Lies Ripped Open (5 page)

I fought for breath, but the void’s weight made it impossible. Clawing at his leg did nothing but gain me another punch to the mouth. I was going to die in a hospital room by someone who had no right to last ten seconds in a fight with me. Rage filled me and I opened my eyes wide, staring up at the void, while I struggled beneath his grip. I punched up with everything I had, hoping to connect with his gut. Fortunately, I hit something a bit lower.

It wasn’t exactly a killing blow, but it was enough to ensure he dropped his concentration for a moment as he roared out in pain and released my arm. My glyphs instantly flared to life. I drove a blade of fire through his knee, immediately extinguishing it as the use of magic once again overwhelmed my exhausted body. The void, now unbalanced, crashed to the floor at the foot of the bed, screaming obscenities at me as he held his bloody limb.

I took a few moments to stop the room from spinning and then gingerly got to my feet. I’d reapplied the air magic, and was using it to increase my speed and agility, as opposed to just
having
the magic evaporate into nothing as the runes in the room had done. I was soon beginning to feel more like my old self.

I saw that the knife the void had been using had skittered under the bed, but I didn’t really have time to fish it out as he dragged himself toward the door, leaving a bloody smear in his wake.

“Who do you work for?” I asked, and took a step toward the void, who ignored me and continued to crawl away.

I grabbed him by his shirt and dragged him upright, slamming him up against the nearest wall, and then head-butting him to ensure his concentration didn’t return anytime soon. He slid down the wall with more blood running down his face.

“Don’t make me ask again,” I snapped.

“We’re all coming for you,” he said, a hideous grin on his face. “You can’t beat us all.”

I grabbed him by his ears and lifted him off the ground, much to his obvious discomfort.

“Last chance.”

He spat blood onto the light blue hospital bed shirt I wore, getting it right on my chest. I punched him in the kidney and he spat up more blood, although this time it was onto the floor between us.

Holding him by the back of his collar, I dragged him over to the hospital room’s door, pushing him roughly against it. There was a bag on the floor beside it, which I hadn’t noticed before. I held the void upright with one hand and picked up the bag, which was unzipped. The gleaming metal of a gun shone through the darkness of the bag. I picked the gun out and upended the bag onto the floor. It contained a mixture of drugs and magazines of bullets.

I removed my hand, letting him fall as I stepped back, and checked the gun, which was loaded. “No, not this way,” I said, more to myself than to him and drove a wall of air into his chest. He crashed through the door and into the hallway outside.

Pieces of wood and plastic littered the ground as I stepped through the ruined door. The corridor was silent, I saw a body lying further up it, but kept my gaze firmly on the man before me. The void was barely moving, but his eyes were still open, still locked on me with a stare of hatred.

“What did I do to you?” I asked.

“You should have never interfered in our plans. In our
quest
. We will have our revenge.”

“You want to tell me who
you
are?” I raised the gun. “Who sent you here? Why were you in West Quay? What were you looking for? You got me to West Quay to kill me. It’s a lot of trouble.”

“No trouble at all. Your death, in full public, was to be a message to our enemies. We are coming for all of them. And there’s nowhere you can hide, even in full view with the world
watching
.”

“If you wanted me dead, why coat the blade with a slow-acting poison?”

“We were prepared in case you fought back. To weaken you and then kill you, it would have been glorious.”

“Your elemental friend is dead; your griffin friend is missing. It’s just you. How do you want this to end?”

“I told you before that you wouldn’t kill me, and you didn’t. You need answers, and I can’t give them to you if I’m dead.” He raised the sleeve of his shirt, showing a dark mark. “It scrambles our spirit’s memories upon death. There’s no way you can kill me and get what you desire most. The knowledge of who we are.”

I stared at the mark for a heartbeat. I’d seen it before, on
several
people over the centuries. The last time had been
on someone evil, a man consumed with his own need to destroy and kill for pleasure.

“Show me your full arm,” I demanded.

The void smirked, but did as he was asked, unbuttoning his shirt and dragging his arm free, showing me the mark I’d dreaded to see on his shoulder. The black-bladed scythe in front of an eye with a blood-red iris.

“You know who we are,” he said with just a little joy in his voice. “If you want more, you’ll have to take me alive.”

I heard footsteps from my side and turned slightly, to watch Heather run around the nearest corner, flanked by two large guards. She immediately crouched by the man the void had killed on his way to get me.

