Prison of Hope (25 page)

Robert glanced down at the gun, and I knew by the look in his eyes that he wouldn’t be able to pull the trigger. He looked up at me. “Please.”

I crouched down beside his head, making sure to avoid the expanding puddle of darkness that crept out from under him. “Did Chloe plead when you took her? Did she beg for you to let her go?”

Robert’s expression told me I was right.

I picked the gun up. “You terrified a young girl just so you could make it easier to get Cronus free.” I placed the gun in his hand and pointed it at his temple. “Go fuck yourself.” And then I stood and made my way out of the house, leaving him to die.

I caught up with everyone else outside, just as rain began to fall in steady streams. Tommy and Sky were speaking with Kurt and Petra, who’d completed their check of the area.

“There’s nothing there,” Petra said. “No scents or anything. I’m not sure how that’s even possible. Even if a person could remove their scent, there should be the scent of the gun, the powder—something.”

Everyone was silent for a moment. Someone had killed the people in the cabin but hadn’t left any scent. I didn’t have a good answer to how that was possible.

“How can we be sure they’ve gone?” I asked.

“We can’t,” Kurt said. “We’ve checked all of the sniper
positions
, and there’s no one there, but someone could still be out there. What would you do?”

“I’d run,” I said. “The second I was done, I’d get as far from here as possible. You don’t stick around.”

“My guess is they didn’t either,” Kurt agreed.

“Let’s go search the cellar,” I said as I tried very hard not to turn to look at the trees around me. The mystery of the scentless assassin could wait until we’d finished.

The five of us moved around to the rear of the building. Beneath the broken windows, beyond which the dead lay inside the house, were two cellar doors. There was no lock or chain
on t
he rusty handles bolted to each door, so I pulled them open and peered down into the darkness.

“Death,” Tommy growled. “There’s a light switch,” he
continued
and touched something just inside the gloom, bathing everything beyond in a soft glow.

I was first into the cellar, taking the steps down slowly, just in case some of Robert’s friends happened to be around, hiding while the others were slaughtered above, but the cellar was empty.

Tommy, Petra, and Kurt walked over to a sizeable cupboard at the far end of the cellar, and Tommy and Kurt each pulled one door opened, revealing the corpse inside, which fell out onto the floor with a loud thud.

We all quickly surrounded the body, and I turned it onto its back, revealing Sarah Hamilton. She looked very different from when I’d last seen her standing above me in the car park of Kurt and Petra’s bar. Her skin was gray and stretched tight against her bones, giving her face an almost skeletal appearance. She wasn’t just dead; she’d been drained. I’d seen that kind of thing once before, on victims of vampires who had gone too far, but here there were no obvious bite marks.

“How did Cronus do this?” Sky asked as she lifted Sarah’s thin, bony arm. A ring on the dead witch’s thumb fell off and rolled across the floor.

There was a tear in her blouse, just above her stomach, stained with a tiny amount of blood. I lifted the fabric, exposing her sunken ribcage, along with a stab wound.

“There’s no blood,” Tommy said as everyone stared at the wound. A blackness on the skin around it stopped after a few inches, forming a perfect ring of darkness. “How can that
be possible?”

I moved away from the body and searched the cupboard, looking for the dagger that had killed Sarah.

When the cupboard yielded nothing, we searched around the rest of the cellar. It was a sizeable room, with a double bed and some more cupboards. A small TV sat on top of a chest of drawers at the end of the bed. Black carpet had been laid on the floor, and two electric heaters were turned on, keeping the room warm. The space had clearly been designed to house someone for a while. There was even a small fridge in the corner; I opened the door and found it stocked with milk, bottles of water,
and variou
s packages of ham and chicken. A half-empty loaf of bread sat on top.

“There’s a toilet back here,” Tommy called from beside the stairs. “Shower too.”

“Cronus stayed here,” Sky said, picking up the top book on the bedside cabinet and showing me the cover. It was about the last twenty years of world history.

There were also an assortment of British tabloid newspapers, some German newspapers too, and a few porno mags. All in all, it wasn’t the classiest table of literature I’d ever seen, but then what do you get the man who’s been kept in another realm for several millennia?

“Well, he certainly had fun,” I said.

“So, where was he meant to be taken?” Kurt asked. “Robert said Cronus killed Sarah and ran off. What would he have to fear from a witch and a bunch of Vanguard thugs?”

