"He slept in here," Olivia said, removing a photo of her from the wall and throwing it on the floor with disgust.
"These photos of the murdered women weren't taken by Neil. Peter must have done them himself. It would be more personal for him."
"I feel sick," Olivia whispered. "Neil was following me around all this time." She tore another picture from the wall and showed it to me. "This is one of Kasey and me. That fucking cunt took a photo of my daughter. If he wasn't already dead, I'd tear his fucking head off myself."
I took the pictures from Olivia's shaking hands and tossed them onto the floor.
"Burn it," she said. "Burn all of it."
"We need to look around more-we can't do that if I set fire to the building."
Olivia grabbed a large bunch of the photos, most of which appeared to be of her and Kasey, and tore them all off the wall, exposing the blue paint behind them.
As I was leaving the room, I noticed one picture that stood out from the rest. It was of Peter and four other men, all of whom were in police uniform. "The four ghouls he created in that basement, they were his friends. And they were cops."
"It was thought that some people in the police tried to conceal evidence during his trial, but nothing was ever proven." Olivia shuddered. "Let's keep searching."
I made sure to shut the door on our way out of the room; I didn't want Olivia getting all pyromaniac on me. There were four more doors along the hallway. The first two led to nothing but empty rooms, and by the time we'd reached the second to last door, I was beginning to think there was nothing here worth bothering with.
I opened the door and very quickly realised how wrong I'd been. Although it didn't contain anything quite as crazy as the first room, I did find three leather-bound books on a desk next to a large window with a chair in front of it. I picked up the first book and turned it over in my hands.
At first I thought it was just a journal, as there were no markings to set it apart as anything important. But when I opened it, I realised exactly what I was holding. "I don't know how this is possible," I said to myself.
"What's wrong?" Olivia asked, taking the book from my hands and flicking through it. "What is this?"
"It's a copy of a six-hundred-year-old book that details how to become a lich. A book that should be locked away on Avalon to stop anyone getting hold of it."
"What are the other two?" Olivia asked picking up the second book and handing it to me without opening it, as she flicked through the last one.
I read the information contained within the second leather book with haste. "It's his journal," I said. "It details every single murder he's ever committed. Including the ones since he became a lich, he says he wanted to make them all pay. He blames you a lot, Olivia. Mostly for taking away Vicki and getting him caught."
I flicked through a few more pages and came to a photo that had been glued into the back of the journal. It was a copy of the one I'd found in Vicki's house, the picture of her and her friends, the six other victims. I showed it to Olivia.
"He wrote something underneath," I said. "He wrote, and I quote, 'Those fucking bitches need to die. They helped Vicki get away from me. She was never meant to leave. She said she'd love me always. Fucking whores will all pay for what they did. Vicki is paying right now. I can hear her scream when I close my eyes. And when everything is done, when I'm content that all of the wrongs have been righted, I'm going after that LOA bitch.'"
I paused, then said, "And, you know what, Olivia? I think I'll stop there."
"Keep going."
"No. I'm not giving you more ammo to do something stupid. You're already angry and emotions are high, you don't need to hear any more of his insane ramblings."
“Point taken. You should take a look at this." Olivia passed me the book she'd been reading. "It's a history of insanity."
The last book was a chronology of not only Peter's behaviour, but that of several of his ancestors. A mixture of paper cuttings and copies of the crime reports from the police gave a stark and dangerous view into Peter's mind. His father was a drunk and regularly beat both him and his mother, finally getting arrested at the age of thirty-six. He was dead a few hours later, found hanging in his own cell. Peter would have been eight years old.
Peter's grandfather was similarly tainted with a seemingly endless rage. He was arrested and convicted of the murder and dismemberment of three prostitutes in Leeds during the 1950s. A fellow prisoner slit his throat six weeks after he started a life sentence. I began to wonder how anyone could be a member of this family and not be a psychotic madman.
It was endless misery and hatred in printed form-Peter's great-grandfather died after a drunken brawl outside a pub in London. Someone shot him to stop him from stabbing a man to death with the end of a table leg.
The very last page was just a photo, taken in the 1860's. Beneath it was written great, great-grandfather. The man's evil eyes bore into me. I'd seen those eyes before. When he'd almost killed me. Peter's great, great grandfather was the lich I'd met in Montana.
Chapter 32
Montana Territory, America. 1878
"Your plan appears to settle on the insane side of crazy," Sergeant Roberts said from the opposite side of the long table we were sitting at.
Next to him Chief Blacktail stared intently at the map that was laid out before us. "I have to agree with the sergeant, Nathan. Your plan has some fairly major holes in it."
"Such as?" I asked. It had been a long afternoon. Once Sky and I had finally left Waltham's old bedroom at the fort, everything had almost happened at once. Chief Blacktail had arrived with his warriors, eager to spend a night behind some walls. The lich had everyone on edge, and to Sergeant Roberts's credit, he'd agreed immediately. Chief Blacktail positioned the armed Crow Tribe members around the fort to help keep it safe during what I was almost certain would be a very long and tense night.
Once the preliminaries of getting the Army and the Crow tribesmen to work together were out of the way, Chief Blacktail, Sergeant Roberts, Sky and I sat down in the officer's quarters to try and ascertain how we were going to take the lich and his men on.
"What about the house that sits apart from the city of Kilnhurst? Your plan doesn't explain how anyone will be taking it," Sergeant Roberts commented.
"I will be dealing with that property and its inhabitants," Sky said.
"Alone, it would seem." Sergeant Roberts didn't sound happy about it. I got the feeling he thought that fighting was a man's job and sending a lone woman into an unknown hornets' nest was suicide.
"I am more than capable of taking care of myself," Sky said with a smile. "But I will not be alone, my men will accompany me."
"And these men," Chief Blacktail interjected. "Where are they?"
"They'll be here before sunrise. Trust me; your help would only get your men killed."
Sergeant Roberts and Chief Blacktail clearly wanted to argue more, but instead kept their mouths shut.
"Any other problems?" I asked.
"There are three entrances into the town-north, south and south-west." Sergeant Roberts pointed to each area on the map as he spoke. "Your plan is that my men and I take the north, Chief Blacktail takes his to the south, and you take the south-west. Alone."
"That's the plan," I said.
"And to do this you plan on using your… magic." The word stuck in his throat; he'd seen the aftermath of my battle and how quickly I'd healed from my wounds, but he was having difficulty believing what Chief Blacktail had accepted so readily.
"Magic isn't a dirty word," I pointed out.