“Except when you do it for work,” David pointed out.
Raziel gritted their teeth, looking a bit ashamed. “Yes.” Then their expression changed to one of concern and interest. “We have a case.”
Jack rolled his eyes dramatically and set his phone on the table. “I don’t know why I bother. Yes, the angel’s right, we have a case.”
“Oh my god, my first case!” Katha exclaimed, and then glanced over to see if she’d offended Raziel.
“They’ve been on earth much too long to worry about a little blasphemy, my dear,” Jack announced, though there was a glint of pride in his eyes. “Just what we need, another trouble maker,” he muttered happily in Raziel’s ear as they all got up to get back to the Guild.
Once they were back at the Investigations wing, Katha expected them to gather up some kind of arsenal, but there was little more to get than Raziel’s notebook, a tablet with a database of ancient manuscripts, directions and a vehicle. She supposed, with the entire team being immortal or nearly immortal begins, some of them very powerful, there was little need for weapons or protections. That was until she saw the vehicle.
“I’d like to go over a few things before we get underway,” Raziel said as they walked up to a black SUV. It was a smaller, more inconspicuous vehicle than many of the government agencies drove, but it had been designed to blend in, not announce the presence of the team. The angel walked Katha to the back, where he opened the boot, and lifted a floor cover. Underneath was a pair of ancient looking wooden boxes.
Raziel glanced around, as if to make sure no one was looking and then popped the lids of both boxes open. Inside one was what looked like an ancient pharmaceutical collection, and inside the other were objects Katha didn’t recognise at all, a metal rod sharpened at both ends, a pewter ball with dents in it, ancient figurines and more.
“What are these?” she asked.
“This is the arsenal you were wondering about,” Raziel answered. “As you probably know, every supernatural species has its own strengths and weaknesses. Some are immortal, some aren’t. Some have magical powers, some don’t. In these boxes are different potions, and magical artefacts that you may someday need to use to bring down someone who’d very much like to kill you.”
Katha reached for one of the potions in the box full of glass bottles, but Raziel quickly closed the box on her hand. “Ow!” she complained.
“Until such time as you’ve been trained to know how to handle them, you are to leave them very much alone. Do you understand?” the angel demanded.
“Yes,” Katha answered just as firmly, a hint of pouting in her voice.
Raziel nodded and motioned for her to get in the vehicle, then the angel climbed in after her and shut the door.
When they’d left the garage and were headed toward the city, Raziel asked, “What do we know about the case?”
“Don’t you know, already?” David teased from the driver’s seat.
“Humour me,” Raziel sighed.
Jack turned from the passenger seat, glancing at a page on a tablet. “Well, you’re not going to like it,” he said, and then waited for the angel to peel their eyes from glaring at the back of David’s head. He gave a good-natured smile, and then went on. “Apparently this case is already a day old.”
“A day?” Raziel said in disbelief. “And they’re just not getting it to us?”
“It was a disappearance in Marygate car park. Apparently, it didn’t look like anything that would interest us at first. Once they began questioning witnesses, and our colleagues in the police department heard about it, they decided they’d better give us a call.”
“We have colleagues in the human police?” Katha asked.
“Yes,” Raziel said, dismissively. “So, what happened?”
“Well, the witnesses say they saw a young woman in distress, and then, apparently she just vanished,” Jack replied.
“Vanished?”
“Poof, into thin air,” the man said, with a flick of his wrist.
“And are these witnesses...”
“Human, yes, well most of them.”
“Great,” Raziel grumbled.
“But there is one from our own community who might be more helpful. Our colleagues have them all rounded up, and at the crime scene even.”
“Well, that’s something, at least.”
Chapter Four
When the team pulled into the car park, they were surprised to see the size of the police presence. They weren’t sure they’d even be allowed into the small park set in the heart of the cramped city centre of York. Then they noticed a familiar face.
David rolled down his window and called out, “Sergeant Crispin.”
The man nodded and ran over, stopping long enough to whisper something to the detective in charge of the scene. Crispin looked haggard and more worried than they were used to seeing him. Usually, it was a small, quiet matter for him to turn a case over to them, but they could tell that it wasn’t going to be that easy this time.
“Sorry gents,” he said a bit breathlessly as he got to David’s window. Then he noticed Katha in the back. “Oh, excuse me, and ma’am.” She smiled and he smiled back before turning back to David. “Too many human witnesses to quietly sweep this under the rug,” he muttered.
“Perfectly understandable, Sergeant,” Raziel said from the back seat. “We’d like to get to it, though.”
“Of course.” Crispin went to the gate of the car park, and had the constable there raise the arm to let their vehicle in. Then he waved them in and led them to where they could park. As the group climbed out of the vehicle, surveying the area like they hadn’t all, apart from Katha, seen it a million times, Crispin added, “I’m afraid there’s no getting around dealing with the Inspector this time.”
“He does think we’re MI-5, right?” Jack said with the tiniest of sarcastic grins.
Crispin gave him a quick once over, and then quickly covered the terror on his face. “Yes...that’s what he’s been told anyway.”
