The Bloodless Witch (Merging Worlds Book 2) Read online

  Flashes of Dalia from his most recent dream flashed in Markus’s mind, her disturbing pleas drawing flesh bumps up and down his spine. She’d told him to seek the doorway leading to Avalon, making this meeting with Lund rather fortuitous—in a wholly unnerving way. While Markus had the motivation to want to get back to Avalon, there was no reason on Earth he could think of why Lund would.

  “If you’re wondering why me, I’ll be happy to explain,” Lund offered. Just as she’d remembered Markus’s wit, he remembered she exceeded at reading body language. “When I read your account of the events, I was most struck by your tales of this other world.”

  Lund paused as their waiter made a pitstop to refill their drinks and lay down the check. Markus did his best to pretend he didn’t notice it. “My reasons for wanting to get to Avalon are simple,” she continued when they were alone again. “I want to assess the threat level this other world poses to ours. I want to see it with my own eyes.”

  “What you mean to say,” Markus translated. “Is that you’re looking for trouble.”

  “No,” she replied, reaching for the bill. “Only information. And with someone like you who's been there and can act as a guide—”

  “Whoa, there.” Markus leaned back, the booth suddenly feeling way too tight. “I wasn’t there for long and ran for my life every second.”

  “But you know Holger,” Lund insisted, knuckles pale on hands that clutched the table lip. “And you met this—Queen Morgana, as you called her. So that’s two more than I know.”

  The spins returned, and his heart pounded hard against his ribs. Air was growing tight. “I—didn’t—say I wanted—to go.”

  Lund reached across the table. At first, Markus thought she might strike him. But, instead, she clasped his hands in hers, holding them together in the center of the table. “I know you’ve been wondering about Dalia, just as I know why you’ve been running so damn hard—and getting nowhere. Do you want to know why?”

  His answer was meeker than he would’ve liked. “Yes.”

  “Because you can’t run from yourself,” she said, releasing his hands abruptly. “Come with me. If I’m right, you can see the witch again. But if I’m wrong, you have lost nothing that you don’t already seem content to lose.”

  Markus’s jaw opened and shut, the muscles in his face trying to do one thing while his brain demanded another. To Lund, he was sure it looked like he was having a seizure—and it felt like one, too—a battle being waged on every internal front as to what response should be given. And finally, a victor, though a highly reluctant one, emerged.

  “I will go with you.”

  Lund clapped her hands as the surrounding patrons glared in annoyance. “Well, that’s a relief. Here I thought I would have to go with option B.”

  She left it purposefully open. Markus took the bait. “What was option B?”

  Blue eyes darted to Markus’s water glass, lips curling upwards into a smirk that reminded him of McDermott—who’d once drugged Markus after refusing to join a similar ill-fated venture…

  “You wouldn’t have,” he blinked incredulously.

  Picking up her napkin from the table, Lund slipped what sure looked like several capsules into her pocket, winking at Markus as she rose from her seat. “Guess we will never know.”

  TWO

  “Welcome to Glastonbury Tor! My name is Art. I will be your guide today. Before we begin, do we have any elves or dwarves with us here today?”

  The ear-splitting squeals of children made Markus want to clutch his head. Though he didn’t, it was only because doing so would have made him stand out in the crowd—which, according to the woman he barely recognized standing at his side, was the last thing they wanted. Still, he couldn’t help sending her a seething look that she was too happy to shrug off.

  Lund had been less than forthcoming about where they’d be going after leaving the café. Upon buying Markus some new clothes, which he’d gladly accepted on behalf of the people he might stand next to, she’d directed him into a car and drove them straight to the airport. She had told him it was a short flight to England; it would be over in no time. And yet, ‘no time’ consisted of a seesaw battle that early and often found him with his head hanging over the lavatory toilet.

  “That’s wonderful,” Art continued his pitch to a jubilant mob of youngsters. “Because today, I will be taking all of you somewhere very special.”

