With Silent Screams (13 page)

“I’m going to clear out the rear of the house,” I told Bill. “Stay guard here, I won’t be long.”

Bill had taken a long silver dagger from the dead body and was weighing it in his hand as he nodded.

I left him alone and crept toward the rear of the building, passed a large empty room and set of stairs. I heard grunts and groans of pain upstairs, but I forced myself to keep going. Whoever was up there was going to have to hold out for just a few more minutes.

As I moved closer to the kitchen, I overheard two men speaking and moved into the shadows next to a large chest of drawers, giving me a good view of the occupants. The first man was short, stocky, with a shaved head and several tattoos along the back of his neck. He was digging the point of a dagger into the softwood around the doorframe. His friend was well over six-feet tall, but was just as broad as his smaller comrade. His arms were bare, except for a few scars that looked a lot like bullet holes. He was sat at a kitchen table a few feet away from his friend.

“Who’s that new guy? The one Simon wants left alone?” the shorter man asked as I moved toward them.

“No idea, but he’s freaking out about it. I think the government has finally sent someone to deal with us.”

“Then why aren’t we dealing with him first? Sending those fucks a message.”

The larger man sighed; clearly he’d heard his friend’s words before. “Because we’re not finished here yet. And because we don’t want a long drawn out battle with the Feds.”

“So, what about that cop? Moon?”

“Well that little piggy is going on a spit. Son-of-a-bitch once took me in for assault.”

“Who’d you hit?”

“Some bitch who didn’t know when she was allowed to open her mouth.”

“Never, am I right?”

Both men laughed as I entered the kitchen and silently made my way toward them. The larger man was still laughing when I slit his throat with a blade of fire. He made a bubbling noise as he died, which caught the attention of his shorter friend, who died a second later as the same dagger severed his spine.

“What the fuck?” a woman shouted as she entered the kitchen from the opposite side. She turned to shout once more, but I threw the stocky man’s dagger at her. The blade entered her skull and killed her before she’d hit the linoleum floor.

I made a circuit of the remaining rooms, but found no one else until I reached Bill. “Three down,” I told Bill. “The exit’s free now, take everyone from downstairs out through the kitchen. I’ll go deal with whoever is up there.”

“You need a hand?”

“Get them outside first, take them to the tree line. Then go get Galahad. Call a bar in Portland, the Mill. They’ll sort it out.”

“Be careful,” he said, and within a few seconds I was watching him lead a half dozen people safety out of the house.

When I was certain enough time had passed for them to get away, I walked toward the staircase. The noises I’d heard from before had ended, and I really hoped that whoever they had up there was still alive.

I crept slowly up the staircase and peered through the wooden banister onto the empty landing above. Once at the top of the stairs, I opened the nearest door, but although it held several single beds, it was devoid of life. I re-closed the door and heard muffled voices coming from the far right of the floor.

It took me a few minutes as I continued to open every door I came to in an effort to not be surprised by any would-be attackers. As I got closer to the voices, I made out a woman laughing. I stopped at the door for the briefest of moments before bursting through in one motion. The explosion of sound as the door slammed open startled the two women inside. They each held a carved dagger and straddled the bodies of a young man and woman, both tied to old wooden chairs, each drenched with blood.

The first woman never even moved before a torrent of air slammed into her and flung her through the window at the rear of the room, her screams echoing in the night as she fell the thirty feet to a soft thud and then silence. The second woman flung her dagger at me, which I easily avoided and then set her legs on fire before she could try to get away through a nearby door. She screamed in pain, rolling around trying to put out the magical flames as they leapt onto her arms with seemingly a mind of their own.

I left her to scream as I checked the man and woman tied to a chair and found them both dead. Their tops had been torn off, exposing the three tattoos on their backs, one on each shoulder and one on the base of their necks. They had dozens of knife wounds, and both had been dead for a few hours. The voices I’d heard earlier hadn’t belonged to either of them.

I clicked my fingers and the fire vanished, leaving the murderess moaning in pain.

“Why?” I asked her.

“Fun,” she said and smiled through the pain.

I grabbed her by her hair and dragged her toward the unbroken window. “Where’s Simon?”

