The Adept Book 2 The Lodge Of The Lynx (6 page)

The priest had brought two fingers to rest lightly over the pulse-point in Helena’s wrist, and was speaking to her in a voice too low for Peregrine to make out the words, but his expression was serenely distant, almost as if he were listening to faraway music.

Even as enlightenment settled into acceptance in Peregrine’s mind, a greyish film seemed to pass in front of his eyes. It
was like looking through some sort of heavy, semi-transparent veil, like a shower curtain. Six weeks earlier, such a clouding of his vision would have terrified him—and
had
terrified him. Now, thanks to Adam, he knew what it meant, and what he had to do.

Blinking once, he leaned back in his chair, letting his eyelids droop behind his spectacles and bidding his vision focus through and beyond Helena. During the succession of slow, deep breaths that followed, the veil before his eyes began to take on the character of a ghostly overlay of images. Disregarding for the moment all concrete aspects of the room, he set himself to capture on paper the visual resonances of past events...

The light in the room was subdued now, filtered through the sheer inner curtains Adam had drawn. Peripherally aware that Peregrine had begun to sketch, Adam returned to the fireplace and cast an inquiring look in Christopher’s direction. The priest gave him a slight nod, and Helena also glanced up at him, looking far less anxious than she had before.

Taking his cue with a smoothness born of long practice, Adam reclaimed the prism from the mantel candlestick and sank down in the chair opposite his subject. Holding it by its transparent thread, he extended his hand so that the prism hung slightly above Helena’s eye-level. Its multiple facets caught the glow off the gas fire, fracturing the flickering amber light into rainbow glints of red, yellow, and green. The sparkling play of colors drew Helena’s gaze like a magnet.

“Now, this is your own crystal, Helena, so you know that there’s nothing particularly mysterious or frightening about it,” Adam said quietly, moving the thread of prism slightly between his fingers so that it twirled slightly. “It’s simply a focus, so that you can turn all your attention to one, single point. This is the way we distract your conscious mind so that gradually your unconscious mind, where dreams come from, can rise closer to the surface, and recall things in greater detail that you need to see.

“So I want you to focus all your attention on this crystal. Watch it turn and sparkle, watch how it catches the light. Let the crystal be the only thing in your vision, and listen only to my voice as all the background sounds outside recede and you focus completely on the crystal and what I am saying.”

Adam watched the movement of her eyes, locked already on the subtle flashing of the crystal, and shifted to more specific instructions in a low, conversational tone.

“That’s just fine, Helena. Just drift and let yourself relax. You’re quite safe and comfortable. Christopher is right here beside you . . .

“You haven’t been getting your rest of late, have you? You must be very tired. So tired... I imagine there’s nothing you’d like better right now than a little bit of sleep. Why don’t you let yourself go? Just relax, and let your eyelids droop . . . that’s right. You’re feeling warm and safe and drowsy . . . very, very drowsy . . . ”

By degrees the tension went out of Helena’s face and neck. Her eyes closed, and her breathing settled into a slow, regular rhythm. Adam lowered the pendulum and eased back in his chair, continuing to speak reassuringly of sleep and greater relaxation. When he was satisfied that his subject had achieved a sufficient level of trance, his suggestions began to shift more specifically to their needs.

“You’re doing very well, Helena. Just fine, in fact. You’re a very good subject. You can hear me quite clearly, can’t you?”

“Yes.” The girl’s response was a mere whisper.

“Very good,” Adam said in the same gentle but confident tone.

“Now, in one sense, you’re awake—fully aware of your present surroundings. But in another sense, you’re like someone sitting in a cinema, waiting to see a film. The film is a recording of the dream you had the night before last. In a moment I’d like to start the film running. Are you willing to watch the film and tell me what you see?”

“Yes.” The affirmative came after only a slight hesitation.

“Excellent,” Adam said with soft approval. “I’m going to start counting backwards from five now, just like you sometimes see on the screen before the actual picture begins. When I reach the number one, that will be the sign for
your
film to begin, and you’ll begin to describe everything you see on the screen. Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . .
one.”

Helena’s eyelids trembled, watching the inner memory unfold, and after a moment she drew a deep breath, eyes remaining closed.

