The Myth Hunters (The Veil #1)

The Myth Hunters (The Veil #1) Page 46

Halliwell had taken time to warm up to her. Julianna could not blame him. The feeling was mutual. In truth, they were awkward companions, not at all comfortable with each other. They did, however, talk quite a bit about the murders and disappearances and Halliwell had clearly been surprised to discover that she was not the society girl he had first taken her for. Julianna was glad, not because she felt she had something to prove— fuck that, she had earned her degree and her reputation as an investigator for the firm— but because it made the job easier if Halliwell respected her.

His drawing of connections between the child murders scattered around the world and the killing of Max Bascombe disturbed her deeply. So much so that she did not want to discuss it with him after their initial conversation. What was the point? Until they learned something new, it was a puzzle they could not complete.

But she had begun to understand Halliwell’s obsession with Oliver and the unknown associates he had been seen with in Cottingsley and in London . . . and back in Mallaig.

Buried in a thick winter jacket, she felt nevertheless as though she might freeze to death. Exhaustion and the cold of the storm and the ocean were wearing her down. But soon they would have reached their goal, and the thought warmed her. They were coming up on Canna Island now, so Halliwell had left the cabin of the fishing boat and gone out on the deck, trying to see through the snow. It was shortly after noon, local time, but the sun was nowhere in sight. The sky was nothing but gray storm clouds, an eternal winter twilight.

“Now, you promised we wouldn’t be out here for long, miss. I won’t forget that promise. Every minute I’m away, my Moira will worry.”

Julianna smiled wearily. “You’re fortunate to have someone to worry for you.”

When he smiled, the otherwise plain, unkempt-looking man was almost handsome. Julianna hoped that he used the extra money to make his life with Moira just a little better.

Halliwell came back to the cabin, snow covering his shoulders and hair. His lips were drawn back and his teeth chattered with the cold. “I see the boat up ahead. But it’s pulling away from the dock.”

Julianna got up from the bench where she’d been sitting. She peered out through the windshield of the cabin but could barely make anything out through the snow. She shot a panicked look at Halliwell.

“We’ve got to beat them back there,” she said.

The detective ran a hand over the gray stubble on his chin, bracing himself against the door of the cabin. He pointed to the radio. “Mr. Strachan, could you radio Mr. Moncreiffe, please?”

The bartender/fisherman, Strachan, nodded and picked up the handset. Before they’d set out, he had contacted Moncreiffe by radio and through the static caused by the storm had confirmed that the charter boat had carried Oliver and two companions out to Canna Island and that Moncreiffe was awaiting their return. They’d asked the man to delay, to hold off on returning to the mainland until they reached the island.

“Barc, it’s Keith Strachan again, do you read me?”

There was static on the radio and for a long moment Julianna held her breath, wondering what was happening out there in the storm, what had brought Oliver to this island. Then there was a break in the static.

“Hullo, Keith, I’m heading home,” the captain of the other boat replied.

“What of your passengers, Barc?”

More static. A hiss, as though the storm itself were talking through the radio. Then Moncreiffe replied. “Told them I wanted to be back by noon. Stayed much longer than I agreed to and the storm is getting worse by the minute. They can spend the night with one of the island folks and I’ll run out to get them in the morning.”

Strachan gave Halliwell an expectant look, and the detective nodded.

“Thank you, Barc. Safe journey.”

“And you, Keith. I’ll save you a spot at the pub, shall I?”

Strachan replied but all they heard afterward was static. The other boat passed them near enough to make out in the snow and then disappeared behind them.

Minutes later they were idling next to the dock, Halliwell and Strachan working together to tie the boat up. Julianna pulled her scarf tighter around her neck and tucked it into her jacket, then pulled her wool hat down over her ears as far as she could. Detective Halliwell seemed almost to have forgotten she was there, his eyes gazing into the snow toward the village that was supposed to be there.

“Do you smell smoke?” he asked.

Julianna nodded. She had noticed it a moment earlier. There was a fire in the village.

Halliwell looked down at her. His attitude toward her had gone from doubt to tacit acceptance, even respect. Now, for the first time, she saw concern in his eyes.

