by Alex Rivers
I flicked off the flashlight and shoved it into my bag. Slinking through the shadows, half-crouching, I crept to the place where I’d heard the grunting. I left the light behind. Slowly, with the fear blazing through my nerve-endings, my eyes were starting to adjust to the dark. If I shone the flashlight around, the boar might come charging right for me.
I rounded the corner, adrenaline blazing. There, against the tile wall, I caught a glimpse of an enormous form, emitting a low growl.
When the lights flickered again, my blood roared in my ears. Twenty feet away stood an immense boar, its flesh and fur the ivory color of bone. The thing was nearly as tall as me, with two curved tusks the size of my arms, spattered in blood. Its eyes were the size of baseballs, dark as the opening of a cave.
The lights flickered off again, and my heart slammed against my ribs. I tried to make out its form in the dark again, my eyes slowly adjusting. In the ancient, primitive part of my brain, a voice screamed at me: Run. I tried to marshal my calm, using my FBI training. With fear whispering over my skin, I lifted the rifle in a fluid motion and shot.
My aim was perfect, the dart hitting the boar in one of its shoulders—but the damn thing bounded off, as if hitting rock. Shit. How had that dart just bounced off it? Maybe I’d hit its shoulder bone.
With an enraged grunt that echoed through my bones, the boar charged for me. I dove out of its path, rolling on the floor. I was already inserting the second dart into the gun, my pulse racing. As I fiddled with the gun, I heard the boar turning, grunting. I strained to see him in the dark. To get it, I would need to shoot it somewhere soft, like his stomach.
The boar screeched, a sound that turned my gut. I tensed, preparing to roll away when it charged. But instead of charging me, I heard its feet clack against the stone floor, the low growl as it ran past me. For a moment, the lights flickered on, and I seized the chance, taking aim at the boar’s haunches. My pulse racing, fired, just as the lights flickered off again. I heard the dart clatter to the floor again. What the shit?
I strained to see in the dark, my raw fear helping me penetrate the shadows. Through the dim light, I could see the boar turn again, its dark eyes glistening with rage. My mouth went dry, and I loaded the third and last dart into the gun. I’d have to wait for a sure thing with this one.
I crouched, keeping my gaze on the creature’s dim silhouette, but my body felt strange, my fingers clumsy. I had the strange sensation that a layer of thick lead was encasing my body, my movements slow and cumbersome. I struggled to keep my eye on the boar. Panicking, I tried to re-aim my gun but realized I couldn’t move my arms. It felt as if a thick layer of metal were locking them in place.
“All right, Cassandra?” a voice said to my left.
I couldn’t turn my head to look, but I knew the voice.
“Alvin?” I struggled to get the word out.
“Right here.” A note of sadness tinged his voice.
“What are you doing here?”
“You didn’t keep your promise,” Alvin said. “I have to say, I’m a bit vexed.”
My blood roared in my ears. Through the darkness, I could see the glint of the boar’s terrifying eyes, ready to gore me to death.
“Can we talk about this later?” I slurred. “I need your help… something’s wrong with me. Feels like metal all over me.”
“Right. You can’t move. I know.”
Understanding dawned in my mind. “You did this.”
“You were supposed to ask your mate to delete my name from the database. You had the chance. You didn’t do it. My name’s still on there, innit?”
A drop of sweat tricked from my forehead as I struggled to move. Apart from my lips, Alvin had completely frozen my body. I’d broken my promise to him, and it gave him power over me. Power to do this.
“Alvin. This boar will kill me if you don’t free me.”
“The king will kill me once they discover what I did!” Alvin said sharply.
Underneath the heavy lead weighing down my body, terror raked its claws up my spine. “We can think of something. If I die now, it won’t do you any good.”
“Nah. Sorry, but it will. Grendel has quite the prize on your head. With his money, I might be able to buy the silence of the fae technomancers.”
“Alvin—”
The boar’s feet clacked over the floor, his furious grunts echoing off the ceiling as he charged.
Alvin sniffled. “Goodbye, Cassandra. I actually liked you.”
“Alvin! Give me more time! I’ll get your name off that list! Just a bit more time!”
