“Jayce, look, before we go any further I need you to be honest with me.”
She reached across and took my hand. Her green eyes looked deeply into mine. My heart practically leapt out of my chest. I suddenly realised what this was all about. Why Kate had been acting so weird, why she’d been angry with me. It all made perfect sense now. She’d been waiting for me to make a move, waiting for me to say something. Tell her how I felt, because she felt the same way.
It was so obvious now I thought about it. How had I not seen it earlier?
“Okay,” I began.
Kate looked at me expectantly. Her face was close to mine. Lips slightly parted. I swallowed, even though my mouth was dry. My heart was beating so loud I was sure she could hear it. It was now or never. I swallowed, then went for it.
“Well, um, so...I think I love you,” I said.
Kate blinked. She pulled back, letting go of my hand. She slapped her forehead with her palm.
“Oh. My. God. You are such an idiot,” she said.
She jumped up, grabbed her bag, grabbed her folder.
“What?” I said, dumbstruck. This was the last thing I’d expected.
Before I could do anything, the front door had slammed shut for the second time in less than half an hour as my other best friend walked out on me.
‘Feeling crushed’ would have been the understatement of the year.
I told you this Sunday was messed up.
But wait, because there’s more. Much more.
It wasn’t even midday yet.
*
“Jason, I think we might need to talk, love.”
“Mum, seriously - not right now.”
Chapter Thirty Two: Going Solo
I went to the garage. It was closed for Sunday but Mum had been hovering since Kate had left and I needed some head space. I had to figure out what was going on and what, if anything, I was going to do about it. I felt crushed and bewildered by Kate’s reaction to my declaration of affection and was still furious with Dee, but I tried to push both problems out of my mind. The hacker had offloaded some interesting information and I had to work out what it all meant.
I sat in Rob’s office with a pad of A4 paper and a pen, making notes, trying to figure out how things were connected. What all of this had to do with me.
I still had no idea what I was, but hopefully Victoria would find out. I was also still in danger from Section 19, and it was vital that I didn’t accidentally reveal myself. Using my supernatural strength against Wilson had been risky, but there hadn’t been any other option.
I wondered if Wilson survived the injection Victoria had given him. I wondered if Victoria really would have let him bleed out and die if I hadn’t intervened. It seemed ruthless of her, maybe even vindictive, but then again she and her brother had just been threatened at gunpoint.
Was it possible Vincent was the warlock that had bound Dee to me? If he was, why would he keep it from me? Unless he didn’t know it was me? I had been about a year old, so he wouldn’t recognise me if he’d done it. I question marked the idea, carried on sorting through what I’d learnt so far. Trying to put the pieces together.
What else did I have?
Something called Operation Blackstar, run by Section 19 around the end of World War Two. Three apparently immortal – or very slow ageing – beings. One of them now dead, killed around the same time the demon hound had appeared. The demon hound which according to Dee shouldn’t even be here because it came from another dimension. Then there was the attack on Section 19 that had happened a few hours later, with the attackers looking for some files. Could the files the MLF were after have been connected to the three (now two) immortals? I liked that idea, circled it.
One down, two to go? I added in the pad’s margin.
Could the immortals be vampires? Or a different type of supernatural creature? Were vampires even immortal at all? What about werewolves, demons, angels, djinn? How long did they usually live for? How much of what I knew from fiction and television was real and how much of it misinformation?
“Gee, Jayce,” I muttered to myself as I scribbled my questions and speculations, “If only you had a friend who knew all about the supernatural world and could help you out here. Oh, that’s right, you did, but you told him to get lost. Smart move.”
Dee thought the demon hound had been tracking him, in which case none of this was connected to me. It was all just a coincidence sparked by the fact that Dee had been bound to me. But why had he been bound? Was any of this anything to do with my missing father?
Would finding out about my father give me answers to what I was?
And just like that I was right back where I’d started: What was I, why had Dee been bound to me and how was any of it connected?
I groaned, realising I was going round in circles. It was early afternoon, and the questions and uncertainties just kept piling up. My friends were angry with me, I was still a freak, and I had no clue what was happening.
All I had were a bunch of puzzle fragments that didn’t fit together.
“Alright, to hell with this,” I muttered, “Time to get some answers.”
I checked train times on Rob’s office computer. I was wary of using my phone for anything, knowing that it was being monitored. I checked the addresses of the two other immortal pensioners the hacker had told me about. It was a three and a half hour journey to Christchurch and the trains on a Sunday were useless. High Wycombe, on the other hand, was two and a half hours, and the times fit. I could hotfoot it over there, try to talk to one of these people who’d been involved in Operation Blackstar and be back in the evening before anyone realised I’d gone.
At that moment, getting out of town and getting away from everyone seemed like a great idea. I’d got enough from what Rob paid me at the garage to cover the train fare, so I headed to the train station.
I was, as they say ‘On the case.’
Maybe this day doesn’t have to be so bad after all, I thought.