“If you’re thinking of asking me to stay on the boat, forget it.”

He grinned tiredly and nodded. “All right. We’ll forget it.” Then Halliwell stepped off onto the dock and reached back to help her across. Julianna didn’t need the help, but appreciated the gallantry, and so she let him.

They turned toward Strachan.

“Two thousand pounds is a lot of money,” Julianna told the scruffy man.

“I won’t be leaving you here like Barclay Moncreiffe. You’ve my word.”

Julianna thanked him and started up the dock with Halliwell. The wind blew, carrying the smell of smoke, which was stronger as they stepped onto the Isle of Canna. Through the snow they could make out the steeples of churches a short distance away and they began to trek toward the village in what Julianna guessed was half a foot or more of new-fallen snow.

They had gone less than a hundred yards when Halliwell took her arm and halted her. Julianna had ducked her head down to keep the snow from her eyes, but now she looked up.

Four figures moved toward them through the storm. One of them was a woman in a long fur cloak. Beside her was a man with feathers in his hair. Oliver was with them. And there was a man made entirely of ice. She would have thought him a statue if not for the fact that he was walking toward her, moving through the storm, leading the others. Leading Oliver.

Here he was, at last. Her love. But Julianna found herself afraid to call his name.

Then the man made of ice lifted a hand and the air beside him shimmered. The four of them walked into that shimmering air, and they disappeared.

Oliver had vanished again.

“No,” Julianna heard herself say. “What just . . . where did they go?” Slowly she turned to Halliwell and she saw cold anger in his eyes.

“I don’t know. But wherever it is, we’re going to find a way to follow.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CHRISTOPHER GOLDEN is the award-winning, Los Angeles Times bestselling author of such novels as Of Saints and Shadows, The Ferryman, Strangewood, The Gathering Dark, and the Body of Evidence series of teen thrillers. Working with actress/writer/director Amber Benson, he cocreated and cowrote Ghosts of Albion, an animated supernatural drama for BBC online.

Golden has also written or cowritten several books and comic books related to the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, as well as the scripts for two Buffy the Vampire Slayer video games. His recent comic book work includes the creator-owned The Sisterhood and DC Comics’ Doctor Fate: The Curse.

As a pop-culture journalist, he was the editor of the Bram Stoker Award–winning book of criticism CUT!: Horror Writers on Horror Film, and coauthor of The Stephen King Universe.

Golden was born and raised in Massachusetts, where he still lives with his family. He graduated from Tufts University. There are more than eight million copies of his books in print. Please visit him at www.christophergolden.com.

ALSO BY CHRISTOPHER GOLDEN

WILDWOOD ROAD

THE BOYS ARE BACK IN TOWN

THE FERRYMAN

STRAIGHT ON ’TIL MORNING

STRANGEWOOD

THE SHADOW SAGA

OF SAINTS AND SHADOWS

ANGEL SOULS AND DEVIL HEARTS

OF MASQUES AND MARTYRS

THE GATHERING DUSK

And be sure not to miss

the further adventures of

Oliver and his friends in

THE BORDERKIND

BOOK TWO OF

THE VEIL

CHRISTOPHER GOLDEN

On sale spring 2007

Here’s a special excerpt:

THE BORDERKIND

On sale spring 2007

Fire engulfed the church, radiating such heat that the snow falling around it was vaporized instantly. Julianna Whitney stood a moment and stared at the structure, at the flames eating their way through the roof and licking fiery tongues from the shattered remnants of stained glass windows. Four inches of fresh snow had fallen since the storm began, but this close to the fire it was melting away. The dusting of flakes on her hair turned to beads of moisture as she turned to glance around the little island village.

The church was not the only building on fire. There was another large structure that might once have been an office or shop whose elegantly detailed front porch had now been burned black, embers glowing in the wood. A couple of small cottages were also ablaze.