  Once they’d gotten off the plans and on the road again, Lund did a stellar job of blocking out all of Markus’s insistent inquiries, ending her brooding silence only once to enlighten him about where they were headed. She’d called it Glastonbury Tor—and it was where they would find Avalon, she’d insisted. Begrudgingly, Markus decided to leave it alone, zoning out as he stared through the window at an endless blanket of rolling green.

  The tower ruins of Glastonbury Tor had been visible from a distance, a giant archway looming large even from the bottom of the grassy hill that had to be scaled to reach it. And, staring up from the base of the decrepit structure, Markus couldn’t figure out all the excitement. Nothing about the unstable remains screamed doorway to Avalon to him.

  “You’re all in for a special treat,” the tour guide boasted. “We will be adventuring today to the fantastical land known as Avalon.”

  Markus barely contained a groan. Lund returned it with a smug I-told-you-so look.

  “Glastonbury Tor was once a great chapel,” Art announced to the gathering crowd. “But due to the unstable geology of the hill, it fell—leaving only this tower at the very top. Yet, it’s said, somewhere, within this very tower is the key to reaching the magical realm.”

  A little girl could barely contain her excitement. “Can we go inside?”

  Art smiled and shook his head, smiling wide with grey eyes that looked much older than the rest of him. “I’m afraid not, little one. The building is far too unstable for any to go upstairs. We wouldn’t want it to fall, would we?”

  Still looking disappointed, the children shook their heads.

  “What about the tile seals?”

  It took Markus a moment to realize the question had come from Lund. Heads turned in their direction, making Markus want to shrivel up and disappear, but Lund didn’t pay attention to any of them—keeping her eyes locked on just one. “Stories speak of five seals etched into the walls within the tower,” she continued. “They are said to contain the knowledge of reaching Avalon.”

  Heads turned back to the tour guide, whose eyes didn’t blink as they settled on Lund and stayed there. “There are many stories about these hallowed walls, but I assure you that’s all they are—stories. Every inch of this tower was ransacked by thieves and marauders long ago. Nothing of value remains inside.”

  Lund was undeterred. “How would you know if you’ve never been up there?”

  The moment of silence was tense, like a contest between two people that no one else was allowed to be a part of. Then, finally, wolfish eyes released their tension as a jovial laugh left the tour guide’s throat. “I know what everyone would like to see—the Entrance to Fairyland. At the base of the hill, there’s an old thorn tree whose roots have grown free of the dirt, creating a cave where many have claimed to have seen and talked to faeries. So what say you, everyone—shall we go there?”

  The applause by the children was pure enthusiasm, while on the part of the parents, it served as simply a way to move past the awkwardness. And as they were shepherded towards a path leading down the hill, Markus turned to Lund. “So much for trying to stay beneath the radar. What the hell was that back there?”

  “Just testing a theory,” Lund replied curtly.

  Markus shook his head. “I think you pissed off our guide.”

  She grabbed his hand, squeezing his fingers in a cold grip. “Well, then he’s really not going to like this.”

  “Wha—”

  He had no time to finish as Lund suddenly veered off to the side, breaking free from the main group and leading them back to the tower’s grand—crumbling—entrance. Fortunately, no one had noticed their quick departure, though that hardly made Markus feel better about it.

  “What the hell are we doing?”

  Lund put a finger to her lips. “I thought it was obvious. We’re going in.”

  “Going in?” Markus started—promptly lowering his voice even further beneath a pressure-cooker stare. “You heard what he said. We can’t go in there. The whole place could come down.”

  Already scanning the area, Lund hardly acknowledged what he’d said. “I never said finding the doorway to Avalon would be easy.”

  “Will you listen to yourself?” Markus hissed, causing Lund to turn on him. “We don’t know if there’s anything up there. And what if he was telling the truth?”

  “You think they’ll let children pose next to a building that could fall on them?” Lund scowled. “If this building wanted to fall, it would. Something is keeping this place up, something unnatural; I can feel it. And what we’re looking for is inside these walls.”

