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  Don Bassingthwaite

  A World of Darkness Novel

  PROLOGUE

  The sun was just beginning to rise as Solomon stepped out of the long, black sedan. To the southeast, the skyscrapers of Toronto’s downtown core were silhouettes against the rosy predawn sky. It was going to be another hot day. July was one of the worst months to be in Toronto. People complained about the winter, with its cold winds and slushy streets, but sticky, smoggy July was just as bad. Solomon slipped off the jacket he wore over his black T-shirt and tossed it back into the sedan. “Keep the motor running, David. We’ll go home again as soon as I’m finished.”

  “I’ll be waiting.”

  Solomon walked through the iron gates of one of the University of Toronto’s many colleges. It was a pleasant building, now abandoned for the summer except for a few visiting scholars and a handful of graduate students. Several old trees grew in the college courtyard, and water splashed in broad fountains at the base of a bell tower. More water dripped from the body that two big men were hauling out of the pool. A third man, lean and hatchet-faced, watched them. Solomon walked over to him. “You’re cutting it close, Arthurs,” he said angrily. “I called you three hours ago.” Just moments after he had received a telephone call himself,

  a telephone call that had consisted of a single name.

  “We just found him,” Jubilee Arthurs said hastily. “We missed him the first time we were here looking. He was in a shadow under the water.” Arthurs was in his late fifties, his hair gray, his clothing loose on an aging frame. Solomon was barely pushing thirty. His skin was tanned and his muscular body stretched his T-shirt tight. His hair was black and slicked back. He had the kind of look that spoke of days spent in the gym and nights spent at clubs. He knew it. He cultivated that look. Arthurs prodded the wet body with his toe rather than meet Solomon’s dark eyes. “We would have left him in the fountain, but,” he shrugged, “like you said, we’re cutting it close.”

  Arthurs’ bodyguards settled the wet body on the flagstones beside the fountain. Solomon knelt beside it, turning its head so that the face of the professor looked at him with clear, terror-haunted blue eyes. A third shining eye stared blindly at him from the professor’s forehead: the head of the nail that had been hammered through his skull. There was little blood. As with the others, the nail had been driven in after he was dead. Solomon rose again and held out his left arm. Arthurs took his hand and kissed the tattooed chain that encircled the thick wrist. It was a strange tattoo, gleaming dully as though steel rather than ink had been embedded under the skin. Solomon caught Arthurs by the neck before he could move away. “Full obedience.” He reached across his chest and pulled aside the collar of his T-shirt to reveal his left shoulder. He had another tattoo there, a rearing black beast. Sometimes people mistook it for a heraldic lion rampant. In fact, it was a mastiff.

  Arthurs glanced up at him. This time it was Solomon who refused to make eye contact. He kept his eyes fixed forward, unnervingly distant. Arthurs bent his head and kissed Solomon’s wrist again. “I pay homage to Shaftiel,” he murmured obediently. He straightened a little and leaned forward to kiss the tattoo on Solomon’s bared shoulder. “1 pledge my soul and service to the Sentinel of the Ways, the Hungry Guardian Who Watches the Three Ages, the Hound of Thorns, the One Who Waits, the One Who Comes First.” He stood straight and kissed Solomon’s angry, unmoving lips. “I will obey his servant in this world. I am Bandog.”

  He was calm. Too calm. Solomon didn’t want him calm. He wanted him anxious, frightened.

  And a mage, especially one of the demon-serving Nephandi, had the power to make almost anything he wanted happen. Solomon reached out with his will and just a touch of magick, seizing reality and bending it. For a moment, Arthurs’ heart thundered in his chest. His face became slightly frantic. Whether the mercenary recognized magick at work or not, his body was responding to the cue of his racing heart. “You don’t have any clues, do you, Arthurs?” Solomon asked coldly. “You’re no closer to knowing why this is happening than when I first asked you to investigate. And two more of our master's followers — two more of the High Circle

  — are dead!”

