Chapter 6
I dropped Tommy off at his office, but he'd been silent the whole way back and it was beginning to concern me.
'They tortured that woman,” he said before I could ask him anything. “I could smell the blood. Can you come pick me up before you go home? I think there are a few things we need to talk about.'
I said I would and told him that I'd return in a few hours to give him his car back.
'How's your hand?' I asked a still quiet Sara.
She flexed her fingers and wrist. 'It feels sore, but no more throbbing pain. Why, where are we going?'
'We need to talk,' I said. 'About what you saw.'
'I saw a dead woman.' Her words were spoken softly, just above a whisper.
I didn't really know what to say to that. 'I'm sorry' felt too small a phrase to use for the horror that Sara had witnessed. Instead, I drove in silence for a few more miles, before leaving the motorway and driving down some quiet country roads until we reached a a dirt road. We bumped and jolted down the road for half a mile, the width just big enough for two cars, but there was no one else around at one in the afternoon on a weekday. At the end of the road sat a large grassy clearing.
I stopped the car and got out. Sara joined me a moment later.
'I've never been here before,' she said as she followed my gaze.
The clearing ended fifty feet in front of where we stood, replaced by a drop of a few hundred feet into the New Forest below. From our vantage point, we could see for miles, all of it green and peaceful. Very few people knew of the spot, so thankfully there was no fence protecting idiots from falling down the slope, and spoiling what was a spectacular view.
'It's so quiet,' she said as she walked toward the edge, stopping a few feet back and peering down the slope. 'Bloody hell.'
'Yeah, I don't advise jumping,' I said as I joined her. 'You could probably survive as it's not a sheer drop, but you'd know about it once you hit the bottom.'
'How do you know about this place?'
'I used to come here, a long time ago. When the only way to get up here was to climb that slope, or walk the ten miles to get around it.'
'You climbed that?'
'A few times, it was good exercise.' I made my way back to the truck. 'I picked here as we're unlikely to be disturbed. You can ask whatever you want. I won't dodge anything, I promise. No subject is off limits. You got into a fight today, how are you feeling about it?'
Sara continued to stare down into the forest below, her back facing me. She rubbed her neck and turned, before walking back over where I was sitting. 'I wanted to hurt him,' she said. 'He threatened to… well, you know. When I hit him, I just lost it.'
'You handled yourself well. I'm proud of you; you should be too. But next time, maintain composure. Losing your temper will get you in trouble one day. Trust me on this.'
'You were so calm. You could have killed them all, couldn't you?'
'And a day not so long ago, I would have. But, that's not me anymore. I try not to kill those too stupid to know better.'
'Why doesn't that scare me?'
'Because I'm awesome,' I said with a laugh, which Sara quickly joined.
'I want to know what happened today,' she said. 'Who murdered that woman? Why did you have blood on your hands when you came out of the farmhouse? What did you do to scare that agent and who the hell are the LOA?'
They were all fair questions, but I thought starting at the beginning was the best idea. 'To explain about the LOA, I need to start with Avalon. Do you know what they are?'
Sara shrugged. 'Sort of. I know about people who aren't human. My neighbour when I was little was an elemental. She could move the earth around. I thought it was fantastic.'
I grabbed a blanket from under the rear seat behind the driver and unrolled it, laying it on the soft ground. I took a seat and Sara came and sat next to me a second later, eager to hear what she wanted to know.
“Avalon is a small island off the northern coast of Cornwall. There's only one massive city there, Camelot. And apart from being the island's name, Avalon is also like the non-human version of the UN. Or it would be if the UN had any real power. Avalon consists of the most powerful members of every non-human species in the world. You know those gods and goddesses that you read about at school-Zeus, Hades and the like? They’re all real and each one has a say in what happens with regards to the laws of the world. Merlin is in charge of Avalon, although his ability to control what happens has been on the decline for a long time now.”
“You sound upset about that.”
“Merlin and me have a difficult history. He’s not the man I thought he was, and he turns a blind eye to far too much.” I sighed. “Anyway, we’re not here to hear me complain about Merlin. Any other questions?”
“So who were those LOA people?”
“Avalon has several bodies which help it retain power. The three main include the Shield of Avalon, or SOA, which is the internal security force, sort of like America's Homeland Security, or the MI5. The Blade of Avalon, or BOA, are the armed forces. They deal with external threats. The last is the LOA, the Law of Avalon, a police force, which is similar to Interpol. They investigate crimes which are perpetrated by humans against Avalon members, or by Avalon members on humans.”
“So those Agents were there because either the killer or victim wasn’t human? Tommy said that most of the people in charge just do whatever they like.”
'True enough. The big members of Avalon-Hades, the vampire Lords, werewolf Alphas and the like, all have their own security forces or internal investigation people. They'd never allow the LOA to investigate them without a fight and a whole lot of evidence. It's a bit like a huge corporation not wanting the police to snoop around unless necessary.'
'But whatever happened today was within LOA jurisdiction?'
'For now, yeah. Neil isn't under anyone's protection; no one too powerful anyway; otherwise Olivia wouldn't have been allowed to let Tommy look into him. That might change depending on who the murderer or victim was. There's a lot of political bullshit that goes into every investigation when the higher ranked members of Avalon are involved.'
'And you used to work for them?'
'For a long time, yes. I quit over a century ago.'
'Why?'
'A story for another time.”
Sara was silent for a few seconds, and I could tell that she wanted to ask more, but she thankfully changed the subject. 'The blood on your hands.'
'How much do you know about magic?'
'Tommy told me that there were two types, Elemental and Omega. All sorcerers' start with Elemental — fire, water, earth or air-and you can only learn two from that set. That about right?'
'Close enough,' I said. 'You can never learn a magic that is the opposite of the one you know.' I raised my hand, palm up, and a small ball of flame appeared. It was about the size of a marble and hovered just above my palm. 'The orange glyphs on my hands and arms show that I'm using fire magic.'
I extinguished the flame and the orange glyphs were replaced with white ones as a small, whirling ball of air appeared where the fire once was. 'And this is air magic. So I can never learn earth or water, no matter how hard I might try. Omega magic is the same, four different schools and you can only learn two. Mind, matter, light and shadow. But there's a third type of magic — blood magic. My hands were covered in blood because I can use blood magic to learn from whom the blood came. I now know that the blood down there belonged to the dead girl and four human men.'
