View Full Version : Born Under a Bad Star
(Solo. Part 1 of 2.)
"When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live. But although They no longer lived, They would never really die." - H.P. Lovecraft
FOREWORD
The dark depths of the sepulcher gave me great comfort as I retreated deeper into the cold, hard earth and fled those who sought me harm. I placed my hand carefully against the cool stone walls as I guided myself down the stairwell by the faint luminescence of the remaining tinder I carried. I had neither the time nor the luxury of a torch, so every step deeper into the tomb was precarious, but I kept on all the same. It would not be long before I reached my haven.
For over a fortnight I had made this into a ritual. Fleeing into a crypt each night and locking myself within, only to return to the surface and the land of the living when the sun rose each day and eradicated its eternal enemy. I know it is strange for one such as I to be finding a home in such a ghastly and morbid place, but I have discovered the silence and seclusion to give me the peace of mind necessary to continue my experiments. I have made much progress, and I find that the means in which I pursue this end to be fitting, especially in such dark times.
As it might occur to whomever ends up reading this, I must insist that I, Eidan Hamilton, am not mad. I do not belong in some sort of padded cell where the alienists shall stare at me through the looking glass and gaze upon my very visage darkly. I am a man of science, after all, and unfortunately I am also desperate. For as I write this, I must confess that all is not well. In fact, save finding a new haven for myself and my pursuits into the ungodly, nothing has gone right. Since my research has been discovered by a known few, I have been hunted. Those who wish to pursue me also desire that which has become my obsession. They wish to find me and take it.
Though they claim to want to slay me and destroy that which I protect, I scarcely believe them. Even Christian men fear that which they do not understand, and I think even if they were to get their hands upon this device, they would not be able to find it in their black hearts the courage necessary to destroy such a malevolent thing.
I know this, because I have not even found it in myself to do so. Each and every night that I return to the depths of this tomb and to this thing, I find my curiosity growing as I attempt to learn more about it. Where it came from. What it is for. What power it holds. Such a device of impossible geometry and dark intent must have a greater purpose then what many scholars before me have fooled themselves into believing. But yet, in my heart I know that it is up to me since the day I unearthed this wretched box that I am the only one capable of destroying it. I after all, know what it is capable of.
I am the only one living now that has seen the true horror of what such power can inflict upon the human mind. To the soul.
But, alas, I still defy my greater senses in the pursuit of research and understanding. Perhaps in the sacrifice I make by suffering this wretched thing to live, I might unlock its secrets and share them here. For if I fail, whoever finds this journal can learn what I have and make the hard choice I never could.
Reaching the bottom of the stairs, I walked about the halls of the dead with naught but a match and the will of a ruined man and an addict. I retreat down a corridor and make the winding turns necessary to reach my hidden abode. Into the darkness I plunge, and in the company of the dead I find myself again. Almost there, I reminded myself as I made the turn near the crumbling column. I had memorized many landmarks within this place to guide me within the miles of cavernous halls to my laboratory. Without them, I would never reach it and those who pursued me would do so in vain. Running themselves in circles until they either gave up or.. well, let us not speak of such matters for now.
In the end, I reached my laboratory and pushed the heavy, stone door forward. I had used the same sequence of stones necessary to access this hidden passage. Bottom left, center, upper right. Should you obtain this journal, this gibberish should make some sense to you. Perhaps, anyway.
Regardless, I must finally speak of what brought me to this which has become my last bastion against my fellow man. I am the last of the Hamilton family, and I have found that I have always had a peculiar talent in being in the right place at the wrong time. How I obtained my burden will be later revealed, but it is important to know that I did not do any of this by choice. I found myself under these circumstances and as they say, let the cards fall where they may. Any man I have murdered, house I have burned, and lives I have destroyed I have done so in the hope of covering up my greatest folly. And I will not stand for these Christians to call me some charlatan who had planned for the series of events that has led to my own ruin.
It simply is not true. And if you live to read my words, it means that I have done what I thought unthinkable and managed to wash away my sins by finding the courage necessary to do what no other man has and destroyed this accursed box before the fanatics have found me.
And even to my last breath, I curse them. I curse them all.
Eidan Hamilton
October 3rd, 1897
Thirty Years Later..
Liam made himself comfortable in the parlor of a man who was an old friend of his, dating back to the days where both men were of family and had a hand in love. But now, each of them shared a story of a family ruined, a soul mate dead and the taste for life like ashes upon their tongue. Instead, both men turned to God to find some way to fill this void in their hearts. While Liam sought redemption in a crime he did not commit, Maurice Pendleton instead hunted witches.
And the two remained estranged friends. Or at least, they did so long as Maurice did not learn of Liam's darker nature.
Pulling two glasses from a cupboard and a fine bottle of scotch from the counter in the kitchen, Maurice called, "So, Liam. I hope that such a visit from yourself for the first time in twenty years speaks of better things then when our paths last crossed, yes?"
Sitting in a moth-eaten, worn chair the Irishman could smell the pleasant odor of scotch from clear across the room, but looked in the direction of his friend suspiciously. "Swiftly, Maury. What is it about my visit that has branded me, such a life long friend, as an intruder?"
"Oh, nothing." The middle-aged man replied from the kitchen as he picked up the glasses and took a ginger step back. Entering the parlor, he paid his friend a wide smile as he guided himself about the furniture and to the far side of the room where they both sat. "Perhaps it is just me, or is it somewhat strange to encounter such a dear friend for the first time in twenty years with scarce notice and in such dire times?"
Accepting the glass, Liam chuckled. "Maurice, I sent you a letter weeks ago detailing my desire to make your acquaintance again."
Maurice nodded, "I read your letter, friend. But I suppose that I did not uncover its veiled meaning."
Sizing his friend up as he sipped at finely aged scotch, Liam gazed upon Maurice with the level, unblinking stare of a serpent. He noticed that Maurice had not aged well, as he complained of a heart condition and had become fat while enjoying the fruits of his labor. He was balding now, and his eyesight had begun to go bad which explained the spectacles perched upon his hawked nose. Carefully trimmed, graying lamb chops and a beard hid many of the scars the Irishman knew his friend to bear over the years of his bloody existence as a hunter. Wearing a vest over a shirt that was a size too big for him, his corduroy pants were held up by his suspenders. As Liam noticed, his friend had a knack for always being under-dressed for the occasion. And today was of no exception.
He could smell the man's sweat upon his shirt. Under that musk. Beneath that fear.
"I did not wish to upset you with my presence, friend." Liam said after a long while. "But it is necessary that I meet with you because of a matter of great importance. And I trust that you would especially understand in these dark times the measures I have taken to entrust our reunion be held both in comfort and in safety."
Tipping the glass a bit too far and gulping at the scotch, Maurice let out a gasp as he swallowed. Pausing for a moment, he set the glass aside and looked to his friend again. This time, Maurice did not have a smile on his face. In fact, he looked upon Liam with some disdain and his careful gaze upon the Irishman noted his apprehension of the present conditions.
"Is this why you come to my door for the first time in decades, Liam? And with men with guns?" Maurice asked, all humor dropping from his voice. "For help?"
"My men are outside where I have instructed them to remain." Liam replied dryly. "These are perilous times and I do not have to remind you the present danger men like you and I are in with such a disruption in polite society."
Maurice snorted. "Many are dead after that fire destroyed the Belascoe Theatre in downtown."
Liam simply shrugged, albeit casually. "Such catastrophes happen every day. It is unfortunate so many souls were lost, however. But some good came of it. That man, Cedric, will no longer be kidnapping children for his malevolent work."
"What of the bombings of those shops at the square?" Maurice said, licking his dry lips nervously.
"A terrible tragedy." The Irishman replied as he sipped at his scotch. "But, those shopkeepers catered to a clientele that pursued.. darker arts. It is terrible that some innocents got caught in the blast, but these pagans are no longer around to peddle their wares to degenerates."
Maurice nodded, locked in the piercing gaze of his friend whose very presence began to make him anxious. "Yes, a terrible thing. But, what of the men who hang from Saint Jonathan's Bridge? Were they not members of the Sons of Purity*?"
For the first time in their visit, Liam found himself amused and he made it known with a deep chuckle. "Yes, I remember that. Those men were cut down after dangling over the river all night. Such an awful occurrence. It was if those men had been executed. But, for what?"
Maurice nodded feverishly and again licked his lips. "Yes. And for what?"
With a smirk, Liam set his glass aside and sat forward, praying his hands in front of his face so that he could focus on what he was about to say. "Maury. My friend. My dear, dear friend. You worry too much. Those Sons were found guilty for crimes so heinous that to let them live would have been an affront to His Name. They were hypocrites, Maurice. You can relax, for I do not seek the same retribution with you."
Maurice let out a big gasp and fell back into his seat, his face pale and covered in sweat. Fearing he was being paid a visit by the vigilante the newspapers had been calling The Reaper, the same man who had gained much infamy with both Radasanth and the public, the old hunter found himself able to relax in the knowing he would not swing with his brothers.
"However," Liam said after watching his friend visibly relax. Seeing him straighten again as stiff as a board caused the Irishman a bit of pleasure. "I did come here for a reason, Maury. And I know you can trust that I would not darken your doorstep with my presence if it were not for good reason."
Maurice nodded. "What is it exactly you need from me, Liam?"
Liam smiled broadened like that of a Cheshire cat and the old man turned to drain his glass with a wince and an exhale of pleasure. Turning back to his friend, the old man laughed. "Excellent question, Maury, and perhaps the first right one you have posed in the last twenty minutes. To keep it to the point however, I am looking for somebody and I need your help in tracking them down. And the only means I have to pursue him is a journal I know you can acquire or already have."
As quickly as the color had been returning to his face, Maurice found his heart flutter at the request. "And who is this journal written by?" He asked, fearing that he already knew the answer. He had heard the legends. Knew of the tales of such evil walking among the living today.
Liam looked at his old friend carefully and replied, "An alchemist. Eidan Hamilton."
It was upon hearing that name that Maurice Pendleton's blood pressure dropped. His vision began to waver and the thin, powerful old man who sat before him shimmered as he stood and rushed over to him. The world darkened around him and the calls for reassurance that he was all right went unbidden. In a matter of moments, Maurice fell unconscious and into a world of black.
He fainted.
-----------------------
*The Sons of Purity are a movement led by Christian radicals who have openly declared all things unnatural to be their enemy. Known for their xenophobia and fanaticism, the Sons at their peak were responsible for many unnecessary and inexplicable deaths around the country within the last century. In recent decades, however, the cult's infamy and popularity has died out through internal strife and as local and state government has cracked down on their practices.
Guided by his cane, Liam walked down the icy streets of a city gripped in the claws of winter while his men followed closely after him. The two young men were a bit thuggish in appearance, but as the old man recalled he knew there to be much Irish in their blood and they were both devout Catholics. In such perilous times where a man needed to trust those who witnessed or heard information of a more.. sensitive nature, there was no better companion the Irishman had found then good, strong men who shared a faith with as deep of conviction as he.
The streets of Radasanth were empty, even at midday. For outsiders this might have come to a surprise, but to the Irish it had not. With the attacks on merchants, deaths of bystanders, and the destruction of places that had become monuments of high society, it was understandable of the fear that had spread throughout the community. It was palpable. Still, in the snow, Liam found more weighing upon his mind then considering the merits of what he and others of the faithful had called his 'good work'.
God's work, he corrected himself.
