while I was on a job?” It was kinda neat how Harmon had tried to distract from that, given he was the one who’d most recently caused me havoc while on a job. I could almost see him smiling innocently in my head, like, “Nothing to see here.” I slung my bag over my shoulder. “Zack’s probably right,” I offered as a concession. “But I’m on the case now. It’s time to get things done, and we’ll worry about this other, personal stuff…y’know, later. Right?”

  There was a chorus of assent, and I could hear almost all their voices. There was a slight prickling in my mind, though, a feeling that something was not quite right, that somebody was not quite present. I heard Eve, Bastian, Gavrikov, Harmon, Bjorn—even Zack chimed in, reluctantly, but present, nodding his sullen approval for my course of action.

  I shrugged, tossing off that feeling that something was missing, that someone was not quite all there, not quite on board with this, but I didn’t spare much thought to wonder who it was or why they were absent in their enthusiastic, choral support for my current endeavor.

  I didn’t even bother casting a last look over my hotel room as I opened the door to leave. When I came back from Scotland I’d change it up again, stay somewhere else. Wouldn’t want to stay here too long, or establish a pattern someone could trace. I needed to keep moving, keep going. “Scotland ho,” I said under my breath as I closed the door on another transitory chapter in my life, wondering if there was something going on in my head that I’d missed.

  11.

  Wolfe

  Republic of Athens

  453 B.C.

  The caves were dark, dank, filled with the occasional howl and yell of the tormented. The air seemed to crawl across the skin like claws, gently scraping the flesh as it passed.

  Wolfe took a breath of the stale, dank air. There was a tinge of salt that he could taste, wandering its way through his nasal passages through the stink of all the people that had made their way down here over time. The smell of fetid bodies, both living and dead, meandered through his sense of smell as well, and it reminded him of…

  Food.

  There was no cure for the smell. The caves were lit by torch, which carried a scent of its own, that burning smell, but one not nearly strong enough to overcome all the other scents this place held. The crash of the waves behind him, where the caves met the sea, echoed madly, was nearly deafening to his enhanced hearing, but he struggled his way through it.

  He was the guard of the gate to this place right now—the sentinel to keep others from passing into this realm, this…

  Underworld.

  “Wolfe,” Frederick called, causing Wolfe to open his eyes, to blink in the darkness. A slow look over his shoulder confirmed it. Frederick wandered his way, a dark-haired shadow picking around the bones that had not been disposed of properly by the handful of slaves that worked in this place. “The master calls.”

  “And I answer,” Wolfe said with a nod. It didn’t bear thinking about, doing anything but subserviently coming when bidden. Wolfe respected strength above all else. It was the way of his family, his way…strength meant you could take what you wanted, and he had built his own strength prodigiously to ensure that no one could take from him what he did not wish to yield.

  But the master…the master could take from him in mere seconds that which no man had prised from his grasp given years. And that was why he was the master.

  Wolfe threaded his way past Frederick, bumping shoulders hard with his brother. They both growled, keeping it low, where others would not hear. Wolfe smiled silent satisfaction; Frederick’s had been the shoulder turned aside this time. It was not always so, but it was so more often than not. Of the three of them, Wolfe knew he tried hardest to strengthen himself, to leather himself against threats. Was he not the one who ground his skin against the rocks outside the cave for hours? Slammed his head against them only to let them heal, stronger against that sort of wounding in the future? Frederick and Grihm had taken some of it upon themselves in turn, certainly, but Wolfe…

  Wolfe had led the way. Not that they appreciated him for it.

  He descended into the darkness, torches lighting the way into the abyss of the cave. Bones crunched underfoot, more…spillage…from ill-fated servants doing an ill job. Wolfe did not care, but the master was furious when he crunched bones. Which was probably why he seldom came this far toward the entrance of the caves. It had been years since last he’d emerged; Wolfe remembered it very faintly, as he remembered all such good times.

  And it had been a good time…at least for Wolfe and the other brethren of Hades. Perhaps not so for the nearby village who’d suffered their…visit.

  The darkness lightened, a cluster of torches ahead flickering in a symmetrical pattern. Two to the right side of the throne, two to the left. Wolfe did not slink, but he did ease his walk. His normal mode of walking was to pad upon his feet, to stalk and hunt. There was none of that here. He approached straight of back, a subject summoned into the sufferance of his king, lest insult be given where none was dared.

  He could not see the throne in the middle of the torches, but he did not need to. To stare into the shadows was, in itself, enough. He could see the shape, sense the presence, and that was quite enough, yes. Wolfe sank to a knee, bowing his head. “I am summoned, and I appear. What would you have of me, oh great Hades?”

  “Wolfe…” The very voice caused his bones to quiver, as Hades himself turned his full attention upon him. It could be an uncomfortable feeling, if the man truly focused and used his power to reach out and tug at your soul, to read it for himself the way others might parse a manuscript. It was a heavy and unbearable feeling, like the breath of death itself was coming down the back of your neck. It was a thing for which there was no defense, and Wolfe had felt it only a very few times. Those were quite enough for him.

