Eddie Lancaster Box Set 2, page 67
part #4 of Eddie Lancaster Series
I pulled away and looked into Gabe’s pale blue eyes that were now shiny and wet. I couldn’t believe being detained here was upsetting him so much.
‘Gabe, don’t worry. I’m going to get you out of here,’ I promised him. I’d never seen him so upset before.
‘It’s not that,’ he sobbed, shaking his head. He turned away and walked towards the sofa only to change his mind and turn back to me. ‘This place is like living in a hotel. It’s…’ He trailed off, unable to tell me what had happened.
‘Gabe?’ I said softly, prompting him to continue. What had they done to him?
‘Marty’s dead.’
Marty was his boyfriend, another of the vampires sired from Aldric Ashworth’s blood. Marty was possibly the biggest idiot I’d ever met and I despised him, but I’d always tolerated him for Gabe. Why Gabe loved him was beyond me, but he did, and that was all that mattered.
‘How?’
He jerked his head angrily at the door. ‘Them,’ he growled. His lips drew back and his nostrils flared. ‘He tried to fight them and they…’
‘They killed him,’ I finished. ‘Listen. We will make them pay for this. But first I need to do something for them.’
Katelyn’s head jerked up. ‘Eddie, you can’t be stupid enough to trust these people,’ she warned me.
‘I don’t,’ I told her. ‘But I need to do this to get you guys out of here.’
‘No.’ She put her book face down on the sofa to hold her page. ‘We can look after ourselves. Whatever they want, do not do it.’
‘No offence, but you can’t. That’s how you ended up here. Your grandmother would never forgive me if I didn’t do everything I could to get you back to her.’
Katelyn folded her arms across her chest and glared at me sourly. She couldn’t seem to think of a response, though, and just stood in silence.
‘If I had the power I’d break you both out right now but I get the feeling this building is pretty secure if they’re managing to hold the two of you.’
‘Ask that guy for help. Clarke, or whatever his name was,’ said Gabe. He dropped himself heavily onto the sofa.
‘Why?’ I asked. Clarke didn’t have the power to fight these people. He’d never struck me as much of a fighter anyway, he was basically a librarian.
‘He’s an Ancient,’ Gabe said as if it was obvious. Ancients were one of the oldest beings in existence. They were ridiculously powerful and almost completely immortal. The only beings known to be powerful enough to kill them without specially designed weapons were Jinn. Neither race was easy to come by anymore. A war between the races had brought them both close to extinction. Clarke had told Gabe and me all this not long before my death.
‘Why do you think he’s an ancient?’ I’d never gotten the impression that Clarke was any more than a sorcerer, and I’d thought he was a pretty weak one at that. Why else would he hide away in a secret room?
‘It was obvious. When he was talking about ancients he looked all longing and nostalgic. When I insulted them he looked offended.’ Gabe waved his hand as if he was giving me throwaway information. I suppose in the grand scheme of things it was. This information was in no way useful to finding the dagger and Clarke did not get involved in anything outside of his library. I’d only ever seen him leave the place once and that was because he had information he wanted to get to me urgently. There was no way he was going to help me now. Especially not if he thought I was going to cause the apocalypse. From everything, he’d told me last time I’d seen him he was more likely to side with Julia.
As if summoned by the mention of her name, the door opened and Julia entered. ‘Time’s up,’ she said.
‘I will get you both out of here,’ I told them one last time before leaving with Julia. She led me back to the foyer where I found Zeke and Lydia waiting.
‘So, do we have an agreement?’ she asked me. Her voice was flat, emotionless. She was like a robot. Just crunching numbers all day long. Beep beep beep.
I nodded reluctantly, all the while hating her. ‘We do. I’ll bring you the dagger. And I’ll promise you something else too. For the pain you’ve caused my friend, I will kill you. Go and crunch those numbers. See what your chances of survival are.’ I turned and strode out of the building like I’d just dropped the mic on her.
The others followed and as we left Lydia looked back over her shoulder and said, ‘Bitch!’
