Moonscorn

Chapter Twelve

Jack Cold drove Raven back to Whaterly on some impossible reserve of energy brought up from a spiritual well deep inside him, the kind you only accumulated after training with monks under a waterfall for years. He dozed on the way and woke up when Jack shook him awake, parked in the car park for The Open Gate. He had a big red slash down the side of his face where he'd fallen asleep on the seatbelt.

"Go find a proper pillow," Cold said. He offered Raven a friendly fist bump, which Raven gave back weakly.

"And you?"

Cold laughed. "I've been on campaigns in the middle of shit in some jungle out nowhere hunting every manner of horror imaginable on less sleep than this. I'll be fine." He took his phone from his pocket to check it, but fumbled and dropped it by the pedals. Banged his head bending down to retrieve it. Looked at Raven with half an eye open. "OK, I get your point. Maybe I do need a kip."

"Where are you staying?"

"Conservatory's got a house nearby. It looks like an Airbnb, but we've taken it over the whole time. We cover a twenty mile radius from it if we need to."

Raven wanted to ask why he wasn't allowed to hole up there, and decided that having a several minute discussion on Conservatory operational procedures was far beyond his brainpower at that point. Instead, he nodded again to Cold, told him he'd be in touch, and got out of the car.

Cold reversed out of the car park, clipped the inside curb as he pulled onto the street, and left once he'd managed to get the car driving in a straight line.

Raven almost fell over on the crooked stairs up to his room. His stumble caught the attention of a few men at the bar who turned to see what the drama was all about. He smiled and waved away their concern.

Most of the patrons were the regular midday drinkers, nothing unusual in any way about them. One patron in particular, however, caught his eye. The man was older, fifties perhaps, and stood at the bar with an air of dignity that screamed inherited wealth. He was dressed in a black jacket with a tweed cap tight twisted slightly askew on his greying hair. He had a black goatee, a few grey hairs springing around the muzzle.

What stopped Raven even more than his clothing were his eyes. They sparkled, seemingly lit from the inside. Moisture in his eyeballs glittering gold. They were gorgeous, enchanting, and Raven found himself wanting to fall into them, to linger in those pools of starshine forever.

Only when his own eyes threatened to close on their own a moment later did his world go blurry and he finally regain some kind of sense. The spell was broken. He turned and slowly mounted the steps again.

Raven shut the door to his room and sank to the floor, wearied. The wooden door was reassuring and firm against his back. He threw his bag across the room, where it slid up against the side of the bed and stopped with a pleasing thud.

What the hell was that he had just experienced? He'd never felt a single thing like it. It was as if he had been transfixed, taken over by some strange power.

Maybe it was just the tiredness. Exhausted and ready to collapse, twenty-four hours on the go with chases and terror and back and forth to the city, he was losing his mind. That was one answer. But he knew he wasn't in the habit of imagining things. They'd established this in the past few hours, if nothing else. Sleep deprivation might play a part, but it alone couldn't do that to him.

Raven crawled out of his clothes and slipped under the covers. He wanted to fall asleep but couldn't. Despite the tiredness, and despite sleeping eliminating one possibility as to the cause of that strange encounter, he couldn't drift off. The whole thing kept playing in his head. He remembered the way the man had looked at him, the way his eyes shimmered. They seemed to have some kind of mesmeric power, holding him captive, if only for a second.