The Thirteen Hallows (19 page)

Beyond the physical world exist realms of experience undreamed of by the vast majority of mankind. These are the Ghost Worlds, sometimes known as the Astral plane or simply the Astral.

Scores of religions and beliefs accept that the human spirit, the soul, travels to the Astral while the physical body sleeps and renews itself. These faiths also agree that the spirits of the newly dead linger in the Astral before they take the final journey into the Light.

Powerful emotions in the living world, the Incarnate World, echo into the Astral, tiny pulses of color in the gray landscape. Words of power, either prayers or curses, once fired with emotion, can penetrate the Astral. Places of special worship, holy shrines, and revered artifacts leave their mark in the Astral.

And as in all worlds, predators hunt in the Ghost Worlds.

“DYRNWYN…DYRNWYN…
Dyrnwyn…”

A solid cone of light burst through the shifting pattern of clouds, lancing into the upper reaches of the Ghost World. Higher and higher it soared, slicing through realms accessible only to a rare few. The sleeping spirits of humankind roamed the lower levels, while more highly developed souls had access to the middle levels. Only those who had dedicated their lives to the acquisition of arcane knowledge could enter the highest levels.

The gray landscape lit up as the beacon throbbed in the nothingness, washing away the shadows, muting the lights of human emotions and dreams that speckled the gray Astral.

And then the cone took shape, streamers of light flowing, giving the creation form and substance, angles forming, lines appearing, the beam of light tapering from the lowest levels, rising to a slender point high in the Astral.

The image of a sword formed.

It pulsed and throbbed in the Ghost World for less than a handful of heartbeats, and then it winked out of existence. The grayness, darker now, slipped back, leaving the pastel lights of human consciousness flecking the Astral.

But the sudden burst of power had attracted the attention of those within and without the Astral. Such power—raw, naked, uncontrollable power—had not been witnessed in a score of generations, and those who once tapped the power, twisting and shaping it to their own ends, those whom people called great or good or evil, had not walked the world for nearly two thousand years.

The curious gathered, hunters and hunted. Lights and spots of fire, bright primary colors, solid dark pigments, mirrored whites, reflective blacks, raced across the Astral landscape toward the last location of the sword.

In the Incarnate World, those with the power to see and travel in the Astral recoiled from the blinding, deafening power, while those who were sensitive but untrained awoke from terrifying nightmares.

“DYRNWYN…DYRNWYN…
Dyrnwyn…”

And on a shabby London backstreet, an old man heard the words and awoke.

Dyrnwyn…Dyrnwyn…Dyrnwyn…”

Vyvienne’s cold gray eyes snapped open. She was leaning against an ancient stone wall, staring out toward the distant Welsh mountains. It was raining in the distance, heavy clouds banked to the horizon, slanting sunlight lending the scene a quality that was almost pretty. But the icy wind robbed the autumnal day of all its charm.

She felt the pulse of raw power as the words echoed clarion-like across the Astral. The sword was being awakened, and the ripples of energy bubbled beneath the surface of the gray landscape, exploding in a wash of blinding power.

She had always been psychic. A seer. An oracle.

Vyvienne had lived a lifetime in her twenty-one years.

Born into a family of modern-day witches, she had always known she was special, different from the mundane little boys and girls whose egos were wrapped up in material needs. She was not satisfied with mere corporeal pleasures. She wanted more. And when she concentrated, Vyvienne could visit the Astral plane, the Otherworld.

Vyvienne was aware that the majority of humankind did not understand the universe beyond its limited experience. They grabbed onto the tangible realities of grass and trees and oceans and sky.

Because the Astral realm is accessible to only a rare few. Vyvienne was one of those people. For her, it was as real as the physical world.

VYVIENNE TURNED
and hurried back toward the house, blinking hard. She focused on her surroundings—the chill of the autumn air, the crisp leaves underfoot, the hint of woodsmoke—anything to keep her mind off the images crowding at the edges of her consciousness. She desperately wanted to examine those images, but she needed to be someplace protected and secure. Because when you look into the Otherworld…sometimes it looks into you.

By the time Vyvienne was ten, she had walked the myriad lower levels of the Astral; when she gave up her virginity at the age of thirteen to Ahriman Saurin, her skills had been honed by techniques and rituals centuries old. Enhancing her natural skills with the ancient power of sex, Ahriman had encouraged Vyvienne to seek out the artifacts, to read their sleeping signatures in the Astral, and to trace them to their source. And when she’d been handfasted to Ahriman at the age of sixteen, together they had embarked upon the Great Work: to recover the Thirteen Hallows. It had taken him five years to train her properly, though once she recognized the initial Astral shape of the first object they were seeking, the rest came quickly. Once they had the first Hallow, the rest followed. Men and women died, but humankind was born to die, and at least they died with purpose; they had given their blood to fire the ancient objects.

Now only a handful of Hallows were unaccounted for.

