The Myth Hunters Read online

Page 10

  “Has it always been that way? The law, I mean?” he asked. “Have they always killed Intruders?”

  “Always,” the winter man said. “The only way to protect this world is to keep it hidden behind the Veil. ”

  Oliver nodded. So that was the end of it. This was his journey and he would have to forge ahead. He would have to learn whatever he could about the Two Kingdoms if he intended to survive. There was no choice.

  “What of Professor Koenig?” Kitsune asked, turning at last to look at them, one eyebrow arched.

  The winter man knitted his brows so tightly that the ice in his forehead crackled. “Surely that’s only a story. Our own sort of legend. ”

  “Not at all,” Kitsune purred. “I met him once, long years ago. ”

  “Who’s Professor Koenig?” Oliver glanced past Frost at Kitsune, but it was the winter man who answered.

  “Just a man. A human historian, a folklorist, whose research led him to ask the right questions. The legend says he convinced a Borderkind to open a portal for him, so that he could explore our side of the Veil. That is, if you believe the tale. According to the story, he was the one Intruder who discovered our existence and was allowed to live. ”

  “But why? Why him?”

  Kitsune pushed back her hood for the first time since they had encountered her, and her black silk hair gleamed in the sun. “That part of the story I do not know. ”

  “Well, that’s what I need to find out,” Oliver said, a rush of fresh energy filling him. “If I can find this professor, and learn why they spared him, maybe I can get them to forget about me, to leave me alone. ”

  “He would be very old now,” Kitsune said dubiously.

  “But he could still be alive,” Oliver argued.

  “Perhaps,” Frost said, nodding slowly as he walked between them. “You would still have the Hunters to fear, but that’s a problem we face together. After we’ve rested at the Sandmen’s castle, we shall continue on to Perinthia—”

  “Where?”

  “The capital of Euphrasia, which is one of the Two Kingdoms. In Perinthia, Kitsune and I will try to discover who has set these Hunters after the Borderkind, and we may be able to learn the whereabouts of Professor Koenig. ”

  The winter man narrowed his eyes and gave Oliver a meaningful look, which Kitsune could not see. “If he is not only a legend. ”

  “Haven’t I told you he’s real?” Kitsune asked. “How ironic that you, who so many believe a figment of the imagination, treat the existence of this mortal man just as his kin would treat you. ”

  Frost said nothing at first, only walked along. At length he glanced over to regard Kitsune and she arched a mischievous eyebrow.

  “We shall see,” the winter man said.

  But a spark of hope had been born in Oliver. If there was a chance he could be spared, no matter how small, he had no choice but to pursue it. If one man had gone through the Veil and lived, then it could be done again.

  So involved was he in these thoughts that he did not notice at first that his companions had stopped, and he took two long strides past them before coming to a halt himself. They had crested the top of the hill with those ragged, bent trees on either side of the Truce Road, and he was about to ask what had prompted them to stop when he saw it. On the eastern side of the road the scrub brush gave way to sand.

  Nothing but sand.

  It stretched for nearly a mile, sculpted into large dunes that seemed almost like waves on an ocean, all of them leading up to the base of an enormous walled fortress, with a castle rising up from the keep at the center.

  And all of it made of sand.

  Against the blue painted sky, the sand seemed almost golden.

  “It’s . . . I never . . . ” Oliver muttered.

  But his awe was crushed by the winter man’s next words. “This is troubling,” Frost said, his tone as chilling as his touch.

  Oliver began to ask what he meant, but as he did so he turned and saw that it was not the sight of the Sandmen’s castle that had caused his companions to stop. Kitsune left the Truce Road, no trace of her passing in the dirt, and walked into the trees. As she stared upward, she did a curious thing. Kitsune raised her hood to hide her face.

  Impaled upon a thick tree limb was a withered, gnarled old man clad in green so dark it was nearly black. Where the branch had burst out of his chest his shirt was torn and broken bones jutted out. Only there was no blood. Instead, sand had spilled from the wound. Even now, as the wind swirled around him, it sifted from his corpse and scattered the ground. There were heavy boots on his feet that seemed made of rough iron.

