He stopped in his main laboratory to grab more ingredients. The Carmot was the central shaping material, but it was trapped in the Cinnabar resin. He’d need to first break that down and distill the rare element. Then the fun would really begin. He’d require extenders, and charge-holding ingredients that would mimic whatever magic signature graced the artifacts. And he’d need something to stretch the small, precious supply far enough for him to use some on his own pet project.
In his private lab, the canopic jar sat alone on a marble table, the only item on the pristine surface, awash in the glow of an overhead halogen light.
“What are you?” he said to himself, placing the Tiffany’s box beside it on the table. The proximity of Carmot might be enough to stimulate something, anything from the relic. So far the jar appeared energetically dead, but it was cleverly resistant to many of his tests.
The air between them shimmered briefly, as if something had passed between the jar and the box. Hopeful, Jack placed his palm about an inch from the curved top, and reached out to sense the energy. As before, the jar remained inert. He advanced, laying his palm along one of the curves of the body. Nothing.
“Penny for your thoughts?” He pulled away and stared again at the worn hieroglyphs for the thousandth time. “Maybe I should just break you open,” he threatened. But the jar remained silent, stoic, and waiting. He supposed he could smash it, but doing so could trigger spellwork too sensitive for him to pick up, and that spell could do all kinds of nasty, lasting things. To him, and anyone within the kill zone.
“All right, we’ll save you for later.” When I have Raine. He hoped the power he’d raise with her would not only be enough to locate the remaining three jars, but allow him to see deeper into the artifact. To tell for certain whether it was truly inert, or had dangerous power cleverly concealed by some arcane spell he’d yet to discern. Another pang of guilt bit at him.
Jack ambled over and fired up his computer. Maybe he should feel Raine out more. See if he was reading her wrong. She’d been seeing more and more shades of gray. Maybe she would be open to this latest evolution of the mission spec…
He laughed harshly at his folly. Who was he kidding? She was no more flexible where the Covenant was concerned, than he was the hero she seemed to think on occasion he was. He couldn’t recall a time he had less in common with someone, or more. Such a perplexing mix. One thing was for sure: chemistry. Way more than the magic burn, they had that spark. He’d thought there was only one woman in history to do that to him, but then came Raine Spencer, all starry-eyed, ass-kicking, and fine-looking in that lithe body of hers, throwing all his past misconceptions aside.
What he’d shared with Caroline had been nothing. A flicker of a candle in a storm. He’d confused it with love, and been suckered in as a result. To think he’d felt misery and rage hearing of her murder. It faded fast enough when he learned he’d been played from the start. It still took him years to know what he thought was the spark of love was nothing more than hormonal overload. And in comparison to what fired off between himself and Raine, what he had shared with Caroline was nothing more than weak heat.
Jack kicked back in his chair, propped his feet up on his desk, and set the keyboard in his lap. Raine was volcanic. Surface-of-the-sun hot and then some. It was so damn hard to maintain perspective around her. Even now his cock grew heavy as thoughts spun out across his brain in vivid detail. Raine crying out in orgasm. Her heady taste, spicy sweet and unforgettable. The curve of her hip against the flat of his palm. Her eyes misting blue from grey when she really smiled, or turning ice-sharp when that rocket-scientist brain of hers kicked into overdrive and laid into a problem.
She’d fit so well against him riding down that elevator shaft. He wanted to see her naked, test that fit, skin to skin. He wanted to slide himself into her. Bury his cock deep inside that tight, slick tunnel of lava-like heat. His balls tightened and his heartbeat quickened. God’s teeth, this was no way to get work done. He was all but sweating, and ready to beat off again just to get her off his mind and out of his blood. Except this time, the hard-on was twice as rock solid as last time. “Yes, you’re a pervert, Jack Madden,” he said aloud, hoping the sound of his own voice would throw him off this dangerous track. “There’s plenty of time to sample the lady and her charms after business hours.”
