Gawain (Knights of Excalibur Book 1)

by Hanley, Donald

  “Let me go, please,” she said quietly, keeping her eyes fixed on his chest.

  “Trisha, don’t leave.” He sounded genuinely distressed and frustrated at the same time. “You have to help us figure out what Lucas’s Quest means.”

  “I can’t.” Her voice finally had some emotion in it. “It doesn’t mean anything. You’re just imagining things! It’s not a Quest, it’s a delusion!” He stepped back from the heat of her ire and she pushed past him.

  “Trisha –” He reached out to grab her arm but Nim stopped him.

  “Gavin, let her go,” she said quietly. “She’s not ready.”

  Trisha stormed out of the apartment without looking back, repeatedly jabbing the down button by the elevator until it finally arrived. She rode all the way down to the lobby before her anger and resolve eroded away and she collapsed onto one of the benches set along the corridor leading to the street exit. She closed her eyes, feeling warm tears slide down her cheeks, but she didn’t cry. She was too empty for that.

  My whole life is ruined, she told herself bitterly. They’re not going to stop hounding me until they get what they want and I can’t give it to them. I don’t know what’s going on, I can’t help them. I can’t go to the police, they won’t believe me. What can I do? She had no idea. There was no one she could turn to for help, except ...

  She slowly extracted her phone from her pocket and stared at it. Lionel would help her. He was the only one who showed her any kindness, who seemed to care at all about her as a person. He’d come if I called him.

  Then the memories of Chantal’s attack and Savard’s image surfaced and she shivered violently. How can I go back to a man who uses things like that? I’d be afraid for my life the entire time. Despair weighed down on her shoulders. I have to leave town, go someplace where they’ll never find me. But where? I don’t have enough money to leave the country. She shook her head in silent resignation.

  “Trisha.”

  She sat up with a start. Butler sat on the bench across from her, leaning forward with his forearms resting on his thighs. She hastily wiped the tears from her cheeks, wondering how long he’d been there.

  “I’m not going back,” she told him.

  “I know,” he said quietly. “I just wanted to say I’m sorry. It’s my fault you’re here at all.”

  “Why did you pick me?” she demanded. “Out of everyone in Boston, why me? What did I ever do to you?”

  He opened his mouth to answer and then closed it again, looking chagrined. “You wouldn’t believe me.”

  “Why not?”

  “You don’t think Quests are real.”

  She couldn’t argue with that, but she had to know why all this was happening to her. “Tell me anyway.”

  Butler leaned back, looking up at the ceiling thoughtfully. “My original vision wasn’t actually much of a vision. I was just eating lunch at a restaurant and suddenly I knew – I knew – I had to go to Boston.”

  “Why Boston?”

  “Because you’re here, apparently.” He shrugged apologetically at her expression. “All I knew is that I had to get to Boston to find something important. I told Nim and Arthur and they arranged for a decoy so that I could come without the Chevaliers following me.”

  “But Lionel’s a Chevalier, right? How did he know you were here?”

  “That is a very good question,” he said wryly. “Nim suspects there’s a mole back at headquarters but we don’t know who it is.”

  Trisha shook her head. This sounded too much like a bad adventure novel. “So you showed up in Boston. Then what?”

  “I got in late so I went straight up to the apartment to sleep.” He pointed up at the ceiling. “That night, I had another vision.”

  “Of me.”

  “Yes, as it turned out. You were standing by the shore of a lake, facing away from me. I called out to you but you only turned a little bit. You beckoned me to follow you and then vanished into the fog. I woke up and drew your picture on my tablet.”

  Trisha frowned. Why does that sound so familiar? She shook off that niggling thought. “What about that tartan?”

  “In my vision, you wore a plaid with that pattern. It was fastened at your side with a cairngorm.”

  “A what?”

