Reality Bites (16 page)

But all this, he was aware, was, for him at least, just a distraction.  In his off hours, his brain was working overtime.  He was frantic to start the investigation again.

Ran-Kur had sent assassins after him and had caused a whole lot of trouble on the way.  Stiles wanted fervently to know why, and he wanted to nail the swine.  All this chasing vampires around the streets was just a stop-gap measure as far as he was concerned.  A crime had been, and was being, committed.  He was not quite sure what it was, well obviously there was attempted murder, and the mass slaughter of innocent people, but those were just the consequences of a far bigger crime, one that he could not quite put his finger on.  But he was determined; he would find out what the crime was and, if necessary, give it a name, then bring the perpetrator to justice.

Stiles’s thinking had been conditioned by twenty odd years at Scotland Yard, and he also shared with Tamar, a conviction that everybody was guilty of something.

But Tamar and Denny seemed happier now that they had decided on the course of action they were taking, as if they were relieved of a burden, and the chances of changing their minds was remote.  Tamar had said that perhaps the answer would come to them, if they stopped looking.  But in twenty-five years of police work, that had never happened once to Stiles.  You
had
to look; it was just how it worked.  Answers or criminals did not ever just drop into your lap.  Stiles personally had no case on record of a perp walking into his office and saying. ‘It’s a fair cop guv; I’m the man you want.’  (They often did not even say that, when you found them bending over the corpse with a bloody knife in their hand – or even after ten years in prison.)

Plenty of innocent crack-pots did this, but to date never the actual suspect or guilty party.

Stiles was forgetting of course, that he had left normality behind him quite a while ago.  The world he now inhabited did not follow the rules that his mind was imposing on it.  In other words, he was wrong, the answer
was
about to drop into their lap.

* * *

Denny was dreaming; he was vaguely aware that he had had this dream before.  It seemed important, he tried to concentrate, but it made little sense.

It made even less sense when he awoke and scribbled down a few notes before he forgot it.  There had been a talking beast of some kind, with antlers and a
crown
?

Hank? 
He wondered. Even with all he had seen, he had never come across talking animals, and there had been a medal – this was very familiar; he
knew
that he had dreamt this before. Also, there had been a knife – no, a sword, and it dripped with blood – hearts blood.  He knew this because of symbolism in the dream, which he could not quite remember, but he was quite certain of it, just as you are certain, in a nightmare that the monster is behind you, even though you cannot see or hear it.

He looked at his notes in confusion, they read thus: -

1, Animal – antlers – stag? – Deer?  (Royal)

2, Sword – hearts blood.

3, Medal – courage?

He scratched his head,
what the hell did it mean?
 As premonitions went, and he had no doubt that it was one, it was pretty vague.  At least the first one had been absolutely clear.  Then he remembered; it had not started that way.  The first few times, it had been just as mystifying as this was, it had taken several nights to take shape, but he had hardly slept lately.  This was only the second time that this dream had come to him.  Maybe he needed to sleep more, but if this was a message, then he needed to try to figure it out.  He had a nasty feeling that he should have been having this dream for a week or more, and should have figured it out by now.  He felt slightly guilty that he had not.  He manifested a cup of coffee and sat at his computer with the notes in front of him.

Tamar appeared behind him.  ‘Hi, what’s up?’

‘Can you just – leave me alone for a while?  I need to try to work something out. – Actually no, wait.’  He handed her the notes.  ‘Mean anything to you?’

She glanced at the notes.  ‘No, what does it mean?’

‘I don’t know.  Never mind, I’ll figure it out.’

She looked curiously at him and back at the paper.  ‘More dreams?’

‘Yes, how did you know?’

‘You made notes like this about the first one.’

‘Did I? I’d forgotten.  Actually, could you grab me some books? Um, ‘Allegorical Animals’ and, um – ‘Mystical Weapons’, there might be something in there.’

‘Okay.’  She fetched the books. ‘What’s this?’ she brushed his shoulders, and a silvery powder came off on her hands. ‘Dream dust,’ she said.  ‘Someone’s been
giving
you these dreams.’

‘That’s very – helpful of them. Although, it might be
more
helpful if they just sent an e mail.’

‘That’s magic folk for you; they delight in the vague and mysterious. Sure you don’t want any help?’

‘I’m sure.’

