The Thirteen Hallows (24 page)

Ahriman had always known that Don Close was going to be the difficult one.

A professional soldier, sometime mercenary, and criminal who had served time for armed robbery. In prison, he was known as a hard man, respected by prisoners and guards alike. Close was not a typical senior citizen. Ahriman had suspected all along that torture would not be enough and that they needed to find the right tool to break him.

WHEN HE’D
first woken up in the dungeon, naked and chained to a weeping, foul-smelling wall, Don Close had immediately planned his escape. The last time he had been in a similar situation, it had been in a cell in Biafra in that grubby war where foreign mercenaries received little pity and no mercy. He’d killed four guards without remorse, knowing that if he failed, he would face torture and a firing squad. Those killings and all the others he had committed, first for his queen and country, later as a paid mercenary, and finally as a security consultant, had all been necessary. The British Army had trained him well, and he could kill without compunction, without taking any pleasure from it.

But killing the pair who had kidnapped and tortured him would be a special pleasure. The thought had comforted him in those first few days when the man and woman had done little other than humiliate and abuse him, depriving him of food and water, leaving him to stand in his own waste. He thought he could take anything they did to him; he’d once spent a year in a Chinese prison, where he was tortured on an almost daily basis, until Her Majesty’s Government had negotiated for his release.

On the morning of the fourth day, the dark-featured man had quietly entered the dungeon and, even before Don had come fully awake, had shattered his two big toes with a hammer and then walked away without a word. Don had screamed his throat bloody.

Later, much later, when the pain had abated, Don had realized that any plans of escaping had been effectively wiped away; any movement with a broken toe would be painful and, with his feet pulped to bloody ruin, now impossible. He was also forced to face the chilling fact that he was a seventy-seven-year-old man in poor health and not the robust thirty-year-old military specialist he had been when the Chinese had worked on him.

The question was always the same: “Where is the Hallow?”

Denying that he even knew what they were talking about was pointless. The couple obviously knew that one of the ancient Hallows had been given into his sacred keeping some seventy years earlier. He hadn’t begged for mercy, hadn’t even spoken to the couple, though this had driven them to a frenzy and they had taken out their frustrations on his frail body with clubs and canes.

But they hadn’t killed him.

And he knew instinctively that as long as they did not have the location of the Hallow, they would not kill him. Even now, with his emaciated body covered in cuts and lacerations, he held out some hope. Surely someone in the street on the outskirts of Cardiff would notice him missing and report it to the police. Deep in his heart, he knew it was a forlorn hope; old Mr. Braithwaite who lived three doors away had been dead in his kitchen for the best part of a week before his body had been found.

Late at night, when the rats grew bolder and he could hear them skittering in the straw and occasionally feel their furry bodies brush against his ankles, Don Close knew that he was standing in his grave. All he could do now was to deny his torturers the location of the Hallow for as long as possible.

The Knife of the Horse man.

He would try to take the secret of its location with him to the grave.

THEY HAD
taken him prisoner with surprising ease.

He had answered a knock on the door late in the evening to find a man and woman, well dressed, carrying briefcases, standing on the doorstep. The woman had stepped forward, smiled, consulted a clipboard, and said, “Are you Don Close?”

He’d nodded before realizing his mistake, old instincts coming too late. The man had raised a gun and pointed it directly at his face. Then the couple had stepped into the hallway without another word. Neither had spoken again, and they’d ignored all of his questions. When he had threatened to shout, the man had beaten him into semiconsciousness with the butt of the pistol.

He’d awoken sometime later in the back of a car as it bumped across a bad country road. He’d managed to sit up and look out before the woman slapped him hard across the face, knocking him back down onto the seat. Lying with his face against the warm leather, he’d puzzled over the images he’d glimpsed: purple mountains, the distant lights of a village, and a road sign in a foreign language. The lettering was English, almost familiar. Eastern European, perhaps, but there had been no accents on any of the letters. Besides, he knew he should recognize the letters. They were
almost
familiar. He was convinced then that someone from his checkered past had caught up with him; many of his old enemies had long memories.

When he’d awoken sometime later, he knew that he’d been looking at a sign in Welsh. He hadn’t been in Wales for…for a very long time. And in that instant, he’d caught a glimmer of the reason he’d been snatched. When the car had eventually stopped, a foul-smelling bag had been pulled over his head and he’d been dragged across a gravel drive, down stone steps, and into a chill room. His clothing had been torn and cut from his body, and then he’d been struck unconscious. When he’d awoken, he’d been chained to the wall by his wrists and ankles and there was a thick collar around his neck.

For three days they’d left him alone.

