Hound of Night (Veil Knights Book 2) Read online

  Hound of Night

  Veil Knights #2

  Rowan Casey

  Contents

  Hellhound On My Trail

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Beyond The Veil

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Faster Than The Hound

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  The Veil Knights Series

  About the Author

  Copyright Information

  Part I

  Hellhound On My Trail

  1

  I heard them before I looked up and saw what was coming. Three tweakers, looking to roll a street-corner grifter for the afternoon takings. They thought I was an easy mark so I didn't do anything to make them think otherwise. The only move I made was to step away from the wall behind me—I'd need some room.

  "What have you got for us?" the taller of the three said. His drawl wasn't local—Texas at a guess—but L.A. sucks up people from all over and treats them all equally to its pleasures and pains. This guy looked like he'd had his fair share of the latter—his eyes were bloodshot and wet, his lips were gray and dry, and he was about ten minutes away from a full out screaming, give me a fix, jag. He also seemed to be the leader of what passed for his gang, so I spoke to him first.

  "I've got nothing for you," I replied. "I had a bad day—got cleaned out."

  The one on the left—local Latino by the sound of it, but with dry lips the color of the sidewalk stone we stood on—seemed confused by my accent.

  "What are you then—some kind of Irish?"

  "Some kind of Scottish," I answered, and gave them my best smile. "And a bloody poor one at that."

  This wasn't my first rodeo with tweakers. Sometimes my innate charm was enough for them to pass me by. Usually I could convince them I was just a street-kid trying to get along, one of their own kind—but that wasn't going to work this time. These guys were at the desperate stage—strung out and out of cash—a bad combination.

  "You've got something all right—I've watched you working the crowd—you're good at it," the leader said. "Too good to be cleaned out. Too good by far."

  He was getting more needy by the second. His hands gripped and loosened in front of his belt buckle, as if he was attempting to strangle a pet. Or a small child. I don't think he even knew he was doing it. His gaze went from my face—not my eyes—to my pockets, and back again, never staying on one place for more than a second at a time. These three weren't going to move on voluntarily, so I showed them all I had in my pockets.

  Face rattled as she hit the sidewalk—I knew I'd get an earful for that later—then just lay there, looking like what she was—a flat, palm sized sheet of burnished metal, roughly circular with some crude carving around the edges.

  "What the hell is that?" the confused one asked.

  "She's all I've got," I replied. "Apart from what she holds for me."

  Now it was the turn of the other two to be confused. The leader gripped the invisible thing he was holding tighter; his knuckles whitened and I guessed he was within a second or two of striking out and worrying about the consequences later.

  "What is that supposed to mean?" he said.

  "Let me show you," I said and, in the same breath continued. "Okay, Face. I'll have it now."

  The quarter-staff came up into my hand as it rose from the ground—or more accurately, came up out of the metal circle, and it came through with enough force—thrown from the shadow side—that it was already in my grasp before the three tweakers took note of it. The action of swinging it around into a two-handed grip brought the confused Latino one's knee in range and I was too good to miss such an opportunity. I gave his patella a hard, straight, crack and he went down with a yell but I was already pivoting on my left heel, turning and catching the leader on the side of the ear with a sound that meant he'd have a headache for a month. He fell, literally pole-axed—he wasn't trying to strangle much of anything at all now.

  By the time I finished the turn the third one of them—dirty, unkempt, even more strung out than the other two—was just standing there, mouth open and flapping with no sound coming out. He hadn't said a word yet, and didn't look likely to. I gave him a second to see if he'd run, but when he still didn't move I punched the staff forward, end on, smacking him between the eyes. I didn't push into it too strongly—I didn't want to kill him, but he went down hard and would have an egg-shaped lump to show for it for weeks to come.

  I bent, sliding the staff back through to the shadow side and picking up Face in the same movement to walk away, leaving them strewn—still strung out, still penniless, and now hurting quite a bit more than before—on the sidewalk at my back.

  "Maybe you are a knight after all," Face said as I put her away in my pocket.

  "I'm no Skywalker. And Drake is no Kenobi," I said ten minutes later.

  I sat in the corner table of The Twa Dugs going over the day's takings, but Face wouldn't let me concentrate on the counting. I had her out, lying flat on the tabletop—shiny side up—we weren't arguing with each other today. She wanted to talk about Drake, a man who had just recently come out of nowhere to tell me it was time to fulfill my destiny.

  "I thought he was cute," she said. "And all that stuff about fate and heroes and saving the world? Admit it, you love that kind of thing. You lap it up."

