The Thirteen Hallows (14 page)

Owen Walker stood in the doorway, leaning against the jamb, sipping the Earl Grey tea he had just made, looking at the bag the wild-eyed stranger had given him. It was still on the floor where she’d left it. He’d been half tempted to contact the police but dismissed the idea as ridiculous. What was he going to tell them: An exhausted girl brought me a message from my aunt? He had tried phoning Aunt Judith, but the phone had been engaged, which was a little odd given the lateness of the hour. But he knew his aunt often worked through the night. A cursory glance through the contents of the bag revealed that it was filled with manuscript papers and some old letters. Why would his aunt send him a bag of papers? And why didn’t she use the regular post? It all felt rather covert. Maybe his aunt was beginning to lose it. She spent her days and nights living in a fantasy world; it was only a matter of time before she lost contact with reality.

Owen put his cup on the table and sank into the battered, balding fireside chair, feeling a vague twinge of guilt. When was the last time he had visited his aunt?

Owen reached for the telephone and hit the redial button. The busy tone cut in immediately. He frowned. On the off chance that he might be phoning the wrong number, he checked it in his BlackBerry, then dialed again. It was still busy.

He glanced at the clock, tapping the phone against his bottom lip. Ten forty-five. He dialed the number again. Still busy, but now he was beginning to think that it was out of order. She had a cell phone, but he knew there was no point in calling it: She rarely turned it on.

Owen looked at the clock again. He’d call her in the morning, and if it was still busy, he’d take the first train to Bath.

He was reaching for his aunt’s bag when he heard footsteps on the stairs leading down to his basement flat. A shadow passed his window and then a second and a third.

Owen Walker peered through the curtains. Three men were standing outside his window. A skinhead, a younger man with a tight-cropped haircut, and a short, bulky man. He saw the bulky man reach up to press the doorbell and noted the signet ring on his little finger…and then realized that it was indistinct, the pattern blurred, and he recognized the effect: He had watched enough episodes of
Law & Order.
The short man was wearing flesh-colored surgical gloves.

The bell rang.

Owen jerked back from the window, but not before the short man had turned and looked directly at him and smiled. From inside his pocket he pulled out a pair of pliers. The look on his face was terrifying.

Heart thundering, Owen scrambled for his jacket. He had to get his phone.

And all the while the doorbell rang continuously.

ELLIOT KEPT
his finger on the bell while Skinner worked on the lock. Most people never expected to be mugged, never thought they’d be attacked in their homes or that they’d be burgled. That sort of thing always happened to someone else, so when it did happen, they were completely unprepared. Right now Mr. Walker was probably rigid with fear. The constant jangling of the bell would set his nerves on edge. Maybe he was looking for a weapon, a kitchen knife or a poker; Elliot hoped so. He always made a point of using their weapons against them.

Skinner grunted with satisfaction as the lock clicked open.

And the three men stepped into the hall.

“I’VE CALLED
the police.” Owen attempted to slow his ragged breathing and think clearly. His heart was thumping so hard in his chest that his entire body was vibrating. The adrenaline racing through his system made his fingers tremble, and he was having trouble turning on his phone. He punched in 999. He would just have to hold off the intruders until the police arrived. “They’re on the way.”

He caught the edge of the table and pushed it up against the door, then snatched up a poker from the grate. There was no escape through the back; the basement flat gave onto a tiny walled garden. There was no way out through the barred windows, and he knew the old woman who lived in the flat directly above his was half-deaf, so even if he screamed for help, no one would hear.

There was movement in the hall, floorboards creaking but no other sounds, and he found that even more frightening.