The real torture had begun on the fourth day.

The day after they’d broken his toes, they’d asked him about the Hallow. Maybe they had expected a quick answer; maybe they’d thought that the starvation, humiliation, and pain would have weakened him to such a state that he would blurt out the secret without a second thought. They had been wrong, but he suspected that they weren’t entirely unsurprised, nor were they displeased. It gave them a reason—if reason they needed—to hurt him. They would do it slowly and take great pleasure from his suffering. During a life spent in military service, he had come to recognize and despise the type: the pain lovers.

Closing his eyes, he prayed to a God he’d long thought he’d forgotten. But Don Close did not pray for a release from the pain or even a quick death. He wanted a single moment of freedom to take his revenge on the couple.

THE DOOR
creaked open, but he resisted the temptation to turn his head and look. He would not give them the satisfaction.

Don caught the hint of perfume—bitter, acrid—before the young woman with the raven hair stepped around him, a pitying smile on her full lips, though her eyes remained cold and unfeeling. “I am so sorry,” she said quietly.

“For what?” he demanded. He tried to put as much authority as he could muster into his voice, but all that came out was a hoarse croak.

“For all this.” She smiled.

“I notice it didn’t stop you laying into me.”

“I had to. Ahriman would kill me if I didn’t.”

Don filed the man’s name away in case he ever got a chance to use it. He knew the scam. This was the honeypot. The couple were playing the good cop, bad cop routine; when he’d served in the Military Police in Berlin, it was a ploy he’d often used himself. He’d play the bad cop while his partner, Marty Arden—poor dead Marty—would play the good cop. He knew the script almost by heart. Next she’d be telling him she wanted to help.

“I’d really like to help you.”

She’d tell him she was terrified of Ahriman.

“My husband…Ahriman has a temper. He…frightens me.”

Of course, she had no control over him.

“You don’t understand, I’ve no control over him. He’s like an animal.”

But if he gave her the location of the Hallow, she’d be able to help.

“If you tell me where the Hallow is, I can help you escape, I promise.”

“I don’t…I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he mumbled through cracked lips.

“Oh, Donnie,” the woman whispered, using his childhood nickname and sounding almost genuinely upset. “He knows you have the Hallow. He already possesses nine. And he’s about to get the horn and the sword. The only two outstanding Hallows are the Knife of the Horse man and the Halter of Clyno Eiddyn. You have one, and Barbara Bennett has the other.” She smiled as he started at the name. “You remember Barbie, don’t you? She was such a pretty girl…she always wore her blond hair tied back in two braids. You two were inseparable that summer…a couple of little lovebirds. And guess what: Barb is here, too…in the next cell, in fact.”

Close was unsure if the woman was lying or not.

“I’ll try to keep Ahriman from working on her, but I don’t know how long I can keep him away. And he’s worse with the women, much worse. He tortures them…in unique ways.” The woman let the word settle as huge tears sparkled in her eyes.

If he hadn’t known the scam, Don might almost have believed her.

“He’s killed all of the others,” she went on. “Sexton and Rifkin, Byrne and Clay, and all the others. He has their Hallows. He’s obsessed with them. He’s determined to own them all. If you give yours up, then he won’t start on Barbara for a while. And I can help you escape. I can help you both escape.”

“How do I know you have Barbara here?” he whispered.

The young woman with the stone gray eyes raised her head and smiled. “Listen.”

A bloodcurdling scream echoed off the stones, and then a woman began sobbing, the sound piteous and heartbreaking.

And Don Close wept then, not for himself but for the woman who had been his first love.

AHRIMAN PRESSED
play.

A CD reproduced perfect sound. Barbara Bennett screamed again and again, replaying screams she had uttered just before she had given them the location of the Halter of Clyno Eiddyn.

Before she had died a month earlier.

“QUICKLY,” THE
woman insisted, “give me something so that I can make him stop it. I have to tell him something.”

Close looked at her. It was only a knife, nothing more than an ancient sickle-shaped knife, the point snapped off, the edges dulled and rounded. He hadn’t looked at the Hallow in more than a decade.

The scream that echoed down the corridor died to a dull sobbing.

Was it worth dying for, worth listening to Barbara—little Barbie, with her sweet smile and bright blue eyes, exactly the color of the autumnal sky—being tortured by this evil man? He should have married the girl; maybe his life would have been different. It certainly would have been much better. Last he’d heard, she married an accountant in Halifax.

Barbara screamed again, and now Don heard a dry, rasping chuckle.

“Tell me,” the woman said urgently. “Tell me. Make him stop.”

Ambrose had said never to reveal the locations of the Hallows. Even now, all these years later, Don could feel the old man’s moist breath on his cheek.