I glanced back at the void, who hadn’t moved.

“Put the gun down,” Heather shouted at me. “This is a
hospital
.”

I ignored her. “I don’t need you for anything,” I told him and shot him three times in the head.

I immediately dropped the gun and walked back into my room, pulling off my bloody hospital shirt and putting on the clean clothes that Grayson had brought for me.

Heather stormed into the room as I finished pulling my T-shirt over my head. “This is a hospital,” she screamed at me. “A place of healing.”

“And a place of death,” I pointed out, feeling slightly light-headed after the revelation I’d discovered. “I just saved him the time of having to live through the healing part of his stay.”

I put my phone and wallet into my jeans pockets and strolled out past her. The Reavers were back. And that meant all kinds of trouble for me.

CHAPTER
5

November 1888. London.

A
fter what had happened in the alley, Alan and I left the
bodies
of the two SOA agents where they lay and went back to the safe house. London was ruled over by Brutus, who considered himself the king of the city. When he’d first arrived in England after the fall of Troy, he’d spent some time killing all of the giants who’d lived here at the time, and then getting into a confrontation with Merlin. It had resulted in Merlin allowing Brutus to stay in the country, but only in London.

Brutus had a network of runners who gave messages to him for a fee. I managed to find one of the Whitechapel runners and told him about the two agents. Brutus would arrange for them to be taken care of, at least until they could be collected by others within Avalon.

“Is it wise involving Brutus?” Alan asked, as he washed the blood off his body in the back garden of the house. Luckily it was still dark, so there would be very few people around to complain about the naked, blood-covered man washing himself.

“It’s not like we had too many options,” I pointed out. “We
couldn’t leave the bodies there indefinitely, and besides, Avalon isn’t allowed to have people in the city without Brutus’s permission.”

“Yeah, but he’s going to know everything now.”

“Well, I’m sure he’ll want to discuss it all. But we probably have a while before that, so we’d best get on and find out who that man was, and why he attacked us. Also, why didn’t he kill us?”

“And why did he write
From Hell
on your forehead in your comrade’s blood. Don’t want to miss that bit,” Alan said and tipped the metal bowl full of now red water onto the grass.

“Thanks for the reminder,” I said with as much sarcasm as I could muster. Scrubbing off the bloody writing was the first thing I’d done when returning to the house. “Do you remember anything else about what happened?”

Alan thought for a moment. “He had a mark on his forearm, a tattoo.”

“Of what?”

“I only glimpsed it in the light of the torch one of those SOA agents was carrying. An eye of some sort, but there was
something
in front of it. Sorry, that’s all I got. Does that mean anything to you?”

I shook my head. “Not that I can recall. Lots of tattoos have eyes in them. Lots of organizations tattoo their members. It’s basically a needle in a haystack. How’d you see it anyway? He was wearing a long coat.”

“Not when we arrived he wasn’t. He only put that on after killing the agents. He was wearing a dress shirt, but the sleeves were rolled up. Who wears an expensive shirt to go murdering?”

“Someone who thinks it’ll be easier to get victims from around here if he looks the part of a wealthy john.”

“You think the woman was a prostitute?”

I nodded. “That would be my guess.”

“Why do you want to help?” I asked after a few moments of silence. “I know you said you were never going to kill the agents, but why help me? What do you honestly get from it?”

Alan was quiet, and for a second I didn’t think he would answer, or that he would lie and tell me some frivolous tale about being chivalrous or wanting to be the better man.

“I saw the look on his face while I lay in the dirt and watched him butcher two people. I saw the joy and excitement it brough
t h
im. I was scared. I was helpless and scared, and I thought I was going to die in this shithole of a city lying in the dirt and blood and semen of however many others frequented that alley. I want to pay him back for that. I want to show him what I can do when I’m not helpless. But more than anything, I want to make sure no one else sees those eyes before he carves them up.”

Alan wiped his face with the palm of his hand and walked off into the house, leaving me to sit on the makeshift wooden bench and stare up at the fading moonlight.

Alan returned a few seconds later. “There’s someone here for you. She’s pretty, but I already know she despises me, so I’ll wait out here. If this is the caliber of visitors we’re going to get in the middle of the night, I may have to stick around after we’ve caught these bastards. She’s in the . . . whatever passes for a drawing room in this place.”