Having left Maurice Pendleton's apartment a little wiser, Liam recalled after nursing his friend back to consciousness and some much needed persuasion, he had convinced his old acquaintance to give him more information. More than the sad story of a misguided attempt of a man trying to be a good Christian, anyway. With the biting wind howling behind him, the Irishman carefully pulled out a piece of folded paper that had been his reward for perseverance.
Thomas Sullivan
Shop at the corner of 57 Robinson Street and 112 Bullock Avenue.
Unfolding it carefully, the old man gazed upon the feverish writing of a man who was both afraid and delirious. But regardless of his mental state, Maurice had come through. Even under a veiled threat of being paid another visit by a man the old fanatic had so feared. Looking upon the writing, the Irishman noticed again with some contempt that his friend had not written the name of his new contact himself. Instead, Liam had taken the fountain pen from his friend and written it after persuading Maurice he had nothing to fear.
However, Liam did not know whether his friend's reluctance to reveal to the Irishman his source on paper was an attempt to conceal his betrayal outside the permanence and profoundness of ink. Or, if the Son had wished for this man to allow him to reveal his identity to such a dangerous old man himself and at his own peril. Liam considered either notion for a moment and then dismissed it. It wasn't important.
What was was the location of his newest contact. Following the directions of his acquaintance, Liam and his men walked about the empty streets for more then an hour until they made it across much of the city and into the seedier Eleventh District. As Liam recalled, it was a dangerous place even during the day for anybody, especially those of wealth. It was the district that housed much of the squatters and tenants who could not afford the luxuries of safety and stability. A haven for thieves and murderers. Home of whores and addicts.
"A sanctuary for degenerates." Liam said flatly, watching his hot breath escape him. A feeling of frustration and anger building up within him at the thought of such people being allowed to live freely while they destroyed the lives of other citizens. God fearing people much like himself. The thought of a campaign against this place occurred to the Irishman but he decided to save such thoughts for another time.
Before he would have time to contemplate such matters, however, Liam had arrived at his destination. The only shop still open on the street and looking strangely out of place. The front of the shop looked neither dilapidated nor in a state of disrepair. Sitting outside of the shop next to a portable heater, a man who was dressed in strange furs warmed himself while keeping vigilant in his watch. Still, Liam kept a careful eye at the sight of the long, broad headed ax that lie next to the man's feet.
And the pistol in his belt.
Standing to greet the men, the sentry waved them over with strange amiability. "Please, please. Do not shy away. If you are here to see Mister Sullivan, he is right inside. If not, our hours are from dawn 'til dusk, Monday through Friday." The man said, speaking with what Liam thought of as a lisp. "And have a nice day, gentlemen."
"Thanks," Liam replied before turning to his companions. Looking to one of his men, Michael, who nodded in quiet compliance, he beckoned the young man to follow him into the shop. Pulling open the door at the ring of bells that hanged upon the door and the warm and pleasant scent of lavender, Liam quickly walked inside and was accompanied by the other Irishman. Outside, the other man, Daniel, lit a cigarette and stood by the other side of the door, his eye upon the strange sentry and his free hand upon the pistol on his belt.
Outside, neither of them noticed upon the door the name of Sullivan's shop, stenciled in fine, green lettering; Sullivan's Antiquary and Artifacts.
As the Irish soon discovered, there was good reason why Thomas Sullivan had stayed in business. Even from the outside, Liam couldn't put his finger on it, but he knew something about the corner store was a bit off. He had originally suspected that such a place could not exist, especially in such a state, without succumbing to the corruption that had poisoned the surrounding, crime-ridden district. First, he reasoned, Thomas Sullivan must have been rich. If he was, it would explain how the shop remained in business, because with the necessary bribes and the right amount of charm, anyone with sizeable wealth and a brain could buy the favor of the powers that be. Second, Liam figured if Sullivan wasn't rich, he must have been really good at business in order to remain insulated from the poverty and social plague that had condemned much of the Eleventh District.
However, as Liam quickly observed, Sullivan was not rich in the way of wealth, nor was he an exceptional businessman. Nobody was that good.
Instead, upon leaving the safety of the city streets and the public eye and venturing into this peculiar shop, Liam immediately felt something was wholly wrong in what he saw. It was a feeling of unexplainable revulsion and rejection of what he saw that seemed to strike the Irishman. As nearest he could tell, it wasn't what the shop necessarily contained so much as the shop itself that had bothered him so much. That had paralyzed him with animal, superstitious fear at what he saw.
Michael exhaled and whispered, "Jesus Christ, Mister Duigenan. It is like being a sailor aboard a ship looking at the bottle out. It's bigger on the inside then the outside!"
Licking his lips as he attempted to swallow his fear, Liam nodded. "Yes, m'boy. I couldn't put it better myself."
"Still, let us be swift in finding Mister Sullivan to see what he has to say about this journal. Then we can leave." Liam said, beckoning his cohort to follow him, and defied everything inside of him that screamed for him to turn and walk away from this place. His instincts were right on every account, but something inside of the old man allowed him to retain his conviction and forced him to press on with his task. The shop as nearest as Liam could tell from looking at the forest through the trees, was as big as any cathedral or library he had ever been in. Housing a labyrinth of bookshelves containing secrets of the occult and far sinister portents, it also displayed all manner of artifacts. Both historical and arcane.
Entering the maze of shelves, Liam guided himself along by the red arrows that had been painted on the mahogany floor. He had guessed this would have led him to the front desk, but for all he knew he could be entering the jaws of Hell and wouldn't even know it. The bookshelves were so high that you could scarcely see above it, and the strange electric lights that provided the daemonic warehouse with luminescence seemed to hum irritatingly. But, as the pair ventured deeper and deeper into the maze, they couldn't help but notice the shop and its bookshelves still growing bigger.
It was the feeling of superstition that kept Sullivan in business, Liam surmised. Fear of what sorcery that conjured this and what it could possibly be capable of if turned on a man.
For several minutes, Liam and Michael both wandered about the bookshelves and followed the trail of red arrows with as much dignity as any adult who was lost could muster. They hadn't happened upon any other living soul while they had been in the shop. That was until the pair turned a corner and Michael almost ran into another customer.
His books clattering loudly to the floor, the young gentlemen yelped in surprise and glared at Michael who immediately apologized. "Sorry about that, friend."
"Watch where you're going." The man said flatly as he bent over to pick up his purchase, speaking with a thick, indiscernible accent.
In an effort to salve the situation, Liam stooped to help the man as he picked up and hefted one of the thick, dusty grimoires. Examining the title, the Irishman said aloud, "Meta Genus: An Examination of Transcendence. A Scientist's Perspective. By Dr. Alden Wundt."
Before the man could react, Michael grabbed another book, strangely thin and read it. "Hey boss, here's another. A Darwinian Analysis of.. De.. De.. Acht-Zee..."
Snatching the book from the Irishman's hand, the young man snarled. "Step off. I'd help you pronounce it, but I'm afraid you'd hurt yourself in trying to understand it."
Turning to Liam, the intellectual held out his hand and glared at him. "Please. Give me back my purchase."
Handing it back to the young man, Liam shrugged. "Sorry. Didn't mean to offend you." Still, the Irishman found himself stricken by the strange, carefully kept appearance of the young man. He appeared to be in his thirties, had neatly clipped blonde hair and a piercing gaze. The Irishman remembered the man dressed conservatively and wore wire-rimmed spectacles.
"Ja. That's what they always say." Turning back the way he came, the young man stormed off and disappeared around another bend, but not before either man could hear him curse, "Animals."
"Hey, wait!" Michael called after him. "Can't you tell us where Sullivan is?!"
But it was too late. He was gone. Pausing long enough to stare at one another, the two Irishmen shrugged and continued on their quest, quickly dismissing their encounter as nothing but a bump on a very strange and creepy road. The pair followed the arrows once more and didn't encounter another customer during their stay. It was a matter of several minutes before they happened upon the front desk of Thomas Sullivan's shop. Almost by accident too, for even with the guidance of the arrows, they had nearly missed it.
Approaching the empty desk where a cash register and mounds of mouldering books, decaying scrolls and all manner of yellowed parchment sat, Liam stood and tried to glance around the corner at what lay beyond in the backroom. "Must be a busy man," Liam said, more to himself then to his companion.
His hand hovering over the small, silver bell, Liam tapped it and was rewarded with a resounding clang. The Irishmen concentrating on the back room and occasionally looking over their shoulder, Liam yelped and nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard an older, courteous voice speak from his side, "Yes? May I help you two gentlemen with something?"
Thomas Sullivan greeted his two newest customers with a hearty handshake and a heartfelt apology for startling them. A man who was both stocky and virile, Liam placed him in his early thirties, though his voice which was both deep and rich belied his age. He looked well-traveled and had the air of a man who had seen considerably more of the world then he let on. Even so, despite his dark, oiled hair and well kept appearance, Sullivan oozed with charm. Whether he had put his customers under a spell or if he was just that sort of likeable guy, Liam found himself warming up to the young man as they exchanged names.
"Hello! It is certainly a pleasure to meet you both," Thomas said with a warm smile as he shook Michael's hand with a firm grip. "Name's Thomas, but everybody calls me Tom. How about you, gentlemen?"
"Michael." The tall, clumsy hired gun said laconically, his apprehension of the strange shopkeeper betraying his smile.
Turning to his cohort, Liam nudged his shoulder, "Now then, Michael. Where are your manners? How often do you find yourself in the presence of such a charismatic young man?" Meeting Sullivan's gaze, the old man smiled warmly and said proudly, "My name is Liam Duigenan, among the last of the Duigenan Clan and my friend and I are here with the hope that you might be able to assist us in a peculiar matter."
"Oh yes? Pray tell, Mister Duigenan. What is it that I and my humble shop can do for you both?" The shopkeeper said, fixing his gaze upon the Irishmen with the heart of a saint and the silver tongue of the devil.
Even before the exchange began, it was only Michael who did not seem beguiled by Sullivan's charm. Something about the young man didn't sit well with the Irishman, but what disturbed him the most was how enthralled his leader was with the shopkeeper. For despite his short time as one of Liam's personal retainers, he could not for the life of him remember a time where he had seen the old man so warm and lively. So animated. His leader was never this forthcoming, and was often distant to anyone, especially what many among the order knew to be an outsider.
In truth, the entire situation was weird.
"My friend and I are looking for somebody. A wicked man with the blackest of hearts and in the possession of something that might do us all harm." Liam said finally, his eyes meeting with the young man's as he revealed more of his hand then he intended to. But, despite that, as he spoke to Sullivan who smiled and seemed to be hanging off of his every word, something in the old man's mind told him that it was going to be all right. He could trust this man.
"Oh? And who might this man be?" Sullivan said with a look of genuine concern in his eyes as he warmed up to the old man. "What does he have?"
"My men and I only know him as Joseph. He is a man of considerable means who spent a great deal of wealth in locating this malevolent item and we must go to any lengths we can to stop him." Liam found himself saying, in fact, the Irishman seemed to have lost control of his tongue all together. Though he felt like he was reminiscing with an old friend he had seen for the first time in ages, Liam could not quite place a time in his long life where he had ever met Thomas Sullivan before.
"Yes, and the item?" Thomas said with great intrigue, his entire focus on that of the old man who found his tongue slipping more then it should as he was completely taken by the young man's charm.
"Well, that's the thing," Liam said with a chuckle as he pulled out the paper with Sullivan's address and turned it over. Taking a fountain pen from his breast pocket, the old man looked eagerly at Sullivan as he set the paper down and began to trace something. "You see, we are not quite sure of what this artifact is, per se. But from the information we have gathered, we have learned it is housed in a sort of box. An old, black iron thing tha-"
"Boss!" Michael shouted as he reprimanded his leader, unable to conceal his complete and utter disbelief in what he was seeing. "What are you doing?"
