by Sean Stone
Drew suggested the hospice for terminal cancer patients. Simon had suggested the retirement home that housed all the rich old people whose families no longer wanted them around. Both were good suggestions. Those rich old people’s families were connected to Dorian and the rest of the city’s elite, striking them would be a major blow for Dorian. But Magraval would expect us to expect that since Dorian had given orders for the elite to be guarded ever since the first attack.
Drew’s hospice idea wasn’t terrible, but Magraval wouldn’t waste his time killing people who were dying anyway.
I believed that Magraval’s most likely target was the most charitable thing the city had ever built. And it had been built in the North End. The lowest part of the North End anyway. Most people just called it the Shelter. It was a giant building that had been designed to temporarily house up to three hundred homeless people. Since it had opened it also took in other people who needed refuge. The people were allowed to stay there with bed and food for up to one month whilst the workers helped them get up and running in the real world. It was a marvellous thing for any city council to do. I would’ve admired Dorian for it had I not known that he’d done it to draw attention away from the massacre he’d ordered that same day.
It wouldn’t bother the ruling elite if a few hundred homeless people died, but it would bother the poor people. It would bother them a lot. It would do what Magraval had been attempting since he’d started toying with Dorian; it would put further strain on that delicate divide between the rich people in the North, and the poor people in the South.
The Shelter was where we would wait for Magraval in the morning.
After Simon left I carried the cups through to the kitchen and began rinsing them in the sink. Washing up was one of the few bits of housework that I actually liked doing it. It was almost therapeutic. I was a pretty busy person so I didn’t often get the chance to just stop and think. Washing up allowed me to do just that.
‘I’m going to need a lot more rings,’ Drew said, as he began clearing the medical supplies away.
‘What?’ I asked, my tired mind too slow to process what he was saying.
‘I’m not going to be much to use to you tomorrow with only one ring. Now, I’ll be bringing my own weapons with me, but a few more rings would be handy too.’
‘One for each of your fingers?’ I said sarcastically. ‘You know it’s too volatile to wear that many rings. You’ll likely end up blowing yourself up. Or worse, blowing me up.’
‘I know how to handle magic, Jacob.’
‘Drew, I don’t mean to offend you, but I really don’t think this is your fight.’ I could barely handle Magraval myself, and my chances of surviving tomorrow were fifty-fifty or worse. Drew, a wizard who could no longer convert magic, didn’t stand a chance.
‘Jacob. I’m joining the fight. End of. Don’t fight me on this. We’ve a got a big enough fight ahead of us.’
I sighed in resignation. He was right. And without Simon I needed all the help I could get. ‘I’ll make the rings,’ I said quietly. I needed sleep badly.
Drew nodded his gratitude. ‘See you in the morning kid,’ Drew said, almost affectionately. He walked past me and headed to the guest bedroom.
There was something we needed to discuss before the sun rose. I knew it was going to end badly but I had to bring it up anyway. ‘What if I’m right?’ I burst out just before he entered the bedroom.
‘I hope you are right since that’s where we’ll be waiting for Magraval,’ Drew said as he turned back to me.
‘Not about the location. About his identity.’
‘Oh,’ Drew moaned, closing his eyes in frustration. ‘We’re not doing this again, Jacob. Not again. I thought you’d accepted that it wasn’t him. Sam would never have blown up a school full of children.’
‘Listen, if it is Sam and I discover it tomorrow…’ the question hung unspoken on the air. How do you ask a man if they’re cool with you killing their son. Even if Drew told me to do it I wasn’t sure I’d be able to. He was my cousin. We were raised as brothers. Even after everything, that still meant something to me. Deep in the darkest recesses of my heart I just wanted my cousin to come home.
Drew let out a long breath and then opened his eyes. He looked at me calmly, not a trace of anger in sight. ‘That man murdered children. He is killing innocent people every day to settle some grudge from years ago. Whoever is behind that glamour is a monster and tomorrow they are going to die.’