“No idea. He lets us enjoy ourselves. He doesn’t own us.”

I glanced outside at the lawn below, to the body of her friend who was lying at an impossible angle. “You may live from this high up, but it wouldn’t be a good life. Why did your brute of a friend say you were the Vanguard?”

She followed my gaze, her eyes wide open at the sight of her friend. “Because we are Vanguard. We will rid the world of the lesser souls.”

“Lesser souls?”

“Anyone we deem to be beneath us. Simon picks them and once he’s done questioning them, he leave their punishment to us.”

“You’re human, all of you. In the eyes of any true Vanguard,
you’d
be the lesser species.”

She appeared confused for a second. “I don’t understand.
We
are the true Vanguard.”

I shook my head. “No, you’re psychotic cannon-fodder.”

The gunshot exploded inside the room as bullets came pouring through the nearest wall. One of the bullets hit the woman in the temple, spinning her to the ground as I managed to throw myself behind the two deceased victims.

Once the shooter had finished, there were well over a dozen bullet holes in the wall and the door that led to the hallway. The door opened slowly, showing the framed image of Brute Two in the gap, an uzi in one hand.

A quick blast of air threw his gun arm up toward the ceiling, something he couldn’t do anything about in time to stop me barreling into him and out into the hallway. His gun skittered away into the room as I landed blow after blow on his face and chest using my fists and forearms to remove any fight that might have been in him. When finished, his features were a bloody mess and he was wheezing badly.

“Where’s Simon?” I asked.

“Out,” he said and started to cough up blood onto the floor.

I dragged him to his feet and marched him down the corridor, searching the remaining rooms on the floor until I found another woman. I pushed the brute onto the floor and checked on her. She’d been tied to a bed with cable-ties, which had cut into her wrists and ankles, drawing blood. I checked her pulse, but there was nothing there. She’d died while I was downstairs helping everyone escape. One more life lost so that others could live. Unfortunately for the brute, that didn’t make me feel any better.

I dragged the injured murderer out into the hallway once more and toward the large window that looked out over the front of the house. He struggled a few times, but it’s amazing what a well-aimed punch to the kidneys will do to get someone to
co-operate.

I smashed the back of his head against the window, leaving a bloody print in the now spider-webbed glass.

“Where’s the rest of your people?” I demanded.

“They’ll find you. My brother—”

“Your brother has a large hole in his neck where his jugular used to be, he probably won’t be doing much.”

“Bastard!” he reared up at me, gaining a kick to his knee, which popped, and a right-hook to his jaw.

I glanced out of the window and saw Simon walking toward the house. I dragged Brute Two to his feet and held him steady. “There’s good news and bad. Good news, you won’t be going to jail.”

“And bad?”

“This is going to hurt like a fucking son-of-a-bitch.” I kept hold of him as I took a few steps back and then ran at the
window
, using the Brute’s own body to drive through the glass. I kept hold of him until we were free of the house and then I released him to fall alone, using my air magic to drop softly to the ground as the Brute landed with a sickening crunch on the porch behind me.

I took a step toward Simon, with what I was sure a murderous glint in my eyes, but he dropped to his knees, placed his hands on his head and said, “I surrender.”

It wasn’t enough and I took another step, but before I could do more, Galahad and his forces exploded out from the trees around us, screaming orders at Simon to lie down.

“You okay?” Galahad asked.

I had an urge to wipe the grin from Simon’s face, but pushed it aside. “There are a lot of scared people in the trees behind here. Most of them will need a doctor.”

“I’ll ensure it’s done. You did good work here.”

“How’d you get here so quickly?”

Galahad shook his head. “Rean found me. He knew who to contact in town.”

“Rean?” I didn’t even bother trying to hide my surprise. “He betrayed us to Simon. He wanted to save his family and clan.”

“Well, he must have had a change of heart,” he said
dismissively
.

One of Galahad’s men—a lanky, grizzled man with a scruffy beard—marched Simon over toward us, forcing him to his knees before Galahad.

“I only kneel to my king,” Simon said.

