The Seventh Star

by Mark Hayden

  She looked down. ‘I’ll still see the Boss and take my punishment.’

  ‘Good.’ I looked round the table. ‘Let’s see. Lucy saved my life, and you saved Tom and Mina’s. With joint accounts, I reckon that in the end, I owe you twice over, unless you want to collect from the others.’

  Karina nodded. ‘No offence, Mina, but I don’t pay any taxes or play cricket, so I’d rather collect from you, sir.’ She gripped her hands into fists. ‘Can you get the file on my mother’s murder from Merlyn’s Tower? Boss Hannah wouldn’t let me see it. And if I come back, will you help me deal with her killer?’

  ‘I should be able to get the file. Hannah would have let you have it eventually anyway. As for the second part, I’ll help you as Watch Captain. Remember the golden rule.’

  She didn’t look happy, but she nodded. ‘Yeah. Part of the solution, not part of the problem.’

  ‘Good. Are you staying for part two?’

  The glint was back in her eye. ‘Yes. And I give you my word that I’ll follow all orders.’ Before I could stop her, she whipped out a knife and cut herself. ‘In blood, it is written.’ She took some blood on the tip of her knife and made an X on the table. ‘In blood it will be honoured. I’ll go.’

  Mina and Lucy wouldn’t let her leave without a hug, and there were tears in her eyes when she dashed out of the cottage. Poor kid.

  While the girls were hugging, Tom leaned over. ‘Is there a lot of that? The blood stuff.’

  ‘Not so much. Depends on your affiliations.’

  The Mannwolves were next. Tom had told me about them, that the girl was Cara, and the boy introduced himself as Alex. They brought the Elder with them, though she sat on the sofa, cradling Alex’s little boy. Cara placed a pile of clothes on the table in front of Mina. ‘For you.’

  Mina shook back her hair and bowed. ‘Excuse me.’

  In seconds, the torn, blood-stained kurti was in the bin and she showed off her new look: a red smock, a Mackenzie tartan kilt over leggings and flip-flops that fitted. Even the Mannwolves winced when they saw her swastika tattoo.

  We quickly established some ground rules: I wasn’t allowed to ask where they’d come from, or who their Fae Protector had been. Apart from that, they were very keen to talk.

  There is a real issue with in-breeding within packs. The Fae (and it’s nearly all Fae) who act as Protectors like to move them around, and this pack was assembled a couple of years ago with individuals from Scotland, Ireland and the south of England. The original King, Queen and two Elders had died when the pack was set to hunt and kill Drake Blackrod.

  ‘He went down fighting, then,’ I said.

  ‘Aye,’ said Alex. ‘With magick and his bare hands. One of the Elders was mother of my boy. Before then, it was all so easy. We just had to stay out of sight on the farm. They used to take us to different places at the Full.’

  That’s the one part of old w*r*w*lf lore that’s true: they do have to exchange forms at least once when the moon is full.

  ‘Are you viable?’ I asked. It was blunt, but necessary. Without enough bloodlines, the pack wouldn’t be viable, long term.

  ‘Sure we are,’ said Cara. Dressed, she looked fourteen going on forty, and was actually nine. That is, she was born nine years ago. ‘There’s bloodlines from four surviving packs amongst us.’ She turned to Alex. ‘He’s going to be busy.’

  Now that was hard to stomach. Lucy’s eyes bulged, and Mina looked down.

  ‘There’s something we’d like to ask youse,’ continued Cara. ‘We want you to be our Protector. Please, Lord Guardian.’

  ‘You’re all equal in my eyes,’ I said. ‘Be your own Protectors.’

  The pack Elder spoke up from the sofa, with a strange old-sounding half German accent. ‘I told you he’d say that. He’s not of the Fae.’ She looked at me. ‘If you let us loose, we’ll be caught and enslaved in weeks, and yes, I know what real slavery is. We are not human. Let us be who we are, and be our Protector.’

  Mina kept still: this was my decision. I looked at Tom. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Do you really want to know?’

  Mina patted his arm. ‘He always means it when he says that.’

  ‘Then take them on. It’s not just the Fae, think about Clan Blackrod. From what you’ve told me, they need a reason not to hunt the pack down. Give them one.’

  ‘Good point. In that case, I offer my Protection.’

