Grave Night (Harbinger P.I. Book 10), page 1
Grave Night
Adam J Wright
Contents
The Harbinger P.I. Series
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
The Harbinger P.I. Series
LOST SOUL
BURIED MEMORY
DARK MAGIC
DEAD GROUND
SHADOW LAND
MIDNIGHT BLOOD
TWILIGHT HEART
FAERIE STORM
NIGHT HUNT
GRAVE NIGHT
FINAL MAGIC
Chapter 1
I woke up quickly and sat up in bed, my eyes taking in the details of the surrounding room. The realization that I was in Harbinger Academy came back to me as I shook off the last remnants of a nightmare that had included a tentacled creature killing Mallory on a strange island.
My subconscious mind had created that scenario from events that had taken place in the actual world, of course. We had fought a tentacled creature, and it had almost killed Mallory. But unlike the dream version of Mallory, who had died from her wounds, the real Mallory was currently being taken care of by the witches collectively known as The Coven.
I pushed back the bedsheets and swung my feet to the floor, sitting on the edge of the bed with my eyes closed and head in my hands while I tried to forget the images that had played in my mind like a horror movie.
When the nightmare wouldn’t disappear so easily, I got to my feet and roamed around the room. I was on edge, like someone sitting in a hospital waiting room, going crazy while hoping to hear their loved one has pulled through major surgery.
The room I was in, however, was nothing like a waiting room. It was a plushly furnished bedroom with a fireplace, coffee table, desk, bookshelves, armchairs, and a king-size bed. A gilt-framed oil painting of Hercules wrestling the Nemean lion hung on the wall.
The house itself was about three times the size of my house in Dearmont, with a spacious living room downstairs, as well as an office, kitchen, and library.
This building would soon house a member of the academy staff and was probably a selling point of the job.
I was only here temporarily, taking advantage of the time dilation between this realm and my own, so that the witches could heal Mallory before Mister Scary completed the Harvest of the Maidens ceremony.
Speaking of time dilation, I had no idea what time it was at the moment. I could see daylight through the arched bedroom window, although a lime green glow tinged the sky. That seemed to be normal here. On some days, I’d seen purple luminance paint the clouds, and on others, it had been a bright scarlet.
I picked up my watch from the nightstand and strapped it to my wrist. It said 11:53, but that meant nothing. The watch was steadily ticking through a 24-hour clock that had no meaning in this realm. I’d experienced time dilation and contraction before. I could spend a month in Faerie, for instance, and only a day might pass on the Earthly realm.
I had no idea what the ratio of time was between this realm, where the academy had been built, and my own realm was, but judging by the disorientation I felt, I could have crossed a thousand time zones coming here.
According to my father, time passed even slower in the place where The Coven lived, meaning Mallory could take all the time she needed to recover and we’d still be able to save the five final girls before Scary completed the ceremony.
That was the idea, anyway.
My father’s voice suddenly boomed into the room, seeming to come from the walls. “Alec Harbinger, to my office, please. Alec Harbinger.”
I looked for speakers in the room but couldn’t see any. Someone had equipped the academy with some sort of magical PA system.
I went downstairs to the kitchen and put the coffee maker on before heading up to the bathroom and running the shower. I got under the hot spray, leaning my hands against the tiled wall and bowing my head beneath the water as the last vestiges of the nightmare finally washed away.
After that, I got dressed and downed two cups of coffee, wishing I had a stack of pancakes to go with them. I wasn’t sure how long it was since I last ate. The weird passage of time in this realm was really screwing with me.
I left the house and went out onto the street where several identical houses sat in neat rows, waiting for occupants. Judging from the size of the street, my dad must be expecting a lot of future employees.
I walked along the sidewalk toward the central area of the campus, feeling like the last survivor in a post-apocalyptic movie as I made my way along the silent, empty street.
When I got to an area where taller buildings clustered around a central patch of grass the size of a football field, I followed a flagstone path to the main academy building.
In front of the building, sat a fountain carved with scenes of heroes fighting monsters. Perseus held Medusa’s head toward the Kraken, and David took aim at Goliath with his slingshot.
The huge, wooden double doors that led inside had carvings of similar scenes. Perseus was here again, this time holding Medusa’s head toward an unseen enemy, while Saint George swung his sword at a vicious-looking dragon.
Fighting monsters had been the overwhelming theme of my father’s life, and the decor of Harbinger Academy reflected that. I supposed that as the students passed through these doors or sat by the fountain, the scenes would be a constant reminder of why they were here.
Those who fight monsters should beware that they, too, do not become monsters.
The words came unbidden to my mind, and I mentally pushed them away. It was too early in the morning to be quoting Nietzsche. Or was it? I had no idea.
