The Cult of Osiris: Book 2 in the Cedarstone Chronicles Read online

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  Horrors from Cedarstone

  Horrors from Cedarstone II

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  THE CULT OF OSIRIS

  Book 2 in the Cedarstone Chronicles

  SEAN STONE

  Contents

  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 ONE

  The house on Bartholomew Road was quiet. People were rarely seen coming or going, but there were people inside. There were thirteen at one point, but now Clara only knew of twelve. Of those twelve she could recognise four, and of those four she could name none. That didn’t matter to her though because the twelve weren’t the ones she was interested in. She was interested in their leader: Nickolas Blackwood.

  Every day for three months she had driven her car, a modest Vauxhall Astra, to the house on Bartholomew Road, and she’d watched. So far she had only seen the four people, three men and a woman, and she’d only seen those fleetingly. In actual fact she didn’t know for certain that all twelve of the disciples were living in the house, she only assumed, as did her colleagues at the station. The disciples, as Nick’s followers were known, rarely came out of the house. Considering that they were known for being notoriously evil, in the three months, they had been in town they had done nothing wrong. They had done almost nothing at all. Clara didn’t know where they went on the few occasions when they left the house because she had never followed them. She always stayed at the house, always watching for Nick.

  Three months ago Nick murdered her father and then he’d promptly disappeared. But she knew that he’d be back because he’d left his disciples. She’d tried to find out where he had gone, but nobody in town knew anything. She had planned on asking the disciples directly but when her boss, Detective Inspector William Marshall, had learned of her plan and what she had been doing in her spare time, he had ordered her to stop. Clara was a police officer on the supernatural investigations team, the only branch of the town’s police force that knew about the supernatural. If William knew that she was here now he would probably lock her up for her own protection. Nickolas Blackwood was a dangerous man, as Clara’s father had learned when Nick had thrown him from a balcony. Clara could still remember the sound his body made when it hit the ground. She could still remember the feeling of his blood splattering over her face and the sight of his broken body. She’d done everything she could to forget but the memories came flooding back several times throughout the day. She would never be free. Not until her father had been avenged.

  Down the street, she saw a man walking towards the house. He could have been walking towards any of the houses on the street but she got the feeling that he was heading to Nick’s house. Number thirteen; he seemed to have a thing for that number. Her feelings were rarely wrong, she had a detective’s instinct. As he drew closer she could see him looking at number thirteen and knew that she’d been right. A knot formed in her stomach. She knew the man. She recognised his long dark hair and light brown skin. She even recognised his quick, purposeful gait. He was her mentor: Jamal Rasul. Clara had only been on the special investigations team a few months and he’d been assigned as her trainer. Being the only other sorcerer on the team, William had thought him the most suitable teacher.

  Why is he going to Nick’s house? She wondered, keeping her gaze locked on him. William had ordered the team to stay away from the Thirteen — that’s what they called themselves. William didn’t want to give them any reason to cause trouble. Clara reminded him on several occasions that Nick had already caused trouble when he’d murdered Arthur Winters, but apparently that wasn’t enough.

  “I know he killed your father, Clara, but we don’t have the resources to deal with him. We’ve got enough going on in town without adding an immortal warlock and his warlock followers to the list. Until we have a way to deal with them nobody is to go anywhere near that house,” William said. And Clara had been given no choice but to accept it. But she hadn’t obeyed him. She knew that she couldn’t fight the Thirteen, or even Nick on his own, but that didn’t matter. She could still watch. She could still wait. One day Nick would return to town, and she would be waiting for him.

  Jamal got to the garden path and stopped. He looked up at the house ponderously and then turned and looked in Clara’s direction. She thought about ducking behind the wheel but there was no chance he could see her from this distance, not well enough to make out who she was. She’d deliberately kept the windscreen dirty to distort the view, plus it wasn’t her normal car, she used the Astra so that nobody would recognise her. Usually, she drove her father's Jaguar, left to her in his will along with everything else he’d owned, including the family house and shares in Winters Research Labs. Jamal looked like he was about to walk up the garden path when instead he continued walking down the street in Clara’s direction. As he drew nearer she slid down in her seat, trying to hide from his view. The dirty windscreen would do her no good if he got too close and he was very nearly too close. By the time he reached the car she was halfway to the floor, her face just below the steering wheel, but she knew it was pointless, there was no chance he’d miss her. He stepped directly in front of the Astra and stared in through the grubby windscreen at her, his arms crossed over his chest and one eyebrow raised above his dark eyes. Taking hold of the steering wheel she pulled herself back up into a sitting position and watched as he walked around to the passenger side and then slid into the seat next to her.