I moved past him without comment; there was really little point in replying to him, it would only create the impression that I wished for him to continue discussing the matter. I walked through the house to the front room, opening the door to be greeted by a woman of staggering beauty.

“Diana,” I said with a smile just before being enveloped in a hug.

“It’s good to see you, Nathan,” she said, her Italian accent just creeping into the words.

Diana, the Roman goddess of the moon and hunting, and probably other things I couldn’t recall, was one of the most beautiful women on the planet. Her long, dark hair was loose over her shoulders. She wore a simple blue top with dark trousers, which wouldn’t have looked as good on anyone else.

“I assume this isn’t a social call,” I said and offered her a seat on one of the two leather chairs in the room.

She nodded a thank you and sat down. I removed a bottle of red wine and two glasses from a cupboard next to an old fireplace that would probably turn into a death trap should it ever be lit, and passed a half full glass to Diana, before pouring my own.

“The wine was unnecessary,” she said as she savored the smell. “But thank you.”

“I remember you like your red wine, and if you’re bringing bad news, I figured it might be pleasant to have something nice to go along with the unpleasant.”

We toasted and both drank a measure. I wasn’t a wine connoisseur. To me, if the wine tasted like wine and didn’t make me want to vomit, it was good enough to drink. But Diana preferred wine over almost any other alcoholic drink, and, as she smiled, I knew she appreciated the bottle I’d uncorked for us.

“You sent me two bodies tonight,” Diana said.

“That I did. Although I assumed they were going to be
Brutus’s
problem, not yours.”

“Brutus very kindly gave the problem to me to sort out. In fact, I believe his exact words were ‘Sort this shit out before we get more Avalon bastards running around.’ He was quite animated in his speech.”

“He’s not happy with me.”

“Actually, no, not at all. As you know, he likes you very much, but he does not like your employer. You sending him bodies is barely thought about. But these are Avalon bodies. And we both know that once Avalon gets wind of what happened here tonight, they’re going to send more people to investigate.”

“I’ll be doing the investigating,” I said. “Whoever killed them attacked me and Alan. We’re going to figure out who did it and then deal with him.”

Diana laughed. It was a beautiful sound. “You and I have
history
. Good history.” The word history was accompanied with a smirk. “
Alan
and I have the kind of history where he stole something he shouldn’t have, and I’d like to tear out his lungs for it.”

“What did he steal?” I said with an audible sigh.

“One of my arrows. Caught the bastard red-handed and he tried to use his manly charms on me. So I kicked him in the cock, but he got away before I could cut it off and stuff it in his mouth. I did get the arrow back though.”

Diana was an incredible hunter, but part of her ability to hunt was her arrows. Legend had it they were blessed by the ancient Norse dwarves themselves, using runes to ensure that they always killed what they hit. Those arrows were one of the things she cherished the most, considering it an utmost honor to use them when she hunted. The dwarves were no longer around, having vanished many centuries previously, and her arrows were one of the few weapons made by them that still existed in the world.

“I’m not going to say that he’s even close to being
trustworthy
,” I explained. “But I saw what he went through tonight. He’ll be with us until he gets his revenge. Once that’s over, all bets are off and he’ll run like a spooked gazelle.”

“Good enough for me, but if he steps out of line, I will
hurt him.”

“You make it sound like you’re joining us.”

“I am. This is Brutus’s city and someone has spent the last few months murdering women in this area. And now
also
in
Whitechapel
someone kills two SOA agents. I’d like to believe they’re not connected.”

I told her about the
From Hell
that the murderer had written on my forehead.

“You know that was written in a letter to the police by the man they believe to be Jack the Ripper,” she said softly.

I nodded. “I think it’s the same man, or at least someone who wanted to copy those murders. I think his kill was disturbed and he took his anger out on those who’d disturbed him.”

“We’ve had nearly a month with no murders. If this Jack the Ripper has resumed his crimes, and that’s a pretty big if, we can expect more. And soon.”

“We need to find him. Alan saw a tattoo on his arm.”

“Lots of people have tattoos.”

“This one was of an eye.”

“Again, not narrowing it down much.”

“That was my sentiment too. But it’s what we have to go on.”

“There was a scythe,” Alan said as he opened the door and waved at Diana. “It was over the eye. I’ve just remembered it.”

