Hammer of Darkness (Veil Knights Book 8) Read online

  Hammer of Darkness

  Rowan Casey

  Contents

  Series Summary

  Veil Knights Newsletter

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Veil Knights Newsletter

  The Veil Knights Series

  About the Author

  Copyright Information

  In book one of the Veil Knights series, THE CIRCLE GATHERS, stage magician and sorcerer extraordinaire Dante Grimm brings ten strangers together, informing them that they are the living avatars of the original Veil Knights, brave men and women reincarnated many times through the millennia, most recently as the Knights of the Round Table, who pledged their lives to protect mankind from supernatural threats and enemies.

  In the distant past, the Veil Knights had combined the power of several arcane talismans into the Caeg Dimmre, the Key of Wickedness, which was used to construct a mystical barrier between our world and the Demimonde, preventing the supernatural races that inhabited the realms on the other side from continuing to ravage our humanity. The talismans were then split apart and hidden away in the far corners of the earth, there to remain until the time should come when they might be needed once more.

  That time is now.

  The Veil is falling, weakened by age and the machinations of those on the other side. Grimm knows that unless the pieces of the Caeg Dimmre are brought together again, the Veil will fail entirely, releasing the darkness that it has kept locked away for so long.

  In desperation, Grimm convinces the knights to assume their mantles once more, to undertake the quests necessary to bring the pieces of the Key back together so that they can be used to strengthen and reinforce the Veil.

  These are their stories.

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  Chapter 1

  Bay kou bliye, pote mak sonje -- those who give the blows forget, those who bear the scars remember

  Creole proverb

  Grimm called the way he always seems to; out of the blue and in the middle of the night. Time has a different meaning to him, I suspect, and certain social niceties we take for granted seem beyond him.

  My place is sparse, Grimm tells me he can't decide if he finds it more monastic cell or dojo. There are truths in both those things. I train here; I contemplate here. But really, it's more secured waystation than anything, where I keep tools of the trade and bide my time until I begin the next quest.

  There's always a next quest.

  I sat up in bed and picked up my phone, noting the hour with something like hostility. "Yes, Dante," I said.

  He's not big on preambles. "Do you still love her?"

  "What?"

  "You know who I mean, don't play games. Do you still love her?"

  "Why? Does she have something to do with the Caeg Dimre?" I sounded evasive even to myself, make of that what you will. As of late, the Keys are almost always the reason he calls me. But not always, he's got a lot of fingers in a lot of pies.

  "The Basket. The Hamper. It's in San Francisco."

  My stomach dropped away leaving behind a frozen, empty pit. I closed my eyes. There is little use lying. I evaded again, hedging on the answer. Lawyers are good at that sort of thing. He referred to the Hamper of Gwyddno Garanhir, one of the keys and a mystical item of great power.

  "Nothing will stop me from doing my job," I said. "Nothing ever has." That much was true. "What does she have to do with it?" I asked.

  "Her new bedmate, a local politician, named Fallows, has found it or at least discovered its location. Or at least discovered a person who is aware of the location. Or something."

  "That's a bit obtuse," I said.

  "Clarity is the reason I have you, Hautdesert," he said.

  "Which faction is he with?"

  A more accurate question would have been, ‘who does he serve,' but that was too uncomfortable a reminder of my own position. I refrained from asking what I really wanted to ask, who is he, who is she with now?

  "He's not factionalized. He's an…interested collector, I suppose. A gentleman antiquarian. I do not believe LaVey commands him."

  "Erica is a witch," I said. "And not some, ‘goddess' loving, hedge pagan, as you well know. She's a hexslinger. They're sort of LaVey sympathetic by nature."

  "Maybe," he allowed. "In fact, always a distinct possibility. LaVey moves in mysterious ways. But you were with this hexslinger, in her bed, or she in yours. I trust you to ferret out the truth. Though preferably you'll be able to avoid her."

  "You can't send one of the knights? I'm really more internal affairs." I was hedging again. I knew it, he knew it, I knew he knew it. Goddamn magicians.

  "No," he said. "I need you." His voice held the matter-of-fact tone I associated with the end of the world. "Your paramour is more formidable than her lover by far. I need experience in this matter."

  "This group is a very capable cast of characters," I pointed out.

  "I need experience," he repeated. "A subject matter expert." He hesitated. "Initially I thought this would be low key."

  "Initially?" I asked.

  "I sent Kay," Grimm said. "She hasn't checked in."

  My heart sped up a moment at the mention of her name. Of course, it was Kay, I thought. She wasn’t like he and I, or the knights, but she was a trusted operative and we had history.

  "Send me the information," I told him, defeated.

  I closed my eyes, inhaled and smelled Erica's perfume, the memory of her perfume. Then I smelled the memory of her flowing blood on the day, half a decade ago, that I tried to kill her.

  She wasn't going to be happy to see me.

  "It's already in your inbox," Dante said. He hung up.

