Luke Andrew nodded off again and then jerked his head up. He had been studying the archives for days. Something was just not clicking here. There was something terribly wrong with the Red Cross of Gold. His father was not telling him everything and he was not sure if his father even realized that anything was amiss. How could Adar, the Mighty Hunter, recognize this purely human anomaly that was going on? Mark Andrew Ramsay was many things and knew a great deal, but he didn’t know everything and things that were quite normal to him, were completely abstract and impossible to most people. Luke Andrew on the other hand, was half human. He had a better grasp on humanity than his father. De Lyons condition baffled everyone, but there was something that they were missing. Something very ominous. De Lyons was completely human… completely human. His father had been an executive at a bank in Lyons. His mother had been an architect in a very successful drafting firm. They had died together while on vacation in the Alps. Guy de Lyons, like most of the human apprentices taken in by Edgard d' Brouchart, had been an orphan. Well-heeled, but an orphan. Luke yawned and rubbed his eyes as he stared into the computer screen. De Lyons was completely human.
De Lyons was lying in the infirmary in Italy, staring at the ceiling. He had been lying in the infirmary for three weeks. He had collapsed during a workout with the boys at the Academy. They had been practicing with some of Sir Barry’s ancient morning stars and he had simply collapsed. He had not been injured. The boys had testified that he had been in the middle of telling them how to hold the stars properly and then… pow! Gone! And no one could say why or how or where he had gone. Luke looked down at the notes scribbled on the paper in front of him.
Armand de Bleu, gone to the underworld. An elf. Age: 80+
Corrigan, Alexander, gone to the underworld. An elf or whatever. Age: 700+
Lavon de Bleu. Hafling+ Unaffected. Father: John Paul Sinclair-Ramsay—immortal who should not have died! Hafling? Father: Mark Andrew Ramsay or Luke? Or what? Mother: immortal non-human
Konrad von Hetz: Hafling. Unaffected. Age: 30+60 years in underworld = 90+ Father: human Mother: immortal non-human
Louis Champlain: Human, approximate age: 800+. Is he special? Unaffected. Father/Mother: unknown
Edgard d’Brouchart: Definitely not 100% human. Unaffected. Age unknown.
Lucio Dambretti: Human or not? Son of a witch? Son of a king? Reincarnation of Nebucchadnezzar? Unaffected. Age: 800+
Luke Matthew Ramsay: shared womb with Mark Andrew—affected by brother? Completely human, supposedly. Unaffected. Age: 800+
Omar and Lemarik: Not human. Djinni race. Ages unknown.
Christopher Stewart: pulled from second time-line. Former member of strange group associated with Aristoni’s Order. Not old enough. Not yet.
Simon of Grenoble: Double entity. Over 700 years old. Definitely something screwy there. His sons? Simeon holding at 30, hasn’t seemed to age much since. The rest? Too young to tell.
Barry of Sussex: 800+, should have been affected before de Lyons, if theory is correct. Parents of poor, peasant stock.
Barry, Louis… maybe Dambretti. Should have been affected by now. De Lyons too young. Argonne, nuts. Champagne, nuts. Montague, nuts. Beaujold, nuts. De Lyons, kaput. And there were many other examples in the archives. Several of the Knights had died under mysterious circumstances which had been ruled accidental. Some were destroyed in the various wars in which they had participated. These had been dispatched by the Knight of Death. A couple of them had found ways to commit suicide which may have been the results of psychoses of some type. And in the case of all the deceased Knights, their parentage where documented had been merely human.
Jozsef Daniel: where was he? What happened to him? Furthermore, where was Meredith Sinclair-Ramsay? John Paul Sinclair-Ramsay? They couldn’t be dead. Something was very odd here.
Luke wadded up the paper and threw it across the room at his trashcan. What was it? The Order had filled up with people not quite human, it seemed. And where in the world had Nicole Ramsay gotten off to? No one had heard from her in months. That was scary. And the Andrea thing. How had his father pulled that one off? Who had conspired with him to make her appear at the meeting just in time to confuse everyone? Who in the hell was Andrea Larmenius?! Where had she come from? Where had she gone? Had he been entirely wrong about her? Had he assumed that she was actually Mark Andrew when she had been something or someone altogether different? Luke had not dared bring up the subject with his father again. They had talked about telling Lucio the truth about Andrea. Perhaps they had been speaking of two different truths. Was it indeed possible that Andrea had been yet another of his father’s illegitimate offspring? If so, where had she gone?
Edgard had summoned Luke’s father to Italy to confer with him about de Lyons. They were trying to decide what to do about the Knight of the Sword. They had barely been back from Romania a month when this had happened. They would have to decide whether to take de Lyons’ mystery and transfer it to Philip d’Ornan, his apprentice. De Lyons was not dead, but he was not quite alive either.
The phone chirped on the desk and he jumped.