My uncle slipped into his room and closed the door quietly behind him. Well, that sounded like he was giving his blessing to me. If Sam was hiding behind that ridiculous mask, then his dad had just signed off on his execution.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I decided to create the rings before I went to sleep. That way the sleep would replenish whatever energy I expended on their creation. I had eleven rings and I charged them each with magic and then put them neatly to one side. The rings weren’t mine, nor were they Drew’s. Rings were one of the best items of jewellery for enchantments. They were the hardest item to fall off and there were plenty of places to put them. Drew had instilled in me a habit that I’d practiced since childhood. Whenever I go into a shop and see cheap rings for sale, I buy them and tuck them away. Luckily, Drew and I were both the same ring size so the rings could be used by either of us. Sadly, these rings were cheap for a reason. None of them looked particularly nice. I could have scrapped the habit, or adjusted it after I’d become rich enough to buy higher quality jewellery, but some habits just stick with us.
I placed the magically charged rings on my dresser and then headed to bed. I was already tired and charging up that many rings had absolutely shattered me. I was starting to doubt I was going to make it to the bed. My legs trembled as a hideous tearing sensation ripped through my stomach. I cried out and doubled over as I crashed to my knees. Fresh pain seized every organ within my stomach forcing a withered groan to escape my lips. My entire bedroom spun around me and I drew in several ragged breaths but the air was barely making it down my windpipe.
‘Drew…’ I gasped, clutching my stomach. I tried to concentrate on anything that ought to be able to help me. Some spell or potion, but the pain was too great.
‘The door behind me flew open and my uncle burst into the room. ‘Jacob!’ he shouted, seeing the state I was in.
‘I camambaln…’ I mumbled pathetically as Drew began dragging me toward my bed.
‘Stop trying to talk.’ He grabbed me under the arms and hauled me up onto my bed, rolling me onto my now sweaty back. ‘That bite is more serious than I thought. I need to call Jeremy.’
I opened my mouth to reply, but a fresh wave of agony turned my infant word into a howl of anguish instead. Drew tore the bandage from my hand and began flaking the paste away so he could get a good look at my wound. I turned to look down at my hand too, terrified of what I was going to see. It didn’t look at all malign. The bite looked as innocent as it had done before. The paste had already healed it considerably. Maybe that was why I was in such pain, the wound was trying to do as much damage as possible before Drew’s remedy cured me of it.
‘Makes no sense,’ Drew muttered to himself before hastening from the room to call Jeremy.
It took Jeremy forever to arrive, or maybe it just felt like it did because with each passing minute the acute pain in my stomach grew just a little stronger spreading to other areas as it did. When Jeremy finally shuffled into my bedroom in his long mackintosh it reminded me of those old films where the doctors have to come to a patient’s home. Jeremy didn’t waste any time with small talk.
‘When did the pain start?’ he asked. He knelt by the bedside and began examining my hand. He was careful not to touch the wound or any of the skin near it.
‘Just before I called you,’ Drew said, sparing me the expenditure of having to answer.
‘And where did the pain start?’
Drew wouldn’t be able to answer that one since I hadn’t told him. �
��My stomach,’ I replied. Jeremy’s brow furrowed in what might have been confusion. It’s hard to read a person’s expression when in an unending state of torment.
‘So not your hand where you were bitten?’ I shook my head. ‘Can you describe the sensation to me?’
I took in a deep breath and then released it, wincing at the pain it caused me to expand my lungs so much. ‘It started like… like something tore my insides in two. But now it’s like a… pool of acid is in my stomach… and it’s… very slowly spreading outwards. And every now and then I get a… a jolt… like somebody’s punched me with a metal fist.’
‘Please tell me you’ve got a cure for a dullahan bite,’ Drew said from the doorway. Jeremy blinked once and licked his lips nervously.
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t have a cure for a dullahan bite, but luckily, you don’t need one.’
‘What?’ My uncle and me said in unison.
‘If the bite had caused this reaction then the symptoms would have started from the wound. However, by the looks of things, that wound is already half-healed. This pain is completely internal. There’s no visual symptoms on the body. And it’s starting location in the stomach tells me that it’s being caused by something you ingested.’
