by Steve McHugh
"Who could stay here?" Sara asked.
There were no doors, and the plaster had fallen from most of the walls, leaving bare brick or wood in its place. "Someone desperate," I said. "Or someone who doesn't want to be found."
Tommy's bark could be heard from the rear of the house, so Sara and I walked toward it, carefully watching where we placed our feet for fear of falling through the floor. Surprisingly, the floor held, in fact it was of good quality. Someone had done recent work on it.
We found Tommy sitting in front of a door in what used to be the kitchen, rat droppings littered the floor where once-white, hard tiles now lay broken and stained yellow.
Tommy's bark turned me away from the apocalyptic scene before me. He was staring up at the shiny new lock that had been fitted onto the basement door in front of him. It was a heavy duty job, and using magic to knock the lock out of position as I had with the front door would probably just rip the door apart, causing more noise than just kicking it in.
"So we have a falling-down house, with a locked front door and a basement door with a brand new lock. Anyone else got a really bad feeling about this?"
Tommy barked.
I motioned for everyone to stand back and then kicked the lock as hard as possible. The door didn't budge. It didn't even sway as the shock travelled up my leg. "Steel posts inside the door," I said rubbing my knee.
"So how do we get in?" Sara asked.
"With noise," I said and orange glyphs flared to life over my hands. A blade of fire extended down from one hand, stopping after a few feet. I sank the blade into the door, just under the lock, and dragged it up in one smooth motion. The sound of steel sizzling made more noise than I'd have expected, but after a few seconds I removed the blade and booted the door once again. This time it slammed open into the plasterboard behind it. The residual heat from the metal started a small fire, which I quickly put out with my hands, before removing the glyphs altogether.
"How'd you do that?" Sara asked, her mouth agape.
"Fire magic," I said with a smile, which was broken by a deep growl from Tommy as he descended the steps into the blackness beyond.
"You want to stay here?" I asked Sara, who shook her head.
I closed my eyes as the orange glyphs came back to life. When I reopened them, the world was a mixture of red and orange, allowing me to see in the dark. It wasn’t as good as Tommy’s night vision, but it was better than falling down a flight of stairs.
I led Sara down the stairs, making sure she didn't trip. Once we reached the floor, I found Tommy, crouched in the corner. His hackles were up and a low growl was emanating from his throat. A girl sat in front of him. Her hands were above her head, tied behind a pipe, or pole, of some sort. Long hair covered her face, but it was easy to tell that she was dead.
"Take Sara out of here," I told Tommy.
But before he could say or do anything, Sara had knocked a light switch, bathing the entire room in a low, white light. It took her two seconds to spot the body, and she screamed, probably more from shock than anything else. But then she spotted the large mass of blood on the walls and floor and realised what had happened here and for a moment I thought she was going to faint.
"Oh, my God, oh, my God," she said over and over.
"Tommy," I said. He dashed over to Sara and began to nudge her toward the stairs. Getting pushed by a normal dog can move a fully gown person, getting pushed by a thirteen stone pack of muscle like a wolf, will move anyone. Sara had little choice but to comply and she soon vanished back into the house. After changing back to his human form, Tommy would call whomever he needed to, and hopefully give me enough time to figure out what had happened.
I looked around the room. Someone had covered all the windows with cement, and it looked old. This place had been prepared in advance. I turned back to the dead girl, and noticed the marks and bruises on her arms. Moving closer, I got a good look at the deep cut that had severed her throat, but even from a distance I could tell it was deeper than it needed to be to kill someone. It had been done with a lot of anger.
I got a closer look at her face, a mass of bruises and cuts. Her entire front was drenched in blood, cumulating in a large pool that spread out from under her bare legs, which were covered in smaller cuts and bruises. Whatever had happened here had been premeditated and prolonged. If there's one thing I know when I see it, it's torture. And the poor girl in front of me had gone through hell.
Chapter 5
I took my time searching the prison that someone had created for their victims. At first I'd thought Neil had to have been responsible, but he was the kind of person who wanted instant gratification. Whoever had built the prison wanted their victims to suffer for a very long time.
Loft insulation covered parts on two different walls, where thick, black welding tape held it in place. I pulled some of the tape off, and found that the insulation had been added over what appeared to be concrete-covered windows. The room had been made pretty much soundproof.
The pole the woman had been handcuffed to was fixed to the floor and ceiling with steel rivets. Four huge steel rings sat in the opposite wall, where blood smeared the white plaster. The wear on the steel suggested that they'd once been used to hold thick chains, but I couldn't find any remains of them in the room.
The sound of cars pulling up outside flooded through the open door at the top of the stairs. Tommy had probably called the police, and I needed to finish before they cut off my access to the basement.
I made my way to where the four holes in the wall were and placed my hand in the dry blood. I couldn't see them, but I knew that black glyphs were spreading out over the palm of my hand, crisscrossing over my wrist and up my arm. Blood magic is addictive and dangerous. Most sorcerers use it to aid with healing, or make their magic more powerful. But some use it for horrific ends — curses, controlling people, torture.
