Relic: Crown (A Kane Arkwright Supernatural Thriller) Read online

  Relic: Crown

  A Kane Arkwright Supernatural Thriller

  Ben Zackheim

  Copyright © 202 by Ben Zackheim

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Where we left off…

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Acknowledgments

  Where we left off…

  After suffering a blackout, Kane learned he accidentally shot his own partner, Rebel. He was detained in a hospital room in Paris to keep him (and everyone else) safe. Along with his demon librarian Lucas and Rebel's jerky sister, Ronin, Kane busted free and set out to find the spear of Odin, with its runes of knowledge that promise great power to anyone who can read them.

  On the way, they discover the importance of Imhotep's Book of the Dead. After extensive study, Lucas reveals that the back of the famous scroll has a hidden story of its own...Set's Book of the Undead!

  But the scroll is missing two segments. Two critical pieces of parchment.

  Kane also learns that his origins aren’t human. In fact, his soul is a part of Odin who died a thousand years ago when trying to learn the meaning of the runes on his spear.

  Merlin, determined to kill Kane for accidentally shooting his wife, started a battle in Merlin's Cave. Kane was badly injured and Rebel was sapped of her magic powers. But the fight also reunited them with their troll friend, Dino, thought deceased. The team must recover before they can set out to find the last two scroll pieces.

  But Set is not going to wait for them.

  His end game is nigh.

  Chapter 1

  I swung my legs over the edge and gave them a good dangle.

  “Will you please stop that?” Rebel asked with just enough venom to make me undrape my legs from the wheelchair’s arms. I set my feet back down on the footrests.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I hate this thing.”

  Rebel pushed my wheelchair through the abandoned streets of Paris. The slow pace of an invalid was starting to wear me down.

  Merlin had done a lot of damage in our last battle. He’d transformed into a fireball and had torn into Rebel and me. The flame must have been laced with a spell of some kind. I was healing, but slowly. Even our healer couldn’t counter the damage.

  And Rebel had lost her magic.

  Two weeks had passed since the horrific bloodbath in Merlin’s Cave. Hundreds of pixies and dozens of trolls had died before I took control of both armies with a couple of relics. The Troll’s Cross and the pixies’ Vower were both crafted to call armies to your side when you needed them most. I’d saved both of the relics for just such a moment.

  Hey, sometimes my plans work out.

  The relics were one-shots, though. There would be no using them again.

  “If you give me a million bucks, I’ll ask you for your thoughts,” Rebel said. Her voice always lilted when she pushed my buttons.

  “That’s not the way it works, Rebel. You pay me a penny for my thoughts. I don’t pay you a million bucks to give them.”

  “You’re the billionaire, asshole.”

  “Take it all. Money’s not worth anything anymore.”

  Our banter was out of place in the bleakness of our surroundings. Apocalyptic Paris was still beautiful — it was just a beautiful mess. A library loomed over us. Its stone facade was torn to pieces by one of the dozens of attacks by Set’s massive Leviathans. In the end, we’d managed to take Paris for the humans, but the city was in bad shape. The sight of a decimated library made my heart sink. I exhaled with a little too much drama for Rebel’s tastes.

  “It’s just a building, you big baby. It can be rebuilt.” Rebel pulled us to a stop in front of a pile of rubble at the bottom of some wide stone steps.

  The sun was setting, casting streaks of velvet black shadows across the desolate cityscape. A troll emerged from a blind spot on the stairs above us.

  “Whoah!” he yelled, as he stared down the barrel of my Glock. “It’s yer old buddy, Dino. Yer not having one of those fits are you, Arkwright?” He was referring to the blackouts I’d been experiencing. Well, not blackouts as much as dream outs. They were like waking visions of slices of a life.

  Someone else’s life.

  I was still trying to figure all of that crap out.

  “You just surprised me, troll,” I said. Dino grunted and took three long strides down the stairs to my side. He scooped up my wheelchair, leaped back up the steps, laid me down on the ground, and crossed his arms.

  He was showing off for Rebel. Again.

  I didn’t know what the two of them had going. But, from the looks of it, Dino’s sudden return from the dead was a turn-on for my partner. Reincarnation is sexy. Take notes.

  Rebel gave the troll a small smile and patted his massive bicep as she rolled me toward the library’s entrance.

  “You two are really doing the Apocalypse Lock-Lips?” I said over my shoulder.

  “Better than the Ragnarok Cock Block!” Dino said, laughing at his own joke, as usual. Yeah, his joke was funnier, fine.

