Six, p.23
Six, page 23
“It’s not easy to get a berserker nowadays. You’d need someone who’s never been vaccinated and has never had the chicken pox—”
“You mean like a conspiracy-theorist’s daughter who spent the first eight years of her education being homeschooled?”
“Yeah, someone just like that—someone that you happen to be related to and have access to their only close relative.”
“My mom had dates with some guy she couldn’t really remember—”
Kyle buried his face in his hands. “We have so many problems right now,” he muttered. “You’re not dead, Grandpa’s not dead, and any half-decent, vengeance-obsessed vampire is going to try and figure out why his plan failed. We’ve also got two completely unknown werewolves running free to do god knows what.”
“Hey, can I use your phone?” Paige asked. He handed it over, and she pulled up WWII-Stories.com. “At least we know who our number one enemy is, right?”
Kyle scrolled down the page and stopped at a picture of a smirking, Italian-American boy posing in his uniform.
“Steven DeMarco, my evil great-grandfather,” Paige said as she pointed right at his mop of curly, dark hair. “At least we know what he looks like, and I’m pretty sure my dad found out about a bunch of his associates. It’s like all the haze in the back of my head is starting to clear and I’m starting to remember names and faces.”
“We also have a rare and unusual drug to trace,” Kyle murmured as he rubbed his fuzzy chin. “We are gonna go totally CSI on this shit, aren’t we?”
“Amen,” Paige said as she gave him a high-five. “Now we have to figure out just where to start.”
17
“So according to legend, King Arthur was tricked by his sister and had a son named Mordred, who pretty much destroyed the kingdom—fact or crap?” Paige asked as they swayed in the back of an L-train.
“Crap with some fact,” Kyle said between bites of his massive chicken shawarma. “There wasn’t any trickery; Arthur and his sister, Morgana, had a plan all along to create a pure-blooded strain of Pendragon.”
“So your family tree—”
“I’m descended from English nobility. It’s practically a straight line,” Kyle muttered. He eyed the yogurt sauce welling up just on the edge of Paige’s wrap, as well as his helpless tablet in the line of fire on her lap.
“But the fact?”
“Mordred was an evil traitor who destroyed the kingdom, killed his father, and nearly prevented my beautiful face from ever existing.”
Paige looked over at the window. In the reflection she could see the faint image of Mordred holding a finger to his lips. She blinked and turned back to her Wikipedia article.
“There’s no mention of a Lorcan though,” she said as she scrolled through a bunch of text.
“Grandpa is not one for a lot of attention. When Mina started her spin on the stories, he made certain that he wasn’t in them. Um, napkin?”
She wiped the dribble off the corner of the screen. “Sorry,” she said before wolfing down her last few bites of chicken, onions, and bread. “Arthur married Guinevere—”
“And Mordred accused her of having an affair with the king’s bestie, Lancelot. Yeah, that is a really sore subject at family gatherings, let me tell you. I once heard that my great-times-eight uncle, Geoffrey, threw T. H. White out a plate glass window. I think that might have led to some revisions in The Once and Future King, but I’m not sure.”
“It’s weird though. Grandpa will talk about most of them, even Mordred, but you never mention the ‘L’ word to him.”
“Lancelot?” Paige said. As the words escaped her lips, she winced and grabbed her head.
Kyle eyed the subway map. “I’m out of here next stop. You have your map?” he asked.
Paige nodded and rubbed her temple again. She looked in the glass, but there was no figure to taunt her this time.
Kyle leaned in as he took his tablet. “Be careful, OK?”
“I got this,” Paige said as she grabbed her gym bag.
“Meet you back at the apartment around eight,” he said as the train squealed to a halt.
Paige continued a few stops deeper into downtown Chicago and started her long day of following up on addresses scrawled on the back of the pizza receipt. Her first stop was a bodybuilder supply and nutrition center.
She brushed past a man who was nearly as wide as he was tall to shimmy into a crowded aisle stuffed with whey protein and nutrition bars. The huge balding man at the counter didn’t bother looking away from his phone as dinky little Paige approached.
