In the chaos of the battle, and despite Containment’s best efforts, Skorzeny managed to evade capture. He was never the sort of person to enter a situation without an exit plan, so had one of his men standing by with a jeep, in case he needed to flee.
By the time the dust had settled and the Department realised he wasn’t among the dead or captured, he was already on his way to a private airfield. He took off without a flight-plan and landed in Brittany a short time later. He never returned to Ireland and his farm was eventually sold.
The Magistrate took over ownership of the other estate when it became apparent that no survivors among the existing residents wanted to remain. He held the third conference there nine years later, and nobody has died there since, so it seemed like the chain of cursed events that befell the estate was finally broken.
“It has to be Hamilton!” said de Silva.
“Why?” asked the Magistrate, who had not risen from his chair. “Why violate the most sacred laws among our kind?”
“And do you even know who was killed? Or how?” I asked.
“None of us. The man would not dare attack us openly. The only others here are servants and staff. He kills one to demonstrate his strength and provoke a reaction. He is new; it is the fastest way to a position of power.”
I let the ‘servants and staff’ comment go and said, “Like attacking the biggest guy in the yard on your first day in prison?”
Sir Arthur tutted under his breath and rose from his chair. “It does not seem likely, Don Juan Perez. An extreme way to introduce yourself.”
“He knows you cannot take action without the evidence, but he also knows that this will make you seem weak.”
“Sit, please,” I said to Don Juan Perez. “Let’s just get this out of the way, then we can go speak to the others.”
He pushed past me and took the chair I had been using. “Ask your questions, then.”
His story was similar to Sir Arthur’s and Augustine’s. He claimed to have left the reception, returned to his bungalow and stayed there until sunset. He didn’t hear anything before dawn, and denied slipping a note into Hamilton’s pocket.
After he was done, Sir Arthur asked Murtagh to return to the others and invite them to join us.
Galligan arrived first, with two of his men. One took up position outside the conference room and the other stood silently in the corner. Galligan himself stood just inside the door as the Archbishop arrived.
Hamilton entered last with Sissy clinging to his arm. She looked at me with a slight sad smile, though she seemed terrified by everything else that was going on. They took their seats and the room fell silent. I watched everyone, waiting to see who would speak first.
“If you would, Mister Grey,” said Sir Arthur, and I realised everyone was waiting for me to speak.
“Oh right,” I said. I’m a detective! “So, I’ve taken preliminary statements from all of you, to try and get a rough timeline of this morning. At the time of the murder, most of you were asleep in your light-tight enclosures.”
“Except for me,” said Hamilton. “I was lured out to the southern garden.”
“By a note,” I said, “That nobody should have been able to plant on you unseen.”
“Sissy and I were the only ones who could alibi each other,” he said, drumming his index finger into the table heavily. “This was clearly arranged so we would be apart when the crime took place.”
De Silva growled and said, “I am not sure I would trust either of you, even if you were to act as the other’s alibi.”
“Maybe you did it,” giggled Sissy. “Killed the poor old man and then ran to the cleansing pool and back. Your paws are clean now, but they were dirty last night.”
Every pair of eyes in the room moved to de Silva, who spread his hands, palms-up, on the table.
“I live with nature, but I am not an animal,” he said. “The house, it has the shower. I used it before I slept.”
Augustine spoke for the first time. “Mister Grey, if you have a suspect, please say so. Otherwise, perhaps you will allow my men access to the scene. They are not investigators, or employees of the state, but they may find something you missed.”
“I’ll be honest with all of you. This murder may not be one we can solve,” I said. “There’s no witnesses and no physical evidence, thanks to-” it was then when my brain caught up with my ears and I stopped while I considered the implications of what I’d just heard.
“Thanks to what?” asked Hamilton.
“Susan,” I said. “Who told you that the pond in the woods was called a ‘Cleansing Pool’?”
She looked up from her usual stupor with a quizzical look on her face.
“When talking to Don Juan Perez,” I said, leaning on the table, “you said he might have run to the ‘Cleansing pool and back’. Who told you that is what it is called?”
“You did?” she answered. “When you spoke to me before?”
“No, I’m certain I didn’t. Sir Arthur called it that, because that’s what the Wiccans who lived here before called it. But he didn’t call it that in your presence. Have you been here before?”
