Royal Blood

by Debra Dunbar

  We waited. I stared at the planchette, willing it to move, but nothing happened.

  “Bernard D’Angelo, Knight Templar, we call to you. A sister Templar needs help in finding your murderers and bringing them to justice. I call to you through the bond of your mark.”

  I felt the tattoo on my wrist tingle and warm. The planchette shuddered and slowly moved, letter by letter to spell out a response.

  BLOOD.

  I waited, but the planchette remained still. Blood. I assumed the man was telling me that vampires had killed him by drinking his blood.

  “Knight D’Angelo, I am Solaria Ainsworth. We know you were killed by vampires. We’re trying to track them down and deliver justice. What were you in Baltimore seeking?”

  I held my breath as the planchette crept its way across the board.

  ROYAL BLOOD

  My mind raced, wondering what in the heck D’Angelo was talking about. Royal blood? Had a European prince been kidnapped and the Templars hired to find him? He couldn’t be referring to the Holy Grail because we already had that item safely in the Temple. Unless it had somehow been stolen or smuggled out underneath the eye of half a dozen skilled Knights and the Elders were keeping it quiet until it was recovered. Although if we’d lost one of our most holy artifacts, I would have thought the Elders would have sent more than one Knight to retrieve it.

  “You were here to retrieve the royal blood?” I asked, trying to keep the question simple. I’d figure out who or what royal blood referred to later, if Russell was able to maintain the connection long enough.

  The planchette moved to the “no” word on the board, then once again began to spell out a response.

  STOP THEM B4 HE COMES

  Okay, that raised the hair on the back of my neck. I immediately thought of Chuck’s Big Bad, and hoped I wasn’t going to have to face whatever the heck that was right now.

  “Before who comes?” I asked. “Who is coming?”

  I watched the Ouija board, shaking my head slowly as I made note of the letters.

  “Marblehead?” What in all that was holy was D’Angelo talking about? Was the connection slipping and the spirit losing control over the planchette? Or was the Knight sent to stop a giant statue of a head?

  “A golem?” I asked, trying to think of any stone-like being that might warrant sending a Templar to deal with.

  Russell sucked in a deep breath, his hands beginning to shake. Once more the planchette moved.

  DEAD SECRETS WILL LIVE STOP ROYAL BLOOD STOP MARBLEHEAD

  An icy breeze blew through the room, extinguishing the candles. Russell exhaled, pulling his fingers away from my Templar tattoo and wiping them on the front of his shirt. “I’m amazed by everything you got there. He was very determined to communicate with you, otherwise I doubt I could have even connected with his spirit.”

  A whole lot of puzzlement is what I had. What the heck was a Marblehead? Royal blood? And what did a group of vampires have to do with any of this? Were the rogue vampires working for a mage who was going to raise a golem using a special type of blood magic?

  I’d need to talk to Mom about all this.

  “The next one should be easier.” Russell moved the Ouija board aside. “You’ve got a connection with your friend Raven. I might be able to even channel her directly.”

  “Even if she’s in hell?” I asked.

  The necromancer nodded. “Yes, although I won’t be able to hold the connection for long if she’s in hell. If she’s in the grasp of that Balsur, I might not be able to get much in the way of communication, but I’ll know she’s there and be able to get a quick message from her.”

  That surprised me and I eyed Russell with added respect. If Balsur had Raven, I doubted he’d willingly let her communicate across the veil. That Russell was powerful enough to bypass the demon in his own domain was impressive.

  “Do you have the focus item?” Russell asked.

  I dug around in my purse and pulled out one of the spell books Raven had given me. The little resin fox that had housed her spirit had been pulverized to dust, but I had lots of things that had belonged to Raven, and I knew how much she’d loved her spell books. This one, with her notes in the margins adding to those of two centuries of mages, would certainly call to her spirit even if my presence alone was insufficient to link to her.

