Forged, p.22
Forged, page 22
part #4 of The Grey Gates Series
“I think this is where Sirius died,” Max said, her voice harsh as she tried to hold back tears. “His hounds were here.”
“The police tape is all outside,” Bryce pointed out, a slight frown on his face.
“I know. I think whoever killed him must have moved him outside,” Max said. That felt right. Even though she wasn’t sure why the killer or killers would have moved the corpse. They hadn’t attempted to hide the ritual circle, after all.
“Do we have any more information?” Bryce asked. He looked around. “The site outside isn’t visible from the road,” he added. Max wasn’t surprised that he’d noticed that as well.
“No. I didn’t think to ask for the detective’s information,” Max said. “I wanted to get here first.”
“Alright,” Bryce said. “Have you searched the building?”
“No. I just came in through there,” Max pointed back to the gap in the wall, “and crossed to the circle. That’s it.” She hesitated, and Bryce raised a brow, prompting her to speak. “When I pulled up, I thought I saw someone outside the building. A man. But I haven’t seen him again.”
“A man,” Bryce repeated, frowning. “Someone you knew?”
“I thought so. It looked like-” Max’s words stopped as if they had been cut off. She shook her head, struggling to remember the name. She’d recognised the man, she was sure, but couldn’t remember his name. Why couldn’t she remember his name? “A warrior. Kitris’ second in command,” she managed to say, the words heavy and reluctant.
“Here?” Khari asked, her brows shooting up. “Why would he be here?”
“I don’t know,” Max said. “And I can’t remember his name,” she added, frustrated. She could never remember his name.
Bryce opened his mouth, then frowned more deeply. “I can’t, either,” he said, and turned to the other warriors. They all shook their heads, similar frowns on their faces.
A chill ran over Max’s skin. She’d never spoken to anyone else about her inability to fully remember Kitris’ second in command when he wasn’t present. She’d assumed it was some quirk of her brain. But it seemed that the other warriors shared it.
“I can never remember him when we’re out of the Order,” Osvaldo said. “That’s weird, isn’t it?”
“Very,” Bryce said. He looked back at Max, expression stern enough to make her blink. “Wait here. We’ll clear the area,” Bryce said.
He and the other warriors were moving away before Max could form any response to that.
Aurora approached the group of shadow hounds, her hands held out, and let the hounds all sniff her. “There, there, my poor darlings,” she said, making her way through the press of large, furred bodies to reach the two in the middle. She put a hand on the head of each of Sirius’ hounds. “I’m so sorry,” Aurora said, her rich, warm voice full of grief. The other woman had a true gift with animals of all sorts, and from the way all the hounds were pressing around her, they welcomed her presence. Ben moved slowly through the crowd of dogs as well, putting an arm around his wife’s waist, the two of them comforting Sirius’ hounds.
Max blinked to clear her eyes and turned away to see another figure approaching from the gap in the wall. Kolbyr looked as comfortable in the abandoned building as he had in the city mortuary. He stopped a few paces from the edge of the burned circle and looked down at it. His expression tightened, a hint of his other nature showing through.
“This was a dark ritual site,” he said. He glanced up at Max. “But you will know that already.”
“Yes,” Max said. “I think this is where Sirius was killed. The body in the mortuary,” she added, just in case Kolbyr hadn’t made the connection. From the slight quirk of his lips, he hadn’t missed that detail and was almost amused that she had felt the need to tell him. “From the police tape outside, I think that’s where the body was found.”
“It was moved, then,” Kolbyr said. He started a slow walk around the outside of the circle, moving away from Max and the cluster of shadow-hounds nearby. “This was a different magician from the last time,” the vampire said when he was about a quarter of the way around the circle from Max.
“Probably one of the new demons, then,” Max said. She wasn’t all that surprised. “Donal or Finn.”
Kolbyr stopped moving and stared at her, the intensity of his expression making Max want to reach for her gun.
“What did you say?” he hissed.
“Donal or Finn,” Max answered, her mouth dry. “Donal pulled me into an illusion spell yesterday. He’s the one in Oliver Forster’s body. Finn is in Hemang Raghavan’s body.”
“He gave you his name?” Kolbyr asked.
“He said I couldn’t pronounce his true name, but I could call him Donal,” Max answered. “Does the name mean something to you?”
“You will recall that there was a time when the dark lord Himself walked this world,” Kolbyr said, still staring at Max. He didn’t seem to be blinking, and Max found her hand gripping her gun. It was still holstered and she carefully moved her hand away. The vampire wasn’t threatening her. Not yet. In fact, although he was looking at her, he didn’t seem to be seeing her at all, lost in the old legends he was talking about. When Arkus Himself had walked in the daylight world and all but destroyed it before His sister, the Lady, had managed to contain Him behind the Grey Gates.
Kolbyr blinked, focusing on Max’s face, as if making sure she was listening. He needn’t have worried. She was absolutely focused on him as the greatest threat nearby, and a source of information. “We don’t have many records of that time, but the names Donal and Finn do feature. Donal is one of the dark lord’s most senior lieutenants. He was said to possess an extraordinary skill with magic.” Kolbyr looked away from Max, finally, and down at the charred circle. “It seems that the legends are true.”