Galahad kicked him in the face, sending him sprawling to the ground. “Get him to the jail, I want around-the-clock guard. And I want runes on the cell, if this piece of shit touches anything resembling metal, I want his fucking arms to catch fire.”

“I want to talk to him,” I said.

“Yeah, not a problem.”

I thanked my old friend and went off to find Bill and the survivors, all the while wondering why, for a tiny fraction of a second, I thought I saw concern on Galahad’s face when I asked to speak to his prisoner.

CHAPTER
15

S
imon Olson was a fairly unassuming man. It was a decision I came to while watching Galahad’s forces march him through the police station to his little cell at the far end of the row of four. Th
e oth
er cells were empty, although I doubted Simon would have cared one way or the other. Aside from his bland exterior, there was something not right about him. It coiled under his skin, like a great white shark just under the surface of glassy water. Danger just waiting to be released to devastating effect. He looked at people in two ways. Either as someone who was beneath him, or as prey. I apparently fell into the second category. Lucky me.

“Do you think these bars will keep you safe?” he asked me once Galahad’s people left us alone. Simon had immediately laid down on the single bed, trying to look as disinterested in his current predicament as possible.

I tapped one of the steel bars with my finger. It made a satisfying noise. “Pretty much. There are runes drawn all over these bars, you could rub them off, but doing so would make it go boom if you do it in the wrong order. That will turn you into
a paste.”

“You too.”

“Nope, the focus of the blast is directed toward you. Me, I’ll just get a bit of a jolt and try to avoid flying parts of psychopath.”

Simon’s eyes narrowed. “You’re a smug little prick, a
ren’t you?”

“Well I’m not in jail. So, yes, yes I am.”

“Where do you think Galahad is going to put me? He’ll take me to Shadow Falls and put me far away from any
living thing.”

“I don’t give a shit if he puts you in a Siberian Gulag. In fact if I had my way, I’d probably send half of you to one place and half somewhere else. Just to make my point.”

“This isn’t over.”

“Oh really? Are some of your human friends running around the place? What are they going to do?”

“You’ll see. I don’t play the short game.”

“Good for you. Do you play the dodge-the-large-man-who-wants-to-make-you-his-bitch game? Because on the off chance that Galahad keeps you in a human jail, you’re gonna have to get really good at it. A whole life of sweaty man love and sorcerer’s bands. Never to use your alchemy. That would be a very long life for you, I think.”

Simon’s eyes narrowed again. “Why are you here?”

“Why kill those people? What did you get out of it apart from just the act of murder?”

“Isn’t that enough?”

“You’re not an idiot, you tortured those people and removed parts of them. I’m guessing tattoos. So, why the interest in
people’s
ink?”

“I like collecting tattoos. They’re pretty.”

“That’s an awful lot of work just to get some tattoos. And why have those fucking idiots you were working with think they’re Vanguard? Because we both know they’re about as far removed from Vanguard as you are from President of Algeria.”

“What do you know about Vanguard?”

“Well, I know they’re never human. That they want to destroy Shadow Falls and anyone else who has left Avalon and that they’re full of insane idiots. So I guess you got the last one right.”

“What makes you think I want to tell you anything?”

“Because you’re itching to. You want to tell everyone how smart you were, and how easy it was to string all those pe
ople along.”

“Fine, you’re right. I told them they were Vanguard to give them a purpose. Make them think they were doing something they consider worthwhile. They were a band of misfits and murderers when I came along, it didn’t take much to convince them that the world’s ills stemmed from the people I wanted dead.”

“So, why did you want those people dead?”

“Ah, that’s for me to know. Let me ask you something, why did Galahad get you to bring me in? Why not do it himself?” He glanced around as if checking for anyone who may overhear us. “Why ask
Merlin’s Assassin
to come get me?”

I stared at Simon as a thought popped into my head. “Have we met before?”

“Oh, yes, although it took me a little while to remember you. The last time we met you were trying to kill me.”

“Clearly I didn’t do the best of jobs.”

“Milan, 1709. You remember it now? Do you remember those dead kids?”

Reality dawned on me as the memory of dead teenagers found in snowy woods flashed in my brain. “You were the
assassin
.”