  “A cairngorm. It’s a gemstone, a type of smoky quartz, actually, used in traditional Scottish costumes. It’s usually set into silver pins or brooches.” He touched his thumbs and forefingers together, making a circle about four inches across. “I’m surprised you don’t recognize it.”

  “Why?”

  “Your ring.” She looked down at her right hand in surprise. “That’s a cairngorm.”

  “It is?” She held it up and stared at it like she’d never seen it before. The dark brown stone gleamed under the fluorescent lights. “You saw my ring in your dream?” she asked incredulously.

  “No, I saw a large silver brooch with a cairngorm in the center.” He circled his fingers again.

  “I don’t have anything like that.” She felt oddly disappointed.

  “Really?” he frowned, leaning back against the wall again. He’d left his stolen jacket upstairs and Johnson’s shirt hung on him like his bigger brother’s hand-me-down. The cuffs covered the backs of his hands and he rolled them up to his elbows, exposing the gauze wrapping on his right arm. It was almost the twin of the bandage she’d put on Hawk. “It’s important, though,” he murmured to himself.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s strange,” he mused. “I just assumed that the plaid and brooch were just details to help identify you. You know, the tartan, the cairngorm, all that points to a woman named Macmillan of Scottish descent. The plaid doesn’t feel special to me at all, but the brooch – it’s important, somehow.”

  “So I’m just here to help you find it?” she asked doubtfully.

  His gaze turned inward for a long while and then he shook his head. “No. No, you’re important too. We need you and the brooch together.”

  A cold shiver ran down all the way down her spine and back up again. “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” he confessed. He rubbed his bandaged arm as if it bothered him.

  “Why not?”

  Butler chewed on his lip as he ordered his thoughts. “Remember I said this Quest was different from the others I’ve had?’

  “Yes,” she said carefully.

  “Way back when, Quests were usually a test of some sort. The questee – quester? – was given a task to prove his courage or strength or resolve or whatever. It was always challenging but the goal was pretty obvious. Find this object or defeat that enemy, that sort of thing.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” he echoed with a frown.

  “What’s the point?”

  “Believe me, we asked ourselves that very question many, many times,” he grinned. “Those Quests were meant to keep us prepared, to make sure we were ready, willing, and able to do whatever needed to be done. The ones we’ve been getting since then haven’t been like that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Most of them have us searching for obscure objects and places all over the world. I’ve been to Egypt, Peru, China, even a few countries that don’t even exist anymore. It’s like a giant scavenger hunt sometimes.”

  “What sort of objects?”

  “Stuff from our time, mostly. The Middle Ages,” he added when she shook her head. “Most of it’s junk that ends up sitting in the vault because we don’t know what to do with it.”

  “Then why do you keep doing it? It sounds like a big waste of time.”

  “You’ve never had a Quest,” he said dryly. “Ignoring one isn’t an option. Besides, a few of the artifacts do seem to have something to do with Camelot and Avalon. There has to be a purpose to them.”

  “Like what? Are you planning to rebuild Camelot with them?” She couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of her voice.

  “It’s a bit more complicated than that.” he said, looking a bit u
neasy. “Back to my point, though, this Quest isn’t about testing my faith or finding another rusty sword. It’s about putting the right pieces in place, like the first moves in a chess game.”

  “To do what?”

  “That’s for the next Knight to figure out. My job here is nearly done.”

  Trisha looked at him in surprise. He sounded resigned and disappointed. “You mean that’s it? Your Quest is over?” Butler nodded silently. “So what happens now?”

  “Now I need to tell all this to Hawk and Nim. They still don’t know what’s happening. They’ll decide what the next step is.” He looked her over hopefully. “Will you come back upstairs with me?” he asked quietly.

  Trisha was sorely tempted. Despite the sheer insanity of his story, she wanted to know how it was going to end. She hesitated and then shook her head. “No,” she whispered. “I’m sorry, I can’t. I have to go.”

  “I understand.” Butler stood and held out his hand. “Good luck, Trisha.”