  I sat there, phone growing cool in my hand and looked at my bedroom wall, staring straight through it and into the past. Did I still love her? Not to put too fine a point on it, but do bears shit in the woods? I wanted to pull my beard out until my face ran with blood.

  In the dark of my room, I saw a rider on a pale horse, it was death, and hell followed him. I closed my eyes but couldn't shake the image.

  The Veil grew thin.

  The next evening I stood beside Grimm looking up the bay at the lights of San Francisco in the distance. The Oakland hills form steep canyons across which mansions, brilliant as carnivals, stood in enclaves of wealth.

  I looked around the sunken living room at the Henkle Harris furniture tastefully decorating the place. There was an original Andy Warhol on one of the walls not taken up by floor-to-ceiling, panoramic windows.

  No Ikea and mass produced prints for Grimm. I studied him over the edge of a tumbler of Highland Park single malt. He looked young, hip, ready to snort coke with reality TV stars and be photographed by TMZ paparazzi. Lean build, messy bed head, black shirt of raw silk open to the navel. He'd fully embraced his role.

  "You really like all this?" I asked.

  He smiled, a small one. "All what? The view?"

  "The celebrity, the fame," I gest
ured vaguely with my drink, "the pageantry."

  "You'd be happier if I was in a robe in some oak grove perhaps? Maybe waving a sickle blade and some Mistletoe around?" He sounded amused.

  "What happens if Access Hollywood discovers the reason your invisibility illusion is so realistic?"

  "You on edge, old friend?" he asked.

  I grunted. Shrugged. Maybe I just admired his ability to reinvent himself. After the Veil had taken my wife, I'd mostly remained unchanged as the world progressed around me into its inevitable future. After losing myself for awhile, anyway.

  "I'm ready to start," I said. "If it's really the Basket, now just as the circle gathers, and the gods-damned aspects of the Key are unearthed, then we have to end this quickly." And I would invade the depths of Niflheim alone for Kay, I silently added.

  "The basket was lost when Canter'r Gwaelod drowned," Grimm said. He took his own drink of Highland Park. "Or thought lost anyway." He turned back toward the windows and the fifteen-million-dollar view. "Canter'r Gwaelod," he said, repeating the name of that ancient place. His voice was softer, farther away as he quoted Horace Mann. "Lost - yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered, for they are gone forever."

  I swallowed a drink. Sometimes I hate being around Grimm. His sense of nostalgia rivaled my own.

  "How do you want to approach this?" I asked.

  "I have you set up in an apartment, in the Narrows," he said, still not looking at me. He knew what he was asking. "Just be yourself. Have conversations. See how long it takes her to notice you're there."

  "Like a Judas Goat?"

  "Well, yes," he said. I heard the smile in his voice. "Exactly."

  Chapter 2

  Cynthia's shop was a throwback, a relic of older times in San Francisco. The Haight is different now, trendy second-hand stores, expensive niche boutiques, exclusive restaurants, all crammed in next to tattoo and piercing shops, Internet cafes, and neo-punk hangouts. Positioned in the nebulous area between upper and lower Haight, the Spell Book straddles more than one world

  The shop clung to the side of a ridiculously steep hill in a tucked away part of Haight-Ashbury. It sat sandwiched like a broom closet between a used clothing store and an antique records store. I stopped in front of the tiny occult establishment and took a moment to look around. The sky was iron gray as day slipped out of afternoon into evening. Twilight crept forward, and a chill wind came in off the Bay.

  The street seemed deserted. Down the hill, the occasional car passed on one of the cross avenues. Two homeless men in filthy canvas coats sat on flattened cardboard boxes with empty McDonald's cups stuffed with dirty crumpled bills and random coins. I stopped by one and slipped a twenty into the cup.

  The man looked up at me. He was Native American and somewhere between a well-preserved sixty and a hard worn forty. The lines on his face were deep canals, and his beard hung in wispy patches of white-grey. He smelled like he'd been on the road a long time.

  "Thanks, man," he said.

  His voice was cigarette-raspy and softly slurred. I smelled cheap, strong wine, though I didn't see a bottle anywhere. There but by the grace of God, I thought.

  "No problem," I said. I pointed my chin at the Spell Book. "Busy in there?"

  His dark eyes squinted up with mirth. "Never is, during the week."

  I nodded. "Thanks," I said, and walked into the shop.

  A little bell over the door that jingled as I entered and the smell of old books and incense hit me as soon as I crossed the threshold. The place was more gloomy than homey, with a warren of ancient book shelves and dusty display cases filled with occult paraphernalia. I felt the small hairs on the back of my arms lift slightly. The runic tattoos on my back warmed gently. There was real magic here.

  Among all the Reiki and neo-pagan bullshit, there were items of actual, if limited, power. There were points of authenticity among the bowls of crystal shards and dangling dream catchers. I wasn't surprised, I'd been here before. The owner may have sold whatever Kabbalah trinkets were hottest at the moment, but that was just to provide cover. Behind the counter, there were things that could blast the mind, or damn the souls of inexperienced practitioners.

