Necropolis

by Wendy Saunders

  Elias watched as she released him and once more, he slumped into his chair and swore at her again, this time in Italian, before spitting on the ground at her feet.

  He had to give Christofano his due, he held out a lot longer than Elias would’ve thought. After an hour, Temperance hadn’t even exerted herself, but her captive was saturated in sweat, his body trembling, pushed past the limits of human endurance. The whites of his eyes were stained red from where the tiny blood vessels had burst and his once tidily combed hair was hanging forward, dripping sweat onto his face as he panted.

  ‘Rome,’ he hissed, ‘your brother is being held in Rome.’

  ‘Rome?’ Temperance raised one perfectly sculpted brow and the man arched in his seat, screaming in intense agony.

  ‘San Clemente,’ he panted, ‘he’s at San Clemente.’

  ‘The Basilica?’ Temperance replied thoughtfully.

  ‘Si,’ he breathed heavily, ‘the Basilica di San Clemente, but it is no use. You will not get to him, he’s too heavily guarded.’

  ‘San Clemente,’ Elias mused as he stared directly at Christofano. ‘It’s below ground, isn’t it?’ he realized. ‘San Clemente is like the nesting doll of Rome’s churches, layer upon layer of it reaches underground. The Veritas built something beneath it, didn’t they?’

  Christofano glared at him, a venom filled look, loaded with malice and pure unadulterated hatred.

  Elias turned to Temperance and nodded.

  ‘Sleep,’ she whispered and Christofano’s head immediately slumped forward and a long thin stream of drool slid from his lax mouth.

  ‘He’s right you know,’ Temperance replied. ‘You won’t get in; it’ll be heavily warded and guarded. As one of Rome’s tourist traps, you’ll have to get past all the human security and surveillance first before you even get to the magical warding.’

  ‘That won’t be a problem,’ Elias murmured thoughtfully, his mind already beginning to formulate a plan.

  ‘Don’t kid yourself Logan,’ she replied. ‘That won’t be just any magical warding, it’ll be the best. But you add into that, the fact that it’s built beneath an ancient church, one that is visited and adored by thousands a day. The sheer energy from all that faith and prayer, the Veritas will have channeled that into the warding so its constantly feeding it, making them nearly impenetrable. Witch smoke won’t work, you won’t be able to just smoke in there. I can’t even guarantee your magic will work within its walls.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ Elias smiled slowly, ‘all I need… is someone who can walk through walls.’

  ‘Davis,’ Temperance muttered in consideration, ‘it might work.’

  ‘It will work,’ Elias replied, his dark eyes flashing dangerously, ‘because I’m not walking out of there without Theo, even if I have to tear the place apart brick by brick.’

  ‘You don’t have much time,’ she glanced down at the plain, man’s watch she wore at her wrist, before turning her attention to the unconscious man. ‘Once they realize he’s gone, they are going to assume he’s been compromised. You don’t want to risk them moving Theo. How quick can you get Davis and get to Rome?’

  ‘Quick enough,’ he nodded. ‘What about him?’ he nodded toward Christofano.

  ‘I hope you’re not expecting me to just let him go?’ she replied coolly.

  ‘No,’ Elias scowled, ‘it’s too dangerous to let him go. Besides this is an opportunity to really get some inside information on the Veritas. Who knows when we’ll get another chance like this?’

  He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and handed her a plain black business card with nothing but a phone number on it. She didn’t need a name to know exactly what it was.

  ‘Call this number,’ he told her. ‘They will come and collect him and take him someplace more secure so he can be questioned further.’

  She stood staring at him, holding the card.

  ‘Temperance,’ his voice softened, ‘I know the hate you feel for him right now. I know you want to make him pay for everything the Veritas has taken from you, but you don’t want to go down that path. It can only lead to one place. Trust me I know, I’ve been there. Don’t do something you can’t come back from. Killing him won’t bring Mac back and it won’t ease your pain, but it will take a part of you that you will never be able to get back.’

  She continued to stare at him.

  ‘You should go,’ she finally replied, ‘you’re running out of time and so is Theo.’

  He glanced toward the door, torn between going after his brother and leaving his sister.

  ‘Just promise me you’ll call that number, please?’

