Born of Hatred (38 page)

I nodded, but daren't say anything. 

"They're going after Tommy..." she started to say more, but she passed out again. Olivia retrieved her phone from her pocket and started calling. 

"It's okay," I assured her. "Sky and your agents are with them, they're safe."

She nodded, but made the call anyway, walking off to talk as I left the ambulance and watched it drive away, before glancing over to the tree to discover a small black bag beside where Sara had been held. 

I picked it up, hoping to find something that might tell me where Peter and his men were hiding. I didn't really expect to find anything, but it was either do something pointless that took my mind away from Sara, or I start hurting people to get the answers I needed. And Olivia probably wouldn't have liked that very much. 

I glanced up in time to see Olivia's face turn to one of horror as she sprinted toward her car.

Chapter 35

Olivia was in the car and off like a rocket, before I'd even had time to ask what had happened. I raced over to my bike and followed her. Unfortunately, she had a good thirty seconds head-start, but that was soon cut down as I sped through the traffic to catch up. Olivia had her lights and siren going, something the LOA rarely use. Clearly whatever she'd been told was enough to spook her into charging off. 

I wasn't worried about Tommy or Kasey; they had Sky and Agent Reid with them, along with half a dozen other agents. And no lich is going to willingly attack somewhere that a powerful necromancer happens to be staying.
But Peter wasn't just a lich,
I thought
.
What he had against Olivia was personal. And personal shit often overrode any sense of self-preservation. I opened the throttle further and the speedometer shot upwards, the front wheel of the bike lifting off the road slightly for a moment. 

The journey probably didn't take long, but it felt like a lifetime as all of the horrific things that could have happened ran through my head. I had to keep telling myself that everything was fine, over and over again like some sort of mantra. 

I arrived at Tommy's house soon after Olivia, who was already out of her car and sprinting toward the front door, as I switched off my engine and... noticed the front window was broken. I dropped my helmet onto the ground and ran to join Olivia, just as she pushed the unlocked door open and stepped inside.

The house was eerily quiet, and Olivia drew her gun as we walked down the hallway toward the living room, the room where the window had been broken. It looked as if there'd been one hell of a fight; plaster was missing from the walls, which had huge dents. The dining room table was in pieces, and I counted three bullet holes in the ceiling. Someone had fired shots as a warning. A note had been stuck to the TV screen... W
e left you a DVD
. 

I almost had to drag Olivia away, but the rest of the house needed to be searched, in case someone was hiding. Be it friend or foe.

We went to the kitchen first, as it was closest, and found Agent Greaves with his face pulverised. A bullet hole sat right where his heart would be and blood soaked the front of his body, making a substantial puddle beneath where he'd fallen. In the middle of the puddle sat a pair of silver knuckle-dusters, probably discarded after his killer had finished with them. A second agent was slumped beside him; he'd been decapitated with something sharp. His head had rolled under the counter and blood had sprayed up the wall and ceiling. 

We left the kitchen and finished searching downstairs, but found only the bodies of yet more dead agents in the den. There were four of them and, unlike Greaves, they'd been torn apart. Ghouls had been at work on them. The rest of the search was exhausting, and not because of the size of the house. I could tell from her body language and silence that Olivia was doing everything she could to hold it together. I hoped she could keep that up until we knew what was going on. 

The four upstairs bedrooms were all empty, and all immaculate, no one had been searching for anything. But the bathroom held the body of the babysitter in the bath. A bullet hole in her head, and another in her heart. There was blood splatter up the blue tiles. She'd been standing in bath when the first shot had been fired, and then shot a second time as she collapsed into the tub. 

Olivia’s phone started to ring and she answered it immediately. I left her to talk and went back downstairs to give the front room a more in-depth search. Claw marks had defaced one of the walls, leaving deep gouges in the brick. It was then that I remembered that Tommy had a shed outside.

