Simon Hawke - The Wizard of Camelot 2 - The Wizard of Whitechapel

Simon Hawke - The Wizard of Whitechapel.htmTHE WIZARD OF WHITECHAPEL

e-book ver. 1.0

For Adele,

with thanks for a decade of working together. Here's to the next ten.

PROLOGUE

London had changed little in two hundred years. It was hard to believe he'd

been

away so long. The neatly bearded blond man with the gold wire-rimmed glasses

sipped an unblended Scotch as he stared out the window of his suite in the

Dorchester Hotel. He was wearing a white silk shirt with lace trim and an

elegant, high-collared black suit. It was a cool, early-autumn evening, and

through the open window he could hear the orchestra playing in the pavilion

in

Hyde Park. He lit a cigarette and removed his coat, revealing the black 10-mm

semiautomatic he wore in a shoulder holster under his left arm.

People and fashions come and go, he thought, but the city always stays the

same.

Like Rome and Venice, London was a city that stubbornly resisted change.

Londoners took great pride in their city's history. They cherished the

buildings

that dated back hundreds of years. They installed blue plaques on houses

where

famous people had once lived. 48 Doughty Street had been the home of Charles

Dickens; 34 Tite Street boasted Oscar Wilde; Thomas Carlyle had once kept

lodgings in Cheyne Row. Londoners took meticulous care of their ancient

monuments and statues and fastidiously restored their old mansions, mews, and

churches, maintaining a tangible connection with their noble past. But the

artifacts of London, from its Tudor architecture to its Victorian gas lamps

to

the nightmarish Bauhaus office buildings of the Windsor Era, were mere

novelties

to him. He remembered a much older England, when London had been little more

than a thatch-roofed village eclipsed by that great stone monument to the

roaring ego of his father—a castle fortress known as Camelot.

Almost two thousand years had passed since Modred first left England at the

close of the sixth century. Back then, he never thought he would return. They

had all believed him dead, all except Morgana, who had never given up. And

now

she, too, was gone. England held nothing for him anymore, and yet he had come

back once again. It had always been that way. Years would pile up into

decades,

decades into centuries, and he would find himself once more inexorably drawn

back to England, to see what new generations had accomplished and what, if

anything, remained of the England he once knew.

He had known since childhood that he was descended from the Old Ones, but he

had

never truly known just what that meant until his first century had passed and

he

still looked like the wild young boy who had brought down a long. He had aged

since then, although extremely slowly. Now, within two hundred years of his

second millennium, he looked like a man of forty. There were streaks of gray

in

his blond hair and beard. The tinted, gold-rimmed glasses were an eccentric

touch. He didn't really need them, but they gave him a clerical, antiquarian

look that was often usefully deceptive. His body was lean and well muscled,

his

reflexes and instincts as sharp and quick as ever.

His grandmother, Igraine, had been a human, as was his paternal grandfather,

Uther. As a result, when Uther raped Igraine, the issue—Arthur—was a normal

human child. But his maternal grandfather, Gorlois, the Duke of Cornwall, was

of

the Old Race, and Modred's mother had inherited the genes and eldritch powers

of

the Old Ones. Morgan Le Fay had been a half-breed, as was Merlin. They both

had

the same blood running through their veins. Neither of them was completely

human.

Morgana herself did not know what she was till she met Merlin and he became

her

teacher. Merlin had told her the secret of her past and instructed her in the

mystic arts of thaumaturgy, but he never suspected her true purpose. Her

boundless ambition and her lust for vengeance had consumed her and

contaminated

everything she touched. She seduced her own half brother, Arthur, and gave

birth

to Modred. Through him she had brought down Arthur's kingdom, but when it was

over, she had been left with nothing. She could take no satisfaction in the

bitter irony of Arthur being destroyed by his own son. The spoils of her

vengeance were denied her. There had been no kingdom she could rule through

Modred, because without Arthur, the kingdom fell apart and there was no

Modred

to try to hold it all together.

With Arthur dead, the poison had gone out of Modred. He remembered Lucas and

Bedivere standing over him as he lay upon the battlefield, impaled on his

father's spear, and he heard Bedivere saying flatly, "He is done." Then they

had

left him lying mere and went to help their king, but Arthur did not survive

his

wounds. Modred had been certain that he would die of his as well. At that

moment

he had longed for nothing quite so much as death, and yet his body lingered,

clinging stubbornly to life in a way that no merely human body ever could.