“Need something for your boyfriend?” he asked as he swiped away a row of candy on his game.
Paige smiled blandly. “Actually, I was looking for someone. You know a guy named Irvine Wolfe?”
“Never heard the name. You gonna buy something?”
She grabbed a stack of almond butter bars from the counter. “Blond guy, kinda hard to miss—?”
“That will be eighteen-forty-five.”
This scene repeated itself at every local gym, fitness store, and supplement outlet. By the time she reached her final stop back at the end of Michigan Avenue, her arms were laden with calories and vitamins, and her prepaid Visa card was all but out of balance.
“Maybe this was a dumb idea,” she muttered as she wandered into the Shredded Zone. Once more she ducked past meathead after meathead and more images of glistening chests than the romance aisle of any bookstore. This time she was surprised with a real, live woman behind the counter, a very tall, tanned bottle blonde who thought a hot pink sports bra was work attire. The gal at the counter smiled as she saw the mountain of previous purchases.
“Well, hello. Looking for anything in particular?” she asked.
“A really hot blond guy,” Paige sighed.
“Aren’t we all?” the woman said with a laugh.
Paige took a few minutes to wander down the aisles, making sure to check if they had any flyers or message boards that might lead to more prospects. As Paige approached a pyramid of vanilla protein powder, a heavy, musky scent tickled her nose. She started to blush as she approached the gap where one of the large tubs was clearly missing.
She looked around before bending over and taking a deep, long sniff. She shuddered.
“Can I help you?” the cashier asked.
Paige grabbed the faintly stinky plastic container and hustled to the counter. The cashier gave Paige a hearty thumbs-up. “Is this any good?” Paige asked as she set down “Hyper-Bulk Alpha” on the counter.
“Sweetie, this is the best. This is our own proprietary blend of fully organic, non-GMO certified—” Paige tuned out the rest of the five-minute spiel extolling every virtue of their completely in-house blend made by their company founder all the way back in 2008.
“Can you only get this here?” Paige asked.
“Only in this very place or on our website,” the cashier said as she popped a card in the bag. “Once you use this, you will never go back to the processed, sugar-laden crap other stores try to sell you. Oh, you mentioned hot blonds, right? I know for a fact that we have a regular stud who swears by this,” she said with a little wink.
Paige said a silent prayer as she saw the fifty-plus-dollar price tag, but mercifully an approved message came through.
The girl at the counter asked, “Did you want to join our mailing list?”
“Um, not today, but can I sign up online?”
“It’s on the card. Hey, let me know how that works out for you. I’m telling you, everyone gets hooked, and with arms like yours, I’m sure you like to work out a lot.”
“Oh, I’ll be back, I’m sure.”
Paige skipped down the street, even with all her bags and walking that day. She sniffed the bag one more time, just to make sure that she really did pick up that distinctive werewolf funk on the plastic. She hunted for her new prepaid phone and dialed the only number in the contacts.
“Guess what I found,” she said as soon as Kyle picked up.
“An angry blond with a fitness fetish?” he asked.
“Well, I think I found his favorite protein powder at least, and in even better news, it’s only available one place.”
“Kick ass,” Kyle said. “Let’s meet back at the ranch; I’ve got news too.”
Paige began her triumphant walk home down Michigan Avenue. As she passed a majestic building with two lion statues out front, her feet simply stopped. A pack of girls walking behind her gave her a nasty look as they had to stumble around the young woman transfixed by the Chicago Art Institute. She turned and walked up the steps, her eyes glazed over, and ended up infuriating the coat-check desk as she had to deposit a dozen plastic bags before they would let her farther inside the lobby.
She walked right up to information and said, “I’m here to see Mr. Merriweather,” without missing a beat.
The stern-looking older lady at the counter stared witheringly over her glasses. “And who should I say is inquiring about Dr. Merriweather?” she asked.
