Silver Knight
“You want to know what’s really nuts?” She nodded in response to my question. “The Light House that I bought in New York in the 1930s is on the same street as the house he bought in 1912.”
“Wow.” She didn’t actually say it, just mouthed it.
“Yep, wow,” I said nodding.
“If he loved you, how could he kill you?”
“I know! That's the real question. But, I guess, since I asked him to, I shouldn't really blame him for that one.”
She nodded. “Okay, let’s get through customs and go home.”
We all hugged Helen goodbye at JFK. She was going to the Light House to meet the others, while we went to catch our connecting flight. I thought that she just wanted to meet Jarret, but she smiled at my suggestion and promised to keep in touch.
I really looked forward to a calm and peaceful summer. I would turn 18 and get the AA book vote completed. No demons allowed.
Epilogue
The first day of school—the first day of senior year! Not quite the first day of the rest of our lives yet, but getting closer all the time. Unfortunately, today would be difficult. A few weeks after we got back from Italy, Maggie had called with sad news. Our vice principal, Mr. Jakes had been involved in a fatal car accident, and many of the students didn’t know it yet.
It had been a one car accident in which he’d lost control, side swiped a barricade, and then gone over the edge to slam head-on into an oak tree. He apparently hadn’t been wearing a seatbelt because he’d been thrown from the vehicle and had suffered extensive head and chest injuries. Tommy had been routed home from basic training for the memorial service, and Sam spent as much time as possible with him.
Sam, Maggie and I got out of his truck and headed to our homeroom long before the tardy bell could ring. Unbelievably, we all had homeroom together this year. The rest of my schedule included Sam in Government and Maggie in English and pre-cal, and we all had the third lunch wave. I was on my own in Chemistry, which meant I was probably doomed to fail that particularly gruesome subject.
When we chose seats as close to the back as possible, Allie Newton leaned close to say, “Hey, did you hear we got a new assistant principal? For an older guy he’s kinda cute. He even has an earring. But he’s way strict. I heard he took up seven cells before the first bell!”
“How’d we get a new VP so fast?” Sam wondered.
“You heard that Mr. Jakes had an accident?” Allie asked him.
“Yeah, Tommy called me over the summer when it happened.” Sam had been depressed, and we’d all gone together to see Tommy.
“Is it true he’d been drinking?” Allie asked. She loved gossip and was always an excellent source if you needed to know what was going on around the school.
“No, I don’t think it’s true,” I answered. “They are going to do an autopsy to determine the cause, but Tommy said that he’d been having heart trouble, so they think it was a heart attack.”
“Oh.”
“Well, I hate to bring it up,” Maggie said pausing to clear her throat, “but who are we going to get to sponsor Authors Abound?” Mr. Jakes had been our sponsor for the last three years. He’d always been the hands-off type and let us read pretty much what we wanted.
“Maybe Mr. Mason,” I suggested.
“Are you kidding? Mason would never let us read Lord of the Rings. He’d insist on something like Moby Dick,” Sam said disgustedly.
“What about Johnson?” Maggie asked hopefully.
“No, she said she wasn’t going to donate any of her free time for clubs this year. She did that singing group last year who never showed up, leaving her waiting around, and she was really annoyed. I heard her chew a couple of them out royally,” I told them.
“We’ll think of somebody,” Maggie said as Mr. Mason entered the room to call roll.
When lunch time arrived, I grabbed a Coca-Cola. I was making my way to the concourse to meet Sam and Maggie, when I heard the principal, Mr. Fredrickson, call out to me as I passed the door to his office. His office was set up with his desk opposite the door so that he could always see out with two chairs facing him on the other side. I knew that along the currently hidden far right wall there was a bank of file cabinets and behind the door a coat rack stood where he always placed his jacket and an extra umbrella.
“Diana, can you come in here a moment, please?” I skidded to a halt, and as I backtracked, heard him say, “This is the student I was just mentioning who is our book club president.”