  I didn’t know why I cared. What the two of them did to each others’ bodies was up to them. Maybe it was the helpless feeling of being stuck in a wheelchair. I couldn’t pull my weight and I knew it. I was at least able to psych myself up that I was amazing before my battle with Merlin. But, as Rebel rolled my chair over the rough concrete and through the tall double-doors of the library, I couldn’t even play pretend.

  “He and I are friends, Kane,” she mumbled back.

  “With benefits!” Dino yelled from behind us. He shut the double-doors with about as much care as he usually showed for everything else around him. In other words, no care at all. I cringed at the crushing ring of the iron-adorned wood slamming closed.

  I might have said “That’s just fucking great, Dino,” out loud but I couldn’t hear my own my voice over the echo bouncing around the large space. I waited for the din to die down before commenting, “And now we have no light, either.”

  Dino lit a torch. “Yer in a mood.”

  “Sorry,” I grumbled. “Let’s just get this over with. Is Lucas okay?”

  “He’s alive,” Dino said as he walked past us. The torch in his hand was just bright enough to reve
al the piles of stone surrounding us. He shoved a piece of a Corinthian column aside. The one-ton object slid across the marble floor, hit a mound of junk, bounced up in the air a few feet and rolled to a cracking stop against the ex-reception desk.

  He was clearing a path for Rebel to push my wheelchair forward.

  Between the racket of Dino’s bulldozing and the general sense of anxiety slapping around between the three of us, we didn’t get much more talking done. Instead, we methodically worked our way toward a set of doors on the other side of the vast space.

  “They need to work on their wheelchair access,” I said. No one heard me, so I grinned at my own bad joke.

  I focused on our destination. I was afraid of what waited for us on the other side of those doors. After all of the fighting, all of the loss and confusion and pain, we were about to get some answers from my demon librarian. Lucas had found something new on the the back of the Book of the Dead. He’d insisted on delivering the message to me personally.

  We reached the large double doors. Dino pushed them open like they were cardboard. In the near distance, a table was centered in the middle of the room, surrounded by a dozen torches. The scroll itself glowed blue. It was so bright, my eyes took a few seconds to adjust.

  Lucas’ weak voice crept toward us. “Welcome, sir. You’re just in time.”

  Chapter 2

  Lucas was guarded by two soldiers.

  My soldiers.

  At least they had been my soldiers until I’d shot Rebel in the temple and lost my army’s trust. The fact that she’d forgiven me didn’t appear to factor into the equation. I locked eyes with one of them. I was the one who broke eye contact as I rolled past.

  Dino offered up a threatening growl for the guards. “You two gits have a problem?”

  “Leave them alone, Dino,” I said.

  I just had to hope Lancelot could find a way to bring me back into the tribe. It was going to be a tough task while I was stuck in that wheelchair. I didn’t know how to prove myself without using my legs, and my split-second decisions. And my Glocks.

  “Hi Lucas,” I said. My voice was muted in the large room. Thousands of tomes surrounded us, organized neatly on the shelves from the floor to the twenty-foot high ceiling. “What am I just in time for, exactly?”

  Rebel pushed me up to the scroll. It was unrolled and spanned the entire table, casting its blue glow over us. Rebel was lit from underneath, covering her face in a mask of shadows. She looked like her sister, Ronin.

  I also got my first good glance at Lucas.

  “You look like shit, demon,” I said. It came out stronger than I’d intended, but it was true.

  “Why, thank you, sir,” he said like a proper gentleman. “I can confidently say the same thing about you.”

  “No, he’s right, Lucas,” Rebel said. “Are you okay?”

  Lucas’ eyes were lost in the shadow of his furrowed brow. His left lip drooped so heavily, it skimmed his chin as he glanced between Rebel and me. He’d lost what little hair he’d had on his head just two weeks prior.

  “I am working very hard, my friends,” he said, softly. “The scroll is not eager to give up its secrets.” He rolled up his sleeves, revealing bruised and bloody flesh.

  “Fucking Hell,” I said.

  “Blasphemy!” Lucas yelled. But his demon smirk told me he was joking.

  “But you were able to read the scroll when we last saw you,” Rebel said. “You told us that the back of Imhotep’s Book of the Dead was Set’s Book of the Undead. You said it was filled with spells.”

  “I did, yes. Once I realized that, I came running to deliver the news to you. However, now the scroll fights me at every turn. If I’d been wise, I would have started translating the spells immediately. Now they are slipping away from us and I am trying to keep up.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Lucas,” I said. “What have you found out?”

