Bound (28 page)

‘I’m a pariah among my own kind. I always have been. Joseph told me that if I helped him get the stone from you it would prove to the Kin that I was one of them. But that’s not true. They would never accept me, not really. But Joseph’s words made me realise something else. For the first time, with you, I’ve found someone strong enough to actually be with me. With you, I don’t need the Kin.’

Alex wanted to believe her. He needed to believe her but couldn’t help wondering if she was just keeping him and his power for herself. If she was such a pariah, did she intend to take his stone and use it to take over the Kin? He recognised Uthentia’s influence in his thoughts, and cursed the book again. But he couldn’t ignore it. ‘I hope you’re right. How did Joseph find us?’

‘As Clan Lord, he can find any of his Kin, wherever they are.’

‘So he can track us easily, with far greater numbers?’

‘Possibly,’ Silhouette agreed.

‘He underestimated me,’ Alex said. ‘He won’t do that again.’

Silhouette gestured to the three dead Kin at their feet. ‘These were powerful men. Ataro was big and strong and deadly, but Joseph thought you a human then. These are older, more experienced. Between them they were a far greater threat than a beast like Ataro. But you went through them like butter.’

‘I’m owning the power of the Darak more all the time.’

‘Clearly.’

‘If Joseph comes again, with ten Kin, or twenty, or fifty, what then? However powerful I might be, there are odds I simply can’t stand against.’

‘I think Joseph might lick his wounds for a while at least,’ Silhouette said. ‘We’ll just have to wait and see. We have to go, before people come to investigate.’

‘Where?’

‘Let’s just find somewhere private while we decide what to do.’

The Dark Sisters stood outside Termini station in Rome. They were dressed in modern skirts, blouses and fashionable boots. They drew appreciative glances, exuding confidence, revelling in their soul-stolen beauty.

‘This is a little loose about the middle,’ Red said, tugging at the soft silk.

‘I told you she was heavier than you,’ Blonde replied absently. She looked across the busy street. ‘I feel them. Faint. This stench of humanity and their oily technology disgusts me, but I sense them. This way.’

Red stepped up to her sister. ‘Yes. They are quite unmistakable. But the trail is getting old.’

‘We are restricted by the nature of human time,’ Blonde said. ‘All we can do is follow where it leads.’

She walked across the road. A car screeched to a halt, skidding sideways, horn blaring. A stream of Italian invective burst forth, the driver hanging half out the window, gesticulating wildly. Blonde turned a smouldering look on him, not breaking her stride. The driver melted quietly back into his seat. Red and Brunette followed their sister.

They walked three abreast along cobbled alleys, faces tipped to the air, reading the weak presence of their quarry, to eventually emerge into the wide open space dominated by the Colosseum. Blonde turned a small circle, frowning.

‘The trail is confused here,’ Red said.

‘We must follow in the order it was laid down,’ Brunette said. ‘But there’s a part missing.’

Blonde sneered. ‘Mortal temporality. So limiting. What are we missing?’

Red drifted towards the wall at the back of the palazzo. ‘This way,’ she called. ‘It vanishes here.’

‘We should combine,’ said Brunette.

The Sisters faced each other, joined hands. They murmured, ignoring the curious looks from passers-by. Their eyes closed, heads down, the murmuring became faster as they used their collective will to feel the way their quarry had passed. All three snapped their heads up to stare at the door to the Kin Den, no longer hidden from them.

‘Kin,’ Blonde said, almost a hiss.

‘Naturally,’ said Red. ‘Of course they’re allied with Kin. One of them is Kin.’

‘Almost as childish as humans,’ Brunette said disdainfully. ‘Trying to hide in plain view all the time.’

‘Is it so different from us, sister?’ Blonde looked amused.

‘We’re hardly hiding.’

They shared a smile and turned to the magically concealed doorway, striding purposefully down the passageway until they reached a heavy wooden entrance. Blonde reached out and stopped. All three turned to look back down the passage. A man stepped into view.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’ he said, his face derisive.

Blonde stepped forward. ‘It’s no concern of yours, little man.’

‘Little man?’ His face became furious. ‘I am Louie Vertigno, Warden of this Den, and I demand to know just what you think you’re doing!’

Red stepped up next to her sister. ‘Oh, Louie, you’re cute.’ She reached out, index finger crooked to stroke under his chin.

Louie grabbed her hand, drawing his other arm back to strike. His face twisted in pain as he sucked in air, dropping Red’s arm as if it was red hot. Brunette joined her sisters and they bore down on Louie. He fell to his knees, babbling incoherently. The energy of the Sisters drifted out, encompassing Louie’s face. ‘What are you?’ he managed in a weak voice before his skin tightened black across his skull.

The Dark Sisters straightened. ‘That was nice,’ Blonde said. ‘It’s been a while since I tasted something so old.’