“It’s this room, but different. There’s frost on the windows. The carpet is dull red, instead of blue, and the chairs have bare wooden arms. The people have all gone away, but they’ve left their shadows behind. The shadows are drifting in and out like ghosts—”

She broke off abruptly, a look of consternation furrowing her brow.

“It’s only a film,” Adam reminded her quietly. “You can turn it off anytime you want, but there’s nothing you see there that can do you any harm. Christopher and I are right here. You’re not afraid, are you?”

“A-a little,” she murmured.

“Then here, take my hand too,” he said, enfolding her free hand in his two, as Christopher had done with the first. “Now, you’re perfectly safe, with both of us here. So when you’re ready, I’d like you to go back to the film and continue telling me what you see. Will you do that for us?”

At her timid nod, he patted her hand reassuringly.

There’s a brave girl. Now, you mentioned something about shadows. Can you tell me what it is about these shadows that you find so frightening?”

Helena bit her lip. “They’re—so dark—like cutouts made from black cellophane. And they won’t keep to the walls. They keep coming out into the middle of the room. I can hear them whispering. They’re cruel. They want to break the things they have—“

This time the break in her voice was a small gasp of fear.

“That’s enough for now,” Adam said, glancing back at Peregrine, who was still sketching busily. “You needn’t be afraid. It’s time to turn off the film. When the lights come on, it will be as if you’ve moved into a different room—someplace where you feel safe and secure. What room would you like that to be?”

“My old room at home, in my parents’ house.”

“That’s where it will be, then,” Adam said confidently. “The lights are now on. What do you see?”

Helena was smiling again, relaxed. “My bed, with the quilt my grandmother made for me. All my dolls are lined up along the footboard.”

“That sounds like a wonderful, cozy place, Helena,” Adam said approvingly. “Why don’t you go lie down on the bed and have a little nap? Nothing will disturb you, and you’ll remember nothing of what you might hear. In a little while, I’ll give you a touch on the forehead and call you by name. At that point you will wake up feeling refreshed.”

Helena sighed and sank back in her chair with a small wriggle, like a child nestling under the blankets. Satisfied that she was comfortable, Adam disengaged his hands from hers and straightened up, shifting his attention to Christopher with a look of inquiry. The priest likewise released the hand he had been holding and shook his head.

“Whispering black shadows,” he muttered. “Sounds to me like there really is something darkening the atmosphere of this place. Wonder what it could be.”

“So do I,” Adam agreed, in a thoughtful undertone. “I doubt we can glean much more from Helena, though, at least at any practical level. If I thought it involved her directly, I could probably get at it with more aggressive techniques—drug support, and such—but I don’t think it’s warranted, in this case. My suspicion is that she’s simply been picking up resonances of things that took place here in the flat long before she moved in—and what she’s picked up suggests several intriguing possibilities. Fortunately, we have other resources at our disposal besides her dreams.”

He cast a pointed glance in the direction of the windows. Peregrine was still sketching, his pencil darting back and forth across the page in front of him with swift, unerring precision. From the expression on the young artist’s face, Adam could tell that he was temporarily oblivious to the present scene, his attention focused wholly on the task of isolating and capturing a significant image of the past.

Christopher elevated an eyebrow, clearly impressed.

“He sees what took place?” he said, almost incredulously. “And he’s learned all this in only a month?”

Adam nodded. “Less, actually. I suspected, from our first meeting, that he had the makings of a Huntsman. At Melrose, I became convinced of it. You see now, don’t you, why I was so keen that you and Victoria should have a chance to meet him for yourselves?”

“Indeed,” Christopher acknowledged with a fleeting grin. “I can hardly wait to see what’s going down on that bit of paper.”

Even as he spoke, Peregrine made a few more decisive flourishes with his pencil, then leaned back in his chair. With his next breath, his hazel eyes snapped back into normal focus. He gave himself a slight shake before glancing down at the page in front of him.

“Adam!” he exclaimed. “Come and take a look at this!” Adam rose swiftly to answer the summons, Christopher following after a glance to reassure himself that their subject still slept. Peregrine handed over what he had drawn, and Adam turned it to the light, his dark eyes intent as he looked it over. Christopher edged closer and peered over his shoulder.

