Eddie Lancaster Box Set 2, page 13
part #4 of Eddie Lancaster Series
‘Eddie!’ Emma screamed at me.
‘Listen to that woman, Eddie. She is the only one speaking sense in your house,’ Sebastian said calmly.
‘I’m not giving you that serum.’
‘You have nothing to fear, Eddie. You’re immune. The serum can’t be used against you. All I want is that. I don’t even want you to work for me anymore.’
‘I know that as soon as you have what you want you’ll kill me,’ I said.
‘I won’t kill you, you have my word,’ he said. I wondered if his word was as good as Aldric’s.
‘But you won’t stop her from doing it.’
‘Do you really think you need to be scared of a powerless woman?’ I said nothing. I wasn’t playing this game with him. ‘Eddie, let me be clear. If you do not give me what I want in the next ten seconds I am going to kill your friend.’
‘Sure you are,’ I said.
‘Ten.’
‘Eddie you should really listen to him. He looks serious,’ Rachel said jovially.
‘Nine.’
‘Eddie give him the serum,’ Emma begged. Her face was soaked with tears. I shook my head and tried to give her a reassuring look. He wasn’t going to kill Matt.
‘Eight.’
‘You’re not going to kill him.’
‘Seven.’
‘If you kill him you’ll lose your leverage,’ I told him. I was still shaking my head as if trying to convince myself that he wouldn’t do it but everything I knew about him told me he would.
‘Six.’
‘Eddie please!’ begged Emma.
‘Five.’
‘Don’t give in, Eddie!’ Matt shouted down the phone before crying out in pain. I assumed he’d been hit.
‘Sebastian’s taking off his jacket, Eddie,’ Rachel said in a sing-song voice.
‘Four.’
‘He’s rolling up his sleeves.’ I was going to rip her voice box out when I got hold of her.
‘Eddie you’re killing him,’ Emma said, teeth bared.
‘Emma, don’t,’ Matt said, all choked up. ‘He’s doing what’s right. I love you.’
‘Three.’
‘Eddie,’ was all Emma had left to say.
‘Two.’
‘We both know you’re not going to kill him because if you do you’ll have nothing to threaten me with so why don’t we both—’
Matt’s scream silenced me at once. Even Rachel gasped. The scream was high and went on for an eternity. Time seemed to stop. Emma stood totally still, her mouth open, eyes watery. I’d never heard a scream with so much pain in it. Then it stopped abruptly and was followed by a thud, presumably as his body hit the floor.
Silence.
Footsteps approached. ‘That was unfortunate,’ Sebastian said in a soft but malicious tone. ‘Do keep a closer watch on your remaining friends, Eddie. This doesn’t end until you give me the serum.’
The phone beeped three times to signal the end of the call.
Nobody in the house spoke or even moved. I couldn’t believe what had just happened. Rachel had been out one day and already she was making my life hell. Already she’d helped kill my best friend.
Emma screamed and flew at me. I didn’t stop her or defend myself. She attacked me with slap after slap, screaming unintelligible insults at me and I let her do it. I took every stinging blow. I deserved it. All I had to do was say yes. All I had to do was give him the means to control anyone on the planet.
‘That’s enough,’ said Ashley as she pulled Emma away from me.
‘He killed my Matt!’ Emma wailed.
‘No, he didn’t!’ snapped Ashley. ‘He did the right thing! He chose several lives over one.’
‘It was Matt!’
‘He was still just one person. He even told Eddie not to give in.’
‘Ash, don’t. Let her grieve,’ I said quietly.
‘No, Eddie. You’ve done some horrible things in your past. Things you should feel bad about. I’m not letting you add this to the list. You did the right thing. You acted for the good of others,’ Ashley said. Her words were kind but meaningless. Nothing could absolve me of the guilt I felt.
‘I hate you,’ Emma whispered. She was looking right at me. Her words stung worse than her slaps had.
‘I know. Right now I hate me too. I just lost my best friend and I could have saved him.’ Tears welled up in my eyes.
