Ancient Evil (The First Genocide Book 1) (9 page)

“Nice imagination you have there.”

“Finn!” she said again, actually
scandalized this time.

“You know, he does have a certain charm,
and no matter what he or anyone else says, his heart is in the right place.”

“I’ll have to take your word for it,” she
said. “So, Finn, where do you call home?”

“This is my home for now.”

“What, Old Hall? This is an all-female
hall.”

“Uh, no, I mean that I live here in town.”

“Oh, um, no family around then?”

“My parents died in a car accident when I
was young.”

“I’m sorry, I had no idea,” she said.

“No really, not problem, I don’t even
really remember them. I was raised by my grandmother, until she passed away
when I was fourteen. I was away at University by then, so I have just being
living at various universities since then. The trust fund my parents left me
means I can just study as long as I want to. I’m going to have to leave
academia sometime, I suppose. But not yet; I like it here.”

“Yeah, it could be worse. So, how young
were you when you first went to University?”

“I started at Cambridge when I was
thirteen, well, almost thirteen.”

“Wow, what does a thirteen-year-old do at
University, anyway?”

“Grow up fast. You develop a thick skin
too. People try to treat you normally, but you can see it in their eyes that
they think you are a freak.”

“There’s that freak word again. You said
that the other night. You shouldn’t put yourself down like that.”

“I used to think I was putting myself down,
but then I realized everyone is a freak in their very own special way. It is
just more obvious in some of us. That is what makes us special. And the special
ones need to stick together.”

“Hmmm, I suppose this explains your
tolerance of the intolerable Mr. Brown?”

“That is part of the reason, but it’s more
than that. I met Jonni four years ago when I was going through my physics
phase.”

“Your physics phase?”

“Yeah, sorry. I have been at Uni for eight
years now. I started out in Maths like most so-called academic prodigies, then
became really interested in Quantum Physics, theories of action at a distance
and entanglement, that sort of thing. That led of course to my current disreputable
field of study, Parapsychology.”

“Of course. Obviously,” she said with a
flourish and an eye roll.

He flushed a little. “Sorry, didn’t mean to
be pompous. Anyway, when I was studying physics, Jonni was an undergrad in my
some of my classes. He did not seem to have any friends either. There were some
people who hung out with him, but they weren’t his friends. They kept him
around to have someone to make fun of, the same sort of people who made fun of
me. I observed him and I noticed that, while he seemed completely oblivious to
social niceties, he was actually really sharp and just pretended to be
oblivious as a way of giving himself a shield to say some vicious, biting
comments to the bastards who tormented us. He eventually got bored of them and
we started to hang out. You know, he has really helped me with my lack of
self-confidence.”

“You are going to have to forgive me, Finn,
but I don’t think he is doing a great job.” She smiled to take the sting out of
the comment.

“You think I am shy now? You should have
seen me before Jonni Brown walked into my life.”

“OK, OK. I get it; he is not a sexist,
xenophobic toad, just a misunderstood shy boy like you.”

“Let’s not go too far now. He is a sexist
toad, he just has a shiny side too. Enough about me … how about you? How did
you end up here in Old Hall with the Wee Marys?”

“Offensive! What if I’m a Wee Mary, or my
friends are? You may have just blown your chances.”

“Well, the way I see it, I should be safe.
If you don’t consider yourself a Wee Mary, you won’t be offended. On the other
hand, if you do consider yourself a Wee Mary, I am guessing that you probably
think of it a reverse ‘too cool for school’ type of label, like ‘Hey, look at
me I’m a Wee Mary, I’ve never kissed a boy and I’m proud of it’.”

She looked at him for a few seconds then
said, “Do you have a fucking theory for everything?”

“Well, interestingly enough …” he said.

She cut him off. “I grew up in Cardiff.
Pretty boring story, really. Parents not divorced, an older brother who lives
in America. Oh, and I have an abiding love of rock climbing.”

“Rock climbing, really? That is
interesting.”

“And the rest isn’t.”

“Sorry, not what I meant.”

“I’m teasing you.”

Finn plowed on, “So … you study
Evolutionary Genetics. What exactly is that?”

“I am trying to figure out what happened to
the Neanderthals.”

“Huh?”

“OK, here’s the deal, Homo sapiens and Homo
neanderthalensis co-existed for a hundred to two hundred thousand years, and
then, boom, forty thousand years ago the Neanderthals start to disappear and
are extinct about five thousand years later.”

“I thought I read somewhere that they were
wiped out by an ice age or something,” he said.

“That may have played a part, but I don’t
think that is the whole answer because their extinction was so sudden. I think
we killed them. I think we raped their women, and I think it was the first
genocide perpetrated by our species.”

“Wow, that’s sad and more than a little scary.
Why would we live in peace for hundreds of thousands of years and then suddenly
wipe them out?”

“I don’t know, but I want to see if we can
find out. We have a lot of work to gather evidence to support the theory. For
example, did we change at about the same time that the Neanderthals started to
die out? If so, how did we change? Did we breed with Neanderthals? Once the
Human Genome Project wraps up we should have a lot more to go on. In the
meantime, we are running gene studies on early man and Neanderthal samples to
get some more insight into what happened.”

They sat in silence for a couple of minutes
and then Bex broke the somber mood.

“So, I joined this club at the Freshers
Fair at the start of the year, the Alternative Sports Club. They are doing an
event next weekend. Do you want to go?”

“Alternative? How alternative?”

“I think it is a piercing marathon. You
know, we go to Dundee and everyone gets something pierced in every tattoo
parlor we pass.”

