The Devil You Know (Jacob Graves Book 3)

by Sean Stone

  ‘This deal will be done and dusted before the new treaty is signed,’ I replied. No treaty would be signed until I’d killed Magraval and if I didn’t kill him then he would certainly kill me.

  ‘We admire your optimism,’ said the Fae leader, though his voice conveyed no such admiration.

  ‘Thanks,’ I muttered, before plunging the nib of the pen into the palm of my hand. The sharp point dug into my flesh and siphoned my blood into the wooden writing implement. Then, before I could consider changing my mind, I scrawled my signature on the bottom of the contract. My blood dried and crusted in a matter of seconds.

  ‘If you please,’ Cheirvorn said, extending his hand once more.

  I placed the contract in his palm as I rose and he slipped it inside his clothing before I could blink. I held out my hand and he placed in the very centre of my palm, the little yellow raisin that was going to help me stop Magraval. I noticed that he was careful not to make any contact with my skin. I closed my fist around the key and slipped it into my inside pocket, zipping it up for security. And that was that, for better or worse I had signed my first, and hopefully last, deal with the Fae.

  ‘It has been a pleasure doing business with you, Jacob Graves. We expect that we will meet again.’ Cheirvorn backed away until the shadows enveloped him once more. The yellow eyes surrounding us blinked out like candles being extinguished until Jasmine and I were alone in the dome.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  ‘What did he mean when he said about Dorian not being able to attack them?’ I asked Jasmine as we trudged back through the woods toward her car. Her designer shoes were beyond help; they were caked in mud and one of the heels had actually started to break.

  ‘If I knew I wouldn’t be allowed to talk about it,’ she replied, her gaze set ahead, longing to be back in the comfort of her car.

  ‘So you do know and you won’t tell me.’

  ‘Pretty much.’

  We walked in silence whilst I tried to figure out a way of extracting the information out of her. Short of torture there wasn’t much I could do and she was more powerful than I was, so torture was unlikely to work. ‘That Cheirvorn bloke—’

  ‘He’s not a bloke, he’s a Fae,’ she corrected me. Her car was now in sight.

  ‘Yeah, whatever. He kept using the royal we when he was talking to me. That doesn’t strike me as someone who hates kings and queens and all that.’

  Jasmine chuckled lightly, almost imperceptibly. ‘You noticed that?’

  ‘Yes. What’s it all about?’

  ‘The Fae migrated to these woods long before I was born. I think it was about 3,000 years ago or more. It’s hard to know the exact date when it was that long ago. Anyway, my point is, Cheirvorn was not one of the original immigrants. He was born here, he’s native to these woods, this city. He does not share the same ideals as his ancestors did. I’m not sure how many of the Fae actually hold those beliefs. Cheirvorn is a king in all but name. And if the Fae do go to war you can bet that he’ll find a way to use that war to crown himself.’

  ‘Fuck me, you can’t even escape politics by hiding in the woods,’ I muttered.

  ‘That you can’t.’

  We reached the Rolls Royce and Jasmine hopped in, sliding her expensive shoes off her feet the moment the door was closed.

  ‘Pour me a drink,’ Jasmine said before I’d even fully sat down.

  I raised an eyebrow. ‘Do I look like your butler?’

  ‘Now that you mention it, you do a little.’ She shot me cheeky wink and smiled in a way that I couldn’t help laughing at.

  ‘You know,’ I said, as I reached for the bottle of pink gin and began pouring it. ‘When I first met you I never thought I’d actually start to enjoy your company.’

  I passed the glass across the space and she took it by the stem. ‘Well, I grow on people, Jacob. You know a thing or two about being a grower, don’t you?’ She winked at me again.

  ‘I’m not sure what you mean by that.’ I diverted my attention back to the mini bar and began pouring myself a rum and coke. ‘What I am sure about is that I just walked into the Fae woods and came out with a pretty good deal. How many people can say that?’