Emma stood up and went for the door. ‘I never want to see you again,’ she said and made to leave.
I pointed a finger at the door and sealed it. ‘I’m sorry, but you can’t leave this house. Sebastian and Rachel will come for you next. This house is the only safe place for you.’
‘If you think for one moment that—’
I snapped my fingers and put her to sleep. I hated doing it. She had the right to berate me and make me feel like shit but I just didn’t want to hear it. It was worse for me because I only had myself to blame. I could’ve stopped it.
‘You did right,’ Ashley assured me. I opened my mouth to reply but instead of words a great cry came out, quickly followed by tears. Like a great river bursting through a dam they flowed. Ashley caught me in her arms as I sunk to the floor and she cradled me.
‘He was… my friend,’ I sobbed.
‘I know. I know,’ she said gently as she rocked me. I stayed that way until I fell asleep.
Once again, I was woken up by my infernal phone. All it did these days was ring and it was never good news. I glared at the device which had delivered the audio version of my friend’s death. I wanted to throw it out the window but I saw it was Richards and picked it up, already dreading whatever he had to say.
‘Yeah?’ I said groggily.
‘Bad news, Eddie,’ he said. Straight to business.
‘When isn’t it?’
‘I’ve found Pete Sheridan. Dead.’
Chapter Twenty-One
Ashley took the news better than I expected. Either that or she was masking her true feelings about the matter. It wouldn’t do to have both of us a grieving wreck.
She drove us to the crime scene in silence. There was probably something I should have said but I just didn’t have the energy. I didn’t want to be awake. I wanted to be sleeping in a hole for at least a hundred years. I wanted to sleep until I forgot everything that had happened. Everything that I had caused.
Richards had told us to come to Heath Woods. It was only a short distance from my house but we still thought it better to drive. I’d had to enchant the house so Emma couldn’t leave. No doubt she’d wake up soon. It was daylight now which meant no vampires would be coming after us, but Rachel still could. She obviously had some muscle working for her or she wouldn’t have been able to kidnap Matt. Although it was unlikely she’d come, both Ashley and I had magic and no amount of human muscle would be able to beat us.
Richards met us at the edge of the woods. Last time I’d been here had been when I’d failed to stop a gnome from kidnapping a child. Now it was the site of a murder. Police tape ran the length of the trees cutting off the woods.
‘Are you ready for this?’ he asked, giving Ashley a sympathetic look.
‘Yes,’ she said quietly.
‘Follow me. It’s quite unusual, I warn you,’ he said as he led us through the trees. ‘I wonder if it has anything to do with Rachel.’
‘No doubt,’ I murmured. ‘She got Matt too. He’s dead.’
Richards stopped and turned. ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ he said.
I shrugged. ‘I should’ve killed her when I had the chance.’
Richards continued walking. ‘I disagree with that. You did the right thing by putting her in prison.’
‘You know, back when I used to do the wrong thing the people I cared about stayed alive,’ I snapped. I was sick of people saying I’d done the right thing as if that made it better. It didn’t. If the thing I did ended up with my friend dead then the thing I did was wrong. End of.
We reached the murder site and Richards had been right to say it was unusual. Pete was bound to a tree with a thick heavy chain. His arms were pulled around the trunk and his head held in place against it too. He’d been kept with as much contact to the tree as possible. His throat had been cut in the familiar style that told me it was definitely Rachel. She hadn’t even closed his eyes and they were wide and staring at a random place where I assumed she’d been standing last night when she’d murdered him. What we were looking at was not just a murder.
‘This was a sacrifice,’ I said in a whisper. Ashley looked on in silence, her expression impossible to read.
‘What like to the gods?’ Richards asked. His expression was far easier to read. He was terrified.
‘No.’ I walked over to the body and squatted before it. His eyes were open and though dead I could still see the last remnants of fear in them.
‘Who goes around sacrificing people tied to trees these days?’ asked Richards.
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ Ashley said slowly, her voice steady. ‘This was Rachel.’
‘But why? I mean I understand she’s trying to get to you guys but why like this?’ He made an excellent point. Rachel did like theatrics but this was uncharacteristic of her. A sacrifice made no sense.