“Hello?” He punched the button without thinking or looking to see who might be calling at two in the morning.
“Luke!” the voice sounded excited.
“Papa?”
“No. Omar.”
“Oh.” Luke sat straight up. “My God! Where are you? Everyone is looking for you! Where is Ruth?!”
“She’s in Port-au-Prince,” Omar sounded elated. “Luke! Great news!”
“You found Bari?”
“No. I found Jozsef Daniel!”
“Really?” Luke glanced about. “Is he… dead?”
“Not yet,” Omar’s voice subsided a bit. “What about… Budapest?”
“Oh, that. Nothing.” Luke slumped. Another thing that bothered him. His father had sworn him to secrecy.
“He got away? Is that true?” Omar asked.
Luke frowned. Omar must have talked to d’Brouchart. He remembered how upset Omar had been the last time he’d heard from him.
“So you are still in Haiti?” Luke did not answer his question.
“Yes. Anna has a plan.”
“Anna?”
“Yes. I can’t talk about it right now. I just wanted you to know that we are all right. Also, I wanted to know about the other… Budapest.”
“Well. He was pretty slick,” Luke hedged. His father had let Aristoni make it. Why, he had no idea. They were supposed to kill him. That had been their mission. But something had happened. “We’ll have to try again, I suppose.”
“No doubt!” Omar agreed. “We’ll worry about that when I get back to New Babylon. By the way, if things work out, I’ll be back in fine form.” He exaggerated these last two words.
“Omar?” Luke’s frown deepened. His eyes felt full of grit. “You’re not planning to confront him personally, are you?”
“It is the only way.”
“He’ll kill you!”
“I won’t take any chances. Where is my great-uncle?”
“Asleep, probably! It’s two AM.”
“Oh. I forgot. I’m going to stop by on my way home.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
“Omar. I have something to discuss with you,” Luke told him impulsively.
“Oh?”
“De Lyons has collapsed. They don’t know what is wrong with him.”
“Collapsed? What do you mean?”
“Just fell out. Three weeks ago. They can’t wake him up. He’s gone.”
“Dead?”
“Not dead. It’s a long story. We need to talk.”
“All right. I’ll be there as soon as possible. Pray for me, Uncle.”
“I will. Go with God!”
“And you.”
The line went dead and Luke stood up, stretching his arms over his head. The big house was very quiet. It was times like these that he felt the house was haunted. Not that he could hear things, but that he could
not hear things. He looked up at the portrait of his mother and father hanging above his desk. His mother smiled at him. She had truly been very beautiful. And she should not be dead! No one had released her soul. Even if she fell from the bell tower and broke her neck, she should still be alive, waiting for the Knight of Death. And they did not know for sure if she had broken her neck. All they knew was that someone on a horse had come and taken her away. It was all screwy.
If John Paul had come from wherever he was and taken his mother away, she was, theoretically, still alive. For that matter, John Paul was still alive. Michael had told him that John Paul had come to Merry and him when they were freezing in the mountain palace after the yellow Ifrit had abandoned them there to die. The boy had said that a Knight on white horse had come and pushed them out a trap door into a lake of mercury. Merry Ramsay had confirmed this story, but Merry had thought it was Luke Matthew. John Paul looked almost exactly like Luke Matthew. But the archives he had been studying indicated that this white Knight had appeared in many visions to many of the Council members even when John Paul had been very much alive and very young. And had, in fact, appeared with John Paul and had been seen with the boy. Either this white Knight was not John Paul at all, or John Paul had not been human at all. And if Michael Ian was a reincarnation of John Paul, then this white Knight was definitely not John Paul and they knew he was not Luke Matthew. Luke Matthew was very much alive and well and living in Lothian, Scotland. And furthermore, Luke Matthew had denied ever entering the snowy castle in the Himalayas in the flesh or otherwise.
The magick protecting the palace had been too strong. Luke rubbed his temples wearily. It was too much. If he kept this up, he was going to collapse like de Lyons.
Flicking off the computer, he made his way downstairs to the kitchen. He needed a snack. He’d forgotten to eat supper. He’d been asleep again for several days prior to waking up on a tear to learn what was going on.
The refrigerator was full of leftovers. The new cook had no doubt gone to bed very angry. There were all sorts of goodies in the shelves and no one had been there to eat except Planxty and Stephano. He pulled out a bowl of some sort of soup and turned around.
“Great Scot!” He almost dropped the bowl on the floor. “Joel! What are you doing here?”
The young man stood in front of him, watching him blandly from dark brown eyes.
“I was hungry,” the boy told him.
“So you came all the way over here for a midnight snack?” Luke frowned at him.
The enigmatic boy lived with Luke Matthew and Merry across the meadow and through the woods at the old McShan place. They had brought him back from America, much to everyone’s surprise.
“You have better leftovers.” Joel smiled at him. “What is that?”