Eventually, I discovered the dagger underneath a small chest of drawers, lodged at the back. I pushed the furniture aside slightly and retrieved the weapon.

The dagger had a five-inch blade, which curved slightly from the wide base to the considerably thinner tip. A thin groove sat in the blade, moving from tip to hilt, where a small black hand guard sat. The hilt was black with red and white runes carved into it, and a small spike sat at the bottom. I hefted the knife in one hand. It felt much heavier than a blade that size should have, although maybe I was imagining things, giving weight to what the dagger had been used for.

I unscrewed the spike and glanced inside the hilt, tipping it up and allowing the small vial concealed inside to drop out onto my palm. The small oblong object was about two inches long and had barely the same circumference as a pencil. It was green and gold, with no obvious markings. On the top sat a small, razor-sharp spike with curved grooves carved into it.

“She was stabbed with this,” I said and showed everyone
the dagger.

“Oh shit,” Sky said; the rest appeared slightly confused about what I was showing them.

“What is it?” Tommy asked.

“It’s a dwarven dagger,” I said. “It’s called a Kituri dagger, and it’s probably a few thousand years old, although it could be even older. It’s named after one of the dwarven gods. The god
of chaos.”

“What does it do?” Petra asked.

I showed them the small vial. “This is used to cut someone and collect their blood. It’s then placed inside the dagger.” I unscrewed the top of the vial and tilted the bottle as if to pour a little blood onto my hand, but it was empty. I pushed the vial back inside the hilt of the dagger and closed it. “The runes carved into the dagger transfer the life force of someone stabbed with the dagger to the person whose blood is inside the vial. O
nce the vic
tim is dead, the blood in the vial, and that in the body
of th
e victim, evaporates.

“The dwarfs used to settle blood feuds and serious crimes by having two champions fight. Inside each blade would be the blood of the person they were fighting for. As the fights continued and both sides sustained wounds, their masters or the
person
they were fighting for, would get stronger or weaker accordingly. Eventually, one champion would die, and his entire life force would travel to his opponent’s master, making him strong enough to kill his rival without too much trouble. It was used in matters of war mostly, because only two people had to die to settle the conflict and stop the fighting. Occasionally, it was used during criminal proceedings too.”

“Why hide it? Why not just take it with him and use it himself?” Tommy asked.

“It’s not a quick way to get energy,” I explained. “The runes inside the vial and the blood have to be allowed to infuse for several days.”

“But Cronus definitely stabbed her with this . . . blade?”
Kurt asked.

I nodded. “Anyone killed with this ends up looking like”—I pointed to the body on the floor—“that.”

“Are knives like this rare?” Tommy asked.

“Very. I know of only five people who owned one. Zeus—or now Hera, Merlin, Hades, Galahad as the ruler of Shadow Falls, and Pandora. There are probably a few more out there I don’t know about, but there can’t be too many. The dwarfs weren’t exactly keen on handing them out to people.”

“So why hide it?” Petra asked.

“My guess is he either threw it aside and that’s where it landed, or he figured if he couldn’t use it, no one else should be able to. He was probably in a hurry, didn’t really have time to think things through.”

“How’d Pandora get one?” Sky asked.

“No idea. But I saw it in her possession a few centuries ago.”

“One of these days you’ll have to tell me what happened between the two of you,” Sky said.

I ignored her probing suggestion and removed the vial for a second time, placing both it and the dagger on the table beside me. It was too dangerous to leave it intact. The link between the dagger and owner of the vials contents was severed once the blood had evaporated, but someone who knew what they were doing could always use it again.

“Do you know whose that is?” Tommy asked.

“I wish I did,” I said softly and used my necromancy to try to find Sarah’s spirit. If I could find her, I could ask what happened. “She didn’t fight,” I informed everyone after a few seconds. I can feel her there, but I can’t interact.”

“I’ll try,” Sky said and dropped to her knees, silently using her own necromancy to get the answers we needed.

“You still can’t talk to spirits then?” Tommy asked.

“I can sense them easily enough,” I explained. “I know
Sarah’s
there, but I can only contact those who died fighting. Not sure if I’ll ever be able to speak to those who didn’t.”

“Sarah was supposed to kill Cronus,” Sky said. “She was meant to take him somewhere that would have ensured his magic was back to full capacity, and then use the dagger on him. She went to a lot of trouble to make him believe they were allies. I doubted he considered they’d go to the trouble of getting him out of
Tartarus
just to kill him. But when Cronus saw the dagger, and knew exactly what it was, he panicked, killing her in t
he process.”

