Band of Demons (The Sanheim Chronicles, Book Two) (35 page)

When she opened the door, Kieran was standing in the hallway.

*****

“You son of a bitch,” Kate said.

She didn’t wait for a reply, but grabbed him by his shirt collar and threw him to the floor. The door fell shut behind her.

In an instant, she transformed into the banshee and knelt on top of Kieran. She put her skeletal fingers across his throat.

“Good,” she said and her voice was eerily high-pitched and breathy. “Saves me the trouble of hunting you down.”

Kieran struggled on the ground and tried to speak.

“Kate, let him go!” Quinn said.

She didn’t. Her fingers tightened around his throat.

“I’m curious, Kieran,” she rasped. “What will happen when I scream at point-blank range? Will your blood boil? Perhaps your brain will run out of your ears? Shall we see?”

Kieran gave a strangled cry and the spirit took a breath.

She never saw the Horseman appear, only felt him—impossibly—pull her off Kieran. She wasn’t sure which emotion she felt more keenly as he picked her up: surprise or betrayal. She opened her mouth to scream anyway. Even from this distance, she should be able to kill Kieran in seconds. The Horseman’s hand wrapped around her mouth. She struggled against him.

You will stop this now
, said his voice in her head.

No!
she replied.
He will pay for what he’s done.
I am the harbinger of death. I will…

Listen to me!
the Horseman thought.

He didn’t speak in words, but a series of images flashed through her mind. They were images of Kate walking through the paper, talking with Tim. She saw their first meeting at the Starbucks, how he stared at her. She saw them kissing in a hotel room far from here, making love. And she saw him proposing to her on one knee in this very room.

You are not a killer
, his voice said.

He killed them! This is justice!

You do not know that
, he said.
He came here to talk. Let him speak. He could help us.

We don’t need his help,
she said.

Yes, we do,
the Horseman said.
If we don’t get help, we will fail. And those deaths last night will be a complete waste.

She stopped struggling then, whether because of the images still playing in her mind—her own memories now, her mother pushing her on a swing, laughing with her father—or because she was finally persuaded by his logic.

When she stopped struggling, he put her down. They both shimmered for a moment. Kate and Quinn looked at the terrified man on the floor.

“I take it you decided not to kill me?” he asked.

Kieran could only remember one other time when he had been quite so petrified in his life. He kept waiting for Kate to finish him off, but saw with some relief that it wasn’t going to happen.

“For now,” Kate said, and she stepped around him.

Quinn offered him a hand to help him off the floor. Kieran noticed his pained expression when he helped him up. However much he had recovered in the past few days, Quinn was still wounded.

Quinn gestured to a chair in the corner and Kieran sat down.

“What do you want?” she said. “Come to give us another ‘warning’?”

“That wasn’t my fault,” Kieran said.

“Careful,” Kate replied and she looked at him as if he were a bug she would love to squash. “Any lies and I will kill you. I don’t think Quinn has enough strength left to stop me a second time.”

Kieran took one look at Quinn and knew that was probably true. He looked worse than the last time he had seen him, evidently exhausted from his brief dispute with Kate.

“It was a trick,” Kieran said to her, knowing it would make little difference. “Sawyer suspected I tipped you off to the Ashburn attack. He wanted to test me. He fed me false information about Waterford. At worst, I would do nothing and the county’s firefighters would respond to him when he attacked Purcellville. At best, though, I would warn you and you would divert resources miles away from where they would be needed.”

“Why should we believe you?” Kate asked.

 “Why would I lie?” he spat back at her. “If I’m still working for Sawyer, why did I tell you about Ashburn in the first place? Why did I hire those two kids to draw graffiti everywhere? Why did I leave you the book at Carol’s place? You must know by now that I did all that. I was trying to help you!”

“Did you kill her?” Kate asked.

The temperature in the room dropped significantly and Kieran took a step back.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have brought that up,” he said, and offered a half smile.

“Did you kill her?” Kate said again slowly, punctuating every word.

Kieran looked her in the eye and the smile dropped from his lips.

“Yes,” he said.

Kate stared at him for a long moment as if daring him to say anything else.

“Why?” Quinn finally said.

“It wasn’t my idea,” he said. “She knew too much.”

“She said she didn’t know anything at all,” Kate said.

“Then she lied to you,” Kieran replied. “Other than Sawyer or myself, Carol—or Madame Zora, if you prefer— knew more about the Prince of Sanheim than anyone.”

“Why leave for the book for us? How did you know we would find it?” Quinn asked.

Kieran stared at him in disbelief.

“I knew who you were, Quinn,” Kieran said. “Don’t you get that by now? Sawyer and Elyssa have been looking for nearly a year, but I’ve only been pretending to help them. At every opportunity, I tried to lead them astray, get them to focus elsewhere. If you hadn’t published that damn article on who killed Lord Halloween, none of us would be here now.”

The frustration in Kieran’s voice was evident. He shook his head and continued.

“I left the book at Carol’s because I knew you would be sent to that crime scene,” he said. “She made it clear that she already had contact with you—though she never gave you up—so I knew you would arrive. The police might have found the book first, but they wouldn’t have been looking for a book on the Prince of Sanheim or Richard Crowley. However, it would jump out for you.”

“How did you know who we were?” Kate asked and her voice made it clear Kieran was still in danger.

Kieran paused a moment before continuing. He couldn’t tell them the truth—that Sanheim had told him almost immediately where to find Kate and Quinn and ordered him to keep Sawyer and Elyssa on the wrong track.