“Soup.”
Luke took the bowl to the microwave and slipped it inside. “There seems to be enough for two.”
Joel sat down at the table and watched him as he took down two smaller bowls and rummaged for a couple of spoons.
“You know that Luke is going to kill you if he finds you sneaking out at night,” Luke admonished him. “You shouldn’t just go wandering about like that. Especially at night.”
“It’s all right. They are asleep.”
Luke sighed. The boy was weird. He didn’t understand why Luke had brought him here. And he had caught him skulking about everywhere. Well, maybe skulking was not really the right word. Joel just popped up everywhere when least expected. He did not seem harmful or anything, just scary.
“Who called?” Joel asked him as he set the bowl of soup in front of him.
Luke was aggravated by the question. His first impulse was to say ‘none of your business, you little snoop’, but instead, he said “Wrong number.”
“You certainly talked a long time to a wrong number.” Joel stirred the soup.
“And you certainly are nosy.” Luke scowled at him.
Joel sipped the soup. “Not nosy, just curious.”
Luke nodded. Luke Matthew had told him that the boy did not talk much, but he never was at a loss for words whenever he met up with him.
“I like that… whatever it is you wear,” Joel told him and put down his spoon. It was quite obvious that he was not hungry.
“Me kilt?” Luke narrowed his eyes at the boy. “Would you like to try one? Are you Scottish, perhaps?”
“I might be. I’m an orphan. How would I know?”
“You look Italian or Greek, perhaps. No, you look like the Gypsies we saw in Budapest.”
“Really? Gypsies? What are Gypsies?”
“I really don’t know. Just Gypsies. That’s what they call them.”
“Who?”
“The Gypsies!”
“I mean, who calls them that?”
“Everybody.”
“How do you know when you see a Gypsy?”
“You don’t.” Luke almost laughed at the absurdity of the question.
“Then how could everybody call them that if they don’t know when they’re looking at one?”
“Look. It’s just one of those things.”
Luke got up and picked up his bowl. They would have to start locking the doors. If he couldn’t get in, then maybe he would stay home at night. “Come on up to my room and I’ll see if you fit in one of my kilts. You know where my room is. You were just eavesdropping on me earlier.”
“Right. Well you were talking loud enough, but really?” Joel got up. His dark eyes danced with amusement.
“Sure and if Luke Matthew kills you, we’ll have something nice to bury you in.”
“He’s killed a lot of people, hasn’t he?” Joel asked as he followed him toward the stairs.
Luke was glad the boy was behind him so he could not see the look on his face.
“Why do you ask that, Joel?” he asked as they climbed the stairs.
“I don’t know. He just seems like a killer to me.”
“You think Luke Matthew is a murderer?” Luke was astounded.
“Not a murderer. I just think he’s killed a lot of people.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Kind of like Gypsies. You just know.” Joel ran one hand along the railing.
“And what about me? Have I killed a lot of people?” Luke asked him.
“Not as many as Uncle Luke,” Joel told him. “And he hasn’t killed nearly as many as your father.”
The ease with which the boy spoke of this unlikely subject, made Luke’s hair stand on end. They made it to the top floor and Luke held the door for him. The boy stepped into the rather austere room and looked about. His eyes fell on the portrait of Mark Andrew and Meredith.
“They made a nice couple,” he commented and stepped closer to the picture. “You look more like your father, of course.”
“Of course.” Luke set the soup on his desk and went to the closet. “Which do you like, red or blue?”
“Blue.”
Luke yanked one of the blue kilts from the hanger and tossed it on the bed. It had been one of Galen’s. Galen had asked him to keep it for him, but Galen had outgrown it.
Joel picked up the tartan and held it up in the light.
“Nice.” He draped the sash over his shoulder.
“Just take it home with you and try it out. You can ask Luke Matthew for help with it, if you need to.”
“When is she coming home?” Joel asked him as he gathered up the kilt and the accessories that had spilled from a plastic bag attached to the hangar.
“Who?” Luke frowned at him.
“Your mother. When is she coming home?” Joel raised up and looked at him innocently.
“She’s dead,” Luke told him flatly.
“How do you know?”
“Look, Joel. It’s really late. You’d best get home now.” Luke went to open the door for him.
Joel took the bundle with him and disappeared down the stairs. He waited a bit and then hurried down the stairs to make sure that the boy had left the h
ouse. The two wolfhounds lay on the hearth when he passed the library.
“Damn it, Astro!” he stopped to admonish the big dogs. “Scooby! Why didn’t you let me know we had company?”
Astro sat up and whined. Scooby climbed stiffly from the stones and then sat back on his haunches and let loose a blood-chilling howl.
“Oll roighty then!” Luke backed away and hurried back up stairs as if the devil, himself, were chasing him.
Book 1 of the PSI Consulting Series is a Hot Paranormal Romance