  She nodded reluctantly. Seemingly satisfied Elias turned, giving his sister once last concerned glance as he headed out of the room and back through the warehouse.

  Temperance waited until she felt his presence leave the building. She pinched her fingers together and the business card burst into flames, flaring brightly and burning to a cinder. She rubbed her fingers together as the ash fluttered to the floor.

  ‘Wake up Mr Moretti,’ she murmured. She turned back to the slumbering man as he began to stir, her cold smile slowly curving the corner of her mouth. ‘You and I still have much to discuss.’

  Jake stared out of the window to the lake and the woods beyond. Behind him the room was filled with muted conversation, filling the air with a somber tone, but it was what was outside, beyond the boundaries of the house, that was making him nervous.

  He’d been assured that nothing was getting across those wards and even if they did, they’d still come across Olivia’s lethal mythological petting zoo, which was currently on loan from none other than the God of the Underworld himself, Hades, and consisted of two giant invisible cats, a Chimera and a Hydra in the lake. In fact, at this point it probably wouldn’t surprise him if he looked out of the window one morning and saw an army of flying monkeys. Although after the previous Halloween it wouldn’t have been the first time.

  It was quiet, too quiet. He didn’t have a clue what the Veritas were up to and that made him twitchy.

  Then there was the strange fact that everyone in Mercy, bar the people currently inside Olivia and Theo’s house, seemed to think Mac had dropped down dead of a heart attack. Although, weirdly enough, it did them a favor, less outside law enforcement and feds snooping around, but equally it felt wrong, like it somehow dishonored Mac’s memory.

  He was not only a hell of a cop, but he had also been one of the bravest men Jake had ever known. He’d stood up to an evil psychotic society even though it had cost him his life. Attributing his sudden death to what essentially amounted to high cholesterol seemed trite somehow.

  He turned back to the room, his gaze scanning the assembled mourners. His sister Louisa and her husband Tommy sat in one corner with his wife Roni. Theia sat in Louisa’s lap playing with the ugliest doll he’d ever seen in his life. It was like it had been made from an old potato sack and then dragged through the dirt for several centuries.

  His nephew Jace, and Olivia and Theo’s son, Logan, sat happily on the floor in front of them playing with toy trucks, something Jake was profoundly grateful for. He hadn’t had a good night’s sleep since the moment Logan had learned to use witch smoke to travel from one room to another. So far, they didn’t think he’d left the confines of the house, but it was still way beyond his babysitting pay grade. Olivia and Theo were going to have a lot of trouble with that one.

  Davis stood in the corner of the room, sipping a whiskey and talking quietly to Jackson who ran the local pub, The Salted Bone. Not far from them was Jackson’s very pregnant wife Shelley and their adopted son Miller, who seemed content to just sit and watch Theia.

  Across from them sat the crazy old British medium Fiona, wearing a sober black dress and purple leggings, with bright lime green Birkenstocks. Anyone who knew Fiona well would know how wildly out of character this was for her. Not for the brightly clashed colors of her leggings and shoes, but because this was the most t
oned down anyone had ever seen her. Usually she was a riot of wild psychedelic patterns and mis-matched primary colors, a travesty for the eyes which should come with a health warning for the nervous system.

  But not today, today she sat quietly sipping a cup of tea which every now and then she’d top up from a concealed tartan hip flask. Beside her, quite happily sharing the contents of the flask, whatever it was, was Mercy’s newest resident, Dominik Savage. A highly respected travel blogger who spent most of his time debunking haunted buildings and supernatural occurrences, he had been treated to a real eye opener since the moment he set foot in Mercy to cover the first annual festival of magic, something his wife Roni still refused to talk about.

  These days Dominik was more or less a permanent fixture in the Salted Bone, propping up the bar and keeping company with Jackson who’d become, to all intents and purposes, his best friend.

  Jake sighed and turned back to the window. There were still too many people missing from their little gathering. Tammy should’ve been there, and Theo, and Olivia. Not knowing what was going on with them was driving him crazy.

  A familiar figure in black appeared at the edge of the clearing and approached the house at a brisk pace as Jake headed for the front door.