Suddenly the sitting room door moved, banging against the table he’d pushed up against it. Then the door was suddenly flung back, moving the table a couple of feet. Gripping the poker in one hand as he tried to grip the phone in the other, Owen Walker swung it at the window, shattering the glass, slivers nicking his forehead, biting into his cheek. Pressing his mouth to the opening, he started to scream, “Help!…I need some help!…”

“Hello, emergency services, how may I help you?…”

Heart pounding, Owen shrieked into the phone, “There’s a break-in. My address is Scarsdale Vil—”

The foul-smelling rubber-gloved hand pressed over his mouth while other hands grabbed his shoulders and dragged him, kicking and struggling, away from the window. The phone dropped to the floor, the back falling off, spilling the battery onto the carpet, ending the call.

“You should not have screamed,” the short, bulky man said softly. He brought his face so close to Owen’s that his hair brushed his skin. Owen recoiled from the touch, twisting his head away from the minty sweetness on the man’s breath. He was shoved into a chair, and two youths—the skinhead and his companion with the close-cropped hair—pressed down on his shoulders, ensuring that he couldn’t move.

“No, you should not have screamed,” the man repeated. “Nor should you have called the police,” he added, grinding his heel into the BlackBerry, destroying it. Standing back, he watched dispassionately as his colleagues tied and gagged Owen. The cloth they jammed into his mouth tore the soft skin on either side of his lips, and the young man kept fighting the urge to throw up. If he did, he could easily choke on his own vomit.

The small, cold-eyed man stooped to lift the poker off the floor. “And what were you going to use this for, eh? To start a fire?” In the reflected streetlights, his lips shone wetly. He licked them suddenly, a quick flickering movement, then leaned forward to wrap iron-hard fingers around Owen’s jaw, biting into the flesh of his cheeks. “I’d like to start a fire with a pretty boy like you. I really would. We could have…such a good time together.” He allowed his hand to trail along the line of Owen’s throat, down his chest toward his groin. “But time is a luxury I don’t have. So I’ll be brief. Tell me what I want to know, and we’ll leave you alone. Lie to me, and I’ll hurt you. Badly. Do you understand me?…Do you?” he suddenly snarled.

Owen nodded. He wasn’t sure if his message had gone through to the police. Even if they didn’t get his address, they must be able to track his cell phone…or they’d have heard the panic in his voice…. He had to stall for time…he had to—

“A woman called Sarah Miller came to visit you today. What did she give you?” The short man abruptly whisked away the gag. Owen winced as blood oozed from his dry, chapped lips. “If you scream, I’ll break your fingers,” the man hissed, lifting the pliers, working the jaws inches from Owen’s eyes.

“Miller…? I don’t…,” he began.

The small man started shaking his head. “Don’t tell me you don’t know. That will upset me. You don’t want to see me upset, do you?” Holding Owen’s head in both hands, he moved it from side to side to side. “Good. Now, I know she was here. I know she gave you the bag. I want to know what she told you, where she is, and what you did with the bag.”

Owen focused on the pain of his torn lips and continued to stare straight into his tormentor’s eyes. He knew what bag the small man was talking about: It was on the floor almost directly behind Elliot, where it must have fallen out of the chair. All Owen had to do was lower his head and he’d be looking at it.

“A young woman came around a couple of hours ago,” he said quickly. “She had a bag with her. She claimed to have come from my aunt Judith. But when I spoke to my aunt, she said she’d never heard of her.”

The small man struck Owen quickly, casually, expertly, the ring on his index finger catching him along the line of the jaw. A purplered welt appeared immediately. “I told you not to lie to me. You couldn’t have spoken to your aunt.” The small man’s grin was fixed, his forehead greasy with sweat. “Because she’s dead. My associates here killed her. Slowly. Oh, so slowly. I believe she died hard.”

“Dead? No.”

“Oh yes.” The skinhead standing behind Owen giggled, the sound wet with phlegm. “Dead. Very dead.”

The small man’s fingers tightened on Owen’s jaw again, forcing his head back. “I want the bag and its contents. I want to know if the girl told you where she was staying.”

“I don’t know,” Owen began.