Turning to his cohort, Liam found himself mouthing the words for his companion to shut up, but somehow managed to blurt out, "I don't know, Michael. I don't know what this man is doing. Help me."
Unable to look at Michael any longer, Liam found every fiber of his being telling him to turn back to Thomas Sullivan who was still smiling warmly at him, listening at his every word. He felt powerless to stop what was happening.
"Uh huh. Do tell me more, Liam. Tell me about this box and this artifact." Sullivan said with the voice of a man who could coax a cigar out of its box.
Finding himself unable to watch his leader under the torment of whatever profane spell the shopkeeper had him under, Michael went for his revolver under his jacket and pulled it out, pointing it at the shopkeeper. "Stop it!" he cried.
Not shifting his powerful gaze from the old man who was revealing all of their secrets, Sullivan grinned devilishly, "Stop what, son? And what is it exactly I am doing?" But, before he shifted his attention back to Liam, he added, "And put that pistol down, Michael. You'll only get yourself and Liam hurt."
Not giving ground, the Irishman found himself consumed with anger at the casual nature the shopkeeper just brushed him off. "You know exactly what you're doing, Sullivan. Let my boss go. Now!"
Finishing his sketch of a black box of peculiar design, Liam highlighted what he knew about the box and what he thought it contained. The truth was that the evil that was contained in that wretched device escaped the Irishman's knowledge, and he couldn't possibly tell Sullivan what he didn't know. "And this device acts as some sort of prison for this thing. It can be let out, but not on its own and once inside the box it has very little influence on the outside world."
Sullivan nodded and finally let out a bored sigh, beginning to express his disinterest. "That'll do, Liam. I think I have heard enough of this man and his box, you can relax now."
Perspiring and feeling faint as he tried to regain control of both his mind and body which betrayed him, Liam found himself under complete control of Sullivan. Only once the man had broke his gaze with the Irishman did Liam reassert himself as master of mind and body, immediately crumpling to the ground as he found all of his strength sapped from him.
It was then that Liam realized that in entering this accursed shop, he had gotten considerably more then he bargained for.
Relinquishing his weapon, Michael rushed to the aid of his leader, helping him back to his feet. "There was nothing I could do boss. You saw him, Mister Duigenan. He completely foxed you!" He whispered hurriedly.
"Thanks, Michael." Liam said as he used the front desk and then his cane for support. Listening to his retainer blather to him, it was Liam who finally asserted control of the situation as he brushed him off with an irritated look and a wave of his hand, "I get it Michael. Yes. Right. That is enough, Michael."
Silenced by his leader, the hired gun nodded dumbly and backed away, though this time he stood between Liam and the shopkeeper who was eagerly watching their plight from the other side of the counter. "Yeah, Michael, that's enough." Sullivan said playfully, "You wouldn't want to give old Liam here heart failure would you?"
"What are you?" Michael said carefully, narrowing his gaze as he put his hand on the holster that rested on his hip.
Thomas Sullivan laughed at the Irishman as he watched him reach for his weapon, treating it as if it were the funniest thing he had seen all day. "Stop, stop. Really," Looking at Michael with a sinister grin, Sullivan jutted a thumb to the old man who was bent over the counter, catching his breath. "Do you really think something like that can harm a man like me? Especially after what I did to your grandfather over here? Save yourself the trouble, Michael, and holster that peashooter. It won't do you any good in here, anyway."
"You haven't answered his question." Liam said as he defiantly looked the young man in the eye and asked again, "What are you?"
Looking to be entertaining the thought for a moment as he held his head aloft with both fists, Sullivan's charismatic smile vanished and instead gave a look of feigned concern. "Careful who you are asking questions to, Liam. That's how I got you the first time. And the only reason why I haven't worked my magic on your friend there is that I think he's probably too stupid to know anything worth my interest."
Liam recovered and picked himself off the table, giving Sullivan a quizzical look.
"Fine." Sullivan said flatly, crossing his arms as he leaned forward and peered at Liam, his gaze piercing all of the Irishman's defenses. "I will give you this one for free, Liam. What and who I am is of little concern to you, and if you wish to continue living what short, miserable lives Christians like you lead, I wouldn't burden yourselves any longer with questions of my identity."
"However," Sullivan said with a look that Liam vaguely surmised as friendly, "I can tell you that I am older then I look. Far older. And I have traveled far and wide to amass such a collection that you see before you. It is only within the last couple of years that I have chosen to reveal it to men such as yourselves and allow it to be pawned off for mere trinkets."
"Wh-" Liam began before he stopped himself and rephrased what he was going to say, "Alright, Tom. Such an old and powerful being as yourself selling off your possessions. Such an act does not seem in your nature and would hazard a man to ask why one such as yourself would do a thing."
"Wow." Sullivan said with genuine surprise as he stood up. "Color me impressed, Liam. I didn't think you were capable of it."
"I try." Liam said with his eyes fixed upon the wicked young man who was quickly becoming the source for all of his vexation. "Now tell me."
Sullivan simply shrugged, ignoring the demand in the Irishman's voice. Looking past the two and into the labyrinth of his treasure hoard of artifacts, the man squinted as if trying to recall something. "I don't know," He said finally, "I'm old and tired. Though I pride myself on being a connoisseur of such powerful objects and relics, it simply doesn't interest me any longer. Ten years ago if you had made the mistake of telling me about this box, I would have killed you, your lackey and everyone else who knew about it just to get my hands on it..."
Pursing his lips, he added with a look of clarity, "..But now.. I simply don't care. Which, luckily for you, will mean that you will walk out of here today. Alive."
Somehow, both of the Irishmen didn't like the hesitation Sullivan had had in acknowledging they would be able to leave and with their lives intact. But, they dismissed it all the same.
"But that doesn't really answer our question." Michael said, unable to catch his mistake as Sullivan looked at him dubiously.
"Really? Well I am sorry I could not completely satisfy your curiosity, but that will have to do. If I told you any more.. well, I think I would have to relinquish what I said earlier about you leaving." Sullivan explained, his rising frustration becoming more and more apparent to the pair. "The truth is that you both came here for a reason, and I would like to help you find this box. What becomes of it or you is of little concern to me, but I am offering to help you all the same."
Accepting Sullivan's profane offer and apathy, Liam looked from Michael to the whimsical shopkeeper and replied, "We need a journal that was written by an alchemist. Eidan Hamilton. He experimented on the device I told you about and was the last known man to have it in his possession before his passing."
Looking at the ceiling, as if trying to search his memory, Sullivan ticked his fingers off on the table before he snapped his fingers with recollection. "Ah, yes. Hamilton. Eidan Galton Hamilton. I have a lot of his creations in my possession, but I do recall purchasing a journal awhile back from an old, fat fellow who couldn't bring himself to burn the wretched thing. What a fool."
Maurice, Liam thought, recognizing the description. "Would it still be in your possession?"
"I don't know." Sullivan replied suspiciously.
"What?" Liam exclaimed, "What do you mean you don't know?"
"I mean," Sullivan said sardonically, "That I don't know because I want something in return for it. You don't possibly think I'd give such a prized possession of mine up for free would you?"
Liam immediately dug into his coat and pulled his wallet from his breast pocket and retrieved his billfold. Licking his finger, he thumbed through the hundreds of crowns that he had used to bribe, blackmail and buy his way this far. "Alright. How much do you want?"
"Oh?" Sullivan said, appearing to be genuinely offended. "Do you really think that you can buy me off like those fools you paid or tortured to tell you their secrets so far? Why, Mister Duigenan, while I can't say that I take your willingness to pay me off as insincere, I must express my disappointment in you. Besides, I want something else."
Rising anger at being played with by a man who by all appearances was his junior, Liam didn't take well to being the one who was manipulated for once. Setting his wallet and billfold on the counter, the Irishman shrugged. "What do you want from me, Sullivan? What? My clothes? My friend here? If you're looking to buy my soul, I'm afraid to tell you that it is already spoken for. And if you want my firstborn, he is already dead. Frankly, Sullivan, I am growing tired of you and your tricks. Just tell me what it is you want and do so swiftly before I lose my temper."
"All right," Sullivan said, putting his hands up defensively while looking mildly amused at the old man's frustration. "All right. You don't have to go that far, Liam. I'm not some demon who is interested in your children or your soul. I want to make a boon."
"A what?" Michael and Liam said in unison.
"A boon." Sullivan said flatly. "A pact. A deal. I'm a businessman after all, and while I don't have a great deal of interest in your wealth, I am looking for a favor."
Liam narrowed his eyes, "A favor? Boy, you have been floundering with me all afternoon to fish for some sort of favor from me? Y'know what? Fine. Fine, Sullivan. I'll do you a favor."
This time, Sullivan didn't reply with anything witty or a sarcastic remark. Instead, the young man who had misled both Irishmen in playing into his very hands offered a sobering word of warning. "Liam. This is no ordinary favor you are getting yourself into. My word is my bond, and I do not ask people for anything, so heed what I am about to say well. If you accept this pact, in return for the journal, you will owe a debt. And Mister Duigenan, I will collect this debt and soon."
Pulling a black, leather-bound journal that was sealed with an iron clasp and fat with yellowed, mouldering pages from a nearby shelf, Sullivan sat it on the counter between them. Fixing his gaze upon the Irishman, the strange and malevolent man offered his hand. "So what do you say, Liam. Is it a deal?"
Liam and Michael both stood in the courtyard of St. Sedna's Cathedral, the beating heart and stronghold of the Irish network. Liam handed the journal to Michael, who reluctantly accepted what he was coming to learn to be a dangerous thing. Holding it with care, the retainer listened intently to his leader's careful instructions of what to do with it, "Go to the reliquary and give this to Teagan. Make sure she understands that I need this unlocked and to be apprised of her findings before I present this to the board tomorrow."
"And you, sir?" Michael asked, revealing a bit of genuine concern for the old man and everything he had gone through to get the wretched journal.
"Do as you're told, Michael, and nothing else." Liam replied as he stared at the Irishman balefully. In truth, the old man had grown to like the attendant, especially after their ordeal and what they had been through. However, after they had reunited with Daniel outside of the shop, Liam had decided that it would better serve him to have Michael replaced. Perhaps even have him put on an assignment on another end of the city where their paths would not cross again.
Yes, perhaps that would be best. And soon, he thought.
"And Michael," Liam said to his attendant, "If Teagan sends for me, tell her I am going to confession."
"Yes, sir." Michael replied obediently as he turned on his heel and walked off in the direction that he knew to be a part of the cathedral that housed the archives.
Watching him go, Liam rubbed his gloved hands furiously and blew into them for warmth as it grew colder and colder the farther it got into the evening. It would only be a couple hours until dusk, and the old man wanted to finish his business here and get home before dark.
Beginning to walk around the fountain that stood cemented in the center of the courtyard, a veritable bowl that began to overflow with snow, Liam noticed from the marble exposed that it had begun to crack from the change in temperature and pressure. Waving for one of the men who stood on watch near the stairs, the Irishman looked at the fountain with disdain. "Have somebody clean the snow out of that thing and turn the boiler and pipes back on. The fountain should be hot with water by the time I leave today."
"Right away, sir." The sentry replied, acknowledging the demands of someone he knew to be a senior member of the Irish cabal. But more to the point, the young man knew of the man who spoke to him and heard stories of the infamous Liam Duigenan who had had a hand in founding the holy order and was legendary among the faithful for both his resolve and violent nature. It was in his very best interest, he decided, to do whatever it took to keep from upsetting the old man.
