Stones of Power- Hellstone & Maelstrom

by Jenna Grey

  He gave her a smile back, and this time it was genuine; there was a hint of sadness in it, but it was genuine.

  “No, that’s cool. I just thought I’d ask. Nice cards, though. I’ll take one of the other packs. The dragon one is pretty bomb. How much?” He picked up the dragon pack, but she could see that it was only to save the situation from becoming even more awkward.

  “The box is a bit tatty – is five-pounds okay?”

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a wallet, bulging with cash, and took out a five-pound note. His hands were long, slender, like her uncle’s hands. It sent a little shiver through her. Polly noticed that the black nail polish was flaking off, she wondered why anyone would paint their nails like that; it looked so ugly when it started to peel. She took the money and found a bag for him.

  “Thank you,” she said, hoping that he would go soon. She hoped even more that he didn’t come back again. It was only then she glanced down, and the V of his tee shirt moved just a little to reveal the tattoo underneath. She recognised it from one of her grandmother’s books. It was a warding sigil to keep demons away. She could only see the top of it, but she recognised it right away. It sent a tingle of real fear through her.

  “See you again soon,” he whispered.

  Polly watched him walk out of the door and breathed a sigh of relief as it closed behind him.

  She turned the sign around and put the catch across the door. Finn and Bert had a key. She’d had enough intrusions for one day; she felt drained, apprehensive, all of the calm she had regained with her frantic bout of cleaning gone with the arrival of that stranger. Then Polly remembered what Hel had told her, that the way had already been opened up for the dead and even worse to come through from Hell, and the ripple of fear she was experiencing grew from a ripple to a full-blown tsunami. She was suddenly so weary that she could barely keep her legs under her. She left the cup of tea she had made undrunk on the counter and stumbled her way upstairs. Perhaps a sleep would do her some good after all.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Blaine got back to the office at lunchtime, grabbing a tuna wrap and a coffee on the way. His office was on the top floor of the MI5 building overlooking the Thames; Lambeth Bridge was just along from his building, and MI6 was across the river. It would have been a great view if it wasn’t obscured by a bloody great skyscraper. PC Widget would still have been very impressed.

  He downed a mouthful of coffee and pulled every file he had that was even vaguely related to the deaths in the warehouse. When he’d finished, the pile on his desk was high enough for him to worry that the whole lot was going to tip over and cascade all over the floor any minute. They’d threatened to digitise all of his files; he’d threaten to castrate someone if they did.

  Gaunt first, as he seemed to be the obvious choice. The file was a good two inches thick and pretty battered where he’d opened it so often. Gaunt had been on his top ten list since he’d first hit the radar – he’d been after this scum bag for quite a few years now. He’d only become aware that there were things that went bump in the night seven years ago when he’d been thrown head first into a nightmare that would have driven most people over the edge. A kid had been butchered and mutilated in a fairground, and he’d been called in to investigate because no-one could identify what could have done it. They had thought it was an animal attack of some kind, and hoped he could help track it down. He had discovered the culprit, but it was no animal that had ever set foot on this earth before. He had found himself thrown into a reality so far removed from his experience that he would never see anything the same way again.

  Since then he’d compiled a list of every magical practitioner in Britain and as many as he could find from around the world and had been monitoring them assiduously. Some of them were working for the greater good, some, like Gaunt, were pure filth. The world was without question a much better place with him out of it. He still hadn’t quite decided if he should bring any of this to the attention of his superiors just yet – his superiors being the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister. Other than that he answered to no-one. The circle of people who knew what he did was limited to just a few, and he tried to keep it as simple as possible when he handed over information because most people either didn’t believe him or just couldn’t handle it. No, he’d leave it a while before he said anything because there wasn’t much to tell yet, anyway. He just hoped he didn’t live to regret that decision.