A handful of people— no more than a dozen— had gathered in the center of the village to watch the conflagration. They hung back as though afraid the fire would engulf them. None of them so much as looked at Julianna, but she frowned as she studied them. She had seen dozens of small houses and cottages. Admittedly, some of them had looked abandoned, but could there really be so few people living on this island?

The gray sky hung low and heavy, and with the blanket of snow muffling all sounds, the whole island had a claustrophobic air. When the sound of cracking wood split the sky, Julianna jumped as though it had been a gunshot.

The roof of the church was buckling. Red embers sprayed into the sky.

A strong hand grabbed her arm and pulled her backward. She let herself be dragged a few steps away from the blazing edifice, then turned to glare at the man who’d taken hold of her. It was Halliwell, his sad eyes dark with confusion.

Julianna shook herself free. “Don’t do that, okay?”

Halliwell gave her a look as cold as the storm. “You were too close.”

Before she could respond there came another crack of wood and then a splintering noise, accompanied by the hiss of the fire. Julianna spun to see the church roof buckle and the steeple fall. It snapped in two, part of it crashing down inside the blazing ruin. The top of the steeple struck the ground only a few feet from where she had been standing, the fire sending up tendrils of steam as it hit the snow.

For a moment she could only stare at the ground, then she let out a shuddering breath and glanced at Halliwell. “Thank you.”

The detective replied with an almost imperceptible shrug, then turned to survey the village, as though he were back in Maine and this was just another case for the sheriff’s department. Halliwell was thus far doing an excellent job of pretending he was undisturbed by what they had seen as they arrived at Canna Island. They’d come halfway around the world in search of Oliver Bascombe. Upon their arrival, they had been rewarded with a brief glimpse of Oliver as he strode toward them— toward the dock— with the fires beginning to burn in the village behind him. But Oliver had not been alone. He had been accompanied by a man with blue feathers in his hair, an Asian woman wearing a copper-red fur cloak, and a man made entirely of ice.

She and Halliwell had not discussed that particular topic, but she was not prone to hallucination. She knew precisely what she had seen, and that man had not been a mirage.

Then the ice man had stretched out a hand and drawn a kind of oval; the air there had begun to shimmer, and Oliver and his companions had simply stepped out of this world, disappearing one after the other.

Halliwell spoke her name. The man was a curmudgeon by nature, gruff and distant. But somehow the events of the previous few minutes had created a connection between them that had not existed before. When he spoke to her now, Halliwell seemed almost gentle.

“Focus,” he said.

Julianna did. “What happened here?”

The detective glanced at the islanders who had gathered. “No idea.” He turned to face them. “My name is Ted Halliwell. I’m a police detective from the U.S. Anyone have any idea how these fires began?”

Blank faces stared back at him. Several people began to whisper to one another. Others started to walk away, eyes averted, as though the last thing they wanted was for Halliwell to talk to them.

Halliwell shook his head as he turned back to her. “Had a feeling that was going to be useless. I know from back home that islanders are xenophobic as hell. But this is different. I think they saw something, all right, but it isn’t just that they don’t want to talk to outsiders about it. They don’t want to talk about it at all.”

“Maybe they just want to forget.” Julianna glanced at the people. Some of them were no more than gray shapes in the storm. More had begun to drift away, going back to their lives. She wondered if any of them had had their homes destroyed, and what they would do about it. No one was coming from the mainland in this storm.

Embers floated and danced with the falling snow.

“Let’s keep looking,” Halliwell said. He stared at Julianna, waiting for her reply. When she nodded, the detective started around the church, moving toward the large building whose beautifully carved porch was little more than charred kindling now.

“Wait!” a voice called.

A lone woman strode toward them even as the other islanders retreated into the storm. Her grim features were cast into even sharper angles by the firelight.

“Do you know what happened here?” Halliwell asked her.

The woman ignored him, focusing on Julianna. “You’d be looking for them what came before you. The young man and his friends— the fox girl and the others.”

Julianna shivered and hugged herself, the thick coat suddenly not enough to protect her from the cold. Or perhaps this chill came from within.

“That’s right,” she said.

“Ma’am, could you tell us what you saw?” Halliwell urged. “It’s not a difficult question.”