A few seconds later, when I'd finished gathering information from the blood, two things surprised me. Firstly the blood comprised of four different people. And secondly, they were male.
When finished, I walked over to the dead woman and placed my hand on the pool of blood under her legs, using the same magic as before. Information about her flashed through my head. I was about to remove my hand, when all of a sudden a wave of power jolted through me and it took all I had to not collapse to my knees. Some form of magic had been used on her, and it had been incredibly powerful.
When I’d caught my breath, I thought about wiping my blooded hand on my jeans, but decided against it and instead made my way out of the basement and back through the house to the outside where a gun was pointed directly at me.
"Stay where you are," shouted a well-dressed man with long blond hair.
I did as was told whilst a young, red-headed woman walked toward me. She was both confident and beautiful, and her eyes sparkled with an assured power. "I'm Director Olivia Green, with the LOA. You must be Nathan."
She held out her hand which I stared at for a second, before showing her the blood on mine.
The blond man took a step forward, his gun still trained on me.
"Step back, Agent Greaves," Director Green said.
Agent Greaves stared at me for a heartbeat before lowering his gun, but he didn't step back.
Director Green clearly wasn't in the mood to argue and just ignored Agent Greaves. "Where did the blood come from?" she asked me
"Body of a woman in the basement. She's handcuffed to a metal pole, and she's human. Also there were four others killed down there. All human, all male."
"How the hell can you possibly know that?" Agent Greaves said, with a dismissive tone.
I raised my palm to show the agent, and allowed the blood magic glyphs to come back to life.
"Blood magic," he hissed, but held his ground for a few seconds to make a point that he wasn't scared, before walking off without another word.
I turned to Director Green. “None of the men were killed by magic, although there’s n
o telling what was done to them after they were killed. The woman though, that’s different, a lot of power has been used on her. Can’t tell you more than that though.”
"Thank you for the information, I’ll have people look into it.”
I walked past her before she could say anything else and kept moving until I reached Tommy and Sara, who both stood next to Tommy's truck.
"We need to talk," I said to Tommy. "Now." The anger in my voice was easy to decipher.
We stopped out of earshot from anyone trying to listen in, a few hundred meters from those now searching the house. "I should knock you the fuck out," I said.
"Nate…"
I raised my hand to interrupt him. "Ten years ago, Mordred tried to kill me, but only succeeded in wiping my memory. Three months ago, I get my memory back, go find and kill the son-of-a-bitch and then come to find you. I told you all of this. I told you that Avalon was almost certainly involved in what happened, and that they might try to find me to finish the job they'd started. And how do you deal with this? By inviting them to meet me as I walk out of a crime scene with fucking blood on my hands!
"Jesus, Tommy. Avalon wants me dead, and you basically deliver me to their police force. Good fucking job."
"You done?" Tommy asked with a touch of anger himself.
I grunted something non-committal.
"I'm sorry I didn't tell you that the person who asked for my help was Olivia."
"The fucking director? This just gets better."
"Hey, you had your turn, now you get to shut the fuck up and listen."
There was a silence between us that lasted only a few seconds, but if felt like a lifetime. There were probably only six people in the world that could speak to me like that and not get a punch in the mouth. And Tommy knew he was one of them. I shut up and listened.
"Olivia needed my help, and I agreed," Tommy said. "I didn't want to argue with you, so I didn't tell you. She's not a cop, she's LOA, and I needed your help. I thought it was going to be a nice easy job, snooping around Neil's house. I had no idea what we'd find, but I swear to you I thought at most we'd just find enough to let the LOA look into him further. I'd have never brought Sara with us if I thought for one second there might be any real danger.
"Besides, you shouldn't be too concerned about me telling Olivia that you were helping me. Your past is so deeply hidden in Avalon, that no member of the LOA, agent or director, will ever be able to gain access. You know this."
"Damn you," I said softly.
"I really am sorry for not telling you. But I'm also sorry that I had to lie to Olivia."
"What did you do, Tommy?"
"She wanted to know who you were, your past, that sort of thing. I told her that you were a member of the Faceless."
The Faceless were bodyguards, assassins, thieves or whatever else their master needs them to be. Each high-ranking member of Avalon has their own personal Faceless, and each of them wears a mask so that no one knows what they really look like. There are no files on members, and only their master knows their true identity as all of them are bound to do their master's will. No matter how disturbed or unpleasant it may be.
"Are you serious?"
"I needed to explain why any checks would come up negative. And preferably something that would make her not want to check in the first place. I wasn't left with a whole lot of good options. The Faceless were the obvious choice."
I shrugged my agreement, he had a point. "Okay, there's only one problem."
"And that would be?"
"You ever met an ex-member of the Faceless? It's a till death-do-you-part, sort of group. And even that doesn't always mean their work is done."
"You'll think of something." Tommy gestured behind me. "She looks angry, think fast."
I turned as director Green strode toward me, determined and clearly having decided that she'd given Tommy and me enough time to chat. "I don't believe we were finished talking, Mister Garrett."
