True to Hades' word, we were all back in his jet within twenty minutes of Tommy's phone call from Olivia. There was no Scotch to ease my flight on the return leg; I didn't need any. All I could think about was how the lich had attacked again so soon after trying to have Olivia, Agents Reid and Greave, along with me, killed. And it had attacked a prison. What could possibly be so important that it would attack a prison with a huge population like Winchester’s?
The four hours in the air went by quickly, we were soon landing at the same secluded base we'd left the day before. There was a quiet concern that was easy to spot not just on Tommy and Kasey, but the flight staff, too. They knew something was wrong, and even if they didn't know all the facts, I doubted Hades would normally have had them ready the jet so quickly unless it was a dire emergency.
"I'm taking Kasey home," Tommy said. "Will you be okay going by yourself?"
I swung onto my bike, which was still in the hanger where I'd left it. "I'll be fine. I’ll get Olivia to call you when I see her."
Kasey waved as she and Tommy got into his car and drove off; leaving me alone with the jet's flight crew and the maintenance team, who were getting the jet ready to fly again.
I placed my helmet on and pulled down the visor; letting the bike roar to life, before taking it out into the early morning sun.
My mind wandered during the ride to the prison, I had no idea what I was going to find, but I was glad that Kasey wouldn't be there to see it. I'd been younger than her when I'd seen my first dead body, but that didn't mean it was okay.
The police presence outside the prison was extensive. They'd blocked off the entire road to the front entrance, with the LOA using the human uniformed police to deal with crowd control.
A large group of people were milling around on the road to the prison. They got in my way as I rode toward the barriers that had been placed to stop the curious. The press were out in force, too, trying to take photos, or busy talking into microphones about the developing story.
I stopped the bike near a haggard looking policeman who didn't appear too happy at having to tell one more person to bugger off. I raised the visor on my helmet. "I'm Nate Garrett. I'm here to see Director Green," I said before he could tell me to leave.
He didn't acknowledge that he'd even heard me speak. Instead he picked up his radio and spoke into it for a second, then listened to the reply.
"You can go in," he told me after replacing the radio on his belt. "Straight through into the parking area."
He pointed the direction and I thanked him. I dropped my visor and passed several more officers, until I rode under a huge stone arch that marked the entrance to the prison parking area.
I'd used my phone to do some research on the prison during the flight back. The prison itself was an imposing structure, consisting of one large building and two smaller ones. Sixty foot walls topped with razor wire encircled the entire prison grounds. And there were only two exits. One was a service entrance for the various vendors and employees to come and go during the day, and the other was the main visitors entrance.
I stopped the bike at the visitors' entrance and switched off the engine, removing my helmet and hanging it from the handlebars as someone shouted from behind me, "You took your damn time."
"Hi, Olivia," I said. "Nice to see you, too. Takes a while to fly from Canada."
Olivia marched over to me and opened her mouth to say something, but instead her shoulders sagged and she leaned against the nearby wall. "Sorry, I'm just tired. How are Kasey and Tommy?"
"Good; Tommy took Kasey home. I told them you'd call."
"So, did you manage to get us any help?"
"A necromancer should be here in a few hours, maybe sooner depending on where he or she is coming from."
"And with your necromancer in tow, we should be able to stop this thing, right?"
"That's the plan. Now, what happened here? Tommy said that a bunch of prisoners are dead or missing"
"I'm at a loss for words." Olivia rubbed her eyes, the past few days had clearly been hard on her. "You need to see this for yourself."
Olivia led me through the prison entrance, which was guarded by another uniformed officer who nodded to us as we walked past. A series of corridors later and we reached a heavy-duty door, made of steel and painted blue. It was the last gate to freedom for those locked up inside. Olivia unlocked it with a key and a buzzer sounded from above us as she pushed it open, ending when the door was closed once more.
We continued on; passing a small breakroom where several LOA agents were talking with a few of the prison guards.
We went through another two heavy doors, and we were in the prison itself.
"How many wings are there?" I asked.
