3 Gates of the Dead (The 3 Gates of the Dead Series) (30 page)
Read 3 Gates of the Dead (The 3 Gates of the Dead Series) Online
Authors: Jonathan Ryan
“You have no idea. My dad and I have been working for years to get this country club out of here.”
A skinny tanned man in a white golf hat walked up to us as we got out of the car. “Detective Brown?”
Jennifer forced a smile. “That’s me. Bruce, is it?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll take you to the altar. That’s where the huge hole is.”
Bruce walked us down the mounds. As we passed over the green of the ninth hole, he pointed to a mound about fifty feet in front of us. “The hole is up there. I found it a few weeks ago.”
“Could it have been made by a backhoe?” I asked.
“No,” Bruce said. “No tracks on the course. Nothing. Only thing we found is a ton of bare footprints. Some jokers from Denison University, probably. Little assholes like to come over here all the time and mess with us.”
He took us to the altar, and we climbed the hill where a large rectangular hole had been carved into the ground. Father Neal began to walk around the mound, muttering to himself.
“What else did you find here, Bruce?” Jennifer asked.
“Well, ma’am, we found a lot of what I thought was blood. But the police said it wasn’t. Just a red substance that looked a lot like blood.”
“So what did they say it was?” Jennifer pressed.
“They didn’t know, ma’am. But nothing else was amiss, so the police just chalked it up to a weird vandalism case.”
I bent down to touch the earthen edges. The smooth dirt shocked my senses as I stared into the hole. Energy seemed to flow from the opening, and the world spun. I backed up so that I wouldn’t fall into it, and began to hear whispers, though I couldn’t make out what they said.
“Anything else?” Jennifer asked.
“Nope. Good thing you came today. We’ve got a truck-load of dirt coming to fill this hole in tomorrow morning.”
“Thank you, Bruce,” Jennifer said. “Would you mind letting us look around?”
Bruce nodded. “Take your time. I want to check out the green for a minute.”
“Father?” Jennifer said as Bruce walked away.
Father Neal turned to us. “He was here. Buried right here. He should have been easy to find, but I never could. I’d been around this area so many times and never felt him.”
“How is that possible?” I asked.
“The magick of the Nephilim, I would guess. They drew me out. They drew out what I guard. And they found you, Aidan. They won this round. Now, we’re all in serious trouble.” He shook his head as he stared into the hole.
Jennifer rubbed her scar. “What I don’t get is who was sacrificed? If the blood wasn’t really blood, how did they finish the spell?”
Father Neal limped over. He went pale and swayed. “No, the red substance was not the blood of a human.”
“What?”
He gave me a grim smile as he bent down to the ground. “It’s blood of a type. The blood of someone who has erased all their humanity through magick and most certainly had to be a woman to complete the Three Gates.”
“But why would she sacrifice her own life?”
“None to sacrifice, Aidan. That’s the glitch in the system.”
“I don’t get it.”
Father Neal took a deep breath. “When someone goes far enough down the magickal path, they cease to be human. Even their blood changes. This woman sacrificed part of herself. She died in some way for her master, to serve her master.”
“Who is she?” I asked.
The three of us stood on the mound as we gazed over the golf course.
“That is the question, isn’t it?” Father Neal said as he leaned on his cane.
“What do we do next, Father?” Jennifer gripped my hand, and I pulled her in close.
“We watch, my dear. And we pray.”
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Coming Soon:
3 Gates Series Book II:
The Dark Bride