Diana had an expression that suggested she might hit Alan with the glass she held in her hand, but decided to place it on the floor beside her feet instead. “An eye with a scythe? Still doesn’t mean anything to me.”

“It does to me,” I said, and really wished it didn’t. “If it’s who I think they are, then that’s the tattoo of the Reavers.”

“Umm,” Alan said after Diana and I had been silent for about half a minute. “Any chance you could expand on who the
Reavers are?”

“The Reavers work for Avalon,” Diana told him without
taking
her gaze off me. “You think they could be involved in this? You know what that would mean.”

“I don’t,” Alan interjected. “I’d quite like it if someone
fucking
well told me though.”

“Have you ever heard of the Harbingers?” I asked him.

“Sure, they’re the best of the best. The toughest, brightest, most dangerous agents in Avalon are given special training and turned into an elite fighting force. They’re not exactly people I’d like to bump into.”

“They’re sent to situations that Avalon considers to be out of control. They stop uprisings, or go in and deal with problems that other branches of Avalon have failed at. Usually when Avalon casualties are involved. The Harbingers go into other realms too. They help the leaders keep control of any problems they might have. To say that they work in the shadows is an understatement. Normally they hit without warning, leave no witnesses or targets alive, and then vanish again.”

“What’s this special training they undergo?” Diana asked, clearly very curious about the subject.

“No one really knows,” I told her. “I’ve been told it’s some sort of mental conditioning. A psychic puts them into an unconscious state and then they live out their lives in that dream world, while learning new skills at an astonishing rate. How true that is, I don’t know. Apparently during the day they live in the dream world, and when they’re sleeping, their bodies are put through conditioning in our world. Like I said, how much is truth and how much is fairy tale, I couldn’t tell you. Whatever they go through, though, it’s so classified that not even I’m allowed to see it. Nor are the knights of the realm.”

“What do the Harbingers have to do with the Reavers?” Alan asked.

“Not everyone passes the Harbinger trials,” I explained. “And once you’ve failed, that’s it, you can never try again. Some simply go back to whatever they were doing before. But others banded together, and formed the Reavers. Originally they did it off their own back, but it didn’t take long for them to get Avalon backing. I have no idea what they do, or who they report to, but they work for Avalon and they’re meant to be fiercely loyal.”

“So, why are they killing SOA agents in some dark little patch of grass?” Diana asked.

I didn’t really know the answer to that. “It’s perfectly possible it’s not the Reavers who are involved. But they’re the only ones that I know of with that tattoo. It could be an ex-member, or someone who tried out for them and got rejected. Decided to muddy their name.”

Diana stood. “Wait here.”

She left the room and a short time later the front door opened. Alan remained standing, but leaned up against the wall.

“Why would one Avalon group kill members of another?” he asked, mostly it seemed to himself. “It explains why he let you live though. If he recognized you as Merlin’s errand boy, I mean.”

“Alan, is now really the time to start trying to piss me off ?” I asked.

Alan raised his hands in mock surrender. “You’re right, sorry. Force of habit.”

The shutting of the front door signified Diana’s return. She reappeared in the drawing room’s doorway holding a box, which she passed to me before retaking her seat.

“And this is?” I asked as I opened it and saw a lot of pieces of paper.

“Those are copies of Brutus’s case file for the Jack the Ripper murders. They have things in them that aren’t in the file held by the police. He wanted the murders looked into, he felt something was off about them.”

I removed a handful of documents and passed the box to Alan, who did the same. It didn’t take long for both of us to come across crime scene photos of the victims, and the horrific way in which they had been killed. Detailed information on their wounds came with them and I was suddenly very grateful that I hadn’t been one of those first police officers who’d found the bodies. There’s a big difference between finding a normal dead body and discovering one mutilated by someone for their own amusement or perverse satisfaction. Both leave memories of the event, but the latter is liable to leave a mark on your soul, and years after you think you’ve moved on, something will flash into your head and it’s like reliving it all over again.

About halfway through the stack that I’d taken I came across something that wasn’t macabre or full of details of the murder of young women. It was a drawing of a rune. One I’d never seen before. It was a wash of dark lines that started with very little space between them as they crossed over at the
bottom
of the rune, but ended with much thinner lines at the top. It was an odd, and very complex, pattern. Not the type of things drawn in a hurry by someone who didn’t know what they were doing.