I reached out with my senses and tried to draw in magic. I might as well have been trying to suck a watermelon up my nose. Nausea swelled inside my stomach, and I gagged. I knew from experience, trying to absorb aether so soon after magic poisoning wasn't pleasant.
"What the bloody 'ell," said a familiar Scottish accent from behind the door. The eye blinked in a very humanlike way. "Who the bloody hell are you, and how did you get in here?"
I gave up on my attempts to energize and took deep breaths to ward off the sick feeling in my guts. "I'm the guy who saved you from Bigglesworth," I said. "My name is Justin."
"Who are you with?"
"Nobody. It's just me."
MacLean sighed, and the gemstone eye narrowed. "Bloody shame."
"That I saved you?" I leaned closer to the eye. "Look, I know you're probably proud of your super-secret hideout and all, but these things are a dime a dozen to me. My friend Shelton has a gazillion of these—"
"Who did you say?"
"Shelton?"
"Harry Shelton." His voice went flat.
"Um…yeah?" I remembered Shelton's split lip and his propensity for making enemies and quite suddenly realized mentioning him might have been a horrible mistake. "But—"
The eye clicked shut. The light in the corridor winked out. And the sound of crushing death grated against the stone floor.
Chapter 17
For the second time in a short while, I wanted to scream bloody murder. A light appeared as the iron door before me flung open and the huge frame of MacLean stood there.
"Well, why didn't you say you were with Harry?" he said in a booming jovial voice. His ham hand gripped mine and shook it until my bones rattled. "Paul MacLean. Pleased to meet you, Justin."
"Y-you like Shelton?" I was genuinely surprised.
He released my hand and shrugged. "Well, 'like' is such a strong term with Harry." He laughed and motioned me forward. "Come on in. Welcome to my secret abode." He waved a hand around the small stone room. A bunk bed stood in a corner and a table in the middle of the room.
I spotted a hallway leading away from the room and figured the entire library must be riddled with them.
MacLean reached into a box and pulled out a brown bottle with cold vapors steaming from it. He popped the top with a thumb, settled into a chair, and propped his boots atop the table. "Grab an ale if you'd like, lad. It's brewed on campus by the best potion masters." He took a long draw and sighed. "Bloody hell, I really needed one of these."
"Why did Bigglesworth kidnap you?" I asked, ignoring his offer of alcohol.
MacLean smiled. "Direct and to the point, eh?" He narrowed his eyes. "How do you know about the Flark?"
My left eye twitched. "The what?"
"That's what Bigglesworth—the nasty bugger—is."
"A Flark?" I narrowed my eyes. "Did you just make that up?"
He chuckled. "Nope. Don't know who did. Personally, I'd rather just call him a bugger and be done with it."
"You're avoiding my question. Why did he kidnap you?"
"You're ignoring mine, lad." He folded an arm across his stomach and took another draw of ale.
After a moment of silence, I huffed. "Fine. I know him because he works for the Conroys, and they want me dead."
MacLean nearly dropped his ale. Sliding his boots off the table, he leaned toward me, lips pursed. "You're bloody Justin Slade, aren't you?"
A sigh escaped me. "Yes. Will you answer my question?"
"But you're with the Templars, aren't you? Working for the Borathens."
I was about to answer when shadows crept from the corners of the room. Deep cold bit into my leg. A shadow skull stretched from a corner behind MacLean. "Eat," it whispered in a raspy susurrus, seductive and demanding. "Devour. Consume." The cold in my leg intensified, and hunger like no other I had felt before hollowed my insides. MacLean's veins seemed to pulse and glow as my eyes settled on him. I smelled his blood. I wanted to bite his throat. Tear it out. Drink—
"What the hell is happening to me?" I said balling my fists. More shadow skulls formed, taunting, talking, telling me to feed, their fanged mouths diving at MacLean's neck.
The world flashed white for a brief instant, and my back slammed against stone. The shadows vanished like smoke, and the cold receded. MacLean towered over me.
"They gone?" he asked.
I flexed my jaw to make sure it wasn't broken. He reached down and pulled me to my feet.
"You saw the shadows?" I asked, my head still reeling from his sucker punch.
The large man downed the rest of his ale in a long gulp and grabbed another. "It's my bloody curse and gift." He sighed and dropped into the chair. "It's why the Flark wanted me."
