The Revealed (The Lakewood Series Book 2)

by Sarah Kleck

“I thought you might want some company.” He looked at me, then at his hands. He had a paper bag and a cardboard tray with two paper cups. The aroma of fresh coffee filled the air.

  “Enid told me you were all alone here with Mrs. McHallern.” I liked the way he pronounced her name. As if it were an imposition. I had to smile. Let’s see how Jared would handle this.

  “To be honest, I’m bored to death here.”

  Detective Parker grinned. “Do you feel like some fresh air?”

  “Definitely.”

  It was so warm outside, I didn’t need a jacket.

  “Call me Adam, if you wish,” he offered.

  “Evelyn.”

  He gave me one of the cups.

  “I wasn’t sure what kind of coffee you’d like. Is a latte okay?”

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  He smiled again and held open the bag. “You can’t go wrong with croissants, right?”

  I reached eagerly for one. “Good thinking.”

  I winked, wondering if I was really winking at him. Hopefully, he wouldn’t take it the wrong way. I was simply happy for the diversion. I bit into the croissant, took a sip from my coffee, and enjoyed the sun on my skin. While we sauntered along Bishop’s Park Road, I asked myself what Adam knew. Just because someone was a member of Legatum Merlini didn’t mean he knew about Jared and Colin. I doubted Adam even knew who Jared was. He hadn’t treated him differently from Irvin or Gareth. Then again, he hadn’t seemed particularly baffled by what he saw in the surveillance video. This would be tricky, because I had to figure out what Adam knew without giving away too much. It was clear that he knew something.

  “How long have you been a member of the Order?” A safe inquiry.

  “About twelve years.” He slurped from his cup. “I’d just begun service with the City of London Police. Gareth was my partner and trained me, in a manner of speaking.” He smiled. “I helped him in a few extra-official matters, and at some point I was officially accepted into Legatum Merlini. With a ceremony and all the bells and whistles. But you know that.”

  “Not really.” I frowned. “To be honest, I’m not even sure I’m a member of the Order at all. There certainly wasn’t a ceremony for me.”

  “Oh, really?”

  I nodded. I could almost hear Adam’s mind working as he turned to me with an insightful look. I was pretty certain he’d come to the wrong conclusion. He had taken me for an ordinary member of the Order, but now he stared at me as if he saw in me what he’d overlooked in Jared. It made sense from his perspective, of course. Jared wanted to protect me at all costs and keep me away from danger. I, on the other hand, whiled away my days behind the closed doors of a safe house.

  Adam looked at me almost in awe. Sure thing—he took me for Merlin’s last descendant.

  Adam swallowed. “Perhaps we should head back,” he suggested, desperately trying to maintain a calm tone while probably visualizing what would happen to him if someone found out he was walking around outside with Merlin’s supposed heir.

  “I don’t know who or what you think I am, Adam, but I’m sure you’ve got it wrong.”

  He gave me a quizzical look. The poor man looked completely lost. “If we return, I could—”

  Suddenly, I was grabbed. Something clawed into my waist from behind and pulled me off my feet.

  “Stop!” Adam shouted.

  That smell. Damnatus stench. Anger and anticipation rose in me, and a hot shudder ran down my spine. I oriented myself. The beast had thrown me over its shoulder. I swung my legs around, clamped them on both sides of the stinking creature’s neck, and squeezed. He gagged, gurgled, and then, trying to free himself, went down. I jumped off at the right moment, grabbed his arm, and twisted it until I heard a shoulder joint pop.

  “Really? You’re attacking me? In broad daylight?” I asked, twisting the arm even farther. The damnatus screamed and squirmed on the pavement like a run-over animal. “Where is she?” I demanded. I loosened my grip a little so he’d stop screaming. “Where’s Morgana?”

  “I don’t know,” he whimpered. “Please, don’t!”

  The hood of his sweatshirt slipped from his head, and I saw that the transformation hadn’t advanced much. Probably some junkie she’d recently converted.

  “You haven’t been with her long, have you?”

  “No. Please. She’ll kill me.”

  I laughed. What did he think we’d do to him?