  He yanked it open as Elias Black climbed the last step and stopped in the doorway, picking a twig from his hair as he brushed down his suit.

  ‘Wow,’ he remarked easily, ‘Olivia’s wards certainly pack a punch. I tried to smoke through them, and they threw me back half a mile through the woods. I think I might have accidently taken out a hundred-year-old red maple.’

  ‘Where is Olivia?’ Jake asked coolly, seeing that Elias was on his own and the last time he’d left he had Olivia and Scarlett with him.

  ‘That’s something we need to discuss inside,’ Elias replied easily.

  Jake stepped back and allowed him to enter.

  ‘I do like your Chimera,’ Elias remarked casually, ‘don’t see those often.’

  ‘Hades is very protective of Olivia,’ Jake closed the door and followed Elias into the house, toward the room full of chattering people.

  Everyone fell silent as he entered. He scanned the assembled mourners determining they were all the ones on his list. Good, he thought to himself, they all knew the truth. He wouldn’t have to worry about censoring his words.

  ‘Where’s Olivia?’ Jake demanded as Elias turned to face him, ‘and Theo for that matter. When they left here you were taking her and Scarlett to find Theo. It’s been weeks; where are they?’

  ‘Where they’re meant to be,’ Elias replied.

  Jake stared at Elias’s face carefully, his eyes narrowing as he studied him. Suddenly his eyes widened furiously.

  ‘Son of a bitch,’ he hissed loudly, grabbing Elias by the lapels of his jacket and smashing him up against the wall, making Theo’s watercolor mounted on it to rattle in its frame. ‘You betrayed them, you handed Olivia and Scarlett over to Faraday.’

  Elias’s eyes darkened as he watched Jake curiously. ‘A mind reader?’ he mused, ‘haven’t seen one of your kind in decades. I really should get out more.’

  ‘Why did you betray them?’ he demanded, punctuating his words by slamming Elias once again against the wall.

  ‘Because Sam asked me to,’ Elias replied simply.

  ‘What?’ Jake frowned in confusion.

  ‘Jake,’ Elias lifted his hands slowly, his fingertips sparking slightly with his magic. ‘I don’t want to hurt you, but I simply don’t have time for this. I have things I need to say to you and then there is someplace else I need to be. You want them back? Then release me and listen.’

  Jake’s jaw tightened angrily but he did what he was asked.

  Elias smooth down his shirt and straightened the lapels of his jacket.

  ‘First tell me where Olivia is,’ Jake asked coolly.

  ‘London,’ Elias replied, ‘…1862.’

  ‘What?’ Roni gasped from the corner of the room. ‘Jake… the newspaper clipping in the kitchen drawer, the one Olivia showed us. It had a picture of Olivia and Scarlett in London at the opening of the first Underground station.’

  Jake swore beneath his breath, turning his piercing blue eyes on Elias.

  ‘I think you’d better start talking.’

  ‘Okay then,’ Elias replied, ‘but like I said, I’m on a schedule so try and keep up.’

  Jake nodded.

  ‘Yes, I betrayed Olivia and Scarlett by handing them over to Faraday. I didn’t have a choice. Olivia and Scarlett had to be in London in 1862. They are going to do something there, something very important, something that has to happen. It’s a fixed point in time.’

  ‘What is?’ Jake replied suspiciously, ‘what are they meant to do?’

  ‘I can’t tell you,’ Elias shook his head, ‘but just know that I handed them over to Faraday for two reasons. Firstly, because Sam insisted that they had to be in London in 1862 but also because Faraday is trying to blackmail me. He’s leveraging something that I want, something he knows I want badly enough to do almost anything for. He coerced me into giving him Olivia and Scarlett, thinking he had me in a corner. However, I knew they were exactly where they were meant to be.’

  ‘What does he have on you?’

  ‘That doesn’t matter,’ he shook his head. ‘Right now, Olivia and Scarlett are fine, but Theo isn’t. I know where he is, and I have to get to him before they figure out that I know and move him.’

  ‘Where is he?’ Jake asked.

  ‘Rome.’

  ‘Rome?’ Jake repeated slowly, ‘what the hell is he doing in Rome?’