  In Markus’s mind, there was no way she could know that. Not in the concrete way she was making it sound. “What about the cave he was talking about? That sounds like it could be more promising, not to mention safer.”

  A visible vein pumped at Lund’s temple. “You’d rather take your chances underneath thousand tons of dirt instead? The cave is a ruse, a carrot the wolves wave at the rabbits to get them to follow. Trust me; what we’re looking for is here.”

  It was a hard sell, especially considering it sounded like Lund was insinuating that there was a full-blown conspiracy plot between the tour guide staff. While he wasn’t close to entertaining such an outlandish theory, there was more than just wild obsession staring back at him. Lund was sure of what she was saying—and she was going in whether Markus liked it or not.

  “Fine,” he relented. “But we go up and get out quick. If there’s nothing up there, I don’t want to waste time searching for unicorns.”

  “Deal,” she said with a dangerous half-smile. “The seals we’re looking for are imprinted into the walls of the lookout point. We find them and get out.”

  Markus sighed—but was otherwise given no time to prepare himself. Lund dragged him by his hand underneath the temple's towering archway and towards a dilapidated staircase on the west wall. Seeing its fragile state and knowing one wrong step would result in numerous broken bones as a positive outcome, Markus immediately began to re-assess his options. But, of course, Lund sensed that and wasted no time pulling him past a cone blockade and up the first couple of stairs before yanking his hand away. He winced as he flexed his fingers. He’d forgotten how strong she was.

  Having gone too far to go back down—or so he convinced himself—Markus swallowed hard as he followed after Lund. Each climb was a puzzle requiring a solid look-over before putting weight on an already-compromised surface. Using the staircase walls for support would have been an option had they not been in a similar state of neglect, making the incline seem more like Russian roulette.

  Finally, they made it to the top of the first level.

  “Towers were built as lookout points, often occupied by only one person at a time—their sole job to search the horizon for friends and foes alike,” Lund said, her whispers sounding more like hisses in the minuscule daylight.

  Markus gulped. Not only could he feel how wobbly the floor was, but the walls themselves seemed to close in all around him. “Why the hell would they build something like this so tight?”

  “Lookouts would be in here for hours, even days on end,” Lund answered over her shoulder. “The time spent alone made it easy to drift off and miss potential threats. So, whatever floors were designed small and tight to make it as uncomfortable to fall asleep as possible.”

  “Lovely,” Markus quipped. He couldn’t wait to get out already.

  The floor was the size of a small closet. Small windows were carved into each of the four walls, providing sightlines in every direction. A thick ever-reaching fog was just starting to roll over the surrounding marshlands. Watching the impenetrable grey mass sweeping over and consuming everything in its path made sweat pour from Markus’s forehead as memories rushed back to his nightmares—and the Necromancer.

  “Markus,” Lund called. “I need you.”

  Those three words—the same he’d heard Dalia say to him in his dream—broke Markus from his paralysis. He moved towards her, making sure to tread lightly. True to what their guide had tried to tell them, the place felt like it could go down with one ill-placed foot. He decided against wagging that point in Lund’s face.

  “We don’t have much time before they figure out we’re gone,” Lund said, motioning towards a wall section adjacent to the closest window. “Here’s one of the seals. Take a look. Tell me if it means anything to you.”

  Markus raised an eyebrow. “Why would it mean anything to me?”

  Lund blinked, offering nothing. “Indulge me.”

  He leaned in to get a closer look. Squinting against the tricks of shadows created when darkness and light mixed, Markus discovered that what Lund was pointing to wasn’t part of the wall—but rather a custom square tile deliberately inserted into it. On its face was a peculiar design of jagged lines, all cutting and twisting into different directions with no apparent meaning.

  His silence must have given Lund her answer because she reached into her pocket to grab her phone. The camera flashed as she took pictures of the demented illustration from every angle. “Don’t just stand there; find the others.”