  He flipped open the file and leafed through it. For the most part, it was just routine stuff, but there were enough question marks to make anyone wonder. Gaunt’s father had died in mysterious circumstances about fifteen years ago – an argument with a flight of stairs. Gaunt had been suspected of his murder, but nothing could be proved. His sister had died in a car crash along with her husband; Blaine was pretty confident Gaunt had a hand in that as well. It left him the sole beneficiary of his mother’s estate when she died recently – and Blaine would like to bet Gaunt had helped her shuffle off this mortal coil as well. Blaine had to admit, though, that Gaunt was a smart fucker, he’d covered his tracks well. His only surviving relative was his teenage niece, Polly. Blaine had got a hold of the Education Department reports and a few other bits of information about her, and she seemed like a good kid. She was still living in the house as far as he knew. Somehow she had to be tied up with all of this. He would make it a priority to have a word with her.

  For the last few months, the Gaunt house had been used for clandestine meetings, and Polly would have to know something about what was going on there. Twelve men and women congregated for a gathering one night a week. With Gaunt, that was the thirteen he needed to make a coven. Blaine was pretty sure that the recent reports of missing persons in the area were down to him and his cronies, but again, he just couldn’t prove it. The last missing person report was a boy, Timothy Baird, no family to speak of, a lost soul of a kid that Gaunt thought wouldn’t be missed. He looked down the list of the twelve coven members: A high court judge; a high ranking civil servant working in the Home Office; a general in the Royal Fusiliers; a major shareholder in one of the big tech companies and a big property developer. All twelve of them were high powered individuals with some influence. Blaine was pretty confident he wasn’t the only ones watching them.

  The four armed bodyguards that had been there with them in the warehouse had impressive records; ex SAS, special ops, mercenaries with CVs that would have made them more than qualified for the lead roles in the next Expendables film. Gaunt must have been paying them well for their services. What was odd, though, was that one of the thirteen members of the coven was obviously one of the hired muscle. Kurt Kronenburg was a German mercenary, a stone-cold killer – he had a sidearm and was wearing black combat gear under the ill-fitting robe; it was way too small for his bulk. Had he been swapped in at the last minute? That had to be the case. Something had gone wrong, Winchard had died, and Gaunt had been forced to put in a replacement at the last minute. Interesting.

  Gaunt had been hanging around with Winchard for quite a few years, and if ever two scumbags were meant for one another it was those two. Winchard, like Gaunt, had never been caught doing anything illegal, apart from a couple of minor offences when he was a teenager. He’d been suspected, though, of several sexual assaults on young girls, a couple of them vicious rapes, and he’d even been pulled in on suspicion of murdering a teenage girl but had managed to somehow fake an alibi. Blaine was sure he’d used magic to cover his tracks, just as Gaunt had. Well, they’d both paid for their sins. He hoped they rotted in Hell for all eternity.

  That should have been the end of the case as far as he was concerned. The scumbags had finally got what they deserved. Blaine was still curious, though, why Winchard had ended up in the cellar, as dead as the others, but he could live with not knowing. The marks on his neck, the broken nose and scratches on his face almost certainly meant that he’d tried to 3 right.

  And then to the event that really made him wonder, and whi
ch was going to give him a few sleepless nights. What the hell had happened to drive their souls out of their bodies so suddenly like that, leaving them just an empty shell? Magic, of course, but what could have done that? And perhaps even more perplexing, what the hell was that all about with PC Widget? He had his suspicions, but God help him if he was right.

  *******

  The creak of the old floorboards under Polly’s feet was welcoming somehow. Polly supposed that she and Finn would move into the big bedroom now, instead of being squashed in the tiny single bed in Polly’s room. It would be fun picking out furniture and decorating, something good to look forward to. Then came the sudden realisation that although the Magic Emporium was home, Gaunt House now belonged to her and she would have to decide what to do with it. She couldn’t go back to live there, even though her childhood memories of life there with her grandmother were sweet ones. What had happened since her grandmother’s death had soured it so much that she could never feel the same there. The police would have got a search warrant, of course, and gone in and ransacked the place. The idea of strangers rummaging through her personal belongings left her cold, but the thought of what they might find elsewhere in the house left her colder still. She daren’t think what they’d find hidden in her uncle’s study, or worse, shoved down in some hidden compartment in the cellar. She supposed she had to go back there to get some of her things, but she wasn’t relishing the prospect much.