  “Yes, my lord?” Wolfe asked, keeping his head bowed.

  “Look up,” Hades commanded, and Wolfe froze in place. He gradually adjusted his sight upward, afraid he might be looking into the face of death—in more ways than one.

  But when he raised his eyes, Hades himself was not standing before Wolfe. No, not Hades. Nor Persephone, either, though she had the same dark hair that marked her mother, but those eyes…

  Those eyes were purely her father’s.

  The woman before him was one that Wolfe had seen only in passing, a shadow in the darkness of the caves. That was the way of Hades, of his bride, to keep their offspring close, in the back of the caverns, in the family quarters, for lack of a better word, where Wolfe and his brothers and all but a few servants were not welcome. He had heard the cries in the dark, the peo
ple brought into those places who never left, save as sprinkled bones. He could smell her, the scent of her, unwashed for the most part save for in the sea water brought in by the slaves in buckets every so often. It was a pungent aroma, the scent of her, but in spite of her life spent in the dark, in the captivity of this place…

  Her chin stuck out defiantly, and she looked at him…as a master looked at a slave.

  “This is my daughter,” Hades breathed, his voice like a drumbeat of intensity in Wolfe’s soul. Wolfe lowered his head again, drive to show deference like a weight pushing it down. “You have not seen her before, yes?”

  “Perhaps in the shadows,” Wolfe allowed. There was no counting how many offspring Hades and Persephone had now, but it had to be many. The cries of childbirth all ran together in his mind, and there was no telling how many of the children had survived into adulthood. Considerably fewer than had been born, naturally.

  “Good,” Hades said. “No one should know our numbers.”

  Wolfe did not feel a need to offer counsel on that; the man who was known as the God of Death had no need of his opinion on this matter or any other.

  Only his service. “I have a task for you,” Hades went on. The shadows moved before him, behind the woman.

  “Anything you request, my lord.”

  “You will escort my daughter out of this place,” Hades said, and faint disbelief chilled Wolfe’s ears. “Wherever she wishes to go…you will follow, and ensure her safety.”

  It felt as though all the air had been drawn out of the cave, as though some Aeolus had swept in and done the inconceivable, pulling it out with their power. To evince such disbelief at Hades’s words, though, did not bear consideration, and so Wolfe held his silence until the understanding of what had been said had fully seeped in, the shock passed. “I will follow her for so long as you command it.”

  “I command it until I say otherwise,” Hades said. “Go with her. Go with her wherever she desires. She is to see the world, the world beyond these feuding cities and states, to make report of it all…and bring such knowledge back to me here, so that I may consider…all that will come next.”

  “As you wish,” Wolfe said as the woman before him moved, swaying. His eyes flitted up and saw a face like carved marble, chin strong and extended, jutting out as if daring him to strike at it as a target. Her eyes blazed even in the darkness, and she moved, right toward him, without a hint that she would consider slowing if he did not move out of her path.

  Wolfe smelled the challenge, and knew what waited in the shadows behind her. Had this been Frederick, he would not even have been so bold as she. But she did not slow, did not stop, and she was so close he could smell her even more intensely now, beneath the ragged cloth robe she used to cover herself—

  He moved aside, as befit his station, and she swept past, clearly having either expected him to do so, or perhaps ready to make him do so if he had not moved. Wolfe moved deftly, sideways, and then came to his feet once she was past. The faint, low rumble of amusement from the throne did not cause Wolfe to burn as it might have had it come from anyone else. Strength was strength, and the strength of a man who could rip the very soul from his body with a thought was nothing to be trifled with. It commanded respect…or it would command your death, and Wolfe was clear on which he was willing to give.

  “I will do as you command,” Wolfe said, keeping his front facing the throne as he made to follow the daughter of Hades. She continued her pace unabated, and he was unable to show his back to the king, so he quickened his pace, trusting his feet to be nimble and keep him from tripping over any of the assorted stalagmites that had grown in this cave over the years before their arrival.

  “You will faithfully serve me as ever you have,” Death said, his laughter now spent. “This I trust.” And he said no more, the shadows growing still as Wolfe retreated, until he had passed the chamber wall and was free to turn, and chase the daughter of Hades.

  She moved swiftly, not waiting for him, perhaps trusting he would catch her, which he did just as she was reaching Frederick. Wolfe heard the subtle growl in the darkness, his brother’s hackles raised at the approach of a servant.

  “Quell yourself,” Wolfe said, hurrying forward. “That is no mere—”

  But it was too late. Frederick had sprung forward; servants died all the time in this place, and no child of Hades had been seen at the cave mouth in…ever. Nor had Persephone, either. It simply never happened.

  Frederick’s mouth was wide, his anger rising at the thought of a servant challenging him in the way of his brothers. There was little malice behind his movement, merely a desire to establish the dominance of his power. Frederick swept in at her—

  And she dodged, deftly, on the balls of her feet, swifter than him.

