by Nyna Queen
The memories rushed him with the scents of death and blood, with the feeling of delicious terror that brushed the edges of his temper.
Darken breathed in through his nose, concentrating on the pungent smell in the laboratory. It helped—a little.
“How far can we go back?”
Barthi, who had been watching his mirror image curiously, heaved a sigh. “I can only make so much happen. Your batch is lousy.”
He reached for the panel. Suddenly the projection started to move, blurring, too fast to follow. As they watched time race backward, the image visibly shrunk and slowly collapsed in on itself. When Barthi stopped there was almost only mist with huge gaping holes in it as if a hungry carnivore had bitten chunks out of a ghostly carcass.
The kiddo narrowed his eyes. “That’s the farthest with still some response. I’d say this is about three days ago, but don’t nail me to the hour. Where are we again?”
Darken didn’t answer. In front of his eyes, the mist took shape, transforming into the same lawn his mirror had crouched on a moment ago. It bordered the backside of a stately country house, with a recently painted porch gleaming in the non-existent afternoon sun, facing peaceful hills and a tidy lawn. At its edges, the image faded out in a semblance of hills.
Darken stepped onto the conjured lawn.
A girl, maybe five, jumped from a tree swing and raced across the grass, right through him, as a man with the same set of tight wavy curls emerged from the back door. Her lilting voice was slightly distorted, but he still understood, still heard the bristling joy in it.
“Look, Daddy, look. My new shoes!” She pointed at her shiny blue shoes and danced in the grass.
The man picked her up and twirled her around. The image wavered shortly, flickered, only chunks of broken words reaching his ears.
“… here … little princess … come …”
Darken felt his chest tighten, knowing what was about to happen.
“Fast forward,” he told Barthi roughly.
The young man raised an eyebrow but operated a lever. The image sped up again, moving around him, this time in a traceable blur: a boy joined the girl in the garden; they played some game with colored sticks; a spotted dog raced across the grass chasing bees; the light changed gradually in accordance with the invisible sun lowering itself toward the horizon.
A female voice called something from the house that was impossible to understand. A moment later the burly man reappeared at the screen door, waving at the children before vanishing back inside.
Darken caught the hint of a movement at the far end of the projection and tensed. “Slow down.”
The image slowed to normal speed. Darken leaned forward.
Four men appeared at the edge of the lawn. Lean, fit, muscular, and cunning, all of them, with long, unkempt hair, and ragged clothes. One of them was bare-chested. None of them wore shoes. There was something unmistakably predatory about them.
So, there had been shapers at the scene, after all. Could Alex have been wrong?
They moved without haste toward the back door. The boy had already obediently trudged inside, but the girl had been dallying, and now turned in front of the threshold. She cocked her head to one side, watching the strangers with a curious, childish air.
The middle one with a shaggy blond mane of hair smiled and waved a hand. Hesitatingly the girl raised a hand and waved back, her other hand clutching her cuddly toy, a plump pink snail.
Another call came from the house and the girl turned with a shrug, taking a step toward the door. It happened too fast to really perceive: one moment the shapers were still a good eight yards away. Next, one of them shot forward like an unstrung arrow. He grabbed the girl from behind and broke her over his knee like a stick. No sound came from her, except for a crunching pop, when her spine snapped.
Somewhere behind him, Barthi gasped loudly but Darken was too focused on the scene to pay him any mind. The small body flopped lifelessly in the shaper’s big hands, her toy lying abandoned on the ground.
The other shapers joined the killer.
“Too clean,” a brown-haired one with a bone, eerily reminiscent of human knuckle dangling from his ear, growled. Without ado, ten-inch-long, tipped claws shot from his left hand and he ripped off a leg, tossing it away like a piece of junk.
The father appeared at the door again, his expression holding that particular blend of stern irritation softened by the loving exasperation of a parent used to saying, “Do I need to tell you twice?”
