Crimes Against Magic (23 page)

After a few minutes she opened one eye and stared at me. "I think I got it," she said. "And you're about to get a phone call." Then she passed out. A second later my phone rang.

"I was wondering when you were going to call," I said and sat opposite Dani, watching her as she rested.

"I haven't exactly been able to get away," the mystery woman said. "It's been a bit crazy here since... well, since they brought in Jenny."

I forced myself to remain calm. "How is she? Achilles mentioned that she told them about my vision."

"She would not have done that if given a choice," she said tersely.

"I wasn't being shitty," I pointed out. "Just wanted to know how she was."

"Surviving. At the moment, they need her. But if they find Dani all bets are off."

"Did you know Dani is psychic?"

There was a brief pause. "I assume you mention that because she's revealed her abilities."

"Answer the fucking question," I said. "Did you know?"

"We weren't certain, although it was highly possible."

"Yeah, well you can be certain now. She had her first vision and it was of someone being tortured to death." I decided to leave out that it was me, and that she'd just delved around inside my head to get information. "A little heads up would have been nice." 

"There was no time," she said.

"Make fucking time," I almost shouted into the phone. "You tell me everything I need to know. Right now. No more bullshit, no more clandestine meetings. Achilles has my friend and her family held hostage. I have twenty-four hours to find Doctor Welkin's research or he'll kill them. Research I don't fucking remember in the first place. And he wants me to give over Dani too, so if you can help me not do either of those things, then now is a good time to start." I sagged into the comfy chair. "I need help here, or people are going to die."

"We have a file on you," she said. "It's the one Jenny gave to you. Achilles brought it back with him. Your real name is Nathanial Garrett, so you got that bit right. There's no date of birth, but we know that you worked with Avalon before your memory loss. It's probably how you managed to get a man into my lord's operation so easily. Daniel Hayes."

"What else did that file say?"

"We know very little about what you've done in your life. And I don't mean you've led a quiet life. I mean your entire existence is hidden so well that you're a ghost. That alone means you worked for some powerful people, high enough inside Avalon to ensure everything you did was hidden. It's why Achilles wants to kill you. I think you scare him."

"He has a funny way of showing fear." I absentmindedly touched the side of my face where I'd been hit. "Why not kill Daniel back then? When I broke people out?"

"My lord didn't look into it too closely until Daniel tried to hide his daughter."

"Do you still have her safe?"

"Jenny gave up her whereabouts. It was the only thing she could do to stop them from... They hurt her." 

I closed my eyes and sucked down my anger. There would be time for that later. "Achilles thinks that Jenny unlocked memories hidden in my head. He said that she's a psychic, is that true?"

There was a brief pause. "Yes, Jenny is psychic," the mystery woman said. "Although I doubt she's powerful enough to unlock memories hidden by blood magic."

"She didn't unlock my memory," I said, certain that I was right. "I saw the look of confusion and shock on her face after I came round. There's no way she was expecting to do that. So, she's either incredibly powerful and doesn't know it, or..."

"Or something else happened."

"Exactly. I've no idea what though." Although the vision in the pub was my first memory, the first time I'd felt strange was when I'd fought Holly's brother a few weeks earlier. "Could she trigger memory without knowing it?"

"Jenny's not powerful enough to do that without help. Someone else would have had to plant the suggestion on you."

"And that person would be?"

"Not person,
people
. You took three important women from him ten years ago. They are why you must keep that research and Dani from my lord. If he gets his hands on it, he can start from the beginning, he can make them again. "

"What are you talking about? What women? Make who again? If you can help me, please do."

I waited a few seconds and when no reply came, asked the same thing again. Once more all I got was silence, and then the sounds of someone moving the phone around. "Mr Garrett, I presume," said a man's voice.

"And you would be?" I asked.

"If you don't remember me, there's no point in reminding you. It seems that you've had some help from within my organisation. I assumed we'd caught it all when Jenny was apprehended, to find yet another greatly disappoints me. And if you did remember me, you'd know how much I hate to be disappointed."

"If you hurt her or Jenny, you're going to have a lot more than disappointments to contend with." 

"I believe you now have less than twenty-four hours to get me what Achilles asked. If I were you, I'd hurry before my patience becomes lax." And he hung up.

Chapter 25

1414, France.

Ivy fell into a deep sleep after having visions of both Thomas and me in such a short space of time. Thomas lay down next to her, once he'd changed back from werewolf, and was asleep soon after.

I dozed off for an hour or two, but it was fitful. Visions of Mordred, and of all the pain and suffering he'd been responsible for, swirled around my head.

Eventually sunlight streamed through the treetops, bathing the lake next to us in a brilliant sheen, a sight that was far too tempting not to take full advantage of. By the time Thomas woke up, I was just getting back onto dry land. 

"Ivy still asleep?" I asked.

Thomas nodded. "I think we need to talk, don't you?"

I shrugged and allowed the orange glyphs to burn brightly, raising my body temperature and drying me in the process before I put my clothes back on. 

"You're not too worried about using your magic now?" Thomas asked.

I tapped the side of my skull. "I don't think I can solve the world's problems with a flick of my hands anymore, so I think it's safe."

Thomas sat on the lake's edge, his back up against a nearby tree. "I can't go home can I?"

I sat on the ground one tree over. "This is what you wanted to talk to me about?" 

"I have a wife and son. His name is Edward. He'll be four now. It's been so long since I've seen him. And I'll never see him again, will I?"

"Before I answer that, let me ask you a question. Last night, when you changed, how did you manage to control the beast so easily?"

Thomas shrugged and threw a stone into the lake, watching the ripples it made across the otherwise still water. "I don't know. It wanted me to rip Ivy apart when she touched me. But I wouldn't let it. I forced myself to control it. "

"About one in fifty can control the beast like you did last night. Even fewer would have stayed as calm. The only werewolves I've ever met who could claim that were Alphas. The most powerful of your kind."