  Arthurs actually cringed before the lash of his voice. “I’m not a private eye, Solomon,” he protested, “I’m an arms dealer. Can’t you get—” -

  “You’re a mercenary.” Solomon turned away from Arthurs. The two big men, Arthurs’ henchmen and bodyguards, were watching them. They looked away hastily. Solomon swept his gaze around the dark windows of the college. “One of the best, so I’ve heard. Or you used to be. Now what’s happened? You’ve been disgraced, Arthurs. You’ve messed up one too many times. You’re getting old and clumsy. Even Pentex won’t hire you anymore, not after that episode last winter with the Garou and the Wynn-tainted bullets. It was an easy job, but it fell apart in your hands.”

  He glanced back to see what effect his words had had. Arthurs was red in the face. “How did you know about that?”

  “You’d be surprised what I know about the people who join the Bandog, Arthurs, especially the people I bring into the High Circle. So many of them are desperate. So many of them seek Shaftiel’s aid. I like to know why.” Solomon smiled. “You can get access to contacts and resources that I can’t. Find the killers who are preying on us, Arthurs, and Shaftiel will see that your fortunes rise again.” His smile turned sharp. “Think of it as a last-chance contract.”

  Solomon turned back to the professor’s body without looking at Arthurs again. He knew that the man would very likely be pale and swallowing hard, weighing the pact he had made in choosing to join the Bandog. It was, of course, far, far too late for him to back out now. Solomon gave him a little time to sweat, then squatted down beside the professor’s body once more. “Do you have anything new to tell me? We're still looking at two murderers?”

  “Umm...” Arthurs hesitated, trying to find words that wouldn't make him look like a fool. “Yes. And no

  — nothing new. Not as such.” Solomon almost grinned at the old man’s desperation; he was at the end of a very frayed rope. “I’ve been in his office. All the usual signs, though: a new bottle of the victim’s drink of choice open, three chairs moved and sat in, two glasses drunk from. And the cut link.” He pulled something from his pocket and passed it to Solomon. A heavy link from a chain, one side cut through so the link could be separated from the rest of the chain. Solomon wrapped his hand around the link and squeezed tightly, feeling the cool metal against the skirt of his palm. The nail, the cut link, the final drink, the mocking calls that told him who had just died — of it all, only the cut link made sense. The killers were severing the chain of the Bandog one link at a time.

  “What about the people here? Did anyone see anything?” -

  “No, not as far as I can tell from their dreams.” Arthurs coughed and added, “I’m keeping them asleep now so we won’t be disturbed.”

  Arthurs’ access to contacts and resources wasn’t the only reason Solomon had elevated him to the High Circle of the Bandog. The mercenary had other useful talents. Not magick, but useful nonetheless. Now Solomon just gave him a dull stare. Arthurs shifted nervously. “But you didn’t find anything else.” Not a question. A statement of fact. Arthurs looked away. “Look again. Keep everyone here asleep until noon if you have to.”

  “What about the body?”

  Solomon touched the professor’s corpse. “We’ll make it look like another suicide.” He gestured at the body’s head. “Pull out the nail. You remembered to bring something this time?”

  Arthurs flushed, but produced a clavvhead hammer and proceeded to wrench the nail out of the professor’s forehead. It left a neat, round hole behind. �
��An accident would be more believable than a suicide,” he suggested humbly. “Hardly anyone commits suicide by drowning themselves.”

  Solomon just glared at him. “An accident then.” He pulled a small packet of herbs from his pocket, glancing at Arthurs’ bodyguards as he did so. “How much do they know?” It was a vague question, but Solomon knew Arthurs would understand what he meant.

  “Not enough for what you need.” Arthurs gestured toward a door leading into the dark interior of the college. “You two take care of the office. Lose the extra glass and fix the chairs.” The bodyguards nodded and disappeared. Arthurs turned back to Solomon. “All clear.”