He jerked to a halt at the sight of the men. Stared at them. At the lifeless body they held in their hands.
Shock. Disbelief. Grief. There were not even words to describe the speechless horror that registered on his face. His head moved from side to side, denial so plain in his eyes you could almost grab it.
The closest shaper male to him jumped forward and they both stumbled into the house. The others looked at each other and followed.
The sounds that came from the house could have stemmed from any horror movie. A woman screamed, a pained, desperate sound. A moment later the boy ran out of another door at the porch and scrambled across the grass, hiding behind some of the bushes. Two of the shapers appeared only seconds afterward. They didn’t hurry. They just walked over, pulled him out and then ripped him apart limb by limb. It was nothing of the wild frenzy Alex had described. This was cold, controlled, deliberate and utterly … passionless.
Barthi was holding onto the table, incessantly muttering, “Mother mercy, Mother mercy, Mother mercy.” He probably would have thrown up if not for the precious machinery around him.
Darken watched the slaughter with sick fascination. The screams, the pleas, the whimpers. He’d heard them all and more. And despite his disgust, something about the savagery called to the deepest center of his being. Excited him, lured him.
The magic inside him stirred, a viscous river of molten lava that lazily got into movement. The need still ground at him but controlling it was easier now than it would have been yesterday. Thanks to Alex.
The back door banged open and the blond bear dragged the mother out at her red hair. She saw her son and her daughter and keened in a way that made Darken’s skin crawl.
The head of one of the other shapers shot up. His nostrils flared. “Someone’s coming.”
The one holding the whimpering woman raised a hand and disemboweled her in one fast strike. Her scream became a gurgle, her eyes bulging, and blood poured from her mouth.
When the man raised his hand again, another grabbed his arm. “Enough. Let’s go.”
With a shrug, he dropped the twitching body of the woman and they jogged off. On the ground, a puddle of blood expanded beneath the dying woman like an unfolding red shawl.
There was the sound of tires on gravel. A car door banged. A moment later someone knocked on the front door. The woman moved, her hand twitched, but no sound came from her lips. Shortly after the car left again.
Silence fell, only broken by labored breathing that got weaker and weaker until it finally stopped.
The first hint of darkness was falling. Darken stared at the massacre with a chill. Whatever this had been, it hadn’t been an attack driven by hunger, nor was this the kind of rabid frenzy Alex had described. This had been deliberate murder and it made absolutely no sense at all.
He was just about to tell Barthi to skip forward when two dark shapes solidified out of the mist from the direction of the main street.
Two hooded figures in long black cloaks gilded into the backyard, almost invisible in the deepening twilight that was turning the projection even hazier. Black gloves covered both their hands. Darken felt the tiny hairs on the back of his neck rise.
The men stopped at the edge of the lawn, silently looking at the slaughter.
Suddenly one of the hooded figures spun toward the house. There, at the edge of the sandy path that led toward the porch, the gutted woman had lifted her head. Curse the Blind Child’s eyes, she was still alive!
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br /> Her breath wheezed from the exertion to move, as she raised a shaking, blood-smeared hand toward the newcomers, the skin on her outstretched arm, shining waxen in the invisible moonlight. With only the great Mother knew how much willpower, she pulled herself two inches toward the men, leaving a dark smudge of blood and intestines on the ground, her eyes full of agony and a plea for help. She had to be on the brink of death.
The forfeits exchanged a glance. One of them approached her. He leaned forward and gently reached out with his hand. With a soothing noise, he ran it along her cheek, her jaw, her neck. One quick movement. A crack. The rattling breathing stopped. The head lolled down.
Barthi groaned.
The forfeit let go of the woman and stepped back. Without another look at her, he rejoined his partner, who pulled out a halfborn mobile, pressed a couple of buttons and raised it to his ear.
“It’s done,” he said softly in a distorted voice Darken didn’t recognize. He listened to the other side, then shut it off and vanished it inside his coat.