Raziel frowned and then looked over at Jack in his white Panama suit and hat. “Good lord,” the angel said under their breath. “Could you please at least act like we’re in the twenty-first century?” Raziel heard David snort quietly, and turned toward him. When David gave the angel a once over as well, and waggled an eyebrow, Raziel simply glared at him, and turned back to the Sergeant.
“Here he is,” Crispin whispered as if the entire group couldn’t see the older man marching toward them. “Inspector Martins, this is the team from MI-5 I told you about.”
The Inspector was a tall, white haired man, with a bristling moustache. He looked the team over, like he couldn’t quite believe this group of misfits had ever investigated anything in their lives, but it didn’t matter what he thought. If needs be, he’d think exactly what Raziel wanted him to think. It didn’t come to that, though. Eventually the man nodded.
“So, you’re the team they send out to investigate the weird stuff?” he barked.
“Yes, you could say that,” Raziel answered, and then introduced themselves.
When the Inspector only gave a curious look, Jack added, “You can call him Raz-”
The angel cut him off with a sharp look and then glanced back up at Inspector Martins. “Raziel.”
“Sounds Italian,” the Inspector commented.
Raziel open their mouth and tilted their head. “Could you perhaps show us where the crime is said to have occurred, Inspector?”
“Certainly. Follow me.”
It didn’t take long for it to become apparent where the woman had disappeared. Raziel and Katha both slowed their walking, and as they did so, the others took note, and stopped as well. Inspector Martins, looking both impressed and alarmed, stood off to the side with his Sergeant and let the team work.
“The report said that a woman disappeared here?” Raziel double-checked.
“Yep, apparently off of the face of the planet,” Jack confirmed.
“What i
s it?” David asked.
It was Katha that spoke up, though. “I’m not sensing any death here,” she said, her face turned to the sky.
“No,” Raziel agreed, taking small steps around the perimetre, and feeling the space out for themselves. “But the energy here is all...wrong, somehow.”
“What do you mean?” Katha asked.
The angel scrunched up their features, trying to find a way to explain. “Something...big happened here, something very ethereal.” Then Raziel turned to Jack. “The witnesses say that she simply disappeared. Do they say anything else?”
“We could ask them?” David pointed out.
“We will,” the angel replied impatiently. “What else does the report say?”
Jack looked over the tablet. “A few of them said that the air seemed to be shimmering, and she looked like something was shaking her. The nonhuman witness was adamant apparently.”
“And the woman? Anyone identify her, any relatives report someone missing? Who was she?”
Jack looked down again, and his eyes went wide. “Veritas’s notes say that her family are fairies.”
Raziel left Jack and David, their mouths agape, as the angel marched back over to the Inspector. “I need to speak to your witnesses,” they demanded.
“What is it?” Katha asked.
“Usually, these types of crimes end up being a supernatural being who got too big for his britches,” Jack answered, still flabbergasted. “They show off for humans or attack them out of contempt. The victim was a fairy, though.”
“Which means a supernatural being has attacked one of our own,” David added.
“It simply is not done, my dear.”
By the time they’d finished explaining, Raziel had come back and nodded for them to follow. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much more to be learned from the witnesses than they already knew. The young woman had looked frightened, froze in her tracks, the air or earth began to shake, and she was suddenly gone. A few of them thought that, maybe, she’d been lifted up into the air, but they couldn’t be sure, and one man insisted that she hadn’t actually disappeared but flew away with translucent wings. Even the supernatural witness had no idea what he’d seen and was only less surprised. He did confirm there had been wings but the young woman had disappeared before she’d actually extended them.
“So, we’re nowhere,” Katha grumbled as they got back into the SUV in the wee hours of the morning.
“Not exactly,” Jack corrected. “We may not know exactly what happened, but we know more than when we started.”
Raziel was quiet on the way back to the Guild. The angel glanced out the window, stroking their chin in thought. It wasn’t as if they’d never seen crimes against their own kind, but it was rare, especially perpetrated by another supernatural being. There was an order to their society, an order that, if broken, could have dire consequences for the entire world. The angel kept their feelings to themselves though, and only looked away from the window as the SUV drove into the Guild’s garage.
“So, now what?” David asked as he climbed out of the driver’s seat. Raziel shut the back door and looked the man over. “Get some rest. We’ll get back to work in the morning.” As they all started to protest, the angel held up a hand. “We’ve been up almost twenty-four hours as it is.”
“Some of us a good deal longer,” Jack quipped, looking his old friend over.
Raziel ignored him, and said, “I want fresh eyes in the morning, so when I say rest, I mean rest, not partying.”
“Okay, then,” David said, starting to walk back the way they’d come.
Raziel sighed. “You could try staying here for once. You know how the Guild feels about its members living among the human population.”
David snorted and shook his head. “Stuffy dormitory living? No thank you.”
Raziel’s face fell as if the remark had been a personal insult. After a moment, the angel looked down at their feet, and nodded gently. “Fine. But try being on time tomorrow. We have a case...a very important one from the looks of things.”