  “I had a feeling I’d find you here,” he said softly. He wasn’t angry, he understood. Of all the people Clara had seen since her father’s death Jamal had been the one who seemed to understand what she was going through the most. He was the one who’d offered her the most support. Even more than her best friend Bianca. Bianca had done her best, she’d been there for Clara the whole time, but Jamal just got it more than she did. “He isn’t here, you know that don’t you?”

  “Yes, but he’ll come back,” she replied. She kept her eyes dead ahead, not taking them off the house.

  “I’m sure he will, but when? A day, a week, a year? He’s immortal Clara, time doesn’t have the same value to him as it does to us. He could spend fifty years travelling the world, doing whatever he’s doing, and he won’t age a day. And neither will the people in that house. But if you stay here waiting for fifty years you’ll be an old lady and you would have wasted your life.” Nick had granted all of his disciples immortality, but unlike him, they could still be killed if their head or heart were destroyed. It was just a matter of getting close enough.

  “Is that what he’s
doing, travelling the world?” Clara asked and Jamal sighed.

  “That’s the bit you paid attention to? Not the bit about you wasting your life?”

  “Is he?” she pushed for an answer.

  “That’s what I’ve heard,” he nodded resignedly.

  “What’s he doing?” He was obviously up to something. People like Nick didn’t go on holidays.

  Jamal shook his head. “I don’t know. The only people who can tell you that are the people inside.” He pointed at the house. “Judging from the fact that you’re sitting out here I’d say you’re smart enough to know that storming in there demanding answers will do you no good.” She’d just end up like her dad: dead. She couldn’t avenge him if she was dead. She was angry but she wasn’t stupid.

  “So what are you saying?” she asked, her tone was brash.

  “Go home, Clara. Sitting here won’t help,” he said emphatically.

  “I’m not going to give up, Jamal,” she said, turning to him for the first time. Unlike the other people in her life, his eyes showed no pity, only understanding and something else, something she couldn’t put her finger on.

  “I’m not saying you should. But you aren’t ready to fight Nick. You need to come back to your lessons,” he said. Ever since the curse broke and magic had returned to town Jamal had been trying to teach her to use it. Unsuccessfully. Her powers had surfaced once very briefly. Right after Arthur’s murder. She managed to focus some sort of energy at Nick, not that it did any more than tickle him. Since then she hadn’t been able to call on her magic once, despite Jamal’s best efforts.

  “The lessons aren’t helping,” she argued. “Maybe another encounter with Nick will do the trick?” she suggested.

  He laughed wryly. “It will get you killed. Magic takes years to develop and you have to face up to the fact that even when your powers are at their peak you still might not be able to beat Nick. He’s too powerful Clara. A man like him does not survive for this long on luck alone. It takes power and skill and he has both.”

  “Too powerful for me on my own, but this town is full of people with power,” she countered. There must be someone else in town who would stand against Nick. Sometimes she thought back to when Adam had asked her to be the coven dynast. If she hadn’t turned him down, then right now she would have a small army of sorcerers who she could order to help her fight Nick. But it wasn’t her place to lead the coven. She was powerless and what coven would allow a powerless witch to order them about? Besides, her place was with the police, not the coven.

  “Anyone who knows him is too scared to challenge him,” Jamal said. “You won’t find any help.”

  “No I won’t,” she agreed, and then added, “Not yet.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked, confused.

  “Nick has set up in town. His disciples have been doing something in that house for months now. He has plans that involve Cedarstone and when he puts those plans into motion I bet he’ll piss someone off. All I need to do is wait for that to happen,” she said confidently.

  “Alright,” he nodded, “But do we have to wait here? Let’s go home. Let’s prepare.”

  “Prepare?” she asked, raising an eyebrow and looking at him again.

  “For the day when Nick comes back and you go marching in to fight him. If you really mean to fight him then I won’t be able to stop you, but I can’t let you do that unprepared. So come back to your lessons and let me teach you to use your powers. I know that if you just concentrate enough it will work.”

  She knew that arguing with him wasn’t going to work. He wouldn’t give up until she left no matter what she said. She sighed loudly and then turned the key in the ignition. She’d give him what he wanted and leave, for now, but she’d be back tomorrow.

  The next day she spent the morning training with Jamal to no avail and the afternoon was spent go over paperwork at the station. At 9pm when she finally finished work she was planning to return to the house on Bartholomew Road when William called her into his office. Her first thought was that Jamal had told on her. But Jamal wasn’t a snitch, even if he was obligated by duty to inform his commanding officer of her insubordination and recklessness. William could have found out some other way, though. Maybe he had someone watching her. If he did know that she’d been watching the house then he wasn’t angry, otherwise he would have called her into his office at the start of her shift rather than the end. She tried to keep her face completely neutral, giving nothing away, when she stepped into his office. The blinds were all closed keeping out the last rays of sunlight that was deadly to him, and the only light was from the small lamp on his desk.