  ‘It’s one of their most secure facilities,’ Elias explained as his eyes flickered to the corner of the room. ‘I can get him out, but I need Davis… I need his particular skills.’

  Davis drained his glass calmly.

  ‘What are we breaking into? The Vatican?’

  ‘Not quite,’ Elias’s mouth quirked. ‘The Basilica de San Clemente.’

  ‘I do like a challenge,’ he mused, ‘and I’ve always wanted to visit Rome.’

  ‘Now’s your chance,’ Elias replied, ‘but we need to leave right now. Time is against us.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Jake rubbed the back of his neck and turned to Davis. ‘You do realize your twin sister is going to have my balls, if I let you go.’

  ‘Balls!’ Olivia’s son, Logan, piped up from the floor, clapping his hands as his buddy Jace watched and grinned.

  ‘Jake,’ Roni sighed.

  ‘Well Danae will just have to get over it,’ Davis grinned as he looked down at the cute dark-haired boy. ‘This is something you need to learn Logan,’ he told the little boy. ‘Your twin sister is not the boss of you.’

  ‘That may be true,’ Jake replied as Davis crossed the room, ‘but you’re not the one who has to work with her.’

  ‘I’m sure you can handle her, Chief,’ he slapped Jake on the shoulder and handed him his empty glass, before turning to Elias. ‘Shall we then?’

  ‘Just a minute,’ Jake scowled.

  ‘Sorry,’ Elias replied, ‘we really don’t have any more time, but just a couple of things before we go. I made a deal with the crossroad keeper; everyone in Mercy has had their memory altered. The people in this room are now the only ones who really know what happened to your former Chief at your wedding… you’re welcome.’

  ‘That was you?’ Jake blinked.

  ‘It was,’ Elias confirmed. He didn’t add that it had also cost him dearly but there were some things they didn’t need to know. ‘Also, I had her clear out all the Veritas members and spies lurking in Mercy and barring them from the town. Within the city limits, Mercy is now, as it was always meant to be, a safe haven for those who are magically gifted or of magical descent. No one affiliated with the Veritas can cross its boundaries. You are now completely safe here.’

  ‘That couldn’t have come cheap,’ Jake muttered. ‘You didn’t sell your soul, did you?’

  ‘Not quite,’ he smi
led as he turned to Jackson. ‘Oh, and by the way, you may find yourself short one bartender.’

  ‘Who?’ Jackson frowned.

  ‘I don’t know his name,’ Elias shrugged, ‘but I do know he was the one who told Faraday about Theo.’

  Jackson cursed under his breath.

  With one final nod of farewell, he turned to the pale haired man waiting for him patiently by the door. ‘Let’s go Davis.’

  21

  Christmas - London 1862

  ‘This is stupid… and pointless,’ Elias growled in frustration. ‘I’ll never be able to do it.’

  ‘Well you won’t with that attitude,’ Olivia replied patiently, ‘but I believe in you.’ A small secretive smile played across her lips. ‘Trust me, you can do this.’

  ‘You seem so sure,’ he frowned.

  ‘I am sure,’ she replied firmly. ‘That’s why I’m out here freezing my ass off.’

  He watched as she shivered in the freezing cold darkness of the garden. He could barely make out her pale features and cheeks, ruddy from the cold. There was no moon tonight and barely any stars. He could feel the faint tickle of errant flakes of snow as they floated down slowly.

  ‘Tell me again why we’re standing in the middle of the garden in the dark?’ he complained.

  ‘You asked for my help Elias,’ Olivia replied softly, ‘and as someone once told me,’ she smiled a cheeky smile once again, obviously privy to some private joke that was beyond his comprehension, ‘being able to see in the dark is one of the most basic skills for a witch.’

  ‘Fine,’ he huffed.

  ‘Now,’ she told him quietly, her voice soothing, ‘close your eyes, breathe… just relax. Now open your mind, reach out and feel the darkness.’

  It was strange, Elias thought to himself in sudden realization, as he sucked in a sharp breath. He could feel the darkness as if it were a tangible thing he could reach out and touch. It pulsed around him. He’d always imagined the darkness to be empty, a void of nothingness but it wasn’t, it was filled, with energy, with sound, teeming with life and magic.