"Evidently not," I said, as Tommy wandered off to check on Sara.
"You brought the girl here," Director Green said, meaning Sara. "That was stupid."
"Well, you asked Tommy to look into Neil, and that led us here. It wasn't my idea, and I know Tommy well enough to know that he was hardly expecting to find a torture chamber out here. And, like I said, you're the one who asked for his help."
"And I didn't expect him to include a member of the Faceless in this mess."
"Your disdain is easy to hear, Director Green," I said with a smile. "You know nothing about me. Before you judge, maybe you should change that."
"Every Faceless I've ever met; has served only their master, like a good little lapdog. What makes you so different, Mister Garrett? What makes you so goddamn impressive, that I should decide to trust you?"
"Firstly, I'm ex-Faceless. Emphasis on the ex. Secondly, whoever built that basement did it for one reason, to kill people in it. And whoever he is, he's very skilled at killing. This isn't the work of some amateur, like Neil, who doesn't know what he's doing. Neil may be a powerful predator, but he's nowhere near a professional. Professionals don't make the mistakes that he's made, and they're not caught easily."
"Anything else?"
"You got a wipe?"
Director Green pulled a small pack of baby wipes from her pocket and passed them to me. "Keep the pack."
I thanked her and cleaned the blood from my hands, stuffing the remaining pack in my pocket before explaining about the photos I'd found in Neil's house.
"Shit," she whispered. "This just gets worse and worse."
"One more thing." I gestured at the open country surrounding us. "Tommy mentioned that you were called with a tip that someone saw something weird at the farm. You see any way someone could just happen to spot something suspicious going on out here? You can't see the farmhouse from the road, unless you're stopped at the gate and looking in. I'd bet a million quid that whoever made that call is the same person who slit the girls throat. And that's not Neil. My guess, Neil's doing the leg work and the killer called to cast suspicion on him. To give himself some breathing room while you chased your tail. I'm guessing someone called to tell you that Neil was out. Maybe he's no longer useful to whoever he's working for."
"Fuck. Look, I'm needed here to sort all of this out, but I'll contact you and Tommy tomorrow morning." She turned and walked away, re-joining the agents buzzing around the crime scene.
I put the card in my pocket and moved to stand next to Tommy and Sara. "Can we leave now?" Sara asked.
"I assume so," I said.
"Drop me back at the office," Tommy said. "Then take Sara home."
I waited until Sara had gone back to the car before speaking to Tommy. "There's more to this than some dead girl in a basement and a bunch of photos in some asshole's attic, isn't there?"
Tommy looked around, a nervous habit he had tried to get rid of. "That's putting it bluntly. If I'm right, this is going to turn into a huge fucking mess by tomorrow morning."
Chapter 6
I dropped Tommy off at his office, but he'd been silent the whole way back and it was beginning to concern me.
"They tortured that woman,” he said before I could ask him anything. “I could smell the blood. Can you come pick me up before you go home? I think there are a few things we need to talk about."
I said I would and told him that I'd return in a few hours to give him his car back.
"How's your hand?" I asked a still quiet Sara.
She flexed her fingers and wrist. "It feels sore, but no more throbbing pain. Why, where are we going?"
"We need to talk," I said. "About what you saw."
"I saw a dead woman." Her words were spoken softly, just above a whisper.
I didn't really know what to say to that. "I'm sorry" felt too small a phrase to use for the horror that Sara had witnessed. Instead, I drove in silence for a few more miles, before leaving the motorway and driving down some quiet country roads until we reached a a dirt road.
We bumped and jolted down the road for half a mile, the width just big enough for two cars, but there was no one else around at one in the afternoon on a weekday. At the end of the road sat a large grassy clearing.
I stopped the car and got out. Sara joined me a moment later.
"I've never been here before," she said as she followed my gaze.
The clearing ended fifty feet in front of where we stood, replaced by a drop of a few hundred feet into the New Forest below. From our vantage point, we could see for miles, all of it green and peaceful. Very few people knew of the spot, so thankfully there was no fence protecting idiots from falling down the slope, and spoiling what was a spectacular view.
"It's so quiet," she said as she walked toward the edge, stopping a few feet back and peering down the slope. "Bloody hell."
"Yeah, I don't advise jumping," I said as I joined her. "You could probably survive as it's not a sheer drop, but you'd know about it once you hit the bottom."
"How do you know about this place?"
"I used to come here, a long time ago. When the only way to get up here was to climb that slope, or walk the ten miles to get around it."
"You climbed that?"
"A few times, it was good exercise." I made my way back to the truck. "I picked here as we're unlikely to be disturbed. You can ask whatever you want. I won't dodge anything, I promise. No subject is off limits. You got into a fight today, how are you feeling about it?"
Sara continued to stare down into the forest below, her back facing me. She rubbed her neck and turned, before walking back over where I was sitting. "I wanted to hurt him," she said. "He threatened to… well, you know. When I hit him, I just lost it."
"You handled yourself well. I'm proud of you; you should be too. But next time, maintain composure. Losing your temper will get you in trouble one day. Trust me on this."