"The prison is made up of one central hub, that's the smaller building we just walked through. That hub feeds into five spokes, all of which house the prisoners, and a sixth much smaller spoke, where they keep the supplies. Each spoke is capable of keeping about five hundred prisoners, along with the various guard facilities, waiting rooms for visitors, interview rooms and the like. All of the spokes are independent of each other; to travel between them you need to come though the main hub.
"The wing we're currently in houses those who are considered highly dangerous to themselves or others. There are thirty four-guards working exclusively in this spoke on every shift. Each shift is ten hours long; overlapping so that there's never a complete change of guard all at once."
"It looks quiet here." I glanced around the magnolia walls and blue and white tiled floor, which probably hadn't been changed in decades.
"We've not reached where we need to go yet. There's a large hall at the far end of this building. It was considered a reward for prisoners to be allowed to work in there."
"What did they do?"
"The usual metal and wood work. There's a library, too. Most of what happened earlier took place in that part of the prison."
We walked along one row of cells and down yet another long corridor with barred windows down one side. A second corridor intersected it, and the lack of lighting down that hallway gave it an eerie quality.
"What's down there?" I asked Olivia
"There's another security door and after that, a second guard checkpoint. Beyond that are the solitary confinement cells. Not everyone in this place is able to play with others. The most dangerous prisoners were housed down there."
"Were?"
"You'll see in a minute."
We walked on, and before long I noticed blood smears on the walls, continuing through the closed doorway at the far end of the corridor.
"You need to be prepared for what you're about to see." Olivia's words were spoken with such trepidation that I was certain walking the other way would spare me a lot of misery. Unfortunately, my path was set and walking away was no longer an option.
Olivia stopped walking a few feet back from the open door.
"You're not coming?" I asked.
"I have no intention of stepping foot in there again if I can manage it. There's a door on the opposite side. It leads to the cells. I'll meet you there. And here, you're going to need these." She handed me a pair of shoe covers, which I quickly put on.
As Olivia walked away, I wanted to mock her, to say something to break the tension, but I bit my tongue. It didn't feel right.
Instead I turned and pushed open the door.
The stench of death hit me like a train as I stepped through the doorway. The first thing I saw was the remains of… of a human, although considering how little was left of him, it was hard to be sure. Dozens of bodies littered the large area, their blood and gore soaking the floor and walls.
The machinery the prisoners had worked with was scattered in pieces around the room, deep dents in the wooden walls testifying to the violence of its destruction. Some bodies lay over their workstations, others had clearly tried to get away and were caught before they reached anywhere near freedom.
At one end of the room, in a portion devoid of the blood that covered so much of it, stood Agent Reid.
"I thought you were off healing up?" I said as I got closer.
"One sec," he said, and then started counting. He stopped at thirty-two. "Shit."
"Thirty-two bodies?"
"Thirty-two bodies which are identifiable without serious medical knowledge."
"Where are all of the Avalon agents? I thought there'd be dozens of you in here."
"They've got to wait for the docs to finish in here," he said. "Doc Grayson didn't want anyone else going through here until his people had finished. I don't envy their job."
"So why are you here?"
"Waiting for the doc to come back. Director Green wanted a count of the bodies, but there's too much mess in here to give an accurate number."
"What do you know so far?"
"These people were torn apart," Agent Reid said. "Grayson said he thinks ghouls did it. The barren wouldn't have left any flesh for us to find, his words, not mine."
"So let's say forty people died in here. Where are the rest of the prisoners?"
"Forty-seven," Doctor Grayson said as he entered the hall wearing dark blue coveralls that even covered his shoes.
"And you know that how?" Agent Reid asked.
"I have a very special sense of smell, Agent," Doctor Grayson said, tapping the side of his nose. "Nice to see you again, Nathan."
"You, too, Doc, although this isn't exactly how I thought I'd be spending my day."
"On that, we can agree," he said with a forced smile. "Forty-seven dead down here-a further eighteen upstairs in the library, it's quite the display of brutality."
"Were they all killed in the same way?"
"Partially eaten, yes. But that's not all. I believe Director Green has something to show you in the main hall. You may wish to steady yourself for what you'll see there."
"Olivia said the same thing about what happened in here, how much worse can it get?"