  ‘I wouldn’t exactly call that a good deal.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘All Cheirvorn did was give you a key, one that took no effort on his part to produce. You, on the other hand, now have to kill a foe who has proven himself to be your superior in every respect so far. He has outwitted you and outfought you at every turn.’ She added the last quickly seeing that I was about to argue.

  ‘Well, I have no intention of going into the fight alone. I’ll be taking as many people as possible with me. Dorian wants him dead so I’m sure he can spare me a few Orchids. Simon will be there for certain and he’ll have a few minions at his disposal.’

  ‘Disposal being the key word there, sweetheart. Simon’s minions are cannon fodder. Nothing more.’

  ‘If I can get Monroe to join in…’ I took a sip of my drink. I didn’t need to finish the sentence, Jasmine knew how effective Monroe was in a fight, even against a wizard.

  ‘If…’

  ‘If you wanted to join in there’s plenty of room for a nymph on Team Graves.’

  She eyed me coolly, seeming to consider my offer. ‘You know that won’t happen. I can’t get involved in these matters. My family’s job is to keep the peace, we don’t take sides.’

  ‘But this is about keeping the peace. Magraval is an outsider. He’s putting the city at risk,’ I said.

  ‘I know. But we still don’t get involved. Our job is to guide and advise. Not to fight. Mother would never allow it.’

  ‘I think you’re old enough to make your own decisions. You’re what, two thousand?’

  Jasmine covered her mouth with her hand and giggled richly. ‘Close enough, Jake.’

  ‘Don’t call me Jake,’ I said a little too roughly. Sam used to call me Jake when we were kids and I hadn’t liked being called it since he’d left. ‘My point being it’s time to start thinking for yourself.’

  ‘You sound like Leah.’

  ‘Leah’s not wrong. Your mother wants peace. The quickest route to that is to eliminate the person threatening that peace. All you have to do is kill one wizard and you’ll get the signatures you need. Help me out and save the city. Or you can sit in the river with your family and watch Magraval burn it to the ground.’

  Jasmine sipped at her gin and then placed the glass down in the holder as the Rolls slowed and then stopped. ‘Perhaps you should consider a career in politics. You might be a better politician than you are an assassin.’

  ‘I’m an excellent assassin.’

  ‘Well, your most recent target being alive would contradict that.’

  ‘Will you help me?’ I said seriously.

  Her smile slipped away and she looked at me with pity. ‘I wish that I could. This is your stop. Goodnight, Jacob.’

  I sighed with disappointment. I’d known that I wouldn’t be able to convince her to join my little band of hunters but I’d still let myself hope. ‘Goodnight, Jasmine,’ I said and then exited the vehicle.

  She’d dropped me back at the hotel where I’d found Thor. It was where I’d left my car, though to be honest I would have rather been dropped at home and then collected the car in the morning. It was already dark and I’d spent the entire afternoon in the Fae woods. It hadn’t felt like I’d been there more than an hour, but everybody knew time moved differently when you were in a Fae domain.

  I glanced at my watch. It was already eight pm. I still had a few hours to get planning. I needed to know who I could count on to fight Magraval and then I needed to figure out where he was most likely to attack tomorrow. Hopefully, Drew had already done the majority of the work whilst I’d been off doing other things. The planning was kind of his job after all.

  As I stepped into the car park, which was now empty apart from my lonely Mercedes, I noticed the first wisps of mist curling around my feet
. My blood ran cold and the hairs across my body stood erect. The dullahan was back. Instinctively my hand went to the guns holstered at the small of my back. This time I was armed with enough gold to bury the fucker and I had no intention of running.

  I turned and saw the headless horseman mounted on his trusty steed and blocking the exit of the car park. The spinal whip hung from his hand menacingly. I needed to get that out of his grip, I’d already seen what a single touch of it could do.

  I raised my gun and aimed at the menace. I had to stop it from getting back to its cart at sunrise. It was only eight pm. It was going to be a long night unless I found some way to trap it. I should have had Natalie forge a golden cage.

  The horse charged without warning and I squeezed the trigger. The bullet raced through the air and the horseman swerved to the side, narrowly avoiding my shot. I sent three more bullets his way. He dodged the first two and actually managed to swipe the third out of the air using his bone-whip. Apparently his weapon was not as averse to gold as he was.