  Frederick’s eyes grew wide; servants did not outmaneuver the brothers three. Doubt surfaced, easily read in his movements, and he held himself away from her, still, assessing, thinking—

  She did not think. She did not consider. She struck, like a snake at a wolf’s paw, lashing out and grabbing him by the throat. Frederick struck back, furious, battering at her hand, where it had him. He was taller than her by several heads, but she did not let loose of him. Wolfe could see her grip like iron upon him, her teeth bared as she let out a growl as savage and feral as any Frederick had ever loosed.

  It was a matter of seconds and Frederick loosed his first whimper. He had realized, Wolfe knew, realized what he faced, who he faced, and had restrained himself in the face of the daughter of death. Now she had clutched him at the neck and he hung there, limply, upon his knees, whimpering like a dog.

  She spat in his eye, and he whimpered further, his muscles jerking until she surrendered her grip on his throat. Wolfe hung back, unwilling to interfere in this contest which had already—clearly—been decided. Frederick fell back on his haunches and sat there, head down, breath coming in quick, juddering movements. He did not speak, but his bearing was more than just a man who had surrendered himself to yield to a master…

  It was the bearing of a dog in pain.

  She stood over him, straight-backed and scorning, and there was no touch of sympathy in her gaze, no empathy for her lesser. Her hand was fixed in a claw, ready to snake out again and take hold of him. Frederick’s hands touched his throat, protecting it from her strength, from what she had done. She did not speak, but merely stared at him for a full ten seconds before she moved again, toward him, and Frederick scrambled aside without a hint of shame at yielding his ground to her.

  Wolfe followed her as she went, bold, unafraid, toward the crash of the waves in the distance. The mouth of the cave was ahead, and she plunged toward it with steady steps, her back exhibiting no fear that Wolfe could read.

  He paused at Frederick’s side; his brother would not look at him, not now. Not in defeat. “What did she do?” Wolfe asked, uncertain. There had to be more to Frederick’s reaction than mere embarrassment at being thwarted by one of Hades’s children.

  “When she touched me—” Frederick’s fingers, long and shaking, held court over his throat, a shield from harm that already been visited “—it was like him. Like his power to fix itself on your soul and rip it from you. Her touch…” His eyes flashed in the darkness. “Be wary of her touch. For it will steal you from yourself. It will be your death, if you do not heed me.”

  Wolfe studied him, the fear of his brother, and nodded once. “I will be wary,” he said, and followed the daughter of death from the realm of Hades, and into the world, his brother’s words ringing in his ears.

  12.

  Sienna

  I remembered in my youth reading a book about the grand old city of Edinburgh, in the days of yore, when there was no sewer system and people bathed once a year, usually on New Year’s Eve. They said you could smell it before you could see it, and I believed them. How could you not, with all that mass of accumulated filth?

  I quietly thanked the heavens for the development of the sewer system and
indoor plumbing as I came in sight of the city itself, flying down out of a low-hanging cloud and catching my first glimpse long before I caught my first smell of the place. It was an impressive view, with a massive, massive castle just sticking up in the middle of the city, a bulwark and fortress to be defended in times of struggle. It reminded me of those books Reed read about mighty battles between forces of orcs and men and whatnot with swords. I tended to like watching those sorts of things unfold on a screen, Netflixing my way through the great battles of epic fantasy rather than reading them the way my brother did.

  And Edinburgh…it looked like it had a history of that sort of massive battle, the kind of thing that might inspire the tellers of those sorts of stories.

  It didn’t take me too long to use my phone’s GPS to find where I was supposed to be. It was on the east side of town, a hill that stuck out from the landscape, dotted with monuments—a tower or two, a Greek-looking temple that was about a quarter done, if that, and simply ended at the edge of it, like they’d just sort of run out of interest or money before completing it. And then, at the edge of that hill, I found what I was looking for—an old graveyard, laid out on the base of the hill and sloping down, old stones in neat rows, old vaults up at the north like little interconnected castle courtyards of their own. I wondered if the wealthy and notable were buried up there, but I didn’t wonder too hard about it.

  I landed in an alleyway nearby and put on a wig, then stowed my bag on a nearby rooftop that had no access. My work done, myself mostly presentable, I then hoofed it up to the Old Calton Burial Ground, a graveyard by any other name, entering through the southern gate, and worked my way up the hill toward the visible police presence in the vaults to the north of the site.

  It was a pleasant summer’s day, clouds overhead threatening rain in the future, but for now I could see the sun hinting at its own presence behind a clutch of clouds. A breeze came rolling through the graveyard, light and low, and as I sauntered uphill toward the waiting men and women in the yellow jackets emblematic of UK police uniforms, I wondered how long they’d been standing around up here. Hours, probably, since it had been at least a couple since I’d had my briefing with Dr. Logan and Wexford, and the murder had clearly been discovered in advance of that by some time.