‘So much better than humans,’ Red agreed.

They turned to the door. Blonde put one palm against it and shoved. The door burst inwards in a shower of dark splinters. Several Kin turned and rushed as the three Sisters strolled nonchalantly through the wreckage of the door into the Den. Shouts and screams erupted as Kin were tossed aside like rag dolls, some merely broken, others partially consumed before being discarded. Panic broke out, weapons appearing as Kin swarmed the Sisters in a wave. A huge voice boomed out.

‘CEASE!’

Kin dropped back at the command. Lorenzo stood across the large central room, his face hard. Several Kin groaned, writhing on the floor in pain. Others lay still.

‘What is this?’ Lorenzo demanded. ‘Who are you?’

The Sisters looked around, ignoring him. Some Kin rose to rejoin the battle. Lorenzo strode across to them, his hand staying their actions. ‘You do great insult to this Den,’ he said, stopping several feet from the Sisters. ‘What do you want?’

‘We’re seeking someone, that’s all,’ Blonde informed him. ‘It’s no concern of yours.’

Lorenzo saw the blackened corpse of Louie in the passageway. ‘It most certainly is my concern when you break into my home and kill those I’m sworn to protect.’

‘Are they here?’ Red asked.

‘Who?’

Brunette stepped forward. ‘Come now, Kin-King. You’ve not had any strange visitors lately?’

Lorenzo’s lip curled in distaste. ‘I should have known trouble would follow them. They’re not here.’

‘What did they want?’ Blonde asked.

‘Information. They wanted help. I told them to leave.’

Red tipped her head to one side. ‘You didn’t help your own kind? One of them at least is Kin, no?’

‘One of them is Kin and I told her she was welcome here any time without the human. An ancient evil clings to him and will destroy him.’

‘And you didn’t help?’ Brunette asked.

‘I couldn’t help if I tried. I don’t know what they needed. So I sent them on their way. I don’t want that curse infecting this Den.’ He gestured at the bodies of his fallen friends. ‘Even so, it seems that chaos still trails them. You’re the Dark Sisters, right? I thought you myth. Who invoked you?’

Blonde gestured dismissively. ‘No one you’d know. We’re tracking these two, that’s all.’

‘If you tracked them here, surely you could tell they left again?’

‘It doesn’t work like that. We can only follow their intent, their learning. We’re restricted to the course they took.’

Red drifted off towards the back of the room. ‘Can you sense the overlap?’ she called back over her shoulder.

Blonde and Brunette walked to join her, Lorenzo forgotten. He raised his voice. ‘Don’t do anything to hinder these three. Let them go where they will and they’ll leave when they’re ready. Right, ladies?’

Blonde flicked a smile back over her shoulder. ‘Of course.’

They headed deeper into the Den. Lorenzo followed them into the library. ‘They didn’t come in here,’ he said tiredly.

‘Yes, they did,’ Red said. ‘Well, the human did.’ She stopped, concentrated. ‘They left together,’ Red said.

‘But the human came back,’ said Brunette, brow creased in concentration.

Blonde pointed to the back of the library. ‘He spent some time there, reading through your records.’

Lorenzo frowned. ‘What? How? We would have known.’

Red smiled. ‘Apparently not. He’s using powerful magic, this human.’

‘This power, it is what the Hood wants,’ Blonde said.

‘But the curse is strong too,’ Brunette added. ‘The Hood doesn’t know this, perhaps?’

‘How can he? He would never risk that,’ said Blonde. ‘This is becoming quite interesting.’

The Sisters strolled back through the Den, ignoring all the Kin.

Lorenzo stood in the main room, staring up the passage after they passed along it. Eventually he shook his head, dropping his gaze to the carnage. ‘Get Louie’s body in here and fix that door. We need to hold a ritual for the brothers and sisters we’ve lost today.’

Kin moved about the Den, faces downcast in frustrated sorrow.

Silhouette slipped from the hotel bed, pulling her clothes back on. ‘That was awesome.’ She leaned over, teasing Alex with her breasts, planted a kiss on him.

He smiled, disappointed as she covered herself with bra, then T-shirt. ‘Makes a nice change to do that and not try to kill you too,’ he said.

‘It certainly does. You really are getting a handle on controlling this stuff, huh?’

‘Those Kin in the alleyway took my rage for a while.’

‘I like it.’

‘I’m glad. I like it too, a lot. But we’re procrastinating. We have to think of what to do. I can’t keep slaughtering Kin.’

‘Don’t pity them, Alex. They would have killed you. They tried to kill you. It’s Joseph you should blame.’

Alex climbed from the bed, began dressing. ‘I do.’ A tight knot deep in his gut twisted every time he remembered the fast, decisive slaughter. Perhaps it was a good thing that he held a level of guilt about what he’d done. How long before he didn’t care any more? As a fighter, his Sifu had instilled in him a respect for every warrior.
Whenever someone steps up to test themselves against you, they deserve to be honoured by you. It takes courage to walk this path.