  Russell took the book, caressing the spine and paging through it before carefully setting it in the middle of the table. Then he stood, replaced the candles in their holders, and once more set them alight. Taking a small bundle of herbs from the table, he walked around, whispering under his breath. Touching a few sticks to the flames, he placed the smoldering herbs on metal at the base of each candle.

  The room filled with a woodsy scent. Russell returned to the table, sat, and placed his hands flat on the surface. I mimicked him, closing my eyes and thinking of Raven.

  Russell chanted in an unfamiliar language for what seemed like forever. Finally I opened my eyes to sneak a peek at him, and saw the sweat beading on his forehead. Why was this so difficult? My heart sped up with fear. Was Raven okay? What had happened to her that Russell couldn’t manage to establish a connection?

  “Hear my call,” Russell muttered in English. “Answer my call, Raven. Aria wishes to speak with you. She wants to know if you’re safe.”

  The necromancer scowled.

  “What?” I whispered, desperate to know what was going on.

  He ignored my question. “Are you safe, Raven? Where do you reside on the other side of the veil?”

  What was happening? Why wasn’t she answering? At least he’d made contact with her, though—that meant her soul hadn’t been destroyed. There was still hope, although hope for what I didn’t know.

  What the heck was I going to do if Raven was in trouble? If Russell was struggling to communicate with her, I had no hope of his being able to…I don’t know, summon her across the veil, relocate her from hell or wherever she was to a better zip code. She’d saved me—saved my life, saved my soul. I couldn’t just let her suffer, if indeed she was suffering.

  Russell let out a breath, opened his eyes, and shook his head as he removed his hands from the table. I stared at him, feeling as if I were on the verge of a panic attack.

  “That was…that was difficult,” the necromancer admitted. “She didn’t answer my call, so I had to follow the trail to her.”

  “She couldn’t answer your call? Does that mean something horrible has control over her?”

  He shook his head. “I got the impression that she was purposefully not answering my call.”

  I swallowed hard. Was she angry with me? Refusing to talk to me just as Reynard refused to answer my calls? Did she think I should have made the deal with Balsur and had her brought back to life in a human body—assuming the demon wasn’t lying about his ability to do that? I couldn’t believe Raven would go to all the trouble, losing her life in an attempt to rid me of my demon mark, only to change her mind.

  “She was…busy,” Russell added.

  I wasn’t sure if that was better than her not answering because she was mad at me.

  “Busy with what? With whom?”

  “I don’t know. I got the impression there was fighting, like everyone was trying to knock each other out of the way and grab something. Raven was determined, but scared. She’s not somewhere good, Aria. I’m sorry, but that’s what I felt.”

  I tried to steady my breathing, to force back the tears. “What can I do to help her? What can I do? There has to be something I can do.”

  Russell shook his head. “Not that I’m aware of, Aria. One thing she said to tell you before she cut the connection, though: she said she’s coming back. She said the time has to be right. When the time is right, she’s coming back, and not in a dog or a piece of resin this time.”

  I sucked in a breath. “Can she do that? Is it even possible for her to do that? Raven could bring a demon across the veil, maybe she has the ability to bring herself somehow? Or
there’s a mage that can do that?”

  “Bringing a spirit fully across the veil isn’t like summoning a demon. It’s a very different process, and not easy. Throughout history there have been powerful mages whose diaries are filled with the attempts to bring a deceased spirit fully across the veil, to bring them into an empty vessel as if they were reborn again. It’s not something we do.”

  “But isn’t that a necromantic skill?” I asked. “Surely if you can raise the dead, communicate with spirits, summon them back into their bodies, then you have the base talents to perform a resurrection?”

  “Necromancy is not resurrection,” Russell argued. “We call spirits back on a temporary basis, and often not the entirety of the spirit but just a shadow of their former selves—most likely the portion with anger over how they died. The only magic we do that is permanent is to create zombies, or wraiths, or even ghouls. Those sorts of creatures never house the fullness of the deceased spirit, and sometimes do not house the original spirit at all.”

  “So resurrection isn’t a necromantic rite?” I was so confused.