Or so he hoped. Raine was hard to judge. She had an iron will, and a personality that adapted rapidly. She might be able to resist the lure of the magic burn this time. And that would so totally suck, because he really wanted to show her how good it could be between them. No train ride and wham, bam, and “thank you, please drive through”. He wanted to show her long into the night what the son of an Elven sorceress and a Norse God could do to drive a mortal woman into a truly ecstatic state.
Jack pulled up his email and one immediately caught his eye. He straightened up and opened the message from Butcher22 and scanned the contents. He no sooner read the first line than the IM from the author popped up on his screen.
Butcher22: You should have warned me before you sent me hunting.
Jack furrowed his brow and typed back.
MadJackM: ?
Butcher22: Suriana Winterheart. The crazy painter. She was exiled from the homeland because she was nuts. Riddle me this, Batman: how insane do you have to be for the Elves to kick you out?
Jack’s heart sunk. He had a bad feeling about where this was heading.
MadJackM: I’m game. What did she do?
Butcher22: What didn’t she do? Rumor has it her paintings could steal a soul, or act as a window through time. The Red Queen banished her after Suriana completed a portrait the Queen claimed stole her sorcery.
Jack thought back to the Red Queen in question. His history was a little rusty for that realm, but the one he recalled had a short-lived reign marked by terror, debauchery, and tacky court fashions. She was beheaded by her successor, who was just as stark-raving stupid, both of them magic junkies that lived in the nebulous haze common to illusionists. Butcher had a point. How crazy were you if you were kicked out for being crazy by crazies? Man, this did not look good. Not one damn bit.
MadJackM: Sounds like more Elven horseshit.
Butcher22: Digging up that much nearly got me killed. Horseshit usually doesn’t carry such a hefty price tag.
MadJackM: Put it on my tab.
Butcher22: Already did.
MadJackM: What’s the connect with the Wardens?
Butcher22: Can’t say. No one’s alive who’s talking from that op. Near as I can tell, the Spencer boys were living in an estate in the south of France where she was staying for the summer. Place was owned by Thaddius Archer.
Jack blinked.
Hard.
Holy shit. Holy black-fucking-dark-arts shit. The blackness forecasted at the end of days wasn’t nearly as blotto-evil as the infamous Archer. After Jack got over the initial shock of the name-drop from Butchy, another shock hit him. He’d mentioned Spencer in the plural.
MadJackM: Both brothers? What were they doing?
Butcher22: Security of some kind. They started ten months before Archer’s death. Don’t know how Suriana fits in.
MadJackM: Find out.
Butcher22: Will do. Putting that on the tab also.
MadJackM: Any thoughts on Edward Spencer and Suriana?
Butcher22: My contacts in the Covenant are silent. So is any hacking. I’m turning up jack shit. Whatever went down was buried deep as hell’s basement. Sure you want me to go further?
MadJackM: All the way to the devil’s boneyard if necessary.
Butcher22: You’re the boss. Say hi to Jessica. I have a spot on my mantle reserved for her pretty little orange head. Or whatever color she’s dyed it today.
Butchy cut the IM, and closed the connection. Jack set the keyboard back on the desk. His blood was cold, and his mind on fire from this latest facet of information. The small voice in the back of his skull, the one that plagued him the way his newfound conscien
ce did, told him “Call Butchy, tell him to stop.” But he’d caught the scent. The most powerful black mage of the era had two of the cleanest paladins masquerading as security while a crazy Elven artisan in exile lived in his house. That was juicy enough all on its own to nose into. But factor in one of the paladins knocking up the elf, the mage buying the farm under suspicious circumstances, and the Wardens purging the records, and you had an irresistible mystery. There was no way he could it pass up.
Especially considering the math. Archer’s demise, which occurred somewhere in Northern England, though occasionally linked to the Wardens, was always shrouded in secrecy and deceit, and had more speculation surrounding it than Kennedy and the grassy knoll. Archer’s death, Edward Spencer’s demise, and Raine’s birth were way too close for comfort. Or coincidence.