Chapter Thirty-Three
We all clambered back into the motor home. Zeke’s silence was finally starting to bother me.
‘What’s the problem, jolly green? You’ve been silent for too long.’
He turned to me, one eyebrow cocked most probably at the nickname I’d given him. It wasn’t the worst one I’d assigned him. I’d once called him Black Gandalf.
‘I don’t want to help you cause the apocalypse,’ he admitted. So Julia had gotten to him. Great.
‘We won’t cause the apocalypse,’ I assured him.
‘We still need to be careful. Listen, I agreed to help you find the dagger and I will, but I will not help you take it. And after we’ve found it you help me get the Jinn ring. Then I’m out of here. If you are going to bring about the end times I don’t want to be associated with that,’ he said. I was kind of annoyed that he was abandoning me but he was honouring the deal we’d made so I couldn’t argue. I couldn’t really blame him either. I’d turned my back on enough difficult situations in the past, and none were as difficult as potentially causing the end of days.
‘Pussy,’ Lydia murmured under her breath. She didn’t even disguise it with a cough. Zeke said nothing.
‘Let’s get to Ashford then. See what this Heavenly clerk has to say.’ Julia had already said I was going to find the dagger so I liked my chances of getting its location from the clerk. My chances of actually retrieving it were less appealing.
Zeke started the vehicle and we were off on the road again. Whilst he drove in broody silence I pulled out my phone to call Shirley. We needed to figure out how to deal with the Prevention Association.
‘It’s simple enough,’ Shirley said after I’d finished updating her. ‘You get the dagger and then arrange an exchange with them. After the exchange, we attack them and take the dagger back.’
‘That sounds like something that could easily go wrong. They’ve probably got enough people in their organisation to stop us from taking the dagger back,’ I said into my phone.
‘I have all the covens in Kent at my disposal,’ she reminded me.
‘There is the possibility that they’ll predict this subterfuge,’ Zeke shouted at the phone. It was a good point, they did have some kind of future predicting technology. I didn’t know what they had but it wasn’t all that accurate as far as I was concerned; I’d overcome their odds almost every time.
‘It’s the best plan we’ve got so unless you come up with another one by the time you’ve got that dagger we’re going with mine.’ Shirley ended the call before anyone could object. Not that anybody was going to. Like she’d said, nobody had a better plan and it was a pretty good plan. As long as nothing went wrong and they didn’t see it coming.
Julia would definitely run the numbers on the likelihood of the exchange going in her favour and she’d do anything she could to increase her odds. I just hoped she couldn’t increase them too much. Just because she tried it didn’t mean she would succeed.
By the time we arrived at the opticians, it had long since closed. Ashford High Street was not empty, however. The bottom end of the street which seemed to be made up mainly of pubs and kebab shops was packed with people out on the town for the night. It was only early in the evening and it already looked pretty rowdy. A group of men was staggering around, shouting unintelligibly at one another whilst smoking by the doorway of a rundown looking pub.
There was a group of girls, who frankly looked too young to drink, who were harassing a pigeon that was trying to forage through an abandoned KFC bag.
I would’ve enjoyed watching the various groups of revellers for longer if I didn’t have a job to do. But alas, I was on the clock.
The store was small. A simple glass-fronted building with no alarm as far as I could see. Inside the lights were off and it was clearly empty. No staff had stayed late to do inventory or anything like that. Nobody would get in our way.
‘You can break this glass, right?’ I asked Zeke, looking up at him. In the dark, his hat cast a menacing shadow over the top half of his face. Only his chin was showing.
‘You think I’m good at breaking into places because I’m black?’ he asked in a dark voice which matched his intimidating look.
‘No,’ I said calmly, making sure I didn’t sound scared. ‘I think you can break the glass because you’re humungous.’
‘Hmph,’ he said with a small nod, seemingly accepting my reasoning. I couldn’t believe he pulled the race card on me. Outrageous.