‘Okay, then, I’ll see you later.’  She went back out, leaving Stiles to sleep.

When she arrived back, three hours later, Denny still had not got anywhere, and it was time for his shift on the street.  Tamar suggested that perhaps he should carry on his research. But he said that he could do with a break, to clear his head and stretch his legs.  Stiles slept on.

Denny found himself going over the dream as he walked, going over each point until it no longer made any kind of sense at all, like when you repeat a word over and over until it loses all meaning.  It was frustrating the hell out of him, especially as he knew perfectly well that, as Tamar always said, the answer, when it came, would be obvious.  He took out his frustration on a bunch of vampires and decided to go home and get some sleep.

Denny dreamed.  The answer was there, right on the edge of his brain, tantalising him.  The earlier research he had done was floating on the surface of his unconscious mind, connecting the dream images together.  The answer was there, just out of reach.

He woke with a start and leapt up to the bookshelf.

‘Eureka?’ asked Tamar.

‘Not yet,’ he replied. ‘I just need to check in “Mystical Animals”.’

‘What’s going on?’ asked Stiles, appearing, bleary eyed.

‘Shhh,’ said Tamar.  There was a long silence, except for the swishing of pages.

‘Aha,’ said Denny, triumphantly.

‘What?’ they both said, excitedly.  ‘What is it?’

‘I have found a way to kill gods,’ said Denny, dramatically.  This was greeted with a stunned silence.

‘You’re kidding!’ said Stiles, eventually.

‘H – how?’  Tamar had found her voice.

‘Denny pushed to the book toward them. ‘The Purple Hart!’ he said, ‘a mythical deer whose blood is the only substance that can kill a god.’

‘Surely that’s the Golden Hind?’ said Stiles after a moment’s thought.

Tamar laughed. ‘That was Homer for you,’ she said.  ‘He used to do that a lot – change the names to protect the innocent.  You know what Hercules was
really
called? It was …’

‘I thought Homer was before even your time?’ interrupted Denny.

‘Oh he was, but I’ve heard all about him, from people who knew him, you know.’

‘Are you saying that this thing, whatever it’s called, is
real?
’ asked Stiles, feeling that they were getting off the point.

‘It must be,’ said Tamar, that’s why he was having the dream, it was a message.’

‘So how come, if you can kill a god this way, you didn’t find this before?’

‘I didn’t know what I was looking for,’ said Denny.

Tamar was reading the text. ‘This was thousands of years ago,’ she said.  ‘How are we supposed to find one now.’

‘Him,’ corrected Denny.  ‘There’s only one.’

‘Okay, how are we supposed to find
him?
’

Denny shrugged.  ‘A summoning maybe?  What does it say?’

‘It says – go to page ninety-seven – typical!’

Page ninety-seven turned out to be an index.  Denny found the heading – ‘Questing for mythical beasts’.

When Tamar heard this, she groaned.  ‘Not another quest.’

Stiles looked from one to the other, perplexed at their downcast faces.  ‘What?’ he said. ‘What?’

Part Two: The Quest

~ Chapter Twenty ~

F
irst, they had to find a witch.

‘No problem,’ said Tamar, ‘we’ve already found one.’

‘Not just any old witch,’ said Denny.  ‘According to this, we have to find “The old Witch of the Caves”, whoever she is.’

‘Where do we find her?’ asked Stiles.

‘It doesn’t say,’ said Denny.  ‘It’s written as if the reader should know.’

‘Well,’ said Tamar.  ‘Most of these old books were written by witches, for witches.  So a witch ought to know.’

‘Okay, okay, you win,’ said Denny.  ‘You go and ask her.  Now, we have to decide who is going on this quest.’

‘Aren’t we all going?’ asked Stiles.

‘No,’ said Tamar.  ‘I’m going on my own – someone has to stay here and carry on the fight.’

‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ argued Denny.  ‘If the last quest we were on is any guide, you’ll get into trouble on your own.  Trouble that you might not be able to get out of.’

This was inarguable.

‘And, anyway,’ continued Denny, ‘who says it has to be
you
that goes?’

‘I just assumed.’

‘Yes – well, I have a few powers now too.’

‘Yes, but I’m still more used to this sort of thing than you are.’