"What is your name, by the way, young man?" Liam asked with a careful eye upon the sentry who looked at him with a mixture of apprehension and fear.
"Broyles, sir." He replied.
Liam nodded amiably, "Keep up the good work, Broyles."
Parting ways with the young sentry, the Irishman stepped to his side and guided himself around the ice carefully with the help of his cane. Making it to the ornate, stone steps that would guide him to the cathedral, Liam grimaced at the idea of hazarding the steps, provoking the pain in his old bones. Though he genuinely did not experience much of the ails of the elderly like that of his fellow councilmen, he was still not impermeable to its effects.
Eventually, Liam reached the main building of the cathedral and was spared from the harshness of winter as soon as he retreated inside. Walking through the cavernous halls where many nuns and priests greeted him warmly, the old man made his way to the main chapel where he knew the confessional to be. Knowing already that on a Tuesday after hours, the box would most likely be vacant. Pulling the wooden door open, the old man shut himself inside the dark room and placed his cane to his side as he turned and bowed his head with his hands clasped in front of him.
After he had examined his memory of the events that had transpired, Liam made a sign of the cross across his heart and said piously, "In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, my last confession was three weeks ago."
From across the wooden mesh screen, a voice both old and wise replied warmly, "It has truly been awhile, my Son."
"Yes, but listen to me, my Father, for I have truly sinned." Liam said as he bowed his head and silently recited the same, habitual prayer he did before every confession.
"I am listening." The priest replied affectionately.
"Father, I have sinned against God and His Son by forming a pact with the Devil. And I am unsure of what accursed things he will have me do in the name of his unholy work." Liam admitted, finding the act of contrition and unburdening of his soul to be helpful in absolving him of that which caused him worry.
In a matter of minutes, the old man confessed to the priest everything that he had done, seen or experienced that he knew to be sin. Working his way through the worst of them first, Liam soon found himself unburdened by that which had been bothering him earlier. Eventually, the priest spoke to him of his sins and gave him his penance which he would pay later that night.
As much as Liam could remember, he could not recall having slept as well as he did then he had that night.
The next day, Liam had gotten an early start. Darkness still reigned over the city below when the old man pulled himself from the comforts of a warm bed and retreated over a cold floor and into his bathroom. He showered and took care with the straight razor he had used to shave. Greasing back his hair with the same pomade he had used for nearly twenty years, Liam returned to his bedroom now refreshed and reinvigorated.
It was a very big day, and Liam made it his mission to secure a positive impression from his fellow councilmen today. The case he had slaved to build and toiled over for months depended on it. Moving to his wardrobe, the old man pulled his very best suit from his surrounding attire, a dark blue pin-striped suit that he used for the very best of occasions. It was accompanied by a starched, spotless dress shirt that still bore the tag of the laundromat he had retrieved it from just days before.
He was quick to dress and had barely donned his trousers before he was found unrolling black socks and pulling them over powdered, crooked feet that were then shoehorned into black dress shoes. Shoes that had been carefully polished and looked reminiscent of Italian footwear he remembered his father donning for Sunday Mass back in Ireland all those years ago. Checking the time, Liam grabbed his crushed scarlet tie and pulled it over his head before tying a double-Windsor. Pulling down his collar, Liam checked his appearance for any flaws in the mirror of his dressing room while he put on his silver cufflinks.
"A bit over prepared for the occasion," Liam told himself as he buttoned up his black vest before obtaining his dress coat. "But it'll be worth it in the end. Always pays to look your best on the Day of Judgment."
Retreating from his room after looking out the window and seeing the darkened sky soften with the grey of a coming dawn, Liam continued on with what remained of his morning. In a bit of a hurry, the old man had set aside time to eat and had scarcely finished breaking his fast before he remembered that he had forgotten to say grace. Mending an early sin with a quick and silent prayer, Liam returned the dishes to the kitchen and moved about his wide, luxurious apartment quickly.
He spent the remainder of his morning assembling the evidence he would present the council later that day. It was the day Liam had been awaiting for months. A day of judgment he had painstakingly engineered by pushing the right pieces into place. He had greased palms, blackmailed the right people and managed those who served under him to gather the necessary information he would need to make his argument.
However, it had taken a good deal of convincing and quite a bit of coin for Liam to persuade the council to hear him out again. With little results and a lot of unnecessary blood spilled, much of it Irish, many members of the council had become reluctant to allow Liam the resources necessary to pursue what was becoming his white whale. But, as Liam had convinced himself over the long nights of the many months it had taken to gather the evidence necessary for the council to even hear him out again, it was a fight worth having. And, as Liam eventually realized, it was a fight only worth doing if the council backed him. Without their blessing, trying to pry the box from its owner's hands would become catastrophic.
He couldn't afford such a power play among the members of the council at such a crucial juncture. Not now.
But, with all of the key information at his fingertips and the right people out of the way, all that stood between the old man, the daemonic black box and its wretched owner now was the council and its politics. All Liam needed to do now was ply the councilmen with the appropriate facts and convince them to give him the manpower, money and resources necessary to continue with his hunt.
Putting away the last of the dossiers into his briefcase, Liam locked the clasps and looked around his home with the air of finality. Finding his mind too busy to ponder the numerous and inevitable consequences he would suffer after compiling so much damning information that was in his favor, the old man instead chose to ignore it. For only that moment.
Taking his cane, briefcase and pausing only to put on his overcoat, Liam left his apartment and locked the door behind him. Down the narrow hall and retreating to the staircase and into the city below, Liam stepped outside and took to the frigid morning air gasping a curse. Only a block away from the Cathedral, Liam decided to make good time and began his journey down the empty, frozen streets of Ashbury Square.
With the rising sun at his back, Liam could only watch as the dreary neighborhood, wretched and cold, was brought back to life by the returning dawn. The cold air was still and Liam found himself coughing inexplicably by breathing too fast in a city gripped by winter. Still, with some amount of pride, the old man noticed as he shambled down the streets he revisited that they lay barren of the depravity and crime the Square once wallowed in.
Like many of those who were a part of the order, Liam had chosen to live close to the Cathedral that acted as the heart of their network and influence upon the city. Councilmen especially needn't stray far when the business they tended to keep their blessed machine running happened with daily occurrence. But as the old man had noticed, the unintentional influence of a good, strong Catholic community upon the district had been for the better. It had been some years since they had entered Radasanth with their holy mission, but Liam and his fellow Irishmen had attempted to wash away the cancer of a crime-ridden city and heal old wounds that had been plaguing it for ages.
What had been gained in the bargain? Liam noticed people were more polite and hospitable to each other, and thought it to be because they no longer had anything to fear. They were able to establish a tightly-knit community that had abysmally low rates of crime and poverty, and business boomed while under the wing of their protection. Their mission to better the city was working, the old man realized, and the neighborhood before him was evidence of it.
However, what Liam failed to remember, or chose not to were the first days the Irish had spent in Radasanth. The wicked, heavy-handed, and sometimes bloody tactics they had needed to use in order to secure the sanctity of Ashbury Square. They had bought up much of the district through one-sided and devilish deals with the city through blackmail and coin, and under their ownership of what they thought to be havens of sin, they kicked out their residents. Most grievous of all, Liam and the faithful had been indifferent to those they turned their backs on and labeled as vermin.
Surely, some had been criminals, whores and drifters using many of the buildings for illicit use, but many of them still had been impoverished families who were unable to afford the price hikes in rent or found the strict moral code the Irish forced upon them to be intolerable. Because of that, many of the buildings in the early years became vacant and only recently had begun to fill with good, god-fearing people as Catholicism began to find deeper roots in the city.
Oddly, even Liam chose to dismiss the notion that the neighborhood he was living in was predominantly Catholic, but also Irish and failed to inquire as to why. Why the streets were empty during the night and the early hours of the day. Why everyone he had come across who knew of him and his holy work smiled at him and treated him with such manners. If one thing could be assured to the old man, none of the residents of Ashbury Square held him and his cabal of Irishmen in any high regard or gratitude.
Instead, the new residents approached their new masters and protectors reluctantly, and did so out of fear of their wrath. But still, it was the price they must pay to the Irish who had quickly bought themselves a higher place in social hierarchy and forced their ways upon those of Radasanth with an air of superiority. But, alas, neither Liam nor those at the Cathedral seemed to notice what sort of monument they were building in the name of their God. Only the effects it had upon those they thought to be among their flock.
Smiling to himself as he continued on his journey to the Cathedral, Liam embraced the cold with the knowledge his good work was having an effect after all.
A fair skinned, blonde woman sat in Liam's office in one of the leather chairs opposite of his desk, waiting for his arrival that morning. She wore a long, dark skirt that stopped at her ankles, thigh high, black leather boots and a thick, white wool sweater that was embroidered in designs of green and brown thread. She was young and had to be no older than thirty, but nobody among the Cathedral was fairly certain. She was of average height, paunchy and of considerable beauty. It was a wonder by many guests of the Cathedral why so few among the order spoke with her openly, but that was until they saw her face.
Starring pensively through the frosted glass and to the street below, Teagan Ryan saw her reflection in the window and grimaced. An ugly, jagged red scar ran down the length of the right side of her otherwise porcelain face, marring her immaculate beauty and serving as a daily reminder as to why she was here at the cathedral. Looking away in disgust, the Irish woman fixed her gaze on the wooden clock overhead instead and clasped her hands over Hamilton's journal which rested on her lap.
Teagan Ryan was a learned woman who studied at St. Helen's University in New Belfast and possessed degrees in geology and chemistry. However as educated as she was, those among the Irish order and herself knew of her true value. She had come from a family where the Ryan name had considerable clout in all places of Irish origin. Her father, a wealthy and influential merchant who traded in glass, spices and ore, had opened a lot of doors for her in the social hierarchy of New Belfast. However, as educated and well-connected as she was, her true value lie in her intimate knowledge of the occult and alchemy.
She heard the sound of footsteps and the sound of the brass doorknob turning noisily. Standing up, and turning to the door, Teagan waited as Liam opened it and walked smartly across the threshold and the figure closed the door behind him. He gave a dry cough and stifled a sneeze that sounded like that of a snort as he hanged up his overcoat and placed his hat upon the rack near the door.
Placing the cane at the door, the man walked across his office, adjusting his cufflinks. "Good morning, Teagan."
"Good morning, sir." Teagan said.
Taking off his jacket, he hung it atop his chair. He adjusted his scarlet crush tie so it hanged parallel to his suspenders and sat behind his desk. "So what do you have for me?"
"Hm? Oh, right." Teagan answered, pulling out her copious notes she had taken from the night before. "Hamilton's journal wasn't written in code as suspected, so it made it easy to pour through the information once I broke the lock."
"And your findings?" Liam asked, before chuckling to himself. "You know what, Teagan? Yesterday after telling Michael to give this to you, I had forgotten to give you some direction in what you were looking for. I assumed that you remembered our other conversations about Hamilton and what I was looking for. Hopefully."
Teagan nodded and gave him a soft smile before flipping through her notes. "Yes, I do remember. You were looking for Hamilton's laboratory, correct?"
"Spot on." Liam replied, "Yes. And I was wondering if Hamilton gave any insight about this box and what he studied? Perhaps some sort of weakness to the artifact and the bond to the afflicted owner?"
"Right. Well, the good news is that Hamilton kept this journal for over a year and recorded his research and studies of the box. He managed to suss out much of the earlier symptoms of the transformation of the owner. Before.. before well, he met his end." Teagan explained, before adding. "He was very thorough."