  Alex and Cara got up and stood back. They lay face down on the floor, and Cara pulled the hair away from her white neck.

  The Elder shifted the boy in her arms. ‘Tell them our new pack name and say, “My arm is your shield.” Unless you want to kiss one of their necks.’

  ‘Why on earth would I want to do that?’

  The Elder’s smile was grim. ‘You can take Alex or Cara for the rest of the night. Or both if that’s your inclination.’

  That went straight into my Top Ten Most Alarming Magickal Moments list. Top three, probably.

  ‘You are the Elvenham House Pack, and my arm is your shield. Now please get up before Mina says something rude.’

  The King and Queen of the newly minted Elvenham House Pack got up and offered me their hands to shake. Far more civilised. ‘Your arm is our shield, and Great Fang our blade, Sire.’

  ‘Great Fang? You’re not talking about Scout, are you?’

  Cara burst out laughing. ‘Go away wid you. He’s sweet an all, but he’s only a dog. Your sword. I heard the crunch when you took out that Nightmare, and I swear it was possessed by Great Fang, our first and last king.’

  I do wish everyone could agree on terminology. I called them Nachtkrieger, they called them Nightmares. Doesn’t help. And now my new sword was haunted by the ghost of the mythical First Wolf. Allegedly.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I will take great care of Great Fang.’

  Alex and Cara helped the Elder to her feet, and she had something else to add before she left.

  ‘The Gnomes are divided. We heard more than they thought, and not all of them were happy with the attack on Drake Blackrod, and there was nearly a rebellion when Fergus said he wanted to kidnap the Rani. You should bring Ilse up here on her own.’

  As they walked out, Alex looked over his shoulder. ‘How’re you going tae get into the mine?’

  ‘Briefing in here at Eight o’clock. One hour.’

  ‘Aah ken how to tell the time, Sire.’

  ‘And no jokes, yee great Saxon!’ added Cara.

  Lucy’s hair seems to rise a centimetre when she’s genuinely confused. ‘What jokes?’

  ‘You were in Italy, cara mia,’ said Tom. ‘British children still play a game called What’s the time, Mr Wolf.’

  ‘You could have asked me first before you rejected their offer,’ said Mina when they’d disappeared into the night. ‘Alex might have had something we could learn from.’

  Tom went bright red.

  ‘How do you keep a straight face?’ said Lucy.

  ‘It’s because I’m so twisted inside,’ said Mina. ‘I shall go and get Ilse. Which one is she?’

  ‘The one with her arm in a sling,’ said Lucy. ‘The one who tried to save the Elder. The taller of the German girls.’

  ‘And bring Lloyd,’ I added. ‘This is his business as well.’

  Lloyd appeared first, with a carrier bag full of bits, including Mina’s bag, their phones and their ID. He also had a pile of car keys. I put them to one side.

  Ilse’s arm was probably broken, but not badly, and she had a cracked rib or two. With the help of the Internet, Lucy had fashioned a sling that pinned her right arm to her left shoulder. Ilse was the tallest and strongest of the wives, if you’re measuring muscle mass, and her English was as good as you’d expect from an educated German. So far, so predictable. When she came in, Lloyd casually mentioned that she was a Witch.

  ‘I thought that didn’t happen,’ I said, blurting out more than I’d meant to.

  ‘Most Witches have more sense,’ s
aid Ilse, ‘because your daughters will not be Witches unless your husband’s mother was a Witch, too. Hans’ mother was a Witch. I am not a very good Witch.’ Her sentences were delivered in short bursts of small breaths. If it weren’t for the painkillers, she’d be lying down in a lot of pain.

  ‘Interesting.’

  She shrugged, and immediately regretted it. ‘Acch. Zo. What is your plan? All must die?’

  ‘No one must die,’ I said. ‘If they surrender and submit to the Cloister Court. Simple as that.’

  She thought about it. ‘What will be the charges?’

  I pulled my lip. This was going to be a difficult situation. I was theoretically off the case, and charging decisions weren’t mine to make. I started with the obvious. ‘All thirteen of you, the survivors, were involved in the assassination of the Count of Canal Street.’

  Ilse snorted. ‘He was extorting us. He wanted to be our “Protector”, as if we were like those wolves. We gave him a chance to back out.’

