Chapter 11
Brody
“What do you mean they found Creed?”
Hearing my own voice, it sounded like I was upset by the news.
Anyone who didn’t know me would have thought I wanted Creed to remain missing.
This wasn’t true, obviously. I wanted nothing more than for him to be found, but this sudden turn of good fortune was too abrupt, and I couldn’t help but feel suspicious.
Magnus threw himself into the chair across from me at the table, nearly knocking the whole thing over in the process.
“What’d you think I meant? They found him.”
Taking a deep breath, I fixed the saltshaker, which had fallen over when Magnus joined us. “Explain.”
Beside me, I heard Ellis draw in a sharp breath. He was clearly uncomfortable but refused to say anything. For a moment, I thought there was something wrong between him and Magnus, until I noticed he was staring at the saltshaker still in my hand.
Oh, right.
Wasn’t there some superstition about spilling salt?
I’d never bought into such things myself, but Ellis clearly did. So, just to make him happy, I took a pinch of the salt and threw it over my left shoulder.
Ellis immediately relaxed, and he gave me a grateful smile.
Across the table, Magnus clearly saw the exchange, but chose not to comment on it, focusing instead on the more pressing news about Creed.
“One of my contacts just sent me a message saying that they’ve managed to locate Creed. He’s alive, and as far as they can tell, unharmed.”
“As far as they can tell?” I asked.
At that same moment, Trent also came through the open front door, taking the time to close it behind him before joining the rest of us at the table.
“Don’t get your hopes us too much,” he said as he sat down, confirming what I already suspected.
“They couldn’t give us much information.
There was no explanation about what happened to Creed in the first place.
They couldn’t even confirm that he’d been rescued from his supposed captors.
All they said was that he’s been located, and that he seems to be all right. ”
Magnus slumped low in his chair, arms crossed over his broad chest. “At least it’s good news. Yesterday, we didn’t know if Creed was alive or dead. Now, we know he’s okay.”
“And I’m happy about that,” I insisted, resisting the urge to reach across the table and grab Magnus’s hand.
I’d leave the physical comfort to Trent.
“I’m just going to hold back on celebrating until we know exactly what’s going on.
But you’re right. This is good news. So long as Creed is alive and well, then he’ll definitely find a way back to us. ”
A smirk lit up Magnus’s face, bringing back the light in his blue eyes that had momentarily dimmed. “That bastard is probably already working on a plan. If the military hasn’t rescued him yet, they better get on it, or he’ll take care of the job himself.”
I nodded along. “It wouldn’t surprise me if getting captured was all part of some plan of his to begin with.”
I said it as a joke, and we both laughed, but the more I thought about it, the more I began to wonder.
Could Creed have orchestrated his own capture?
Well, yes. It made an odd kind of sense.
Creed was the most cunning and the most ruthless of all of us.
Survival was a special skill of his, which he had honed down to an art.
In all the years we’d served together, I could only think of a few times where he’d ended up in legitimate danger, and those instances had always been cleanly handled by the end.
Suddenly getting captured was so out of character for him. However, the thought of him orchestrating it on his own actually made more sense.
But why?
What would he stand to gain from such a deception?
We’d never know for sure until we asked him, and even under the best circumstances it would be several months before we saw him face to face again.
A rhythmic tapping of metal against wood caught my attention.
Ellis sat beside me, half listening to the conversation and half lost in thought, while idly tapping a painfully familiar key against the table.
Despite clearly being distracted by his own thoughts, he immediately noticed when he had my attention. Looking down at his hands, he realized what he was doing and shoved them in the pockets of the hoodie he’d borrowed from me, hiding the key out of sight at the same time.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“No, it’s all right,” I insisted, cursing myself for putting such an ashamed look on his face. “I just didn’t realize you still had Poppy Milford’s key. I thought we’d locked that away.”
“Oh.” Hesitantly he took the key back out of his pocket, placing it on the table in front of him without ever letting it go.
“It was put away, but I got it out again. I know it’s silly, but this key is the last thing my brother gave me.
It feels tied to him, so I just like holding onto it. I hope that’s okay.”