“I will,” David answered sincerely and then turned to walk away.
Raziel looked back up and watched as the man walked away. After a while, the angel sensed a presence beside them, and looked down at Katha. Raziel gave her a weary smile, and then nodded back toward the mansion.
“Have they assigned you a room?”
“Oh yeah, they showed it to me before sending me down to the Investigations wing,” she answered.
With that, the three of them turned to go inside as a flash of lightning and rumble of thunder rent the sky above them.
David continued walking down the road that led back into the city as fat droplets of rain began to fall from the sky. He lifted the hood of his coat and held it over his face, as he picked up his pace. He had a little flat near the centre of the city, one he shared with a couple of people who were, to his luck, pretty much never there. They simply kept it for when they could get to York to visit. Sometimes they ended up subletting, which made David’s life interesting. He liked meeting new people, getting to know new stories, and new faces, though being a lycan made things a bit complicated now and then.
David kept the basement room, and everyone knew that a few days of the month, it was better not to disturb him. He’d made up the excuse that he was a researcher at the Guild and brought some of his work home with him, and that once a month he had very important experiments he had to attend to that were time dependent. It usually impressed people and left them feeling respectful enough to leave him be when...he was indisposed.
He passed the Minster and headed toward the Yorkshire Museum. As he passed the little side streets, he glanced down towards Marygate carpark, wondering what had happened there. Part of him had the urge to stay and investigate, but he knew he’d get a good scolding if he did anything on his own, so he walked on. Raziel had been right, he could have simply stayed at the Guild mansion, and sometimes he did, but he’d never quite felt right staying there. He’d been a lycan, and part of the team, for a long time now, but sometimes he still felt like he was intruding.
David Talbot had been a twenty-five-year-old, late blooming student at the University of York, when he’d been out for a stroll one night. It had been a quiet night, and he had the streets mostly to himself, when he ran into an old man, who would turn out to be deceptively young looking for his age. He’d been standing in the middle of the sidewalk, just staring at David. For a moment, the young man had thought about crossing the street to get away from the creepy old man, but something had made him stop. It had been the way the man was looking at him. There was a level of familiarity and concern that shouldn’t be on a stranger’s face.
“Are you alright?” David had asked, creeping forward. “Can I help you with something?”
The old man had simply opened his mouth and said, “You’re dying.”
That had been thirty years ago. David hadn’t believed him at first, but after seeing his doctor, he’d sought out the old man, who’d promised he could help. From there, things only got stranger, but eventually, the old man had passed on a symbiotic parasite, one that asked for nothing more than a few days of the month to be given charge of his body, and the old man had died in his arms. David had barely aged since; he figured he was now the equivalent of thirty. He still had much to learn about the being who shared his body though. There were flashes of memory, strange feelings he knew weren’t his own, but for the most part, he still felt like David Talbot. And he found it slightly disturbing that Jack and Raziel had known his symbiote as someone else.
So, most nights, he took for himself, to keep himself sane, and try to wrap his brain around what his life had become. Some of his own memories had faded over the years, replaced by ones that he knew, intellectually, couldn’t have been his own. When he got home, he saw that his flat mates had come in to visit. They were well off city boys from London, but one thing they knew how to do very well was have a good time. And it was nice to
spend some time now and then with people who didn’t have quite so much...vintage.
As soon as he stepped through the door, his flat mates shouted, tossed him a bottle of beer, and the music came on. David laughed, and saluted them. He knew he was supposed to be fresh for the next day, so he swore he’d take it easy. He had a few drinks, did some dancing and laughing, thankful to have the down time, but it also made him think about the pub and dancing with Jack, and especially Katha. He’d only met her that day, but he’d felt like he’d finally found a more kindred spirit. Technically, he was pushing fifty-five now, but he didn’t feel that way, and with his memory a bit scrambled, and getting more so the longer he was a lycan, it was nice to have someone young around. What he really liked about her was that she didn’t know him. There were no expectations, no memories of who he “used to be.”
When he realised he was neglecting his friends, he set his second bottle down on the kitchen table, and said, “I’ve got to work early, boys. Big case.”
“Investigating whatever secret stuff you refuse to tell us about?” one of them teased dramatically.
“Yeah,” David chuckled and excused himself, giving them a wave. Then he took the stairs to the basement and unlocked his bedroom door. It was a bit strange for a flatshare, but given the nature of his work, and the fact that everyone at least knew it was secretive, no one minded that he kept his things locked up. The truth was, his bedroom looked like most any other, without any experiments or strange scientific equipment. The most valuable thing in there was a laptop, that just happened to have been issued by the Veritas Guild, and held some pretty powerful secrets. Secrets no one would probably believe, but he’d been charged with not letting them get out anyway.
He plopped down on his bed and glanced out the window. He could make out half of the moon’s face and smiled wearily. “Not tonight, old friend,” he whispered to the menace deep inside him. He felt something rumble deep in his mind in reply. He pushed a strand of blonde hair off of his forehead, and closed his eyes, falling asleep almost immediately.
The Veritas Guild Page 3