I could hear the boar moving closer, charging for me, its lethal tusks about to impale my chest.
“Please!” I shouted in desperation, willing my body to move from under the heavy lead weighing it down.
Suddenly, a pulse of warmth flooded my body, melting the feel of lead from my body. I was free. Just before the boar slammed into me, I rolled, swiveling the gun and taking a shot. Once again, I heard the dart bounce off its hide, clattering on the stone.
“Fuck!”
“Iron!” Alvin shouted. “You’ve got to use iron!”
I threw the gun on the ground, grasping desperately around me for the case. My fingers brushed against it, and I popped it open, feeling for more darts. Still, I didn’t want to attract the boar’s attention by turning on my light.
In the case, I felt nothing. No tranquilizers, and no iron. I felt around for the syringe, then plunged it into the plastic bottle with the tranquilizing liquid. My breath came in shallow gasps as I filled it up. I shoved my hand into my bag, feeling for the twisted iron knife. I yanked it out, squirting some liquid onto the blade. The sound of the boar’s enraged shrieks echoed off the ceiling. For a moment, the lights flickered, and I saw it charging for me.
I held the syringe in my left hand, the knife in my right, trying to predict the trajectory of the beast’s charge as the lights went dark again.
When I thought it was right next to me, I lunged sideways, turning to slam both my hands down at once. I slammed the knife into its flank, and the syringe a fraction of a section later.
The boar screamed, bucking its tusks with a furious motion, and agony splintered my leg. Blocking out the pain, I depressed the plunger on the syringe, emptying some of it into the boar’s blood before its furious motion tore both the syringe and the knife from my hands, running off over the platform.
I fell back, moaning in pain, gripping my ankle. I could feel it wasn’t too deep—not down to the bone like the other man’s—but it hurt like a bitch.
“Fuck.” I clenched my teeth, trying to take the pain. “This is a shit show.”
Alvin crouched by my side, his fingers tracing around the wound at my ankle. The lights flickered, and I saw him, drawing a small bottle from within the flap of his tattered jacket, his shaggy blond hair hanging in his eyes. When the light blinked off again, I felt him pour a cool liquid over the wound. The entire area instantly went numb.
“Analgesic,” he said. “That’s all I can do.”
“That boar…” I swallowed hard. “Is it… magical?”
Instead of answering, I heard him heave a heavy sigh.
“Alvin?”
“Do you know what I just helped you do?” he asked, his voice cracking. “Bloody hell, Cassandra, I should have stayed away from you. I’m absolutely fucked now!”
“Why?” I asked. “What—”
“Two days!” Alvin said, and already I could hear his voice moving away from me. “You have two days to keep your promise, or I’ll deliver your head to Grendel myself!”
I heard his footsteps echo over the floor. My leg throbbed, still losing blood, but with the analgesic Alvin had given me, it was manageable. I reached into my bag, pulling out my flashlight. With the boar injured, I was less worried about it charging me.
I flashed the light around me, scanning the ground for the knife. I found it a few feet from me, covered with the boar’s blood, and I heaved a sigh of r
elief. I gripped it hard, shining the flashlight around the darkened station, searching for the boar, my stomach churning.
It took me only a few seconds to find the thing. It charged for me again, but this time, its movements were erratic, and it stumbled. About fifteen feet from me, it fell to the floor with a final grunt, its eyes slowly closing.
From my bag, my portable radio screamed, and I suddenly realized someone had been shouting into it for a while. I pulled it out, my hand shaking.
“This is Cassan… Uh…Tursten.”
“Tursten!” Wright shouted. “Why didn’t you answer earlier? Get the hell out of there. We’re sending in the AFO.”
“No need.” On trembling limbs, I limped over to the boar. “The animal is down. Just send in DI Stewart and several people to help us carry it.”
Chapter 18
After four of us had hauled the boar up an escalator, using a stretcher that groaned under its weight, we loaded the creature into the back of Gabriel’s car. Gabriel had explained to them that I needed to get the boar back to the zoo, and as long as we were taking the thing off Wright’s hands, he didn’t seem to care.