I pulled open the patio door and walked through the conservatory. The back garden was as much of a war zone as the front room had been. Two more dead agents lay on the ground, teeth marks in their throats and deep gouges in their chests. More ghoul kills. But someone else had put up a hell of a fight against the intruders. I stepped over destroyed plants and an upturned bench, making my way toward the huge shed at the end of the lengthy garden. Someone had piled up garden furniture in front of the door, but a blast of air sent it spiralling away. I ignited a ball of fire in my hand as I opened the door... and immediately extinguished it as I found a bound and gagged Sky lying unconscious on the cold wooden floor. 

Silver cuffs adorned her wrists, and a thick rope had been used as a gag. I unfastened the gag and tossed it aside. I'd need keys for the cuffs, so had to leave them on for now. That's when I noticed the sorcerer's band on her left wrist. I'd never seen one used on a necromancer outside of a prison before, but it was on the other side of the cuffs, and so impossible to remove without magic. And using magic would cause whatever runes were inscribed to ignite, possibly removing Sky's hand along with it. 

I felt for a pulse. Like Sara's it was slow, but strong. I needed to get the cuffs and band off of her before she woke. It would be easier and faster to let her healing ability do the work. So, I picked her up in my arms and carried her back to the house, as a cold rage swirled inside of me. First Sara and then Sky. Someone was going to pay dearly for that. 

The front room was empty, but I heard Olivia talking outside to the agents who had arrived in double-quick time. If your director calls and says her family was attacked, you make it your new mission in life to make sure that it gets dealt with.

I laid Sky on the mostly undamaged sofa and went outside to find someone who might have keys. 

Olivia's talking had turned into a full blown rage as she demanded that her agents find out everything about what had happened and report back to her and her alone. She saw me and sighed. 

"Get to work," she told everyone and the agents dispersed without a word. 

"Did you find anything?" she asked me with more than a little anger. I doubted it was aimed at me, so I let it drop. 

"Sky was in the shed. Bound, gagged and unconscious. Someone put a sorcerer's band on her wrist. I need keys to some cuffs so I can remove it."

Olivia fumbled in her pocket and passed me a set of small silver keys. "A sorcerer's band?" she asked, almost to herself.

"Whoever did this has access to Avalon tech," I pointed out as we walked together back into the living room. I unlocked Sky's cuffs and removed them, almost tearing off the sorcerer's band from her wrist and throwing it across the room a moment later. 

"We should watch whatever message they left us," Olivia said, switching on the TV and ripping the paper from the screen. "How long will Sky be out?"

"I don't know," I said, moving her arms so they were no longer behind her. "Probably a few minutes. She's not going to be happy when she wakes up."

"She can join the fucking club then, can't she?" Olivia flicked the TV onto the right channel and started the DVD. 

Agent Reid's face came into view. "Hey, boss," he said. There was a cut above his lip and blood trickled down his chin. Another was just below his eye. He'd taken one hell of a punch.

"Actually, I guess it's time to tell the truth. You're not my boss. I don't work for you. I work for someone else; someone considerably more powerful than you, my pretty little director. And they want this lich to have his way. My job was to make sure that happened. And when he decided he was going to take your family, well it was my job to make sure that he got exactly what he wanted there, too."

He motioned off camera as one of the ghouls dragged Kasey into the room, pushing her onto the couch. Reid turned the camera slightly to reveal a semi-conscious Tommy on the same couch, his face a bloody mask. A sorcerer's band adorned his wrist. "Your bloke here put up a hell of a fight," Reid continued, touching his swollen lip. "He had to be taught how to be civilised, and it's amazing how quickly one learns with a gun to your child's head." 

Kasey started shaking her dad, begging him to get up, to help. To not be dead. 

"Will you shut up, you stupid little bitch," Reid snapped, delivering a swift kick to Tommy's chest. 

Kasey screamed and positioned herself in front of him, protecting him from further damage. Tommy glanced at her through one good eye and I saw tears roll, cleaning some of the blood from his cheeks. 