“The pair of demons are mentioned by name?” Max asked, chills running across her skin. That was not a good sign. Not good at all. Whoever had recorded the histories of the time had missed out most of the names of the people involved. If the writers had taken the time to set down a name, it generally meant the person - or demon in this case - had done something truly memorable.
“Oh, yes,” Kolbyr said, a humourless smile on his face. “They were quite famous. Or perhaps infamous is more accurate. The pair of them seemed closer than brothers, and left a trail of destruction behind them.” Kolbyr frowned at the circle. “Although I cannot imagine why they would need to drain life force. They are powerful demons. They should possess enough energy of their own.”
Max wasn’t sure if Kolbyr realised he had spoken aloud. He didn’t seem pleased by the presence of the two powerful demons in this world. She turned his words over in her mind.
“So Sirius was used as a battery?” Aurora asked, sounding outraged.
Max had been so focused on the vampire she hadn’t noticed that Aurora and Ben had left the group of dogs and were standing nearby, both of them staring at Kolbyr.
“Dear lady,” Kolbyr said, putting his hand on his heart. “In essence, that is the truth of it. I just don’t understand why the demons needed the energy.”
“When I spoke to Donal yesterday, he seemed strained,” Max said slowly. She was about to go on and say that it had seemed like Oliver Forster’s body had been struggling to hold the demon’s essence, but bit her lip, falling silent. If she said something like that, Kolbyr might want to know how she had come to that conclusion. And Max didn’t want to talk about her extraordinary encounter with the Lady. Not with this vampire, at least.
“An interesting observation,” Kolbyr said, staring at her again. “An influx of energy may have been needed to help the host body accommodate the demon. Even though Oliver Forster was not entirely human, Donal was likely too powerful for the body to hold without some intervention,” he said. “I am speculating, of course.”
Max nodded, not sure what she could say that wouldn’t give away the extra knowledge she had. She looked around the site, and felt the chill of foul magic brush across her skin. The whole interior of the building seemed to have been affected by the ritual and Sirius’ death.
The warriors came back, walking through the remnants of dark magic. Only Khari seemed to notice. The others didn’t have any magic sensitivity.
“The building is clear,” Bryce reported. The warriors were still on alert, though, spaced out around the shadow-hounds and people, their eyes watching their surroundings.
Max nodded to let Bryce know she’d heard him, and looked around again. “Why here?” she asked, not realising she’d spoken aloud until Kolbyr lifted a brow at her. “Donal was here yesterday before we arrived. He’d gathered cuchara to this place, and was breeding more in the buildings over there,” she said, pointing in the general direction of her and the warriors’ first encounter with the enhanced creatures the day before. “So he was here for a reason, not just a whim.”
“It’s an abandoned building, so less chance of being disturbed,” Bryce pointed out. It was a fair point, and a warrior’s way of looking at things.
“There has to be more to it,” Max said, frowning as she looked around. For the first time, she realised that the placement of the ritual, and the place where Sirius had died, wasn’t in the centre of the building, but slightly off to one side and hemmed in with a few piles of broken bricks and other rubble from the building’s ruined interior. There was a much more open space, with fewer obstacles on the ground, not far away. So Donal had deliberately chosen this spot.
She forced herself to move to the side of the circle, but couldn’t quite get over the edge of it, the tips of her boots almost brushing the edge of the charred area. She crouched down, and opened up her senses. Just a little bit. She dared not open her mind completely. Not here. Not with so many people around her. And not with Sirius’ death still hanging in the air. She drew a long, slow breath, and looked around, trying to see past the immediate layers of the dark ritual and the echoes of terror and pain she could feel. Sirius had not died easily.
There. Almost beyond her senses. A slow, deep current running under the ground. Like a warm thread. It was a soothing balm after the foulness of the ritual.
“Ley line,” she said aloud. “That’s why he was here. He tapped into one of the ley lines.”
“Ley lines? My dear, how terribly old-fashioned of you,” Kolbyr said, sounding almost amused. He was still standing a quarter of the way around the circle, which was a bit of a relief.
“Remember the killer who was cutting up people and using their blood to mark out his spell?” Max asked, straightening to her feet and looking across at the vampire. It had been the first time she had met the dark magic master, consulting with him about blood rituals. “The death sites were all mapped onto intersections of ley lines across the city.”
To her surprise, Kolbyr didn’t laugh at her. Any one of her teachers at the Order would have laughed. Ley lines were superstitious nonsense, as far as they were concerned. In pursuing the killer, she had discovered that ley lines were quite real. And she had since learned that a lot of other things her teachers had tried to tell her were not true, either. Discovering that there was more than one way to use magic was just one example.
“What’s the effect of the ritual being done on a ley line?” Bryce asked, frowning slightly. It was a good question.
“I think it would have given the spell more power,” Max said slowly, looking around.
“Yes,” Kolbyr agreed. He was quite serious. “Modern magicians like to scoff at the idea of ley lines, but the modern world does not know everything. The power in the land can be a potent force, if you know how to use it. And a demon as old as Donal would certainly know.”