I closed my eyes and sent my magic out to the corpse. I felt around not just the corpse but also the tree and ground around it. What I discovered confirmed my suspicions and scared me in the process.
‘His power is gone,’ I said. ‘There’s some leftovers in the tree but not much.’
‘So, she’s—’ Ashley started.
‘Impossible,’ I replied. ‘She cannot take on magic. My curse is in her blood.’ I wasn’t so sure, though.
‘Hang on,’ said Richards, waving a hand to stop me. ‘I’ve been looking into this whole warlock business.’
‘You’ve been looking into warlocks? I thought you wanted to stay as far out of this as possible?’ I said.
‘Eddie, every freaky case gets dumped on me. I can’t stay out of it so I figured I might as well learn as much as possible.’
‘From where?’
‘I called Clara and she set me up a few meetings with Dean. He’s working out of an office at her Maidstone building at the moment.’
‘Right, so he’s teaching you about warlocks,’ I said.
‘Yes, and he said that the magic isn’t kept inside the warlock but inside the athame they carry. So surely it doesn’t matter if you cursed her blood?’
I sighed. Magic is a confusing subject. It doesn’t work in simple ways and it doesn’t always work logically. It’s not like science. Explaining the workings of magic to fellow sorcerers can be difficult but explaining it to a guy who didn’t even want to get involved with the supernatural was going to be even harder. Still, I had to explain it to him anyway. You should pay attention too, dear reader, I don’t want to have to go over this again.
‘Yes, the magic is kept in the athame but when the warlock uses the magic it flows into them. The magic works through them. The athame on its own is useless to anyone but them no matter how much magic it contains. So, the curse I put on Rachel stops the magic from flowing through her so she can’t use magic no matter how much she puts in an athame. And besides, the athame needs to be spelled first and nobody would spell one for her. Sebastian’s warlock told her she isn’t worthy of having magic’ That wasn’t complicated at all actually. Or do you disagree? Did you find that complicated? If you did… Well, it’s best I don’t say any more lest someone end up with hurt feelings.
Richards was nodding his understanding. ‘So, it’s not like in the books where people get magic wands and just point them about and all that?’
‘Well, it can be. There are magic wands and the magic in them flows straight from the wand. Whoever has the wand controls the magic. But to make a wand you have to invest your own magic into it. I don’t know of…’ I trailed off as I put the pieces together. ‘No, no, no,’ I muttered as I examined the tree.
‘Eddie?’ Ashley asked, worried.
‘When a sorcerer dies the magic flows into the place where they died. There isn’t any magic in Pete, nor the ground around him. There are vestiges of it in this tree, though.’ I stopped and looked at the stump where a branch had been freshly cut. That’s why he was pinned to the tree. ‘She forced his magic into the tree by tying him to it and then used the tree to carve a wand. She has magic again,’ I said. Nobody else made a sound. I couldn’t even hear them breathing. Then Richards’ phone dinged loudly.
‘This confirms it,’ he said, reading the message. ‘This land is owned by Lecon Limited.’
‘Rachel’s company,’ I finished.
Ashley said she needed to summon her mum to break the news to her. I led Richards away to give them both time to come to terms with what had happened. I was concerned about how Ashley was reacting to her dad’s death. She didn’t seem to be showing any emotion. That was usually a sign of something bad. I could deal with that later, though.
‘Do you have a ring or a necklace or something?’ I asked Richards once we were away from the murder scene. He’d been reluctant to leave a civilian and her ghost mother alone on a crime scene but I’d reminded him that it couldn’t really be contaminated. There was no police procedure for this kind of thing.
‘I’ve got this, why?’ he showed his little finger which had a small silver band round it.
‘I want to give you some defence in case Rachel comes for you,’ I said and held my hand out.
‘Why would she come for me?’
