Chapter Sixteen

The Old Man

It was a brisk morning on the rooftop of Old Scotland Yard.

The air was cool, frigid even, only to be broken by the intermittent waves of heat from the portals. They were being opened and closed with the neverending pops of magical expenditure, accompanied too by a flash of blue light. Wizards, most dressed in their dark blue ministry garb, flew through them, closing the portal only for another to appear simultaneously.

It was a busy morning in the old city.

The world was still in chaos, it seemed. The sun had risen on a dismal scene. Fire burned distant in London’s landscape. Sirens split the air at different decibels. Wizards on brooms flew by, some landing on the roof.

“How are they taking it out there?” Wesley asked. “The non-magicks?”

Mora had her wand out as they waited their turn to use a portal. She’d obviously gone home though it didn’t look like she’d slept. Her eyes were sunken and her skin pale. She’d changed her clothes and wore a black suit under a dark gray coat. She wore several new pieces of jewelry. A silver necklace, a golden watch, and a pair of copper rings. No doubt all imbued with some kind of power.

“From what little I’ve been told, they’ve got a handle on it. But they keep finding cracks. He did some real damage. Which is why we need to find him.” She looked at Wesely like it wasn’t his priority. Or as if he’d better things to do. “We are on a timeline,” she said to drive the point home.

“I’m aware,” Wesley said, stretching his back, and rubbing the parts of wrists where the shackles were digging into his skin. She’d let him sleep on the couch in the office but not let him take them off. The couch had been about half a meter short but was better than a cold cell. He’d spent most of the night dissecting his growing dread. “I’m not sure we can put the genie back in the bottle, though.”

She stared at him stolidly. “We’re going to try.”

Wesley bit his lip, thinking. “Listen, there’s something I need to tell you before we–”

“Enough, Wesley,” she said, looking past him to where Cillian and the Twins stood.

The duellist wore a long leather jacket and a black beanie. His hands were in his pockets and the small end of a cigarette was hanging lightly from the corner of his mouth, though it didn’t look like it was smoking.

None of those three had said a word all morning. It had mostly been Wesley and Mora bickering.

“Everyone on guard,” she told them. “We’re going to portal outside the estate gates and walk in.”

Mora swished her wand in a quick figure eight and muttered, “Per spatium.”

The portal opened with a pop and expanded till it was as tall as her. The scene beyond sent chills down Wesley’s spine. His childhood home had not changed much.

He followed her through the portal. A shock of coldness gripped him only to be released when he was on the other side.

A pop a second later told him the portal had closed.

Wesley stood as still as one of the gargoyles that sat perched atop either side of the gate. An overwhelming calm had come over him. He no longer felt the chains on his wrists. Or the sinking loss of his rib. Even the distant weight of the Nocturne’s presence was gone.

He was home and with it came all the memories.

“Do we knock?” Cillian asked.

“Don’t be insolent,” Mora said, though she sounded unsure. She had not moved. Perhaps she could feel the magical energy pulsing from the place. He’d almost forgotten how overwhelming it could be. The stones of the foundation had been forged nearly a thousand years prior and they’d only gotten stronger.

Welsey blinked, looking at the plaque on the old stone gate.

Morningstar Estate.

The plaque had been left seemingly to ruin. Green moss had grown around the letters. Vines too grew down around the stone and iron gates.

That was odd.

“Interesting name,” Cillian said, watching him.

“I think I should proceed alone,” Wesley proposed, ignoring the comment. Such fascinating history would be lost on the brutish man. He didn’t seem the one to find such complexity interesting, or allowable. Wesley wouldn’t waste it on him.

Cillian chuckled. “Good one, Wes.”

Wesley shot him a glare. “I’m serious. And don’t call me Wes,” he said, getting only raised eyebrows from the duellist. “My father is not a trusting man.”

“We go together,” Mora said, stepping toward the gate.

“There is…hidden magic,” Robin said, her voice quiet. “It would be best to proceed, cautiously.”

“My father already knows we are here. Likely knows I am here too,” Wesley said.

Mora gestured toward the gate reluctantly. “If you please.”

Wesley felt a little nervous as he stepped up the gates, pushed aside the vines, and said, “I’m home.”

They swung open with perfect force and the protections of the estate rippled away, creating an entrance for them.

“If you won’t let me go alone, then at least stay behind me.”

Cillian sighed, lighting back up the small bit of cigarette with the end of his wand.

“My father hates smoking,” Wesley told him, starting forward.

“Piss off.”