  She had me there. I'd come to L.A. eighteen months before, just turned twenty-one, with stars in my eyes and dreams in my head. But it doesn't take long here to find out that 'actor' isn't a job description, it's a sentence. After my third day spent in a line waiting to audition for a ten-second part in a commercial, I took to working the three-card trick on street corners. And after a fifth day trying to persuade tanned blondes with perfect teeth that what they really needed was a wiry, ginger, freckled, Scotsman, I ended up working an irregular gig in the corner of The Twa Dugs, a Scottish bar tucked away in an alley off W 6th Street. I played guitar pretty well, sang the old songs passably, and did some magic tricks—making the real look just fake enough that it wouldn't confuse the punters. George let me sleep in a box room upstairs and I made enough from the gigs and from the tricks on the corners to keep me, if not comfortable, at least alive.

  Then, just last night, Dante found me.

  When he got in contact, I asked Face if she had anything on him—old men promising magic—or fame and fortune, which amounted to the same thing—to younger guys was a trick as old as the hills, especially so here in L.A. I wasn't about to fall at his feet in adoration. But Face said he was kosher—or at least, he wasn't darkside, which was good enough to get him some chat time with me.

  He said all the things bearded old men tell young heroes—fortune and glory—mostly glory, destiny and world shattering events—enough heroic majesty to turn most people's heads. I wasn't quite sure I believed his spiel—I'd worked enough marks to have a pretty well developed bullshit detector of my own—but there was no denying he was on to something. He'd shown all of us—the group of folks that he was trying to convince to join him —more than enough to get me to agree to help him.

  And now I was on
a quest. A bloody quest—his word for it, not mine. But there was a promise of, if not money, at least glory at the end of it, and despite my grumbling to Face, I had to agree with her—I was actually pretty excited at the idea.

  Not that I was going to tell her, of course. If I mentioned it she'd tease me for weeks to come. Besides, I didn't have a clue where to start.

  I was after something Dante had called the Halter. According to him, it was a strip of old burnished leather that might or might not appear to be hundreds of years old, might or might not be a leash—or collar—or belt—or even a bloody necktie for all I knew about it. It was somewhere in the city, and Dante needed it—the world needed it, to stop the return of eternal chaos, cats and dogs sleeping together, mass hysteria—you know the kind of thing I mean.

  Now all I had to do was find it.

  I finally got a chance to tally up the day's tricks when Face went quiet. I had two hundred bucks, a heavy silver signet ring and a cheap, too gaudy, gold watch. The last were from the same mark, a suit who thought he knew how the trick was done, and wouldn't give up even after I proved that he didn’t. A good day, all in all. I gathered up the takings, put Face away and headed for the bar to settle up with George.

  There are bars like this all over the world. Places where the Scots' diaspora gather to drink, reminisce and sing songs about old times long gone that could never be as golden as the glow of patriotic nostalgia might infer. And there are bar managers like George in most of those bars—hard men with fingers in many pies and an eye for a deal no matter how dodgy. George was authentic Scots—a wee barrel of a man, going bald from the back, gray from the front and with a bristling moustache with more flecks of gray in it. He'd been born and bred in Glasgow, left school just as the jobs in the shipyards were drying up, and had come over here in his twenties looking for fortune and glory. What he'd found was a Hollywood film set that looked strangely familiar—a real Victorian Scottish bar, all glass and mirrors and mahogany, transported over wholesale in the '70s from a condemned tenement block in the Gorbals for a movie. George had seen the potential, bought up the set and then built up a booming business around it and its story. It got good local trade on the weekends and brought in countrymen from all over whenever they were in town.

  But the main thing about George, and the reason I hung around, was that he had a seemingly endless capacity to help his countrymen when they came to him in need, as I had done. I'd been silly—I tried to work the corner after a few beers too many and I'd gotten rolled over for my sins, too drunk for Face to help me, too stupid not to fight back. I'd been brought into the bar, a wounded bird, and George got me patched up, sobered up, and made sure my head was screwed on before I was allowed back out on the street. He seemed to see something in me I didn't see in myself—and he let me stay once I realized I could make a few extra bob singing and playing.

  Today, more than a year on from that day, I wasn't needy. The money was going the other way for a change, and I was happy to count out my rent for another month and put it in his hand. I also passed him the watch and the ring—he'd find cash for them—I never asked where—and we'd split the profit later. While I was doing that I saw him look over my shoulder to the corner seat, then back at me. If he ever wondered who I was talking to, sitting there on my own, he never asked, and it wasn't info I was going to volunteer. Face was something—just about the only thing apart from the battered old guitar—I had that was mine to keep to myself.

  George put the money away without counting it, and drew me a shot—a small shot—of Highland Park from the gantry optic—a wee taste of home that was always my reward when I was able to pay for my lodgings.

  "I know you're not due to be on tonight," he said. "But there's a busload coming in—a Hollywood trip that's making a wee detour for a pint and a pie. If you want to bring the guitar down and sing a few songs you could pick up a few bob in tips?"

  "Naw, not tonight," I replied. "I'm heading up to Hollywood myself. I need to see a man about a dog."

  It was a throwaway line.

  I had no idea how prescient it would turn out to be.

  2

  It had been Face's idea that we check out the club on Santa Monica Boulevard.