“So, that’s why he was here,” Bryce concluded. “Is there just one line, or is it another intersection?”
“I don’t want to look,” Max said honestly, “but I would guess there is a crossing here, yes.”
Bryce nodded his acceptance. Max felt a prickle of shame across her skin. She was quite sure that he had never shied away from doing anything difficult. But she could not bring herself to open her senses enough to look fully beyond the echoes of Sirius’ death to what lay underneath.
“What did Donal want with you?” Kolbyr asked her, sounding genuinely curious.
“He didn’t say. Not outright,” Max said, hearing the frustration in her own voice. “It’s impossible to get a straight answer from a demon,” she complained.
Kolbyr’s mouth curved up into a smile full of sharp humour. “You are perhaps the only person alive who has spoken to more than one demon and lived to talk about it,” he told her, “so you are uniquely qualified to make that statement.”
“I would happily have never spoken to a single demon,” Max told him, hearing a snap in her voice. She hoped that the ancient vampire would realise her anger wasn’t directed at him, but at the demons. She truly didn’t want to offend Kolbyr. If she angered him, there was no telling what he might do. And as an expert in dark magic, she was quite sure he had a wide range of ugly and painful spells at his disposal.
“I am sure.” He inclined his head, seeming to take no offence at her tone. “But, as you have far more, what’s the expression, ah, yes, hands on experience, than anyone else, perhaps you would give me an account of your meeting yesterday?”
Kolbyr had somehow moved from around the circle to be standing only a few feet away from her. She hadn’t noticed him move.
“How is this going to help find Sirius’ killer?” Aurora asked, her voice high. Her face was streaked with tears and she was still pressed against Sirius’ two shadow-hounds.
“All the indications are that one of the new demons killed your friend,” Kolbyr said to Aurora, surprising Max with the gentleness in his tone. “The more information we can gather about the demon, the better chance we will have of stopping them from doing this again.”
“We were sent here to chase down a possible sighting of Oliver Forster and Hemang Raghavan. They may have another potential victim,” Bryce said. Max could tell he wanted to follow that lead. She agreed. The bit of information might lead them to the demons.
“It will still be helpful to know what Marshal Ortis and the demon Donal discussed yesterday,” Kolbyr said, not moving. He looked at Max and lifted a brow. It wasn’t an idle question, Max realised. The vampire truly did want to know.
Max scrubbed a hand across her face, trying to put herself back inside the illusion of the day before. She gave her audience a quick summary of what had happened, trying to stick to the facts and Donal’s words as best she could remember them, and not colour the tale with her own impressions or feelings. No one interrupted her. When she reached the end, Kolbyr’s brows were almost at his hairline.
“That was a most illuminating conversation, Marshal Ortis,” he said.
“How?” Max asked, frustration breaking through despite her best efforts to remain calm. “He didn’t tell me what he wanted, and there’s nothing there that will help me find him.”
“On the contrary, you learned a lot,” Kolbyr said. “The demons Donal and Finn did not know that it was Queran who helped bring them through. So they did not come here to meet with Queran. The sophistication of the spell work he used confirms that it is indeed the Donal of legends that we are dealing with.”
Max suppressed the first few hasty things she wanted to say and instead paused before she said anything, letting what Kolbyr had said sink in. “Orshiasa said that he thought Queran and Evan were attempting to bring through lesser beings from the underworld,” she said slowly, hairs on her body lifting as the implications of that sank in. “So, whatever plan Queran and Evan might have had when they were using the Arkus Codex, it wasn’t specific to Donal and Finn.”
“That is so,” Kolbyr agreed, a pleased smile on his face, as if she was a favourite pupil who had just solved a difficult puzzle. “I speculate that Donal saw an opportunity and took advantage, and Finn followed as there was another body available. The two have a long history of working together.”
There was a strong current of fascination in his voice that made Max want to take a very large step back. Just when she could almost forget what he was, Kolbyr reminded her of his true nature. He had dedicated his very long life to the study of dark magic. For him, a demon taking over a dead body was a matter of interest rather than horror.
“How does this help us find them?” Bryce asked.
“Well, it means that the demon pair are here for their own reasons, and not to fulfil whatever errand Queran and Evan might have had in mind,” Kolbyr said.
“Which is all well and good, but we don’t actually know for certain what Evan and Queran were up to with the Codex,” Max said. Bringing lesser beings through sounded more like mischief-making than any grand plan, at least in her mind. Which made her believe she was missing something. Queran might be content to meddle without any definite purpose, but she was quite certain that Evan Yarwood had greater ambitions. “We’re not going to find out hanging around here. We should see if we can find the trail, and the place where your informant spotted Donal and Finn,” she said to Bryce. “If the two demons were there, then my hounds should be able to pick up their trail.” She glanced back at the group of shadow-hounds, reluctant to pull Cas and Pol away when Sirius’ pair were still in such obvious distress. But she knew she needed her dogs with her. She needed as many allies as possible if she was going to track down the demons.
Aurora must have read the hesitation on Max’s face. “Take your hounds with you,” the older woman said, tone firm and allowing for no argument. “Sirius’ pair will want to go with you, too. They’ll want to catch whoever killed their person.”