Individually they are powerful; together they are devastating. Once, they made this land; together they can unmake it.

Did he believe it? There was a time when he would have said no, but he had fought in some of the most dangerous corners of the world, he had watched African witch doctors, Chinese magicians, and South American shamans work their various spells. He had once fought alongside an enormous Zulu, the bravest man he had ever seen, fearless in battle, who had taken scores of minor wounds without complaint, but who had curled up and died without a mark because he had been cursed with juju.

“Don…? Tell me. Quickly!”

Raising his head, he looked at the woman, watching her sparkling eyes, seeing her lick her lips in anticipation. “You say he has the others?”

The woman visibly relaxed.

“Nine of the others. And the other two he will have before the night is out.”

Swear this to me, Don Close. Swear that you will never reveal the location of the Hallow to any who might demand it. Swear to protect it with your life.

Don Close had done much in his life that he was not proud of; he had lied, cheated, stolen, and killed when it was necessary. He had made many enemies, few friends, but all—friend and foe alike—respected him. And they all knew that one thing held true: Don’s word was law.

“Tell me,” the woman demanded as the screams started again.

He smiled. “I’ll see you in Hell first.”

She struck him hard across the face, snapping his head against the stone wall, the iron collar biting deeply into his skin, and then she laughed. “You’ll tell me first…and then we’ll see about Hell.”

The enormous Hotel Thistle in Bryanston Street was suitably anonymous. Because of its central location, the hotel was used to handling hundreds of foreigners a day, mostly tourists, and the Indian woman behind the desk didn’t even look up as she filled in the registration form for Mr. Walker, who spoke in an American accent and rented a standard double room for the night.

Sarah was waiting just outside the hotel’s double doors as Owen picked up his plastic key card and walked toward the lifts. She quickly entered the hotel and fell into step beside him. Not looking at each other, they traveled in the crammed elevator to the sixth floor, listening to an obese midwesterner drawl to her children about how lucky they were to get to see
Oliver!
that night. Her tweens rolled their eyes as they ignored her and concentrated on the phones in their hands.

When the elevator doors opened, Sarah and Owen stepped out and walked in opposite directions. When the elevator doors closed, Sarah turned and hurried after Owen, who had stopped outside a room at the end of the corridor.

“We should have taken a boarding house,” Sarah muttered, glancing nervously down the long hall, watching as Owen slid the electronic card into the lock.

“So when the police broadcast our descriptions on the news, the landlady can phone us in? I don’t think so.” Owen stepped inside and looked around the hotel room. “No, this is good. Here, at least we’re invisible.”

Sarah crossed to the window and pushed back curtains to look down onto Portman Street. Her stomach rumbled and she couldn’t remember the last time she had eaten properly. “Can we order room service?” she asked.

Owen shook his head. “No, we’ll go and get something on Oxford Street. Let’s do nothing that makes us stand out.”

Sarah nodded. It was good advice. She looked at herself in the mirror. Her appearance no longer shocked her, but she was still amazed that she had deteriorated so quickly. The shadows beneath her eyes seemed permanent, and her poorly chopped locks were almost comical. “God, I look a fright. I need a bath. A long, hot bath.”

“I think you look beautiful.” Owen smiled shyly.

Sarah sank onto the bed beside him, placing the bag with the sword on the ground between her feet. From her jeans pocket she pulled out a leaflet advertising The First International All Hallows’ Eve Celtic Festival of Arts and Culture.

“I picked this up at the concierge desk.”

Owen leaned against her shoulder to read it. “It doesn’t tell us anything new,” he said. “And I’ve never heard of any of these bands,” he added, looking at the names of the obscure groups. “Most of them seem to have been named after Celtic islands, Aran, Skellig, Rock-all, Orkney…and what’s this writing here?” He was pointing to script that bordered the page.

“Looks like Scots Gaelic. Welsh?”

He turned the sheet of paper, trying to make out the words. “Maybe it’s some sort of greeting. See…the festival is being held on All Hallows’ Eve…Saturday, the thirty-first of October. Tomorrow.”

“You know what Alice would have said?” Sarah asked.

Owen looked at her blankly. “Alice?”

“Alice in Wonderland. She would have said—”

“Curiouser and curiouser,” Owen finished.

“Yes,” Sarah said lamely. “Lots of coincidences here, you’ll notice.”

“Maybe they’re not coincidences,” he insisted.

“That’s what I was afraid of. But what about free will?”

Owen nodded toward the bag on the ground. “And what about the sword and everything that it represents? What has that got to do with free will?”

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing,” Sarah whispered.