Band of Demons (The Sanheim Chronicles, Book Two) (14 page)

Could she enter the mind of anyone near the Headless Horseman? Was that the key? Or was it something different? Both Lord Halloween and the kid were important to her goal. In Lord Halloween’s case, she had been chasing him for weeks. As soon as she had the powers of the Prince of Sanheim, his mind had been like an open door to her. As for the kid, she had been desperately trying to find the graffiti artist when the Horseman came close to him. Did that matter at all?

It seemed like every time she got close to an answer, there were just more questions. Were they any closer to finding out what chased them? It felt like instead she had uncovered just another mystery. The book was the key—but to what? Who was the person trying to send them a message?

More frustratingly, the Horseman had been riding through the county for hours—they had assumed their opponents might show up. After all, he or she was clearly trying to goad them by murdering someone and pretending to be them.

What are they waiting for? They are out there
s
omewhere, laughing at us
.

The Horseman, who had listened to her mind impassively, responded to that.

Not for long. I promise you that. Not for long.

Chapter 13

September 23, 2007

Quinn should have been exhausted. It was 6 a.m. He had ridden through Loudoun County for most of the night and only slept for two hours.

Instead, he felt strangely invigorated, as if he had slept for 12 hours. He seemed to draw energy from becoming the fictional phantom.

He let Kate sleep and stepped into the shower. For some reason, she was the more fatigued of the pair. Quinn wasn’t sure why. She had been standing in the cemetery for most of the night. 

Quinn quietly got dressed and moved into the living room, shutting the bedroom door behind him. On the desk in the corner, there were the four photos Bill had taken of the graffiti.

Quinn pulled out a blank piece of paper and quickly sketched the other three that had been in Stefan’s mind. In addition to the snakes, bear, flaming sword and spider, there were now a horse, bow and, oddest of all, what looked like a flute.

Crowley had 17 drawings in his book, including those seven images. But why had Stefan been asked to complete just these particular drawings? Quinn paged through the book looking for any kind of special significance. But despite the fact the animals and symbols were depicted, the text never seemed to refer back to them in any kind of clear way. Indeed, the text was verbose and unclear, almost totally incomprehensible.

He tried approaching it from a different angle. The serpents, he saw, were at the start of the third chapter, while the bear was at the start of the second.

Quinn stood up and went to his small Ikea bookshelf in the corner of the room. Crowley had published three books himself—all poetry. After his death, Horace Camden, his devoted follower and admirer, had published a single collection of the books.

Quinn felt sure he had seen most of the drawings in there.

He took the book and sat back down at the desk. He flipped through mostly sonnets and love poems until he found them. The same 17 drawings were all in this book, but in different places. Except…

How could he not have seen this before? The bear was at the start of Chapter 2, just like the book they had taken from Zora’s office. On Chapter 1, the symbols were different in each book—a tiger in one and an eagle in the other.

But for Chapter 3, they were the same again—the serpents. They were different again for Chapter 4, but the spider appeared at the start of both Chapter 5s.

Throughout the book, only the seven symbols the graffiti artist had been asked to draw were at the same place in both books. The bow was at the start of Chapter 7, the flaming sword at Chapter 11 and the flute at Chapter 13.

The final chapter in both books, Chapter 17, was topped with a drawing of a horse.

Quinn stared at the books, suddenly understanding what he was looking at.

“My God,” he said.

“What is it?” Kate said behind him. She had woken up a few minutes ago, but hadn’t wanted to disturb him.

“It’s more than a code,” Quinn said.

“What are you talking about?”

“This is a history of the Prince of Sanheim,” he replied. “These represent the forms they took. The bear was the first, I’d stake my life on it. The drawings represent the
cennad
of each Prince of Sanheim. The bear, the serpents, the spider, the bow, sword, flute and…”

Quinn stopped. He pointed to the horse.

“That’s us,” he said quietly.

“You’re right,” Kate responded. “It’s not a code; it’s a prophecy.”