“I think you do.” The small man shoved the gag back into Owen’s mouth, caught his earlobe in the jaws of the pliers, and snapped it shut. The pain was incredible. Owen convulsed in the chair, grunting against the gag. “Answer me, or I’ll rip your ear off.” He eased the gag out of his mouth.

“You can go and fu—”

The small man closed his hands on Owen’s throat, fingers along the line of his windpipe, and squeezed. Suddenly Owen couldn’t breathe and the screams died in his chest.

“Answer me!” the small man demanded, releasing his grip.

Behind him, one of the youths giggled, the sound high-pitched and feminine.

“I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you everything I know,” Owen gasped, knowing that the police would not arrive in time.

The one-eyed tramp huddled in the doorway and watched as the wild-eyed young woman appeared out of the shadows. She started across the street, then stopped, hovering indecisively, before darting back the way she had come and returning to the shadows.

The tramp eased himself to a sitting position, and the paper bag in his lap hit the ground with a solid thump and rolled into the gutter, glass clinking and clunking. The tramp watched it, trying to remember if there had been anything left in the bottle. His memory wasn’t that good anymore. A shape loomed out of the shadows and the tramp drew back, but it was only the young woman again. Her foot hit the paper-wrapped bottle, sending it clinking farther into the gutter.

“Who are you—what are you doing here?” the young woman whispered in alarm.

The tramp shook his head quickly, keeping his face down, not meeting her gaze, streetlight washing half his face in yellow light and giving it an unhealthy cast. The thick bandage pasted over his left eye was filthy. “I’m nobody. I was just kipping here….”

“How long have you been here?”

The tramp frowned, trying to make sense of time. “A while,” he said eventually, then shook his head quickly. “A good while.”

“Did you see some men pass by here a few moments ago?”

The tramp nodded again. He had seen them and instinctively recognized them for what they were, survival instincts honed on the streets driving him back into the safety of the shadows. He squinted his single eye at the wild-eyed young woman. Was she with them? He didn’t think so….

“Where did they go?”

The tramp pointed with long filthy fingernails. “Down there…down there.”

Sarah Miller straightened and looked toward Owen Walker’s flat. Something cold and sour settled in the pit of her stomach: She had led the killers directly to Owen.

They were going to kill him, and she would be responsible.

Pressed against the cold stone wall, Sarah could hear them torturing him.

One of them was talking. A foul-voiced man, his words bitter, twisted, full of loathing and amusement. And then there was a choking gasp, high-pitched, rasping, followed by the sound of someone giggling.

They were torturing him for the same reason they had killed his aunt. For the bag. For the sword.

She risked a quick glimpse inside through the broken window. One man was blocking her view, close enough to touch, but over his shoulder she could clearly see the skinhead standing in the background. She couldn’t see Owen or the man with the foul voice, but she could hear the questions and the blows.

The front door gave to her gentle push.

The sounds were clearer now, Owen’s choked sobs, the skinhead’s giggling, and the small man’s bitter voice.

“…Sarah Miller.”

Shocked, she stopped, hearing her own name mentioned. How did they know her? Unless…unless…Realization washed over her in an icy wave: These were the same men who had phoned her in her office, the same men who had butchered her family.

Propelled by pure rage, Sarah was moving before she was even conscious of it. It was as if time had slowed to a series of images, frozen snapshots:

…the small man turning toward her, pliers in his hand.

…one of the youths lunging for her.

…the shock of recognition on Owen Walker’s face.

And then the small man jabbed her in the chest with the blunt end of the pliers. The pain took her breath away and she crashed to the floor, lungs struggling for breath. She hit a chair and toppled sideways, and the steel-toe-capped boot, which had been coming for her head, struck her shoulder, numbing her entire arm, spinning her around in a half circle on the floor, rolling right over the familiar Tesco bag.

“ALIVE,” ELLIOT
snapped. “I want her alive.” He grinned. Suddenly everything was going to work out. He could trade Miller to his employer and make everything right again. He watched the skinhead strike at Miller again, catching her high on the thigh with his steel-toe-capped boot. The youth was moving in for another savage kick when Miller rolled over, pulling a roll of newspaper from a bag on the floor, scattering loose pages across the room.