  ‘Alright then, fucktard,’ I muttered under my breath. I lowered my gun and fired a fifth bullet. This one he couldn’t dodge because it wasn’t aimed at him. It caught the horse right in the middle of the leg. The animal shrieked as it collapsed forward sending its rider flying over its head. The dullahan crashed to the ground, head and whip flying in different directions. I wasn’t sure what to do next and I had no time to weigh up the pros and cons. I remembered one of the first lessons Drew had ever taught me when it came to killing. Always try for the headshot.

  I ran off in the direction the head had rolled in. I wasn’t sure if it would work, but maybe if I could destroy that head it would destroy the whole monster and then I wouldn’t have to keep it busy all night long. The rider was already back on his feet and wisely searching for his whip. I wondered how he could see what he was doing when his head was detached from his body and at the other end of a car park. As my uncle always told me when I was a kid, the supernatural does not always have a logical explanation. His answer always seemed like a cop-out to me but now I was a grown up I knew it to be true.

  I looked over my shoulder and saw that my pursuer was reunited with his weapon.

  Where was that head?

  I searched around me. I’d definitely seen it roll over in this direction. It was an empty car park, the head could not have vanished. Then I saw it. It had rolled right up to a rubbish bin and stopped against its side. How unfortunate for it. Though, considering his current condition the bin was hardly a bother.

  The headless body was halfway to me now. I lifted the gun, aimed at the head, and fired. The golden bullet tore right through its forehead. The mouth opened to reveal rotten teeth and it loosed an ear-shattering shriek. I pressed my hands to my ears and backed away. The eyes rolled back in its head and then closed, killing the scream. I heard a thud and turned to see that the body had collapsed. The spinal column lay at its side in the middle of the car park.

  ‘Fuck me,’ I sighed. It had actually worked. I hadn’t needed all the weapons Natalie had made for me after all.

  I looked around at the mess I now had to clean up. A dead horse, a dismembered body, and a random spinal column. I smirked as I imagined some poor pedestrian finding all this in the morning. A bit of fire should take care of the mess and then I could go home and get on with the real work. It would be quite nice to get some sleep before the big fight tomorrow.

  I took a single step and then the headless corpse sat bolt upright like it was Michael Myers. I stop walking and looked back at the detached head. Its eyes were once more open and I could’ve sworn the damned thing was grinning at me. It was hard to tell in the dark. I turned back to the body and unleashed a spell.

  ‘Rabole.’

  My spell hit the spinal column and sent it flying across the car park. Deprived of its only weapon the dullahan was far less threatening. But I still had no way of killing it. The golden bullet had put it down for all of thirty seconds and I didn’t have enough bullets to keep that up all night. But maybe I didn’t need to. Jeremy had said that the dullahan needed to be back in his cart by sunrise. I assumed that meant all of it had to be back in the cart.

  I brought up the gun once more and fired the remainder of the clip into the dullahan. It managed to dodge a couple of the bullets, but the rest peppered its torso making it look like a voodoo doll that had been stabbed a fair few times with the vicious needle. The lumbering corpse fell to its knees, but it did not go all the way down. Apparently, that only happened if I shot the head. Not a problem.

  I released the empty clip and pulled a fresh one from my belt. I slipped it into the gun, clicked it in place, and then shot the fucker in the head again. Once again, it unleashed that blood-curdling scream and then died. I was certainly not putting up with that all night long. And I doubted the rest of the city would either.

  I snatched the head off the ground by the hair. It was so thick with rotten dead skin cells that I actually shivered as I began running to my car. I felt it wake back up. A jolt of hideous energy ripped through it, tearing up my arm. I had to fight the urge to drop the revolting thing. I pulled out my car keys and unlocked the door as I ran. Jumping inside, I tossed the head into the passenger seat and clamped the door shut.