  “No. It’s a field unto itself, one that requires a lifetime of study to get right—and even then, as I’ve said, many spend their lives devoted to the study and never succeed. Resurrection rites actually have more in common with blood magic and demonology than necromancy.”

  Blood. It always seemed to be about blood lately. Poor Melbourne Cassidy lured from Philadelphia to his death. Bernard D’Angelo drained by a group of rogue vampires, his spirit saying something about a marble golem and royal blood.

  “From the limited amount I know, a resurrection spell works best right after someone had died, before the body has time to decompose to the point where it would reject the spirit. And even if a mage manages to perform a resurrection within moments of death,” Russell continued, “the price of failure is steep.”

  “How steep?” I asked, my curiosity getting the better of me.

  “A life for a life. And if it fails, you’ve committed a murder for nothing.”

  For all that was sacred, the ritual involved killing someone? This was clearly the territory where these spells overlapped with death magic and I was far more shocked than I probably should have been.

  “So it’s a balance thing?” I asked, swallowing my horror at the thought of sacrificing an innocent person just to bring a loved one back to their body. “Is there always the price of another life to bring someone back from the dead?”

  “Fully back from the dead? As in a resurrection? Yes. There is always a price to magic, Aria. The most powerful magic requires the steepest price.”

  I shook my head, imagining something akin to a horror movie. “And the person has to be recently dead to resurrect them? How recently? Hours? Days?”

  Russell eyed me for a moment then let out a long breath. “Not…not always. A resurrection ritual back to the original body is ideal, but there is an alternative.”

  “Alternative?”

  “Alternative.” He shot me a stern look. “There have been occasions in the last five centuries where a mage has attempted to resurrect a long dead spirit into another body. They have always failed. Either two spirits have ended up inhabiting the body and the subject went insane, or the intended spirit bounced back across the veil and the subject was never the same.”

  All this was purely academic. I’d never have the ability to do that sort of thing, and as much as I wanted Raven back, I would never sacrifice someone for that to happen. No, if I wanted to help Raven, I’d need to figure out some other way—some way of getting her to a better afterlife at the very least.

  Maybe I needed to be talking to a priest. I picked up the book and stood, thanking Russell for the tea and for his help today.

  “I owe you big time,” I told him.

  He chuckled. “Don’t worry. There will come a time when I need a Templar, and then I’ll be calling on you.”

  “And I’ll be happy to help.”

  I put the book into my oversized purse and headed out, wondering if I would have time for a quick nap before my mother got home. I’d given her one of the spare keys before I’d left, but I got the feeling she’d not be back until closer to four or five, and it was barely after noon.

  My hopes for a nap faded as I turned the corner and noticed a man loitering around my front stoop.

  Chapter 16

  Two unexpected visitors in one day was more than odd. Admittedly, there was a convenience store on my block, but it was across the street. They generally didn’t encourage loiterers, and most of their customers didn’t seem inclined to hang out, so this man was more than a little suspicious. And why my house? There were a dozen boarded up houses on this street where he could have sat on the front steps and not gotten a second glance. But my house?

  Parking in my usual spot, I grabbed my sword off the passenger seat, and instead of putting it over my shoulder, I kept it out as I walked to my front door.

  “Can I help you with something?”

  The man jumped, backing a few steps away from me and staring at me with wide eyes. He looked vaguely familiar, and I tilted my head trying to remember where I’d seen him before.

  “Are you the Templar? The Knight?” he asked.

  I was “a” Templar, not “the” Templar and I wasn’t a Knight, but it didn’t seem to matter enough to warrant a correction.

  “Doctor Tremelay gave me your name and address?” He continued.

  This must be the guy Kyra had come to talk to me about—the one who thought he’d been kidnapped by aliens and possessed by a demon or something. Great. Kyra was supposed to give the guy my number, not send him over to my house. I could hear Fulk barking inside, and I did have my sword in hand, so I figured I was reasonably safe. Unless the guy had a gun in his pocket, that is.