  As Polly passed Liam and Finn’s bedroom she stopped, and on impulse turned the handle, cautiously pushing open the door. Her conscience pricked a little. Should she really be doing this? She couldn’t see that it would do any harm, now that Liam was gone.

  She stood in the doorway, staring at the sight that confronted her. The room was entirely divided in half, with a kind of pull out screen to separate the two halves, if required. Finn’s half had pastel walls, with two posters, Linkin Park and The Boondock Saints; it was nice, just what she would have expected, manly, but just soft enough to be comfortable. Liam’s half was all black, the ceiling, the walls, the bed; his posters were Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden. She shouldn’t really have expected anything else from him. It was untidy, clothes scattered, the bed unmade. Polly shook her head and gave a little smile; it dropped away again almost instantly when she realised that she would never see Liam again. What had just happened in the shop seemed like more than just a coincidence now. It had disturbed her then, and it disturbed her more now; that strange man, asking her if she’d loved Liam. It was almost as if he knew.

  She sat on Liam’s bed, trying to see if she could sense Liam there, some residue of his soul lingering, but there was nothing. If there had been anything left of him, she thought she would have sensed it. She’d only recently allowed her innate psychic ability to blossom, having feared it for so many years, kept it trapped inside for fear that she wouldn’t be able to control it. And she’d been right to fear it because hadn’t she just proved what monstrous acts she could perform with it?

  She was just about to leave when she spotted the little notebook on his bedside table and remembered that Finn had told her that was how he and Liam had communicated a lot of the time. They would often leave messages in the book for the other, especially when it was something they wanted to keep private from Bert. Finns’ book lay on his table beside his bed, and although she was tempted to read it, she didn’t feel right doing it. It wouldn’t hurt to read Liam’s now, would it? She picked up the book tentatively and drew it to her, letting it lie in her lap for a few moments. It was black of course, just a cheap black notebook, battered and well used. She picked it up, and it fell open at the last entry. She stared down at the words, her heart hurrying in her chest as she realised they were addressed to her. It simply read:

  Polly, I’m so sorry. I never meant to hurt you. I loved you as much as he does. Remember me with kindness.

  Polly felt the first tears drop down onto the page, spreading into pools across the words and making the ink run. She palmed the tears away from her cheeks, sniffing back the rest. He had loved her, but she honestly didn’t know what she felt for him. She wasn’t sure if it was a kind of love, or just pity, because God knows he deserved anyone’s pity. He epitomised the word ‘tragic’, such a lost soul, in every sense of the word.

  The few pages before that last entry had been torn out and she couldn’t help but wonder why. She looked around and saw that the waste bin was empty. Whatever had been on them, Liam hadn’t wanted her to read them, so best they were left unread. Those last words to her were a goodbye. Did Liam know that he was going to die when he came to the warehouse to rescue her? He must have known there was a good chance of it. Liam wasn’t the magician of the family; he was the psychic; it was Finn and Bert who possessed the real arcane power. All he had to protect him was the Torinstone, and time had proven that it had been no protection at all. She suddenly felt the full impact of his death, and it was terrible. It must have been so much worse for Finn. Polly stared down at the untidy, tear smudged scrawl and this time she couldn’t hold back, she sobbed uncontrollably, almost howling her misery, not just at Liam’s death, but for everything that had happened. All of the pain and suffering of the last few days poured out in a great torrent of grief until she was so exhausted she had to force herself to stop and try to calm herself.

  How long she had sat there wailing she had no idea, but she suddenly felt a terrible sense of dread that pushed all other thoughts and feelings out. It was a gradual realisation, first a feeling of discomfort that overrode her misery, then the absolute certainty that she was not alone.

