Born of Hatred (6 page)

I turned as director Green strode toward me, determined and clearly having decided that she'd given Tommy and me enough time to chat. "I don't believe we were finished talking, Mister Garrett."

"Evidently not," I said, as Tommy wandered off to check on Sara.

"You brought the girl here," Director Green said, meaning Sara. "That was stupid."

"Well, you asked Tommy to look into Neil, and that led us here. It wasn't my idea, and I know Tommy well enough to know that he was hardly expecting to find a torture chamber out here. And, like I said,
you're
the one who asked for his help."

"And I didn't expect him to include a member of the Faceless in this mess."

"Your disdain is easy to hear, Director Green," I said with a smile. "You know nothing about me. Before you judge, maybe you should change that."

"Every Faceless I've ever met; has served only their master, like a good little lapdog. What makes you so different, Mister Garrett? What makes you so goddamn impressive, that I should decide to trust you?"

"Firstly, I'm ex-Faceless. Emphasis on the
ex
. Secondly, whoever built that basement did it for one reason, to kill people in it. And whoever he is, he's very skilled at killing. This isn't the work of some amateur, like Neil, who doesn't know what he's doing. Neil may be a powerful predator, but he's nowhere near a professional. Professionals don't make the mistakes that he's made, and they're not caught easily."

"Anything else?"

"You got a wipe?" 

Director Green pulled a small pack of baby wipes from her pocket and passed them to me. "Keep the pack."

I thanked her and cleaned the blood from my hands, stuffing the remaining pack in my pocket before explaining about the photos I'd found in Neil's house.

"Shit," she whispered. "This just gets worse and worse."

"One more thing." I gestured at the open country surrounding us. "Tommy mentioned that you were called with a tip that someone saw something weird at the farm. You see any way someone could just happen to spot something suspicious going on out here? You can't see the farmhouse from the road, unless you're stopped at the gate and looking in. I'd bet a million quid that whoever made that call is the same person who slit the girls throat. And that's not Neil. My guess, Neil's doing the leg work and the killer called to cast suspicion on him. To give himself some breathing room while you chased your tail. I'm guessing someone called to tell you that Neil was out. Maybe he's no longer useful to whoever he's working for."

"Fuck. Look, I'm needed here to sort all of this out, but I'll contact you and Tommy tomorrow morning." She turned and walked away, re-joining the agents buzzing around the crime scene. 

I put the card in my pocket and moved to stand next to Tommy and Sara. "Can we leave now?" Sara asked.

"I assume so," I said.

"Drop me back at the office," Tommy said. "Then take Sara home."

I waited until Sara had gone back to the car before speaking to Tommy. "There's more to this than some dead girl in a basement and a bunch of photos in some asshole's attic, isn't there?"

Tommy looked around, a nervous habit he had tried to get rid of. "That's putting it bluntly. If I'm right, this is going to turn into a huge fucking mess by tomorrow morning."

Chapter 6

I dropped Tommy off at his office, but he'd been silent the whole way back and it was beginning to concern me. 

"They tortured that woman,” he said before I could ask him anything. “I could smell the blood. Can you come pick me up before you go home? I think there are a few things we need to talk about." 

I said I would and told him that I'd return in a few hours to give him his car back. 

"How's your hand?" I asked a still quiet Sara.

She flexed her fingers and wrist. "It feels sore, but no more throbbing pain. Why, where are we going?"

"We need to talk," I said. "About what you saw."

"I saw a dead woman." Her words were spoken softly, just above a whisper. 

I didn't really know what to say to that. "I'm sorry" felt too small a phrase to use for the horror that Sara had witnessed. Instead, I drove in silence for a few more miles, before leaving the motorway and driving down some quiet country roads until we reached a a dirt road. We bumped and jolted down the road for half a mile, the width just big enough for two cars, but there was no one else around at one in the afternoon on a weekday. At the end of the road sat a large grassy clearing. 

I stopped the car and got out. Sara joined me a moment later. 