He remembered lying on the corpse-strewn field of battle, looking up at the

darkening sky as the ravens feasted all around him, his body flushed with

agony,

tears of despair flooding his eyes. He grieved for the waste his life had

been,

never suspecting how much life was still ahead of him. It was as if the hate

that fueled him all his life had spilled out with his blood, and now he was

an

empty vessel, lying shattered and discarded on a field of broken dreams.

He had dragged himself away to heal and then had left England, to live first

as

an itinerant bard, then as a thief, and finally, having no other marketable

skills, he became a mercenary. It was a line of work for which he was

eminently

suited. He fought without passion or ideals and with no thought for

principles

or morals. He knew only too well that even a knight like Lancelot could be

destroyed by passion, and a woman pure as Guinevere could betray her own

ideals.

Modred had seen how easily principles could be perverted and morality

manipulated. He had known the self-righteous hypocrisy of Camelot, where

might

made right and adultery was tolerated so long as the appearance of virtue

could

be maintained. He wanted no part of chivalry or honor. He cared even less for

love and glory. The consuming emotions of his youth were banished utterly, to

be

replaced by the ruthless pragmatism of a black knight errant ruled only by

cold

logic.

He traveled the world and watched it change throughout the centuries. He

became

the consummate master of invisibility, living many different lives under

countless aliases, hiding his vast wealth and his true identity in an

impenetrable cloak of secrecy. He made his way by means of his physical and

intellectual powers rather than thaumaturgic skill. His mother's training and

the natural gifts he had inherited from her had made him an adept, but magic

was

Morgana's way, and Merlin's. Modred wanted no part of it.

Yet the choice was never really his to make. He had learned that he could not

escape his destiny. He rubbed his chest and felt the hardness of the small

ruby

embedded in the skin over his heart. He unbuttoned his lace-trimmed shirt and

glanced down at the enchanted runestone set into his chest. It was glowing

softly.

He did not know why it had started glowing, or why it throbbed the way it

did.

It seemed to pulse like a small heart.

He emptied the bottle of Scotch, picked up the phone, and ordered another

sent

up from room service. He rubbed his chest once more. It felt sore from the

strangely throbbing runestone. He felt an intense anxiety that he could not

define. He did not understand what was happening, and it worried him. He lit

another cigarette. Smoking and drinking were destructive human vices, yet

they

had no visible effect upon him. At one point or another he had done just

about

every self-destructive thing a man could do. It was as if he had been playing

a

game with Death for all those years, daring the Grim Reaper to come and try

to

claim him. Many times the Reaper had almost done just that, but Modred had

always managed to elude him. He had started to believe that he was

indestructible, but Merlin's death at the hands of the Dark Ones had firmly

convinced him otherwise. If Merlin could be killed, then he could die as

well.

That knowledge had given life a sharper edge. That, and the knowledge that he

now had a purpose that was greater than his own survival. A quest, of sorts,

not

unlike Galahad's relentless search for the Holy Grail.

Modred smiled as he thought of his old tutor. He finally understood him how,

after all these centuries had passed. Galahad had known that a man could not

define himself through his relationships with others. He had understood that

his

identity was not bound up with his father or his mother, nor with his fellow

knights, nor with his king. It was to be found somewhere within himself, and

it

was there that Galahad had searched with an anguished desperation, looking

for

that essence of himself, seeking to define his soul. In the end he found his

Holy Grail, but the quest had killed him. Now Modred wondered if he was the

darker side of Galahad, and if his own unholy quest would lead to the same

end.

As he stared out at the sun setting over the city, he drew deeply on his

cigarette and wondered how a cat burglar, a bumbling warlock, and a

professional

assassin could possibly hope to succeed where Merlin himself had failed. As

if

in response, the runestone embedded in his chest flashed and sent a searing

pulse of energy flowing through him like an electric current.

He doubled over, clutching at his chest and grimacing with pain. Suddenly the

hotel room became somehow transparent. He could see through the walls,

floors,

and ceiling to a galaxy of stars. The light around him drained away, and he

heard the sound of distant, mocking laughter. Then it was over and the pain

was

gone, as quickly as it had come. He stood once more in the hotel room, the

walls

around him solid, his face flushed, his skin warm and damp with perspiration.

He

leaned against the wall, shook his head, and blinked his eyes to clear his

vision. The gem set into his chest was strobing brightly.

"What the devil is happening to me?" he said, as if asking the living gem

that

had become a part of him.

There was a knock at the door.

"Room service," said a voice outside the door.

Unsteadily Modred walked over to the door and opened it. The waiter came into

the room, stooped over to push the serving cart that held several covered

dishes, a pot of tea, a small basket of bread, and a vase holding a single

yellow rose.