  “Have a seat, Clara,” he said, gesturing to one of the chairs on the other side of his desk. SIT was very informal when it came to ranks and forms of address, they were all on first name terms. She took the seat nearest to her and sat silently waiting to see what he wanted.

  “How are things?” he asked. It was obvious that he wanted to get straight to business, William Marshall was not one for mincing words, but something was stopping him. That meant that whatever he wanted it wasn’t about work or else he would have got straight to the point. He wanted some sort of favour. Realising that she wasn’t in trouble she relaxed, allowing herself to slump slightly in her chair.

  “Everything’s fine,” she said as if thoughts of vengeance didn’t dominate her mind throughout most of the day.

  William nodded. He straightened up a sheet of paper on his desk before speaking again. “Clara, what I need to talk to you about isn’t strictly a work matter. However, it could impact our jobs a great deal,” he said mysteriously.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “It’s about the Winters Research Labs,” he said. Clara’s great-grandfather had started the company and Clara had inherited shares in it from her father. On the surface it was a pharmaceutical research company but underneath it actually dealt in supernatural research. “I heard today that Jonathan Langford’s estate is being sold. He has no beneficiaries so everything is going on the market.”

  “Okay,” she said slowly. She had an idea of what he was getting at. Jonathan Langford, the former mayor, had a majority share in Winters Research Labs. Somehow he’d managed to con Arthur Winters out of a majority holding years ago. A few months ago Jonathan had been killed by the vampires. He had a lot of enemies in town so it was only a matter of time before one of them got hold of him.

  “I’d like you to buy his shares in the company and make yourself the majority holder. I know it’s a huge thing to ask but you’re the only person with the funds to do something like this.”

  “Why, though?” she asked. She’d cottoned on to what he was getting at when he’d brought the company up, but she couldn’t understand how it would help the team at all.

  “Langford had the company researching supernatural weaponry. Weapons that can be used on the supernatural. We need to get those weapons out of reach. We can’t risk them falling into the wrong hands. We might even be able to use them ourselves to stop the fighting,” he explained. The sorcerer’s coven, vampire’s clan and werewolves’ pack had been fighting each other for the last three months over territory. SIT had been trying to resolve the situation but it was like trying to mediate between supernatural gangsters, and the team only had eight members. William was on the lookout for new recruits but was reluctant to hire anybody unless he completely trusted them and that seriously narrowed the list of candidates.

  “You already have the second highest number of shares in the company,” William continued. “You wouldn’t even need to buy all of Jonathan’s shares to get a majority.”

  “I know, but… I can’t afford it,” Clara admitted. She had money, more than a lot of people, certainly more than anybody else on the team, but not as much as William thought. Her father had done a great job of hiding the fact that their money was running out. He hadn’t worked a day since being ousted from his own company. He’d lived off dividends, and he’d lived well. “The d
ividends aren’t bringing in as much money as they used to and certainly not enough for this. Even if I mortgaged the house I wouldn’t be able to afford it.”

  “Could you get a loan?” William asked, an apologetic look in his eye showed that he knew he was pushing it.

  “Ugh… Maybe,” she said weakly. It wasn’t something she’d ever thought about. “Couldn’t you get one?”

  “Banks aren’t open at night time, Clara,” he said with a small smile. “I wouldn’t ask you this if it wasn’t of the utmost importance. Imagine what would happen if the Richie Morgan or Connor Digby got hold of those weapons. We have a hard enough time doing our jobs as it is.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “Even if we didn’t use the weapons ourselves we could at least keep them away from everybody else.”

  But if we could use them we could use them on Nick.

  “I’ll arrange a meeting with the bank,” she said, nodding. If there was a weapon in the labs powerful enough to hurt Nick, then she wouldn’t need magic. “What if there are no weapons, though?” she asked. All they knew was that Jonathan was doing research, they didn’t know if that research produced any results.

  “They had Richie Morgan locked up in that building for thirty years, experimenting on him. If they didn’t come up with a single weapon after all that I’d be very surprised,” William said, and she had to agree. Richie Morgan was the vampire high elder and thirty years of research on him would have produced enough information to fill several books.

  “Is that all?” she asked, getting up.

  William looked like he was about to say something else but then changed his mind. “That’s all Clara. Let me know how you get on.”

  Clara went straight home and got changed. All she’d thought about all the way home was the possibility of finding a weapon that she could use on Nick. She imagined seeing his body crumpled in a pool of blood at her feet, just as she had her father’s. But it wouldn’t do to get ahead of herself. There was much to do before she would get near the weapons that may or may not exist. First, she had to get the money. The bank would be closed now but she could arrange an appointment first thing in the morning. For now, she might as well stick to her usual routine.