*****

They pored over the books all day.

“How could he possibly know?” Quinn asked. “How could Crowley have seen what I would become?”

“How could you become the Headless Horseman in the first place?” Kate said. “Crowley clearly was tapped into something – he had knowledge and history about the Prince of Sanheim that we lack. Somehow he knew the future, or at least saw a glimpse of it. It can’t be a coincidence.”

“What was his
cennad
?” Quinn said. “The only stories we’ve dug up on him are that he disappeared on Halloween night. But no one ever mentioned what he was.”

Kate shook her head.

“No idea,” she said. “Presumably one of these last ones.”

Kate’s finger traveled over the images, now placed in order. She put it squarely on the flaming sword.

“That one,” she said. “I’d stake my life on it.” 

“Why?” Quinn asked.

“Just a hunch.”

“Which leaves only the flute and us.”

Something tugged at the edge of Quinn’s memory then. It was the same feeling he had when there was a word on the tip of his tongue but he couldn’t think of it. There was something he wasn’t remembering that would be helpful. But for the life of him, he couldn’t think of what it was.

It was Kate who had noticed the significance of the numbers: 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13 and 17 were all prime numbers. But why Crowley had put such importance on them was unclear.

“Are we the 17
^th
Prince of Sanheim?” Kate asked.

“Doesn’t make sense,” Quinn replied. “Sanheim—or whoever he was—made it sound as if this had been going on for thousands of years. He mentioned Julius Caesar running into a Prince. Even if you assumed one per century, we should be past 17. And I got the feeling this happened a lot more often than that.”

He stood up and walked around the apartment. The feeling was unshakeable. There was something they weren’t seeing. Quinn picked up the pencil and flung it across the room in frustration.

“I’m sure that will help, honey,” Kate said without looking up.

“I can’t help it,” he said. “It’s like writer’s block. You know when you have a great story, you’ve done all the reporting, but it’s just not coming out for some reason?”

Kate nodded.

“We have enough pieces to the puzzle,” he continued. “We should be able to start putting them together.”

“So why don’t you use your writer’s block unblocker?” she said.

She smiled at him.

“You want me to juggle?” Quinn asked in surprise.

He hadn’t thought of it. Juggling was a skill he had picked up in high school—in drama class—but it had never really been useful until one day he tried it out when he was stuck on a story. For some reason, focusing on balls flying through the air and forgetting everything else had helped to focus him in a way nothing else could. The result was that he could suddenly think clearly again. He didn’t have much need for them, but he kept a set of juggling balls at home and at work for just such occasions. It didn’t always work, but usually it helped him regain concentration.

“All right,” he said, “you’re on.”

Quinn disappeared into the bedroom, rooted around in his dresser, and pulled out three small bean bags. He had won them years ago at a pub quiz with Janus and Bill. Quinn smiled briefly at the memory.

He returned to the living room and started juggling.

“You never cease to amaze me, Quinn O’Brion,” she replied.

“Have you never actually watched me juggle?”

“You always go off to the conference room,” she said. “I’ve only ever seen you do this in your memories. I’m enjoying the live show.”

Just then, he threw too far with his right hand, sending the bag careening out of his reach and onto the floor.

“Wow,” Kate said. “This is dead sexy. I can see why you keep this talent hidden. Helen would be all over you.”

Quinn bowed slightly, then bent to pick up the fallen bean bag.

“It takes a minute to get focused,” he said.

He started over. This time went a little better, but in less than a minute, the bags were on the floor again. Instead of teasing him this time, Kate stood up, collected the bags, and then kissed him lightly on the lips when she returned them to him.

Quinn stared at the bag in his left hand. He remembered winning the quiz. It had been a Wednesday evening when Janus had insisted on going out. He loved pub quizzes—Quinn knew they reminded Janus of Wales—but they were usually insanely difficult. Unless you had a photographic memory of sports winners and politics, which Quinn did not, it was hard to win anything. But that Wednesday had been different. That particular day, Quinn had been on fire. Even the obscure sports questions had been obvious to him, though he could never have said why or how he knew the information. It had been like some switch had turned on in his brain.

