He could still remember Kay arriving in Wales. Skinny, wary, and angry. Ready to fight the world. Now she was their Custodian. Loyal, brave, and clever. It was an honor to be her friend. “Thank you, Kay.” He met her eye and dipped his chin, and for a moment she smiled back before growing serious once more.
James looked for the words he needed, the words that would have come naturally before. “So, mighty leader—” He raised an eyebrow. “—how are we going to do this?”
Kay rolled her eyes at him, but she also laughed, which was what he’d hoped for.
“We’re not going to get Gordon to come here, are we? Not with David upstairs,” Riley asked, clearly concerned for her patient.
“No. Gordon wouldn’t come here alone, anyway. We need to be somewhere he sees as neutral.”
James scratched his thumb through his beard. He really needed a shave. “I’m still not convinced Gordon will agree to a meeting. Why would he bother to come to us?”
“Because,” Kay muttered, opening the wooden box to reveal the stone dagger nestled inside, “we have something he wants.”
ChapterTwenty-One
Gordon tooka sip of his deeply mediocre coffee. God, he hated train stations. Too many people—almost all of them norms, none of them showing him the respect he was due—too much rubbish, cheap food, obnoxious perfume, and too many tiny little lives.
He and Abigail had caught a train to Paris once, and it had all seemed like a great adventure. Speed and freedom and the girl he loved. But as he got older, he realized the gloss was fake. The shiny shop windows hid piles of cheap tat, the walls were all graffitied, and the frantic rush of commuters was just a symptom of the typical Duine failed attempt at scrabbling for meaning.
Everything faded sooner or later. Everything lost its shine. The only thing that meant anything in the end was power.
He pushed the disgusting brew away. He’d been sitting in Liverpool Street station long enough to sincerely hope he never saw another cup of so-called coffee. But the location was perfectly positioned for him to easily travel the three miles to Downing Street and get to his meeting on time. Just a few more hours, and he would never have to bother with anything he didn’t want ever again.
He kept his eyes fixed on the bustling commuters, resolutely not thinking about the failure of his pathetic Council. Or James. Or Emma. Or how they’d stolen his precious, irreplaceable artifacts.
If he did, his rage would consume him, and he needed to be clear and focused when he saw the Prime Minister. He’d sacrificed his blade, but he still had one last vial of blood Shadows. And he still had his brain and his drive to be the very best. He’d never needed anything else.
The Order would be desperately looking for guidance. He could imagine the frantic scrabbling as they realized their Council was destroyed. David was dead, or soon would be. Elizabeth and Bryn would be lost to their grief. And the rest of them didn’t have a complete spine between them. They would want him back. They would need him.
It wouldn’t take much to prove that James, Emma, and their friends were responsible for the destruction of the Council. Perhaps Finn had been helping them… a traitor working to overthrow the Order. Yes. That made perfect sense.
His successes with James—he wasn’t thinking about the failures—showed that combining low doses of blood Shadows with hypnotic suggestion could be extraordinarily powerful. One meeting—and the remaining vial of Shadows—would be enough to convince Prime Minster Blayne to choose him as his Principal Private Secretary… and then he’d have the full weight of the government behind him.
He'd already decided to use Oracle’s “predictions” to have the entire London Circle thrown into Belmarsh and Bronzefield Prisons. That would be his first job as the most powerful civil servant in the country. Then he’d reassure the Order and step up as Archdderwydd on the solstice as planned. And take back everything that had been stolen from him.
In a few days, he’d be back in power. He’d have the Prime Minister in his pocket. And everyone would recognize he was Archdderwydd. Just like he’d planned.
There was nothing to be gained by losing himself in emotion. Far better to be calm and clear when he took this next step.
The chaos of the morning rush was finally dying away, giving him a little more space. Thank fuck. Gordon leaned back against his hard metal chair, letting his Shadows drift outward, spreading like spiders’ webs.
No one near him even noticed as he slowly tapped into the layers of Shadow that built the busy concourse. And why would they? There was a reason the Duine had always followed the lead of the Dru-vid. And why they would again. They simply didn’t have the skills.
Gordon let his Shadows unspool, expertly tuning into the energies around him. Reminders of rushing activity, raised voices, and urgency battered him. Shadows undulated. So many souls, all focused on their petty lives.
He let them go and sank lower. Deeper into the stone, the earth, the cold ground. All the way down to the sewers and the ancient river that ran beneath the street on the far side of the station.
Historians still argued about the hundreds of skulls found in the ancient—now subterranean—Walbrook River. Because they were idiots. The same idiots who assumed that no one had ever found Dru-vid writings because they couldn’t write… without stopping to think that such a powerful race might have simply taken their manuscripts with them when they left.
His lip twitched into a sneer. In the end, it didn’t matter whether half the historians believed the skulls had washed downriver from a flooded burial ground and the other half thought they were the result of Boudicca sacking London. Gordon knew the truth.
Blood had been spilled by the Dru-vid Guardians working—hoping—to drive their Roman invaders away. They’d failed. But those blood sacrifices still held power even now.
He let his Shadows sink into that long-forgotten concourse. Then, feeling his way through the vibrating energy, he opened himself to the power that had remained written in the rocks for all these centuries.
He twisted the tendrils of dark Shadow, pulling and knotting them into his own Shadows. Bolstering himself. The surge of vitality that had sizzled through him after Finn’s stripping had long since faded, and he needed this sharp potency to achieve everything he planned.
Gordon’s phone rang, dragging his attention back to the present. His awareness soared back to his body, full of fire and thrumming irritation at whoever had dared to disturb him.