"I didn't order dinner," Modred said. "I asked for a bottle of Scotch. You

must

have the wrong room."

The room service waiter straightened up, and Modred found himself staring at

a

grinning, worm-infested skull with green fire glowing in its empty eye

sockets.

Instinctively he jerked back and drew his pistol in a lightning-swift motion.

He

fired three times, point-blank, at the fearsome apparition. The figure

literally

collapsed. With his gun still in his hand, Modred cautiously approached the

pile

of smoking clothing on the floor. He gingerly lifted up the waiter's jacket.

The

hideous skull was lying on the floor beneath it. There was only the skull,

cracked and brown with age, and nothing else. As he stared down at it a snake

crawled out of the left eye socket. A hollow, echoing laugh boomed forth from

the skull's gaping jaw.

And then the skull exploded, shattering into a thousand bright blue shards of

shimmering, glowing crystal that spun around the room in arabesques and

coalesced into a whirlwind funnel of blue fire, encircling him and sucking

all

the air out of his lungs, spinning him around and around, faster and faster

and

faster, and then the maelstrom sucked up into itself and disappeared, taking

him

along with it.

There was a loud, insistent banging on the door.

"Sir! Sir, are you all right? Sir, what's going on in there? What is that

noise?

What are you doing? Sir! Sir!"

The room service waiter tried the knob and found that it was open. He took

one

step inside and froze. The room was empty, but it looked as if a tornado had

passed through it. It was totally destroyed.

"Bloody hell!" the waiter exclaimed, staring at the wreckage with stunned

disbelief. Then he shook his head and squinted. For a moment he could have

sworn

that the walls inside the room had become somehow insubstantial. It seemed as

if

he could see through them to a galaxy of stars. And then he heard the distant

sound of malevolent, ghostly laughter.

The bottle of Scotch crashed to the floor as the waiter took off running down

the hall.

CHAPTER ONE

As Wyrdrune passed the Washington Square fountain, the white-faced mime fell

in

step behind him. Wyrdrune was preoccupied, deep in thought as he walked with

his

shoulders hunched and his hands shoved into the pockets of his brown

Inverness

coat. A wide-brimmed brown felt hat was pulled low over his forehead. . He

didn't notice the mime walking close behind him, burlesquing his stride, his

posture, and his facial expression. It was only when he heard the eruption of

laughter from the people who had gathered to watch the mime that he stopped

and

looked up, puzzled. The mime, playing to his audience, didn't notice Wyrdrune

stop and walked right into him.

Wyrdrune turned around, frowning, and the mime backed off a pace,

exaggerating

surprise, then he once more fell into Wyrdrune's attitude, duplicating his

posture and his frown. Wyrdrune folded his arms and stared at the mime with a

wry expression. The mime mirrored him, enjoying the laughter of his audience.

Wyrdrune unfolded his arms and took one step toward the mime. The mime

quickly

backed off a couple of paces, threw up his hands in an exaggerated expression

of

alarm, and then "constructed a wall" between himself and Wyrdrune. He mimed,

pressing his hands up against the invisible wall, indicating that Wyrdrune

couldn't touch him. The audience loved it.

"Fine," said Wyrdrune, scowling, "Have it your way." He mumbled under his

breath

and gestured at the mime, then turned and walked away.

Behind him, the smile slipped from the face of the mime as he suddenly felt a

real invisible wall before him. He spun around, stretched out his hands, and

encountered another invisible barrier. Frantically he felt all around him,

his

alarm growing as he realized that he really was trapped inside an invisible

box.

The audience laughed louder and louder at his antics.

"He sure makes it look as if he's really in a box, doesn't he?" one man said

to

his companion.

"Yeah, he's really good," the woman replied.

"Help!" the mime shouted desperately. "For God's sake, somebody help me!"

The audience laughed as he seemed to mime shouting for help and hammered,

panic-stricken, on the invisible walls with his fists. No one could hear him

through the invisible box, which extended straight up into the air for ten

stories and was open at the top, so he wouldn't suffocate for the three hours

he

would remain in mere until the spell wore off.

"Hey, warlock," said Kira as Wyrdrune passed the hot-dog stand. "Over here."

She stood next to the vendor's cart with her hands in the pockets of a black

leather jacket with chain-mail trim. She had on tight yellow trousers and

high

black boots. She wore her dark hair short, swept back sharply at the sides

and

down low over her forehead at a rakish angle. She was long-legged,

athletically

trim, and pretty in a slightly feral-looking way.

"You said in front of the arch," said Wyrdrune in an irritated tone. "This

isn't

in front of the arch. This is in front of the fountain."