‘I’m stronger than both of you,’ Lydia said. ‘But did it occur to either of you to just use magic? Less messy and it would draw less attention.’
I suddenly felt rather foolish. I was glad they couldn’t see how red my cheeks had gone in the blackness of the night.
‘Actually, that had occurred to me,’ Zeke said.
He placed his palm on the massive glass window that made up the right-hand side of the store and without making a single movement the glass vanished with a tiny pop. He jerked his head for us to enter the premises. I stepped over the window frame and into the shop. It smelled musty like a secondhand book shop which was strange for a medical place. I’d expected it to have more of a clinical smell. Once we were all inside Zeke restored the window. We both stood staring at Lydia. After a moment she raised her eyebrows questioningly.
‘What?’ she said defensively, looking between us.
‘Where’s the door?’ I asked. She was our guide for goodness sake.
‘Oh, right,’ she said, rapping her knuckles against her own head and laughing. She wandered off towards the back of the shop and Zeke and I followed her. She led us past a coffee machine to a simple white door at the back of the waiting area. It wasn’t hidden in the least. There was literally nothing to stop the public from wandering through this mystical door and visit the Heavenly clerk.
‘Hang on, I thought you couldn’t see it’ I asked her, realising that her hand was right on the surface of the door.
‘This isn’t the door, muppet.’ She grabbed the handle and yanked the door open. Inside was a room so small it couldn’t even be called a cupboard. An old wooden ladder that was coated in thick white dust was fixed against the wall leading up into the ceiling. ‘The door is somewhere up there.’
‘Great,’ I muttered. I poked my head into the cupboard and peered up into the darkness. I couldn’t see a single thing. Lydia flicked a switch behind the ladder and dim orange light illuminated the access shaft.
I put my foot on the bottom rung of the ladder and pressed my weight into it. It seemed to hold me well enough. I glanced back at Zeke and wondered if it would take his bulk as well, he was at least twice my size in every way. His problem.
‘See you when you get back,’ Lydia said and backed away from the cupboard. I nodded and then started climbing.
It wasn’t a long ladder. It only led up to the next floor of the building. I don’t know why there wasn’t a flight of stairs leading up there. I suppose that would make it too easy to get to the clerk. When I reached the top I climbed into a large empty room, coated from floor to ceiling in more of the thick white dust that was on the ladder. It was clear that nobody had been up here for some time. I stepped into the room, kicking up a heavy cloud of dust as I moved. I wafted it out of my face and had to cough some of it out of my throat.
A hard cough behind me announced Zeke’s arrival in the room of dust. I turned to see Zeke’s hat appear just before the rest of his head. It was quite comical to see the wizard’s head protruding from the floor with a cloud of dust swirling around it. He clambered into the room in the least elegant way I have ever seen anybody do anything. He only just managed to squeeze through the square hole in the floor. His long black coat was covered in white patches of filth. I decided not to tell him.
I saw the door at the far end of the room. It looked like it was exactly above the front doors of the shop below which meant that if it was a normal door it would open up onto the street outside. Well, a good few feet above the street anyway.
I trod through the dust to the door and placed my hand on the cool metal handle. I could feel the hum of magic buzzing through it. This was it alright, the Heavenly clerk waited on the other side. I was just moments away from learning the location of the dagger. Then all I had to do was get it.
‘Ready?’ I asked Zeke who was now at my shoulder.
‘Ready,’ he confirmed.
I turned the handle and stepped through the opening into… a very familiar looking room. It was small with a single antique desk in its centre. The walls were lined with bookshelves that were cluttered with old tomes from floor to ceiling. Over by one bookshelf, looking over his shoulder in our direction was an incredibly bewildered Clarke.
The door clicked shut behind us as I felt a wave of magic pass over the room and I knew that the door was gone.
A fist gripped my stomach and squeezed tightly. Everything about this was wrong.
‘Eddie, I wasn’t…’ he was unable to finish his sentence. I’d never seen Clarke in a state of shock like this. His eyes travelled to the mammoth of a man behind me and his shock turned to something else. Fear? Clarke wasn’t afraid of anything, of that I was sure.