Simon nodded, apparently proud of his work. “You almost had me. Almost.”

“So, who do you work for? Did you work for Shadow Falls back then?”

“No, I was freelance. I came under the notice of the old king of Shadow Falls a century ago. He made me very rich. And will continue to do so again when the impostor who stole his crown is removed.”

“So, all of these murders was to, what? Make Galahad loo
k bad?”

“I think we’re done talking now. If you stick around town you’ll find out exactly what I have planned.”

I stood and looked down at Simon who had closed his eyes.

“Please do close the door behind you. I’m sure Galahad’s men will be in here shortly to rough me up; I’d like a nap before then.”

“Make sure we don’t meet again, Simon,” I told him.

Simon opened one eye and stared at me. “Oh, we’ll meet again. And next time, I don’t plan on letting you win.”

I found Galahad outside the police station talking to the mayor, who scowled and walked off the second he saw me. “That man is a weaselly little bastard,” Galahad said before taking a drink of what smelled like coffee.

“Why’d you hire me?” I asked. “No more bullshit. Why have me go after him? He’s clearly working for the ex-king. So, what is he really doing here?”

Galahad drank his coffee and dropped the polystyrene cup into the bin next to him. “I have no idea. I’m hoping our interrogators will be able to figure it out. But know this, Simon never does anything for the fun of it. If he is working for Charles
Whitehorn
, the ex-king, and I’m certain he is, there’s a game plan here.”

“Why not go to Charles and threaten him off?”

“There’s a rumor that he’s about to run for Senator.”

“As in a United States Senator?”

“Unfortunately, yes. If we go after him and there’s any link back to Shadow Falls, it could cause problems for us. Avalon certainly wouldn’t be happy that we’re threatening people who are in the neutral territory of D.C. My position isn’t solidified enough that I can risk it. Besides, Simon was killing on my own doorstep—that was more important than threatening someone and maybe creating more support for him in the long run.”

“How was everyone from the house?”

“We took the three remaining members of Simon’s gang to a nearby cabin. Once Simon’s been taken back to Shadow Falls, they’ll be given over to the SPD to do with as they see fit. Bill and the rest of the inhabitants of the house are at a nearby
hospital
. They’re mostly suffering from shock and minor injuries. The
psychological
impact is going to be the big thing for them.”

“Simon was asking about tattoos,” I said. “Is there a parlor in town?”

Galahad shook his head. “What type of tattoos?”

“No idea, he wouldn’t say. But he only grabbed people with tattoos. It’s why Sally-Ann was disposed of; she didn’t have any. But then, why did they think she might have?”

I walked back into the station and made my way to Simon, who was still alone. “Why’d you grab Sally-Ann?” I asked.

“Who?” Simon asked without opening his eyes.

“The girl you threw out of a car?”

“She fit my type.”

“Bullshit. You wanted tattoos, why her? She didn’t have any.”

Simon sighed. “Two of my boys grabbed her before I could stop them. I checked her for marks and discarded her. Then I killed one of the boys to make sure we didn’t have any more stupid errors. Is she why you’re here?”

“She was the daughter of a friend of Avalon’s.”

Simon sat bolt upright. “Are you fucking kidding me? You’re here because of some bitch my idiot group grabbed because they couldn’t keep their shit together?”

“You’re in here because you murdered someone important to an Avalon official. You very much killed the wrong girl.”

“Those fucking idiots!” Simon screamed and launched himself at the bars, which ignited his hands he touched them, causing him to scream in pain and drop to the floor. “It’s a good thing you killed them.”

“Looks like you picked the wrong people to trust.”

Simon seethed silently for a few seconds. “Speaking of trust. You see that miserable fucking wood troll who set me up, tell him I’m going to make him watch as I butcher his clan. I promised him what would happen. And now I plan to follow through.”

“Well, good luck with getting out of there without cooking yourself. I’m sure he’ll be up all night concerned that the mighty Simon Olson, char-grilled to perfection, is going to come for him.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

The door opened and two large men stepped inside. One was pushing a table, the contents of which were covered by a black sheet. “I think you’ve got bigger problems,” I told him and left him alone with his newfound friends.