Jack reconsidered the power he’d tapped inside Raine. What if it wasn’t all passed on from Suriana’s legacy? What if it tracked back to Archer also? He could just as easily be her father as Edward Spencer. In fact, it was way more believable to think Thadius Archer fathered a magical half-breed child than it was to imagine Edward Spencer doing the same. And it would explain the potent streak of esoteric energy that flowed through Raine.
The possibilities were endless and ugly. They also had a cooling effect on his libido. Jack stared at the screen for a long moment, considering his next steps. After a few fevered moments, he dismissed it all, deciding he had too much information that was too close to innuendo and guesses to process with any value. He’d wait until he had something more solid from Butchy. Last thing he wanted to do was jump to conclusions.
Jack opened Havers’s files on the Covenant, but his mind couldn’t seem to focus on his own vengeance. He closed out of that drive, and called Havers on the interoffice line.
“What have you found out about Raine?” he asked when she picked up.
“Nothing but a big blank spot where the files should be. You sound keyed up. What’s going on?”
What indeed. “There’s no record of the op?”
“No record. No mention. Nothing in lateral files, duty reports, daily logs.”
That was bad. Very bad. “We know the Wardens had an op going.”
“If they did, the files were purged.”
“That’s off-protocol and against Covenant guidelines.”
“It is.”
Oh, really really really bad. Acid churned up in his gut. There had to be something. The Wardens always left a trace. Always. “Try searches on Thaddius Archer, and his death.”
“I shouldn’t ask this, because I think I already know the answer, but are you out of your fucking mind? Thaddius Archer?”
“Yes, and yes.”
“Do you even care about what I turned up on you and the trial?”
“Not at the moment,” he answered before thinking. The words shocked him. “Nevermind. Scratch that. I do care.”
“I take it Butchy turned something up on Raine that ties back to Archer?”
“The Spencers were doing security for Archer at the same time Raine’s mother was a guest in his home. Her birth and his death are a little too close for my comfort.”
“How nice for us all. I warned you about her, didn’t I? She could be Archer’s get. Next to the anti-Christ and Chthulhu, I can’t think of anything worse. Can you?”
“Don’t jump to conclusions.” He let loose a breath and tried to contain himself. Until they had proof, nothing mattered. Jack knew firsthand how damning wrong conclusions could be. “So, anything of interest on the trial?”
“I have one more lead to track down, but, it’s promising.”
“How promising?”
“Don’t quote me, but unless I’m off my game, I think Caroline is still alive.”
Jack’s world tilted on its axis. “Caroline? Alive?” he sputtered. “How? What makes you so sure?”
“The autopsy records show transport for cremation. The cremation logs indicate twenty-one bodies cooked to ash that day. But if you follow the bodies back to the shipping morgues, the math totals twenty-two bodies.”
Havers never failed to impress. “So there’s a discrepancy. That means any of the twenty-two could be the missing one.”
“I searched non-Covenant records at police agencies along the travel routes. Caroline’s route had an unexpected traffic jam. A water-main break at seven a.m.”
Jack processed the information. Thinking about Caroline, hearing her name mentioned, should have left him as it always did, wildly angry and a little sick to his stomach. Strangely, there were none of these things. The woman who once meant all, who’d set him up, who’d he’d been blamed for killing and all of that—still alive. “It’s one anomaly. Weren’t there others? And how the hell did you find out? That was fifty years ago.”
“First, it’s the only anomaly. Second, she was slated to go to a closer disposition point, but Kerr ordered a rapid removal fearing there was some kind of taint from whatever it was that she stole.”
“The Staff of the Neteru,” he said by rote.
“Could be the Burger King’s crown. Doesn’t matter. He signed to have her shipped to a rapid disposal point operated by Mammets, not the Covenant.”
Oh. Interesting. Very. “Go on.”
