Crimes Against Magic (21 page)

"They came," Dani whispered. "Holly told me to come here."

"I don't understand. Who came?" I asked as a cold feeling settled inside me.

"The man who killed my mum. Holly got me out of the building, but he took her. Holly told me to run to this address and ask for Francis."

The cold feeling began to change into the warmth of anger. "You'll stay here," I said to Dani and turned to Francis "Keep her safe."

"Where are you going?" Dani asked, fear easy to hear.

"I'm going to go teach this asshole the error of going after the people I care about."

Chapter 22

I'd made it as far as the top of the subway staircase when my mobile rang. I'd retrieved it from Dani, just in case I needed it. The number on the screen showed as unknown. For a moment I thought about not answering. But something inside me said it was important, so I slid my finger across the phone's touchscreen, answering the call. 

"Nathan Garratt, I assume," a man's voice said.

I stopped dead on the staircase. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. "And you would be?"

"You don't recognise my voice? That leaves me sad. It’s Achilles. Remember me kicking the shit out of you now?"

"I was about to come find you." Anger resonated in my voice. "I think we need to have a chat."

"Oh, indeed we do. I have a lovely friend of yours. Say hi, my dear."

"Fuck you," Holly snapped followed by the sound of flesh meeting flesh in violent impact.

"She's got quite the mouth on her," Achilles said.

"If you hurt her..."

"You'll do nothing. You're not even aware of who you used to be are you? The old you, I may have been concerned about. But you? You're not going to do a damn thing to stop me." 

I had never wanted to kill someone more than at that moment. "What do you want?"

"I'm going to be taking your friend to a nice secluded place. I'll text you a London address in one hour. Be there ninety minutes later. If you're late, she dies. Are we clear?"

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. "Yeah, we're clear."

"If you fuck with me, she dies. You come alone, with no tricks or weapons. Your friend is a beautiful woman, but if you screw with me on this, I will replace that beauty with something ugly and horrific. And I will film myself doing it and send you a copy. And after all that, I will still track you and the little bitch down and take you both in." And then the call ended. 

Rage poured out of me and I spun on the steps, punching the wall next to me with raw power. Dense air had enveloped my hand, stopping me from breaking any bones, but producing a deafening sound as the wall broke apart. Pieces of tile and brick flew into the air all around me. I allowed the glyphs, which had blared to life only a moment before the punch had struck home, to dissipate as I tried to calm down.

Jerry ran to the foot of the stairwell and stared up at me as I slowly made my way toward him. He was soon joined by Dani and Francis. "They have Holly," I whispered. "And there's fuck all I can do about it."

*****

"So we just have to wait," Francis said once I'd crashed onto a comfortable armchair inside his office. "They're not going to hurt Holly if they need something from you, Nate."

"Achilles will hurt her. It's what he does." I turned to look at Dani who sat opposite me. She was staring at the lavish decorating that had gone on in Francis' office. A room I'd only been to on a handful of occasions. At some point it had been a waiting room for customers of the tube. But now it was filled with furnishings that offered both comfort and style. With a very hefty price tag. A dozen small glass cabinets sat around the room. Each housed the trinkets and artefacts Francis had acquired over the years. 

"I need to know everything that happened tonight." 

Dani tore her gaze away from a huge four-poster bed at the far end of the room. "We were watching TV," she said. "There was a knock at the door, and Holly asked who it was, but there was no answer. She told me if anything happened that I should come here." Dani paused, allowing a sob to escape her lips. "The door... it just... vanished. And this... this thing flew into the room.

 "Holly screamed at me to go into the bedroom, I glanced back to see... it had Holly by the throat." Tears began to fall down her cheeks again in slow, steady lines. "I just ran. I didn't know what else to do."

"If you'd stayed, they would have taken you too," I said. "You did the right thing." 

