A Glimmer of Hope (The Avalon Chronicles #1)(98)

“I’m a quick reader and I absorb information like a sponge. I don’t need a superpower, Tommy. I already have one.”

Tommy laughed. “Okay, sorry. Please go on.”

“Right, well, he’s British. Born and bred here. The first known record of his involvement with Avalon is 1841.” Harry clicked on a link and brought up a piece of paper with barely legible handwriting on it. A wax ring seal was on the top right-hand corner.

“That’s an Avalon seal,” Diana said. “I don’t know who, though.”

“Yeah, it’s too degraded,” Harry said. “I couldn’t get a good look at it. But the document says that Elias Wells was put to work within Avalon. It’s basically a contract of employment.”

“You can read that?” Jared asked.

“My mother is a doctor,” Harry told him. “This is pretty neat in the scheme of things. Anyway, there’s no signature, but this is pretty good evidence that a man named Elias Wells was given work in Dorset.”

“Why Dorset?” Tommy asked. “What’s there?”

“I went through a dozen more Avalon personnel records and checked their first postings.”

“You did what?” Diana asked. “How did you get clearance?”

“You gave me a laptop with no passwords or encryption. I just opened the software.”

Tommy glanced over at Diana.

“Okay, moving on,” she said swiftly. “What did you find?”

“Each person was given their first postings in their country of birth. Without exception, they were sent to the place they knew best. Not necessarily the city they were born in, but that first assignment made sure they were sent somewhere they knew. And all of the assignments were the same: they were told to just keep an eye out, to deal with an Avalon office in the area and do what they were told.”

“There’s an Avalon office in Dorset?” Kasey asked.

“Not anymore there isn’t,” Diana said. “Hasn’t been for . . .”

“Since 1850,” Harry finished for her. “When the people there were killed by an ogre.” The screen was replaced with a picture of Brako.

“Elias set it up?” Layla asked.

“Either that or he made a pact with the ogre. I did wonder how they managed to get the creature across the world without anyone noticing. Answer: they didn’t. Ogres don’t fly or travel outside of their home. Ever. I researched them too, just to be sure. An ogre’s territory is for life. And that territory is big enough to encompass Dorset, Hampshire, and a little of Wiltshire. There are no exceptions to the size of a territory. So, Brako—that was his name, by the way, for those who didn’t know—he never left the UK. He was always here, always waiting.”

“So, Elias had an Avalon office wiped out?” Diana asked.

“My guess is yes. He vanished soon after, and didn’t reappear for another hundred years, working for Nergal.”

“So, Elias was born in Dorset, that’s what you’re saying?” Chloe said.

“Yep.”

“Dorset is a big place,” Kasey said. “We’d never find him in time.”

Harry raised his hand again, immediately putting it down when he caught himself doing it. “Like I said earlier, I may have found him.”

“How?” Tommy asked.

“Redcaps murder their families. Anyone in the family home on the night they take the ritual is killed. Now, Avalon doesn’t care about human murders for the most part, so none of you would ever have seen this, but I checked out all local murders at the time. It was hard work, but I found something.”

A picture of a manor house alongside a painting of a man and woman arrived on the screen. “This is Elias’s mum and dad. I checked murders from the early eighteen hundreds, and from the notes you made when you interviewed Layla about what had happened to her, I found that Elias mentioned he’d murdered his parents.”

“Yes, he did say that.” Layla said. “I’d almost forgotten.”

“Well, at the time double murders of middle-aged people weren’t exactly common in the area. There was more crime, and certainly more murders, but double murders of wealthy landowners were always going to get someone’s attention. And they did. A local wrote about the crime and passed the information on to whoever investigated. Over the years the information was logged into the bowels of whatever government building it now sits in, but there’s been a big leap in putting these old documents online for people to read. And people love a good murder mystery, so these went online about two years ago. There are whole websites dedicated to murders in various time periods.

“On the fourteenth of May, 1839, Mr. and Mrs. Wells were murdered in their homes. Their throats were slit and each was stabbed exactly twelve times in the chest. There’s not a lot more to go on, but three months later the deeds of the house were passed on to one Elias Wells.”

“Where’s the house?” Tommy asked, eagerness in his voice.

Another picture arrived on screen. “This is Google Earth. This is Elias’s manor house. It’s not too far from Dorchester. The site is well maintained, and yet no one is ever spotted going in or out. I called the local newspaper and spoke to a helpful woman about it; it’s known as the murder house, even after all these years. She said that it was apparently sold to a business a decade ago, but no one has ever come to work on it. They think it’s being kept while the land’s price increases.”