“Yes, sir?” I paused just outside his door. I saw a woman with shoulder-length brown hair pulled back in a low ponytail sitting in the chair opposite him with her back to me. As she turned to look at me, I saw that she was wearing a white button-down shirt tucked into black pants. My eyes flicked in surprise to a gun at her waist then back to Mr. Fredrickson as he continued to talk.
“I was going to send for you after lunch, but please give me a few moments now. I don’t know if you’ve heard about Mr. Jakes?” he asked me, so I nodded. “Well, there is going to be an investigation, and I’m afraid you and the other book club members are going to be questioned.”
“Investigation? But I thought it was a car accident,” I said, completely confused.
“Yes, well, it may not have been Mr. Jakes’ fault and that’s part of what the investigation is regarding. The team investigating it is here now, so I wanted to introduce you to Detectives Reynolds and Black,” he gestured at the woman and then to the side of his office that I couldn’t see. I nodded to the woman and stepped forward to look at the other detective. And there he was, in the principal’s office, Alex Black.
When my eyes met his, he smiled, “Nice to meet you, Miss Knight.”
Preview of Silver Demon
Silver Demon
Book 2 in The Silver Series
By
Caron Rider
Preface
Sometimes our fears are without visible cause, sometimes not. But everyone, everyone is afraid of the dark. You leave a person long enough without any source of light, in complete and utter darkness, and you leave a person who will slowly lose his sanity. The person might know intellectually that he is in a room by himself with only one door and no windows. He knows—he knows that nothing could have gotten into the room with him without his knowledge, but eventually, he will begin to hear a scrabbling, a light scratching, maybe the softest cough of sound. His heart rate will increase and then it’s impossible to hear anything over the thudding, which only increases the anxiety.
Scientists feel that our dread of the dark is genetically hardwired—evolution at work. In the dark, there were, and still are, predators. Our terror gave us the edge to survive they think. No disagreement here, the Dark is real and we should fear it. But most disagree and term it ‘imagination.’ Little do they know.
The very Dark itself is our enemy. It tries to crush the pinpricks of light spread throughout its domain, but nothing seems to eradicate it! Where one is snuffed out, another begins. The battle lines were drawn eons ago as creatures of the Dark defend themselves against those of the Light.
1 Murder Most Foul
1068 CE
The castle of Black Oaks squatted atop the cliff as if it were a vulture waiting to swoop down and devour the dead below. An icy wind howled its way around the sharp stone corners. Its thick walls would be difficult to breach during a battle, not impossible, but extremely difficult. Opponents could try to dig under it and trigger the wall to collapse, thereby granting access.
However, its location on the cliff face left only three sides to attack, and the ground appeared to be solid rock once you reached a certain depth. So maybe that wasn’t even an option. The only thing left would be to starve the population out…siege, a long and drawn out process. But there was no battle and no siege at the moment, though others had tried and failed in the past.
I rubbed my thin arms as the bitter cold from outside blasted in with the opening of the door. I had been fortunat
e last night. As a reward for recovering a pig from a narrow, rocky crevice, I had been allowed to sleep next to the fire on the stone floor of the kitchen. It was the warmest place in the castle. Usually I was in the barn with the sheep or up in a hayloft.
I preferred to sleep alone because if I woke up screaming when the demons killed me in my dreams, people were frightened and thought that maybe the devil had his evil eye upon me. I learned early that I could lose my life if they thought the devil influenced me.
Later in the day, I took kitchen scraps out to the barn for the pigs. While I was there, crouched down in one of the stalls along a wall, teasing a little kitten with a bit of straw, I smelled it! A demon was in the barn with me! While I’d never met with a demon in this life, there was no mistaking the smell. Although, as I sniffed, I realized the odor was sort of faint. So perhaps it was outside the barn.