  Kitsune dropped to one knee at the base of the tree and picked up something red. She spread it open with her fingers and Oliver saw that it was some kind of hat.

  “What is it?” he asked, afraid that he knew the answer.

  “One of the Sandmen,” Frost replied, gaze shifting from the impaled creature over to the distant castle and then back again.

  “So . . . what now?”

  The winter man turned to him, then away. And then he started walking.

  “We go and see if any are left alive, and give what help we may. ”

  Oliver stared after him. He glanced at Kitsune, but she did not even look at him as she pulled her cloak more tightly around her and started after Frost.

  “What if the Hunters are still there?” Oliver asked, for certainly that was what had happened here. The Sandmen were Borderkind. If one of them had been murdered, he couldn’t imagine any other reason.

  “Then there may be time to save some of the Bloody Caps. Every Borderkind who is killed is an ally we have lost. If the Hunters are still at the castle, then we must fight them. ”

  An image of the Falconer swam into Oliver’s mind and he felt sick.

  “I don’t suppose either one of you carries a gun. ”

  Neither Frost nor Kitsune bothered to reply. They simply kept walking toward the sand dunes— that magical desert so out of place in this landscape— and the fortress beyond. Oliver wished he had a weapon. Any weapon. The last thing in the world he wanted to do was go up to that castle.

  He glanced at the creature impaled upon that tree, and at the red cap on the side of the dirt road.

  Then he ran to catch up.

  CHAPTER 5

  Not even a triple espresso could make Ted Halliwell happy this morning. Kitteridge, Maine, was a beautiful town, replete with both wealth and the culture that had made it an artists’ colony for decades before the artists couldn’t afford to live there anymore. Their work was still shown in the galleries, but the artists themselves lived inland, or much farther north.

  This morning the town was more picturesque than he had ever seen it. It was, in his estimation, the kind of thing that would’ve given Norman Rockwell a raging hard-on, Americana at its best. The blizzard that had swept through the night before hadn’t stuck around long enough to do serious damage, but it had made a hell of a mess. It wasn’t even half-past nine yet and already there were kids all over town firing snowballs at one another— and at passing cars— building snowmen and forts and making snow angels. They were chasing one another, screaming with pleasure, faces red, brightly colored hats pulled over their heads. It was the Saturday Evening Post come to life. Ted was old enough to remember the Saturday Evening Post, though just barely. But there was nothing cheery about this excursion into Rockwell’s America.

  “You’re awfully grumpy this morning, Halliwell,” he muttered to himself. Fortunately, there was no answer. He had always told his wife, Jocelyn, that it was okay for him to talk to himself as long as he didn’t get an answer back. When he started having a two-way conversation with himself, that would be trouble.

  Once upon a time she had found that sort of thing funny. But Jocelyn had been gone from Halliwell’s life, and from Maine entirely, for seven years now. His daughter, Sara, was living in Atlanta, Georgia, and he only heard from her every couple of m
onths, at best. Ted Halliwell had just turned fifty-three, but already he was a cantankerous old man. It was an image he cultivated. It gave him a certain satisfaction. People in Wessex County knew him and remembered him. That wasn’t much, but it was something.

  The plows had done a poor job this morning and even busy roads were only wide enough for about a car and a half. The one positive effect of their sloppiness was that people were forced to drive slowly. With an inch or so of hardpack on the street that the plows hadn’t been able to get up, and the sun already out, just warm enough to make it all even more slippery, driving fast would have been foolhardy. Even so, Halliwell cursed under his breath at the plow in front of him. Seemingly in answer, the lumbering truck started spraying sand and salt out the back, spattering his grill and hood like buckshot.

  He had Harry Connick, Jr. , singing Christmas songs from the car speakers, something that might have hurt his curmudgeonly image if anyone else were in the car. But Detective Halliwell had decided not to bother rousing anyone else today. Bad enough the sheriff had personally called him in, but Ted didn’t want to ruin anyone else’s day just because his own was shot to hell.