"Well who did he use this box on? I thought the man was a recluse and the subject of a witch hunt at the time?" Liam said, before answering his own question with a look of surprise on his face. "Really?"
"Yes." Teagan answered. "He used it on himself for some time and recorded its effects. He didn't do it intentionally at first, but once it started.. well, it was already too late."
"Interesting." Liam said. "Well that explains some things about his death. I could never quite figure out why in the end, even after the Sons of Purity had stopped searching for him that he did what he did. I mean, what free man covers themselves in pitch and lights themselves ablaze in public?"
"He does give an indication later on through passages in other tomes referencing the artifact of ways to defend against it." Teagan said, ignoring the unpleasant and gruesome end to the mad alchemist.
Sitting back in his chair, Liam shook his head and crossed his arms. "I'm going to love hearing this. We tried everything against Joseph. Steel. Prayer. Holy water. Good lord, we even used silver."
Marking a particular part of her notes she told Liam the page number and paragraph in the journal and waited for him to find it before reading. "In this passage, Hamilton quotes from the Invictus that, 'Wretched and wicked It sleeps in It's dark cradle, thriving only in darkness. It wakens only to those who gaze upon It's wretched form and feeds.'"
"So. What? What do I tell my men? How do we fight Joseph for the object if we cannot touch it or look at it?" Liam said with irritation. "A lot of good men have perished already from the guesswork of those degenerates. Hah. Why even bother to call yourselves Christians.."
Averting his pensive gaze, Teagan pointed out another page, "The Invictus* also inadvertantly mentions this, 'Born in fire, lashed together in iron and forged by sorcery, from that which wrought it's prison, shall cause it to perish.'"
"Bullshit." Liam said with exasperation, hitting the same wall he did before after the second tragic encounter with Joseph. Unwilling to accept that these were the answers he was getting, months of tension and pressure finally boiled over. Looking back at Teagan, he shook his head and grew very quiet. After an uncomfortable moment, he spoke. "You know, I read the Invictus early on in this investigation when I discovered the involvement of the Sons of Purity and their blunders. From cover to cover. And you know what I found?"
"What?" Teagan asked, although she was afraid she already knew the answer.
Leaning forward, Liam sneered as he pulled open a drawer of his desk and hefted a heavy tome from one of the drawers, setting it on the desk. Bound in black leather, and looking to be more then fifty years old, the pages were yellow with age and smelled of mildue. Pointing to the book, he smiled. "Hope. I found hope in the passages written by these cretins of their encounters with the box and whoever owns it. Spells that could ward the host off. Promises that fire and iron could be used to 'vanquish' the host. And what happened?"
Hefting the book again, Liam shot up and threw it across the room where it hit the wall with a resounding and cantankerous thud. "They died! All of them! Dead! Over ten men in two different raids on his mansion perished in the blind hope that the lies and false promises these backwater, inbred puritans made to themselves would work."
"Liam..." Teagan said, shrinking back in her seat at her boss's sudden outrage.
"Don't 'Liam' me." The old man snapped, mimicking her voice. "I knew those men and the confidence they had in me. In that book!"
Exasperated, he collapsed back in his chair and whispered, "Henry had gone in with iron. In our hope that being able to pierce that wretched thing's flesh with a weapon that had been blessed would be our saving grace. Much to our chagrin, Henry discovered after the monster decapitated him with his own weapon that his flesh was impervious. Not only to iron, but to steel, to silver, to bullets. To any mortal weapon."
"Liam, please." Teagan said as she pointed to her notes, "I have something."
"So do I." Liam said, already wrapped up in the moment he pulled up his briefcase and opened it. Hefting his dossiers of evidence painstakingly assembled, Liam snarled. "After my meeting with you, I am giving these to the council members to look over. In less than an hour I have a meeting with the council in which I am supposed to convince these men to allow me a third attempt at Joseph and his box. To convince them that my mistakes didn't cost Irish men their lives. What am I supposed to offer them when after bargaining with the Devil for answers, we're looking at the same book that doesn't even work?!"
Feeling the heated moment and explosive outburst begin to fade, Teagan said, "Do you need a moment?"
"Y-y.. No. No. Please just tell me you found something else. The location of his laboratory, a spell or something I can use." Liam said, feeling defeated. He had hoped in ignorance that the journal had the answers he was looking for, and after what he went through to get it, only Liam assumed that there wouldn't be any trouble in locating that which could slay that wretched daemon.
"With a couple weeks and a lot of coffee I could find his laboratory, but..." Teagan said, her heart beginning to beat slower and slower.
".. But we don't have that kind of time." Liam finished.
"Yes." Said Teagan, "But there is one thing."
"What is it?" Liam said with mild interest. "And if its anything from that wretched puritan book, I'm throwing you out of my office."
"No, Liam. Its not that." Teagan said, "In one of his passages, Hamilton briefly mentions how weak he was early in the transformation. How sensitive he was to daylight, his unwillingness to eat or drink..."
"So?" Liam shrugged. "Its the first stage. He needs blood to keep himself alive while that thing is feeding on him." Liam mentioned, thinking back to early on in his investigation when he had first begun to spy on Joseph. "I remember how many heads of cattle that wicked man had delivered to his mansion. How it grew until he eventually sickened feeding on beasts and moved onto people..."
"Right. But that's not what I'm getting at.. Joseph may be at the end of his metamorphisis with this thing, but he is still bound to the same limitations that Hamilton faced." Teagan said, her mind racing towards conclusions.
"Like what?" Liam said.
"Like the blood. Joseph needs to drink. And by the rate at which he's transformed, its probably by the gallon. He also cannot venture into daylight safely. Hamilton speaks of an almost animalistic fear of light, and that it made him feel feeble every time he went anywhere during the day. He also feels compelled to be near that box at all times. His growing obsession with it made it difficult to leave it alone, if only for a moment." Teagan remarked. "It stands to reason that Joseph will possess many of the same traits that Hamilton did, if not more so. You can use them against him."
Liam felt his brain afire with the idea of seperating Joseph away from the box. Standing up as he stroked his chin, he turned to look out the frosted window and into the empty streets below. "We can use this.. I can use this. I don't know why I had never thought of this before. Maybe.. just maybe I can get this to work."
Teagan asked if there was anything else he needed, but Liam's mind was already a thousand miles away as he began to build the plan he would sell to the council.
----------
*The Invictus is an amalgamation of half a century's worth of witch-hunts and considered by the public and the cult who wrote it to be the Sons of Purity's holy book. Much of it contains their history, names of their victims, locations to secret storage caches, and what they acclaimed to have accomplished during their reign of terror. The turmoil that falls upon those who use this old, bloodstained grimoire is not the extent of the vast wealth of knowledge available to them, but how erroneous and dangerously false it can be. It has been reputed that the cult, in its rise during country-wide panic, dabbled in the same black magic and witchcraft they had sworn to stomp out in the name of God. The book is littered with rites, spells, prayers and arcanic knowledge that they claimed to have used repeatedly. However this magic was usually recorded poorly and made with grevious errors by its authors, the same men who were bound to their faith and fanaticism to make themselves willfully ignorant of all deviltry. It is a dangerous grimoire to possess, for nobody but a true sorceror or a student of the occult could truly pick out what would be advantageous to them or what might ultimately lead to their doom.
The chambers the council met in that morning was dark, save large stained glass windows that spanned the length of the far wall and were of an average man's height. The glass, though ceremonial, wasn't very thick and didn't offer much protection, especially in the winter, which was always why the chambers became frigid outside of the warmer months. The room was uncomfortably narrow like that of a chapel, but had a vaulted ceiling. Because of its size and the obscurity of the windows, the room was often uncomfortably dark. Habitually, the councilmen would light candles around the room to make it seem less foreboding. A large, oak long table that was big enough to sit a dozen people sat in the middle of the room. A large maple cabinet where the liquor and tobacco was kept lie against the wall behind the leader of the council's chair. The room had maroon carpeting which basked in a weird and otherworldly glow in the cascade of colors of the stained glass. A crucifix hanged on the wall above the cabinet.
"Father, would you care to give the invocation?" asked Peter Douglas, leader of the council as he turned to the gargantuan priest that stood at his side.
"Of course, Peter. Let us pray." Father Gregory Lynch said, his voice rumbling over the stony silence that filled the chamber. Silhouetted in the darkness by the candlelight, the priest waited for the other members to bow their heads before clasping his hands and joining them. "Heavenly Father, bless us as we come together in Your Name. Send the Spirit of Jesus into our hearts to guide us in our discussions for the good of all and allow us to carry on in Your Holy Name with our blessed work. Father, we ask this grace through Christ our Lord. Amen."
"Amen." The rest of the council resounded in unison. Looking up, they all fixed their gaze upon Douglas.
"The Governing Council of St. Sedna's Cathedral will now convene in the year of our lord and on the 12th of December. You may all be seated; the council is now in session." Douglas resounded, his deep, rich voice booming throughout the chamber as he rapped his gavel against the table. All the members took their seats and began to shuffle through their papers, each searching for their dossiers that would guide them through the majority of this meeting.
"Before we begin, I would like to mention that three of our council members are out today. Either having taken ill, on assignment or out of the city and could not be reached at the time to be present for this emergency session. Because of this, the following members are not present; Mary Higgins, Director of Housing; Daniel Fergus, Chief Librarian, and Paul Clyde, Chief Engineer. Because essential members are present to perform critical tasks, this session will continue. I have obtained permission from all these members and will be their Speaker for today on all issues." Douglas explained as thoroughly as he could, emphatically naming off the names of the members who were not present at the meeting.
Other councilmen looked at each other, momentarily stunned at the announcement more then half the council was missing during a critical issue. Still, in silence, they carried on with their meeting.
Licking his thumb, Douglas began to flip through papers until he found what he was looking for. Scanning it briefly, he set it aside and spoke. "Do we need to issue the minutes from the previous meeting? All for? All against?"
"Nay." Father Lynch said.
"Nay." Liam said.
"Nay." Jonathan Turner, the Treasurer said.
"Nay." Ian Blighe, Director of Public Relations said.
"Nay." Douglas said. "All against. Reading of the minutes will be suspended for this meeting. Reading for Appropriations? All for? All against?"
Another round of Nays across the table caused Douglas to rap his gavel. "All against. With that being said, we will get to the subject of why we are all gathered here today. Liam Duigenan, Director of Judicial Affairs and the Penal Office, has asked for permission to discuss business concerning a mister Joseph and the possession of his artifact. Before I allow Liam to have the floor, does anyone speak out against him in this matter?"
The old man sat in the darkness for awhile as he flipped through the pages of the dossier, pretending to read what he already memorized as he quietly watched the other members do the same. Though he had given them all the dossiers only an hour before, he was sure that only he and Douglas had read it in its entirety prior to the council meeting.
The only man to raise his hand was Ian Blighe, usually the only man in direct opposition of Liam on any particular issue. The old man didn't care for him very much, but as a vital member of the council, Blighe was the only member he wouldn't have been able to convince to remain absent from this meeting and expect to still be able to hold council.
Still, he thought, I only need a majority vote to carry this motion. What's one vote?
Blighe was the second youngest among the council and the most charismatic. He had owned a canary in a fishing village not too far from here before he lost it to the bank he borrowed against during a particular low point in the fish market. He was a short man, of light build and was a dandy who always dressed to the nines. After having had some legal training, he had always been an especially hard man to convince of anything he didn't like. His red hair was greased back by the most expensive of oils and he stank of old cologne. He was forty-five years old.