"I've never been here before," she said as she followed my gaze.

The clearing ended fifty feet in front of where we stood, replaced by a drop of a few hundred feet into the New Forest below. From our vantage point, we could see for miles, all of it green and peaceful. Very few people knew of the spot, so thankfully there was no fence protecting idiots from falling down the slope, and spoiling what was a spectacular view.

"It's so quiet," she said as she walked toward the edge, stopping a few feet back and peering down the slope. "Bloody hell."

"Yeah, I don't advise jumping," I said as I joined her. "You could probably survive as it's not a sheer drop, but you'd know about it once you hit the bottom."

"How do you know about this place?"

"I used to come here, a long time ago. When the only way to get up here was to climb that slope, or walk the ten miles to get around it."

"You climbed that?"

"A few times, it was good exercise." I made my way back to the truck. "I picked here as we're unlikely to be disturbed. You can ask whatever you want. I won't dodge anything, I promise.  No subject is off limits. You got into a fight today, how are you feeling about it?"

Sara continued to stare down into the forest below, her back facing me. She rubbed her neck and turned, before walking back over where I was sitting. "I wanted to hurt him," she said. "He threatened to... well, you know. When I hit him, I just lost it."

"You handled yourself well. I'm proud of you; you should be too. But next time, maintain composure. Losing your temper will get you in trouble one day. Trust me on this."

"You were so calm. You could have killed them all, couldn't you?"

"And a day not so long ago, I would have. But, that's not me anymore. I try not to kill those too stupid to know better."

"Why doesn't that scare me?"

"Because I'm awesome," I said with a laugh, which Sara quickly joined.

"I want to know what happened today," she said. "Who murdered that woman? Why did you have blood on your hands when you came out of the farmhouse? What did you do to scare that agent and who the hell are the LOA?"

They were all fair questions, but I thought starting at the beginning was the best idea. "To explain about the LOA, I need to start with Avalon. Do you know what they are?"

Sara shrugged. "Sort of. I know about people who aren't human. My neighbour when I was little was an elemental. She could move the earth around. I thought it was fantastic." 

I grabbed a blanket from under the rear seat behind the driver and unrolled it, laying it on the soft ground. I took a seat and Sara came and sat next to me a second later, eager to hear what she wanted to know.

“Avalon is a small island off the northern coast of Cornwall. There's only one massive city there, Camelot. And apart from being the island's name, Avalon is also like the non-human version of the UN. Or it would be if the UN had any real power. Avalon consists of the most powerful members of every non-human species in the world. You know those gods and goddesses that you read about at school—Zeus, Hades and the like? They’re all real and each one has a say in what happens with regards to the laws of the world. Merlin is in charge of Avalon, although his ability to control what happens has been on the decline for a long time now.”

“You sound upset about that.”

“Merlin and me have a difficult history. He’s not the man I thought he was, and he turns a blind eye to far too much.” I sighed. “Anyway, we’re not here to hear me complain about Merlin. Any other questions?”

“So who were those LOA people?”

“Avalon has several bodies which help it retain power. The three main include the Shield of Avalon, or SOA, which is the internal security force, sort of like America's Homeland Security, or the MI5. The Blade of Avalon, or BOA, are the armed forces. They deal with external threats. The last is the LOA, the Law of Avalon, a police force, which is similar to Interpol. They investigate crimes which are perpetrated by humans against Avalon members, or by Avalon members on humans.”

“So those Agents were there because either the killer or victim wasn’t human? Tommy said that most of the people in charge just do whatever they like.”

"True enough. The big members of Avalon—Hades, the vampire Lords, werewolf Alphas and the like, all have their own security forces or internal investigation people. They'd never allow the LOA to investigate them without a fight and a whole lot of evidence. It's a bit like a huge corporation not wanting the police to snoop around unless necessary."

"But whatever happened today was within LOA jurisdiction?"