I pushed through the doors and ignored the elevator, choosing instead to take the stairs up to the third floor, where my father’s office was situated. The decor inside the building reflected the carvings on the door and the fountain outside. Statues of heroes fighting all manner of creatures stood in the tiled foyer, and paintings of epic battles between humans and mythical beasts hung on the walls.
When I got to the door with a plaque that said Thomas Harbinger - Principal, I knocked once and then entered.
My dad was sitting behind his desk, staring into a crystal ball that sat on a brass stand before him. He heard me enter and looked up. “Alec, there you are. I was about to page you again.”
I pointed at the ball, which was glowing green. “Is that your PA system?”
He grinned, obviously proud of the magical paging device. “Yes, it is. Wonderful, isn’t it?”
“Why don’t you just have wires and speakers, like every other place with a PA?”
His face fell and he gestured to the crystal ball. “I have this. Don’t you like it?”
“I like it just fine,” I said, realizing I was going to hurt his feelings if I said otherwise. “Why did you use it to call me? What’s up?”
“There’s something we need to take a look at on our own realm. The Midnight Cabal is up to no good again, and you might know something about it.”
“Me? How would I know what the Cabal is doing?”
He put the crystal ball into the desk drawer and leaned toward me. “I have a handful of contacts watching the Cabal. Spies, if you will. They report back to me on occasion, if they think there’s something I need to know about. Sometimes, they hear chatter between Cabal members. A while ago, they intercepted a communication that mentioned your name.”
I shrugged. “I’ve had a few run-ins with them, so I guess it’s logical that they would mention me, sometimes.”
“This was a bit more specific than that, Alec.” He picked up a sheet of paper and put his reading glasses on. “The message said, Operation: High Priest is now ready to roll, thanks to Alec Harbinger.”
“I have no idea what that means,” I said truthfully. “You said this was intercepted some time ago, so why are you telling me about it now?”
“Because it seems that Operation: High Priest might have been put into action yesterday. I got a report from my contacts that groups of Cabal members have been deployed to Egypt. And the witches have confirmed that the magical energy in that area spiked about an hour ago.”
“Egypt,” I said, putting the pieces together. “The Pillars of Khonsu.”
He looked at me and arched an eyebrow. “The Pillars of Khonsu?”
“It’s a doorway,” I told him. “To another realm. We needed to get through it to lift Rekhmire’s curse from Mallory, but we didn’t have the spell that would allow us to do that. The Cabal had the only copy of the spell. I cut a deal with two of their agents.”
“Wait, don’t tell me,” he said, holding up a hand and reading from the paper again. “Doug Chance and Tom Meyer?”
I nodded. “Meyer is dead, but Chance came back through the gate with us.”
He held the paper up. “Doug Chance is the person who sent this message to one of the Cabal chapter houses.”
“And now they’ve sent a number of their members to Egypt,” I said, musing the facts over in my mind. I’d known th at cutting a deal with the Cabal had been a bad idea, but it had been the only way to help Mallory. I’d told myself at the time that I’d deal with the consequences when they arose.
And they were rising right now.
“I need to get over there,” I said. “I need to stop them.”
“Stop them from doing what, exactly?” my dad asked.
“They’re going to open the gate and bring Rekhmire into our world.”
Chapter 2
We assembled in one of the academy’s lecture halls. I stood at the front of the room, next to a lectern that sported a decorative carving of the huntsman saving Red Riding Hood from the wolf. In this version, the wolf was enormous, standing almost as tall as the ceiling of Grandma’s cottage.
Felicity, Leon, Tia, and Michael sat in the front row seats. The ancient priestess, Leon, and his butler had accompanied me to Blackstone Citadel and had traveled here afterward, when we’d brought Mallory to the Coven to be healed.
Felicity had said she was staying behind with Carlton to research the yaghul’s labyrinth while we went to the citadel, but she’d turned up at Frobisher’s Glade, with my dad and Lucy in her car. She hadn’t traveled to the citadel with us, and she hadn’t been at the glade when we’d returned, but she was here now. I had no idea how far she and Carlton had gotten with their research, or if she’d simply abandoned him to continue it on his own.
I had to remind myself that she didn’t work for me anymore, and she certainly wasn’t answerable to me.
Although Lucy wasn’t in the lecture hall, she was somewhere at the academy. She’d traveled here with us, which made me wonder if my dad and Felicity had offered her a place here, as a student, during the journey from my house to Frobisher’s Glade.
That was probably none of my concern. Right now, I had to deal with the consequences of the bargain I’d made with the Midnight Cabal.
“We have a problem,” I said. “It looks like the Midnight Cabal is trying to release Rekhmire from his prison realm.”
Everyone looked shocked but it was Tia who spoke. “That must not happen under any circumstances. If Rekhmire is released, he will try to destroy the world, as he tried before.”
“That’s why we’re going to go back to the Pillars of Khonsu and stop the Cabal,” I said. “My dad is preparing one of those egg things to get us to the Pillars.”