The sketch showed Helena’s sitting room as seen from Peregrine’s perspective, but with some features altered—notably the chairs and the settee, which were far more severe than the present furnishings. Other elements in the room included a Christmas tree in the window bay and a large oriental screen shielding the room’s other window. Of greatest interest, however, were the two human figures sketched in the foreground.

The most prominent of them was an intense young man with longish dark, straight hair. Dark-robed like a monk, with a hooded cowl pushed back on his shoulders, he was kneeling upright on the carpet, offering up his crossed wrists to a somewhat older man, also robed, who was reaching out as though to bind them with a cord that Peregrine had labeled as being red.

The binding was being supervised by a third robed man who watched from the background, a short distance away. Though his features were little more than an impressionistic blur, it could be seen that he wore a medallion on a chain about his neck.

“Look there,” Peregrine said, using his pencil as a pointer. “Where have you seen a medallion like that before?”

Chapter Four

THE ARRESTED EXPRESSION
on Adam’s face was answer enough for Peregrine, but Christopher obviously was missing something. Somewhat bemused, he glanced from Adam to Peregrine and back again.

“Afraid you’ve lost me, chaps,” he said to Adam. “Where
have
you seen a medallion like that?”

“In far too many places of late,” Adam said thinly, “if Peregrine intends what I think he does, by this sketch.” At the artist’s tight-lipped nod, he went on. “Most recently, in a series of paintings he showed me just this morning. I regret to inform you that the Lodge of the Lynx appears to be active again.”

Christopher breathed out softly through pursed lips. “Angels and ministers of grace defend us! I’d wondered, with everything else that’s been going on. But who would have thought we’d stumble across their tracks
here,
in a student flat in Edinburgh?”

Adam set his jaw in grim disapproval. “They have to recruit new members from somewhere. Where better, than from the ranks of the young and impressionable?”

Peregrine had been following this exchange so closely that it only belatedly occurred to him that Christopher had spoken as a man with knowledge—and why. He blinked and took a closer look at the clergyman. Gone, for the moment, was the air of a cheerful schoolboy. All at once Christopher Houston looked deadly serious, no more to be trifled with than Adam or McLeod. As Peregrine recalled his earlier conjecture, he glanced furtively at the ring the priest still wore.

“I see you’ve arrived at the proper conclusion,” his mentor said with a slight smile, as he handed back the sketch. “I was wondering how long it would take you to figure it out. Yes, Christopher and his good lady are members of the same enforcement group as Noel and myself. They’ve assisted in the Hunt on many past occasions.”

“But never in anything where the Lodge of the Lynx had a hand,” Christopher put in, a little distractedly. “Before my time, you see. I rather hoped our predecessors had put a stop to their doings, once and for all.” An uncharacteristic grimace momentarily distorted the schoolboy face. “Appears we were overly optimistic.”

Peregrine blinked once behind his wire-rimmed spectacles, then returned his attention to the sketch in his hand, now consciously comparing what he had drawn with what the room now held. Silently commending the young artist for his swift grasp of priorities, Adam turned his attention briefly to a glance around the room.

“Well, I wonder how long it’s been since the flat was last furnished in the style shown in our drawing.”

Christopher’s brows knit, also returning to practicalities.

“Seem to recall Helena saying something about it having been refurbished before she moved in,” he said breezily, returning to the clipped phrasing of his usual repartee. ‘’I’ll have a word with Mrs. Beaton before we leave—that’s the landlady. She ought to be able to tell us when the work was done, and also who some of the previous tenants have been.”

“In the meantime,” Adam said, “the flat itself remains a problem.” He took the sketch again and glanced at it distractedly. “The fact that Peregrine sketched this particular scene, which seems to be a ritual binding of some sort, suggests that this was the high point of the rite, if you can call it that, which ought to reassure everybody that the chap with the tied hands wasn’t done to death right here in the flat. If he
had
been, I’m sure Peregrine would have seen and sketched
that.
Death, as he’s learned, leaves a different kind of residue.”

As Peregrine nodded his emphatic agreement, Christopher took the sketch and studied it more closely.