The bag.

Elliot raised his arm to point, but by then Miller had come up on one knee, holding the newspaper tightly in both hands. She lunged straight ahead, catching the skinhead in the groin. Even before he saw the newspaper turn red with blood, Elliot knew what it concealed.

THE BROKEN
Sword punched through the soft flesh, destroying tissue, muscles, and the delicate inner organs. Blood spurted, sizzling where it soaked into the newspaper, hissing when it touched the metal. Sarah jerked the ancient weapon upward, the rusty edge of the sword—dull and blunt—neatly shredding flesh, eviscerating the youth.

Somewhere the distant call of a hunting horn, somewhere the faintest clash of metal off metal, the song of the sword.

Sarah jerked the sword free. The youth swayed, ashen-faced, eyes wide and shocked, mouth open, both hands pressed against the gaping wound in the pit of his stomach. Stepping forward, still holding the sword in a two-handed grip, the woman brought it down in a short chopping motion, catching him below the line of the jaw. There was surprisingly little blood when the head tumbled away from the body.

The hunters were closer, their horns shrilling, the baying of the hounds louder.

Sarah Miller leapt over the butchered body and raised the sword above her head in both hands. The sword struck the lightbulb, plunging the room into darkness, sparks and tendrils of white fire curling down the blade.

Elliot and Skinner turned and ran, racing out into the night as the light of a police car appeared, bathing both men in blue and white. They vaulted the car and ran down the road, with the car in pursuit.

Through the broken window, Sarah watched the police car take off after the men and she knew they would be back soon. She turned to Owen. “I have to get out of here. Can you take me?” She hauled the confused Owen to his feet.

“You killed him. You killed him,” Owen said quietly. “Stabbed him, then cut his head off. You killed a man.”

“Two, actually. I’ll explain later. We’re in tremendous danger.”

Owen felt sick to his stomach, and the pain in his head was so intense that he knew if he moved, he was going to throw up. “It’s going to be all right. I’ll tell the police you did it to rescue me. That’s why you came back, isn’t it?”

Sarah nodded, feeling her head throb and pound with the movement. “I couldn’t leave you to them. I saw what they did to my family…and to Judith.”

“These men were talking about my aunt saying…saying…” He suddenly remembered what they had been saying. “They said she was dead,” he whispered hoarsely.

Sarah reached out and squeezed Owen’s hand. She was trying to breathe through her mouth; the stench in the apartment from the dead body was appalling, a mixture of excrement, urine, and blood. “Your aunt is dead, Owen. These men killed her. They butchered her for the bag with the sword I gave to you. She wouldn’t give it to them, wouldn’t tell them where it was. She was strong, so strong, right to the very end. She asked me to get the bag and the sword to you, and she told me to tell you that she was sorry.”

“Sorry?”

“I think she knew this would bring you nothing but trouble.” Sarah looked at him, staring into his eyes. “I think you should take the bag and sword and hide them away somewhere safe. Then I think you should do exactly the same. These people have killed before; they killed my family, they killed your aunt Judith, they were prepared to kill you today. Go away. Hide until these people are in custody. We have to go. Now.”

“But why?”

“I don’t know,” she said tiredly. “It has something to do with the sword.”

“What sword?”

She raised the length of metal in her hand. Much of the rust had flaked away, revealing shining metal beneath. “This is Dyrnwyn.”

Owen reached out and touched the metal with the tip of his finger. A spark snapped between the two, and he jerked his hand back. “But minutes ago, when you stabbed…I could have sworn the sword was whole and complete.”

Sarah shook her head. “The sword is broken.” She turned her head suddenly, the movement sending the room spinning. “Can you hear anything?”

“Nothing. What is it?”

“I thought…I thought I heard horns. Hunting horns.”