Band of Demons (The Sanheim Chronicles, Book Two) (4 page)

Kate started breathing again. She hadn’t even realized she was holding her breath.

“You think Brown would willingly help us?” Kate asked.

“He’s changed since last year, Kate,” Redacker said, and his voice was low. “I don’t think you realize how hard the whole episode was on him. The calls today, the media attention… he wants it to go away. I think I can talk to him, bring him around. If anyone can make it go away, it’s you two. You practically wrote the book on Lord Halloween.”

They made arrangements, Kate thanked him and then she hung up. She went to find Quinn.

*****

They had agreed to meet at 6 p.m. If they got the story they wanted, they would be pushing it to make it into the
Chronicle’s
print edition.

But as they drove to the police office, Quinn wasn’t sure how much that mattered anymore. During his first staff meeting, Tim had emphasized the importance of the website over the print edition, calling it “the wave of the future.” Quinn was deeply uncomfortable with the idea—there was something pleasant about flipping through a broadsheet paper, even getting an ink smudge on your fingertips. But he wasn’t sure Tim was wrong either. The world was changing but the fundamental rule of survival stayed the same: adapt or die. It was still up in the air for the newspaper business.

Already he couldn’t imagine doing his job without the Internet or e-mail, and he had been in journalism long enough to remember cutting out stories, waxing them, and then carefully placing them on storyboards to be photographed and printed. Now it was all digital. He had hated the waxers when he used them, had constantly complained that they jammed and left his fingers covered in goo. And now he found he missed them.

Quinn pulled into the police station and parked in a visitor spot. The two of them were about to get out of the car when Kate noticed a figure walking across the parking lot.

“That bitch,” she said.

Summer Mandaville was heading toward them.

Kate was out of the car before Quinn could stop her. She rapidly crossed the parking lot and practically rushed the
Post
reporter. Summer, a petite woman with short, curly brown hair, looked alarmed, took a step back, and then got angry.

“What are you doing here?” Summer demanded.

“Trying to repair the damage you did this morning,” Kate replied.

“What damage? All I did was report the truth.”

“You lied and panicked the town,” Kate said.

Quinn came running up.

“I’m just raising questions,” Summer replied. “Questions you two ignored. I don’t deny you got a great scoop a few months ago. But I don’t think the situation is quite as tidy as you claimed.”

“I swear I’m going to…”

“Kate…” Quinn said.

“What?” Summer said. “You’ll what? You know, I’m tired of you acting like you are God’s gift to journalism, Kate.”

“Why, because that’s your job?” Quinn cut in.

“Face it, you’re mad because you got beat,” Summer said. “Grow up.”

Kate was breathing so hard, Quinn was worried she would actually physically attack Summer. The look on her face was murderous.

“We’re mad because your story was dead wrong,” Kate said. “Lord Halloween is dead. He didn’t have a partner.”

“So you say.”

“So I know,” Kate said. “Did you know he killed my mother?”

“I read your articles, Kate,” Summer said. “We all know that.”

“Your sympathy is overwhelming.”

“It’s irrelevant,” Summer said in a clipped tone. “My job is to report the truth. And that’s what I did. There are a lot of questions around his death. If it wasn’t a partner, who was it? Why didn’t they take credit for it? Why hide?”

Kate glared at her rival but had nothing to say.

“It’s not that simple, Summer,” Quinn said. “You have no evidence that Lord Halloween was colluding with anyone. The police think he was acting alone. You raised questions for the sake of raising them. You didn’t provide any ‘truth,’ you just spooked a bunch of already scared people.”

Summer looked imperiously at Quinn.

“I did my job,” she said simply, but he thought his comment had stung her nevertheless. “And I hope you aren’t thinking the police are going to help you. I’ve been here half the day and they aren’t saying anything.”

It was Kate’s turn to look smug.

“Maybe they’ll be a little more willing to talk to us,” she said. “You know, since we broke the original story and all.”

Summer’s face was so red it looked for a minute like it might explode. Instead of responding, she turned on her heel and stomped off to her car.

“I’m going to miss her,” Quinn said, quoting one of Janus’ favorite movie lines. “I’m going to get her a nice fruit basket.”

Kate watched her go.

“One day I hope she gets her comeuppance,” she said.

“Be careful what you wish for,” he said. “Come on, we’re late. We need to get inside.”

*****

The meeting went surprisingly well. Redacker was waiting for them in his office. When they walked in and sat down, he stood.

“Before I begin, I want to set some ground rules,” he said. “Everything I say can be attributed to a ‘police source,’ but I can’t be named. The document I’m about to hand you, however, can be used as you see fit.”

“What document?” Kate asked.

“First things first,” Redacker said. “Do you agree?”

Kate and Quinn both nodded.

With that, Redacker handed Kate a letter in an envelope. Kate opened it and was unsurprised to find the letter she had written six months earlier staring her in the face—the one from the Prince of Sanheim. She mentally forced herself to remember she had never seen it.

“Who’s the Prince of Sanheim?” Kate asked.

Quinn shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

“We don’t know,” Redacker said, “but please understand we’re looking into it.”

“Another serial killer?” Kate asked.

“We don’t think so,” Redacker said. “Our theory is that someone discovered Lord Halloween’s identity, killed him, and then is using this alias to cover their tracks. For whatever reason, they don’t want to admit it.”

“Could it be a partner?”

“I think you know the answer to that,” Redacker said. “Between the information you gathered and our investigation, it’s clear Thompson was a loner. He didn’t trust anyone. Why someone would want to cover their tracks, we don’t know. Honestly, we would have pinned a medal on the guy who killed that monster.”

“So why the letter?”

“We don’t know,” he said. “A message to us maybe. It’s possible someone has a vigilante bent, fancies himself Batman or something. Or it’s likely this person is just angry at our failure to catch Lord Halloween ourselves.”