I watched Dani with new eyes. She looked much more grown up, even if she was wearing a blue cookie monster t-shirt and a pair of jeans, a gift from Francis, she still carried herself differently. She was afraid, terrified really, but refused to let that rule her. If she had, she'd still be hiding in Holly's flat. Instead, she ran a few miles, through night-time London to get to me. That took some guts.

"So what's your plan?" Francis asked. "And don't say you don't have one, you always have one."

"I don't know
yet
," I said. "We wait until I get an address. Then I go see Achilles and find out what he wants."

"He'll kill you," Francis said.

I shook my head. "He needs me to do something. There's no point in kidnapping Holly, and then keeping her alive, unless she's an incentive for me to work for him."

"Maybe he just wants you alone so he can torture the information of Dani's whereabouts out of you," Francis pointed out. 

 Dani covered her mouth with one hand to stifle a cry and I stared at Francis for a long second. "Thanks for that," I said as Jerry took Dani out of the room to get a drink. "Always nice to have someone come up with a cheery explanation."

"I am only pointing out possible outcomes," he stated.

"And I thank you for it," I said with a smile, which Francis returned with one of his own.

A message tone sounded from my mobile and any lightness in the air evaporated. I took the phone from my pocket and opened the text message. All it gave was an address and a warning –
Alone. Ninety minutes. 

"You know the place?"

I nodded, dumbstruck and fearful of where I knew Achilles had taken Holly. "It's an industrial estate consisting of half a dozen warehouses on the water front. It's a half hour from here."

"So why are you worried?" Francis asked.

"One of the warehouses is used by Holly's parents to front an underground fighting operation."

"Why would he take Holly to her parents?" Dani asked as she returned to the room, drink in hand.

"Two reasons. Either to get more hostages, or more worryingly, because someone there is allowing him to use the place as he sees fit." Neither of those options appealed to me. 

"This is bad isn't it?" Francis said. 

I nodded. "It does complicate matters. But it changes nothing. I go there alone and find out what he wants."

"That's not the best idea, Nate," Francis said. "He doesn't sound all that sane in the first place."

"If I don't go, people will die—Holly, her family, anyone unlucky enough to be working there. Until I know what's going on, Achilles has me by the balls."

"You'll be okay," Dani said. "I know you'll get through this."

"You have a lot more faith than me," I said.

"You'll be fine," she said again and kissed me on the cheek lightly.

My smile vanished as Dani fell toward me, shaking uncontrollably, her eyes rolled back in her head. "Help!” 

Francis didn't wait a heartbeat, he moved toward us so fast that it was almost a blur. "Don't hold her," he said. "Let the fit happen, if you hold her it could seriously hurt her."

 I let go of Dani, laying her on an old couch and waited until the shaking died down. Francis left us alone, returning with a fresh glass of water. The previous one had shattered on the floor when Dani had started her fit.

"She'll be fine," Francis said.

Laurel entered the room and made her way over to a still unconscious Dani. "She'll be weak and need to be looked after. She's going to have to stay here for a while. I hope you weren't planning on going anywhere with her."

I shook my head. "I want her as far away from everything as possible. She escaped with her life this evening. I won't put her back into a situation where she's in jeopardy again." I looked up at Francis. "If anything happens to me tonight..."

"Nothing will happen to you, my friend," he said with startling assurance. "You're too good to let a thug like this take you down. Discover what he wants and then get out."

"And leave Holly and her family to his devises?"

Dani began to come round before we could finish our conversation. She opened her eyes and sobbed. Not the cry of the confused, but a deep uncontrollable sobbing. She looked between Laurel and me and then dove toward me, pinning herself around my neck. "You were being hurt, Nate," she said between cries. "Strapped to a table, with people all around you."

"It's okay," Laurel said. "Nate's fine."

Dani shook her head. "It didn't feel like a dream. It was so real," she said. "You screamed in pain. You cried and begged someone to stop. Nate, they're going to kill you."

