Star Eater
Chapter Fourteen

Mason could have crowed with victory if not for sitting beside Cole in the limo. His uncle had not checked the sincerity of his words or pushed his will in Mason once. It was a calculated risk, but Mason knew that if Joseph was going to threaten the captains, then there was a chance, even a tiny one, that the case would be there. And then he could follow it. Trace it back to its hiding place.

The car ride was short; from the compound situated not far from Route 1 between Malibu and Topanga State Park, to a Santa Monica nightclub that served as a front for the Wright’s exclusive escort service. Of course they’d meet here. This was a place of celebration. The captains would not know what to expect from a meeting here after the head of the organization getting arrested. Joseph was keeping them off balance.

Joseph’s car drew up into the loading dock behind the club and he entered with his retinue. There were several conference rooms and pleasure rooms large enough to accommodate the twelve captains, their seconds, and the head of the organization plus his retinue. Mason had been to the club before—twice after each of his brothers was murdered, one by his father, the other during the war. He’d come another time via the Plains, searching for the case during the vital few hours the club was closed.

He was familiar with the layout and its secrets. Yet, he was surprised when Joseph led the group to a smaller, private circular party room. Three stripper poles stood in the middle with a leather couch wrapped around the perimeter, tiny tables for drinks, and mirrors to watch the action from all angles.

Mason shifted a little uncomfortably as his reflection was bounced around the room. He caught a glimpse of movement and for a second thought his reflection was moving without him. Then he realized that was Joseph, taking a seat. Mason forgot how similar he and his uncle looked.

They had the same features, the sort of lean jaw and noble brow straight out of portraits of knights from England. They had the same arrogant chin, the kind that turned itself up over everything. A royal chin, to match royal blood lost along the long chain from their family’s sordid past and exile from the empire in the colonial days. Only Joseph’s coloring was different, darker. Mason took after his mother.

“Check the room for auditory devices,” Cole said quietly as Joseph settled in.

“We did already, sir,” a minorling said.

“Do it again,” Cole snapped. “We don’t need the Sharpes listening in on this.”

That same sordid past had tangles with the Welsh family called Sharpe, also once royal yet more caught up in a mythological crossbreeding—if the rumors were true. The long-standing rivalry had turned into hatred and then into war. But the Sharpes had done something no daemon had accomplished since their kind had come to this filthy plane of existence. The Sharpes had somehow managed to evolve into archdaemons without consuming their own flesh and blood. The Sharpes hadn’t murdered their sons like Silas and Joseph. Or so the rumor said. Silas and Joseph called it “The Lie.”

Mason desperately hoped the Sharpes were responsible for his father’s arrest. He mentally pleaded with them to take down the whole damn organization. If it all crashed and burned, he need only get his mother and his sister out. But he couldn't count on the Sharpes. He had to have the case—that would give him the security he needed to make his getaway with his family. If he could get the case, he could protect them.

Awkwardly, Mason sat on the other side of Joseph. True to his word, he kept quiet. Once the room was cleared, Joseph gestured at Cole.

“Send the first one in,” Cole ordered. And so the interrogations began.

What followed was perhaps one of the most uncomfortable two hours of Mason’s life, and he’d suffered beatings and bloodlettings. Joseph’s transformations were so smooth, so lightning fast, it was a wonder he didn't rip his clothes going back and forth. But that was the power of the archdaemon.

More control, more speed, more strength, more willpower. By imbibing a younger male of their own seed, daemons could collect their power both realized and potential. Mason’s cousin Nathan had been almost thirteen when he’d been taken. Mason could still remember the screaming agony of his aunt and the memory turned his stomach. She killed herself later. Mason’s mother hadn’t been that lucky. He sometimes hoped that she didn't feel pain anymore inside her mind where she’d escaped. He couldn’t blame her.

The brutality of Joseph’s questioning was no less violent. Although he never laid a finger on them, he shredded each captain’s will. This was Mason’s birth rite. Wright derived from ‘rite,’ specifically relating to blood rites. The Wrights had once been the leader of blood rites in the Dark Ages because their power was the manipulation of blood. And they had bathed in it.

