Page 98 of Bad Moon Rising
Roman shook his head. “Must be random. Meaningless.”
“Okay. Too bad. Looks like it’s our only lead. We’ll see if we can get prints off it, but it’s unlikely.”
Roman said, “We’re going to take those two days off you offered. We might look for Ky. Or we might sit on a beach. After that, we’ll check in.” Roman closed the laptop.
He leaned forward and held his head in his hands. “This is so much worse than we thought.”
“What did they find?” Nova asked.
“That…those letters…can’t be…right? It’s some sort of diabolical coincidence,” Flynn whispered. “He’s dead.”
“What are you talking about?” Nova raised her voice.
“Gerard’s team found a notebook with the initials ofGalenSigge on the cover. Aka Mad Sigge.” Roman released his head.
Flynn shook his head back and forth in a slow sweep. “We destroyed the Swedish warlock in 1979. He was straight up out of his mind.”
“Not crazy in the sense of insanity,” Roman said to Nova. “More zealous. He worked with countless Nazis in the forties to perfect his techniques. We obviously weren’t careful enough to destroy all his notes. We only destroyed the source.” He rubbed his eyes. “We messed up. This is our fault.”
“We have to tell Gerard.” Flynn’s eyebrows folded inward.
“Can we trust him?”
“I don’t know anymore. Him throwing the notebook our way came off disingenuous somehow.”
“He’s been on our side since the beginning, but there’s a problem in the reliquary. A big one. Items are missing.”
“I didn’t notice anything gone when we were there the day Nova… We were distracted last time we were there.”
“The Viking Curmsun disc wasn’t there. I saw a few smaller items that were also gone, but I didn’t do a full inventory. Ky wouldn’t have touched that disc or taken it with him. Someone got through the protections on the box to take it.”
“That disc was…” Flynn puffed out his cheeks and blew out air. “Shit. It took us and both Ky and Shane to get it last time off the crazed human. Why didn’t you tell me it’s gone?”
“I was preoccupied. Didn’t know what to make of it. I’m still not sure. There are few people allowed into that space. Gerard has no reason to touch it and knows not to. Why anyone would want to handle any of those objects is beyond me, but the fact it’s been removed means none of them are safe. We have to find somewhere else for them.”
“Where?”
“I asked Zadkiel. He said we should build our own facility. This is what we have to talk to Mom about. We need to move fast and get those items out of there. If we don’t, we’ll be spending the next twenty years going after them again. I’m thinking we can do a spell to make it seem like the items are still there when they’re not.”
“Or we do holograms.” Flynn shook his heads. “That’s stupid. Too easy to realize it’s fake, but then again we only need to deceive for a short period of time. At least long enough to get the items to safety. A spell sounds better.”
“It’ll be a temporary fix to buy us time to move them. Once they’re all gone, we can tell Gerard we moved them. There’s nothing about the curse that says we have to leave them in London. We are bound to protect the innocent, and this is the only way.”
“There are too many pieces that don’t fit. Nova, the disc, Ky’s mission, Shane’s lighter…”
Flynn said, “We need Ky back to figure this out. He’s good at solving puzzles. I’ll bet he hid the notebook for us to find.”
“Maybe.”
Nova asked, “What does the notebook and this Sigge person have to do with me?”
“It answers the question why you couldn’t allow yourself to remember.” Roman let out a long sigh. He held out his hand to take hers in his. “They’re using Sigge’s brainwashing techniques to program super soldiers. He specialized in using hypnosis to train soldiers. He used trigger words that become embedded into the subconscious to get soldiers to follow a command.”
“LikeTheManchurian CandidateandWinter Soldier?”
“Something like that.”
“In the video when I said I didn’t remember doing the things that I’d done, maybe that’s why? I was programmed in my brain to obey orders and didn’t know what I was doing. That’s why I had to erase my brain, I guess. I needed to make sure no one could say the trigger words to make me…do things.” Chills shimmered down her arms. “What if they’re still in there? What if someone who recognizes me says them?”