Quinn was furiously taking notes.

“Why are you suddenly being so helpful?” Quinn asked.

Redacker paused, gave them both searching looks.

“Off the record, I won’t deny Sheriff Brown was plenty angry about your stories on Thompson,” he said. “But even he recognizes they were accurate. We would prefer that your version of events be the official one. If we thought there was some merit to Ms. Mandaville’s claims, the situation would be different. But we don’t.”

“And the best way to bury it…”

“Is to let the reporters with credibility do it for us,” Redacker said. “No one will believe us anymore, not after Holober. They will, however, believe you.”

“Anything else you can tell us about the Prince of Sanheim?” Kate asked.

She wanted to ask about the name’s origins, wondered if they had dived into the ramblings of Robert Crowley. But she couldn’t possibly bring that up without simultaneously admitting she already knew a lot more about the legend than she wanted to acknowledge.

“Not much,” Redacker said. “We’ve found some historical references to it, but mostly we think it was a play on words. S-a-m-h-a-i-n technically is the celebration of Halloween. Some scholars argue the spelling S-a-n-h-e-i-m is the correct translation. Instead of Lord Halloween, we have the Prince of Halloween.”

Quinn knew he should push further. If he hadn’t known exactly who the killer was, he would have. But this wasn’t a subject he wanted drawn out. He asked the question he had been waiting to ask.

“Do you have any leads on the Prince’s identity?”

“No,” Redacker said. “But again, we’d like you to play up the vigilante action. We don’t think this person is a threat to the citizens of Loudoun County. He thinks of himself as a protector. People don’t need to be scared. It’s possible, even likely, we’ll never hear from this person again. If we do, we’ll catch him. But we don’t think people are in danger.”

“Unless you’re a murderer or something,” Kate said, and Quinn did not like the hint of a smile on her face.

Redacker shrugged.

“What matters is that people understand they’re safe. Loudoun County’s days of murder and mayhem are behind it.”

Much later, Redacker would remember these words and regret them. He would tell his wife he shivered as he said it. But as with most false prophecies, at the time he had no idea just how wrong he was.

*****

Kate and Quinn turned in their story at 9 p.m. that evening. Tim Anderson, with the approval of Ethan, held the print edition until it was ready. Both men wanted to make sure that this was on doorsteps across the county the next morning.

Quinn was pleased with the end result. For one, the story was legitimately reported and none of it could be tied back to their own involvement. They had a copy of the letter, which they printed in its entirety. Quinn sat in his chair imagining the look on Summer’s face when she saw it. He knew she was going to go crazy.

She would try and insist that the “Prince of Sanheim” was connected with Lord Halloween. But the
Chronicle
story quoted extensively from police sources insisting it was the work of a vigilante, one unlikely to strike again. Lord Halloween was dead. And they did their level best to bury the Prince of Sanheim in their story as well.

There were hints of the truth. Kate had finally tracked down two teenagers who insisted they saw a horseman in black riding on Halloween night near where Lord Halloween’s body was later found. There was no mention of the fact that he might be headless. Better, Quinn thought, for there to be some surprise when fall rolled around this year.

It was the story of someone who had taken it upon himself to protect Loudoun County—and terrorize it. When it hit the streets the next day, it was an instant success. Every newspaper box in town sold out. For Ethan, Tim, Rebecca and Quinn, it was a triumph.

Only Kate remained worried. A sour feeling nagged at her, that instead of heeding Janus’ warning, they had done precisely the opposite. They had saved their careers, but in defusing that problem, they may have opened the door to a much worse one. She feared the article would be a signal flare to their real enemies.

That morning, as the reporters and editors congratulated each other, she couldn’t escape the idea that they had just made a fatal mistake.

Part II

“The Prince of Sanheim is the cycle of life and death.

That’s a litany I have heard since I can remember. Her name was Fara, and to this day I’m unsure of where or how my father came to hire her as my nanny. Certainly, she didn’t fit the usual requirements for that position.

Some of the other servants said it was witchcraft. For all I know, they might be right.

If anyone else thought it unusual, they kept it to themselves. My father had two things that made him above reproach: money and title. And he knew how to use both.

Not that either of those things ever helped him deal with me—or his wife. On paper, I’m the only son and heir to Sir Richard Crowley. In truth, we bear no relation.

I’m not certain who my real father is. Perhaps Sir Richard knew and had the man killed, or merely paid for his silence and passage elsewhere. Or maybe he never knew himself.

What he did know was that I was a bastard, one who would eventually take everything he held dear. I already owned his name and that was all that really mattered. To disown me would have been to admit fault and invite humiliation. To divorce was unthinkable.

The latter option was unavailable to him anyway. My mother died three days after giving birth to me. My father claimed it was complications from childbirth. Fara says Sir Richard poisoned her.

The facts matter little. If she didn’t die naturally, it would have been only a matter of time before she met some ghastly end. Sir Richard was not a man to cross.

Indeed, I’ve often wondered why the old man didn’t kill me as well. Fara says it’s because he couldn’t bear to watch his name be extinguished, even if his blood line was gone.

I can’t say. I’ve only had two dozen or so conversations with the man and his presence in my life is more akin to a distant, angry god than a father.

Each man is shaped by forces beyond his control, events set in motion before his own birth.

For those who believe in a chaotic universe, my birth was the random result of a young wife’s illicit affair. But for me, I know that every event in Sir Richard’s life, my real father’s existence or my mother’s world, was shaped and guided by the hand of fate.

The circumstances of my birth delivered me to Fara, who in turn showed me what I would become—and what I must do to realize my destiny.

I rose above my allotment in life to become legend: the Prince of Sanheim. But that is only the beginning of my story.”

—Robert Crowley, 1871