“I’m a friend of Lorcan Darcy’s,” Paige said ever so sweetly.
“One moment,” she said before picking up the phone on the desk.
The woman at the counter paled visibly as she muttered to someone at the other end. The older lady nodded quickly and made several affirmative noises. She looked back to Paige apologetically. “Dr. Merriweather will be right with you, dear.”
Paige looked around, confused, as people trickled in and out of the turnstiles. A rather small man with long birdlike features, horn-rimmed glasses, and a slightly too big navy suit hurried toward the blank-faced girl in a T-shirt and cargo pants.
He looked her up and down in confusion. “I’m sorry, but you are—?”
“Paige DeMarco,” she said without thinking. “My dear friend Mr. Darcy said that I simply had to come here and see the tapestries and that only you could help me, Mr. Merriweather.”
“Why, yes, of course. Please follow me, Miss DeMarco.” He waved a badge and grabbed her a pass so that they could wander unfettered through one of the largest collections of art in North America. Instead of stopping at the classical wing, the modern art collection, or the Impressionists gallery, Paige found herself led straight to an unassuming door labeled “Janitor.”
Sure enough, as Merriweather unlocked and opened the door, Paige found herself face-to-face with mops, buckets, and shelves full of cleaners and paper products. The professor type gave her a small salute before shutting her in the closet. “Buzz me when you are done,” she heard through the door.
“What the heck?” Paige asked as she noticed the distinct lack of knob or lever on the inside of the door. She searched desperately for any sort of keypad or button around the door frame. Soon she felt a terrible sensation of being watched. Something was barely visible behind a row of paper towels. She pulled away the rolls to reveal a terrible velvet painting of dogs playing poker tacked to the walls of this hallowed institution. “Some tapestry,” she muttered.
She grabbed her temple again with her right hand. Her left paw, however, developed a mind of its own and slid around the cheap fabric. Sure enough, there was a tiny switch hidden behind the border collie on the left. The wall creaked open to reveal a set of stairs leading down.
“Why are you doing this, Paige?” she asked herself as she walked ever so cautiously down the narrow set of steps. A few dim lights ran along the risers and there was a faint hum of a transformer somewhere, but otherwise it was just a deep, dark passageway into the unknown.
Another door greeted Paige at the base of the stairs—this one solid steel, with a keypad next to it. Once more her left hand slid over and typed while her neck turned away so she couldn’t see.
“If you ever do this to me again, Mordred—” Paige hissed. The door made a terrifically loud clunk to interrupt her. She pulled it open to reveal a beautifully lit, climate-controlled vault. Her jaw dropped at a very large slab of stone in the dead center of the gallery. An aged, sliver, ornately-etched sword stabbed right through the heart of the rock, with no perceivable gap between the metal and its lithic sheath.
“Holy—”
“Language, please, Paige,” a very British voice said behind her. She whirled around to see Lorcan in black leather armor. “After all, we are in the gallery of my esteemed ancestors.”
“Are you—?”
“A hallucination?” this Lorcan asked. “Why, yes. It’s safe here, so you can call me by my real name.”
“I’m going crazy,” Paige said, rubbing her eyes. “You’re Mordred, then?”
The hallucination gave a little bow. “Sorry to use your body for a while, but I had to make certain that my family’s greatest treasures were safe. You know, everyone thinks we keep them all in the homeland, but I believe in diversification.”
“So that is—” Paige asked, wide-eyed. She stepped cautiously toward the sword rammed into the stone.
“The one and only Excalibur,” Mordred sighed. “My other body carries around Caliburn, my old sword—supposedly as a reminder to never behave like that traitor Mordred. Oh, we vampires love our irony, don’t we?”
“It’s really a sword in a stone,” Paige cried as she walked around it. She started to reach a hand out but jerked it back. Her hallucination laughed.
“There aren’t any alarms in this room, Paige. Security isn’t going to stop you either,” Mordred said.
Paige stepped closer and reached out. The moment her hand brushed against the hilt, she yelped as a terrible shock shot up her arm.