  "There's a new act in town—one of our countrymen, too. I've heard he's good. He's got a touch of the old stuff himself, but it's the theatrics that are bringing in the crowd. And he's a bit of a scholar of the lore, or so I've heard. If anybody knows anything about a magic halter, it will be him—it can't hurt to ask?"

  As soon as I entered the converted church that housed the Masonic Club I knew I had come to the right place. The floor, bare stone slabs, had been covered in a gaudy, almost cartoon-like array of primary colors. When I stepped back I got the full effect—a giant wolf’s head had been painted there, jaws slavering, head tilted back, howling at a moon only it could see.

  At the far end of the church a narrow stage was set for a band and behind that a huge banner hung from the ceiling, another representation of the wolf, one that fluttered in a slight breeze giving it the semblance of life.

  The church filled fast, but most of the people stayed around the edges, as if afraid to stray onto the painted head.

  All was quiet, but not for long.

  The crowd cheered as the lights dimmed, leaving everything bathed in a deep red glow. A drum came in softly, slowly, like a giant heart starting to beat. The lights pulsed in time, red then black, red then black, the black slowly filling with a deep crimson. A bass drone joined the drum and my heart synchronized itself with the rhythm. The audience howled and, almost imperceptibly, the heartbeat speeded up. Dry ice cascaded over the front of the small stage.

  The concert had attracted the true hardcore; a tribe of lost souls of a hundred or so, a tribe whose identifying costume was black clothing and mascara, with optional tattoos, lace, leather and, of course, high boots. Where some looked like they’d dressed especially for the gig, the bulk of the crowd in the church walked the walk. Their clothes looked lived-in, with dust encased in the folds of their leather coats, boots worn down at the heel, and professionally rolled cigarettes—and jays—dangling from lower lips.

  A sudden increase in the noise level drew my gaze back to the stage. Three figures shuffled into position, one behind the rack of keyboards, the other two picking up guitars. Some distance back, right at the rear of the stage, a squat figure sat behind a massive drum kit. The musicians bent their heads. Lank hair fell over their faces as they started to play. The crowd roared. Gothic organ chords filled the place with wave after wave of sound.

  A figure in a long velvet cloak strode to the center of the stage. The hood obscured his features, and his face sat in deep red shadow as he stood at the lead microphone.

  "I am the Dubh Sithe," he shouted, and the lead guitar counterpointed with a short blistering phrase that shook dust from the ceiling.

  "And we are gathered tonight to open the way…with music."

  The band burst into a manic assault on their instruments, eight bars of an aural blitzkrieg that turned the audience into a thrashing frenzy. The hooded figure waved his hand, and the band stopped, as one, as if a plug had been pulled. The Dubh Sithe stood stock still while the last echoes faded and the whoops and yells of the crowd died down.

  "…with magic… "

  He spread his arms wide, clenched his fists, and when he opened them again two crimson bats, each the size of a large gull, rose from his palms and fluttered away towards the roof.

  "But mostly…with blood."

  He snapped the fingers of his right hand, and a cutthroat razor grew from his palm. He drew the blade hard across his left wrist, and an arc of crimson sprayed towards the front row of the crowd. Even as they cowered away, the performer waved his hand, and instead of being drenched, softly falling rose-petals showered the audience. A black-haired girl, who could have been no more than fifteen years old, stood at the front, enraptured. The flowers fell around her like red snow.

  T
he hooded figure floated backwards to the dark shadows at the rear of the stage. The band came in again, softer this time, building a lattice of sound around a plainsong chant. The audience howled as the hooded figure floated forward once more. He dropped the cape, revealing a kilted highlander in battle-ready dress. The crowd screamed in appreciation as he drew a claymore from its scabbard and began a series of stylized, almost balletic moves across the stage.

  "Long years we have waited for this time to come," he said. "And our pack has grown hungry. Soon we will run…"

  A bass drum beat accompanied each word.

  "And hunt."

  The crowd cheered every beat of the drum.

  "And feed."

  The guitars came in with high lyrical passages that sent the crimson bats fluttering in the eaves. The band brought the sound down to little more than a distant murmur. A flute started up, fluttering, like a little bird in flight.

  The Dubh Sithe spoke over it, his voice low, but carrying over the crowd.

  "But first, in the grand tradition, we will have a volunteer from the audience."

  I wasn’t surprised to see the black-haired girl barge her way onto the stage. When the highlander pulled her up, her skirt rode up her thigh and the crowd cheered louder. She had a broad smile on her face as she stood above the baying mosh pit. The grin didn’t even falter as a clatter of chains announced the arrival of the trick.

  At first I thought it might be a suit of armor. Only when the chains lowered it all the way to the stage did I realize what it was. I’d seen its like before, in the museum below the barracks in Edinburgh Castle. Iron Maiden they were called. And in this case the description was apt.

  It had been cast in black metal, the top half in the shape of a female torso… a female from an adolescent boy’s wet dream, with a massive thrusting chest and thin, almost waspish, waist.