that I was like an elephant…I guess that’s what living in the cement covered city did to your ability to tread lightly and leave little trace behind of your presence.
Scuffing over some of the more irritating trail marks as I went, I mulled over my interview with Corrigan, eventually deciding that he was just trying to get under my skin. If he’d really smelled anything human about me then he’d have squashed me like a bug without thinking twice about it. He had definitely just been fishing around. He probably tried to get a rise out of everyone he interviewed. I ignored the memory of the almost worshipful expression Johannes had had on his face after his interview. Anyway, Corrigan didn’t matter – finding John’s murderer did.
When I started to get closer to where John had died, I stopped focusing on the ground and started checking out the trees instead. I couldn’t see anything yet that suggested the markings that Corrigan and Staines had been talking about it. I felt tendrils of dread curl around the pit of my stomach with each step that I took. I really didn’t want to go there again. I wondered how much the pack had managed to clean up. Would there still be traces of his life blood there? Where it had seeped into the earth, taking the only real parent I’d ever known? I clenched my fists, nails curling into the palms of my hands. I couldn’t let my grief escape back out. I needed to be strong and steely if I was going to avenge his death.
I still couldn’t see anything on any of the trees. I circled a few of them, double checking, but there was nothing. What was I missing? By the time I reached the sandy spot where John had actually died, I felt myself flooded with frustration. Somehow the Brethren were seeing something I couldn’t. I walked slowly up to the spot where his body had lain. There were a few indentations on the grass and in the sand but the blood was gone. I knelt down for a second and softly touched the ground.
“I miss you, John,” I whispered softly. My words were whipped away by the wind. I blinked back a few tears and stood back up to look at the tree line behind me. That was when I noticed that the trees did indeed have markings on them. In a semi circle, facing the spot where he’d died, were one, two, three….seven trees together that had what looked like runes scoured into their bark. I felt some grim satisfaction at finding what I’d been looking for and strode over to the first one.
It was gouged deep into the flesh of the tree. Lifting my hand, I traced the outline of the rune, trying to work out what it was. These weren’t Fae runes: there was something sharper and much more sinister about them than the rune that I’d discovered on John’s paperweight. I pulled out my smartphone and snapped a photo of it. I still hadn’t made it to the library or to check the Othernet to dig up information on wichtleins. Now I had another reason to make sure that I did. I went round each tree, taking a photo of each rune as I went. That there were seven runes on seven trees definitely meant something. Seven was a magical number that contained a lot of power within it.
I moved to the beach so I could stand on the dune and get a picture of all of them together. It was a struggle getting the top of the sand with my injuries but I tensed my muscles and held my side and made it. I was about to take a photo again when something half-buried by the sand caught my eye. I crouched down and brushed away the sand. It was a ring of seven charred coals. All of a sudden several pieces started to click together and I hit the back of my hand against my forehead in exasperation. Of course. I cursed myself for being an idiot. Black diamond stones could easily refer to coal, and Nick had mentioned that someone had stolen a bag of coals from Perkins. And an electric screwdriver. I wondered for a minute whether the tree runes could have been made by a tool like that before realising that was ridiculous.
But at least now I knew where I had to go to next.
Chapter Nine
At this time