"Ah, Nathan, now you know it can always get much, much worse."
More people arrived to help clean up, or tag the bodies, or whatever horrific job they needed to do, and I for one was happy to leave them to it.
"You never answered my question," I said to Agent Reid, who'd received the information he'd needed and had left the hall with me via the nearest door.
"I can't really sit on my ass all day when there's someone out there doing this," Reid said, removing the shoe coverings from his boots and placing them, and his blue latex gloves, in a yellow hazard bag that had been left outside the hall.
I removed my own covers and shoved them in the bag, then used fire magic to heat up my hands, burning off any blood that might have remained on my fingertips.
"Nice trick," Agent Reid said.
"It's sort of depressing that I need a trick to get rid blood on my hands."
"You think what we're about to see really is worse than that?" he pointed to the hall behind us.
I didn't answer right away. Instead we followed the directions of several agents who said Olivia was searching for me, until we came to a room that was guarded by two more LOA agents. They moved aside to let us in, and I immediately realised that I was wrong. It could get worse.
The room we entered housed a large TV, a pool table, and a few other games for the inmates to enjoy, including a collapsible table tennis set that had been folded in half with someone inside still it, crushing the man to death. Three massive couches had been upturned and thrown to the sides, exposing a large, empty section of floor. A lone arm, torn off from the shoulder, sat in the very centre in a pool of blood.
At the far end of the room, the TV had been torn from the wall and tossed aside. In its place was a body. Or at least the remains of one. Two pool cue ends protruded out of his chest, and blood had sprayed from his torso where his arms should have been, drenching the wall in red on either side of him. Identification was difficult since the victim’s head was missing.
"What the fuck happened here?" I asked, not sure if I wanted to know.
Olivia turned away from talking to one of her agents. "The best Doctor Grayson can determine is that, Neil was nailed to the wall by those pool cues, after having his arms and his head ripped off and thrown into the nearest bin."
" That's Neil Hatchell?"
Olivia nodded.
"So, the lich did this," I said. "But how? Surely Neil would have transformed to at least fight back. He'd have still lost, but there'd be more evidence of a struggle."
Olivia passed me a clear bag containing a bracelet. "This is how."
"A sorcerer's band? You mean he couldn't defend himself?"
"We had to make him wear one. He was in a human prison, we couldn't exactly have him running around turning into a wolf whenever he liked."
"Why was he in a human prison at all?"
"He implicated members of Avalon. We had to put him somewhere anyone involved wouldn't find him. Looks like it didn't work."
"I hate these damn things." Sorcerer bands were narrow bracelets with runes etched into the silver, which prevented the wearer from accessing their abilities. Neil would still have been fast and strong, and his innate ability to heal wouldn't have changed, but he wouldn't have been able to access his wolf form at all. I'd worn a sorcerer's bracelet for a while a long time ago, and it had felt like I'd lost a part of myself. They're horrific things, and to compound my dislike, each one has a rune inscribed that sits against the wearer's skin. If the band is removed by the wearer, or by someone else with a band on, the runes ignite with the equivalent of magical napalm. The rune can be changed depending on what will hurt the specific person the most, but the end result is always the same. Death.
"You and me both," Olivia said.
"Wow, this is not what I was expecting."
I turned at the sound of the newcomer's voice, watching as LOA Agents darted to the room's entrance, barring her from entering.
"It's okay, she's with me," I said, and the guards parted.
"Nate, it's been a while," she said with a smile, sweeping past the guards without a glance, her high-heeded boots clicking on the linoleum floor.
"And you are?" Olivia asked, taking the bagged bracelet back from me and passing it to a nearby agent.
"Ah, you must be Director Green. I've been sent here to assist you with your lich problem."
"Olivia," I said. "Let me introduce Sky. She's our necromancer."
Olivia's expression softened and she shook Sky's hand. "Good to have you on board. I hope we can figure out how to kill this thing."
"I'll be doing that," Sky said. "The lich killing, I mean. But first bring me up to speed on what happened here, and why that man has no head."
