Chapter 21
Later that evening we were in my back office, with the stack of books I’d been working on pushed to the side and my map of the city’s shifting ley-line network back out and unfolded, covering the desk. Samantha was comparing the map to her own notes, marking inconsistencies with a pencil.
I was drinking, but not heavily. Just enough to quiet my mind some. I was on edge. It had been a long time since I’d collaborated with anyone else in the Arcanum, and I was uncomfortable with change. Our history didn’t help.
“There,” she announced. “All done.” I stood up to look at the adjustments she’d made. “This was accurate as of two days ago.”
I raised my eyebrows. I’d last measured them the morning before I met the detectives, almost a week ago, and in that time multiple nodes had moved several blocks from where I’d marked them. That was significant movement for the normally stable network. Almost unheard of, in fact.
But I’d been studying Guiscard’s journal, and Samantha hadn’t been lying. He talked of major swings in ley-lines, with nodes shifting a mile or more in just a few weeks. If the journal was authentic—and if it were a forgery, it was high enough quality that I couldn’t tell—then this could well be the key to stopping the Tamesis.
Samantha had marked on the map the addresses of the four potential victims she’d identified. I marked the nodes at the two murder scenes, mentally kicking myself for needing the Immortal’s help to see the connection.
But this isn’t the first time you’ve used the Immortal’s wisdom, that quiet voice whispered to me from the back of my mind. I froze for a second, memories of fire and screams flashing into my mind, before I shoved them back down deep. Enough of that, I told myself.
Samantha noticed the slight shudder as I cleared my head and returned to the map. She cocked her head. “Something wrong?”
“It’s nothing,” I said curtly. “Just an old memory. Don’t worry about it. Let’s figure this out.”
She didn’t back down, though. Instead she moved closer and put her hand on my forearm, gently.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
For a second, I froze, then jerked my arm back. I slowly raised my eyes to face her squarely, my fury building. I was about to snap at her, to put her in her place, to punish her for her presumption. But her expression was concerned more than curious. She looked genuinely worried for me, wanting to help me with whatever I was going through that had caused such a physical reaction.
The anger died down. She didn’t mean any harm. I looked back down and sighed. Even working with the detectives for over a week, I was still very much out of practice dealing with people beyond customer interactions.
“No. It doesn’t matter,” I mumbled. “Let’s get back to work.”
When I looked back down at the map, though, I noticed something I hadn’t seen before. I frowned.
“Damn it,” I whispered. I traced out the ley-lines on Samantha’s version with a finger, muttering softly as I went. When I finished with the last line, I pushed down and twisted while saying the last words of a complex incantation. The lines she’d drawn in pencil burst into golden light on the map.
Samantha gasped.
Without looking up, I asked, “What does that look like to you?”
“A…that’s a pentagram,” she replied. “How did you…?”
I pressed my lips together. This wasn’t the time to explain ancient Babylonian spells.
“That’s exactly what it is. But not a perfect one. Let’s see here….” I muttered, as I again touched my finger to a node and moved it, and the glowing lines moved with me. I repeated the process with a few more nodes. The direction of shift all matched the way they’d moved between my initial measurement and Samantha’s later one. Then I stepped back to review my handiwork and nodded in approval.
With just a few more shifts, the five major ley-lines of the greater Philadelphia area would form a giant five-pointed star, stretching across the city, centered on Logan Square. The first two murder sites were at the first two points of the star to be in position. Three points remained: one in Fishtown several blocks from my shop, one in Pennsport near the Mummers Museum, and one in a housing project in Grays Ferry. Assuming the shifts continued at the same speed they’d been moving over the past couple weeks, the Grays Ferry node would be in place by tomorrow afternoon, followed by Pennsport in two days. The one near my place was the last, two days later.
I looked up at Sam. “Well, we know the location and timing of the next sacrifice, at least.”
Her eyes wide, she nodded back at me.
I looked at the clock on the wall. Ten ’til midnight, and I’d already arranged with the detectives to go over what we’d found in the morning. There was no sense in waking them up; they’d need to be rested if we were going to get in a fight tomorrow afternoon or evening. Instead I found another glass and poured some whisky for Samantha. Handing it to her, I raised my own drink in salute.
“Well done, Sorcerer,” I said quietly.
She smiled. She looked almost innocent and carefree. “Same to you, Quinn. If you hadn’t seen the pattern, we’d have never put the pieces together.”
I took a long sip, then I ushered her out of the office to lock up for the night. I headed over and took a seat in the reading corner. I needed to think. We’d spotted the pattern, yes, but what did it mean? As the Immortal had suggested, it had to be about amplifying the power of the ritual as well as propagating its energy toward the critical point in the Great Cycle. Once we stopped the next sacrifice and had some time to breathe, I could sit down and start looking at the bigger picture to see where that pentagram connected to across the larger network.
Samantha interrupted my line of thought by sitting down in the chair next to me, her drink still in hand.
“You seem awfully quiet for someone who just solved the case.”
“Huh?” I looked up, irritated at the distraction. “Oh. No, we haven’t solved the case. We know the next likely crime scene and have a good guess as to when the sacrifice will occur. We’re almost there. We can probably disrupt the rites enough to stop the Tamesis. But we don’t know why, what the motive is, what exactly the Tamesis is. And figuring that out can help figure out who’s pulling the strings. I’m betting it’s not just the two who are performing the actual rites.”
She shrugged. “But isn’t it enough to stop them from completing the ritual? At least for now?”
I shook my head. “No, it’s not. If we stop the ritual without catching those behind it, we leave the door open for it to happen again. We can’t let an enemy that dangerous slip into the shadows.”