‘Well, whatever.  Whichever one of us goes, I think Jack should go too.  He has to stay with one of us and getting him away from vampire central might not be a bad idea right now.’

Tamar looked dubious.  ‘I don’t know. The quest might be dangerous, especially for a mortal.’

‘
I
survived.  Besides, I think he
wants
to go.’

‘I’m standing right here you know?’ said Stiles.  ‘And yes I do want to go.’ 

‘
But not with you,
’ he added to himself.

‘Okay, so I think we should
all
go,’ said Denny, giving Stiles the uneasy feeling that he had read his mind.  ‘At least as far as the witch, the old witch in the cave I mean, after all we haven’t even found out what it’s all about yet – what we have to do.’

‘What about him?’ said Stiles, indicating the bottle in which they had trapped Peirce.

‘You think we should take
him?
’ said Denny, incredulously.

‘I don’t mean we should let him out,’ said Stiles.  ‘I just think we should take the bottle with us, to keep an eye on it. We don’t want him getting out while we’re gone, do we?’

Denny agreed.  ‘He might even come in handy,’ he said.

‘Only if we have to throw somebody to some lions,’ said Tamar, sourly.  ‘Once we let him out, we’ll never get him back in there.  He’s not like a Djinn. Okay,’ she added, ‘let’s go find a witch.’

* * *

‘You’re a
witch
?’ gasped Stiles.

‘What, you were expecting a hump, warts, skin like sandpaper?’ said Cindy acidly.

‘No, of course not!  But you’re just so – so glamorous.’

‘Hmm, not as good as “beautiful” or “ravishing” but it’ll have to do.’

Since Cindy was standing in Tamar’s company, her considerable attractions had quite a bit of competition.
 And, anyway, Stiles was not used to, nor any good at giving compliments.

‘Can we come in?’ he asked.

Cindy hesitated.

‘We don’t have to,’ said Tamar.  ‘Neutral ground?’

‘Um, don’t we need to be private?’ ventured Stiles.

‘It’ll be fine,’ said Tamar hastily.  The witch was clearly nervous enough.

The three of them agreed to go to the “Dangling Prussian” around the corner.  Denny would be gutted that he had missed it.  They had decided not to all descend on her at once, and, judging from how skittish she was, it had been the right decision, but it had been a long time since Denny had sat in a beer garden in the sun.

Cindy disappeared into the house and emerged with a jacket and a fresh coat of lipstick.  She nodded to them. ‘Okay.’

‘I know what you want,’ Cindy said, when Stiles came back with the drinks – two diet cokes and a large Brandy.  Stiles looked impressed at this evidence of witchly power; Tamar waited.

‘Oh there’s no mystery,’ said Cindy, ‘I had a visit from Hecaté.  I can’t help you.’

‘I don’t think you
do
know what we want,’ said Tamar.  ‘Hecaté …’

‘She told me,’ said Cindy.  ‘And she told me not to help you.’

‘No, you see, we
did
want Hecaté’s help, but now …’

‘You are searching for the Purple Hart,’ Cindy told her.

 Tamar sat back in her chair. ‘Okay, so you
do
know what we want,’ she admitted.

‘How did she know?’ asked Stiles curiously.

‘Hecaté?’ said Cindy.  ‘She
is
a goddess you know.’

‘Why would she tell you not to help us?’ asked Tamar.

‘The Hart’s blood can kill gods can’t it?  Isn’t that why you want to find it?’

‘To destroy Ran-Kur.’

‘Hecaté knows this, but you see, technically Hecaté is also a god.  Surely you can see why she would not want such a weapon in your hands?’

‘But we have no wish to harm Hecaté,’ said Stiles.

‘No?’ said Cindy.  ‘All right, say I believe you?  I’m sure you mean it, but Hecaté told me that the last time a mortal got hold of the Hart’s blood six gods died before he could be stopped.  Or did he just run out of blood?  The point is, he got carried away – the power went to his head; it’s too dangerous.  Besides, she is my goddess, and she has forbidden me.’

Stiles sighed.  ‘Please think about it,’ he said.  ‘Ask her again.  Ran-Kur will kill me if we don’t stop him, and the darkness is spreading.  How long do you think
you
can escape?’

‘My goddess will protect me,’ said Cindy, uncertainly.  She looked at Stiles; her resolve was faltering.  ‘So, you are the one?’ she asked.