The drive was about a hundred yards, with thinly forested shrubbery on either side for about halfway. The same he’d run through as a child, playing hide and seek with…who had he played with? There had been so few other kids in the area. He remembered so little from before his mother was killed.

The landscaping hadn’t laxed completely, as the huge lawn past the trees was trimmed. The bushes held their normal animal shapes. The manor house looked the same. Cool, dark stone, and tall windows. It had about four chimneys and only one of them had vines growing on it. But they came from inside the thing itself.

State of affairs of this place was staggering Wesley. His father never would let the integrity of the manor go like this.

Wesley knew his mother must be rolling over in her grave.

A little brush of wind caught them just as they near the front door, which made Wesley stop. He heard the others stop behind him. Two things that alerted him. An odd glint from the rooftop, just beside the chimney with the vines. Then there was a bit of breeze that was blowing counter to the wind. No visible obstructions…

Wesley narrowed his eyes. “Hello, father.”

The air shimmered, unraveling like an invisible silk sheet. Wesley involuntarily sucked in a breath. It was perhaps the smoothest bit of cloaking magic he’d ever seen. Though he’d never tell his father that.

It took several seconds for the magic to dissipate. Wesley’s father, in all his glory, stood before them in a long, black coat, gray pants, and ancient looking leather boots. His face was an aged meshwork of hard lines, almost seemingly carved from the very stone of the house. He wore his pearl white hair long over his shoulders to match the handlebar mustache. Wesley knew the look matched a painting of his great grandfather that hung in the main gallery of the manor.

His father’s eyes were dark blue and intensely acute in their gaze. As if they were pulling back the very layers of the universe. It was a trait that had always left Wesley uneasy.

The man oozed intensity. It had been baked into his bones from birth. Like some granite had been mixed into the witch's cauldron. Maybe some iron too.

They stared at each other for a long moment.

Each second of this distant embrace seemed deepened with the weight of the years between them. His father had never seen him as the man he was. And Wesely had never seen his father become this picture of ancestral pride.

A sudden emotion clouded his eyes just in time for his father to clear his own throat and say, “Wesley, my son.”

Wesley could only nod, blinking.

“Welcome home,” he added.

A stiff breeze picked up, brushing the old coattails for a moment and Wesley saw the old saber on his father’s hip. That was a relic too.

He heard a shuffle behind him and only then remembered he was not alone. No doubt Cillian was reacting to the weapon. How awkward to have this moment in the open. Nothing Wesley hated more than the idea of the duellist seeing him like this.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

The corner of his father’s mouth quirked up and Wesley frowned. Had his father almost just smiled? Impossible. The old grouchy bastard never smiled. Not even if the queen, bless her heart, had handed him a knighthood. He would have growled his thanks and been on about his day.

To Wesley amazement the old wrinkled face broke into a small smile, which made him look about two decades younger. “Are you not going to give me a hug?”

He tried not to let his mouth hang open. Then he shifted his hands around the jacket to show the shackles around his wrists.

His father’s face darkened, anger flooding his features. “What is this?”

Mora, who Wesley thought might have lost her nerve, stepped beside him and said, “Lord Barstow, your son is in my custody.”

Wesley’s father blinked as if surprised there were other people present. “My dear,” he said gently. “By bringing my son back here you have begun a series of events that cannot be stopped. Of course, you could not know this would happen but that matters little now.”

Dumbfounded by his father’s tone and the lack of angry outburst, Wesley’s mouth worked a moment before finding words. “What do you mean?”

A wand appeared in his father’s hand and he flicked it. There was a crisp pop and the shackles fell to the gravel, smoking slightly. He’d just severed Mora’s magical attachment as if it had been a gnat.

She seemed equally dumbfounded. “Lord Barstow, you cannot–”

“I will ask you kindly to refrain from trying to enter my mind,” his father said. “It is a futile pursuit. And should you continue it will become very uncomfortable for you.”

The threat was so simple and casual that Mora straightened, frowning at him. “I am a truthfinder, sir. My authority is upheld by the Charter.”

For the first time in a decade Wesley heard his father laugh. It was derisive, yes, but jovial all the same. “If you would like to recite your laws here, that is your prerogative. But they will fall on deaf ears, I’m afraid. You are on my land now, truthfinder. And my laws are more ancient than yours.”

The gravel under Cillian’s feet crunched as he stepped forward. It wasn’t necessarily aggressive but his face was impassive. Lord Barstow did not spare him a glance.

“You come unannounced to my house, my son in shackles, and expect me to cooperate? Have you forgotten your manners?”