"I have to ask; Why are we going through this again?" Blighe said, looking to the rest of the council as he sat back in his chair, adjusting the cuffs of his checkered suit. "I mean, really. This is the third time we have granted Liam the table in order to paint us a better picture of this crusade of his.."
After a long pause, Father Lynch spoke up in Liam's defense. "I disagree. I don't believe Liam would waste this council's time unless he had something substantial to show the relevance of another attempt at acquiring the artifact."
Father Gregory Lynch was the tallest Irishman Liam knew. A bear of a man, but kind and gentle at his heart. Because of his size and weight, the priest would often wheeze, where you would often hear him long before you ever saw him approach you. He wore the attire of a priest and shaved both his face and head. Bottle-thick glasses rested upon his hawk nose and on top of the cauliflowers he had for ears, compensating for his poor vision. Liam knew him to be pragmatic, and while he would never take a life or condone the immoral, he believed in the Church enough that he stayed to offer his guidance. He was appointed by Bishop Keane, the ranking member of the Catholic Mission, to St. Sedna's council.
"Yeah." Blighe replied as he pointed to the empty chairs surrounding the table, "I admit that I believe Liam would not bring us together without good cause, but we are missing over half of our council for this session!"
"What are you getting at?" Jonathan Turner said suspiciously. "You know the by-laws. As long as essential members are available during the session, we can hold council."
Turner was the youngest among the council at forty-one years old. He was a short, frail middle aged man who had been in recovery after he survived a battle with yellow fever which had ravaged his body. He was beginning to lose his straw blonde hair, giving him an embarrassing bald spot he attempted to comb over, but never really achieved. Chinless and possessing a beak nose, Turner looked meeker then he actually was. All council members knew of Turner and Blighe's open disdain for each other and it was particularly easy to convince one or the other to vote against each other on an issue. However, Turner's downfall was that he was particularly more gullible then Blighe and everyone knew that you could buy his vote with a strong argument and a majority vote behind you.
"Uh-huh." Blighe said, before brushing him off. "But look at what we are about to discuss here. Men have died over this. Twice, I remind you. Two other times Liam has approached this council with a plan to secure the artifact, but every time he has failed. Whether it has been through bad information or ill luck, do we really propose to gamble men's lives over this again without all of us present?"
"Enough, Ian." Douglas said, with a reproachful look in his eye. "While I agree that this council often enjoys your candor and that the circumstances in this situation are particularly dire, I will not allow you to openly attack the character of another councilman while in session. Remember who we all serve, Ian."
Peter Douglas was the mediator of the group, and by far the most level-headed. He had a presence about him that was typical of a leader and allowed him to inspire others to follow him. While other men often spoke of matters and issues concerning the Church, Douglas preferred to leave his own views outside of the debate until it came time to vote, in which he was always last. He was highly respected among all who served with him in the order, and prior to his position at St. Sedna's, he had been Captain of New Belfast's militia for well over a decade. Liam knew him to be a pious man and along with Father Lynch, he was incorruptible. Douglas was a short man of stout build, but he came from strong stock. His black hair and beard were always neatly clipped, and he tried to always be in the best of attire. No one was sure how old he was.
It was he who Liam had to convince the most, for as of this council meeting, he possessed four of the eight votes needed to carry the motion. He needed him for this.
"Anyway. Before this devolves any further, I see no just cause for this motion to be suspended and I am allowing Liam the floor. Liam, you have fifteen minutes to state your case." Douglas said, looking at the old man stoically.
With all attention turned to Liam, the old man nodded. He had planned for this moment for months. Everything was in place and he had a solid plan behind him with the evidence to back it. All he needed to do now was take a leap of faith and trust that once the argument was heard he could garner the vote necessary to carry on and bring the fight to Joseph again and finish what he started.
Liam spent the better part of ten minutes bringing the council back up to speed with his investigation. Because it had been more than a few months since his last request to move forward in his investigation, many of the councilmen still sat on the details of the massacre that had followed. The Irishman knew it was going to be a tough sell, but before he even got to his proposal, he had to make sure all of those present were apprised of the facts concerning the investigation. Though they concentrated on the artifact now, it was the last part of a very long and bitter investigation into the identity of a man that had spanned for close to two years. While it was difficult to remember its beginning after being so close to putting it to an end and at such a terrible cost, Liam and the rest of the council eventually remembered it all.
Aside from politics, what else Liam was remarkably good at was piecing details to a bigger story together. A story that nobody wanted to be told and whose facts were often buried at the bottom of garbage heaps. Parts of the story were hidden in receipts of suspicious purchases. Town hall records and censuses that lay mouldering at the bottom of some entombed, forgotten archive. It laid waiting in the stories of witnesses nobody believed, and people nobody wanted to talk to. For over a year, Liam had painstakingly put the pieces of his investigation together, and much to his horror this was the story he found.
The story of Joseph began fifteen years ago with a man named Henry Morris. He was a physician who mostly kept to himself and had spent the better part of a decade caring for the most prominent families in Corone. Outside of his profession, he was a recluse and didn't talk much about himself to others. He was a man of short, lanky build and chose to dress plainly and unassumingly. He had a handlebar moustache, brown, curly hair and bore a large aquiline nose.
As a physician who kept the embarrassing and tawdry secrets of the wealthy, Morris was held in high regard and in return for his silence most of his clients agreed not to ask questions about him. Over the course of many years, he had grossed a large fortune in which he rarely spent. He was a man of simple tastes who for a time lived in an apartment between 91 and 3rd. He kept mostly to himself. His neighbors rarely ever saw him and as was practice, they soon forgot he was ever there to begin with. He had no family. No pets. And as far as anybody knew, he had no friends. He spoke with few people and was reputed by many to be a shy mute until someone was bold enough to approach him.
However, Henry Morris began to grow fed up with his life. Using much of his wealth he amassed over the years for the first time, Henry paid men who knew better than to ask questions to begin scouring the city and destroy any and all record of his existence. Newspapers were vandalized, photos were burnt, and any written word of Henry Morris having ever existed was removed. This aggressive deletion of an identity went on in secret and took a better part of a month to complete. And then the man who called himself Henry Morris woke up one day, packed up all of his belongings and walked out of his apartment and into the streets where he vanished never to be heard from again.
Liam found that while Morris' men had been paid substantial fees to aid the physician in disappearing and had done an excellent job in obliterating the surface of any record of his existence, they had not been thorough enough to have destroyed everything. The old man found through census records of Henry Morris' existence and traced him back to his place of residence. His identity had been reduced to a line in the census records and a photograph Liam had found;
Henry Morris. 40. Caucasian. Physician. Between 91 and 3rd St.
Liam questioned his neighbors who hadn't seen him for years, they could tell him little and were surprised anybody knew his name, let alone were asking about him. His neighbors eventually led him back to Morris' apartment. 27. It was a two room apartment where the bedroom and kitchen melted together. The stained, greasy oak wood floor was covered in fetid animal refuse and thriving with insects. Everything was covered in dust and much of the furniture that stank of mildew had either already been stolen or left forgotten because it couldn't fit through the door. An ugly speckled pea green wallpaper lay pasted haphazardly across the rooms, whose tattered remains were beginning to peel with age. The kitchen and bedroom both had windows, but they were covered with such a thick, digusting glaze of old, rancid grease that it basked the apartment and everything in it in a repulsive yellow glow.
In the doctor's apartment, Liam immediately felt a chill overtake him. It was the same feeling many previous tenants had felt and as strange and uncomfortable as the feeling was, they did not dwell in that apartment long. In the last fifteen years, the apartment was frequently abandoned and had gone through many owners. Most had left on their own accord, others had been murdered or died and a few had even disappeared without a trace. It was as if a dark cloud had descended upon this apartment and followed its owners and anybody who dwelled long enough in it. While nobody quite knew of ominous feeling's origin, their senses knew better. There was something wrong here. Horribly wrong.
Liam and his men didn't tarry. They had turned the place upside down and tore it apart, searching for answers. What they had discovered buried beneath the surface was startling. Knocking over a bookcase, they found a hidden compartment of reagents and accursed objects used for all manner of black magic and witchcraft. Books, grimoires and tomes lie trapped beneath the floorboards and contained all matter of horrible secrets of old, dead Gods and how to curry their favor. On a hunch, Liam had an ancient, ugly room rug moved and rolled up to see what lie beneath. A faded pentagram and all matter of symbols and runes lie on the floor written in animal blood. It looked as if Morris had attempted to scrub it away and had done so tenaciously, but had never quite managed it. Instead, he did what all people who were in a rush did; he bought a large, unassuming rug and covered it up where he would be long gone before anyone found out the grisly truth.
It didn't take Liam long to bring a priest to exorcise the room and bless it in the name of Christ. Although they tried, the priest assured him that however much they toiled, the only thing that would purify such a place tainted by evil was with fire. Weeks later, some would read in the paper of a mysterious fire that burnt down the entire apartment building between 91 and 3rd. Leaving many homeless, but none were hurt.
For months, Liam had spent time in his initial investigation of Henry Morris trying to figure out what happened to him. What had drawn the Irishman to him in the first place were the rumors of the apartment, and only when he learned of its source did he begin to unravel the unsavory tale of the physician's existence. Eventually, as if by accident, Liam had uncovered an old picture taken in another part of the city of a man who looked remarkably like Henry Morris. His name was John Tyler and the picture was more then 30 years old. He didn't look a day older than the physician who had disappeared more than fifteen years ago, and when compared there was a definite likeness between the two.
With fewer leads to go on and most of those who witnessed the man long dead, Liam again went to the Hall of Records in Radasanth and dug up the census where he found Tyler and his old place of residence. Unfortunately, upon arrival he discovered that the building he had lived in had been condemned and demolished years ago. With no further leads and only a picture and a simple phrase to go on, Liam had hit a wall.
John Tyler. 40. Caucasian. Carpenter. 714 Rowe St.
However, he had had an idea. With twelve of his men, one day he had gone to the Hall of Records and left with any pictures, censuses taken and records of the last hundred years. Although he hadn't expected to find much, Liam and his men spent the better part of three months at St. Sedna's looking for photographs, reading censuses and checking records for any existence of the strange man. Because of the Civil War and natural disasters, occasionally the censuses would be askew and after a century, the Hall of Records often destroyed their records to make room for newer ones given the dense population of the city.
However, Liam managed to find another man of strange resemblance and of exact age as Henry Morris and John Tyler in another photograph that was more then 45 years old. The census gave him his identity as;
Silas Black. 40. Caucasian. Merchant. 1919 Bellows Avenue.
While Liam had attempted to track down the home of Silas, he discovered the next day that the home had mysteriously been burnt to the ground with the family of five trapped and dying inside. The arson was unsuspected and had shocked many who lived in the tightly-knit community of one of Radasanth's safer neighborhoods. While Liam had dispatched men to question their neighbors, he felt bothered by the coincidence and began to grow suspicious.
Any neighbor of the Lye family on Bellows Avenue was devastated by the tragedy and eager to help however they could and aid the Irishmen who went door to door and posed as city policemen. The neighbors told them of the Lyes who were a typical, well-off family who attended church regularly, were upstanding members of the community and whose kids were beloved by many. Many stated they did not know who the arsonist was, but they knew the fire had been started in the early morning the day Liam had instructed his men to question the Lyes.
One elderly woman had been up at the time of the fire, and she attested that she had seen a figure flee the scene. He had ran out the door, the very same door that the Lyes had always kept habitually locked at night, and ran under the cover of darkness. She described him as middle-aged, but couldn't make him out because one of the lampposts closest to the house had gone out. He had fled down a nearby alley. The Irishmen investigated and found the lamppost to be tampered with. They found no trace of the arsonist's presence or having ever been in the alley that ended in a dead end.