“Where was she going to take him?” Tommy asked, but then his mobile phone rang, so he left us alone and exited the cellar to take the call.

“Not sure; somewhere in England,” Sky continued, still kneeling on the floor. “She was meant to get him to London and receive new instructions from the person employing her.”

“We have a problem,” Tommy said as he almost jumped down the stairs. “That was Olivia. Hera and friends are in the
UK. The
y had to get clearance from the LOA, so Olivia was
notified
. They’re staying in a mansion in London.”

“That can’t be a coincidence,” Kurt said.

“Who employed Sarah?” I asked Sky.

“That’s a bigger problem,” she said as she got back to her feet. “There’s a weird mental lock on her spirit. It’ll take days to get through it. When you ask about the plan, she just keeps sprouting words and names—krampus, Mara Range, and a bunch of others that belong to our dead Vanguard friends above. But one name popped up that I found interesting: Brutus.”

“That makes no sense,” I said. Brutus was the king of
London
. Brutus had made it difficult for any representative of Avalon or its allies to access London without his permission.
London
, like Shadow Falls, was exempt from Avalon’s control. “Why would Brutus want all of this to happen? He’s a bit of a pain in the ass to Merlin, but for the most part he’s an ally of both Avalon and Hades, and while he’s certainly no friend of Cronus, I can’t
imagine
he’d want him dead.”

“Looks like we’re off to London, then,” Tommy said.

Petra had been searching Sarah’s body and now found something interesting. A small mark was visible on Sarah’s hip, about the size of a pound coin. It was a little yellow crown with a tiny green leaf behind it.

A deep pit of worry settled inside me, and everyone in the room fell into a hushed silence.

“Hera,” Tommy whispered. “The mark of Hera.”

All of Hera’s employees who worked in the upper echelons of her organization bore her mark; it was a way to control everyone who was loyal to her. Sarah had evidently been considered a loyal worker of Hera’s.

Everything had just gotten a lot more complicated.

CHAPTER
25

O
n returning to the hotel, Tommy had informed Kasey of her future travel plans. That meant that I felt really uncomfortable about being in the same room as them both as they argued about whether she was going to be sent back to London to her mum. Tommy wanted her back home; Kasey wanted to be with her dad and try to help.

I left them to their increasingly loud discussion and went for a walk around the floor as my mind drifted back toward what had happened in the last few hours. I hadn’t thought about it until we’d all gotten back to the hotel, but Mara and Sarah had certainly known one another, even if they hadn’t been friends.

I opened the door to Tommy’s room again, just as Kasey told her dad she would rather walk home and slammed the bathroom door closed. Tommy used his thumbs to massage his temples.

“Anyone searched the ninth floor?” I asked.

“The one the witches stayed on?” he shrugged. “No idea.”

I eyed the bathroom door. “Just tell her we’ll take her with us,” I suggested. “Hades is sorting out a private jet, so she doesn’t have to go back with everyone else and gets to stay with you. She’s just worried about you.”

“I know,” he whispered. “But . . .”

I waited for him to continue. When he didn’t, I said, “You don’t know how to finish that argument, do you?”

“No,” he admitted. “I’m her dad; she should do as she’s told.”

I laughed. “Yeah, because you’re such a rule follower. Face it, you have a stubborn daughter who takes after her stubborn parents.”

“Go check the witches’ rooms,” he said with a sigh that made me smile.

I left Tommy to his parenting troubles and took the staircase up to the ninth floor. After opening the door, I found myself in a small foyer with the lift doors opposite me and a hallway door to either side. Each door had a plaque depicting the room numbers that were beyond.

I removed my phone from my pocket and dialed the reception desk. My call was answered by the hotel manager who had tried to calm Mara down after she accused me of wanting to kill her. His voice reminded me that I had a bottle of scotch in my bedroom that I hadn’t even gotten around to opening.

“Mr. Garrett,” he said in a tone that suggested he hoped I wasn’t going to cause trouble. “How can I help you?”

“Has the ninth floor been cleaned yet?”

There was a silence as he probably considered whether this was information he could give me. “No,” he said eventually. “That floor is not due to be cleaned for a few hours.”

“Can you tell me what room Mara was in?”

“I’m sorry, sir, but that’s not information I can give out.”