Over the course of his interrogation, Joseph pulled blood from every sensitive area: sinuses, ears, under fingernails, groin. He drove each captain into the ground until they were shaking and clawing, trying to breathe, trying to remain alive. His uncle never had the case brought in. He doesn’t need it to threaten them, Mason realized, swearing internally at his error.

Even with years of bottling his emotions, keeping a neutral face was growing more difficult by the second. Mason counted the number of captains, uncertain he could make it through all the interrogations without vomiting.

Perhaps the case is close by, Mason thought, focusing on his goal. If they do replace the traitor, they’ll bring it in then.

The floor was flooded with crimson, an inch deep. The atmosphere in the room was coppery, adding to Mason’s nausea. Opening his mouth, Mason tried to breathe subtly, not showing weakness.

By the end, Joseph was in a dangerously foul mood, peckish and unsatisfied. No one confessed, not even under his ministrations. Mason did his best to walk a step behind Cole, using the second to cover his presence. He was not foolish enough to think he was safe just because he was the heir. After all, either Joseph or his father could always make another.

Joseph slid into the car, a tight frown on his face. None of the personal interviews he’d conducted had pointed to a leak with one of the captains. Even under duress, they’d all pledged loyalty. That was good on some level. Loyalty was prized. He’d given them all appropriate measures of motivation to rip apart their individual stakes in the business and search out moles. Later he would reward them, when the leak was found. For now, he needed to go deeper. Cole slid across from him, followed by Mason.

The boy seemed to have lost the bravado he’d shown earlier. Good. That would make him more pliable and Joseph might need that. Still, he had brought up a good point. While the captains were searching their own houses, it was time to search the main one.

“Cole, look into everyone in the main house,” Joseph said.

Cole nodded. He opened his mouth to say something but then his phone beeped and he checked it.

“Boss,” he said, his voice mystified. “The surveillance you wanted from the yogurt shop.” He handed over the phone. Joseph glanced at it.

“This is static,” he said.

Cole nodded. “Someone didn't want that video recorded,” he said. He took the phone back. “I’ll check the surrounding traffic cameras and other businesses as well.”

Joseph suspected the others would be much the same. So he’d been right. The boy was special. Not a daemon, certainly. The rippling shadow teased at Joseph’s memories. Something he’d read a long time ago. Something… fanciful. Where had he seen rippling shadows?

There had been many stories when he was a child of shadow monsters. Even those myths related to his own kind, but that had more to do with the clan whose skin turned black in daemon form. There were spells to manipulate shadows, of course, but the creature had been too casual and that sort of spell took a lot of magic. Magic was in short supply in this world. No one cast a shadow manipulation to go get yogurt. He turned to Cole.

“Have someone pull all the children’s books out of storage,” Joseph said.

“Sir?” Cole asked.

“Just do it.”

Cole put a phone call in. By the time they arrived back home, there was a stack of boxes waiting in Joseph’s study. Walking in, Joseph took stock. Something felt out of place. Joseph narrowed his eyes, glancing about, searching. Cole looked around as well, his intuition on point.

Joseph walked over to his desk, and moved a penholder back into place. “They were to drop the boxes in here, not touch anything else,” he said softly.

“Perhaps they knocked it accidentally,” Cole said.

“With a mole in our organization?” Joseph sneered. “This would be the perfect cover… which means it is not one of our captains. Or not just one of our captains.”

“Would you like me to have them questioned?”

“No,” Joseph said. “That will yield nothing. We must be clever about this. We must set a trap.”

Cole waited for more information, but Joseph glanced around once more and then dismissed him. Once his second was gone, Joseph inhaled deeply and considered his options. Nothing came to him. Perhaps he needed to focus on another task before a plan presented itself.

So he opened the box on top of the stack. He ruffled through some of the more sentimental items: his son’s first book, pictures of Nathan’s birth, a lock of hair. For a moment, Joseph saw his son’s face, the moment before he tore his throat out. The look of betrayal and terror was etched into his memory. But Joseph had to do it. For the organization to survive, he and Silas had to make the ultimate sacrifice. They needed to evolve or else they would have been overtaken, if not by the Sharpes then by others. The world of the daemon was a world of death and gore.