But that didn’t apply to people who were out to kill you rather than test themselves. And next time there would be more. How many could he kill? He had made a life of fighting and never killed. He had beaten and broken opponents, and had enjoyed every minute of it, but he hadn’t taken a life. His stomach jumped slightly when he realised that he had now and already he’d lost count of how many. It started with Peacock, then Ataro. The island was where he lost count, unnumbered lives swallowed by the cold ocean. He slammed a door shut on that train of thought and Uthentia’s joy. With a frown he picked up his jacket, shrugged into it, trying to ignore the weight and presence of the book.

‘I’ve had an idea,’ Silhouette said, breaking his reverie.

‘Yeah?’

‘I think you’re trying too hard.’

‘Is that so?’

‘I think the answer is hanging around your neck.’

‘What do you mean?’

Silhouette sat on the edge of the bed. ‘You said that in the Den you used the power of the stone to find reference to itself. You set it to seek itself among the pages of the books there.’

‘Yeah.’

‘So can’t you do that to find the actual piece you’re after?’

Could it be that simple? Why hadn’t he thought of that himself? The Darak he already had could track down the last piece of itself. He would need to let the power out across the world, to seek itself on a global scale. Perhaps it would be worth a try. ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

‘The more you learn about this thing, the more you can do. You’ve learned something, so use it.’

Alex sat cross-legged on the bed. He closed his eyes, emptied his mind. How long had it been since he’d had a chance to meditate like he used to? To train properly, to rest. He mentally shook himself, pushed away the thoughts, let his consciousness sink into the void. Something dragged at him, interrupting. He pulled his jacket off, the book in the pocket, and threw it aside. His mind cleared slightly as he gained some space from it. If only it was that easy to be rid of it completely. He imagined himself walking naked through a forest somewhere, no pockets, no book. But he knew it wouldn’t work. It would dog him everywhere, even if that meant it kept turning up nearby. Nothing this powerful would ever be that simple.

He remembered sitting in the Kin library, letting the Darak soak its presence through the shelves of books. He had put in mind what he wanted to find and used the magic of the stone to seek it. He let the process repeat, but directed the energy out. Without a focus in mind, like a bookshelf right in front of him, it felt like waving his hands in a dark room, stumbling around after a light switch. He panicked at the scale and his eyes popped open.

‘You okay?’ Silhouette asked, concerned.

‘This is hard. I don’t know where to go.’

‘Don’t go anywhere. Tell it to go.’

He pictured the stone whole, the pure Darak as it had once been, but had not been for thousands of years. He let the desire to re-form it become the only focus. Rather than try to travel with it, he simply let the energy go.

Vertigo swept through his body. He deliberately relaxed, refused to be knocked off centre by it. Let it travel where it would and come back to him. And something cried out in the darkness. A sudden sense of oneness flooded his mind and body. As quickly as that, the stone had found itself. Consciously calming his breathing, not letting any excitement disrupt the process, he let the message in.
Where are you?
he called out across the aether. And the Darak cried back. He felt the enormous energy the combined stone would be, almost alive, its desire to be re-formed almost sentient. But it wasn’t life that cried back across the aether. It was magic. Pure, unfettered, incredibly powerful magic, desperate to be recombined.

In his mind’s eye Alex saw a burnt, arid landscape, grey rock, drifting smoke. A cave, isolated. A man in the cave, old as time. The man looked up as if he’d heard an unexpected sound. He gasped, his mouth forming an O of surprise.

And Alex knew where the last shard lay.

He opened his eyes. ‘I know where it is,’ he said, his voice quiet, incredulous. ‘I could feel its magic across the world.’

Silhouette kissed him. ‘You can do this, Alex!’

‘Maybe. I won’t give up the fight.’

‘So, where is it?’

‘You feeling charming?’ Alex asked. ‘’Cause we need to fly again and I’m all out of cash. I hope Iceland’s nice this time of year.’

Hood strolled through a hermetically sealed warehouse in the basement of the Black Diamond tower. Sparks followed him, notebook PC balanced on one palm as she tapped away with the other. A tall, thin man with long, dark hair walked in front of them, eyes panning left and right. His sharp pinstripe suit rustled in the silence of the space, the only other sounds from Sparks’s heels and fingertips. She checked their location on the inventory map. She’d only just managed to have the goods moved to the back of the warehouse before the client arrived. Hood insisted every buyer walk the length of at least one storage area on the way to see whatever they were interested in. The impulse buy was not to be underestimated.

Racks of shelving, glass cabinets and heavily sealed trunks created walkways. A location popped up on Sparks’s screen. Luckily the stuff had been moved before the three of them walked into the far wall. The staff knew better than to fail her directions. ‘This way, please.’