“I’m an excellent researcher,” he replied. “Sawyer and Elyssa left the heavy lifting to me and you two left enough clues for me to be pretty sure I had the right people. I was never really working for them. And now they know it too.”

 “I’m sure they’re all broken up,” Kate said.

“I imagine they’re pretty angry actually,” Kieran said. “Their plan was to kill me when they got back home last night. Once I realized what had happened, I left. Had to leave by a window on the second floor, by the way. They didn’t make it easy for me.”

“They set a guard?”

“Yeah, I tried to leave and found a bunch of
moidin
outside my room,” he said. “Their orders were pretty clear—make sure I didn’t get away.”

“And yet here you are,” Quinn said.

“I’m a survivor,” Kieran said unapologetically. “I’m very good at cheating death. But this is a good thing for you. I can help you now.”

 “We were just beaten pretty badly the other night and yet you’re signing up for our team? I need to know who you are and what you want. No lies, tricks or evasions.”

“You want to know my sad history?” Kieran asked. “Will that help you understand?”

“It might,” Kate replied.

“There isn’t much to it,” he said.

“Try me,” Quinn responded.

“All right,” Kieran replied.

*****

“It was the 1970s,” Kieran started. “My girlfriend and I had been living in Devonshire, but we were looking for adventure. We heard about a couple who could do extraordinary things.”

“Sawyer and Elyssa?” Quinn asked.

“No, but I’ll get to them,” he replied.

“The man was named C.K. Collins,” Kieran said. “The woman was called Grace. They had started a commune outside of Cambridge. I know these things are out of style now—hell, they were out of style then—but it sounded appealing. My girlfriend and I went to check it out. As I’m sure you can tell, they were another Prince of Sanheim. The commune was just a way to attract
moidin
.”

“Why are all the Princes so obsessed with
moidin
?” Quinn asked.

“Simple,” he said. “It adds to their power. There is a reason that Sawyer can go all over town burning everything and yet you two probably get exhausted after one evening. He has the combined psychic energy of some 40 people to draw on. The Princes—not all of them, but most—see
moidin
as the only way to give themselves an advantage over their potential successors.”

“And you became C.K.’s follower?”

“You say it like it was easy,” Kieran responded. “It wasn’t. In order to join, you had to have certain talents, mostly psychic. Both my girlfriend and I were… gifted, though she much more than me. She saw the future, mostly in glimpses, but accurately, and she had a knack for knowing what others were feeling. I had a fair amount of ability myself, but she may have been the real draw.

 “When we got there… it was an amazing experience. There was still a lot of free love and all that crap around. We walked into a permanent party—and became part of a wonderful extended family. It was idyllic. And we were celebrated. I don’t want to brag, but of all the
moidin
those guys pulled to them, we were the strongest by far. A Prince of Sanheim gains power according to who serves him or her. When we joined, our hosts gained significantly.”

“Who were they?”

“Does it matter?” Kieran said. “They weren’t Sawyer and Elyssa. They were just a man and a woman, very much in love with each other but willing to… mess about with others. Like I said, it was the 1970s.”

“It matters to me,” Kate said. “They were our predecessors.”

“They were just kids,” Kieran said. His voice sounded sad. “They didn’t know about the other Princes of Sanheim, understood even less about their powers. It was almost random luck C.K. beat his
cennad
at all.”

“What happened?”

“Sawyer and Elyssa happened,” Kieran said. “C.K. and Grace never knew what hit them. They didn’t understand who they were dealing with.”

“They attacked without warning?”

“No,” Kieran said. “Nothing that blatant. The two of them showed up with their cadre of
moidin
and asked to be friends. It all seemed to be going well. Until…”

“What?”

“Things got out of control very quickly,” Kieran said. “Elyssa seduced C.K. and that made things… tense with Grace.”

“If you tell me it was the 1970s again, I’m going to scream,” Kate said.

“Okay, but it mattered,” he said. “The Princes of Sanheim have a unique bond, as you know, which is solidified by sex. It’s what triggers the trial, all the rest of it. Well, if a Prince wants to sleep with someone else, that’s all fine and good, provided it’s a normal person. But if he sleeps with another Prince’s consort, things get decidedly trickier.”

“They tried to divide them,” Kate said.

“Yes, and it worked,” Kieran said. “C.K. didn’t know what he was doing—he thought he was just doing what he always did. But it weakened the bond between Grace and him. It was a fatal mistake. When the hammer finally fell—when Sawyer attacked—it was all over so fast you wouldn’t believe it. Grace was dead, C.K. was finished, and the
moidin
were left with a decision: join or die.”

“And you joined,” Kate said.

“Yes,” Kieran said, “but not without paying a price. During the fight, I lost the only woman I ever loved. I’m not sure who killed her—whether it was Sawyer, Elyssa or a
moidin
—but she was dead just the same. They said it was a mistake, an accident. But I’ve hated them since that day.”

“Why did they let you serve them?”

“Because I’m powerful, remember?” Kieran replied bitterly. “A Prince of Sanheim is made stronger by his
moidin
. I was quite a prize—I still am.”

“Why haven’t you aged?” Kate asked. “You don’t look older than us.”

“It was a gift from Grace,” Kieran said. “The Princes of Sanheim don’t age. How she was able to convey that gift to me—I have no idea.”

“She could grant immortality?”

“I don’t think I’m immortal,” Kieran said. “If you stuck a knife in me, I’d die quick enough. She just stopped me from aging, or slowed it.”

Kate was suddenly struck by a thought, something she should have realized earlier.

“Did all the
moidin
join?” Kate asked.

Kieran stared miserably at her.