For the next few minutes we did just that, explaining about the ghoul attack on the prison, and everything that came before it. Sky didn't ask questions, but occasionally glanced at the headless body as it was removed from the wall by some of Doctor Grayson's men.
"This lich is strong," Sky said when we'd finished. "I heard that you killed a ghoul with magic, Nate. The lich will want revenge for what you did, you should be careful."
"Then we'd better hurry up and kill it," I said. "What's the plan?"
"How many prisoners are unaccounted for?" Sky asked Olivia.
"Nearly four hundred."
"Then we've got a few hours before we'll have to deal with four hundred new barren as well as a lich and probably five ghouls. Not great odds."
Another agent called Olivia over and she quickly ran off to find out what they needed.
"I've been wondering something," I said to Sky. "How did four hundred men disappear at once? Where'd they go? And how did the lich get them there without a fight?"
"You kill a few of those who want to fight back, and everyone else becomes very complacent. Besides the thought of freedom is a big motivator," Sky suggested.
"How many guards are missing?" I asked one of the agents.
She flicked through several sheets of paper on a clipboard before answering. "Twenty-two, ten are confirmed dead and fifteen were locked in the comm or guard's room. Apparently there was no communication with the outside world for an hour, and all internal alarm systems were shut down. One of the guard's wives got worried that she couldn't get through to her husband on his mobile and called the police. The police notified us two hours later, and we gained entry and secured the building an hour after arriving."
"Why let any of the guards live?" Sky asked.
"They were on a break," the agent said. "They weren't in the wing when the attack commenced. My guess is they locked themselves in to stay alive, and they weren't important enough for the lich to bother with."
I did some quick maths in my head. "I need to speak to Olivia. Now."
"What's got you all worked up?" Agent Reid asked, as Sky and I made our way over to him and Olivia.
"They were in here for an hour before anyone was even notified that something was wrong," I said. "What time did you actually gain entry?"
"Half eight this morning," Olivia said.
"It was light then, yes?"
Sky tapped something into her phone. "Dawn was at 06:58. So they would have been gone well before then. But that still means they had the place to themselves for three hours at least. By the time they left, all of the prisoners would have been pretty much on the way to becoming husks."
"How do four hundred husks leave without anyone noticing?" I asked. "That's what doesn't make sense."
"I'll be back in a second," Olivia said and marched off toward where I'd seen the guards being interviewed.
"The lich will have a home base. He'll want to go there, although if he has four hundred people about to turn into husks, it must be somewhere big. He'd have known the LOA would be all over this place after his attack, and he wouldn't want to be left vulnerable."
"That still doesn't explain how the hell he got out of here with all of those prisoners in tow."
"Maybe I can be of assistance with that," a middle-aged man in a very nice, immaculate, grey suit said, as he arrived with Olivia. He glanced at Agent Reid and me and then extended a hand to Sky, apparently we weren't important enough. "Maxwell Perkins," he said with a smirk.
"Okay, so who are you and how can you help?" I asked as Sky rolled her eyes once Maxwell had decided to stop staring at her.
"He's the assistant warden," Olivia said for him. "You need to listen to what he has to say."
Maxwell straightened his already perfectly straight tie, and I resisted the urge to hang him with it for being a pompous ass. "As I was explaining to your lovely director, there are tunnels under the prison. The whole building was built during the Georgian era, and those tunnels were never permanently sealed up.
"You have a set of open tunnels under a prison?" Sky snapped.
"They're not open, my dear." The smugness oozed out of him like oil. "A very large, thick steel door bars the way. And there's no prisoner in existence that has ever gotten even close to it. And even if they did, the exit is sealed with a three foot concrete wall."
"How long is the tunnel?" I asked
"Two miles, it ends near a selection of woodland."
"Why would the original architects have built a two mile tunnel under the prison?" Olivia asked.
"The tunnel was designed to move people in and out of the prison in a discreet manner. There are rooms down there where they used to torture people, and the tunnel made it easier to dispose of the bodies."
"Can you show us the way?" Agent Reid asked.
Maxwell beamed. "Of course, follow me. And ladies, you'd best stay close, don't want you to get spooked by anything."