He just looked at her, eyebrows raised.

“I’m just kidding. Your face! You should
see it.” She laughed a little. “They are trekking into the Cairngorms with
sledges. I think they are planning on staying overnight in a bothy, climb a
mountain in the morning and toboggan back down. It should be fun.”

“If you say so. What’s a bothy, anyway?”

“It’s like a little house out in the hills
that provides shelter for travelers. Don’t worry, it’s free. Come on, I paid
three quid to join the club and I am going to go on an event.”

“Sure, let’s go,” he said uneasily.

“Brilliant! Want to dance again? I think I
just saw your pal stumble off to the toilet so we should be safe from his
flailing arms. How can he still dance when he can’t even walk straight?”

She looked over her shoulder at the dance
floor. When she turned back, their faces were inches apart. Finn leaned forward
to kiss her but she pulled back.

He pulled back too, hurt.

“I am so sorry, Finn. I like you. I like
you a lot, but I have a boyfriend back home.”

“A boyfriend.” His tone was flat.

“Yes, I meant to tell you earlier, but
there never seemed to be a good time to just bring it up. To tell you the
truth, Brian and I have been drifting apart.”

“Brian.”

“Yes, his name is Brian. We have been going
out for five years or so. Even though I think it is going to end, it hasn’t
yet, so it wouldn’t feel right to kiss someone else.”

“Sure, no problem, no kissing. Got it.”

“Look if I do break up with him, you will
probably be a big part of the reason.” She reached out and grabbed his hand.
“Finn, please just give me a little time; let’s take it slow and hang out. Can
we do that?”

“Sure,” he said.

Old Hall had hired a psychic as part of the
entertainment. The Old Hall Ball planning committee had set up a makeshift tent
under the stairs.

As Finn and Bex walked past it, she said,
“Come on, let’s get our fortune told. It’ll be a laugh.”

Finn pulled back a little. “I really
shouldn’t. You know, with my field of study, I need to avoid the appearance of
supporting this type of thing. I must appear objective, you see.”

Bex blew a raspberry and pulled him through
the curtained doorway.

Inside an older woman sat at a small, round
table draped with a colorful cloth, with a crystal ball in front of her. She
was reading a paperback. She did not look up as she said, “Sorry, I’m on a
break. Can you come back in half an hour?”

Finn started to turn, but Bex held his hand
firmly. “Please, can you just do us quickly? I don’t think I’ll be able to drag
my friend back in here later.”

The woman glanced at them and started to
look back to her book but then did a double take and looked at them
quizzically. She stuffed her book under the table and motioned them to sit.

“Hmm, I suppose I can make an exception.
Something seems interesting about the both of you. I sense something looming in
your futures; let’s see if we can find more details.”

Finn caught Bex’s eye and then rolled his.
Bex pulled Finn further into the tent and they sat down.

Bex spoke, “So something’s looming, is it
good or bad?”

The woman raised her hand for silence and
leaned forward to look deep into the crystal ball, humming slightly to herself.
She rocked back and forth and then looked up at them sharply.

“I’m sorry, I made a mistake. There is
nothing to see.”

Finn stood and pulled Bex up with him.
“Come on Bex, we should go.”

Bex followed along, disappointed with the
experience. As they stepped through the curtain she looked back and saw a tear
running down the face of the psychic.

The coven was hiding out in the mines under
the ruined castle.

The mines had been excavated during a
particularly boisterous period of the University town’s history, when the
castle had been under siege. The besiegers had been trying to dig their way
into the castle to kill those hiding inside. The besieged realized what the
enemy force was up to and had dug a counter mine to meet them. The besieger’s
mine was more professional and roomy. The desperate counter mine was cramped
and hurried. A bloody subterranean battle had been fought when the miners met.
The outcome of the battle was of crucial importance to the besieged and
besiegers, but now, however, no one really cared about who won or lost. It certainly
did not matter to the coven.

What mattered to the coven was that there
was a concealed side passage that led to a spacious, hollowed-out area that
they could relax in. A place that they could feed in. The rock shielded them
from any potential rivals in the area and the ward they had activated on the
side tunnel prevented the uninitiated from stumbling in by mistake. The ward
also prevented the sounds of their feeding from escaping the cave, an important
attribute, as they were noisy eaters.

The hollow was a place that they and others
like them had used in the past. The ward had been carved into the stone of the
passageway long ago, and they had merely needed to energize it when they
arrived. Unbeknownst to the uninitiated, the world was covered in wards that
Quickened had hidden in plain sight. Wards were carved into stone walls, woven
into the design of carpets, hidden amongst the chaotic graffiti scribblings of
the inner cities. Tthey were even carved into the wooden studs and supports of
buildings prior to the installation of drywall.

In the center of the cave there was a piece
of meat that had once been a person. It had been brutally beaten. It was
impossible to tell for sure if it had been male or female; however, the length
of the torso suggested a male.

Leader would not be happy if the corpse was
still in the cave when she returned from her meeting, so one of the coven would
need to dump it up the coast later that evening before it started to stink.
They only fed on the living, the dead held no interest for them and the ward
did not have a stench suppression attribute.

They had snatched their victim from a beach
party a few days earlier. People would assume he had wandered into the North
Sea and died. They had done this before.

The coven was in high spirits. Not only had
they had recently fed, but the town’s violent past had laid a stain on the old
stones that they basked in. However, they knew they could not stay in the town
for long. It was too small; it was easier to hide in a crowd. In fact, they had
been mildly surprised when Leader had announced the excursion, as they had last
been in the town only a year or so earlier. In the past they had gone decades
between visits.