“We can rule out a simple ghost, then, as I suspected from the beginning. Would you say that it was an initiation, then?”

Adam nodded. “That would be my guess, though it’s impossible to know for certain, at this remove. Negative enough, in its own way, if the Lodge of the Lynx was behind it, but not as heavy-duty as it might have been. Still, it’s nasty enough to bother our Helena after close to a year, if the Christmas tree is an accurate indication of time. Whatever the cause, the effect now needs to be dealt with. What do you recommend, Christopher?”

Since their very first meeting, Peregrine had come to take Adam’s leadership for granted. He was momentarily surprised to hear Adam asking Christopher for advice, until he reminded himself that one of the most valuable gifts of command was the ability to exercise a discerning trust in the competence of others. Christopher deliberated a moment before replying.

“Earlier, I’d have said the place just needed a spiritual airing out—a general benediction to lighten the atmosphere. Now, knowing the Lodge of the Lynx is involved, I’d say we do need something more like an exorcism.

“Not the formal rite of the Church, though—poor Helena would probably find that as frightening as a disembodied spirit. No, I’d rather try something a trifle more subtle—something. Helena herself can take part in. It’s important that she have faith in what we’re doing, and that’s best achieved through sharing in the work.”

The ceremony he went on to propose was both graceful and straightforward, containing nothing overt to suggest that it was anything more than a simple house blessing and dedication. When Christopher had finished, Adam nodded his approval.

“I think that will answer the purpose very well,” he told the priest. “Let’s wake our young lady and acquaint her with what you have in mind.”

Helena roused easily in response to Adam’s prearranged cues, Christopher once more holding her hand.

“Hullo, m’dear,” the priest said, smiling and lifting the back of her hand lightly to his lips. “Nice to have you back with us again. How do you feel?”

“I-I do feel better,” she acknowledged, with a tremulous smile. Then a small shadow of anxiety crossed her face. “Did you, were you able to find out anything?”

Adam smiled and sat back casually in his chair, toying with the crystal he had taken up before waking her.

“Indeed, we did. And you were a most cooperative and useful subject. After reviewing the evidence, I think we may safely say that these nightmares of yours owe their origin to influences outside your own psyche.”

Helena blinked at him owlishly, as though she hardly dared believe him.

“Then, it wasn’t just me!”

“Not at all,” Adam said. “Not unless you count having more than your share of womanly intuition; and that has nothing to do with
causing
such things, just perceiving them.”

At Helena’s puzzled look, he went on.

“It’s a fact that physical objects—even whole houses—can and do act as psychometric receptors, storing up emotional resonances from past events,” Adam explained. “Anyone who happens to be sensitive to such things can be adversely affected as seems to have been the case with you.”

Seeing that Helena was still looking a bit bewildered, Christopher gave her hand a sympathetic squeeze and smiled.

“What Dr. Sinclair means is that there must have been a lot of bad feelings connected with some of the people who used to live in this flat, Helena. Bad vibes, if you like—a bit like a nasty smell. Once it gets into the woodwork, it tends to hang about till you give the place a good clean-out.

“So that’s just what we’re going to do,” he went on decisively, echoing Helena’s hopeful nod. “We’re going to give this place a metaphysical house-cleaning. Only we’ll use spiritual fortitude instead of ammonia solution.”

Helena giggled in spite of herself.

“That’s the, ticket, m’dear,” said Christopher. “Now, I know you have both a Bible and a prayer book. Thought you probably wouldn’t mind giving me the loan of them, so I didn’t bother to bring mine. Could you fetch them for me, while I get my other things? That would be splendid.”

He opened his briefcase and lifted out a clerical stole of green silk, along with a small plastic bottle of what Peregrine assumed must be holy water. Helena brought the required books from the bookshelf and sat down beside him as Christopher laid the stole around his neck and began leafing through her small, leather-bound copy of the Scriptures. While the girl’s attention was focused on her pastor, listening to his murmured instructions on the passages to read, placing the colored ribbon markers, Adam drew Peregrine into a corner of the room by the door.

“Stand here and watch,” his mentor told him. “You’re the one who can
see
what we’re after. I want you to be certain we get it all.”