“However, you aren’t a vampire, so your electrical signature isn’t compatible with that combination of alloys,” Mordred continued. “The little bit of me in you, however, prevented any real damage.”
“Why did you really bring me here?” Paige asked.
“One, I did want to make sure it was safe, and you were in the area,” Mordred said.
The hallucination walked over to a case on the far wall. Paige followed him to see a bunch of ancient-looking books sealed in a glass case. One was open to an illustration of two men stabbing each other. “Ahh, Father,” Mordred said with a pained smile. “It was one of our finer moments, really.”
“Go on,” Paige said.
“Two, the information in these books might identify my enemies. There is a computer with the images on file,” he said as he pointed a phantom finger to a gray box straight out of 1995. “It’s a lonely little machine and never so much as once been connected to the outside world, so I’m afraid you and Kyle will have to work here.”
“Kyle can come down here too?”
“I suppose it’s a necessary evil. Of all my descendants, he’s one of the ones who’s disappointed me least. Oh my, you seem to have inherited more of my sarcasm than my kindness, a rún,” Mordred said. “I’m also trying to stay out of your way as much as I can, but you have trapped a great deal of frustration and resentment in your subconscious, Paige. I think you may need professional help.”
Paige laughed bitterly. “My hallucination is telling me to get help—wow,” she muttered. “So, anything else I need to know?”
Mordred pointed to a wall with two paintings. Paige recognized a redheaded lady in a summer dress and hat from Kyle’s picture. The full image showed a familiar, pale, dark-haired man with his hand on her shoulder.
“My dearest Elizabeth Darcy,” Mordred said. “This part of me didn’t know her as well, but her inheritance saved our family’s fortune after the Napoleonic Wars. By marrying her, I had money to shove the Jaegers’ influence out of the United Kingdom for good. I don’t think that vampire family has quite forgiven that loss of face.”
“And my great-grandfather is one of those vampires whose family lost face,” Paige added.
“Yes, in fact I may have personally humiliated his mother, as well as call her many names that don’t translate into modern English; but believe me when I say that they were very rude. Considering that your great-grandfather already attacked two humans in the presence of my son, including a trusted servant, I’d say that he’s not shy about his dislike of the family.”
“So you think he wants you dead?”
“More than likely, but I also know he’s as subtle as a freight train. I’m not sure he’s old enough or cunning enough to have discovered the Lungs’ secrets. Not to mention he would have to have recruited at least two werewolves without getting killed. I raised one from birth and am still surprised that I am alive.”
Paige looked to the other painting, a breathtaking composition of a woman with long black hair and the face of an angel. She lounged in a sheath of brilliant red, smiling knowingly as her hands wrapped around a goblet of red liquid.
“Do you like the Caravaggio?” Mordred asked. “He was always one of her favorites, particularly with his obsession with painting decapitation.”
“She’s beautiful,” Paige said as the painting seemed to stare at her no matter where in the gallery she walked. “Is that—?”
“The one and only Lady Pendragon, Meenakshi Thakkar,” Mordred said. “She single-handedly saved our whole clan when she went before the council. She’s persuasive and cunning, almost to the point of being seen as a witch. She’s the one who told the tale of valiant Arthur, betrayed by one son, but able to sire another with his dying breath. She is the creator of Lorcan Darcy, current Lord Pendragon, as much as Merlin or even I am.”
“And you’re having problems?” Paige asked.
“We’ve been married for one thousand five hundred and one years, a rún. ‘Problems’ is an understatement.”
“And if anything happens to you?”
“She’s free to rule the clan without me or even free to run off with that Eastern European bastard that she likes to chase after, Vlad the Insufferable.”
“So you think that your wife might be trying to kill you too?” Paige asked.
Mordred smiled. “Perhaps, and perhaps I’m just expressing your own subconscious desires bleeding into your hallucination, a rún. Wouldn’t it be so much more convenient for you if my wife turned out to be evil and trying to kill me?”
