Death of an Adept

Recalling his purpose, he tucked his sketch box under his arm and followed after Chisholm and McLeod, noting that the latter unobtrusively took his Adept ring from a pocket and slipped it onto his finger before pulling on his gloves. Peregrine did the same, trying not to draw attention to the gesture, though Harry clearly noticed. As they passed through a gate bearing the logo of the National Trust for Scotland and began trudging up the muddy pathway toward the main standing stones, Peregrine found himself oddly reassured to have the enigmatic Harry bringing up the rear.

Closer to the lines of tape, two uniformed policemen had been assigned to perimeter security. One was crouched down talking to a handful of children who had come to gawk, and the other was engaged in a rather more emphatic conversation with two adult civilians - reporters, judging by their persistence. As Chisholm and his companions approached, the officer dealing with the children sent them off and came over.

"Morning, Mclver," Chisholm said. "This is DCI McLeod, up from Edinburgh. Mclver normally runs the one-man station up at Carloway, Inspector, but he was first officer on the scene yesterday."

He went on to complete the introductions. By then, the two civilians had accepted their rebuff from Mclver's partner and were trudging back toward the car park. From beyond the tapes on the other side of the circle, another man, with a camera and telephoto lens, was trying to frame a shot of the central cairn chamber, but Mclver's partner was already on his way to deal with the situation. Chisholm's mouth tightened as he returned his attention to Mclver.

"Press been giving you trouble?" he asked.

Mclver gave a stolid shake of the head and blew on his gloved hands to warm them. "Not much, sir. This morning, there isn't much to see. Those two chaps have been most persistent, but it looks like they've given up. There might be a couple of stragglers still nosing around the village in search of an angle, but I don't think they'll get very far. The locals seem to be sticking to their original statements that no one saw or heard anything worth reporting."

"They never do," Chisholm said with a grimace. "See if Maxwell needs a hand with that photographer, would you? I want to give Inspector McLeod a quick tour of the site before he talks to our witness."

"Aye, sir."

The wind up by the stones was sharp. When Peregrine had ducked under the tape that Chisholm held up for them, he turned up the collar of his duffel coat with a shiver. McLeod seemed impervious to the vicissitudes of the weather, as did Harry. Frost crunched under their feet as they made their way toward the center of the circle, now seen to mark where the stone avenue and three single lines of stones converged in a rude Celtic cross design.

The details inside the stone circle were much more foreboding. An icy slick of reddish-brown still darkened an open space beside the central stone - obvious location of the bull's demise - and looking more closely, Peregrine could see where blood had been used to trace the outline of a smaller circle on the short wintry turf between the central stone and the irregular depression of an open tomb cairn. More blood still marked the insides of all the stones defining the circle - which he had seen in the photographs, of course, and with the bloody carcass of the bull still in place.

But somehow the reality was far more disturbing, even after the first attempts at clean-up. As Peregrine tried to make some sense of what he was seeing, a sudden flood of psychic impressions rose to meet him, beating against the barriers of his inner Sight with an urgency that was almost irresistible.

"Inspector," he said, as casually as he could, "if you don't mind, I'm going to pull off to one side and start making some sketches. This seems as good a place to start as any."

"Please yourself," McLeod muttered. "You know what we need. Harry, why don't you give him a hand?"

Harry merely inclined his head and gestured for Peregrine to lead the way. Chisholm, meanwhile, drew McLeod aside to point out what looked like a scorch mark at the base of one of the central stones, where the wintry turf showed pale and withered.

"What do you make of that?" he asked. "There are three more like it."

Crouching down on his hunkers, McLeod prodded at the mark with the end of a pen, then glanced around the circle and located the three other marks, obviously marking the cardinal points of the compass.

"At a guess, I'd say they were made by lights of some kind - kerosene lanterns, maybe, or oil lamps, or possibly votive lights."

"That was my thought, too," Chisholm agreed. "But you'd think someone would have noticed. There wasn't even any moon that night."