  “Others?” he repeated, stunned. “That could be anything; most likely, it’s nothing.”

  Lund didn’t wait for Markus to get on board, turning swiftly within the narrow chamber to search for the next seal by herself. She found it seconds later, the tile inlay set into the wall at almost floor level just below the second window opening. Like the first, harsh lines were scratched across the front, making it appear as the doodle of a drunk at the height of his stupor.

  “While you were busy drowning yourself in liquor, I was scouring every fairytale and urban legend I could get my hands to figure out how to get to Avalon,” she spat, lifting herself from the dust. “This place, these seals, are the key. One way or the other, I will figure out what they mean. So, you can either help me or get the fuck out of my way.”

  Reassuring himself that he needed to play along only for a little longer, Markus turned his attention to the task. Finding the next two was simple, their tortured surfaces standing out like sore thumbs on opposing walls. Lund repeated her picture-taking routine as Markus searched for the fifth and final piece. He spent a long time staring at the ceiling, focusing on anything that might even remotely resemble a mess of lines so that he could point them out to Lund and be done with this nonsense that much sooner. Only, he found none.

  But then, frustration getting the best of him, Markus glared down—and beamed. “X marks the spot,” he announced.

  Lund pushed him away, brushing the fifth marker free of the dust from Markus’s foot. “X never ever marks the spot,” she answered, kneeling over it and touching the camera screen. “But in this case, it will do just fine—”

  “You were told not to come up here,” a harsh voice rumbled.

  Before Lund could react, a hand snaked over her shoulder and snatched the phone from her fingers. She and Markus whirled to find Art's skinny tour guide standing behind them, anger apparent in grey eyes that smoldered behind stringy blond hair. He hadn’t made a sound until he’d been right on top of them. And as he glared at Markus and then back to Lund, he held the latter’s phone inside a tightly clenched fist.

  “Hey,” Lund sniped, extending her hand to snatch it back. “Give that—"

  Art sidestepped Lund’s attempt, looking exceptionally nimble despite his long and gangly frame. She tried again, hissing a series of cuss words when her hands swung at empty air. His movements were fluid, almost effortless, and what made it even more impressive was that he was juking within such a constricted, not to mention structurally compromised space. Then, sounding from beneath them at the base of the staircase, came such a bellowing roar that, for a moment, Markus thought Holger had returned.

  “Everything all right up there? Want me to come up and deal with them?”

  Judging from the powerful voice, that was something neither Markus nor Lund wanted.

  “No, I don’t think that will be necessary, Kane,” Art answered, not breaking his sights from Lund. “Is it?”

  “Not at all necessary,” Markus spoke up, blocking out Lund’s scathing glance. “We were just leaving.”

  “You’ve been here before, haven’t you? Not more than a week ago.”

  Markus angled his head, the skin between his brows creasing into a dark frown. Lund stood there, quiet—and yet simmering behind constantly clenching teeth. Her silence spoke volumes.

  As I recall,” Art continued. “You had to be escorted off the property for berating one of our other guides, a young woman who didn’t deserve your mistreatment. Am I correct?”

  Lund appeared ready to swing again but held back, restrained under a piercing stare that knew her every intention. “Yes.”

  Markus wanted to be angry, but he wasn’t the slightest bit surprised.

  “It was a good second attempt,” Art acknowledged solemnly. “But you will not get a third—that I can promise you. Kane?”

  “I am here,” the voice from downstairs boomed.

  “Will you escort our guests from the property? I believe they have everything they came here with?” He held the phone in his hand. A deadpan stare informed Lund that it no longer belonged to her. “I shall not see you again on these premises, either of you. To do otherwise would be gravely unfortunate.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  The amused chuckle was innocent—the intent of it was not. “I do not make threats, Ms. Laura Lund, formerly of Denmark’s DSIS. But, for the good of all, you would do well to heed my warning. What you seek does not exist—and even if it did, one such as yourself should never be allowed to find it. Now, go.”