After they had won, Janus had pressed the bean bags into Quinn’s hands.

“They’re yours,” Quinn said. “It’s your pub quiz.”

“Not after tonight,” Janus said, laughing. “You rocked that thing. Besides, what kind of wanker do you take me for? Juggling is for sissies.”

Three months later, Janus was dead.

This time when Quinn started, the bean bags flew through the air in perfect arcs. They moved in the sort of order that Quinn thought the universe lacked. Within the first minute, he was almost in a kind of trance. The bean bags were now just blurs in the air and everything faded away. The apartment, the Crowley books, even Janus. Only Kate remained with him—she was now such a part of him, Quinn thought they could never be separated again.

In his mind, he saw the numbers: 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13 and 17. They floated through his mind like the bean bags he was juggling. He picked up the pace of his juggling. The bags moved through the air at incredible speed. Quinn had juggled many times in his life, but never like this before. It was as if Kate’s mental focus had been added to his own.

The numbers and pictures from the book clicked through his mind with every throw of the bags until finally they blurred together. And then, only then, did the thought finally snap into his mind.

The bags fell to the floor.

Both Kate and Quinn practically ran over to the desk where the Crowley books lay. She opened the first book while he opened the second, both turning to Chapter 2. The drawing of the bear was on both.

In one, the book they had found in Zora’s office, the first line read: “To eternity, righteousness notifies existence. False anger haunts illusive illumination. The exit you love ousts light for answers. Doom enters thought.”

In the second book, still in the bear chapter, the first line was totally different: “Hark, paupers! Institutes carry only some notions; every man sees his cares called, every figure instills eternity, not defeat, and hope.”

On a separate piece of paper, Kate carefully took the first letter from each word of the first book, leaving spaces in between, in which she added the first letter of the words in the second book. She took the “t” from “To” and the “h” from “Hark,” and put them next to each other. She did it through the end of both sentences until she had a string of letters.

It took a moment to make out the sentence in front of them: “The Prince of Sanheim is the cycle of life and death.”

“Bingo,” Quinn said softly.

After a moment, he added something else.

“At least now we know why Crowley sucked as a poet.”

*****

For the next two hours, they transcribed the code carefully, painstakingly, until they had a complete text in front of them.

Looking back, however, Kate thought the most important line was the first. It’s funny what can be conveyed by a single sentence. She wondered why she hadn’t seen the pattern before.

 “I think I know who’s targeting us,” Kate said as they continued to decipher the manuscript, which detailed both the history of the Prince of Sanheim and parts of Crowley’s life.

Quinn nodded. As she thought it, the realization hit him full force.

They didn’t know who it was, of course. No ancient book could tell them that. But they now knew what was after them.

“It’s another Prince of Sanheim,” Quinn said.

*****

Kieran waited in the large chamber. The
moidin
milled around as he supposed they always did. He only knew a handful of their names. It wasn’t wise to get too attached.

I should feel bad for them
, he thought.
They’re just batteries to those two.

He watched one as she talked with another
moidin
and tried to remember her name. She was blonde, blue-eyed and pretty—Sawyer had clearly picked her. Left to her own devices, Elyssa always chose brunettes or the occasional redhead. But Sawyer? He was no gentleman, but he definitely preferred blondes.

Kieran thought her name was Karen. He should warn her. It would be easy. He could walk up to her, tell her what the future would hold, and strongly encourage her to leave. The trouble was twofold. One, the warning would undoubtedly get Kieran killed, and he was nothing if not a survivor. Secondly, and arguably more importantly, it wouldn’t work. Karen—sweet, young, naïve Karen—believed every word Sawyer had ever spoken to her. How she was special. How, together, they were going to change the world.

They always believe it
, Kieran thought.
Why is that? Is this world so bad that it needs changing? How come nobody is ever satisfied with the advantages they have?