Just then Baron Chadwick spoke from the other side of the wall. I had been around the Baron all my life, all twelve summers of it. He was the one who gave me permission to sleep in the kitchen. The cook called me a scamp and others a rascal but usually with a smile, so I had had the run of the castle my entire life. The master would have been surprised at my knowledge of the passageways and rooms within his fortress.
When I was younger, one of my first chores had been to clean the fireplace in his study. It was where he conducted his business with the tenants and visitors. One day when I was alone with my task, I noticed a silver knife on his desk. I had seen him use it to remove wax seals from documents. I am ashamed to say I stole it, nevertheless I did. I would never find another silver weapon, and while it might mean my death if anyone discovered it on me, it would also mean my death if I did not have it should I meet with a demon.
So I hid it in the bundle of rags I wore for warmth. I never heard an alarm sound over the theft. Could it be that he never noticed something so valuable go missing? What must it be like to be so wealthy that a costly item could be lost and easily exchanged for something else equally expensive?
I clutched at the handle through my clothing. I wanted desperately to pull it out and jab it into the master’s friend, for that is where the smell came from. But if I attacked in front of witnesses, it would mean my certain death even if I triumphed. They would see it as some evil sorcery should he explode into a cloud of inky, black smoke.
I knew which room he had been given to sleep in. He had been placed in a chamber designated for high-ranking guests furnished with the best to create the most comfort. The room was special in one other way as well. When cleaning the massive fireplace, I discovered a hidden compartment. I had stood within the fireplace to scrub off the black soot as high as I could reach up the chimney.
When facing the bedroom, my hand passed over a slightly larger bump on one of the bricks. Thinking that something was stuck to it, I pushed with all my might trying to remove it. Instead, it pushed inward, and I heard a sharp clicking noise to the side. A brick swung loose almost out of my reach.
It took only a moment to pull a footstool within the fireplace so that I could see within the hidden niche. It contained a tiny leather bag tied closed with a thong. I pried the knot loose with the tip of my dagger to reveal a square-cut emerald ring surrounded on the sides by tiny pear shaped diamonds. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
I took it to the window to look at it in the sunlight and watched the radiance glisten around the ring as I moved it. A noise sounded from the hallway, and I almost dropped it! Quickly I put it back in its bag, tied it up, and returned it to the compartment. I often thought of the ring throughout day, but never would I pull it out again for fear of being caught.
I knew I must wait until everyone slept in order to attack the demon. When the time came, I quietly made my way out of the barn, so no one saw me. Hopefully, he would not require one of the maids to sleep with him. That would be awkward.
The darkness of night could not stop me, though I was cold to the bone. I crept up one of the back staircases and slipped down the hall to his bedroom, taking cover wherever it was offered—behind a table, a dresser, even once behind a tapestry. At his door, I listened. Nothing. I gently eased it open and stepped into the room, closing the door quietly.
A fire barely crackled in the grate but gave off enough light to see the furnishings dimly. The bed had the hangings closed except on the side facing the fire. From my position, it was just a shadow darkened cave. I tiptoed over to the foot of the bed and paused, allowing my eyes to adjust to the murky interior. I could hear him breathing! Slow, steady breaths. It sounded as if he was alone, close to my side of the bed.
As I moved toward the head of the bed along its edge, I could see a glimmer of reflected firelight on the skin of his arm above the blankets. It was odd. Even with the fire, bitter cold permeated the room. I would have thought he would keep his arms under the blankets. Getting ready to pounce, I grasped the knife handle with a firmer grip. As I lifted the dagger above my head, his long arm reached out to grab me by my other arm. He hauled me across his body to the other side of the bed as he sat up.
Without thinking, I jabbed the knife into his midriff, feeling it sink in several inches. There was a sharp hissing sound of in drawn breath and then an explosive oath. He released me long enough to grab the hilt of the knife and wrench it from his side before flinging it across the room. I heard it clatter against the stone hearth. I struggled to free myself, trying to slither off the far side of the bed, but he grabbed hold of my ankle and pulled me back. Then he was upon me with his forearm across my throat, crushing the life out of me. And without ever speaking to me, Alexander had killed me again.