‘I’ve been poisoned,’ I said in relief. Poison wasn’t that difficult to cure if you could figure out what poison was used. Mystical bites on the other hand… they were usually a bit more complex.
‘I suspect so. I’m going to need some blood and a surface to work on. I’ll figure out what poison was used and therefore what antidote is needed. Let us all hope it wasn’t one of the incurable ones.’
‘What about the pain?’ I asked, clutching my stomach with both arms.
Jeremy grimaced as he looked back at me. Obviously it wasn’t good news. ‘Most poisons don’t respond well to any kind of pain relief. Most poisoners want their victims to go through hell before they die. Without knowing which poison was used I can’t be sure that any pain relief I use would be safe.’
‘We could put you to sleep until we have an antidote. You won’t feel the pain in your dreams. And besides, poisoned or not, you need some rest.’
Reluctantly, I agreed to let Drew put me to sleep. So, Jeremy drew several vials of blood which he took to my kitchen to start his experiments. Drew knocked up a powerful sleeping potion which he practically forced down my throat. It started working surprisingly quickly. Within seconds of having drank it I was already starting to feel drowsy, and amazingly it was easing my pain too.
‘Marcus…’ I said feebly as my eyelids began to drop of their own accord.
‘Marcus? What about him?’ Drew asked.
‘He did this… He knew the dullahan wouldn’t beat me so he had a backup plan.’
‘Maybe,’ Drew said quietly. ‘But when did he have an opportunity to get the poison into you?’
‘I don’t…’ Thinking grew more difficult as the potion took hold and before I could even think about Drew’s question I was gone into the land of easy living.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
I woke up to a lot of shouting coming from the living room. I rubbed the sleep from eyes and opened them to the startling sight of sun rays shining through the gaps in my curtains. I’d been undressed, I noticed as I looked down to see that I was wearing only my boxer shorts. It was the second time that had happened.
I grabbed my phone from my bedside table and saw that it was almost eight pm. I’d slept for almost twenty-four hours. Suddenly the shouting made sense. I’d screwed up Dorian’s grand plan. I’d slept through Magraval’s next attack. I concentrated on the voices next door. Drew’s was the most obvious. Next in volume was Simon. Then, finally, I heard Dorian speak in softer, but no less angry, tones.
I pulled myself out of bed and threw on my dressing gown. It was time to face the music. It wasn’t like I’d deliberately got myself poisoned. He really couldn’t blame me for this. Though I was sure he was going to try.
I pulled open my door and wandered into the living room. Drew was standing in the middle of the space with Dorian and Simon opposite him, the three of them were locked in a heated argument. My uncle was usually the one reminding me to watch myself in front of the immortal. Jeremy was sitting on the sofa watching the whole thing unfold before him. He did not look like he was enjoying it. He looked like he wanted nothing more than to be in his own home, in his own dressing gown, with a steaming cup of hot chocolate, and a really good book. But sadly for him, he was here with the rest of us.
‘Good evening, sleeping beauty,’ Simon said with a sarcastic smile when he noticed my arrival. Drew and Dorian both turned my way too, as did Jeremy.
‘Feeling okay?’ Drew asked with a slight raise of his eyebrows.
I nodded. ‘Don’t feel like my insides are attacking me anymore.’ I turned to Jeremy and thanked him for his help.
‘Not at all, Jacob. Any time.’ He stood up like a doctor preparing to leave having tended to the sick. ‘You should know, it wasn’t any normal poison that got you. Somebody gave you a deadly potion.’
His words hung on the air for a moment allowing me to take in their magnitude. I glanced at my uncle but he was doing a great job of keeping his face expressionless.
‘I would have noticed somebody slipping me a potion. I’m not a moron.’
‘Well…’ Simon said and then quickly fell silent after a mere glance from Dorian.