Sudden inspiration hit Joseph. An idea formed and he smiled. He took out a notebook and in deep, red ink wrote out a sentence. If the enemy was searching his office, they were surely looking at his brother’s as well. So Joseph did it on two pieces of paper. When both were finished, Joseph nodded in satisfaction. Then he shredded one page in his shredder. He would need to shred the other in his brother’s office. And then he would need to redo the code word on the safe. It was a long shot, but perhaps with this false trail, he could catch the mole.

Pleased, he returned to his original task. An hour later, he took the last book from the stack. The pages were faded yellow with dog-eared corners and random crayon marks all over. He remembered his mother reading him these stories. He remembered wanting to be the biggest and scariest monster on the page. Unlike the watered-down version of Grimm’s fairy tales, these were old fairy stories, those of the Sidhe. And in these stories the monsters and demons survived. For a daemon, survival was everything.

Joseph flipped through the pages, past the death gods and the ghosts who stole children. He was flipping past a story of a cursed island when a picture caught his attention. There it was, the image that had sparked his memory. The illustration showed a man with an identically shaped shadow creature next to him striding across a field and in his wake was pure destruction.

The man was painted with a black fiery outline, the fhear dorcha. The Dark Man. The Sidhe’s darkest and most feared creature. And around the fhear dorcha, the land was on fire. The fhear dorcha was the Abyss personified. It was a walking embodiment of a darkness so profound, even daemons feared it. This was the creature he’d seen.

Turning back to the beginning of the story, Joseph read it through. It told of Fair Island, a place between Orkney and Shetland. There, the fhear dorcha fell from the sky, from a place between the stars. The Sidhe on Fair Island gave the fhear dorcha form and he roamed the islands doing their bidding. He was their weapon. He could suck up fire or noise and distribute darkness. The faery rules did not apply to Fhear Dorcha. No iron circles nor crosses nor blessed water could bar his way.

It was said he could fly across the vast ocean from place to place and he caused destruction over a score of years. Then, a vast hunger overtook the fhear dorcha. Nothing the Sidhe served could satisfy this hunger. No sacrifices of rare and beautiful gifts or blood or fire. The fhear dorcha drank vast amounts of water, but his thirst could not be quenched. He returned to the place he had first fallen but could not slip back between worlds. He was stranded. One day the fhear dorcha expired, sending a blast of magic so powerful, it cursed the land forever.

Joseph sat back, tapping his chin. So nothing barred the fhear dorcha’s way. And it seemed video cameras near it eroded into static. Was that part of its power too? If so it would be doubly useful. If the war with the Sharpes had taught Joseph nothing else, it taught him not to underestimate magic.

Pulling out a copy of the Daemon Treaty, Joseph reviewed the language that governed his life. The Treaty had been signed by his forefathers, but it bound him and every other daemon, along with the last remains of the Sidhe, and other supernaturals that had managed to survive in this human world. It was what prevented Silas from blinking on to the desolate Plains and escaping jail.

After World War I, the supernatural set had come together and decided never again to be weapons or to reveal themselves to the human world. Every supernatural child was issued a copy of the Treaty at birth and taught to follow it strictly. Joseph had read it a thousand times before, but he had never read it with the possibility of a creature that was extra-terrestrial.

It prevented bloodsuckers and shape-shifters from using their powers openly. It didn't really go into the telepaths and the Way Wards; those groups were harder to regulate and harder still to identify. Mostly, it covered the daemons because they were the most abundant supernatural creatures left. But, and Joseph double-checked, it did not specify creatures that were heavenly in origin.

Because that was absurd.

Other planes, yes, the ocean depths, of course, even fire could birth a supernatural, but none fell from the sky. Aliens didn't exist. Only celestials came from Heaven and no one could regulate them. The Treaty had taken that into account. The language was very specific. Of course, if the boy was caught, it would be determined whether or not he was a celestial. Joseph doubted it.

All Joseph needed was an angle, though. And if the boy was caught, he could always distance himself. He was, after all, a daemon and daemons did not associate with other supernaturals. It would take time and investment to bring the boy in. Time and investment Silas might not have. And yet… just the ability to walk through walls was an innovative and crucial talent that could very well break the case the FBI had against Silas.

Yes, this could be a very promising plan with the right preparation. First, Joseph needed to do some more research. He needed more facts. Picking up his tablet, he started with Fair Island.