Chapter 23

Dani's description of what she'd seen sat with me long after I'd left her in Francis and Laurel's able care. I couldn't be late to the meeting with Achilles, there's no way he would let that pass without incident. I tried to show everyone that I was fine. That I thought Dani's vision was just the creation of her fears, but I knew that it wasn't. And that scared me. 

So, I left with an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. And for the entire cab journey, that feeling spread inside me. By the time I'd reached my destination, I was beginning to wonder if I was actually going to make it out in once piece.

I left the cab and watched it drive off into the night as rain began to fall in a steady stream. A guard stood at the entrance to the industrial estate, next to a small hut where he could operate the barrier. He wore dark combat trousers, black boots and a dark blue camo jacket, under which a holster was visible. He aimed an M4 carbine at me. "I'd walk away," he said.

"I'm here to see Achilles. He's expecting me."

"Hands on the hut." He waved the gun's barrel slightly and I complied, placing my hands on the cold glass. He patted me down without comment, a professional just doing a job. 

"Let's go," he said when satisfied I wasn't hiding anything. 

I turned to walk off in the direction of the warehouse and spotted someone's legs stretched across the floor inside the hut. The body had been shoved under the desk, but it was done carelessly. The light in the hut fell over the side of his face, showing his neck at an impossible angle. I knew him, or at least I'd met him a few times. I couldn't remember his name, but he was only a kid, nineteen at most. He'd worked at the fights as a favour to his dad, someone Holly's own father was friends with. "You didn't have to kill him," I said.

The guard pointed behind me at a fast approaching black Saab 9-3 convertible. The Saab belonged to Holly's mum, Lyn. She was not a woman who was easily forced into giving up anything. To get her car, they must have really piled on the pressure.

 "You're going with them," the guard said and shoved me forward. 

The car pulled up beside me, where one man got out and the driver pointed another M4 at me. Both wore the exact same uniform as the guard at the front gate. "Get in," the passenger said.

"Do you know who killed the kid in the hut?" I asked as the passenger got into the rear of the car and motioned for me to get into the front passenger seat. 

Once seated, I was cracked in the skull with the butt of an M4 from the man behind me. "Keep your mouth shut."

I rubbed my head as black spots appeared in my vision, but did as I was told. 

We drove around to the rear of the farthest building, following yellow arrows on the ground, and parked up next to a black BMW M3. The rain had eased off giving everything a fresh feel and smell. I exited the car and looked around at the array of expensive rides all around us. Only the wealthy turn up to Mark's fights, they're the only ones who can afford the bets. 

The whole operation was very slick. No one got close without someone noticing. I knew from past experience that when the fights were on, two men would be sat on the roof with night vision. One extra piece of security. I also knew that when the police did come, everyone would dash off to one of the other warehouses, parking there until the coast was clear. And Holly's dad, Mark, was jeopardising all of that by giving it to his psychotic younger son. The man had lost his damn mind. But first, everyone had to survive whatever Achilles had planned.

"This way," the man who'd hit me said, shoving me in the back.

The three of us walked to the large double doors, which signified the entrance. I noticed the Nissan GTR I'd been driving, parked further down the row of cars. I would need to find another ride as I doubted I'd be getting it back. Two more men in the same uniforms stood outside, both bald and overly muscular with tattoos on their hands and necks. They could have been interchangeable. One nodded to the man behind me and knocked on the door twice. It opened and we all stepped inside. 

The smell was the first thing that hit anyone arriving. It was akin to your nasal passages being assaulted. Blood, sweat, alcohol and sex all featured in the smorgasbord of scents. There was an underlying smell of lemon bleach too, but it wasn’t strong enough to overwhelm the force of everything else in the room.

"The boss is waiting for you upstairs," the man said. "Don't fucking try anything."

I was marched through the ground floor, past the caged fighting area known affectionately as
The Pit,
where
fresh blood was easy to spot on the padded canvas floor, and toward a set of double doors. The man escorting me entered a PIN number into the pad before pulling one of the doors open.