  She stared at his hand, wondering if it was some sort of trick to capture her again, but she finally reached out and shook it briefly. “Good luck,” she said, feeling like she’d somehow let him and the others down. She turned away to the glass doors that led out onto Tremont Street, shrugging on her coat and draping her scarf around her neck.

  She glanced back with her hand on the door and saw Butler rubbing his arm again and then pulling off the tape that held the gauze in place, slowly unwinding the bandage. “Don’t do that!” she exclaimed. “You need to keep it covered.”

  “It itches,” he told her, continuing his efforts. His arm was already half-exposed.

  “It’ll get infected!” She hurried back and tried to stop him. “You’re worse than Hawk!” she complained, pulling the loose end out of his hand and trying to wrap it back around his arm.

  “No, I assure you, Hawk is much worse,” he chuckled. “But really, I don’t need it anymore.”

  “You were unconscious in the emergency room with multiple lacerations just a day and a half ago!” she berated him. “Wounds this serious take days to heal over, weeks sometimes. You have to – to –”

  Her efforts slowed as she got a good look at his arm. Rows of sutures ran up his forearm where the ER surgeon had supposedly closed the lacerations, but the skin underneath showed no signs of any injury whatsoever, not even the faintest hint of a scar. She stared at his arm, trying futilely to make sense of what she was seeing.

  “The records said you had cuts all over your arm,” she said incredulously. “Why would Dr. Adams put sutures in your arm if you didn’t need them?” A vivid image of the surgeon committing insurance fraud flashed through her mind, but she rejected that explanation immediately. No, that’s impossible. The ER nurses and the paramedics would all have to be in on the scam. There’s no way they’d be able to keep that a secret.

  “I told you I didn’t need the bandage any more.” Butler plucked the gauze from Trisha’s limp fingers and continued to unwrap his arm. Other than the sutures poking through his skin, his arm looked absolutely fine. “I heal quickly.”

  “Nobody heals that quickly!”

  Butler’s brown eyes glittered with humor. “We all do.”

  “Who’s we?”

  “The Knights of Excalibur.”

  34

  She sat in front of her vanity mirror, slowly running a silver-handled brush through her hair. It was getting long again and she wondered if she would have time to see Katrina at La Mode before the briefing tomorrow. There just didn’t seem to be enough time in the day anymore to get everything done.

  Her phone chimed softly among her modest collection of cosmetics and perfumes and she set the brush down with a frown. She wasn’t expecting any calls tonight, especially not from the States. She rose from the padded stool as she answered. She preferred to be on her feet for this sort of conversation.

  “Oui?”

  “Desolé, ma Reine.”

  She closed her eyes with the faintest of sighs. “Too many of your calls start that way, Lionel.”

  “I’m sorry. Things have gotten ... complicated.”

  She strode across the bedroom towards the windows, the hem of her filmy nightgown whispering across the thick carpet. “Have you found Butler?”

  “Yes,” he said, “and no.”

  “It’s been a very long day, Lionel, and I’m too tired to play guessing games.” She parted the sheers and looked out over the city, ablaze with light despite the late hour. “Do you have him or not?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know where he is?”

  “Yes. Probably.”

  “Can your friends not check? You assured me they were the best hunters available.”

  “They’re both badly injured,” Lionel told her flatly. “Savard may die.”

  She froze, letting the curtains fall back into as she considered the implications of that bald statement. “Explain.”

  “Hawk showed up in Boston yesterday, looking for Butler. Nim arrived this morning.”

  “Nim?” That was a surprise. She rarely left New York.

  “One of the nurses who treated Butler at the hospital, Patricia Macmillan, seems to be the focal point for all this. I had her tucked away at the mansion, but Hawk figured out where she was somehow. Chantal tried to protect her but she couldn’t stop him.”

  “Where was Savard, then?”