While Gabriel hurried off to speak with a paramedic, I plopped down in the passenger’s seat, the window down. Alone with the unconscious boar, I clutched my ankle, my blood streaming over Gabriel’s floor. All around, red and blue lights flickered over the stone walls. I tried to imagine how this boar sacrifice would work in the center of London’s financial district, surrounded by bankers and rush hour traffic.
Gabriel hurried back to me, thrusting a roll of gauze into my hands. “Let’s go.”
As Gabriel slid into the driver’s seat, I haphazardly bandaged my ankle, staunching the blood flow. Slowly, Gabriel rolled into traffic, heading back to the Temple of Mithras.
By the time we got to Gresham Street, by Guildhall and the fae bar, the traffic started to ease up. The smell of blood overpowered the car, both from my bandaged ankle and the bleeding boar, its ivory hide stained maroon. That, coupled with the earthy smell of unwashed boar, made me want to gag. I swallowed my revulsion. The idea of adding vomit to this ungodly stench horrified me.
Gabriel turned to me. “How are you doing?”
“Okay.” I pulled out a syringe and unbuckled my seatbelt, turning back to the boar. “I’m just gonna make sure this thing doesn’t wake up.”
I held the syringe just over the sleeping boar’s body. If it moved, I’d have to plunge the syringe into its back, filling it with more sedatives, hoping it wouldn’t gore me to death. I didn’t even want to think about what would happen if it overdosed. The idea of giving the boar mouth to mouth made me want to hurl.
After a few moments of staring down at the dirty animal, I noticed a small metallic chain encircling its neck.
“There’s something on this boar,” I said. “A necklace.”
“Can you get a closer look?”
I tried to unclasp it, but the blood covering my fingers made the slippery.
“No. I’ll try again later after I can wipe off my hands. I’m guessing our culprit put the chain there.” I glanced at the window, recognizing the intersection near Bank Station. Somehow, everything kept leading back to this neighborhood. Gabriel turned onto a large street, pulling up his car in the bike lane. To our right stood a raised stone platform. On the platform, a low railing surrounded a rectangle of rocks, about one foot high. Modern buildings loomed behind the temple ruins, their glass surfaces gleaming in the city’s lights.
I frowned at the stumpy rock foundation. “This is it?”
He unhooked his seatbelt and turned on his blinkers. “This is it.”
I checked the time. Six twenty-five. We had twenty minutes. Plenty of time to kill an unconscious boar, I thought. I put the syringe in my bag.
I stepped out of the car, gripping the syringe. “There’s no altar here. Just a plateau with some rocks.”
“There was an altar.” He pointed at a curve of rocks on the near side. “We just need to heft this thing to where it used to be.”
A shiver of dread snaked up my spine. “What if we got all this wrong?”
Gabriel pinched the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know, Cassandra. But it’s the only solution we have, and we’re running out of time.”
I nodded, then stepped out of the car, my stomach clenching. Hurriedly, I pulled open the back door to where the boar lay.
Gabriel grabbed the animal’s rear feet, while I pushed its head. Slowly, we shifted the enormous creature over the seat, its body leaving thick smears of blood over Gabriel’s car.
“Don’t let its head smack the ground!” Gabriel grunted.
“How many laws… are we breaking right now?” I slid my hands under its enormous head.
“Illegal parking,” he grunted. “Animal cruelty.”
I clutched the head just as the body dropped off the rear seat, and nearly gave myself a hernia.
Straining, we shifted the boar into the sidewalk, my body trembling with effort. A woman striding by glanced at us, then walked on with barely a shrug. You had to love big cities.
“One, two… three!” Gabriel said.
We lifted the monstrous boar, then stumbled toward the plateau of stones. I’d never carried anything so heavy before. Blood pooled in my bandage, making the wound tingle. I hoped Alvin’s analgesic wasn’t about to wear off. I took deep breaths, my lungs filling with the scent of boar as we hefted the creature up a short set of stairs.
Passersby in business suits simply walked past on their cell phones, barely glancing at the two people hefting an unconscious boar into the ruins of an ancient Roman temple. London.