  Setting the packet on a dry patch of ground, Solomon began to run his hands over the professor’s wet body as though he were frisking him. Arthurs leaned in, watching closely. Solomon knew the mercenary was trying to catch the trick to what he was doing. He never would, of course. The young man concentrated on the body under his hands, his eyes narrow and distant. “Alcohol in his stomach, but hardly any in his blood. I’ll have to increase that. High levels of adrenaline and epinephrine. Like the others. Bruising on the back of his head, neck and shoulders. Bruising along his belly as well. They forced his head under the water. The bruising on his belly is from the edge of the fountain.” He would have to remove all of it — and the nail hole. He glanced at Arthurs. “If he had fallen into the pool and hit his head hard enough to knock

  him out, how much damage would there...”

  Solomon broke off suddenly and sucked in his breath. “What is it?” Arthurs asked.

  “There are abrasions around his left wrist and hand. Like something was pulled off him.” He clenched his teeth. “Why didn’t you tell me they had taken his chain?”

  “I didn’t know!” Unconsciously, Arthurs twitched his left arm back. He wore a heavy, silvery chain bracelet, not unlike Solomon’s tattoo. Solomon knew that some of the Bandog, like Arthurs and the professor, wore the seemingly innocent chains openly, flouting their secret worship of Shaftiel. The professor was the first of the victims who had done so. “Can you track the bracelet with magick?”

  “No.” Solomon pushed up the left sleeve of the professor’s shirt. The skin of his wrist and the back of his hand was scratched. The scratches were slight and not very deep, the sort of abrasions that pulling off a chain bracelet might produce. Solomon picked up his packet of herbs and opened it. The herbs inside were coarsely crushed and had a peculiar smell. Some of the few people who had smelled the herbs said that the scent reminded them of old graveyards in Europe. Others said that the smell reminded them of a mortuary. There was truth in both statements. Some of the herbs had indeed come from plants commonly associated with Old World graveyards, and derivatives of others were used in embalming. Solomon also used them in the preparation of dead bodies — although hardly in the way that a mortician would. He had been planning to use them to erase the signs of struggle from the professor’s body. Now he had a better idea.

  He took a big pinch of herbs out of the packet and ground it fine between' his thumb and forefinger, letting the fragrant powder settle into the palm of his other hand. Water squeezed out of the corpse’s clothes turned the ground herbs into a thin, runny, gray-green paste. The paste he smeared across the corpse’s hand and wrist, rubbing it gingerly into the dead skin. When he was finished, the skin had acquired a bit of the paste’s gray-green color. “Do you have a knife?” he asked Arthurs. The mercenary shook his head. Solomon frowned. He would have to detach the hand himself. He stretched his thumb and forefinger around the professor’s forearm, just above the stained skin, and concentrated, once again bending reality to his will.

  The dead flesh under his grip began to decay.

  The cold skin blackened, then liquefied. Solomon’s thumb and finger sank into the muscles and tendons underneath. More flesh rotted away. Thumb and forefinger met. The last flesh sloughed off the bare bones, leaving a foul gap in the professor’s forearm. Solomon pressed against the exposed radius bone, then the ulna, with the edge of his thumbnail. Each bone cracked neatly in turn. Maggots wriggled in the marrow. The professor’s left hand came away in Solomon’s grip. He stood and took a few steps toward the college gates, watching the scratches on the hand.

  The leading edge of the scratches changed as he watched. The scratches were growing.

  “Arthurs!” he snapped. The other man came to his feet. Solomon shoved the detached gray-green hand at him. “Take this. Use it to find the professor’s chain.”

  Arthurs took the hand gingerly, but not squeamishly. “How? You said you couldn’t track the chain.”

  “I can’t. But when the killers took the chain, they took some skin with it. The scratches will guide you: they’ll always point toward the skin on the chain, and they’ll get deeper when you get close to it.” He grinned, baring strong, white teeth. “If the scratches start bleeding, you’re practically standing on top of the damn thing.”

  Arthurs nodded. “What if the killers dumped the bracelet somewhere?”

  Solomon’s smiled disappeared. “Then it will still be closer to them than we’ve been yet, won’t it?” He looked up at the sky. Dawn was only minutes away. “Get going. Do whatever’s necessary to get these people. I want them, and the sooner, the better.”

  “What about the body?” asked Arthurs hesitantly. “We can’t really pass it off as an accident with a missing hand.”