"My, aren't we in a shitty mood today," she said. "I got hungry, okay? So sue

me." She turned to the hot-dog vendor and said, "Gimme one with the works."

The vendor, a sepulchral-looking black man with large gold earrings and a

shaved

head, ladled chili over a hot dog covered with sauerkraut, relish, onions,

peppers, and grated cheese. Just looking at it made Wyrdrune's stomach churn.

"I saw that," Kira said, gesturing toward the imprisoned mime, who was

growing

more frantic by the minute. "You should be ashamed of yourself."

Wyrdrune's lower lip dropped down in a sneer. "I hate mimes."

Among the crowd gathered to watch the mime was a skinny old man walking a

land

squid on a leash. The land squid was reaching out with its tentacles and

deftly

lifting wallets out of people's pockets, then handing them to the skinny old

man, who dropped them in his purse. Over by the arch, a group 'of young black

kids were street-dancing , with a rapper box. As it danced and spun around on

its chunky little legs, the box was improvising a fast-paced rap to the beat

booming from its speakers. One of the kids slipped a whooshboard underneath

the

box, and it took off on a wild, gyroscoping course, finally smacking into the

side of the arch, where it fell off the board and lay on its side, going,

"Uh-huh, Uh-huh! Uh-huh, Uh-huh!" Wyrdrune wondered if Merlin had ever

thought

that it would come to this when he'd brought back magic to the world.

Kira took the hot dog and bit into it with gusto. A great glob of condiment

slop

dripped down onto the sidewalk. "Mmm," she said.

Wyrdrune shook his head. "It beats me how you stay in such terrific shape

eating

that garbage," he said.

She turned to the hot-dog vendor. "Man's got no taste," she said.

"This from a woman who uses twelve-year-old Scotch to wash down nachos,"

Wyrdrune said.

Kira shrugged. "There wasn't any beer." She held her hand out for her change.

The hot-dog vendor froze, staring wide-eyed at the gleaming sapphire embedded

in

the palm of her right hand.

"Whatsa matter, you never seen jewelry before?" she said. She snapped her

fingers twice. "Come on, sometime today, all right?"

The vendor counted out her change, then did a double take as she suddenly

vanished into thin air. Wyrdrune had disappeared as well.

"Magic users," the vendor mumbled uneasily. He quickly made a warding gesture

with the forefingers and little fingers of both hands extended, crossing his

arms right over left, then left over right, then he quickly opened up his

cart

and checked his cash to make sure it was still there.

Wyrdrune reappeared in his railroad flat on East 4th Street with a pop of

displaced air. He took off his coat and slouch hat and threw them down on the

couch. He was wearing loose-fitting, multipocketed brown trousers, a light

brown

warlock's cassock, and high-topped red leather athletic shoes with blue

lightning stripes. A bright green emerald was embedded in the center of his

forehead. The runestone was partially covered by his shoulder-length, curly

blond hair.

"Right," he said, "now what did you... ?" He glanced all around the room, but

Kira was nowhere in sight. He squeezed his eyes shut. "Oh, no. Not again."

There was a sharp, insistent rapping at the window. Kira was standing

outside,

on the fire escape.

Wyrdrune exhaled heavily with relief. He hurried over to the window and

opened

it. He extended his hand to her and helped her in, then his eyes grew wide

and

he gasped, stiffening with pain as she squeezed his hand in a bone-crushing

grip. "Aah! Aaah! Kira! Stop! Please...."

He went down to his knees, then clutched his hand to his chest protectively

as

she released him.

"Ow! Damn, you're strong! It feels like you broke it!"

"Next time I will break it, so help me!" she said, glaring at him furiously.

"Six more inches to the right, you bird-brain, and you would've dropped me on

the sidewalk!"

"I'm sorry! It was an accident...."

"That's what you say every time! What the hell is wrong with you? Why can't

you

learn to cast one lousy little teleportation spell without screwing something

up? What've you got against cabs, anyway?"

"Oy, gevalt! Enough already with this mishegoss!" A spindly-looking straw

broom

came swaying into the room on its bristles. It had thin, rubbery arms with

four

fingers on each hand, and its matronly voice seemed to be coming from

somewhere

near the top part of its handle, although it had no mouth. It had no hips,

either, but that didn't stop it from putting its hands were its hips might

have

been if it had hips. "Arguments, arguments, always with the arguments! Always

with the yelling! A person would think you . two were married! What is it

this

time?"

"You want to know what it is? I'll tell you what it is," snapped Kira. "I'm

getting sick and tired of being popped into closets and dropped into

dumpsters

and teleported onto fire escapes and—" She broke off and rolled her eyes up

at

the ceiling. "Will you listen to this, for cryin' out loud? I'm explaining to

a

stick?'

