Page 73 of The Vampire and the Case of the Hellacious Hag

She nodded then froze. ‘Was?’ she whispered.

Double fuck. ‘I’m so sorry. Helmud died. He was killed by the same organisation that kidnapped you.’

Emmacollapsed onto the floor with a strangled sob. ‘Helmud! Oh my God, Helmud!’

To my surprise, Matilda pulled her into a hug. I guessed the hag knew about grief.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said uselessly. ‘I’m so sorry.’ And I was. I’d bet any money that Helmud hadn’t come to Chrome by chance. He’d come a day early to look for his lost fiancée; somehow he’d known she was close by, buried in the ground in a concrete bunker he couldn’t locate. And I was also willing to bet that one of the Knight Stalkers had found him too close to the bunker for comfort.

I didn’t say any of that aloud – Emma didn’t need to pile any misguided guilt on her heart-wrenching grief – but at least now Helmud’s death made more sense to me. It hadn’t been an accident or because he’d accidentally strayed into the wrong corridor; he’d been targeted because the Knight Stalkers knew he was sniffing around.

Of the deaths, Helmud’s had always stood out. The others had been dwarves and their deaths had been used to frame the hag, to scare the dwarves into leaving the mine that the Knight Stalkers wanted for themselves. Helmud’s death hadn’t had the same scare factor – and he’d retained his head. Now I knew why: it was because his death hadn’t been planned.

They’d dosed him with a hefty dose of fisheye. We hadn’t been sure what the drug would do to a human, but now we knew it was as deadly to them as to us. No wonder it hadn’t been widely deployed.

Despite the tragic circumstances, excitement poured through me. We were making real progress. Soon we’d be the ones going after the Knight Stalkers and then we could see how they liked it.

Chapter 42

There was a lot of chatter in the communications room when Emma and I walked in. ‘What’s going on?’ I asked.

‘Thomas found some documents!’ Sidnee was bouncing on the balls of her feet with excitement. ‘Look!’ She passed me a manilla folder. I opened it and took out the first sheet, an old news article; the paper was old and yellowed, and it felt fragile and flimsy.

The paper’s headline wasReef Mine Closes Permanently. I checked the date and the byline: 1945, written by a man named Ross Rose. I scanned the short article quickly: it spoke about how the need for iron and chromite had pretty much ceased at the end of the war and that was the reason the mine was being closed.

I did a quick internet search. Apparently there had been two mines in this area, and both had used Chrome Bay to ship out the chromite and iron. The Reef Mine was situated about five hundred feet off Chrome Point on a small island that was connected to the mainland at low tideby a reef; I assumed that was where the name had come from. I put down my phone and turned back to the folder.

The next sheet was a contract that showed the Reef Mine had been purchased a couple of years ago by an organisation called Orion Ltd. I was betting that was a shell corporation for our Knight Stalkers. After that, there were a bunch of mining reports that I didn’t understand. ‘Thomas?’ I called, ‘I don’t speak mine. What do these reports mean?’

Emma stepped forward and picked them up. ‘They mean the mine was a total dud,’ she murmured.

‘What?’

‘No chromite left,’ she clarified.

‘But the newspaper article says it was closed because of a lack of demand after the war.’

Emma tapped the papers. ‘I imagine that’s what the owners of the Reef Mine wanted people to believe. They didn’t want to admit the vein had been exhausted – they wanted some idiot to buy it off them.’ She smiled grimly and look around the bunker. ‘These are the idiots.’

I rubbed my lip. ‘So they bought Reef, realised it was finished, then tried to buy Chrome?’

‘And when that didn’t work they tried intimidation instead,’ Connor said grimly. ‘I got something too.’ He passed me another document.

It was a lengthy mission statement. There were a number of reasons for wanting the mine, the main one being that the Knight Stalkers needed chromite as an ingredient in their drug experiments and their supply was running out. They’d bought the Reef Mine not knowing it had been mined out. Apparently chromite in other areas didn’t have the same properties as the chromite here, where it had that extramagicalelement that was essential in their drug manufacture. They postulated that it might be something to do with the barrier.

The second reason they wanted the mine was to use part of it as a drug factory. Thirdly, it offered easy access to Portlock and its residents; there was a plan in place to kidnap residents to experiment on once the manufacturing operation was back in full swing.

Finally, the mine had its own port where the super-secret submarine could bring in personnel and take out the drugs under cover of darkness. I smiled. The idiots had failed to consider that this was a fishing port and they'd been spotted right away by our fisherman. The report ended with an amusing note that they fully believed that they could keep all they were doing secret.

Surprise, you fuckers!

I put down the papers and gave the others a summary of what I’d read and my conclusions. ‘This is a satellite office,’I said grimly. This wasn’t the victory we’d thought it was. We’d basically cleared out the Knight Stalkers’ supplies closet; the real location was the Reef Mine – and a mine that size could hold hundreds of soldiers.

Gunnar scratched his beard, a sign he was thinking. ‘Satellite office or not, they’re going to investigate when they can’t raise anyone here. Before we do anything else, we have to make sure that no one can access this bunker again.’

‘We’ll find the tunnel that leads to the metal lid we found. We need to close that down, too,’ Thomas said.

‘I’ll come with you!’ Sidnee volunteered.

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