  ‘Nevertheless…’

  She raised her hands. ‘Ja. I understand. Princess Birkdale must see us all punished or she will lose face.’

  ‘There’s also the attempted murder of Kirk Liddington,’ added Tom.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Also known as Fae Klass.’

  ‘Oh, her. We wouldn’t kill a human. Only kidnap for a few weeks. Gregor was adamant that human murder would bring the King’s Watch down on our heads.’ She laughed bitterly. ‘When he heard you were on the case anyway, that’s when the problems started.’ She tapped the table with her left hand, her voice full of pleading intensity. ‘Gregor is of Blackrod, and his brother also, but his brother does what Gregor says. Gregor will be chief.’

  ‘Is he the one with the axe?’ said Tom.

  ‘Ja. When he becomes chief, he make Fergus second and give him the axe. Gregor insisted that Drake Blackrod must die. He said that Drake was on to them, but I don’t think so. I think it is because Drake wants to marry Gregor’s daughter.’

  ‘Who was the Irish woman in the barn?’ said Tom.

  Ilse looked disgusted. ‘She is the wife of the other Irish brother, Colm. I cannot pronounce her name, so I call her Gudrunna. She thought she was going to be First Wife.’

  How was that possible? Best not to ask.

  Tom coughed and pointed his pen at Ilse. ‘I’ve investigated some big gangs.’ Did he look my way when he said that? Whatever. He continued, ‘The biggest problem is the cut-throat defence, when everyone blames everyone else. What evidence can you give us? How do we know you’re telling the truth?’

  Did you notice? He said we. For now, anyway, I felt a lot better.

  Ilse had a counter-problem. ‘How are you going to get them out of the mine without collapsing it?’

  ‘Trick them.’

  ‘Then you need help from some of us,’ said Ilse with finality. ‘It will never work without us. And I want to be there to tell Hans to surrender. You are good, Dragonslayer, but you do not have enough to take on the Octet if they all fight back.’

  ‘She’s right,’ said Lloyd. ‘We need them cut off from the mine, and we need some of them to surrender.’

  She was right, and this was going to be a big risk, but I didn’t see an option. ‘I agree,’ I told her. ‘Let’s hear it.’

  27 — And your Enemies Closer

  Before the operational briefing, I took Tom back to the barn. It was a huge thing, specially built to house and hide the construction equipment for the mine, most of which had now gone. In the empty space at the back, well beyond his temporary prison, was a fleet of cars. If six vehicles count as a fleet: two white vans, one of which he’d been transported in, three 4x4s and a brand new BMW 5 Series estate, with all-wheel drive, leather interior and all sorts of goodies. I pointed to it and said, ‘It’s about time I replaced the Battlebus. What do you reckon?’

  He struggled to cope with the concept. ‘How? What?’

  I encompassed the fleet. ‘This is all plunder. By right of law, I get to keep the lot.’

  ‘But … there must be over a quarter of a million pounds worth.’

  ‘Yes. I’m expected to distribute it. Lloyd has first dibs on the vans, Karina wants the Evoque, so you can choose between the two Mercedes.’

  ‘I can’t do that.’

  ‘It’s the law, Tom. If you can’t cope with one for yourself, take one for Elaine. She deserves it. Let her choose whether to keep it or sell it and give the money to charity. You’ve got to drive off in one tonight, anyway.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s time for you and Lucy to go. And Mina. Mina’s going to wait at Knutsford services and would love you to join her.’

  ‘Right. There really is no point in me staying, is there?’

  ‘None. You’re witnesses to what’s happened so far. I’d like to keep that testimony safe.’

  He took the keys to a Mercedes and stuck out his hand.

  ‘I’ve been wondering what to say, Conrad, after what you did, and after what’s happened over the last week. I can’t think of anything better than good luck, so that’s it. Good luck.’

  ‘Thanks. See you back here later.’

  He walked towards his new car, and I went to open the doors.

  The Octet were sealed up underground. After a fashion. The entire King’s Watch and half of Salomon’s House would be needed to breach the outer defences of the Blackrod First Mine, if you were mad enough to try. Brookford was a different matter.