This might come across as the most improbable part of the story, but the trains were actually on time.
*
I had to change twice to get to High Wycombe and I made both connections with a few minutes to spare both times. It felt good to be on the move, to get away from everything for a few hours as I investigated.
It occurred to me that the hacker could have been lying or even setting a trap, but it seemed unlikely. As a trap it was a pretty feeble one, and why would anyone go to such lengths to make something like this up? ‘Sam’ had shown me screenshots of various documents to back up his or her assertions. Oddly enough, of all the people I’d encountered so far, Sam was the easiest to trust
Maybe it was because I hadn’t been forced to look into his eyes and wonder what actually lurked behind them.
The train arrived in High Wycombe and I flagged a taxi. The address the hacker had given took me to an unremarkable small house in an unremarkable small crescent.
I stood in front of the faded door. The television was on inside, so the man I was seeking was at home. I rang the doorbell. It buzzed angrily but there were no sounds of movement from inside. A second and third ring and still nothing. The curtains were partially drawn. I tried to peek through the gap but could only make out the bluish glow of the television.
I went around the side of the house through a small unlocked wooden gate and into an unkempt garden. Feeling like a burglar, I stepped onto the cracked patio at the back of the house. A large double glazed sliding door led into the living room. A man was slumped on the sofa, staring at the television with glassy eyes.
I rapped on the glass and the man turned his head to look at me, doing it so slowly that for a second I wasn’t sure he was moving at all. His pale eyes barely seemed to register me. He looked as if trying to comprehend what I was. Then with a visible sigh, he struggled up off the sofa.
He couldn’t have been older than forty but he moved like a hundred-year-old man. You could practically hear his join
ts creaking as he walked towards me. His face was blank. He wasn’t didn’t appear angry or afraid, or nervous.
He wasn’t visibly anything at all.
He pulled open the sliding door.
“Yes?” he said.
“My name is Jason Storm. I’m with Section 19. I need to ask you some questions about Operation Blackstar.”
I was taking a gamble here. I knew the man was connected to Section 19 and I hoped that merely mentioning them by name would be enough to get me through the door and get him talking. If not, I’d have a lot of explaining to do.
He didn’t ask to see any credentials, or challenge me in any way. He didn’t comment on my age. He just nodded, as if he’d been expecting this for some time.
“You’d better come in,” he said.
Chapter Thirty Three: The Cursed One
The inside of the house was the definition of drab. The walls were the colour of nicotine stains, and the place stank of smoke. Dust covered the floor and clung to every surface. The furniture was plain, functional, worn. There were no decorations, no posters or prints. The only indication someone lived there was an old television, overflowing ashtrays and a sink full of dirty dishes in the kitchen. It was grim. I guess a psychiatrist would have said the resident was suffering from clinical depression.
The man made us some tea after hunting through the dirty dishes to find some cups which he rinsed out. I took the tea but didn’t drink any. Who knew what bugs lived in this grimy little house?
He sat back down on the worn sofa and turned the television volume down. I sat in a ragged sofa chair opposite him. As I sat down a balloon of dust sprang up around me, causing me to sneeze.
“Jason, did you say?” he asked after I’d finished sneezing.
“Yes.”
“I’m Paul. But you know that already. And you probably know my real name, the one from before.”
“That’s what I’m here about. We’ve misplaced some of our records, the ones about Operation Blackstar.”
“Misplaced records, you say.”
“Exactly.”
The man stared into his cup, his face still expressionless. Then he slowly opened up.
“It was a terrible thing we did, but there was no choice. No choice at all. We knew the consequences.”
His voice was weak and querulous, watery like the mug of tea he’d handed me.
“It was towards the end of the war, you see. The Second World War. It was a dreadful time. So long ago. So many dead. So many more who would die.”
“There was a shadow war being run by Section 19. We weren’t fighting with guns and planes and tanks. We were fighting with magic and supernaturals. Section 19 had recruited the greatest warlocks of the era. Three of us. Three of us to fight against the Nazi’s supernatural war machine.
“And we were losing. Badly. The Germans had a far better understanding of mystical forces. They had spent years prior to the war developing machines designed to use the source of magic. To build weapons more powerful than anything ever created. They had an army of demons on their side, a strike force which slaughtered thousands of men. They had mystical spies who could view the allies’ plans, no matter how hard we tried to shield them.
“Do you know what the first rule of magic is?”
“A warlock can never use magic to take a life,” I said, remembering what Vincent had told me.
“That’s the first part, yes. The Nazis had found a way around this ‘problem’ as they saw it. They trained warlocks, and witches, to cause immense death and destruction, fanatics who would willingly become cursed ones. One-use weapons capable of horrors beyond imagining. They’d enslaved an army of demons and were ready to win the war with a huge mystical attack that would have decimated our troops.
“Can you understand? Thousands of people were dying every day and many more were yet to come. The camps, my god the camps. We could observe them remotely using scrying spells. We knew what was happening.”