As all attention in the room focused on her, she reached out to Hamilton and grabbed his arm for protection. “I don’t know. I heard it somewhere… I must have.”
Hamilton’s eyes flickered from her face to her hand resting on is arm, but he made no move to take it. “Your mother was a wicca, no? That is how you and she knew Lady York.”
“No, no, no,” said Sissy, shaking her head. “She just knew a few tricks.”
“Did she learn them here?” I asked. “You said your father was a bad man. Your mother left him and took you here, right? That’s how she learned Wicca and how you knew about the cleansing pool. You were just about the only person who could slip a note into Owen’s trousers without him noticing. It got him out of the house long enough for you to sneak out and kill Woods.”
Hamilton shook her hand off and rose to his feet. De Silva was already in a half-crouch, seemingly poised to leap across the table.
I made a gesture for calm. “Why, though? Who was Woods to you?”
She looked up again and her face broke into a wide grin. “He was just the easiest! On his own, isolated, and close to the pool. Any one of you would have done. But he was just the simplest. I might have killed a patrol too, but there wasn’t time.”
Everyone was on their feet then, roaring, except the Magistrate, who sat watching proceedings over steepled fingers. The room fell instantly silent as he said, “Child, you have violated our most sacred tenets. Why? For sport? For fun?”
“I hoped you’d think it was Owen,” she said quietly. “He promised me eternal life, but this isn’t life. This is hell. Dad left. Mum died. Lady York was nice to me, and I know he killed her. I had nothing left, and he took that too. I can’t kill him, but you all can! Even if you killed me at the same time, it’d be freedom.”
“You bitch!” Hamilton yelled, and swiped at her with hands that now resembled claws.
She moved faster than I have ever seen anyone move. She ducked under his attack and then rose to her feet with a clawing strike of her own that shredded the front of his suit. His pocket watch spun loose, shedding links of its broken chain like a comet’s tail. She punched him so hard he flew backwards and took his chair with him to the corner.
De Silva dived over the table, hands out-stretched for her throat, but she seemed to sense the attack and leaped backwards, towards the corner of the room where Galligan’s man stared open-mouthed and immobile.
By the time Hamilton’s watch had completed its arc and smashed onto the table, she was behind the security guard with one hand on his shoulder and the other with his neck in a vice-grip. Her fingernails dug deep into his flesh, and blood dripped towards his collarbone.
“STOP!” she yelled. “Or I kill him. I can rip out his throat before any of you can move.”
Sir Arthur stood now, for the first time. He took one step forward. She backed away further into the corner.
She whimpered loudly. “Stop, I said. All I want is to go. I will leave and not come back. You don’t need to punish me. He vouchsafed my conduct. According to your tenets, he’s the one you need to kill!” She withdrew her hand from her hostage's neck and pointed one bloody nail towards where Hamilton was getting to his feet.
Sir Arthur moved then. One instant he was standing with his hands raised in a soothing motion and the next he was in the corner with them, one arm straight and stiff as an iron bar. His fingers were extended through Sissy’s neck and into the plaster of the wall behind her.
She coughed, and blood flowed slowly from her mouth and from the four-inch hole at the base of her neck around the Magistrate’s wrist. A surprisingly small amount of blood, compared to what would come from a human with the same injury. Though, I supposed if vampires had blood of their own, they would not need to drink from others. What little we could see probably came from her last feeding.
The security guard wriggled free of her grasp and ran to the other corner of the room, where he collapsed in a panicked heap. Sir Arthur had still not removed his hand, and Sissy clawed at his arm with increasingly weaker strikes as life drained from her.
Hamilton climbed unsteadily to his feet, aided by Augustine. His shirt and suit were shredded, but it seemed like his skin had not been broken by the vicious attack. He clung to the Arch-Bishop to steady himself and raised one finger towards his paramour. “We burn her. Stake her to the fucking roof!”
Don Juan Perez snarled. “You vouched for her. You will suffer the same fate.”
“Let’s not start another brawl,” said Sir Arthur, without removing his hand or even taking his eyes off Sissy. “Mister Murtagh, in the storage room, you will find chains and shackles. Bring them here, please. Quickly.”
Murtagh nodded and left without a word.
“Messrs Grey and Galligan, call in the patrols and gather containment and any personal troops. We’ll need some stationed outside, just in case.”