* * * *
The Present
I was unconsciously clutching at my throat when I entered the library at the end of the first day of school. My heart began to beat frantically in anticipation of what was to come. A mere hour and a half earlier, I had discovered that Detectives Reynolds and Black would be meeting with our book club, Authors Abound, today. They had questions about the fatal auto accident of our assistant principal and book club sponsor, Mr. Jakes, which happened this past July.
However, Detective Black was actually the demon, Alexander, who through the centuries had killed me more times than I cared to think about, but who had also saved my life at the beginning of the past summer. Along with other warriors for the Light, Solomon, David, Helen, and Jarret, and my friends Maggie and Sam, I had gone to Rome at the request of Bishop Soratino to fight demons in the catacombs. Mission accomplished, sort of.
I had survived that meeting with him. Would I survive this one? I just couldn’t think straight, and when I looked at my hands, they were still shaking. What was he doing here?
The AA club was meeting to learn the outcome of our email vote taken during the summer to determine what we would read first for the year. The chairs were already in a circle with the gang all there: Sam and Maggie good-naturedly arguing; Vera looking at her phone with Rob watching her; Gabby laughing along with Amy at something Manning said.
“Okay, guys, hands down The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien was the winner of the summer vote,” I said as I came up. As she’d voted for Percy Jackson, Vera looked a little aggravated at the outcome. I’d have to make sure we read something other than Tolkien all year long, or she might flip out. I saw Rob reach out and touch her shoulder, causing her to give him a small smile.
“Hey, where were you at lunch today?” Maggie asked.
“I was talking with Fredrickson and two detectives.” Fortunately my voice was pretty steady, unlike my hands. I’d missed lunch so maybe it was a case of low blood sugar causing my shaky hands. No…probably not.
“Detectives?” Maggie raised her eyebrows. I had gained everyone’s attention.
“Yes. They are coming to talk with all of us today. They should be here any minute. Detectives Reynolds and Black…Alexander Black,” I added quietly with a meaningful look at Sam and Maggie as the others burst out talking at once. The
ir eyes widened, and when Maggie drew in a breath to ask another question, I shook my head slightly.
“About what?” Rob asked.
“They are investigating the death of Mr. Jakes.” As I finished the statement, the detectives walked in with Principal Fredrickson.
“Afternoon students. These are Detectives Black and Reynolds.” Mr. Fredrickson introduced them to us. Alex’s eyes flicked around the circle, finally resting back on me. I didn’t want to keep looking at him but was afraid not to watch him to see what he was going to do. After one quick look at his face, I focused on his blue and white striped tie. I was afraid that I might have a ‘deer in the headlights’ look on my face and tried to regulate my heartbeat.
Det. Reynolds’ eyes seemed to hold the suspicion that all adults hold for teenagers as she looked around the circle. “Hi, everyone. We are conducting a routine investigation regarding Mr. Jakes’ accident.” As she assumed the lead, Alex stood behind her shoulder. Sam started to smile at him, but he shook his head at him.
“Investigation? Is this involving those murders?” Manning asked her and she narrowed her eyes, glancing back at Alex. There had been a rash of unsolved murders lately that had been causing some concern among parents. The PTA had created a Best Practices guidelines form and prominently posted it throughout the school for our first day back.
Alex smiled and quietly said, “I told you.”
With a nod of her head, she answered, “We think that’s a possibility. Can any of you think of anyone who might have wanted to hurt Mr. Jakes?” We all looked around the circle at each other and then shook our heads.
“But I thought he was in a car accident. How could that be related to those other murders?” Gabby asked. Our newest and youngest member of AA seemed pretty sharp. I found myself liking her more and more by the minute. She was a petite little blonde, barely topping five feet.