“But, how—”

“Just watch,” Adam insisted, shaking his head to belay any further argument. “You’ll know, when we’re done.”

They both were out of Helena’s line of vision. Even so, Adam was careful to shield what he withdrew from his coat pocket, so that even Peregrine caught only a fleeting glimpse of it.

Adam called it his toothstone—dark and oblong, curved like a wolf’s fang, all but hidden in the cradle of his palm—but it was, in fact, a piece of lodestone, spiritually as well as magnetically polarized for drawing off malevolent psychic energy. Peregrine had seen it used once before at Melrose Abbey, to dispel the residue of dark intent left by those who had summoned the spirit of Michael Scot back to his grave.

Even though he was not afraid, Peregrine felt his heart thudding in his chest as Adam turned full toward him, the dark eyes already taking on an otherworldly depth, the tooth stone closed in his hand between them. The older man bowed his head briefly over his closed fist, touching it to his lips, then raised hooded eyes to Peregrine’s, suddenly far more than Dr. Adam Sinclair, psychiatrist, or Sir Adam Sinclair, Baronet.

To Peregrine, he seemed inches taller as he drew a deep breath and used the top of the toothstone to sign first himself and then Peregrine with a symbol of personal warding. Peregrine fancied he could feel the path of the toothstone in the air before him, and imagined himself drawing the symbol about him like a protective mantle as Adam smiled faintly, nodded, then began making what appeared to be a casual, clockwise circuit of the room, ritually sealing it off so that the evil was trapped and could not escape.

Christopher, meanwhile, had invited Helena to join with him in a moment’s quiet meditation, kneeling with her in the space contained before the fireplace, defined by the chairs and settee. The furniture also provided additional screening for what Adam was doing, should Helena look up—though in response to Christopher’s gentle instructions, she had bowed her head into her hands, eyes closed.

Once Adam had finished his circuit of containment, briefly disappearing into the short corridor off the sitting room to deal with any residuals in bedroom and bath, he returned to his starting point by the door and took the tooth stone between the thumb and first two fingers of his right hand. His hand steady as a surgeon’s, he then began going over the sitting room walls with a sweeping motion, back and forth just a few inches from the surface. Peregrine looked on in silence as all around him the ghosts of past events were sucked away like so much dust into a vacuum cleaner.

What remained behind was a kind of emptiness. The evil was gone, but the vacancy left behind was not a comfortable one. It was a dullness that made the surrounding air seem stale in his mouth. Even as Peregrine looked instinctively toward Adam in search of an explanation, Christopher broke the silence.

“I think we may begin now,” said the priest, getting to his feet. He took a step backwards and made the sign of the cross over the still-kneeling Helena, intoning as he did so, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, let us pray. Our Father . . . ”

There followed a succession of readings from Scripture, interspersed with other prayers, some of them read by Helena herself, beseeching divine intervention to keep evil at bay and restore peace to the house. As Peregrine listened, only partly comprehending, he felt the flat emptiness of the room begin to give way to a new freshness of life. It was almost as if the room were like a cup. Adam had emptied the cup, had gotten rid of the poison and cleansed it, and now Christopher was refilling it with a lightness that eased the heart and mind like sparkling wine.

Except that Christopher was merely the vehicle—the steward at the feast, not the Master. The real Authority lay above and beyond him, even while It invested him with Its power. As Christopher moved on to asperse the corners of the room with holy water, Peregrine was forced to acknowledge that he understood what the priest was doing even less than he understood what he had seen Adam do.

Religion was a mystery to him. As a child he had learned the forms of Christian worship, but the substance had always eluded him. Eventually he had come to the conclusion that there was no substance. Lately, though, he wasn’t so sure.

He was still puzzling over what it was that he seemed to be missing when Christopher brought the apparently simple service to a close. Helena was smiling, all her earlier anxieties clearly laid to rest, now that the oppressive atmosphere in the flat had been lifted. Christopher waved aside her thanks with airy good humor.

“All in the line of duty, m’dear,” he told her cheerily. “Must be off now, but I’ll be sure to stop in early next week to see how you’re getting on. And don’t hesitate to call me if anything at all still bothers you.”