  “You’re not carrying a pistol or anything, are you?” I asked, just to be sure, still trying to remember how I knew him. A coffee shop customer? No, Kyra had said he was from out of town, here in Baltimore for business.

  Suddenly everything tumbled into place.

  “Rick?” It was the guy from the club Tuesday night, the one who’d gone off drunk with some blonde and stranded his worried sister. Liz hadn’t called Tremelay, so I’d just assumed Rick had stumbled back to the hotel in the early morning hours. But judging from what Kyra had told me about this guy, there was plenty about Rick Dimond that I hadn’t sensed in the ten minutes I’d spent talking to him at the club.

  Now it was his turn to squint and look closely at me.

  “It’s Aria,” I reminded him, realizing that I probably didn’t look at all the same as I had with makeup and in the dim flattering lighting of the club. “From the Ottobar Tuesday night?”

  He frowned. “You look familiar, but I don’t remember going to a bar. Or Tuesday.”

  I snorted. “You were pretty lit, at least by the end of the evening. You probably had the world’s worst hangover for that seminar Wednesday. Why did you decide to stay over the holiday?”

  I suddenly realized that’s when he must have “indulged” in some smack and had his really bad trip involving alien probes and demonic possession. Ugh, poor Liz. I wondered if she knew how serious her brother’s alcohol and drug problem was?

  “I…I don’t remember a seminar, or the holiday. And the last time I remember seeing Liz was at home.” He frowned. “I guess it was last weekend?”

  “You didn’t call her from the hospital?” Sheesh, the poor woman must be frantic.

  “Of course I did.” Rick’s indignation was real, as was the sudden loss of balance and the quick hand that darted out to catch himself on my rickety railing before he fell.

  I reached out to steady him, concerned the railing wouldn’t hold the guy. “You better come in and sit down. Hope you don’t mind dogs. Or are allergic to cats.”

  “Left a message for Liz,” he mumbled. “But I checked out of the hospital this morning and I don’t have a cell phone, so there’s no way for her to call me bac
k. I wanted to see you before I tried to call her again. I don’t have any money, no ID and no cell phone, so I was hoping… But you’re not a Templar, are you? I vaguely remember you worked in a coffee shop?”

  “Good thing, because you look like you really could use a coffee.” I edged past him, and opened the door. Fulk shot out like a rocket and began sniffing the guy.

  I waited for Rick to get his balance and whistled for Fulk to come back inside before helping the man in. Gaia was sitting patiently on the table, queen that she was. She took one disgusted look at Rick, then meowed and strutted off to the kitchen.

  “Sit.” I eased him down on the couch, then hauled Fulk into the kitchen with me so he wouldn’t keep pestering the poor guy.

  Putting on a fresh pot of coffee, I got out a couple of mugs and thought. He’d obviously returned early Wednesday morning, gone to the seminar, then stayed while Liz headed home. I was assuming he’d gone on a bender Wednesday, then been in a flop house somewhere until waking up and staggering to the hospital a few days later. Whatever he told Liz he was doing, it must have been something where he wasn’t expected to check in for a few days, or she would have filed a police report. And Kyra had intimated that he didn’t appear to be a habitual drug user—at with least IV drugs.

  Had he hooked up again with the blonde woman, who’d talked him into shooting up, only to rob him blind and leave him passed out for days? That was the scenario I was thinking about. And if so, then I needed to hear him out, and let the police know that it wasn’t alien scientists and demons we were looking for, but a blonde thief.

  And then I’d help him get in touch with Liz, have her wire him some money, and maybe get him on a bus home—hopefully all before Mom got back.

  I poured us each a mug of coffee, grabbed the milk out of the fridge, a couple of spoons, and the box with little packets of sugar and headed into the living room. Fulk had dashed back in while I was making coffee. I found Rick sitting as I’d left him on the couch, mindlessly petting the dog who was curled up next to him. I shooed Fulk off the sofa, and handed the man a mug of coffee.