Liam did not believe in coincidence and found the revelation of the arsonist more then unsettling. Looking to backtrack and check on others he had met along the way of his investigation, he had found to his horror that ill had befell anyone who had been involved in the investigation. All tenants of the apartments of 91 and 3rd had been taken care of by Liam and his people, having spent much money trying to board them in various parts of the city. However, upon trying to contact them again Liam had found that all thirteen of the tenants had met gruesome fates. Three of them had committed suicide. Five had been murdered and the rest had vanished without a trace. Liam had even read in a paper later that week that the Hall of Records had been vandalized. But strangely, nothing had been stolen.
Whoever this was, Liam surmised, who had spent so much time knocking off witnesses and destroying evidence had worked fast. A bit too fast in that the time it took Liam to make progress in his investigation, it took this man a week to follow the same trail and destroy any further trace of Morris' existence. And now he knew who had the records. Whoever he was, he had made quick work in cleaning up any mess Morris' men had left behind. And it only stood to reason that it could be one man doing it all.
Henry Morris himself.
Liam figured that he must have been reading the paper and spotted the fire at the apartment at 91 and 3rd which had been well documented. Whatever had provoked him to act whether it had been the memory he had been sloppy or that he was growing suspicious he might have more loose ends, Morris must have grown skittish. He might have decided not to risk his identity on the bet the men he had paid to destroy him had been thorough enough not to leave any trace behind. Taking matters into his own hands, he decided to continue the deletion himself and by the violence he left in his wake, it must have been by any means necessary.
Liam had his men post guard around Bellows Avenue and placed all the neighbors under his protection. Though they had noticed a lonely, disheveled old man who appeared once at night, strolling down the empty streets, they never saw him again. There were no further incidents at Bellows.
However, as much as Liam detested the little doctor from 91 and 3rd, he knew that he had one thing Morris did not. The records. Having decided the leverage was sufficient and Morris was desperate enough, the Irish sanctioned Liam all available assets to stage a trap and one that they could catch the stranger in. One thing was sure, Liam knew as long as there was existence of his identity, the man who appeared and disappeared every fifteen years and never aged a day would stop at nothing to find any trace of his previous lives and snuff it out.
It had taken the better part of a week to orchestrate, but Liam and his subordinates had eventually thoroughly planned a trap tempting enough to provoke Henry Morris's ire. They had supplanted the real records the Irish had acquired through the Hall of Records with fake ones and had made it known they were moving them to better facility. Liam was already well aware that Morris had been spying on them and knew they had the remnants of his identity. The old man knew all too well what it was like to hold onto an obsession.
The records were to be transported through coach with only Liam aboard. While the plan had called for the Irish to eventually overpower the doctor when he came for them, Liam insisted that they did not need to draw any more suspicion to the trap then what it called for. What's more is that the old man argued there was a real threat that if under heavy guard, they might spook Morris from raiding the coach altogether.
The Irish had eventually let it slip where they were moving the records to and what coach they were using. It was unlikely that Morris would hear it from any one source, so Liam had spent the better part of a week planting the information in places he was sure the man would look. Despite the effort, when the day came, nobody was sure if the doctor would show.
That afternoon, Liam sat in the coach with the records under his seat. Despite the danger, he looked out from the window of the horse strewn carriage and into the busy streets. The traffic was at its highest this time of day, and while he watched people mill about their lives, Liam quietly waited. The old man expected that if Morris was going to take it, it would be at any point after it left the cathedral. They were going to a warehouse across the city in a seedier district that was far from Irish territory. Liam suspected it was the prominence and the reputation of the cabal that had kept the doctor from making a run at St. Sedna's, but he wasn't sure.
However well the doctor had planned it, he couldn't have picked better timing.
A girl who lost her apple ran in front of the horse and when her father ran after her and pulled her out of the way, he spooked it. The carriage driver fought for control of the reins as the horse reared up and whinnied in fright. It took off in a mad gallop down the street and almost sent the carriage careening into a nearby fruit stand. Opening the door and leaning out, Liam almost fell into the blur that was becoming the street below. Holding onto a rail and regaining his footing, the Irishman shouted, "Get a grip before the beast sends us into a God damned alley!"
"Right away, sir!" The carriage driver shouted as he brandished his whip and struck the horse, pulling with all his strength at the reins to slow the horse. It took the better part of ten minutes, but eventually the driver was able to fight the horse back into submission. Eventually, the driver slowed the carriage to a crawl and stopped to check on the horse and any damage to his carriage.
Liam locked the other door and stepped out from the other side. Shaken up by the incident, the old man had lowered his guard. Looking to where the horse was, he exclaimed, "In the Lord's name, Charlie, where'd you learn to drive?"
Click.
Liam heard the hammer of the pistol drawn back as he felt the cold steel pressed to the back of his head. He could hear the heavy panting behind him and the gruff voice of a man who hadn't spoken for quite awhile. "Charlie's dead, old man."
Raising his hands, Liam snorted, "Who're you calling old, Morris? Or should I say, Silas? Or John? You must have at least forty years on me easy."
A savage blow came and knocked the Irishman to the ground and his assailant put his foot against his back to keep him from getting up. Feeling a sharp pain arc across his skull and hot, sticky blood run down his head, Liam looked up to the empty streets. His vision was blurred and he couldn't make out his hand in front of him which told him he must have been concussed. Leaning forward, Liam's assailant watched as the old man squirmed as his boot was pressed harder against his spine.
Speaking low, the voice from behind grew taut with anger as the man visibly tried to control himself. "Irishman, those secrets have been buried for longer then you have been alive. You or those filthy people know nothing of what they're meddling with. And if you value your miserable life, you will not speak those names again. Now tell me where the records are."
Reaching back to touch his scalp, he winced as he dabbed his fingers in his own blood and stared at it. Trying with all his might to stay conscious, the old man shook violently as he struggled to prop himself up on his elbows, only to meet heavy resistance from his assailant. "You are fine right where you are, old man. Stay down."
"Records? The census records with your names on them?" Liam prodded, still in a daze.
Liam's ears were afire as the pistol thundered from behind his head and a bullet buried itself into the dirt. The ringing of his ears and disorientation compounded with his concussion almost caused Liam to lose his nerve and vomit onto the street. Feeling the visible anger from his attacker as he savagely kicked him; the old man coughed and spattered blood onto the streets.
"Where are the records!" The man roared at the top of his lungs, flying into a fiery tower of rage. Cocking the hammer back again, Liam's attacker snarled, "Tell me where they are. Now. Right now. Or my next bullet is going through your skull, shithead!"
"Under the seat." Liam said, covering his head in futility.
"Which one?" His assailant asked.
"Backseat. Underneath."
"Good. Good." His attacker replied, attempting to calm himself as he tried to figure out what to do next. It came quickly. "Stay down and be quiet. Silent. If you do that.. that.. I'll let you live."
Liam was alone in the middle of an empty street in one of the most violent cities in the country with a man who he believed had killed at least eight people in a week, and he was being assured he would get to keep his life. The Irishman's ears still rang, but he was sure he heard what he did and laughed to himself.
Yeah, sure I'll live.
The assailant was quick in leaving the old man and Liam was sure he kept the gun pointed at him the whole time as he tore the carriage apart. Hefting the large box that contained the records, he opened them and checked to see that they were all there. Liam had made certain the files were duplicated, but what was written on them was just gibberish. Luckily for Liam, he didn't pause to check them more closely.
Crawling out the side of the carriage with box in hand, the man kicked the Irishman and growled, "Are they all in here?"
"Yes."
"Good." Was all he said before he pointed his pistol and shot the Irishman in his leg. As Liam yelped in pain and snarled, he reached over to grab his wounded leg where the man had shot him just below the knee. It felt as if somebody had jabbed him with a white hot piece of iron and held it to his bone. The pain that shot up his leg was extraordinary, and whatever possessed him to stay conscious long enough, he managed to hear part of what was being told to him.
"This ends here. Morris is dead. I killed him. Joseph killed him. I won. Not him. He thought he was going to get to it first, but I beat him to it. He thought he was better than me, but I showed that fool! Do you hear me? Continue looking for him or sifting through his life and there won't be a hole on this island deep enough to hide you from me." His attacker raved, before adding. "Do you understand me?" Shooting the ground again he bellowed, "Tell me that you understand!"
"I..I understand." Was all Liam remembered saying before his vision blurred and he fell into darkness.
Sitting in his chair amongst the council, Liam gripped his left leg as it began to ache from the memory of his first encounter with Joseph, and the cold didn't help. He had spent two weeks in a hospital licking his wounds and the encounter had nearly proved fatal had Joseph nicked an artery. Although Liam or his men were unable to apprehend his deranged attacker that fateful day, it had given the Irishman something more. The encounter had given him a name and the first tangible connection to Morris and the rest of his investigation. Before it had all just been theory, a chain of fires, and a paper trail that took a strong stomach and an open mind to believe. Shooting Liam had been an attempt to send a message to the Irish and drive them off, but much to Joseph's dismay the shooting had left both a grudge and galvanized the old man to dig deeper into the mystery until he had finally located the man and sought answers from him ever since. Now, as Liam finished his presentation, he watched as the council began to deliberate his findings and he immediately found that it wasn't going well at all.
"You expect us to entertain this?" Blighe said to Turner, continuing their heated argument. "Much of the evidence Liam has presented is the same washed information he gave us last time in an attempt for another go at Joseph. Do you know what it cost us during the last raid? Six of our men. Six! And now he's at it again!"
Turner glowered at him and replied, "What do you suppose we do, Ian? Let that fool endanger us all with that accursed artifact? Or are you too flustered that one of the few men to be slain by that creature was your cousin to listen to reason?"
Ian Blighe stood, nearly knocking over the chair as he suddenly lost his temper. The Irishman stood there at a loss for words until he eventually regained his composure. Leaning over the table, he looked the Treasurer dead in the eye and whispered, "Don't belittle my cousin and those who lost their lives that day defending Liam! The Irish blood that was spilled was done twice, and to let it happen again is not only a grievous lapse of judgment for this council, but damning for allowing this man the authority to send more of our countrymen into the maw of another massacre!"
Before Turner could stand up and defend his faltering position, Douglas cut him off with a glare and told them both, "Sit down."
Upon looking at the rising anger in their leader's face, quickly lost their will to escalate the argument any further. As Douglas brought back order to the council, he spoke very softly and in a manner that would continue to smooth tensions over and in a hope to leave his own anger and frustration out of the argument, "Now gentlemen. There is no doubt that blood has been spilled for this cause, much of it has been Irish, but it doesn't change the fact that members of this council, all of them present here, agreed to the motion to allow Liam to act on the information he has provided us. Men have died because of our cause, and I argue that it isn't the fault of any one person among us, but all of us for not conducting a thorough enough investigation into the information provided to us. To create a plan of action that would allow a raid upon that mansion to be successful. Gentlemen, Irish blood has been spilled and good men have been lost out of our ignorance."
A long silence followed as members of the council looked at each other. Liam, remembering many men he had known who had died during those attacks tried to forget their faces. He was pent up with remorse and while the others tried hard to even reach agreement who was to blame, Liam was already trying to seek redemption for his own hand in it. Looking up past Douglas, Liam stared at the crucifix and wished blindly for forgiveness. A large lump welled in his throat and the old man stifled a cough as he tried to contain his emotions. Eventually he swallowed the feeling and the Irishman looked back down at the council, his decision set on achieving forgiveness the only way he knew how.