“A Traveler Egg,” Felicity said.
“Yeah, one of those. I don’t know what we’re going to find when we go through the portal, so we need to be ready for anything.”
“We have plenty of weapons in the armory,” she said. “Everyone should take whatever they think they’ll need.”
“Thanks.” We still had the weapons we’d taken with us on our quest to find Ariadne’s Thread but adding to our arsenal wouldn’t hurt. For all we knew, there could be a hundred enemy soldiers at the Pillars. Springing Rekhmire from his prison realm would be an important mission to the Cabal, so it made sense that a large number of their personnel would be deployed to Egypt.
The door at the back of the hall opened and my father entered, waving at me and pointing to an egg—a Traveler Egg—in his hand.
“It looks like our mode of transportation has arrived,” I told the others. “Let’s grab those weapons and get to the Pillars as quickly as we can.”
While the others got out of their seats, I walked up the steps to the doorway where my father was waiting.
“Everything is set,” he said, handing me the egg.
I inspected it closely. What looked like a swirl of blue on the egg’s surface was actually made up of tiny magical symbols arranged in an intricate pattern. The egg sat in a brass stand that was etched with a similar arrangement of glyphs.
“Just turn the egg so the symbols on its surface are aligned with the ones on the stand,” Dad said.
“And the portal that opens will take us to the Pillars of Khonsu,” I said.
“No, that’s the egg that will bring you back here. The one that’s going to send you to Egypt is outside, by the fountain.”
“Okay. We’re going to grab some weapons, and then we’ll be ready to go.”
The others had reached us now and were filing out of the the door on their way to the armory. I moved to follow them but my dad put a hand on my arm. I turned to face him.
“Alec,” he said, “this isn’t your fault.”
“It is my fault. I showed the Cabal the location of the Pillars. I should have known they’d return later and open the gate.”
“You did what you had to,” he said. “No one can blame you for that.”
“I can blame myself.”
He nodded gravely. “And you will. I have no doubts about that.”
I just hope we get there in time to stop them.” I pushed through the door and followed the others to the armory.
Felicity led us downstairs to the basement and into a large room fitted with racks of weapons. In the center of the room, various items sat on metal tables. Made of rock, and shaped into spheres the size of tennis balls, these were something I’d never seen before. I picked one up, finding it surprisingly light. The sphere was inscribed with runes and as I looked closer, I saw tiny red gems set into the rock.
“Be careful with those,” Felicity said, coming over to join me. “They’re quite sensitive.”
“What are they?” I asked, putting the device on the table gingerly.
“They’re spells locked inside a thin stone shell. When the shell is broken, the spell is released.”
“So, they’re magical grenades?”
She nodded. “They have an area of effect, like a grenade, so yes, I suppose you could call them that.” Selecting two from the assortment on the table, she placed them into a backpack. “I suppose we should take a couple of these with us. Do you want to put the Traveler Egg in here too?”
“Yeah, sure.” The egg wasn’t heavy but it was bulky enough to be a hindrance if we got into a fight. I gave it to Felicity and she placed it next to the grenades before handing me the backpack.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about carrying magical grenades on my back. I slung the pack over my shoulders gingerly and selected a sword from the racks.
Everyone seemed suitably armed, so we went back upstairs and out to the fountain, where our transportation waited.
My dad was waiting by the Traveler Egg, which was sitting on the ground. He held a sword, and as we walked across the gravel toward him, I saw a worried look in his eyes.
“You okay?” I asked as I got closer to him.
He sighed. “Alec, I fear the events happening now are the omens of something terrible that will befall the entire world. I’m not sure there’s anything we can do to stop it.”
I couldn’t argue with the first part of that. If Rekhmire was let loose to wreak havoc, that could definitely be classed as “something terrible.”
But I disagreed with the second part of his statement. My dad seemed certain that the world was going to hell in a handbasket, thanks to some prophecy, but I didn’t share that viewpoint.
There was no point in letting bad things happen and simply calling them fate. Prophecy or no prophecy, we had to try to protect the world. We couldn’t just give up.
“The fact that you have a sword in your hand means you’re willing to try,” I told him.
“I’m willing to fight,” he said, nodding.
“Then let’s fight. Get that egg thing fired up.”
He crouched and adjusted the Traveler Egg, lining up the symbols on the egg’s surface with those on the metallic stand. The air above the egg shimmered and then a circular portal appeared. I could see the high-ceilinged room that housed the Pillars of Khonsu.
“Let’s go,” I said, stepping through the magical opening and onto the sandstone floor of the room.
The others followed and soon we were all standing in the room that was hidden beneath the sands of Egypt.
Except it wasn’t so hidden anymore. Part of the wall had been removed and I could see a tunnel leading away into subterranean darkness. It looked like the Cabal had tunneled their way down here from the desert above.