  He didn’t stop twisting, so I hit the nerve point in his elbow, just as Colin had taught me, and rendered the damnatus immobile.

  Adam stood beside me, his weapon drawn, watching in disbelief at how I’d taken down a damnatus who was much taller and twice as heavy.

  “Adam!”

  He didn’t react.

  “Adam!” I said again, louder.

  “Yes?”

  “Call Gareth. Tell him we’ve got one. Tell them to come immediately!”

  Adam blinked, confused, then pulled his phone from his pocket.

  “He attacked you in broad daylight? In the middle of the street?” Irvin couldn’t believe it.

  “Yes.”

  “I asked you to stay home,” Jared snapped at me, then whirled about. “And you, what the devil were you thinking, taking Evelyn outside?” Jared’s face was close to Adam’s. The air began to crackle.

  “I didn’t know,” Adam stammered.

  “Are you mad?” I admonished Jared. “Leave him alone. You should hear yourself! Take me outside?—as if I’m a dog?”

  “Adam? So you’re on a first-name basis now?”

  “That’s enough, Jared,” I warned him.

  “To get back to the damnatus.” Irvin interrupted our squabble. “He attacked you, and you two overpowered him, then brought him here?”

  “Not quite,” Adam said. “To be honest, Evelyn took him down on her own.” Astonishment and admiration resonated in his words. Colin grinned. Jared’s look was reproachful. Mine, a warning.

  “Did anyone see you?” Gareth asked.

  “Yes,” I said, embarrassed. “He wouldn’t stop screaming. People were coming out of their houses to ask if everything was all right and why we were dragging that poor man across the street. Adam had to show his badge and explain that it was a police matter.”

  Gareth clenched his teeth. We wanted to avoid attracting attention at all costs.

  “Where is he now?”

  “In the bathroom,” Adam answered. “I cuffed him to the radiator.”

  Colin was the first to the bathroom. “Shit,” he swore, storming in.

  Irvin, who was next, clasped his hand over his mouth.

  Even before I could see what had happened, I sensed this damnatus wouldn’t be able to reveal anything. I stepped closer. The scarface sat motionless in a huge, stinking pool of blood, a razor blade still stuck in his arm.

  CHAPTER 21

  “If you ever speak to me like that again, you’ll get to know another side of me!”

  “I’m sorry, babe,” Jared tried to appease me, then took my hand and kissed it. “I was just so worried about you.”

  “You’re obsessed with this hunt for Morgana. You’d do well to sleep through the night for a change. You’d be less irritable.”

  “Yes, relax a little.” Colin put his hand on Jared’s shoulder.

  “How can I?” Jared was still wired. “Morgana shows up someplace and is gone a second later. As if swallowed by the earth.”

  “I know,” Colin said. “It’s maddening.”

  “She’s wearing Evelyn’s amulet,” Jared grumbled.

  My hand wandered to the depression between my collarbones. You’d think I’d have become used to it, but I dearly missed my amulet and felt naked without it.

  “It hides her from anyone wishing her harm,” Irvin added, unnecessarily.

  “I definitely want to harm her,” Jared growled.

  “Rest,” I said, putting my arms around him. “Sleep tonight, and we’ll think of something tomorrow.”

&nb
sp; Jared nodded. That night, he stayed with me.

  “Lovely to still have you here,” I said in the morning, without opening my eyes. I knew he was looking at me.

  He laughed and kissed me.

  “I had a strange dream,” I said. I opened my eyes and ran my fingers through my hair.

  Jared looked interested.

  “I dreamed about a woman. She was dressed in black. She wore my amulet. It called out to me. I followed her. Suddenly the woman started to run faster than I ever could have. I pursued her even though I knew I didn’t stand a chance. Then there was a door. She went through. I rushed after her, and we stood in a huge hall. Hundreds of people were there, but they weren’t moving—men with briefcases, mothers pulling their stubborn children along, long-haired girls with headphones. Everyone frozen, mid-motion. As if someone had stopped time. The woman ran through the frozen crowd. Suddenly there was someone else. A man. He was wrapped in a red cape and wore a sparkling crown. He sat on a golden throne below a huge cross. He smiled and waved me over. Then I woke up.”