"You can read minds?"
He laughed. "If only 'twas that simple. I have the Dark Sight. The ability to see the world within the world."
I blinked. "Say what?"
He shrugged. "I can see the psychic impact of events in the world around me. For example, if someone is killed, you can see the blood spatter, the body. But what I can see with the Dark Sight is the trauma left from the murder. The negative stain left on the aura of that place." He looked at my leg. "When you froze up, I viewed you. Your leg pulses with a black curse. The shadows came from inside you."
"A vampling infected me," I said, my stomach lurching with fear and regret.
His nose wrinkled. "Something inside you is fighting it. Unfortunately, it seems trapped."
My inner angel? I hoped that was the case. "Can I free it?"
He shrugged. "I don't have the answer to that. The sight doesn't always provide answers. Sometimes it only makes for more blasted questions."
"How is this sight useful to Bigglesworth?"
MacLean took a drink of ale, crossed his arms, and stared at me for a long moment. "First, you need to tell me more. I've heard of you, true, but I don't know you, lad."
"Can Shelton vouch for me?"
A laugh boomed from him. "Are you bloody kidding me? Aye, Harry was a bloody good friend, but I haven't seen him in years and, from what I've heard, he ain't the sort of man to trust these days."
I puffed out a sigh. "Can't argue with you there, I guess."
He nodded. "So, Justin Slade. Tell me about yourself."
"Oh, brother. Do you know how many times I've had to repeat my life story? Maybe I should just write a freaking memoir and get it over with."
He laughed, one hand still gripping the ale.
I noticed a symbol carved into the table, virtually identical to the circle-triangle-eye symbol on the door and the chandelier. The meaning suddenly kicked me in the head. I pulled Nookli, my faithful arcphone, from my pocket and ran a quick search. The answer flashed before my eyes.
"What are you doing?" MacLean asked, giving me a suspicious look.
I flicked my gaze back to him. "You're Illuminati."
His mouth dropped open a fraction. "That's rubbish."
"Dude, everything leading here has Illuminati symbols—the door, the chandelier, this table." I jabbed a finger on the carving. "Besides, any nerd worth his salt knows what that symbol means. I just had to run a quick search to be sure."
His face fell. "Really?"
I showed him my phone. He took it and sighed. "Bloody internet."
"Well, maybe if you guys changed it up every once in a while." I squinted at the symbol. "I dunno, maybe instead of an eye, you could use a skull and crossbones with a lightning bolt going through it."
"Do you know how many symbols we'd have to redo? And some members have tattoos." He sighed. "Just drop it for now, and tell me your story."
I gave him the highlights of my supernatural career, skipping the small stuff. When I finished, I asked him, "Shouldn't the Illuminati know all this?"
MacLean gave me a steady look. "Not these days. The organization has gone to hell." He sighed, snapped his fingers as if remembering something, and reached back to pull a rough-bound book stuffed with yellowed parchment from a shelf. He turned the pages, humming to himself, until he jabbed a forefinger onto the page. "Ah, here's that foreseeance you were talking about." He turned the book to face me.
Upon the page I saw the words supposedly spelling out my future—Foreseeance 4311.
In the year of plague comes the Unmaking or the Remaking. The half-damned will make a choice. Each will ally with a harbinger. Should the light prevail, all will be cast in shadow. But should one light the flame in the dark, the shadow may not rise. With either choice comes the end.
"Do you have any idea what it means?" I asked.
"It means this is the year all bloody hell breaks loose," he said. "I don't suppose you've heard about the mysterious plague sweeping villages and small towns across the world?"
I raised an eyebrow. "Not a thing." I shrugged. "Then again, I haven't exactly been watching the news."
"I'm surprised your Templar friends haven't told you." His lip curled a bit at the mention of the organization. "Their special services people—the Custodians—have been working overtime to control vampling outbreaks."
I recalled Elyssa mentioning something about it. "Is it really that bad?"
"Aye. Maximus had recruiters everywhere. Some of the fools tried to make their own little vampire cults and unleashed the vampling curse instead." He blew out an explosive breath. "It's worse than the Templars are letting on, but if I'm not mistaken, that means this is the year of plague, because I sure don't remember it ever being this bad."
I thought back to my first encounter with those relentless vampire zombies. Maybe he was right. "It's September," I said. "That means the end of the world is a lot closer than I thought."