  Lucas laid his hands on the table. “As I said, one side of the scroll is Imhotep’s Book of the Dead. However, this side of the scroll is Set’s Book of the Undead, as it clearly states there.” His long finger pointed to the beginning of the scroll. Lucas nodded. “I’ve made enough progress through the scroll to tell you this: it gives us a deep view of what drives Set. There may even be a clue to why he started this war. The first clue is that he declares himself the god of gods right up front.” Lucas pointed to the beginning of the scroll.

  Dino shrugged. “Why beat around the bush when you’re the god of gods, right?”

  Lucas ignored him. “He says the universe, for want of a better term, is made up of life, death, and undeath. He takes credit for creating the first vampires and the first magicists.”

  “That would be your family, Rebel,” I said with a wink. Her frown showed me she didn’t appreciate my sass. It was true, though. Her family was the first and most powerful of the human spell casters. They’d gone on to create Spirit, the organization that had kept the supernatural at bay. Until the apocalypse, of course.

  Again, Lucas ignored us. It was as if he were in a rush. As if he was dumping his findings in our lap before some kind of deadline.

  “In creating the undead, his most powerful accomplishment, he decided the spells of the undead would be shared in this particular scroll, along with the spells of the dead.”

  Rebel broke in and asked the same question I was about to ask. “Can we cast Set’s undead spells ourselves?”

  “A powerful magicist could, yes. But I would want to find the two missing pieces of the scroll first.” Lucas walked toward the middle of the table. He grabbed his ribs and almost lost his balance. One of the guards grabbed him by the shoulder and steadied him. The demon stuck his nose up and tried to grab some dignity back. He pointed at the table. “Here. This is the first of the two missing segments.”

  “The pieces were missing when we retrieved this scroll in New York,” I said, making sure Rebel and Dino were in the loop.

  Lucas wobbled down the length of the table and stopped at the spot in between the two gaps in the scroll. “The two missing pieces are troubling.” We waited for him to continue, but he just stared at the gaps in the parchment. Dino cleared his throat. The troll was trying to be subtle, but he sounded like a lion with a hairball.

  Lucas looked up, sighed, and continued. “Two entire spells are missing. The spells to the right and the spell to left of each missing piece are complete spells. Logically, that means the missing sections have complete spells of their own, too.”

  “Is it possible the gaps are just tears?” I asked. “Maybe there was nothing there. Maybe the scroll just split at that spot.”

  Lucas nodded and smiled. “The tear marks on the scroll do not match. There are, conclusively, two missing spells.”

  “What spells come before and after the gaps?” Rebel asked.

  “Excellent question. The spell immediately before this gap allows for the undead to control their hunger before sunrise, presumably to give them a clear head so they can find a place to hide from the sun. The spell after it soothes the mind when memories of human life intrude.” The demon paused to ponder something. “The second gap is surrounded by two eyesight spells to allow for keen vision in darkness and underwater.”

  “Not what I would call earth-shattering stuff,” Dino grunted. “Maybe the missing spells let the fuckers keep their shiny complexion and greasy hair.”

  I shook my head. “If it’s important enough to steal, they’re more powerful than that.”

  Lucas nodded in agreement. “Yes, we must assume they are critical spells. Something that someone wants to use or hide.”

  “Like what?” Rebel asked.

  Lucas shrugged and dropped onto a tiny stool. He twanged his long nose back and forth, deep in thought. I realized he was falling into one of his trances. I bent forward to get in his line of vision. The demon’s eyes met mine.

  I smiled. “You said you think the Book of the Undead could reveal the reason for the war, Lucas. Tell us.”
r />   He pointed to the end of the table. He was so exhausted, his hand dropped to his side. He spoke softly. I had to lean forward to hear him.

  “Yes, sir,” he said. “The end of the scroll hints at the existence of yet another tome. The Book of the Living.”

  Chapter 3

  “Is there a Book of the Annoyed, too?” Dino asked no one in particular. “Cuz I’d buy a few copies of that!”

  “Chill, troll,” I said. “What does it say about a Book of the Living, Lucas?”

  “It mentions it in passing.” He ran out of breath near the end of the sentence. “But that’s what makes it stand out. I say that because of this section here. The end of the Book of the Undead has a kind of index, referring to two spells that rely on something called the Record of Life, or the Story of Life.”

  “Or the Book of the Living,” I finished for him. The librarian nodded.

  “I cannot be sure it’s a scroll, however,” he said. “The story could be recorded on anything. A wall. A tablet. In fact, the only other symbol on the page translates into ‘head piece’ or ‘crown.’”

  “So the Book of Life could be etched in a crown,” Rebel said. “That would be one short story.”

  “Or one long spell,” I said. “Lucas, you said there are two spells in the scroll that rely on this Book of the Living, or Crown of the Living. Do you know which spells it’s referring to?”