  “What do you think it means?” Jared asked, kissing my knuckles, one after the other.

  I let the dream’s images pass before my inner eye again. The woman in black running away with my amulet. The king under the cross. I frowned. King . . . cross. King . . . Cross. King’s Cross. I suddenly put it all together.

  “King’s Cross!” I shouted, excited. “King’s Cross train station!”

  Jared stared at me.

  “My amulet makes Morgana a Concealed,” I explained. “There’s no point trying to find her as long as she’s wearing it, right?”

  “Right.” Jared listened attentively.

  “But it’s my amulet, do you understand?”

  Judging from the expression on his face, he didn’t.

  “Maybe I can’t find Morgana, but I can find my amulet!”

  Jared gave me a startled look.

  “I was able to do it once before. My mother discovered it in a flea market in London when she was pregnant with me, and the moment she wanted to put it back I began to kick like mad inside her. I could feel it—I could already feel it in the womb. So, if we stop looking for Morgana and I try to feel the amulet instead . . .”

  “You dreamed of it?” Irvin asked when I told him and the others.

  “Yes, of Morgana and my amulet and a huge hall and a king under a cross. King’s Cross. She’s at King’s Cross!”

  “And you know that just because you had a dream?” Colin inquired.

  “If you’ve got a better suggestion, let’s hear it.” I was annoyed.

  “It’s worth a try.” Irvin rubbed his chin.

  The others didn’t appear convinced.

  That no one moved enraged me. “On with it! Let’s go!”

  “You want to come along?” Jared asked.

  “Of course I’m coming along. Clearly you lot can’t do it on your own.”

  Gareth frowned, then clenched his teeth. I’d insulted his honor.

  “Whatever you want to say, spare me! I’m coming along.”

  “With all due respect, Mr. Calmburry,” Adam intervened, “Evelyn can defend herself very well.”

  I could have kissed him. But the remark put Adam completely out of bounds as far as Jared was concerned.

  Adam stopped his service vehicle right in front of the glass-arch facade of King’s Cross. Colin parked the Mercedes behind him. We charged in, Jared, Colin, Gareth, Ian, Adam, and I. Irvin remained at the safe house to hold down the fort and organize help if necessary.

  An incoming train hit its brakes with a seemingly endless hiss. The place was swarming with people. Except they didn’t stand still, as in my dream, but dashed about everywhere in the huge train station, making our task considerably more difficult.

  “Where shall we start?” Colin asked.

  They stared at me. I had led them there, after all. I looked around. Dozens of tourists stood in a queue for their turn to take a picture at platform nine and three-quarters. A group groaned when a loudspeaker by their platform announced a twenty-minute delay of their train’s arrival. Two child-care workers piloted their kindergarten-age group across the hall; the children walked in double rows, holding hands.

  Damn, where was Morgana?

  Had I been wrong? Had I just imagined it? Was my dream no more than a dream?

  Uncertain, I turned to my companions, who were looking at me expectantly.

  No—the amulet had called to me in my dream. I had felt it, I had. I exhaled and closed my eyes. Tried to focus fully on it and screen out the station noise.

  “Excellent. Focus,” Jared encouraged me.

  Easier said than done. I tried to visualize the amulet. Every detail. The blue-green sheen, the delicately curved lines of its engraving, the warmth it radiated on bare skin.

  Come on, you can do it!

  I’d been able to fully focus on my magic in Avalon, too. I thought of it, remembered the feeling of letting it flow through my arteries. Even though my magic was gone, I knew how it felt. Suddenly, there was silence. Everything around me disappeared. Then I had it. The amulet was nearby. I could feel it very clearly.

  I opened my eyes and began to move, slowly and deliberately. My confident stride parted the crowd. I walked around the upward-branching spider-web-like funnel-shaped central structure, beyond the crush of people. My amulet guided me. The others followed. I stopped in front of a fire door, looking into myself once more to be sure this was the right way. Beyond any doubt. My amulet was somewhere behind this door. I put my hand on the doorknob.

  “Hey,” someone called, running toward us. “No access for unauthorized persons.” A railway employee blocked our path.