  Polly looked up to see Hel standing there, a shadowed figure on Finn’s side of the room, looking surreally incongruous amongst the trappings of a young man’s bedroom. She had been a terrifying sight before, against the backdrop of that dilapidated old warehouse, but here in this mundane setting, she was even more awe-inspiring. She was dressed in a long white robe, pristine and lovely on the good side of her body and tattered rags on the other. The rotted, corpse-like side of her face was mercifully hidden in the shadows of her hood, the sparkling blue of her perfect eye all that Polly could discern beneath the cowl. She knew this could only be a projection, not her true physical form because her soul, the real her, was still trapped in Helheim.

  “What do you want?” Polly asked, still hiccuping sobs, but pulling back her shoulders in a token gesture of defiance. She didn’t want Hel to see her like this, vulnerable, still a victim. Hel gave her a beatific smile, at least the lovely side of her face did; what Polly could see of the other side of her face revealed nothing more than a rictus grimace, broken teeth and rotted lips.

  “Poor child,” Hel said. “It saddens me to see you so unhappy, even after everything that’s happened, everything there has been between us, I still wish you no ill, you believe that, don’t you?”

  She almost sounded as if she meant it. And although it was irrational, Polly felt no real hatred for her either, she even felt a little sorry for her. She had shown Polly kindness, had saved her from Winchard’s vicious attack, but she was quite happy to allow Polly to take her place in Hell and she was responsible for the deaths of innocents – that Polly could never forgive.

  “I believe that, but that doesn’t make up for all the evils you’ve committed. Please tell me what you want and go.” She hadn’t intended it, but it ended up coming out as a desperate plea.

  “I’ve come to give you a chance to put things right,” Hel said, her voice gentle, kind. Polly snorted a laugh.

  “Oh, I think that things are pretty all right as they are, thank you. My Uncle and Winchard are dead, and you’re back in Hell where you belong.”

  Hel hesitated, and the silence in the room was almost more than Polly could bear, but she had to wait for Hel to speak, had to let her make the next move. She just tightened her lips and stared at the bedside lamp, waiting, waiting. Hel’s smile broadened, and finally, she said:

  “Perhaps, but what of Liam? Are you truly reconci
led to the fact that he is rotting in Hell with them?”

  Polly froze, just froze, every muscle of her body petrifying. She looked up into that shadowed face, her heart cramping, her breath trapped in her lungs.

  “I don’t believe you,” she whispered.

  Hel gave that same cold smile and raised her rotted claw, the sleeve dropping back to show the bones of her forearm, wrapped only in flaked and broken skin.

  “But my dear, I touched him – where do you think he went?”

  The real horror of what Hel was telling her smashed into Polly and a tsunami of misery washed over her. She had visited Helheim, seen it in a vision at least, and the thought of Liam being there was too terrible to bear. Hope had long since fled that place. The souls there were lost in a frozen waste, lying comatose in the snow, dreaming endless dreams for all eternity. Some were lost in mundane replays of their lives, just existing in a reality that mimicked the world they had known, not even knowing they were dead. They were neither good nor bad, happy or sad, hollow shadows of what they had been in life. Some spent their eternity tormented by horrendous nightmares, tortured by all the miseries they had created while they were alive. Other souls roamed the realm, bitter and twisted creatures, unable to leave, driven by their own torments and battling demons who were intent on devouring their souls. Polly bit back her despair and stood, her fists balled, defiant.

  “You evil bitch,” Polly hissed. “I swear I’m going to make you pay for all of this.”

  Hel just kept smiling, so benevolent, and raised her good hand, as if in benediction.

  “Child, calm yourself and listen to what I have to say. Yes, Liam is here with me, but it doesn’t have to stay that way. There is a way out for him.”

  “Tell me,” Polly demanded.

  “It’s not too late for the ritual to take place; change places with me, take my place here, and I promise I’ll release him – he can come back to the world of men, take a new body, have a happy life, the life he always wanted. It’s in your power to give that to him, Polly. His fate is in your hands.”