Grabbing the key and his hands all at once, I curled his fingers around the slightly warm metal and pushed it back toward him. “Yeah. It’s fine. Given the situation, I’d say you have just as much right to it as anyone.”
Clutching the key close, Ellis turned it over and over in his hands so the light from the window caught on the subtle floral design carved into the handle.
“You know, the sad thing is, I don’t think my brother even knew what this key was for.
He just knew it was important to those Tamed Souls people.
The only reason he took it was to get back at the cult that deceived him with false promises.
He could have gotten back at them in a dozen different ways, but he chose to steal the one thing that ended up leading me here. It all feels so… fated.”
I kept my reaction to his words under strict control, not wanting to offend him. I didn’t believe in fate, but if that thought gave Ellis comfort then I wasn’t going to take it away from him.
Magnus, however, had no reason to hide his own reaction. He snorted with obvious disdain and leaned back on the legs of his chair far enough to make the wood creak.
“I wouldn’t bother talking about fate until we know what that key is for. It could turn out to be a red herring for all we know.”
Trent laid a hand on his thigh, pressing downward until Magnus had to bring the front legs of his chair back to the floor.
“Considering you found that key hidden in a coffin that was buried on your property, I doubt it’s meant to be a trick.
Red herrings are usually easy to find. That’s their point. ”
Magnus scoffed again, but he sat a little straighter and let his hand rest over Trent’s. “A coffin that held a body we still haven’t identified. Wouldn’t it be ironic if the body turned out to just be some unimportant John Doe, and this whole thing has been a wild goose chase.”
While I didn’t believe in fate, I also knew better than to issue such a challenge to the universe as Magnus just had. Usually, such challenges would be beneath the universe’s notice. However, every now and then, when a challenge was issued, the universe would answer.
Today was one of those lucky days.
Mere moments after Magnus finished speaking, with his breath probably still lingering in the air around him, the ground beneath our feet started to shake.
I instinctively grabbed Ellis, while across from me Magnus did the same with Trent.
Was this an earthquake?
I’d never been through one before, but it didn’t seem right. I could hear something moving outside, like crumbling rock, and the tremors were coming from mostly one direction.
The earthquake—or whatever it was—didn’t last long, but it made a horrendous noise and seemed in danger of shaking my house right off its foundation. I’d built the place with my own hands, and if I’d cut corners anywhere it probably would have collapsed.
Under different circumstances, I would have gloated over the strength of my construction.
When the shaking finally stopped, my house was barely affected except for a few items that had fallen off the shelves.
Unfortunately, pride was the furthest thing from my mind as I slowly removed myself from the protective shield I’d formed around Ellis.
“What the hell was that?”
Magnus also stood up slowly, helping Trent to his feet as well. “That wasn’t an earthquake. I think… something happened outside.”
Something had happened, all right. We didn’t have to do more than open the front door and step out onto the porch to get our answer.
A wide chasm had opened up in the ground just behind Magnus’s house. It was the exact same spot where Magnus had dug up the coffin. He’d been planning on putting a greenhouse there, but now, instead of a crumbling old concrete slab, there was now a gaping hole straight down into the earth.
“What the hell?” Magnus shouted, stumbling a few feet toward the hole before Trent stopped him.
I silently agreed with Magnus, although my own feet stayed rooted to the floor of the porch.
What the hell?
A surprisingly soft touch to my arm startled me out of my shock as Ellis clung to my arm.
“Should we… I don’t know, call someone?”
His dark eyes looked toward me, expecting me to have the answer.
I didn’t. I had no idea what was going on. All I could do was solve the problem the way I always did. By charging forward.
“Wait here.” I removed his hands from me, squeezing them for a moment in a show of comfort, before stepping off the porch and heading for the newly opened hole in the ground.
“Are you sure that safe?” Trent called out, still holding back Magnus from following me.
“I won’t get too close,” I called back over my shoulder. “I just want to try and see what happened.”
The ground felt solid under my feet as I approached. If it weren’t for the big hole right in front of me, the land would have seemed exactly the same as it was a few minutes ago.