Reid watched all of it with a humorous smile on his face. "Brave little fucker, isn't she?" he looked back at the camera. "So, I guess you want to know what's going to happen next. Well, at midnight tomorrow, you're going to come to a place of our choosing, we'll let you know where, and then you're going to hand yourself over to Peter, and he's going to kill you. If you do all of this, he may let your boyfriend and kid go. Probably not, but at least I'll make sure they die quick.
You
will die very slowly, I'm almost certain of that.

"Oh, and sorry about the mess with Greaves, but he was a useless fucking idiot and I basically did you a favour." He laughed to himself. "Seriously, I couldn't have hoped for a partner who was less observant. Not once did he question why we got the calls when a murder took place. He was just happy to take a lead on the investigation.

"And now onto Nathan Garrett. Nate. Do you want me to tell you something that no one else knows about you? You're not a member of The Faceless. I know that with a hundred percent certainty. And do you want to know, how I know?" Reid brought the camera closer to his face. "Because I'm part of The Faceless," he whispered. "And we know our own."

I felt Olivia's eyes burning into me as the truth was revealed, but Reid wasn't done yet. 

"Oh, we didn't kill the necromancer. Hurt her quite a bit, I had to remove her from the issue first as she'd have killed the ghouls. But having Hades after us for killing his daughter would go against our plans. I hope she takes this as a hint to go home, because if she doesn't, and she goes up against Peter, he
will
kill her before she kills him." 

I doubted very much that Sky would be going home. In fact I was pretty certain that she'd be even more eager to go after Peter and dish out some retribution. 

"So, Olivia. You dumb fucking idiot. I look forward to seeing you flayed. Maybe they'll put someone with some balls in the position of director now. Maybe someone who doesn't hire unknown cunts like Nathan Garret to do their work, or fuck werewolves and give birth to some half-breed little bitch. I've been waiting for a long time to see you fall. Ever since I was told about the job I had to do. And Nathan, if I see you again, I'm going to kill you. I don't care who you are, no one lies about being Faceless and gets away with it. Although, to be fair, by the time I'm done with you, I'll make sure that the name of faceless really does fit."

"Who are you?" Olivia snapped, pushing me back against the wall and drawing a dagger, which sat a little too heavily against the skin of my throat.

"A friend," I said. "You don't need to know more."

"Fuck you. A man I trusted turned out to be an evil bastard who has my child. You will answer me, or I will kill you."

"No," Sky said from directly behind Olivia. "You won't."

Olivia spun round to face Sky, but the necromancer was quicker and had her disarmed and thrown onto the couch in one smooth motion. 

"Nate is a friend," Sky said. "You can trust him. Maybe he'll tell you the truth, maybe he won't, but if you ever hold a knife to his neck in my presence again, I will gut you."

Sky casually tossed the knife into the wall, burying it a few inches into the plaster. "I assume Reid took your daughter and Tommy," she said to Olivia who nodded, her eyes narrow and angry.

"He blindsided me," Sky said. "I didn't expect it. Last I saw was Tommy taking a silver knuckle-duster-aided punch to the jaw. Your boyfriend is a tough son-of-a-bitch, isn't he?" 

Olivia nodded. 

I left the room, hoping very much that Olivia didn't try to go for round two with Sky, and retrieved the knuckle-dusters which were being bagged up by one of the agents. He didn't question why I wanted them, just handed over the bag and didn't once complain when I washed the blood from them in the kitchen sink. 

I took them back to Sky and showed them to her. 

"That looks like them. Are they important?"

I shrugged. "No idea." I turned the dusters over in my hand. A wolf head motif adorned the sides. Someone had inscribed "
for the pack"
on the inside. "We need to go see the werewolf pack," I tossed them to Olivia who had remained silent since being disarmed. 

"We go there now," she said firmly.

I glanced down at the sorcerer's band that had been on Sky's wrist. "I'm going to need you to get someone to bring something to Matthew's for me," I told Olivia.

 She left the room, throwing the knuckle-dusters back toward me without a word. 

"You going to tell her the truth?" Sky asked.

"I don't know." It was an honest answer. If I told Olivia exactly who I was, would it make things worse? I wasn't sure how, but if there's one thing I've learned in my life, it's that things can always get much, much worse.