I gritted my teeth as we got to the low fence between us and the raised rock of the temple’s foundations. We could have easily climbed over it—if we hadn’t been carrying a wild boar.
“Ready?” I asked through gritted teeth. “I’ll slip over the fence as we lift it.” Easier said than done.
Gabriel nodded, and we hoisted the boar higher into the air. With the boar held aloft, I stepped over the low fence into the shallow space between the fence and the temple’s foundations, my body groaning with the effort.
I strained, using my legs to lift as Gabriel followed me over the fence. Once we’d passed that barrier, we just had to get it onto the temple’s foundations—only about a foot off the ground. Groaning, Gabriel stepped up onto the temple’s surface, and I followed after him. Slowly, we lowered the boar onto the smooth, rocky surface of the temple’s floor, in the gentle curve of stones where an altar had once stood.
Once the boar’s enormous ivory body touched the temple’s surface, the world around us shimmered.
No longer did modern glass buildings loom over us; no longer could I see the modern thoroughfare. Instead, we stood in a curved stone hall, the walls painted white. Ornate tile mosaics spread across the floor, depicting astrological signs. Moonlight streamed through an oculus above us onto a pedestal altar, its surface carved and brightly painted with an image of a sacrifice: a man in a Phrygian cap, cutting a bull’s throat. Silver chalices lined low benches around the hall.
“Fucking hell,” Gabriel muttered, gaping. “What the hell just happened?”
“I don’t know,” I said, still catching my breath. “Magic. I guess we have the right place.” I pointed at the altar. It was narrow, and about four feet high. Not the kind of thing we could rest a boar on. “I guess we just sacrifice him near the altar.”
“Time?” Gabriel asked.
I checked, my pulse racing. “Six forty.” Shit shit shit. “Four minutes.”
He wiped his hands on his jeans. “Let’s finish this.”
I shoved my hands into my bag, pulling out the knife, and its gleeful whispers echoed around the inside of my skull. Bathe me in the blood of fae.
I clenched my jaw in resolve, gripping the knife tighter. I knelt in the narrow space between the benches, where the boar lay nestled, and I put my hand on its head, watching the slow rise and fall
of his chest. “I’m sorry,” I whispered to the boar, as I drew the blade closer to it.
“Stop!”
A deep voice boomed off the temple walls, and my hand froze. I whirled around, still crouching.
“Roan?” I said in disbelief, holding the knife near the boar’s flesh.
Dressed in black, Roan stood at the other end of the temple before a set of oaken doors. He wore his sword slung over his back. By his side was a beautiful woman whose red hair cascaded over a gold gown. It took me a moment to identify her as Roan’s friend, Elrine.
“How did you get here?” My thoughts were whirling.
“We followed the news about a wild boar roaming free in London.” His green eyes seemed to root me in place. “When we got there, you were already gone. But there was enough blood for Elrine to track you.”
Right. Elrine had magical tracking powers. She had once helped Roan track the Rix using the internal organs of his victims.
I could see Gabriel’s body tensing, his fingers clenching. “We’re running out of time.”
“Get that iron knife away from King Ebor,” Roan said.
I glanced at the boar. “What are you talking about? The boar?”
“He isn’t just a boar.” Elrine’s voice dripped with distaste. “He’s a fae. King of the Elder Fae in the Hawkwood Forest, in fact. Unfortunately, you have no idea what you’re doing.”
The boar grunted, his feet beginning to twitch. I pressed the knife harder against his fur. “I have to do it. The message from the abductor—”
“Cassandra.” Steel edged Roan’s voice, and he drew his sword. “You’re a pawn in a war you don’t understand. If you kill him, you will break the fragile peace in Trinovantum.”
He wouldn’t stab me, would he? Either way, I had to risk it. “Listen, I have a plan...”
The boar grunted again, his body bucking. I had to do it now, or I’d be fresh out of time and luck. My heart slammed against my ribs.
“Get that cursed knife away from him!” Roan clutched his sword, pointing it at me. “Listen to me. He’s not a boar. He is a fae. Like us. On top of killing a king, you’d be killing an innocent fae.”