  “Guarding Nim. We set a trap for her, but it looks like someone else came along with her. Savard’s in bad shape.”

  “Butler, do you think?”

  “Yes, unless Nim’s taken up firearms since the last time I ran into her.”

  She snorted. “Not likely. So where are they now?”

  “If I had to guess, they’re either on their way back to New York or holing up at the Pendragon apartment on Tremont.”

  “And Patricia Macmillan?”

  “She’s probably with them.”

  “I see.” She walked back across the room as she thought, pausing by the foot of the large canopied bed. Amelie was away this evening, but a white rose lay across one of the pillows. She smiled wistfully at her thoughtfulness. “So this nurse is the object of this Quest?”

  “It looks that way.”

  “What do you need from me?”

  “Manpower. Chantal should be ready to go tomorrow, but Savard ... I need help. I can’t follow all of them if they split up again.”

  “You assured me when all this started that you would be able to handle it on your own,” she reminded him.

  “Back then, it was just Butler,” he countered. “Even I can’t handle Nim and two Knights by myself.”

  “True, but we have so few assets in that part of the world.” She ran through the list of Chevaliers and their current assignments, assessing each one in turn. “I can send Boris but it will take him a day to get there. He’s in Ankara at the moment.”

  “That’s it?” Lionel sounded dismayed.

  “If you can assure me that Miss Macmillan is more important than the Pope or the Chancellor of Germany, I can send others.” The line was silent. She knew he wanted to tell her it was so, but she also knew he wouldn’t lie to her. “If you discover otherwise, I will send more,” she promised.

  “I hardly know anything about her,” he sighed, “and there’s no hope of me getting near her now. But maybe ...”

  “Yes?”

  “Have R&D find out everything they can about her. She’s an ER nurse at Massachusetts General and she lives at – just a moment – 95 Thorndike in a suburb of Boston called East Cambridge. I need to know what makes her so special.”

  “Bon, I will do that. You’ll have a complete report in the morning.”

  “Merci, ma Reine,” he said heavily. “Bonsoir.”

  “Adieu, Lionel. Be careful.”

  He hung up and she looked longingly at her bed. Her day was going to be a little bit longer now, it seemed. She scrolled through her contact list and touched the correct number.

  “Gi
les,” she said when he answered. “J’ai une tâche pour vous.”

  35

  “You shouldn’t have told her that about Arthur!” Hawk strode back and forth across the living room, too angry to sit still. “We’re dead in the water without her!”

  Nim didn’t bother turning her head to keep him in sight. “If we tell her lies, we’re no better than Lionel,” she said placidly.

  “At least she’d be here!” He stopped in front of her with his fists on his hips.

  “We’ve never coerced anyone to join a Quest against his or her will, Gavin. We’re not about to start now.” Hawk threw his hands into the air in frustration and glared at the door. “Everything will be fine. Be patient.”

  “How can you be so sure of that? We don’t even know if this is a real Quest!”

  “If it isn’t, then it hardly matters, does it?”

  He didn’t have an answer for that and he dropped heavily into the nearest chair, crossing his arms and lapsing into a sullen silence. Nim allowed herself a fleeting smile just before the door latch turned and Butler stepped back into the apartment.

  “Took you long enough,” Hawk growled, but his irritation changed to surprise as he caught sight of the smaller figure standing just outside. Trisha seemed to be unable to force herself across the threshold for the longest time, but she finally took a deep if shaky breath and entered. Butler closed the door quietly behind her. “You came back?” he asked incredulously.

  The look she gave him was unreadable, but she marched straight across the room and grabbed his right hand. Before he could protest, she unwrapped the first few inches of his bandage and stared at his arm. The claw marks there were still red and raw, but they were already closed and knitting together. In a day, at this rate, they would be gone entirely.

  Silently, she rewrapped his arm and stepped back, looking at them all one after the other. Her eyes glittered with tears that didn’t quite fall as she cleared her throat carefully.