‘Son of a bitch,’ Zeke growled. He walked around me to get a better look at Clarke. ‘He’s the guy who stole the ring!’ He pointed an accusing finger at Clarke but made no move to attack him. Zeke had said that the guy who’d stolen the ring had been a lot more powerful than he was. Then I remembered what Gabe had said.
‘You’re an Ancient,’ I said quietly.
Clarke’s eyes moved back to me and his mouth stretched into a thin line. He nodded once. ‘I think we should have some tea,’ Clarke suggested, looking about awkwardly.
‘Screw the tea. Give me the ring,’ demanded Zeke.
‘Let us have some tea and I will explain to you why that is not going to happen,’ Clarke said. He no longer looked afraid, and his surprise was abating. He was back to his usual calm and assured self. He knew we didn’t pose much of a threat to him. An Ancient could dance magical rings around the two of us in combat. I would be no help to Zeke in a fight after all. But I was bound by magic to honour our deal.
‘You do know where the Ambrotos Dagger is, don’t you?’ I asked him. He’d been lying to me last time I’d come to see him. I thought he was my friend and he’d kept the truth from me knowing what it would cost me.
‘Oh, I bet he more than knows where it is. This sorry son of a bitch probably has it hidden wherever he put that ring,’ said Zeke aggressively. I’d never seen him lose his cool like this. After Clarke, he was one of the calmest men I knew.
‘Is that true?’ I asked Clarke.
‘Eddie, there is a very good reason for all of this,’ Clarke said softly. He was trying to calm the mood in the room. If anything he made it worse.
‘You lied to me.’ One step of Julia’s prophecy was fulfilled. I’d found the dagger. It was right here in Clarke’s abode. Now, I had a fifty-fifty chance of getting it from him. I just had to figure out how to beat an Ancient. To my knowledge, there was only one warlock who’d ever managed to defeat an Ancient in a fight — Nickolas Blackwood. I was nowhere near as powerful and according to the stories even Nick had had trouble. I didn’t stand a chance.
‘Clearly, you are both very upset and I understand that. I do,’ he assured us. ‘But before you both do something that would be monumentally fatal to your futures, please give me the chance to explain my actions to you. Then if you still wish to turn to violence then I suppose I shall have to go down that road with you.’ He walked over to the door at the back of the room and pushed it open. He looked back at us, his eyes asking us which path we wanted to venture down first.
I looked at Zeke and shrugged. There was no harm in hearing him out. When he was done talking the dagger and ring would still be… wherever he’d put them. Maybe talking to him would reveal their location to us. I doubted it, Clarke was too clever to give anything away he didn’t want to. Although Gabe had figured out his race from little signs he’d let slip, so maybe I had a chance.
‘Fine,’ Zeke hissed. ‘I’ll listen. But I’m not leaving without that ring.’
We crossed the room and went through the door. I’d been through this door with Clarke three times now, only this time I knew there was only a fifty percent chance I’d be coming out again. Even though I was a lot calmer than Zeke, I still wasn’t leaving without that dagger.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Zeke was reluctant to sit down. He stood over Clarke and me who were sitting in two of the comfy armchairs in Clarke’s sitting room. There was a tray of tea on the coffee table but I didn’t think anybody would be drinking it this time.
‘It’s going to be awfully uncomfortable if I have to keep craning my neck to look up at you. Please sit with us and make it easier for me,’ Clarke said politely.
Zeke snorted and then swept his coat aside so he didn’t sit on it as he lowered himself into his seat. The chair made a sort of groaning sound as his massive frame landed in it. He did not remove his hat, which my mother would have found terribly offensive.
Clarke’s eyes flicked to the teapot but he read the room and didn’t bother reaching for it. ‘I was only supposed to observe,’ he said at last. ‘I’d never been much for taking part anyway. When my kind went to war with the Jinn I wanted no part in it. But as you are aware, Eddie, war comes for you whether you want it to or not.’