Wesley couldn’t help but smile at that as he rubbed his wrists, the icy feeling was almost gone from his body now.

Cillian, it seemed, did not like to be spoken to like this. “You will tell us what we need to know.”

Now, Lord Barstow gave him his full attention. “Young man, if you address me, you will call me Lord.”

The duellist’s mouth quivered but he said nothing, only glared.

“My son does not wear shackles in the land of his ancestors and he certainly does not wear them in the house they built.”

Wesley felt he was looking at an entirely different man. One that had changed drastically from the hardass to someone who might actually have a heart. Perhaps he’d found another woman.

The vein in Mora’s neck was straining. “Lord Barstow, we are here for information about the Nocturne.”

He nodded slowly. “I’m aware. And soon you’ll have more than you’d ever wanted.”

That ominous comment shut them up. Wesley’s father opened his arms and looked at him. Surprised and hesitant, he embraced him. His father held him tightly.

It was the first real hug they’d shared in ten years.

Wesley swore he felt his grief and resentment wash and break upon this embrace. Like the grip of his father’s hands on his shoulders and the wood smoke smell of his eroded so much of the distance that had kept them apart.

He knew this was not the same man who’d been lost after Wesley’s mother had died. Or the same man who’d driven him away.

When they pulled away, his father’s hand still rested on one of his shoulders. “Wesley, I’m sorry for what has happened to you. For what the Nocturne has done.”

There was so much knowledge behind those eyes. So much pain and regret too. It was clouded with Wesley’s confusion.

“What do you know?” he asked.

His father dropped his hand and stepped back, eyeing the others.

Wesley sighed, stepping aside and introduced them. Mora and Cillian still glared, though they inclined their heads. His father did not react when he mentioned the duellist, but the small flicker of his eyes told Wesley he knew him. And his father was no fool to take a threat lightly.

The twins were impassive, though Lord Barstow shook their hands saying, “I’m familiar with your work. I was impressed by the case you worked in Marbella. I, myself, have run into chimera before. They are wicked things.”

“Thank you,” the twins said in unison, nodding too, in an eerie way.

Wesley’s father grunted, and turned to walk toward the house without another word. They followed quickly. He could almost hear Mora running scenarios in her head. He doubted this was even remotely close to what she’d expected to happen. Her authority meant nothing here.

A memory of something similar came back through the muddy rivers of his mind. A visit from a similar group of detectives in his youth. They too had been shocked to see their badges were meaningless here. His father had even hexed one of them when he’d made the presumption to step into the house without being invited. That had become a sordid affair that was only soothed by Wesley’s mother, who shooed the lawmen out of the manor.

Each step he took reminded him of a memory. Painful as they were. It was a cacophony of the worst part of his life.

And yet, it felt like this was something he’d been waiting for.

As they entered the house, the door was held open by perhaps the oldest woman Wesley had ever seen. And he was just as surprised to find that he recognized her. It was the old as dirt housemaid from his youth. Ms…Ms…what was her bloody name?

She looked like she hadn’t aged a day. She’d looked a hundred years old for as long as he could remember. The old, black and white uniform she wore was pristine, if a little faded.

Wesley was even more surprised that when she saw him, tears like the tiniest specks of dew drops ran down her face. She flung the heavy door back and pulled him into a hard hug. It felt like she was compressing his spine.

“Welcome back, Master Wesley,” she said, a rough sob racking her body.

“Let the boy breathe, Ms. Bonnie. Please, he’s only just returned,” his father told her.

Ms. Bonnie…Wesley thought. Of course.

She released him and fumbled for the door, wiping her face. Heat touched Wesley’s cheeks, surprised by the small reception. This woman had spanked his bottom all those years ago. Now she was having a meltdown.

He steadfastly refused to look at the others. Though he could see they were uncomfortable with the situation. Mora was tapping one of her hands against her thigh with increasing force.

An awkward silence filled the huge veranda, save for the poorly stifled sobs from Ms. Bonnie. She was repeatedly flattening her white apron with shaking hands.

“Perhaps you’d like to check your old room,” his father said, eyeing the ragged clothing Wesley wore. “There might be some…more fitting clothing.”

Wesley snorted. “I don’t think they’d fit.”

“I had Ms. Bonnie put some of your grandfather’s old clothing in there some time ago. They will fit. You’re a spitting image of that man.”

Wesley stared at his father, considering this. Had he known he would be coming?

There was an impatient sound from Mora, who quickly stifled it.