  I stepped past some hanging bundles of sage and wandered deeper into the shop. I saw copies of Aleister Crowley's The Book of the Law next to 18th-century reproductions of the Malleus Maleficarum. These sat surrounded by copies of The Satanic Bible, and Francis Bacon's Novum Organum, first addition. I could only imagine what was in the back.

  Coming around the corner of a rickety shelf, I saw her. Cynthia sat behind the counter pouring over a thick, leather-bound volume with yellowing pages. She looked poised. Calling her a ‘bibliophile' is an exercise in understatement. She still radiated a severe, aristocratic beauty, the kind you sometimes associate with professional dominatrixes or certain cliques of prosecuting attorneys.

  Her hair was grayer now, the lines beside her eyes and the corners of her mouth had grown a little more pronounced, but her figure in the simple black peasant dress remained naughty librarian enough to get second glances at the Farmer’s Market or auction houses I was sure she still attended. She even wore the bifocals perched on her sharp nose with a subdued sensuality that was completely unaffected.

  The Rottweiler laying on the floor beside the counter lifted a shovel-like head and gave a soft, rumbling growl of recognition. Cynthia did not lift her head.

  "Uh," I said, "I was hoping to get some Stevie Nicks memorabilia, real cool stuff, but you know, like, authentic witchcraft...thingy's."

  Slamming the book shut she looked up quickly. Two red spots showed high on her prominent cheekbones, her mouth set in a hard line, and her eyes, so malachite green they almost matched my own, positively blazed.

  "Get ou--" she stopped, blinked and then looked as if she'd bitten a lemon. The dog gave a soft whine and lowered its head onto paws about the size of dinner plates. "Oh," she finished. "It's you."

  "Great to see you again, Cynthia," I said. I tried to appear sincere and maybe even a little abashed. I doubted, from her scathing glance, that I pulled it off. "You look beautiful as ever."

  "You look like someone pounded your face with a pool cue and it didn't heal correctly."

  "Well actually," I began, "funny you should--"

  "What do you want?" she asked.

  "I suppose 'catch up on old times' would be a stupid response."

  "Not if you actually meant it," she countered.

  Her gaze was direct enough that I felt legitimately abashed at her response. She deserves better, I thought. I cleared my throat and shifted on my big feet. The Rottweiler looked up at me. I swear the beast smirked.

  "Cynthia, I---"

  "Don't," she said. Her voice was much softer now. "Don't come in here and apologize after all this time. Just don't."

  I looked away. I knew this would be tough; I came in prepared for anger. But this...this weary resignation at the pain of our history, I hadn't prepared myself for that. It was more real, more honest than I wanted to face. Not on top of everything that was coming ahead.

  "I need help," I said. "A friend of mine is missing. They may be in very real danger. Veil danger."

  She looked at me, utterly composed again. Rod Stewart's "Maggie May" played in the back of my mind. It wasn't a particularly kind thought, but it was honest, and it made me sort of sad.

  "If your friend's mixed up with Grimm then there's most likely no 'maybe' about being in danger." Her voice was flat, declarative. Cynthia does not brook fools lightly.

  I shook my head. "No," I said. "She's in over her head. Cynthia, it's Kay."

  "She never came to see me," Cynthia said. If her voice was hard before, it was all diamonds and titanium now. "Whatever she was about, she hasn't been by." I knew this wasn't easy for her. She had a history with Kay that was sadly similar to the one she and I shared, and, in the grand scheme of things, much more recent.
r />   If we wore ex-lovers like scars, our skin would be nothing but gristle and hardened wounds, her and me.

  "She may have been looking for the cortège," I said.

  Chapter 3

  A cortège is an entourage or retinue. In the framework of which I was speaking, that entourage belonged to a vampire queen. You can see why Cynthia was a little excited.

  She came to her feet in a rush. The dog came to its feet as well, ropes of saliva dangling from bear trap jaws. The sound of it growling deep in its broad chest was a seismic tremor. I looked at her.

  "Grimm sent her after them!" she half-shouted.

  Behind us, the bell rang as the door opened. I looked behind me and saw an emo kid with spiked, jet black hair, and features more San Pablo by way of Berkeley than the Tenderloin.

  "We're closed!" Cynthia snapped.

  Whoever he was, he was smart enough not to argue. My opinion of him nudged up several notches. When the door swung closed again, I turned back to Cynthia.

  She was under control again. I think she despised me now; it didn't feel good. I wasn't in the mood to apologize for either Grimm or my own role in all this. Death was our handmaiden when we battled the Veil. Kay knew that well as anyone, perhaps much better than the current Circle, which was only just beginning to comprehend the horror and violence they faced. Luckily, knights are fast learners.

  "Help me help Kay," I said. "I know you don't hold truck or palaver with LaVey’s bastards."