And one of those was the Sword of Dyrnwyn.

VYVIENNE FOUND
Ahriman in the darkened drawing room, sitting in the carved wooden seat, staring out across the village toward the mountains. He was naked save for the red cloak, the Hallow known as the Crimson Coat. His black eyes were flat and expressionless as he turned to look at her. “What happened?”

“She’s called the sword by name. She fired it.” Vyvienne took a deep, shuddering breath. “It has appeared in the Astral.”

Ahriman stood and spread his arms, gathering the trembling woman into them.

“Such power! You’ve never felt such power,” she whispered.

“A fragment of what we will eventually control.”

“But we cannot proceed without the sword….”

He slapped her quickly, huge hands cracking her head from side to side. Her body reacted to his cruel touch, craving more.

“That is for me to decide,” he reminded her. Holding her at arm’s length, he began to unbutton her coat. “Prepare yourself: It is time to seek out the next Hallowed object.”

“Are you sure—”

He slapped her again. “Do not question me. Ever. Remember who I am.
What
I am.”

Victoria Heath smiled at the handkerchief. “Didn’t think you were squeamish.”

Detective Tony Fowler walked away from the burned-out wreckage of the car, a dirty handkerchief pressed to his mouth. The underground garage was still thick with smoke, and Fowler’s face was smudged, black spots covering the starched white collar of his shirt. “I’m not. But the smell of petrol makes me throw up. No need to ask what happened here,” he added. “Someone doused the car and tossed a match inside.” He looked sharply at the sergeant and started smiling. “I’ve a feeling you’re about to make an old man very happy.”

Sergeant Heath nodded. “We got a usable set of fingerprints off the car. The piece of burnt meat is Robert Elliot, aka Roger Easton, Richard Edgerton, Ron Edwards, and about a dozen different names. Small-time pimp, dealer, fixer, and fence. Owner of a couple of bondage clubs, two peep joints, and a porno cinema. Occasionally, he imported a little coke, some heroin. He served time when he was a teenager for bludgeoning his father to death. We’ve been keeping tabs on him on and off over the past couple of years, waiting for the right moment to take him.”

“Someone’s already taken him,” Tony Fowler said grimly.

“Mr. Elliot swung both ways and liked his sex with a little pain. In general he preferred boys. A lad called Nick Jacobs, commonly referred to as Skinner, possibly because he sported a skinhead haircut, was a long-term boyfriend. Skinner in turn was involved with another skinhead youth called Karl Lang.”

Fowler stopped. The name was familiar.

“Mr. Lang was the headless body we took out of Owen Walker’s apartment this morning.”

Fowler stared at her, dumbfounded.

Victoria’s smile broadened. “It gets better. Elliot supplied dope to a Lawrence McFeely.”

“McFeely was the body in the train,” Fowler said.

“The same.”

“Jesus Christ—what’s going on here?”

“And just so as I make your day complete,” Victoria Heath added, “Mac said the two bodies, Lang and McFeely, have melted.”

“Melted?”

“Advanced state of putrefaction, he said was the technical term. Melted was what he meant.”

“Sarah Miller is the key, you know that.”

The woman nodded. “What about Owen Walker? Is he dead?”

Tony Fowler shook his head. “I’m inclined to think not. Miller likes to leave her bodies lying around. I think if he were dead, Mr. Walker would have already turned up. Did you get me the list of his friends?”

“Mostly people from his university,” the sergeant said, passing across the single sheet of paper. “I talked to all of them, except this woman here, who’s away for a few days.”

“Does Owen know her?” Fowler asked sharply.

“Intimately, according to his friends. Apparently they’ve dated off and on, though he’s a bit of a playboy, from what I’ve heard. Not one for strings and attachments. No one special in his life.” She stopped suddenly. “You don’t think…”

“It’s a straw. It’s all I’ve got to clutch at.”

Dyrnwyn…Dyrnwyn…Dyrnwyn…”

Feeling utterly foolish, Sarah lowered the sword.

She thought she could still hear the echoes of her voice ringing in the flat, and her arm was trembling from the effort of holding the sword high, even though it didn’t weigh much.

Owen was staring at her solemnly, green eyes wide, before he suddenly smiled. “You look like an idiot.”

“Thanks.” She smiled. “I feel like an idiot.”

“What did you expect, thunder and lightning?” He chuckled.

“Yes. No. Maybe.” She giggled at how silly she must look before adding sheepishly, “It just seemed like the right thing to do.”

The hunting horns were louder, sharper, clearer.

“I think we should warn the people on this list,” she said abruptly. She tapped the address book with the sword, flakes of rust rattling onto the page. “Let’s assume that there is some truth in what your aunt says….”

“Said,” Owen corrected her.

“Said,” Sarah echoed. “It has to be more than coincidence that some of the names on this list have turned up dead.”

“They were old people,” Owen reminded her. “Old people die.”