“Maybe we should start with what you said out there,” Wesley said. “What events are now in motion?”

His father sighed, a weary smile touching his face. “Yes, that is a good place to start. Follow me.” He led them through the long hallway toward the back of the house.

They passed the enormous paintings of the Barstow clan. The lineage that traced itself back to damn near the stone age. Wizards and witches with the same stolid features and piercing blue eyes. Wesley felt a small amount of pride now, standing among them. They had fought tooth and nail to survive in their time.

They would be proud of what he’d been trying to do. Stomp out a great evil. Revenge a fallen member of the family.

Eventually his father turned into the study, throwing open the doors with a flourish. The place had not changed. The same books filled the floor to ceiling shelves. The same dirty globe in its holster near the window. The tray of old, expensive alcohols were still beside the mahogany desk. The weapon rack, which always had fascinated Wesley, still hung on the far wall, filled with swords, axes, and spears.

He wondered if this new and improved man that occupied his father’s body would let him touch one now or if he’d still get chastised. He decided not to try.

Lord Barstow sat in the old leather chair behind the desk and steepled his fingers. “Tell me about your trials.”

Wesley blinked. “My what?”

“I’m aware that you have been targeted by the one who calls himself the Nocturne. I want you to tell me how.”

“We do not have time for this,” Cillian said, his jaw flexing. The man seemed to have dwindling patience, if he had any to begin with.

Wesley’s father raised a hand. “Do not be churlish, young man. You are a guest here. You will act as such. If you wish my help, then you will abide the rules of my house.”

Cillian drew a cigarette from his pocket, drawing his wand to light it when the little white slip of paper and tobacco simply vanished. The duellist flinched and stared at Lord Barstow. “What the hell do–”

“There is no smoking in this house.”

Cillian stretched his neck, his jaw clenched and gave a terse nod of his head, looking away.

Chuckling, old man Barstow said, “Good boy.”

There was some of the old disdain and condescension Wesley had remembered his father being so practiced at. According to tales he’d heard as a kid, his words had gotten him into many duels with other lords in his youth. He’d been quite famous for it.

Wesley found himself somewhat glad his father hadn’t completely lost his sheen.

“Enough,” Mora said through her teeth. “Wesley, explain to your father.”

So, he did. Sparing no detail. He told the story again. Every embarrassing detail and every little… quirk of the last several days.

His father listened with impassive patience. He waited a long time after Wesley had finished speaking before asking, “This rib, you say you had it removed?”

He nodded.

“Destroyed?”

“Yes,” Mora said, frowning. “After we had it analyzed. It kept trying to…well, it They only found old engravings on it. An ancient kind of language.”

“Enochian?”

She nodded.

“And this, basilisk blood. Any after effects other than the increased awareness and bloodthirst?”

Wesley thought. His body had been through so much recently he didn’t know what to attribute to what. “Too soon to tell.”

“Why?” Mora asked.

“If it reached your bones then there could be…” his father seemed to search for the word. “Unforeseen side-effects. But if you haven’t felt anything yet then it's unlikely.”

Wesley nodded, he’d come to the same conclusion. Now he waited for the elephant in the room.

“This…latent ability you possess,” his father said. “The Nocturne didn’t have you use it?”

Wesley shook his head. “No.”

“Then we must assume he doesn’t need it yet.”

“Then why tell me I have it at all?” Wesley asked.

“He’s mad, is why,” Cillian said. His arms were folded as he leaned against a bookcase, chewing on what looked like a toothpick.

“He’s brilliant,” Wesley’s father said. “A mastermind. Look what he’s done to our reality. Snapped it in half with the Orb. He’s baiting you, I believe. He wants you to use it.”

“You know what that orb was then?” Mora asked.

“Oh, yes. The Gregorian Orb. The Moonstone. It has been called many things. They did not create it as much as they pulled it out of a different place into ours,” Lord Barstow explained.

Wesley’s head was spinning. How did his father know all this?

“The Nocturne simply used it differently. The fool of a minister allowed it all to happen. I warned him years ago.” Wesley’s father rubbed his mustache absently. “You can’t put the cat back in the bag,” he said, mostly to himself.

Wesley dropped into a chair, his knuckles white against the armrest, his eyes stuck on his father’s face. “How do you know all this?”

His father looked at him gravely, nodding slowly, as if finally able to spill some great burden. “Because the night your mother was killed, it should have been me.” His voice became harsh. “The Nocturne had come for me. Not her. And ever since that night, the Nocturne has been trying to finish the job.”