As if on a silent command, the two men turned and moved toward the edge of the yard, two dark ravens flying over a graveyard. They vanished into the night as if they had never been there.
Silence claimed the scene, as well at the laboratory.
Darken hadn’t felt Barthi approaching him until the young man spoke. His face was peaky. In the bluish light of the projection it looked almost corpse-like, like that of the dead woman.
“Was that—?”
“Yes.”
Barthi swallowed hard, digesting the information. “I don’t want to be curious—”
“Then don’t be.”
The kiddo opened his mouth, took in the cold, sleepy gaze on Darken’s face and clamped it shut again. He took a small step back.
He was too smart to mindlessly fear him like most people did, had never shown that too common mixture of fear and submission, knowing that even one of Death’s Servants didn’t usually strike without provocation, but he was also clever enough to recognize when it would be an unwise idea to push him.
“Fast forward,” Darken said quietly, trying hard, on his part to keep his confusion and mounting anger under control.
With trembling fingers, Barthi operated the control. The images sped up again. Night fell dark in the projection, an indigo blanket dropped over the world. At some point the dog crawled out from under the porch, its furry body trembling, favoring its left hind leg. It flopped down beside the broken corpse of the little girl and howled. Even sped up it was an eerie sound. In the morning a female servant found the dead bodies in the backyard. The poor woman almost suffered a heart attack for it. The law enforcement came, trampling around the scene and destroying half of the traces before they had the sense to start some basic scene cleaning. He doubted any of them had even noted the other pairs of steps. There was a lot of to and fro, but eventually, they vanished as well. Then his own image appeared at the scene, looking around and finally taking the probes. When he raised from the ground, the image started dissolving around them.
Barthi switched off the machine and the lights went on, the bright room seeming strangely inappropriate after what they had just witnessed.
Barthi pushed out his lower lip and blew a strand of hair out of his face.
Darken stood motionless, not sure what to make of all of it. It didn’t make any sense. If the Order was involved in this, why hadn’t Stephane been informed of it? And the dead woman …
A silent cough. Darken looked up to find Barthi shifting from one foot to the other. “What do you want me to do with the samples? I—”
“Destroy them,” Darken said.
Barthi’s eyebrows crept up in surprise. “But aren’t they, you know … evidence or something?”
Darken gave him a forfeit-stare. “Right. Now.” His frigid tone left no doubt about the “or.”
Bartholomeus swallowed and waved his hands. “Kay, kay. Will do.”
He looked slightly sick as he poured the liquids together and then shoved them all into the vaporizing cupboard. A blast of magic and the liquid was all gone, together with the memories captured inside them. He turned with a questioning look. “Alright?”
Darken nodded his consent. “And Barthi … not a word of this to anyone.”
It wasn’t hard to figure out what they had seen. Even someone with less brains than Bartholomeus Farlow would be able to link the witnessed events to the reports about the Manor Creek murders, and Barthi was hardly stupid to begin with. Darken wasn’t such a fool to think that Blayde wouldn’t one way or another learn about this, he was the ruling force in this territory after all, but apart from the Custodian, this matter was a concern of the Order—for now. There had to be reasons for what he had seen, and until he knew them, he didn’t want any of it to do the rounds.
The kiddo fiddled with an empty culture dish. “But, Darken—”
“If I hear that any of this has leaked, I will be back, and you will not like it.”
The words were mild, but there was an unmistakable threat in them, that made the younger man shiver as if he was hit by a frigid wind.
For the first time, Darken saw real fear in Barthi’s eyes. He tried to swallow the sudden bitter taste in his mouth. Another one who would be swept away by the destructive currents of his legacy. There were so few people in this world around who he felt like he could—at least partly—just be himself, but those were getting fewer and fewer the more the Order’s twisted games forced him to violate truth and trust.
With aching desperation, he wished Alex would appear and issue a prissy Alex-ish remark that would annoy the hell out of him, but also show him that it took more than some verbal snarls and glowing eyes to intimidate her.