  Adam pulled out his badge. “City of London Police,” he said in a well-practiced tone. “You’re interfering with an investigation.”

  The railway employee raised his hands and let us pass.

  A short hallway was behind the door, with garbage pails on both sides, ending at another door.

  “Keep on?” Jared asked.

  I nodded.

  Gareth pulled his gun out of its holster and went ahead of me through the second door, securing the area by first sticking in his gun, then his head. Jared followed.

  Now, a broad metal staircase led down into a large room with bare walls. More garbage containers stood there. The air was stale, smelling of empty beer bottles and leftovers. The stench distracted me. I pulled my collar over my mouth and nose, closed my eyes for a few seconds, and let Nimue’s amulet guide me again. I passed straight by the containers, Jared by my right side, Gareth with his weapon drawn to my left. I stopped before a concrete wall. Yet another container stood in front of it. There was no way forward, yet I clearly felt the amulet.

  “Now what?” Colin asked.

  I hesitated. “I don’t know . . . but . . . I feel it very clearly. Behind this wall.”

  “We could try to push this thing away.” Adam put his gun back into its holster, then leaned against the six-foot-high and twelve-foot-long metal colossus. It didn’t move by a fraction, though Adam’s face took on a worrisome shade of red from his exertion.

  Jared chuckled. “This isn’t going anywhere,” he said, amused and even a little smug. “Please, step aside.” He rarely had the opportunity to demonstrate his abilities before strangers.

  Adam stepped back, crossing his arms over his chest. “Please,” he said, sounding a bit smug himself.

  Jared smiled, directed his palms at the container, and effortlessly sent it gliding to the other side of the room as if it were no more than a cardboard prop. Adam gasped, realizing that not I but Jared was the reason for Legatum Merlini’s existence.

  The container had covered a small opening. No more than a hole in the wall, it looked as if someone had recently taken a sledgehammer to it. Fresh concrete chips were still lying on the ground.

  “After you, Detective,” Jared said, pointing at the narrow, dark hole.

  “Do you have to?” I whis
pered, walking beside Adam.

  He shrugged and grinned. I crawled next into the opening, followed by Jared. It was pitch-black inside. Now the air smelled of old concrete, rusty nails, and rotting wood. Our flashlight beams lit up a large space. It was storage for the rusty parts of decommissioned freight cars. An engine graveyard. I probed my surroundings. Suddenly I noticed something. An old elevator grid stood out in the back right corner of the space. I went straight for it. Its green paint was flaking off. I looked through the grid. A black shaft led into the deep.

  Adam shone his flashlight down. “I don’t think there’s anything here,” he said. “It’s a bunker. Must be a bomb shelter from the Cold War.”

  “Yes,” Gareth confirmed. “Dozens of them were built back then.”

  “Can you still feel the amulet?” Jared asked.

  “Yes, it’s really close. I’m sure of it.” My entire body was tingling.

  He nodded. “Good. We’ll go down.”

  I went around the elevator grid and found a narrow ladder.

  “This way,” I said, placing a foot on the steel structure to test it for stability.

  “Not you, Evelyn.” Jared stepped behind me, put his hand on my shoulder, and held me back. “You’re going back to the safe house.”

  “Jared,” I protested.

  “No!” I saw in his eyes that he meant it. “You haven’t got your magic anymore. I won’t let you put yourself in harm’s way. You will not endanger yourself.”

  I stared at him. He stared back.

  “There’s nothing more you can do now. I’ll deal with Morgana, and then you’ll finally be safe.”

  “Jared,” I started again, but he wouldn’t listen.

  “I’ll take her back,” Adam offered.

  Jared nodded. “Good,” he said, but then he hesitated. Did he still not trust Adam? “Gareth will accompany you.”

  Gareth opened his mouth, then shut it again. He really wasn’t excited about having to be my babysitter.

  “I’ll only feel comfortable if I know you’re with Evelyn,” Jared added. Great, an appeal to Gareth’s honor.

  “Nothing will happen to her. Only over my dead body,” Gareth promised.

  Jared took my face in his hands and kissed me.