  “I’ll take care of it. Now get going!” He pointed at the gates of the college.

  Arthurs swallowed. “Yes, sir. But the professor’s office? My men are still...”

  “Call them.”

  “James!” Arthurs yelled quickly. “Jeffrey!” The two henchmen appeared almost instantly. “Are you done in there yet?”

  “Just now.”

  Arthurs glanced at Solomon. The younger man returned his gaze steadily. Magick could be very subtle. Arthurs turned and headed for the gates. “Come on.” The henchmen followed him. Solomon waited until they were gone before drawing a deep breath and turning back to the professor’s body. Damn Arthurs! Damn him for being the most incompetent, fuck-up

  excuse for an investigator!

  Unfortunately, there wasn’t anyone better among the Bandog that he could use as easily, Certainly there was the police detective, but he would have needed to use the department’s resources, and the last thing Solomon wanted was a rumor of murder even accidentally leaking to any other members of the Bandog. Until whoever was responsible for these murders was caught, the rest of the Bandog couldn’t know the truth about what was happening. At least Arthurs intimately understood the need for secrecy and had contacts who also preferred to remain in the shadows.

  Solomon seized the professor’s body. Now that it was so conspicuously mutilated, there was no way he would be able to make the death look like an accident, much less a suicide. He would have to get rid of the corpse. Muscles straining, he lugged it over to the base of a tree, a stately old maple that stood nearby. He reached up and took a gold earring out of his ear. The shaft of the earring was needle-sharp; he jabbed it into his thumb and watched as bright red blood welled up. Solomon reached over the professor’s body and smeared the blood down the bark of the maple. He shook a few more drops onto the body. Then he stood back.

  The tree shivered, the body at its base shifting. There was a groaning, like thick branches in the wind, followed by a quiet whispering, like worms in the soil of a graveyard. The earth around the maple churned suddenly as the tree’s roots — first the delicate, threadlike rootlets, then older and heavier roots — came up out of the ground, flailing hungrily. Solomon took another step back just to be safe.

  But the roots found the body before they ever would have found him. They seized the corpse. Earth moved, the dirt sliding aside like water. The roots dragged the professor’s body down to feed the tree. The sod filled back in as though it had never been disturbed. In only a few moments, the professor’s last earthly remains had effectively vanished. Solomon turned
away. He no longer had the respect for trees that his earliest teachers had tried to instill in him, but they still had their uses.

  , If only his magick could have uncovered the killers as easily as it could reshape or dispose of the victims’ bodies. And he could hardly go for help to another of the scattered mages he knew lurked in Toronto. He would have been destroyed on sight as barabbi — a traitor to the mages of the conservative Traditions. Someone who had chosen to follow the dark paths to power.

  And approaching another Nephandus mage would be the same as begging to be taken down in his moment of weakness.

  Solomon walked out of the college, shutting the gates behind himself with a heavy clang. David, ever obedient, still had the car running. He opened the door for Solomon, then closed it after him and walked around to the driver’s seat. He slid in behind the steering wheel, tall, blond, and impassive as the rising sun. Solomon looked out through the heavily tinted windows and drummed his fingers on the door panel. David glanced at him. “I saw Arthurs come out holding a hand.”

  “We may have a lead, David,” Solomon told him shortly.

  David nodded and put the car in gear, turning tightly on the narrow street to point the car north and home. “A lead would be good,” he commented. “The Bandog are getting restless.”

  Solomon jerked his head up. “How did they find out about the murders?”

  “They haven’t. But they’ve all seen enough by now to be suspicious when two of their number commit suicide.” David turned a comer. “I overheard several of them talking before the last Rite. Some believe it was suicide, that Rooke and Harris just couldn’t stand it anymore. They’re beginning to look for signs of weakness in themselves. Others are wondering if there really might be something more going on than suicide.” “They’re going to be wondering even more, then. The professor has just gone missing.”

  “Ah.” David was silent, then added, “In any event, their commitment and belief are wavering. They’re losing faith in Shaftiel.”