“We formed a desperate plan to cut off the Nazi’s mystical power - to cut off all mystical power. It was an evil thing we did, make no mistake, but it was the only way. If we hadn’t, the war would have been lost, and who knows how long the madness of the Third Reich would have lasted.
“We worked feverishly for months. Nothing like it had ever been attempted before. Even with the three of us working together it seemed an impossible task. Something that could never – that should never – be done. To close the gates to the magic realm, Arcadia. Cut magic off at the source and lock the demon army away for good. Reduce the Nazi’s mystical forces – all mystical forces - to almost nothing overnight. If Arcadia was cut off, the power wouldn’t be there for anyone to harness. Magic wouldn’t go away completely, but it would become much less effective. The difference between a nuclear bomb and a hand grenade.
“It was the only way.”
His face kept contorting into expressions of pain and regret as he relived the memories. His pale, watery eyes trembled as he spoke.
He paused again, “Do you know the other half of the first rule of magic?”
“A warlock can never take a life to fuel magic.”
“Yes. Yes indeed. The human soul, you see. There are few things with so much raw energy. And there’s no soul more powerful than a newborn’s. The Nazis were ready to do monstrous things to win. They were prepared to sacrifice babies to fuel their madness. But if we could close the source of magic off, even these sacrifices would be rendered next to useless. If the initial flame isn’t there, then there’s no use throwing gasoline on top.”
“The Nazis were preparing to do the unthinkable. We had to do the same. The spell we devised would permanently close the djinn realm off. In one fell swoop we would wipe out the Third Reich’s mystical power, levelling the magical playing field and locking away their demon army.
“But we needed raw power to make the spell work. The scale of it was phenomenal. Nothing of the kind had ever been attempted before. Nothing anywhere close. Do you understand? We needed raw power.”
The small, grimy room seemed to shrink around us. I guessed what was coming next.
“No,” I said in a horrified whisper, “You didn’t...”
“We did,” the man nodded, “to save millions. It was the only way.”
The oppressive atmosphere in the squalid room, the presence of this strange little man and the understanding of what he’d done all combined to make my stomach churn. I felt bile rising in my throat.
“You sacrificed a newborn baby,” I whispered, “To fuel the magic.”
“Not one. One wouldn’t have been enough.”
He paused again.
“It took three to make the spell work.”
I ran into the garden and threw up.
*
The man remained sitting in the living room as I regained control of my stomach. I crouched down as the full horror of what he’d done gripped me. I tried to wrestle with the moral complexity, but my mind reneged. Three innocent lives, three newborn children murdered to save millions. I couldn’t take it in. It was too awful to comprehend.
I wanted to be as far away from this grim little house and this broken man as possible, but I knew there were more questions to ask. I squatted, shivering in the cold, trying to build up the nerve to go back inside and continue the conversation with a baby killer.
I stood up but my legs felt like lead. I stepped away from the splatter of puke on the grass.
The man slowly got up and stood in the doorway.
“We had no choice,” he said, “and we all paid the price.”
“What happened?” I asked, wiping my chin, “After you’d cast the spell?”
“It worked,” the man said, “The djinn realm was locked off from ours. Hitler’s mystical forces were reduced to bitter ashes overnight. So were ours. So were the whole world’s. It was impossible to travel to Arcadia anymore. It was impossible to draw out the mystical energy there. We won, and we became cursed to an eternity of knowing
what we’d done.”
I squatted on the cold grass, unable to look at him.
“Except it isn’t eternal. One of you was murdered ten days ago.”
From the corner of my eye, I saw his head jerk.
“Impossible,” he replied.
“It’s true. That’s what brought me here.”
“Who?” the man asked.
“Robert Maugham.”
“That must be the name they gave to Harry. We were separated after the war, sent to live in different towns and forgotten. Left to sit and rot and watch the centuries go by.”
“And now one of you is dead.”
“Are you absolutely sure?” he asked.
“Yes.”
I stood up and turned to face the man. The monster. The hero. The baby killer. The saviour of millions of lives.
I looked him dead in the eye and saw an emotion other than overwhelming regret and sadness.
I saw fear.
Chapter Thirty Four: Enter the Demon
“This is bad,” the man muttered, half to himself, “this is very, very bad.”
“Explain it to me.”
“Someone is trying to undo the spell we cast. Someone is trying to bring down the wall between our world and the other one. And if that happens...”
He didn’t need to finish the sentence. A demon army trapped on the other side. Waiting for seventy years to attack.
“How is that possible?”
“It must be a soul blade. That’s the only thing that could kill one of us. It sucks all the magic out of a warlock, or even a former warlock like myself. If all three of us were killed, the spell we cast would be broken. The wall would come down. The demons on the other side will be more powerful than ever. All that energy trapped behind the barrier, waiting to explode back into our world. I can’t begin to imagine the consequences.”
His lip trembled.
“You have to stop this. You have to protect me. You have to protect Marian.”
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