‘You put her in jail. Plus, we’ve worked together. In her eyes that makes us friends. Everyone who knows me is in danger now.’ I thought about Matt screaming down the phone as Sebastian killed him. That would not happen again. I wanted to lock everyone up in my house (Doris’s house, she probably wouldn’t like me to keep calling it mine) but I knew Richards wouldn’t be up for that. Not that Emma or Adrian seemed particularly fond of it.
‘Fair point,’ he muttered and handed the ring over.
I closed my hands around it and began infusing it with protective magic. Pete had been a weak sorcerer which meant that Rachel didn’t have much power in her wand. My spell would be enough to protect Richards from her attacks. If she managed to get more magic… Well that was a bridge to cross at another time.
‘Here,’ I handed the ring back. ‘Keep your eyes open and try not to go anywhere alone.’
‘Sure,’ he said unconvincingly and then headed off to his car to give us some privacy.
When I returned to the site Margie was already gone. Ashley was standing over her father with that same expressionless look on her face. If she carried on blocking out her feelings it wasn’t going to end so well. She needed to let herself feel the pain of losing her dad.
‘It’s okay to be sad, you know,’ I said. ‘He was a dick but he was still your dad.’
She looked over at me, her eyebrows slightly raised. ‘Why does this keep happening to me?’ she asked and her face finally gave way to the grief.
I took her in my arms and squeezed. ‘I know how it feels. I know,’ I said softly.
‘Both my parents killed by that horrible beast,’ she said. She wasn’t crying but she was on the verge. Rachel had done the same thing to me when I was thirteen and I knew exactly how it felt.
‘She did the same to mine. We will get her for this, Ash. I promise.’
‘I want her to suffer, Eddie. I want her to suffer more than anyone ever has,’ she said coldly. On that matter we were agreed.
For some reason, Ashley insisted on delivering the news to her half-siblings in person. I couldn’t fathom why, considering they were absolutely appalling towards her last time she was there - well, Clarabelle was anyway. I wasn’t up for the plan but I wasn’t really given a choice so back to Cedarstone we went. If we visited much more, I might as well just call Ramsay and tell him to come get me. Not that I had his number.
When we arrived, Clarabelle answered the door and she was not happy to see us. ‘How dare you come back here after attacking my dad,’ she said, her nostrils flaring.
‘Our dad,’ Ashley corrected. ‘And I’ve got news to tell you.’
‘Unless that news is you’re never going to come near us again, I’m not interested. Now, sod off,’ she said and swung the door shut. I lifted my finger lazily and the door swung open again with such force that Clarabelle was knocked back. She threw some sort of nasty spell at me but I deflected it easily and smashed a nearby mirror instead.
‘Who gets that bad luck?’ I asked as I entered the house uninvited. I’m not a vampire so I can do that. ‘I mean, you threw the spell, but I deflected it.’
‘What are you on about?’ she demanded.
‘We’re not here to fight,’ said Ashley as she followed me in.
‘You’re here to deliver bad news,’ Annabelle said as she came through from what I assumed was the kitchen.
‘Oh, for god’s sake,’ muttered Clarabelle. She was about as impressed by her sister’s psychic abilities as I was. Or maybe I was just in denial.
‘Our dad’s dead,’ Ashley said in a not so gentle way.
‘He’s not your… What?’ Clarabelle stared at Ashley in disbelief. ‘You,’ she snarled at me.
‘No, not me!’ I declared indignantly. Why did I always get the blame for bad stuff?
‘It was a warlock called Rachel, she killed him for his magic. We think she’s going after people close to me and Eddie.’
‘So, you did get him killed,’ she accused us. I was baffled by the fact that she blamed us so easily.
‘You’ve got a funny way of looking at things,’ I muttered.
‘Just shut up and listen,’ Ashley snapped. ‘You could be in danger too.’
‘We are not close to you.’
‘Rachel doesn’t know that. All she knows is we’re related.’ Ashley had no evidence to suggest that Rachel knew that, but even if she didn’t yet, she would soon. Rachel had a knack for finding things out. Some might call it being resourceful, I called it being a nosey whore.
‘Mum’s been missing all morning,’ Annabelle said quietly. Her eyebrows twitched in worry.