"Well! Excuse me for living," the broom said huffily. "Is that gratitude, I'm

asking you? I work around here till I could plotz, scrubbing my fingers to

the

bone, cooking, cleaning, ironing, washing out somebody's skimpy little black

panties who never wears a bra, but I won't mention it, and now all of a

sudden

I'm not good enough to talk to?"

"She didn't mean it, Broom," said Wyrdrune, sighing heavily. "She's just

upset."

"Upset?" The broom turned to Kira. "You want upset? Five bristles I lost

today,

Miss Hoity-toity, but do I shout at you when you come home?" The broom turned

back to Wyrdrune and wagged a spindly finger at him. "And as for you, Mr.

Wizard, with yom farpotshket spells, you should be more careful before

somebody

gets hurt! Pay attention to what you're doing with all this meshuggah popping

and poofing all over the place. Why you can't take a bus like a normal

person,

I'll never understand. So we're finished with the yelling now? Yes? Good.

There's fresh coffee and some hot apple strudel on the table. Sit! Eat! And

now,

if you'll excuse me, 'the stick' has to go and do your laundry."

As the broom swept out of the room Kara shook her head and shucked her

leather

jacket. She plopped down onto the couch and put her feet up on the large

wooden

cable spool that served as a coffee table. She was wearing a wide chain-mail

and

leather belt and a skintight, sleeveless black tunic, sheer enough to leave

nothing to the imagination. "You could've had a nice cat for a familiar," she

said wryly, "but no, not you."

"Never mind the broom," said Wyrdrune, going into the kitchen to pour them

both

some coffee. "Did you learn anything from Makepeace?"

Dr. Sebastian Makepeace, a professor at New York University, was one of

Modred's

contacts in New York. Aside from teaching courses in pre-Collapse history, he

was also somehow connected with government intelligence. He knew Modred by

the

code name Morpheus and the alias Michael Cornwall. He had no idea who Modred

really was.

"No, Makepeace hasn't heard a thing," said Kira. "I take it you didn't have

any

luck, either?"

Wyrdrune shook his head. "Nobody's seen him, nobody's heard from him. And it

took me all day just to find out that much. Even knowing who his people are

and

the proper procedures and recognition signals, trying to get any of them to

talk

is next to impossible."

"I know what you mean," she said. "Makepeace was suspicious as hell, and

Modred

had specifically told him about us. He's a weird guy, that Makepeace."

"Modred's got his people trained real well, no question about that," said

Wyrdrune. "What makes it difficult is that hone of them know any truly

essential

information. Most of them are only message drops. And none of them knows who

he

really is. To some he's John Roderick; to others he's Michael Cornwall or

Mikhail Kutozov or Antonio Modesti. It just goes on and on. I don't know how

I

ever kept it all straight. In fact, I'm not even sure I did."

"What do you mean?"

"Have you ever heard of Phillipe de Bracy?"

She frowned. "No, I don't think so." Then she brightened. "Oh, sure, it's one

of

Modred's aliases. He uses it in France when he—"

"How did you know that?" Wyrdrune asked, interrupting her, watching her

intently. "Did you remember that just now, or did you all of a sudden simply

know it?"

She stared at him. "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying that I think your first response was the correct one," he said.

"I

don't think you ever heard that name until I mentioned it just now and your

milestone filled in the blanks."

"But... no." She frowned and shook her head. "Are you sure?"

"Think carefully," said Wyrdrune. "Did you ever hear that name from me

before?"

She bit her lower lip, concentrating. "I suppose I must have, I—"

"Don't suppose. Do you remember me or Modred ever mentioning that name?"

She shook her head. "Well, if you put it that way, no, I don't remember, but

just because I don't remember doesn't mean it didn't happen."

"I never mentioned that name to you before," Wyrdrune said emphatically,

"because until a short while ago I didn't even know it. I had called every

single contact of Modred's I could mink of, and I'd run fresh out of ideas.

And

then, all of a sudden, I realized that Modred also used the name Phillipe de

Bracy. And the moment I realized it, I also knew who Phillipe de Bracy's

contact

in Marseilles was."

"Jacqueline Monet," said Kira. Her eyes grew wide. "My God, you're right! I

didn't know that until just now! It's like those dream visions the milestones

gave us." Nervously she moistened her lips. "You think it's Modred trying to

get

in touch with us?"

"Why didn't he use the mind link?" Wyrdrune said.

Kira had no answer. She remembered Modred's words to them the last time he

had

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