I started to move and then stopped, despite myself. “She’s still alive?”
“She is,” said Augustine. “It takes a lot more than physical wounds to end one of us, especially one who has fed recently.”
“OK,” was the best I could do. “I’ll rally the troops.”
The precautions were unnecessary. Sissy’s body still moved and fought fitfully, but with a fist size hole through her upper spinal column, her movements were aimless and un-coordinated. When Murtagh arrived with the chains, Sir Arthur and De Silva were able to restrain her with little effort.
She was carried out to the south lawn where her chains were fastened to the same gazebo that she had lured Hamilton to. Then, for the rest of the night, the four vampires stood vigil. They gathered around her in a semi-circle, as still as statues, neither moving nor breathing until the sky began to lighten.
The wound in her throat had shrunk to half its former size by the time the vigil ended. I had to wonder what would have healed if she had been fully decapitated, and how that whole thing could have worked. The four unfroze by some unspoken signal and then looked to each other before they walked away. Aside from Containment and Galligan's men, only Sir Arthur remained, briefly, to speak to me.
“You don’t have to stay,” he said. “Containment and Augustine’s men have this covered.”
“I know. But I think I have to. I caught her. She’s here because of me.”
“No, she’s here because life was immeasurably cruel to her.” The Magistrate said. “Nobody should go have to endure what she has.”
Sissy’s head rose for the first time in hours as she struggled to focus on us. Her mouth opened and closed a few times, but no sounds came out.
Sir Arthur knelt before her. “It will be over soon,” he said, kindly. “Sleep, child. Rest will follow.”
Her head slumped again and he nodded to me before walking back towards his cottage.
The sun rose shortly after that. As the first rays fell on her, she burst into flame so suddenly and intensely, the cordon of security had to back away from the heat. She didn’t scream, but I could not tell if that was due to the damage to her throat or because she had already left the world. I hoped it was the latter.
Ten minutes after sunrise, all that remained at the foot of the gazebo was a pile of ash and the chains that had bound her, melted into a twisted and brittle ruin.
“I’m going to bed,” I told the closest guard. “Don’t wake me unless someone else dies.”
When I woke, the sun had set. I made my way to the kitchen to find Cormac and Murtagh drinking coffee in silence.
I poured a cup and joined them. “Hamilton still here?”
“Yup,” said Murtagh. “The four of them are in conference.”
“Surprised they didn’t run him out on a rail.”
“Who knows what motivates them,” said Cormac. “When you’re five thousand years old, you’ve probably been through weekends like this a hundred times. It’d be a mistake to try and judge them on human terms.”
Murtagh nodded. “When you think about the power they possess. Even before you consider his magical skills... The Magistrate moved so fast in there last night… Makes me glad we work for one of the good ones,” he said in a tone that didn’t sound entirely glad.
Murtagh was one of the toughest men I had ever met. The parts of this skin that weren’t covered by warding tattoos were covered in scars. I had never heard him sound unsure, let alone worried.
But if someone or something out there can kill the Magistrate… We should all be worried.
I took a sip of the coffee and it reminded me of the one I had at my Dad’s. I had to check my watch to confirm, but it had been just over forty-eight hours since that cup with him on his boat. I finished the coffee with two deep draughts and stood.
“They asked not to be disturbed,” said Cormac. We have Galligan outside the room, and he’ll come get us if the Magistrate needs us.”
“I’m actually just making a call. I’ll be outside. Yell out if something explodes.”
“Will do,” he said with a salute.
Outside, the chill was just catching in the night air. Summer was not here yet. I dug out my phone and dialled. It rang for just a little bit too long. I was having second thoughts when it was answered and I heard a sluggish voice say a rough “Hello?”
“Dad?”
He cleared his throat. He could have been asleep or drunk when I called; it was hard to tell.
“I was just calling to apologise,” I said, before he could speak. “We shouldn’t have left things like that.”
“It’s… it’s fine,” he said, eventually. “We’re both crossed a line.”
“I also wanted to ask for a favour.”
“Huh? Well, yeah.” He cleared his throat again. “Whatever you need.”
“I know before you went west, you were looking into Sir Arthur and the other vampires. Building, like, a case against them.”
“Yeah, but you don’t have to ask me to stop. I packed that in years ago.”
“I need you to tell me everything you learned.”
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