I really didn’t want to be a dick, but needs must. “Look, you know that Mara’s daughter was kidnapped last night, and that she was brought back safely, but I figured I’d take a look at the room just in case there’s any
incriminating
evidence about what happened to her. No one wants what happened to her to get out. Maybe a keen but disinterested set of eyes can spot something so it can be removed before the cleaners get here.”

The manager paused for a moment once again. “Room 907,” he almost whispered. “This goes nowhere.”

“Promise. I just want a look around. Can someone bring me up a key card?”

“Give me two minutes,” he said and hung up.

True to his word, by the time I’d looked around the corridor for anything out of the ordinary and then made my way to
room 90
7, the manager appeared, handing me a key card. “This never happened. I’m only doing this because something weird is happening here. The key will access every room on this floor.”

I waited until the manager had left the corridor before using the key on the door, which opened without incident. I’d been concerned that the witches might have used runes to rig the doors to explode or some such, but doing so would probably have given them more attention than they’d wanted. So after a quick check, I figured the door was safe to open.

I stepped into Mara’s room and immediately noticed how tidy everything was. For a room that hadn’t been cleaned by the hotel staff, someone had certainly made sure that the room was spotless. Freshly polished surfaces gleamed, and even after checking everywhere I could think of, there was nothing to say that anyone had even stayed in the room for the previous few days.

I left Mara’s room, then proceeded to check every room along the corridor, searching the bedrooms and bathrooms for . . . well, to be honest, I wasn’t sure—anything out of the ordinary. Sarah and Mara had known one another, and despite Sarah’s dislike of the other woman, I doubted that their being in the same place at the same time, while Cronus was escaping Tartarus, was
coincidental
.

I got through eight of the sixteen rooms before I found my first evidence of something weird. I had no idea whose room it had been, but while looking through the bathroom I discovered the bathtub had a tidemark-like ring around it. It was an odd substance that seemed to catch the light in just the right way as to make it invisible to the naked eye. But when not quite looking directly at it, it was apparent there was something not quite right.

I touched the substance with a rolled up piece of toilet paper. It felt a little slimy through the paper, but after a few seconds the part of the paper I’d used appeared to vanish. I held the paper up to the light, the normal white color changed slightly as I looked at it from different angles. I went back to the bedroom, looking for something else to use, and grabbed a pen from the bedside table, taking it back into the bathroom and rubbing the blue lid along the shimming mass in the bath, ensuring that the lid was fully coated in the substance.

It took a few seconds, but the lid simply disappeared from view. My mouth dropped open in shock, and I found myself quickly tapping where the lid would be to ensure it was still there. The lid was still attached to the pen, but it was now almost invisible to the naked eye. I moved the pen slightly, and the movement made the lid visible for a short time, but once the pen ceased moving, it became concealed once more.

I removed my phone from my pocket, without taking my eyes off the pen, and dialed the manager. “Whose room is 914?” I asked him.

There was no pause this time, no concern over whether he was doing the wrong thing. He’d already given me the keycard; he could hardly say no now. “Emily Rowe’s.”

“Thanks,” I said and hung up. So, Emily
was
involved. I found it hard to believe that the rest of the witches could have brewed a potion in her bathtub without her knowledge. Potion making isn’t a stealthy pastime. It’s also not like the stories; there’s no eye of newt or such rubbish. It’s all about using items that have been placed in rune-marked, or magically enchanted containers. The contents take on the property of whatever the rune or enchantment might possess. The contents are then mixed with water or some other liquid. Hence baths and the like are the usual place for such things to be created. The idea is a bit like when someone makes a drink from concentrated fruit juice and puts water in to water down the flavor. Same with concentrated rune-enhanced liquid. It needs to be watered down, or it would be unstable at best, but incredibly dangerous at worst. Potions take a long time—months, if not years to get the concentrate right—which is why few people bother. Most people want a more immediate effect, and with potions if you get one of the ingredients wrong, or the rune even slightly incorrect, you risk either ruining everything or killing everyone.

I dialed Tommy, who answered immediately. “Apparently, Kasey will be joining us on our journey back to England,”
he said.

“That was quick, but you can tell me later. Get to room 914. I’ve got something to show you.” I hung up and went back into the room, opening the door so that Tommy could get in.

“Hey, Nate,” Kasey said, almost skipping through the door a few minutes later.

“I hear you got your own way,” I said with a smile.