As the councilmen all had time for pause to think about the stakes they were playing with, Douglas rallied them. "Now then. I propose we continue to discuss Liam's matter. If we need to take a brief recess, I will allow it. However, I urge all of you that when deliberating this matter that you keep your actions here today from becoming dependent on frustrations felt and animosity towards one another. Now then. Are we ready to begin again?"
All of the men nodded in agreement.
"Good. Now then, I would like to bring up the surveillance reports of Joseph's home." Douglas said, feeling a need to guide the conversation. "From Liam's observations it has become apparent that Joseph's growing hedonism of extravagant parties and luring of locals to their doom has subsided in recent weeks. I ask why? What has happened since our last encounter with this daemon that has prevented him from pursuing his carnal desires among his fellow man?"
"Is he growing tired of it?" Turner asked openly, before adding. "Could he be planning on another way to feed on more people?"
"No." Blighe replied and paused as he caught a careful eye from Douglas. "I don't think a man in that position would stop if he knew he had free reign to do such a thing and knowing that the only people who know of his secret have been unable to stop him."
Looking at Liam, Father Lynch offered his thoughts for the first time after sitting awhile in silence, "What of the alchemist's journal? Doesn't he say something about the artifact and the owner? That he is some kind of host?"
"Yes, Father." Liam replied as he flipped pages in Teagan's notes to find what he was looking for. Once found, he began to read his point, "According to Hamilton, this artifact is without essence in our world. The box that has become its prison that we so loathingly refer to is actually its vessel. While sealed inside and without interference, the artifact lies imprisoned and dormant. It is only once the box is opened and looked upon by somebody it awakens and seeks to corrupt its new host and use them to create a new vessel."
"What in God's name is this thing?" Blighe asked, "We've all seen the results of what Joseph has done to anyone who has tried to take it away from him, but what kind of thing could do that to a man?"
Looking about the council, Liam folded his hands and sighed, "I don't know. None of us know. This thing, whatever it is, is without record or name like many things of the occult and witchcraft. While our Holy Bible speaks of Angels, our Lord and our eventual clash with the Devil, there is no book I have found in this world that reads and annotates the plans, devices and faces of true Evil. However. In my limited search for answers of this object's origin I have found nothing. But I have found that one needs only look at the trail of blood and ruin it has left across the pages of history."
"Are you proposing that you didn't study the artifact itself, but its effects on this world and the people in it?" Father Lynch asked with great interest. As Liam nodded, the priest added, "Very astute, Mister Duigenan."
"What I know of it isn't written here, because at the time of its discovery I feared I had found something far worse then we were battling. But it was only until I had found Hamilton's journal and with Teagan I was able to make the connection." Liam started as he began to recount the horrors he had found, "There are tales of men just like Joseph in the far southeast upon the deserts and jungles of Fallien. Of black tribes who had been consumed by the hunger of a wretched object that sought to be freed from its prison and given the ability to walk the world again. Men who have lost their humanity and souls to an artifact that feeds openly upon them. And in return it protects them. Men are made invincible. Their flesh made impervious to mortal weapons, their minds and body warded from sorcery and fire. But always, it has eventually been stopped by men brave enough to halt its metamorphosis and embodiment in our world. Brave men who laid their lives down for a greater cause.
Whatever it is, it is older then the world itself and I suspect would rival the Devil in age. For in all the tales, it always lies trapped in a box. A black box forged in primordial fire, made of iron and blessed by holy men. However, while it is stationary and unable to move it has been able to travel across our world. Through the hands of wicked men who worshipped it. From holy men who sought to destroy it. From strangers who knew not of what they held, but found it interesting enough to keep, but rarely ever to open. I suspect that this artifact travels the world in some preternatural way and by manifest destiny or grim hope that eventually it will find a new vessel. And eventually, there will come a time when responsible men, good and brave men, will stay their hands rather then perform their duty and slay its vessel and lock it back up in that box."
The dark story of the artifact's history was profound and caused each of the men to squirm in their seats. Many went pale; others looked at each other in disbelief at the thought of such a connection being made. Eventually, after a long, uncomfortable silence, the discussion continued.
"So this artifact.. parasite.. It is feeding on Joseph?" Turner asked.
"Precisely." Father Lynch replied. "It must be why the daemon needs to consume so much blood and wallow in such gore."
The priest indeed spoke of Joseph's carnage and bloodlust, but he was inadvertently referring to an oral testimony given earlier by a survivor about his findings of a part of Joseph's household during the first raid;
There had been bodies. Everywhere. Naked. Hacked apart. And the smell. The smell of sweet, sickening decay had made most of us retch and vomit as we took to those stairs. His murder and carnage was at a scale unimaginable, and many of us became disillusioned that one man could be capable of such a thing. But he had. And in his basement he had created a shrine to it. The people. The people. They had been hacked apart and arranged in a way where parts of man became conjoined to one another, where it was hard to tell where one person began and another ended. He had turned them all into some sick, twisted fetish. The Lord intervened that night, for I only lived because of what lie upon that black altar, amidst those red wax candles and profane talisman was the artifact. I am haunted that night because before that daemon overtook us, I had turned and ran up the stairs and out of the house. My God! I had abandoned them! I ran out of the house and into the night, screaming bloody and raving about that lunatic. I let my friends die that night because I was afraid of that man! No man, not even the Angels themselves could ever get me to go back into that black temple.
"Perhaps then, we need to ask ourselves what we could do to slay such a creature?" Douglas offered, before adding, "Should we be looking at how to use its weaknesses against itself?"
"Splendid idea." Father Lynch replied.
"I agree," Said Liam before offering his plan, "I think we have been going about this all wrong. Good men have died because of my misjudgment in Joseph's power. I contend that we should be focusing not on the monster, but the object he is drawing power from. We assumed too readily that with God on our side we would be able to solve this alone, but I feel strategy is necessary."
"What if.." Douglas began, "What if we separated him from the box? What could we do then?"
"Into what? Another part of the house?" Blighe asked. "He owns the place. Knows every nook and cranny. There's not a place we could lure him into that he wouldn't eventually crawl out of."
"And we already know the artifact is in the basement." Turner replied, mildly in agreement.
Feeling ready after having led them this far, Liam finally lays down his hand for all of them. Looking at each of them, he picked up the journal and spoke, "Hamilton was a pagan and insane, but one thing he was not was daft. He had exposed himself to the artifact without even realizing it, or maybe he had done it because he had succumbed to some stupid desire. Either way, before he covered himself in pitch and lit himself on fire to purify himself, he had studied the effects of his transformation for weeks."
"And?" Blighe replied. "What does a mad alchemist exposed to that parasite have to say about this? Whose to say his later entries aren't the wretched thing itself trying to throw us or anyone else off the trail again?"
"I don't believe that." Father Lynch said. "We know already that the effects upon the mind and body are gradual by the evidence of Joseph's regression over the past year. I hadn't thought of it until Liam told of the artifact's desire for a host, but all of these surveillance reports tell of Joseph's gradual descent into madness. His scheme to feed on cattle. How he eventually moved onto people. His degenerating appearance. Even when he attacked Liam he had seemed saner then he is now. Liam being alive and among us today is proof of that. I think seclusion, murder and paranoia all had to do with the loss of his humanity. Only once he lost enough of himself was the artifact able to supplant more of itself into him and take over. Now, now Joseph and whoever he was is no more. He's but a puppet now."
"Even so," Liam interrupted, "Hamilton found that there were several weaknesses in his new form. His fear and weakness to light, his growing hunger for blood, and his dependence on that artifact. There is a way to use all of this against him. Starve him of his blood by cutting off his ability to acquire sustenance. He may have an entire graveyard in his basement, but those bodies will only sustain him for so long. And since he has lost his mind, he is unable to communicate and reason like one of us. There are no more parties. There are fewer and fewer visitors because of the growing disappearances and the connection to his mansion. While it looks as if nature will run its course and the rest of Corone will ostracize this creature, I say we help it along. And I say we help it along quickly before the artifact reaches the same conclusion and sends Joseph out into the city to feed again.
Second. I believe if we can lure him out of hiding, we can infiltrate his lair and take the artifact. I am certain that there might be some sort of connection between the host and parasite that transcends physical presence. We need to take that box and dispose of it. Unlike every other holy man or vagabond whose put this malevolent thing back in its place, I say we end this accursed cycle once and for all."
"Yes, Liam." Turner agreed, "We smash it."
"No, Turner." Father Lynch corrected him, "We burn it."
"So there we have it. A solid plan at last." Douglas said. "Shall we put it to a vote? All in favor of this motion? All against?"
"Aye." Father Lynch said, with an appreciative glance at Liam.
"Aye." Liam said.
Having stood up and walked to the cabinet awhile ago, Blighe raised his glass of bourbon and said, "For Matthew. May he rest in peace," draining the glass, the councilman wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and nodded, "Aye."
"Aye." Turner said.
"Aye." Douglas said. "A unanimous vote. Motion passes. Liam you may begin operations and conduct actions necessary to plan for another raid against Joseph immediately."
"Thank you." Was all Liam could say, a feeling of elation filling him. After many long months, tireless work and journeys into strange places, Liam had finally gotten what he came for. A third chance.
"Keep us apprised of your actions, the operation and the situation at large." Douglas replied.
"I will." Liam said.
"All right, then. So concludes our session. Father, would you please offer us the benediction?" Douglas said.
To Be Continued.
I'd like to request that this thread be judged for gold and experience only. I also request any spoils for this story to be deferred to the next thread and will be requested upon its completion. Thanks.
Sagequeen
03-25-12, 09:15 PM
Plot ~ 20/30
Storytelling ~ 8/10 – Overall a very good story, well thought out.
Setting ~ 4/10 – Your descriptions were good and warrant mention, but they were of a place totally foreign to Althanas. It seemed like you just inserted the name of Radasanth into a fictional work very loosely based on early America. It was a constant immersion-breaker.
Pacing ~ 8/10 – You did well in your pacing – I didn't feel like the story dragged anywhere. However, especially in the retelling of what Liam pieced together, it seemed to go too quickly since that information is so vital and the council's decision relies on it.
Character ~ 26/30
Communication ~ 8/10 – It wasn't perfect, but the dialog was very good. There were a few subtle slips in the discussion with the council.
Action ~ 8/10 – Only two issues: unconvincingly explaining away why Liam wasn't killed by Joseph, and why the council suddenly all voted yes after some were so staunchly against Liam's plan.
Persona ~ 9/10 – Your development of your characters was truly great. More significance could be given to Liam's motivation, instead of assuming it.
Prose ~ 21/30
Mechanics ~ 7/10 – I noticed you used 'then' instead of 'than' in a few cases. Also, you had some sentence fragments that didn't work as style; the flow would have been better had they been included with other sentences.
Clarity ~ 7/10 – Mechanics hurt your clarity in several cases with the sentence fragments. Also, there were some clunky sentences I had to go back and read a few times, as well as ideas not clearly expressed.
Technique ~ 8/10 – Overall, your style is good, but it lacks a little finesse and consistency. You use nice imagery and higher literary techniques, and at times, your work is good enough that I lose the sense that I'm reading, and instead I'm watching the story as it takes place. If you were able to make the entire story like that, you'd be at 9's and 10's.
Wildcard: 2/10 – While you're obviously a talented writer, this particular story was a head-on collision between Althanas and Earth, where Althanas was a bicycle and Earth an 18-wheeler.
Total ~ 68/100
Vigil earns 2275 EXP and 400 gold.
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