He took a deep breath, said, “Thank you for the assistance, Bartholomeus,” and turned to the door, knowing he might not be welcome here again.
“Hey, Forfeit.”
Darken paused. Looked over his shoulder.
Barthi was giving him a shaky smile. “It was … well”—he puckered his forehead—“I wouldn’t say a pleasure”—his eyes went over to the empty projection area for a second and he shuddered involuntarily— “but as always a worthy challenge. You sure know how to keep my days from getting boring.”
He shook his head and pushed up his glasses. “Maybe next time you could bring something a little less … grueling. A nice pony farm scene or something. You know.”
Grateful for the attempt to bridge the gap that had opened between them, Darken inclined his head and said with all the self-irony he could muster: “We live to serve.”
Barthi snorted and it sounded almost like himself again. “You live to cost me my reputation.”
Darken gave him a lazy smile. “For that, you would need one first.”
The kiddo sputtered. “I have one! A very good one, actually.”
“Keep telling yourself that. Oh, and if you are in need of someone else to keep your days from being boring, I suggest you ask Carlene. I’m sure she’d be only too eager to be of some assistance in that regard.”
The kiddo turned the color of an overripe tomato and started stuttering something incomprehensible. Before he could recollect his wits, Darken had left the room.
As soon as he was outside the smile slid from his face, replaced by a cold, vicious mask. So, the Order had its fingers in this? Interesting. And not only that. One of his caste had killed a surviving murder victim in cold blood. Wasn’t that just calling for an audience with his chapter’s Provost?
For the first time in years, he was almost looking forward to returning to the Order.
WHEN Darken returned to the entrance hall, Carlene was still fussing behind the reception counter, humming a melodious little tune to herself, her neckline once again chaste.
He slipped off his visitor’s bracelet and put it down on the table top. Distractedly, she reached for it, as he withdrew his hand. Her fingertips brushed against his skin.
A shiver went through her whole bo
dy and her head jerked up, her eyes wide open and unseeing. Magic snapped from her, enveloping both of them, a silver spiral that yanked them down.
Darken felt like he was falling backward into a long dark tunnel that shrunk around him. The world sucked him down, squeezed him, shook him. The room dissolved until all he saw was the augur’s face flowing in the misty darkness in front of him, her eyes completely white as if covered in clouds. Blind but seeing.
Her raspy voice seemed to come from everywhere, although it was only in his head. It was the mist rising from the land before evening fell, winding around his limbs with slick fingers and blanketing his soul with a cold, wet truth.
“A castle built on rotten beams,” she breathed, and he shivered deep inside his skin at the hollow sound. “The golden key will help answer the riddle, but if it is broken it will forever remain unsolved. Pain. So much pain. Tears turning into diamonds sparkling on a woman’s palm.”
Her face distorted into a tortured grimace. “Oh … the pain. So many cries, unheard in the darkness. Beware of the snake chewing on its own tail.”
She bared her teeth, her voice rising to a painful shriek. “Beware. BEWARE! She will bleed.” A moan escaped her lips. “Oh, great Mother, so much blood.”
Her eyes opened wider, the white in them sparkling with silver fire as she fixed her empty gaze directly on Darken. “Fly Raven. Run. Ruuuuun!”
She jerked back, and the room returned with a spin. Darken swayed. The girl swayed too and Darken grabbed her shoulders over the desk before she fell.
The augur was shaking in every limb. He guided her to the nearest chair and lowered her into it.
She looked up at him, eyes wide.
“I-I’m so s-sorry.” Her lips trembled. “Sometimes I still c-can’t control it. They say that’s the curse of a strong t-talent. And the threads of fate weave themselves s-so strongly around you.”
Her pale green eyes filled with tears. “If you want to report me—”
Darken raised a hand to disrupt her. His mouth was drier than a barren river bed and a horrible headache was flaming behind his forehead.