‘Somebody could’ve sneaked something into one of the clubs. The store rooms don’t have the best security.’ Drew was right. When I was running an event at one of my venues I had the best security money could buy. But when nothing special was going down I hired regular security. And frankly, I never expected to need to guard the liquor. Poisoning alcohol in a nightclub was like throwing a pin in the ocean. The poison might get somebody but you had no idea who and there was just as much chance of it simply being spilled on the floor.
I’d drank at a few different pubs and clubs lately though. Any one of the bartenders could have poisoned me. I was vigilant by nature so I always kept an eye on what was going on around me, but a professional could’ve slipped something in my drink without me seeing. Maybe I’d been distracted.
‘How fast does the potion act?’ I asked. If I knew how long it took to take effect then I could narrow down the list of places I’d been when I was likely spiked.
Jeremy’s brow furrowed and he shook his head. ‘Well, that’s what’s even more troubling. This potion was one I’ve not seen before. It was… a personal concoction. You wouldn’t find it written in any books.’
‘You’re saying somebody created this potion especially for me?’ I asked. Surely Marcus wouldn’t have gone to all that trouble. Then again, I had humiliated him to all his underlings.
‘Precisely. It is said that the best potion makers in the world never make the same potion twice. So even if they made the same potion twice, the two would be different from one another in at least some small way. By adjusting the potion with each use it makes it harder to counter. Especially in the case of poisonous potions.’
‘So, basically, I’m looking for a master potion maker?’
‘Or they bought a potion off of one. Either way, I think this rules out Marcus. He is good enough at potions, but I wouldn’t even call him an expert let alone a master,’ Jeremy said, and he was the one person in the room who knew Marcus best.
‘He could’ve got hold of the potion from somewhere else. Maybe—’
‘Maybe, we should get to the more immediate issue,’ Dorian snapped, tired of the irrelevant babble. Irrelevant to him anyway, it was highly relevant to me. ‘I will not allow this city to endure another day of being locked down. You were supposed to take care of this today.’ Dorian pointed a perfectly straight finger at me.
‘What happened today then? Did Magraval attack again?’
‘He made the Shelter collapse killing everybody inside. Seventy people died,’ Drew told me. I took no pleasure in the fact that I had
correctly predicted Magraval’s next target. It was hard to take pleasure when so many people had died because I hadn’t been there to stop him. If I even could stop him.
‘Myself and some others were there guarding the building, but he managed to sneak past us,’ Simon admitted, unable to meet my gaze.
‘Fuck,’ I said with a heavy sigh. I went to the sofa and fell into its comfort. Even though I’d been in bed all day, I still felt a little woozy from the poison.
‘Are you okay?’ Jeremy asked me quietly as if he didn’t want the rest of them to hear.
‘He’s fine, he’s been asleep all day,’ Simon said incredulously. The only response I afforded him was a cold glare.
‘Are you sufficiently rested?’ Dorian asked me, his tone even and calculating.
I took a moment to get a feel of my body. I was still a little light headed, but it was nothing a bit of food and maybe some coffee wouldn’t fix. It was similar to the last dregs of a hangover that’s been a nuisance for most of a day. ‘Just about. I can be ready to get back out there in an hour.’
‘Make it half. We end this tonight. I want that masked coward captured or killed by the time the sun rises.’
‘Small problem. None of us know where he is,’ I pointed out. To that Dorian offered me a sly smile.
‘No, but we know where he will be. So far he’s managed to stay ahead of us because we’ve been trying to chase after him or we’ve been trying to pre-empt where he will be. What we need to do is draw him out. You say you believe one of the Elders is responsible for your poisoning?’
‘I’m fairly certain.’
‘You’re either certain or you’re not. There is no middle ground. And honestly, I highly doubt any of them did this. Marcus is the only one who has an issue with you,’ Jeremy said matter-of-factly. Dorian continued, paying Jeremy no attention at all.
‘You need to confront this Elder tonight before they can cause any further damage. You will go to the Hall and put this business to bed once and for all. I suspect that the Elders will lead their wizards and witches out in force to try and frighten you. Therefore, Simon will lead the Orchids to stand behind you. Just in case anybody had any doubts that you were on my side.’