Especially, I thought, if they were Olympians. They’d have the time to wait us out, let humanity forget, and then simply try again.
She smiled, grimly. “Fair enough, I suppose. More work to be done yet, and all. How do you propose catching them?”
“A trap. We need to capture or kill the two conducting the rites, forcing whoever is behind them to come out into the open to complete it themselves.”
Samantha looked horrified. “Wait, you’re going to let them complete the initial blood rites and kill more victims just to capture them?”
“No, of course not,” I scowled. “I’m going to stop them when they reveal themselves, not after they complete the rites. What kind of monster do you think I am?”
She relaxed. “Oh. Okay, that makes sense. Sorry. It’s just…” She seemed hesitant to continue. “It’s just I’ve heard so much about the Shadow War. About the Fields of Fire. I didn’t know…”
“You didn’t know if I’m a monster or not?” I asked, bitterly. “You didn’t know if I had any humanity left in me after the Fields of Fire? You thought that might be why I’m a recluse, why I avoid the rest of the Arcanum? Is that why you were interested in me in the first place, Sam? To find out if I am what they say I am?”
She didn’t say anything. We sat in silence for a long time, just sipping at our drinks.
“Well, you’d be right,” I finally said, breaking the silence. “You’d be right. What I did in Canada…it was monstrous. No human could have wrought what I did. I don’t know if I have much humanity left in me. Or if I’m…something else, now. I don’t know.” I paused.
“But that isn’t why I avoid the Arcanum. That part you’d be wrong about. I avoid the Arcanum because they’re the ones who asked me to do it. They’re the ones whose call I answered, again and again, because I was ‘needed.’ They’re the ones in whose name I killed my best friend. They’re the ones in whose name I killed thousands upon thousands, in a dozen wars across seven continents and two centuries. They’re the ones in whose name I violated the Earth and called forth the flames to vanquish the Shadows and their demon allies. And if I don’t avoid them, I know full well that someday they’ll ask me to do the same again. And I’m afraid I’ll actually do it.” I took a long drink. She didn’t say a word.
“I still hear the screams, you know. Not figuratively. Literally. They’re seared into my memory. Not a day goes by in which I don’t hear the screams. Not a night passes in which I don’t remember killing my best friend, in which I don’t watch her fall from the sky over and over as I can do nothing to stop myself. I remember all of it. The Predations, when a mad djinn slaughtered sorcerers across Europe. The Tear of the Gods, when Boer cultists tried to start a war between humans and the Fae and came damn close to succeeding. Krakatoa, when we murdered tens of thousands of people to save millions from an insane demi-god. Tunguska…” I trailed off for a moment.
“And, of course, the Shadow War. Our stand at Ayer’s Rock. Lithuania. Khartoum. The hopeless defense at Angkor Wat—only three of us made it out of the jungle after that one. Three. Of dozens. And the Fields of Fire. The goddamned Fields of fucking Fire, when I set Canada alight with my wrath.”
I looked her in the eye. “They told me I was a hero, you know. Isn’t that funny?” I gave a humorless chuckle. “A hero. It was profane. It was horrifying. But I won the day, so I was a hero.”
I threw back the rest of my whisky and fell into silence. I’d never told anyone that. I didn’t know why I was telling her now—maybe I was just tired of holding it in, maybe I needed someone in the Arcanum to know why I’d left, why I refused to do anything beyond the bare minimum for them since Canada. Why I’d practically sworn off battle magic and preferred a gun. Why I preferred books to human contact, and alcohol to sleep.
I hadn’t told her everything, of course. I hadn’t told her how I’d done what I’d done in Canada. Not even the Fae had figured that one out—if they had I’d have heard from them already. With any luck, that secret would die with me.
Nor had I told her about the Immortal. The real reason I’d become a hermit. I’d betrayed his trust in me when I’d perverted his teachings to defeat the Shadows. But I wouldn’t betray the promise I’d made to keep his existence a secret. That had been a condition of him taking me in, becoming my mentor in the first place. He had no desire to be known to the Arcanum. To be used as a weapon, as I had been. By limiting my interactions with the Arcanum, I limited the chances anyone could put the pieces together.
Samantha hadn’t said anything. She still didn’t. For several minutes, there was the semi-silence of a quiet street in Fishtown in the middle of the night, just traffic sounds and the occasional siren faintly audible through the storefront.
Then I felt her hand on mine. I looked up. She’d reached over from her chair to hold my hand. It wasn’t unpleasant. Unlike when she’d touched me earlier, I was no longer angry. I’d burnt the anger out for the night. In fact, it was the first gentle, calming human contact I could remember having in a long, long time.
I looked at her. I saw hints of concern around her eyes, but her expression was kind and open. She was just letting me know, silently, that she was here if I needed her.
We sat like that for a while. I don’t know how long.
Eventually, I heard her stir and looked to see her stand up. She let go of my hand and walked over to the door. I thought she was leaving, but instead she hit the light switches. In the soft glow of the streetlights filtering through the store windows, I was reminded that she was a magnificently beautiful woman. Strong and soft, at the same time, in a way you don’t see very often. I kept my eyes on her as she turned and walked back over to the reading corner.
Carefully, but assertively, she took my hand again. Then she perched on the arm of my chair, leaned over, and kissed me.
It was a good kiss. Lingering and bittersweet, rather than passionate. It lasted I don’t know how long, but not long enough. When it was over, when she drew back and studied my face for a reaction, I was still for a few seconds. Savoring.
Then I turned away from her and whispered, “Please go.”
After she’d gone, I sat a minute or two in the dark before I locked up and poured myself more whisky.