"For now, yeah. Neil isn't under anyone's protection; no one too powerful anyway; otherwise Olivia wouldn't have been allowed to let Tommy look into him. That might change depending on who the murderer or victim was. There's a lot of political bullshit that goes into every investigation when the higher ranked members of Avalon are involved."

"And you used to work for them?"

"For a long time, yes. I quit over a century ago."

"Why?"

"A story for another time.”

Sara was silent for a few seconds, and I could tell that she wanted to ask more, but she thankfully changed the subject. "The blood on your hands."

"How much do you know about magic?"

"Tommy told me that there were two types, Elemental and Omega. All sorcerers' start with Elemental –fire, water, earth or air—and you can only learn two from that set. That about right?"

 "Close enough," I said. "You can never learn a magic that is the opposite of the one you know." I raised my hand, palm up, and a small ball of flame appeared. It was about the size of a marble and hovered just above my palm. "The orange glyphs on my hands and arms show that I'm using fire magic."

I extinguished the flame and the orange glyphs were replaced with white ones as a small, whirling ball of air appeared where the fire once was. "And this is air magic. So I can never learn earth or water, no matter how hard I might try. Omega magic is the same, four different schools and you can only learn two. Mind, matter, light and shadow. But there's a third type of magic – blood magic. My hands were covered in blood because I can use blood magic to learn from whom the blood came. I now know that the blood down there belonged to the dead girl and four human men."

"Can you tell how they died?"

"I can tell if magic was involved, like it was with the woman. Other than that just rudimentary details—age, sex, that sort of thing. But if I come across their blood again, I'll know it's the same. So if we find those men, I'll know they're the same ones who were chained in that basement."

"So, how does your magic work? Can you just keep using it forever?"

"No, too much use and I start thinking that magic is the solution to all my problems. And if I don't stop... well, it wouldn't end well. Magic wants to be used, and if a sorcerer isn't careful, it'll change him, turn him into something... wrong. We call them nightmares."

"Can you ever get rid of the nightmare?"

"Learning magic sort of like long training for a marathon. You train by running until you can't run anymore and then next time you push yourself past that point. You keep doing it until you reach your goal, moving little by little. Magic is the same. When you feel the magic inside trying to take over, you stop. And then next time you push it a little further. You do it again and again as you gain power and experience."

"So the magic stops trying to control you?"

I shook my head. "Nope. It never stops; it just gets further and further pushed down inside you. But it's always there, waiting until you use too much to turn back."

A breeze swept through the clearing and Sara hugged herself, rubbing her arms despite the coat she wore. "I can't stop seeing her," she said. "All that blood. How do you deal with it?"

I thought about telling her a lie to make her feel better, but if she stuck with Tommy, it was likely that she'd be seeing more dead bodies. Although, they'd hopefully be in picture form instead of tied up and tortured in a basement. "As unpleasant as it seems, seeing the dead really does get easier the more you do it."

"Have you seen a lot of dead bodies?"

"I've seen quite a few, yes." And been responsible for more than my fair share, though I didn't say that out loud.

"I don't know if I can do this," Sara said. "Work for Tommy, I mean. I love it there, but... your world is so..."

"Violent? terrifying?" I smiled. "Pretty much both of those are right. There are a lot of non-humans who'd like to think they can do whatever they like, including killing. But there are also a lot of men and women out there who stop those people. Or try to. Tommy is one of them. He'd move heaven and earth to make sure his people stay safe."

"If I stayed would you keep training me? And not just in fighting. But to use weapons too."

 "Do you want me to?"

"I think I need you to."

"Good. But today was special. You won't be out on assignment. Hell, Tommy only took you today so you could get a feel for what his people do. It was meant to be an easy trip." I stood up and stretched.

"Do you miss it?"

I stopped what I was doing and glanced down at the still seated Sara. "What?"

"I saw your face when we were searching that farmhouse and after the fight. You were in your element."

I leaned against the car's bonnet, and half sat on the front bumper. "Sometimes."

"Tommy said that you were some sort of Special Forces guy."