  The corpse was lumbering toward me and behind it the horse was returning to life too. Or unlife. I’m not really sure which. The engine roared to life and I gunned the accelerator. I will admit that I took profound pleasure when my car slammed into the headless body and sent it rolling up my windshield and over my roof. I found less pleasure in the fact that it left a trail of rotten green ooze right up my windshield. I flicked on the water and got the wipers to work cleaning my view. The body slammed into the ground behind the car and I raced off away from it, avoiding the horse on my way out of the car park. The horse would likely do more than leave a mouldy trail across my car.

  I had no idea where I was going. I just needed to keep the dullahan away from its head. Driving around all night would not work because my petrol was low and I just knew as soon as I stopped to fill the tank the old horseman would appear to retrieve his head and kill me.

  I could try and find somewhere to wait the night out, the only problem was there was nowhere I knew that could definitely keep a dullahan out. My apartment was protected by gold, but the gold would likely stop me from carrying the head across the threshold. And I didn’t know that the gold would actually stop the creature from entering. It wasn’t like I’d tested it out.

  I pulled out the new phone that Drew had picked up for me and called Jeremy. If anybody could help me now he was the best candidate.

  ‘Pick up the phone you old turd!’ I screamed as it rang and rang.

  ‘Excuse me?’ Jeremy said, having apparently caught the tail end of what I’d shouted.

  ‘I was talking to the dullahan,’ I said quickly, hoping he bought my lie.

  ‘Good golly, you’re with it now?’

  ‘Yes. Well, with the head. Listen, I really don’t want to run from or fight this thing all night long so if you could help me figure out where its cart is parked that would be amazing and I would be in your debt forever,’ I said frantically as I tore around a corner. Thankfully, the streets were pretty much empty. People were more reluctant to go out now that the city was being randomly terrorised by Magraval. Plus, the mayor had likely announced Dorian’s lockdown.

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t want you to be in my debt forever. That sounds like quite a burden.’

  ‘Jeremy, stay on topic,’ I snapped.

  ‘Sorry, Jacob, sorry. Hmm, let me see.’ He went silent whilst he mulled it over.

  ‘If you even suggest opening a book right now I am going to find your secret house, break in, and burn every book you own, Jeremy!’

  ‘My goodness, Jacob. You could forgive me for thinking you don’t really want my help with behaviour like that.’

  ‘This is not the time!’ My voice took on a squeaking pitch in my frustration. I should
have called Drew. ‘How do I find the cart?’

  All I could hear was Jeremy’s breathing in my ear as he struggled to find a solution. ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted at last. You will have to wait until sunrise and then let the dullahan lead you there.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m really not going to lead this thing on a goose chase all night.’

  The head suddenly started shrieking in the seat next to me and I pulled the golden blade from my sleeve and shoved it right in the forehead of the nasty little thing. The head fell silent as it returned to its temporary death.

  ‘What on Earth was that?’ said Jeremy.

  ‘The dullahan’s head. I killed it with a dagger but it won’t stay dead for long.’

  ‘That’s it!’ Jeremy exclaimed, suddenly excited. ‘Jacob, I assumed from what you just said you have killed it temporarily multiple times already, yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I shot in the head. Killing the head is the only way to put the whole thing down, but it only lasts about minute and then it wakes back up again.’

  ‘So the gold kills it and it should keep it dead unless… How is it getting the gold out again?’ The question was aimed more at himself than me, but when I glanced at the head I saw the answer all the same. The dagger was actually easing its way back out of the head. Inch by inch, it was slowly pulling free of the rotten flesh. A green trail of gooey decay was left on the golden blade.

  ‘The head is pushing the gold out,’ I told Jeremy.

  ‘Then all you have to do is a find a way to keep it in.’

  ‘Good plan,’ I muttered sarcastically as I forced the dagger all the way back into the head before it could wake up again. ‘What shall I do, sit here and stab it repeatedly until you come up with a better solution.’

  ‘Or until morning when it will die permanently.’

  I actually growled in frustration. ‘Jeremy, I do not have the luxury of spending the entire night playing around with this thing. I need to prepare for Magraval tomorrow.’