 "What does that have to do with my family?"

"Even if you weren't an alpha, if you go back home eventually you'll change. You’ll have to. It's one of the laws of being a werewolf. Your wife will see you, and if not her then someone else. The alarm will be raised. People will try to kill you."

"What if I stop changing all together? Force myself to stay human?"

I threw a stone into the lake. "If you somehow manage to force yourself not to change for the first few weeks, maybe even for a month or two, eventually your body will break and with it your mind. It was the most common reason why people like me were called to kill a new werewolf. They go mad and start killing people. Usually beginning with those they love. 

"And if someone like me doesn't get to you, the local werewolf pack might. And they have very different ways to punish those who turn themselves into a mindless beast. It usually involves torture and a slow death as a warning to others."

"So I can't see my family, that's what you're telling me?"

"Even if you could go home, and your family could accept you for what you are, others will challenge you for power. Eventually someone will use your family to get to you. Right now your wife and son think you're dead. If you go home, you'll destroy not only your life, but theirs too. Is that what you want?"

Thomas wiped his eyes, not wanting to show the tears falling from them. I turned away to give him a moment of privacy. "I want them to never need anything," he said. "I need them to be taken care of."

"If we get out of this in one piece, I'll talk to some people. They'll make sure that your family live a comfortable life. You have my word."

We sat in silence as a strong breeze lifted the fallen leaves from the ground and threw them into the air. "Merlin's Assassin," Thomas said after a short time. "Who are you, really?"

"I figured you'd heard," I said. I'd tried to decide how much to say if either Thomas or Ivy brought it up. I'd killed people in the past for knowing who I am, or rather, what I am. But something about Thomas told me that he could do great things, and more importantly, I liked and trusted him. And that was a rarity in both my business and personal life. "Whatever is said between us goes no further. If you repeat anything of what I am about to say, I will kill you. No questions, no excuses. Clear?"

Thomas kept eye contact for a moment before nodding once. 

"I am a thousand years old, give or take. I was found outside Camelot as a child of about eight or nine. Merlin took me in and we discovered that I had an aptitude for magic and fighting, so he taught me magic whilst the many knights in the city taught me the other. 

"Being trained to fight in Camelot was where I met Arthur, Gawain, Galahad and the other knights. Arthur and I soon became friends, more like brothers really. He was destined to be king, to be a great ruler, and the knights who pledged their allegiance to him and Camelot were always similarly great men. They believed in doing what was right, most of the time, and like Arthur saw things in shades of black and white. I see things in terms of grey.

"Merlin noticed this in me from a young age, during a training session. Arthur and some of the other boys were being schooled on chivalry. The man-at-arms in charge of one lesson told us that we were never to kill an unarmed opponent, that it was tantamount to murder. I suggested that an unarmed opponent was actually the best person to kill as it was safer than fighting someone armed to the teeth. It didn't go down well." I recalled the day with a smile, the mouth of the man-at-arms dropped open in shock. And Arthur laughed so hard he fell off the bench he sat on, causing everyone else to laugh. I didn't find out until much later that Merlin had been watching and listening to our lessons.

"So Merlin recruited you?" Thomas asked.

I nodded. "He suggested that some people needed to be removed from the world before they could endanger others. And that there would always be some who got away with their crimes simply because they were too powerful. I agreed with him, and he set about training me in other talents. It wasn't about how to fight, but how to kill, incapacitate my opponents and leave as if I were never there. He took me away, to what is now China. He'd visited the country a thousand years before I was even born and learned a lot.

"I was thirteen at the time. It took a year to get there by foot and horse. Merlin stayed for the first year and I for ten more. By the time I got home I was nearly twenty-four and had killed more men than I had fingers and toes.

"Arthur was king when I returned, yet he greeted me as his equal. He asked me if my training was done and introduced me to his wife, Guinevere. I always regretted not telling him what I was, but he wouldn't have understood."

"So you started killing for Merlin?"

"Some things out there need special
attention,
sending Arthur and his knights to kill every evil bastard would have gotten more innocent people hurt. Removing that evil just became a way of life. And I didn't just kill people. I found information on some, infiltrated their homes and friends, searching for clues about their motives and guilt."

"Does Merlin still tell you where to go?"

"These days I tend to do my own thing. Merlin will give me information or a request every few months, but I'm left to do what I need to."

"How does he contact you?"

"Merlin's one of the top three or four sorcerers on the planet. He can project himself into someone's dreams. At first, it's a bit disorientating."

Thomas stood and stretched, glancing over at a still sleeping Ivy. "You skipped a lot of your life in that telling."

"Most of it in fact." Thomas didn't need to know my entire life story. I wasn't sure any one person did.

 "Were you honestly at Soissons by accident?" Thomas asked. "It seems very coincidental."

"I think maybe Merlin knew what direction to send me in. He likes to do that, not tell me exactly where to be, just point me roughly in the direction he has in mind and leave me to sort it out."

"I have one more question," he said. "Why is Ivy a problem?"

"From what I know about the Trojan War and its aftermath, Cassandra died at the hands of Agamemnon's wife. And she died childless."

"So how does Ivy exist?" 

I glanced over at the girl, still sleeping soundly. "I don't know. But I'm planning on finding out at some point." 

He smiled and walked off a few paces before turning round. "Thank you for being honest with me."

I couldn't help but smile as Thomas went to check on Ivy. I got the feeling that smiling would be something I wouldn't do much of before this was over. 

*****

I sat around and waited for Ivy to get up and wash in the lake. She was unsteady on her feet to begin with, as if just shaking off the remnants of being drunk on the visions she'd had.