  As Lloyd said, it wasn’t a First Mine yet: just a big hole in the ground with fancy steel doors. There was fertiliser in the barn and a diesel tank; I could make explosives and blow the entrance to kingdom come. Wesley had the skill to turn that same fertiliser into nerve agents, and I could waft it down the ventilation shafts to kill the lot of them, and those were just the obvious approaches. None of them were acceptable. The Octet had to have the chance to surrender.

  So how to get them out?

  The consecration of a First Mine needs a huge amount of Lux, and the Octet were drawing that from the Ley line spur that ran across the farm. I’d asked myself what would draw them out of their bunker, and the only thing I could think of was to interfere with the supply of Lux. Not to stop it (I could do that myself), but to restrict it and set up a dangerous fluctuation in frequency. For that, you need the Earthmaster and his apprentice. This was their show, and the operation began as soon they were ready.

  The Octet had made use of the topography behind the new barn, where there was a natural hummock on the rise of the land. They’d dug down and into that, levelling the ground in front of it to give extra depth and a more cliff-like front, and that was what we’d seen from the satellite images. Alex, the Mannwolf king, had taken me on reconnaissance and shown me the vents, further away and in three batches.

  The biggest cluster was exhaust, with heat and smoke pouring from it. Not a huge amount of smoke, because they were using Lux rather than coking coal, but enough to be noticeable and pungent. The other vents were fresh air intakes; when the mine was fully developed, all of these would be replaced and hidden.

  They’d also used the spoil to bank it up even further behind the doors, and that was my post, above the doors. I had Lloyd and Albie to my right, with Karina to my left. There was so much magick surrounding the doors that being close to them was the best way of concealing ourselves. I made one last check of the Irregulars and flashed my torch: dash-dash-dot dash-dash-dash. GO. And nothing happened. Nothing I could feel, anyway. I lay down and braced myself in the firing position.

  Chris and Kenver were invisible in the darkness. With starlight and my ever-improving night vision (a side effect of magick), I could see a fair bit, but not as far as their position. Wesley was guarding and shielding them, because if the Octet came out they must not have any idea that the supply was being manipulated deliberately.

  Wesley flashed his torch: dot-dash-dash-dash-dash. 1. The first part was working. I flashed 2 at the rest of Irregulars, arra
yed in front of the mine, and put my torch down. All we could do now was wait.

  And wait. And wait.

  ‘They’re coming,’ whispered Lloyd. How the hell did he know? Must be a Gnome thing.

  ‘I hear them,’ said Karina.

  There was no signal for this. Everyone should know what to do straight away.

  I felt the heat from the doors as the magick changed, then I heard the great slabs of steel start to move. Light spilt out from inside the mine as the left hand door heaved open and two figures emerged. We’d been shown pictures of the Octet, and I reckoned this was Colm and one of the pair from London.

  Colm carried an axe and the other Gnome had a brass thingy that was a bigger version of the brass thingy Chris Kelly had been using to choke back the Ley line. I know, I’m supposed to be a Geomancer, too, but I am only a beginner: to me it was a thingy.

  When they emerged, they headed left, towards the Ley line, and they saw their loving wives gathered around a wood fire, holding a vigil for them. At least that’s what I hoped they saw. In reality, three of the wives were dead (including Colm’s; awkward), and three were tied up in the barn, so only two of the wives were there in person: Ilse and Kathe from Germany. The other five apparent wives were really the Elvenham House Pack using Glamours.

  ‘Where’s herself, then?’ shouted Colm, deviating slightly towards the group. He must not get too close. He must not…

  ‘Gudrunna is guarding the prisoners,’ said Ilse, improvising. ‘Is there a problem? You can’t be finished already.’

  ‘Nothing we can’t fix. It’s going great guns,’ declared Colm. He was now well lit by the fire and still well within range. My range. ‘Now,’ I hissed to Karina.

  She stood up and put her hands to her mouth. She took a deep breath and poured magick out to amplify her voice. ‘In the name of the King, surrender!’ I let Lux flow through my hand into the Hammer, activating my Badge and announcing my authority.

  Colm looked around him, in panic. My worst nightmare was him plunging ahead and attacking Chris, but Wesley did his bit, and the Gnome didn’t see them. The Glamours were gone, the Pack were exchanging forms, and Colm did what we hoped: he grabbed the other Gnome and ran towards the mine, right into my sights. I stilled my heart and fired.