“They were in their seventies. That’s not old, not anymore. Plus, they didn’t die of natural causes,” she said, spreading out the scrapbook, diary, and address book on the floor. “All of the articles Judith cut out pointed to unusual deaths. Unnatural.” She tapped each in turn with the sword. “Judith Walker spent some time during the war with these people. They were all entrusted with these Thirteen Hallows, whatever they are. Now someone is killing each of the Hallowed Keepers to gain possession of the artifacts.” She glanced up at Owen. “Agreed?”

“It certainly looks that way,” he muttered. He rubbed his hand across the back of the diary, rust flakes smearing like blood on the dusty surface. “But why were they killed so brutally?”

“I don’t know.” She tapped the address book with the broken end of the sword. “I wonder how many of these people are still alive?”

Owen reached for the phone and lifted it off the small coffee table. He picked up the address book and opened it to the first name. “There’s only one way to find out.”

NINETY MINUTES
and twenty-two phone calls later, Owen replaced the phone and looked into Sarah’s troubled face. “Including Aunt Judith, eight are dead and four are missing. By missing, I mean I can’t trace them, and no one knows where they’ve gone. The only lady on the list I actually got to speak to lives not too far from here.”

Sarah stood up immediately. “We need to go there.”

Owen looked up. “And what?”

“We’ll tell her what we know.”

“You’re crazy!”

“If she’s a Keeper of the Hallows, then we aren’t telling her anything she doesn’t know. If she’s not, then she’ll probably think we’re nothing more than disturbed kids.”

Owen looked at the white-faced young woman. “You believe all this, don’t you.”

She took a deep breath before answering. “I don’t want to…but yes, I do. Don’t you?”

“I’m not sure.” He smiled at her. “Are we in danger?”

Sarah returned his smile, abruptly conscious of the sudden flutter in the pit of her stomach. She licked suddenly dry lips. “I think we’re in terrible danger.”

Owen’s smile broadened. “You didn’t have to tell me the truth.”

SARAH WAS
pulling on a pair of borrowed jeans when Owen burst into the bedroom. The look on his face stilled her protest. “The police have just pulled up in front of the building.”

Brushing past Owen, Sarah headed for the window. “Where?” she demanded, looking down.

“The blue car; it’s an unmarked cop car.”

Sarah peered closely as the inhabitants emerged from the car: a butch blonde and a craggy-faced man. “Shit. It’s them.”

“You know them?” he asked, surprised.

“They’re the two officers who interviewed me at the hospital. They turned up again outside your aunt’s house. We’ve got to get out of here. Now.”

Sarah turned back to the room and began stuffing Judith Walker’s papers back into the bag. When she picked up the sword, rust flaked off it, revealing a hint of metal beneath. With no time to examine it, she shoved it into the bag.

Owen cracked open the door and stepped out onto the narrow landing. Voices echoed up from below, and he heard his friend’s name mentioned and a man’s voice asking for the number of the flat. “We’re trapped,” he hissed. “There’s no way past.”

Sarah pushed him out onto the landing. “Upstairs,” she whispered. “Quickly.”

They hurried to the end of the corridor and then crouched on the stairs leading to the third floor, praying none of the doors on the next floor would open.

Soft footsteps hurried up the stairs, and the officers stopped outside the flat. Sarah put her mouth close to Owen’s ear, her lips moist against his flesh. “He’s Detective Fowler, and the woman is Sergeant Heath.”

They watched as the man produced a key and carefully inserted it into the lock. Then, holding the key in both hands, he turned it with infinite care, ensuring that it made no sound. The detective then eased open the door, and the couple stepped inside.

“Now!” Sarah whispered. Holding Owen’s hand, she pulled him down the stairs and they crept past the door. They could hear voices from inside, the woman speaking. “The bed’s been slept in, and there are two sets of dishes drying. The teapot’s still warm.”

“Let’s go. They can’t have gone far.”

Sarah’s eyes widened in alarm as she looked around desperately…and then Owen pulled the door shut and turned the key, leaving it in the lock. By the time they reached the hall door, the police officers were pounding on the door.

“What now?” Owen demanded as they rounded the corner. “We’ll have every policeman in the country after us. They’ll definitely think we’re guilty.”

“Not the royal we. Just me. I am guilty. After me, you’re just an innocent victim.” Sarah shook her head. “I don’t know what to do. Let me think. I just have to think for a second.” She reached into the bag to adjust the sword, which was protruding over the top. A tiny spark of static electricity leapt from the metal to her fingertips.

And suddenly she felt confident.

Straightening, she pointed down the road. “First we’ll buy a change of clothes for both of us. I’m sure the cops in the flat saw us from the window, so they’ll know how we’re dressed.” She ran her fingers through her long, tangled red hair. “And I’ll get a haircut. Then we’ll go to Brigid Davis. We have to warn her.”

“Let’s just hope we’re not too late,” Owen muttered.