“So I have this contact over at Mammets. You know they’re freaks about the records. Their guy logged in late. Gave the reason of the water main. I checked with someone in public works, and they cast around the old-timers, and found someone who recalled it. It was a new main, no one could explain what set it off.”
“Threads.”
“That’s all I need. Look. Didn’t you tell me she had power up the whazoo?”
“Yeah. She did.”
“I think this was a bodywash,” she said, using the Covenant term used when an accident was set up to cover for a death in an accepted manner to either hide the real cause of death, or help a person who wanted to disappear “die” on paper.
“Mammets runs a tight ship. They’d want the body logged in. How’d it slip past them?”
“The body was burned beyond recognition. The Wardens tested it prior to release. It wasn’t ordered on the invoice, so Mammets didn’t bother testing again. And the driver was in on the gig. Two years after the event, he left Mammets, and resurfaced in South America living like an Inca King. Now I know they pay well, but not that well.”
Havers was telling him something insane, and yet, believable.
“We find her, we find who set me up.” The stunning reality was so close at hand he could all but touch it. Yet he was afraid. That it was like all the other times. Another dead end. “Keep digging. If you’re right, we may get things wrapped up faster and neater than planned.”
“That would be nice for once,” she said, and cut the line.
Yes. Very nice. Payback nice. Nothing nicer he could think of.
Except Raine Spencer.
The sneaky little though escaped, and once out, couldn’t be ignored.
Perhaps Raine was the reason he didn’t seem to possess the same level of hate for Caroline? No. That was crazy talk. Then again, he was crazy. Or mad. If you believed the legends.
Jack laughed uneasily. Life was getting too weird these days. Even for him. He fired up the computer and tapped into Havers’s stolen files, purloined from the Covenant, and the hard drive of the vampire’s laptop. There was a shit load of work ahead of him before his ritual with Raine, more than enough to help him forget his past. More than enough to help him plan and secure his future.
* * *
Raine’s eyes blurred from hours at the computer. First the Warden’s archives, then her own, then Jack’s digital library, and finally surfing the regular internet. Everything Zep Tepi and Atlantean swirled around in her head, leading to no meaningful end. Oh, she knew more now in plain names, dates, facts, and wild-ass theories of crazies and scholars alike. Everything from aliens to Gods and in between had been proposed, theorized, and considered when it came to the ancient race of Atlantis
, and their legacy to the mere mortal realm. Like most of her other research projects and operations, she suspected that in the midst of the mania were hidden grains of truth. Trick was, sorting out that truth. Logic, in this case, was failing her. If she followed Jack’s advice, instead of using her normal logical approach, however, she hit on one, strange thing.
Carmot.
It had no solid connection to anything they were doing, except for the fact it was credited to Atlanteans, and it was a magical component of unrivaled power. She’d been reading a passage on alchemy, and the Philosopher’s Stone, when it all but leapt off the page. It could be something, or nothing. Too early to tell. But it had struck her as interesting, so she bookmarked several references for later study. She’d mention it to Jack, see what he thought. Maybe he’d be able to draw a bead on it using her energy.
Other than that, she was drawing a big fat blank.
She pushed back from the desk, and stretched out her tension. Dinner sat cold and uneaten on a fancy rolling tea cart. Night had fallen on the city. Raine had one more search left. The ethernet. A version of the internet used by Alts and the magical set, she figured she might hit pay dirt there, if anywhere.
She stood and walked out to the balcony doors, and enjoyed the brisk air for moment. It woke her up from the internet-induced stupor, and, the decidedly damp chill lurking in the breeze reminded her that Hallows Eve was but a few days away. Would they have the artifacts at that point? She laughed at herself and her foolishness. Would she even be alive by then was a better question. The first artifact was found with relative ease. Though she knew Jack to be a little to the far side of crazy, he was probably right about finding the next few. At some point, they’d be paying in blood.
ImmortalIllusions: The Eternity Covenant Book2 Page 19