“I’m an idiot, that’s why,” Tommy said as he appeared in the doorway. “I hope this is as thrilling I’m expecting.”

I passed him the pen.

“A pen? Be still my beating . . .” He stopped for a second. “What the fuck?”

“Dad!” Kasey snapped.

“Sorry, Kase, but what did you do to this pen, Nate?”

I told them about what I’d found in the bathroom.

“A chameleon potion,” Tommy said. “Wow, that’s pretty heavy stuff. Certainly not the kind of thing witches should have. For a start, you need an enchanter to make the container.”

“Couldn’t they make it themselves?” Kasey asked.

I shook my head. “Rune-marked stuff like this needs to be done by someone with a lot of magic to use, like a sorcerer, or someone who works with runes exclusively, like an enchanter. Witches usually get a friendly enchanter to make the containers for them. The magic used is very powerful; any witch doing it would have used up a lot of energy. Much like Sarah and her
effete
spell. Witches could do this if they didn’t care about their own life.”

“Dying for the cause,” Tommy said with a shake of his head. “They’d have to be fanatical. Or insane. Or more probably, both.”

“This is how Cronus escaped,” I imparted. “The bath’s tide line shows it was easily deep enough to soak some clothes in. Give them to Cronus after he escaped, and he could get out of the compound without being detected. So long as he moved slowly and carefully.”

“He was on the bus the witches took,” Kasey said.

I nodded. “Probably hiding under it. He stays still and no one sees him. Which is why Mara and the witches were in such a hurry to leave the compound. If this potion was good enough, it would hide Cronus’s scent and any heat from his body too. It also explains why Petra found only the scent of the gun back at the cabin in the woods. My guess is whoever shot the Vanguard soldiers wore clothes and had a gun that were covered in this stuff too.”

Tommy took a deep smell of the pen’s lid. “Yeah, there’s nothing here; it’s like it’s been removed. Even a normal pen has scents on it from those who used it before, or even from just the ink. This has nothing.”

“This means that Mara and the witches were involved with Sarah and the Vanguard. It was all one big job,” I said.

Kasey made a horrified noise and placed a hand over her mouth. “They knew about Chloe.”

I nodded. “Mara used her own daughter as bait. I doubt any of the kids knew—too much uncertainty. As the coven leader, Mara would have to have been involved; it’s probably why, when we were out searching for Chloe, they were up here scrubbing the whole place clean. They couldn’t risk anything being found once they’d left.”

“They didn’t do a great job,” Tommy pointed out.

“That’s the trouble with lots of people cleaning in a hurry; someone always leaves something.”

“I’m surprised by Emily’s involvement,” Tommy said. “
Actually
, ‘saddened’ is a better word. I figured she’d be less inclined to help someone hurt a young girl just to create a
distraction
.”

I didn’t say anything, but I echoed Tommy’s feelings. I’d thought Emily was better than that; I’d thought she would do anything for those kids. She certainly came across as someone who cared about them. But I guess I’d been wrong, and she was lying. Despite the fact that I barely knew her, I’d liked Emily, and I couldn’t help but feel stung by the revelation.

“So, what do we do with this information?” Tommy asked. “After we call Hades and let him know about how Cronus escaped, I mean.”

“The witches will be on their way back to England, and apart from some leftover potion in a bathtub, there’s very little
connecting
them to what Sarah and the Vanguard did. I say we notify Olivia, get her to keep an eye on them while we go get Cronus back. We can deal with the witches after that.”

My mobile rang. “Hey, Nate,” Sky said, “We’re ready to go when you are.”

“We’ll make our way up to you. How are we getting to
London
? I assume we’re flying.”

“We’re taking the Blackhawk.”

I could practically hear her smiling.

“Great,” I said, with all the enthusiasm of being told you w
ere about to
be repeatedly kicked in the bollocks, and hung up.

“From the way you sound, I guess we’re flying,”
Tommy said.

The word stuck in my throat a little: “Blackhawk.”

“A helicopter? Wow, how you doin’?” There was no mocking in his voice.

“You don’t like helicopters either?” Kasey asked.

I liked helicopters
even less
than airplanes. I’d crashed three times in a helicopter, twice from being shot down and the third time from someone trying to kill me while we were both on-board. I’d ascertained that while I disliked helicopters immensely, they appeared to actively hate me. “I need to go get myself some whiskey,” I said.