  So he sipped his espresso and tried to let a little bit of Christmas cheer relax him, resisting the urge to pull his service weapon and fire a few rounds at the plow in front of him. When at last he came to Rose Ridge Lane, he cursed the plow driver’s mother and father and took the right turn. Some of the houses on Rose Ridge Lane were visible from the street, but others were hidden in the woods, amongst the evergreens. The driveways were, of course, almost entirely cleared of snow. The people who lived on that street had the money to hire plows that would come to their homes first, and do an almost surgical removal, so that the snow cliff that was left on either side of the driveway was smooth and sheer as a concrete wall.

  The last driveway on the left-hand side of Rose Ridge Lane— the ocean side— belonged to Max Bascombe. Halliwell had nothing against Bascombe. The one time they had met the man had seemed fairly pleasant and not nearly as pompous as might be expected of the absurdly rich. But if Bascombe had a problem, it was a Kitteridge P. D. problem, not a sheriff’s department problem. Bascombe, of course, didn’t see it that way. He figured his money had helped get the sheriff elected and that meant he was owed a few favors.

  Ted Halliwell had somehow become one of those favors.

  Sheriff couldn’t have sent the old man a hooker or a box of chocolates? he thought as he guided the car through a serpentine weaving of pavement.

  He emerged from the tree-lined path and pulled into a circular drive in front of the house; the sort of thing one saw at hotels in the mountains or English manor homes. Halliwell put on the brakes and for a moment he just stared at the property. Both the enormous main house with its sprawling wings and the small carriage house that could be seen just to the north were decorated with Christmas lights. With the pristine new-fallen snow and those lights, and the ocean behind it, the place looked like a postcard.

  How much money had Max Bascombe donated to the sheriff’s campaign? Now that he’d seen the extent of the man’s wealth, Halliwell had to wonder. Maybe enough that sending his primary detective off like some errand boy was a small favor in comparison.

  “All right,” he muttered as he pulled up in front of the house and killed the engine. “I can play the game. ”

  Ted had been a Maine state trooper during his youth and had risen to the rank of detective there. Eventually, though, he had wanted to stay closer to the town where he’d grown up, and putting his skills to work for Wessex County had simply made sense. Folks out of state were often surprised to find that there even were detectives in places like this, and often assumed that they must not be very good at their jobs if they weren’t working in some big city. Halliwell ignored such moronic attitudes. He was good at his job.

  But today, his job was a waste of time.

  He got out of the car and walked up to the front of the house. Before he had even reached the steps, the door opened to reveal a neatly put-together little man with soft, kind features. Even if Halliwell had never met him, there was no way he would have thought this guy was Max Bascombe.

  “You’re the detective?” the man asked, a European accent to his words that Ted couldn’t identify. Swedish or something, maybe. He wanted to ask the man if the car had given him away. Instead he nodded and mounted the steps in three quick strides.

  “Ted Halliwell. ”

  The little man stepped back and opened the door for him to enter. “Thank you for coming, Detective Halliwell. My name is George Friedle. I work for Mr. Bascombe. He and his daughter, Collette, are in the kitchen. If you’ll wait in the sitting room I’ll let them know that you’re here. ”

  Halliwell thanked him and watched the man disappear into the back of the house. Then he blinked and glanced around, trying for a moment to figure out what the hell a sitting room was and where he would find one. He grunted in amusement and scratched at the back of his head, where his salt-and-pepper hair was buzzed down to a velvety scruff. A grandfather clock in the hall caught his attention and as he walked toward it he peered into the room beyond it, to the left of the foyer. There was a massive brick fireplace there, paintings of old frigates and schooners under sail, and heavy furniture in deep, rich colors. It was the type of room that ought to have been filled with a bunch of guys in tuxedoes, drinking martinis and smoking fat cigars.

  “Detective Halliwell. ”

  Ted turned toward the entrance of the room to see that Max Bascombe had appeared alone. The little man, Friedle, had apparently gone on to do whatever it was he did in the house, and now it was just the two of them. Halliwell was tall. Bascombe was taller. The attorney was well into his sixties, if Ted’s information was correct, but he did not look anywhere near it. He was broad-shouldered but trim, with serious features but an air of health that only came from regular exercise. And more than just a weekly stroll on the golf course. The detective wondered if he’d make that kind of effort to stay in shape if he had Bascombe’s money. He doubted it.