At First Light(Dr. Evan Wilding #1)(80)



“Just what Hank said.” The kid smirked. “But I’ve been in there a couple times.”

“And?”

“And what? It’s a room.”

But the kid’s face shone with something like adoration. She wondered if there was more to their relationship than that of mentor and apprentice. Either way, the kid had clearly drunk the Hank Helskin Kool-Aid.

Patrick showed Addie his phone. “The photo is from Sten Elger,” he told her. “The owner of the ax-throwing place where Helskin and his pals liked to go. The one called Ragnar?k.”

Was it Addie’s imagination, or had Walters cringed when Patrick said the word Ragnar?k? Did the kid think the end days were coming? Or was it just the memory of going ax-throwing with Hank?

She focused on the photo. The image showed a handsome, narrow-faced man with a dark gaze and a raven tattoo on his forehead.

“That the guy arguing with Helskin last night?” Patrick asked her. She nodded, and he turned the phone toward Walters. “This one of your friends?”

Walters dragged his gaze up to the phone as if his eyeballs were lifting hundred-pound weights. He stared and then shook his head and mumbled something.

Patrick cupped an ear. “What was that?”

Walters shook his head again.

“Tristan,” Addie said. “Look at me.”

He met her gaze, and she went on. “If this man killed your friend and you don’t tell us everything you know? Then he won’t be the only one going to jail.”

The kid licked his lips. “Raven,” he whispered. “That’s Raven.”

“Raven.” Patrick’s eyes sparked. “He got a real name?”

The kid looked like he might cry. “David Hayne. But we mostly just call him Mr. X.”

Addie and Patrick exchanged glances. Patrick’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline.

“Why is that, Tristan?” Addie asked. “Why do you call him Mr. X?”

A loose-boned shrug, like the kid was running out of energy. “I thought it was because he likes axes.” A hiccuping laugh. “I thought it was Mr. Ax. But he told me it’s something to do with black magic. Same reason he collects all those bones. His Viking self is Raven. But he has a darker self, too. Mr. X.”

Patrick pushed up from the stair and backed off a few paces, as if to get a better look at Walters. “The bones on the front porch. Those belong to Raven? To David Hayne?”

“Not all of ’em. Some of ’em are Hank’s.”

Patrick shook his big bull head. “And what in the name of all that’s holy are they doing with all those bones?”

“Raven uses ’em for some ritual he does. With the other guys. I don’t know what the ritual is. Hank says it’s all a big secret until I prove myself. But Raven believes in the old ways. The ways of the ?sir. He says he can open the gates between our world and other worlds.”

Addie flashed to the flag at the front of the house, the black cross hanging over the pile of bones. “Are you talking about black magic?”

“I guess.” He wiped his nose with the back of his hand, then touched the neck of his coat before shoving his hands back in his pockets. “We are the Thule people.”

Addie saw for the first time what was clipped to his parka. A gold swastika pin mounted atop two small crossed spears, also of gold. The entire thing was only an inch in diameter.

“The Thule people,” she echoed. She needed Evan to explain Thule people. Where the hell was he?

Walters’s thin shoulders came up. “Yup.”

Patrick said, “What about Hank? He into the, whaddaya call it, this occult crap?”

“Nah. Hank’s not much about being Thule. I mean, he says it’s fine, but mostly he doesn’t really care all that much one way or the other. He is”—his eyes cut toward the body—“he was—he was just using the bones to make jewelry.”

Addie almost laughed. After the talk about black magic, jewelry-making sounded too banal for a group of white supremacists and Viking wannabes. Then again, what did she know about Vikings?

Patrick’s assessment was even harsher. “Jewelry? That a little girlie for someone like Hank?”

“It’s Viking jewelry. Mj?lnir pendants—”

“What’s that, me-ol-nair?”

Walters rolled his eyes. The message was clear: cops were so dumb. “Thor’s hammer.” He smacked the pendant that hung around his neck, the one Addie had thought was an arrow. “He makes wolf heads, too. Ravens. Runes. Sometimes he makes bigger art—sculpture. People eat it up, dude. Hank makes a shitload of money selling his stuff.”

“Okay,” Patrick said. “We get it. What about this ritual Mr. X does with his buddies? Any idea what that’s about?”

The kid’s eyes went sly, his gaze sliding off somewhere Addie couldn’t follow. “Dunno.”

“Does it involve sacrifice?” Patrick leaned in. “The neighbor’s cat, maybe? One of those dogs you got locked up downstairs? Or something worse?”

“You watch too much TV,” Walters said, probably parroting something he’d been accused of. But his expression remained cunning. His glance cut to the metal stakes driven into the earth.

Special place in hell, she thought.

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