“All of them will have an Avalon presence, though.”
“You really think that’s going to stop Cronus? All it’ll do is give him more chances to kill people. You want our advice?”
I motioned for her to continue.
“You go find Hera and warn her that there’s a reckoning coming. Because Cronus is single-minded at the best of times, and once he gets within arm’s length of killing her, there’s nothing that’s going to stop him short of his own death.”
I stood and realized I hadn’t touched my tea.
“It’s okay,” Pandora said, noticing my gaze. “Go save the bitch; make sure she’s nice and secure. Because we want her healthy for when we get our own chance to tear her fucking head off.”
“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit,” I said as I returned to the control room, where all the others sat in silence. “I assume you heard all of what she said?”
Everyone nodded at once.
“I’ve made some calls,” Olivia said. “All LOA staff are on high alert for anything unusual. I’ve said we have info that someone is going to try to get to a magic well, but nothing more than that. Any ideas where he might go?”
“I’d have guessed outside of London, but I’ve got no idea of his frame of mind. He might go to the biggest one in London and use it as a massive ‘I’m here’ to get Hera’s attention.”
“I’ll get my people to keep an extra eye on the Tower of London, then,” she said. “But once Cronus turns up at a magic well, any hope of keeping this quiet is gone. Magic wells are not made for stealthy use.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we have to,” I said. “In the meantime, we need to go see Hera. She’s got to be warned of Cronus. He won’t be able to kill her and everyone else, but she’s his priority, and she needs to be made aware.”
“I’ll come with you,” Olivia said. “She might be more respectful to the presence of an LOA Director.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“I’m staying here,” Sky told everyone. “My parents are on their way here. One of them is going to need access to whatever magic well Cronus decides to fill up on.”
“I’m coming with you,” Tommy assured me. “What with Brutus, his people, Sky and—when they turn up—her parents, it’s almost guaranteed that Kasey will be safe here.”
“We’ll be happy to keep her company. Nate, if it was Hera’s blood in that dagger, she’ll be more powerful now,” Brutus said. “Sarah might have only been a witch, but she was exceptionally talented and not above using powerful magic.”
“Yeah, I remember,” I said as the memory of the effete spell bounced to the front of my mind. “Any idea where Hera is?”
“She has a place to the north of here. She’s with all of her allies,” Brutus told us. “That means it’s going to be more than a little frosty for you and your friends. You might be better off finding Cronus and stopping him.”
“One thing at a time.”
“I heard Sarah was murdered,” said a man as he entered the control room. He was about my height and build, but with a shaved head with several scars on top. He wore jeans and a shirt, with a holster for two revolvers.
“Justin,” Brutus said. “You heard. I’m sorry. Everyone, this is Justin Toon, our head of security.”
Justin nodded curtly in our direction. Somehow Justin was the man whose connections had placed Sarah inside Hera’s operation. A move that had eventually gotten her killed. I could forgive a little curtness in his situation.
“I did tell her not to get involved too deeply with Hera,” Justin said. “You’re going after Cronus for this?” The question was directed at everyone.
“Yeah,” I said. “But Sarah was a willing participant. She created a krampus, murdered people. She wasn’t an innocent.”
Justin rubbed his eyes and shook his head sadly. “She was a good person, but working with Hera changed her. She became more focused on helping Hera and her people and began to forget that she was there to spy, not help them. They twisted her to their own vision. There’s no other explanation.”
I could think of a few, mostly involving money and power, but decided that bringing them to his attention would do little to help the situation.
“She was thrilled when Demeter started to notice her and took her to see Hera,” Justin continued. “Even more so when Hera started asking for her personally.”
“When did you last hear from her?”
“About four months ago. She said she was dealing with some plans of Hera’s. That it was going to be big.”
“I guess we know what that was,” Sky said.
“I can’t believe she’d fall so far as to murder people for Hera. It’s just not something I’d ever imagined.”
“We need to go,” Tommy said.
“Yeah, we need to help some people who hate us stay in one piece,” I said sarcastically.
“Well, to add to that list of shit things,” Brutus said, “my sources say that Selene is going to be there with Hera too.”
My entire body deflated with one massive sigh. “Well that’s just fucking wonderful, isn’t it?”
CHAPTER 28
Dresden, Germany. 1936.
It took me the better part of a day to fully heal from the injuries sustained by an exploding Magali Jean, not to mention the beating I’d taken at the hands of Helios. Magali’s silver locket, which had embedded in my side and caused so much damage, was the last thing to heal and a constant reminder that Pandora’s thralls were fanatical in their commitment to her needs.
Selene had dealt badly with her brother’s involvement in Pandora’s plan when she’d first discovered it, but the realization that her brother was not only helping but was also the architect of everything was a massive blow. For some reason, our escape from serious injury—or worse—had made her want to discuss our past relationship, a conversation I was unwilling to have.
It was an odd sensation, wanting so much to talk to her, but needing to push her away. Selene was not someone who allowed herself to be seen as weak more than once, so from the second I’d walked away from her request to talk, Selene had thrown herself into finding anything that would reveal her brother’s plan. She went out with Kurt to talk to his contacts in the city while Petra helped an injured Lucie.
I found myself sitting in the house’s library, reading some information that Kurt had uncovered about the availability of sarin gas in Berlin. I was certain it was part of Helios’s plot, which all we knew for certain was that he was going to try to kill Hera at the opening of the Olympic games, only a few short days away.
“I need to thank you,” Lucie said as she entered the room, bringing me out of my concentration. “You probably saved my life.”
“Not a problem. You may not like me, or trust me for that matter, but I’m not the monster you think I am.”
Lucie stood silently for a few seconds before turning and leaving me alone in the library. I sighed. There was always going to be uneasiness between us. She clearly believed her brother hadn’t been responsible for anything that had happened and that I’d killed and framed him as some sort of scapegoat.
I rubbed my eyes. It had been a very long few days, and the constant need to avoid both Lucie and Selene had been much more tiring than I’d expected it to be.
As if on cue, Selene opened the door and stepped inside. “We need to talk.”
“About what?” I asked.
“My brother.”
“Your brother is involved, and he’s doing this of his own volition. Whether he sought out Pandora or vice versa doesn’t really matter.”
“Agreed,” she said and sat opposite me. “My brother has made his bed and must be stopped. That’s not what I’m talking about. I mean us. When I saw you hurt—” She paused, breaking off for a second. “My heart stopped.”
“You left me,” I said softly, so as not to betray my still raw anger at what had happened so many years ago. “You left me for Deimos. A man you’d always told me you hated. Obvious
ly, hate wasn’t enough to stop you from marrying him.” As the words left my mouth, I regretted them, but I was too stubborn to actually say anything of the kind to Selene, who physically recoiled from them.
“Will you ever stop hating me?”
I opened my mouth to say something hurtful, anything to make her feel the same pain I did, but I couldn’t. “I don’t hate you,” I whispered. “That’s the damn problem.”
She reached out and touched my leg, but I stood and walked off, turning away from her. “Don’t.”
I heard nothing else until the door opened, and I turned to find myself alone once more.
I sat in quiet for a few moments. It had taken a lot to tell Selene no. I wasn’t certain I could do it a second time.
“Why did two women come out of here in a hurry?” Kurt asked as he opened the door. “I assume you’ve been your usual charming self.”
“Who knew a library could be so busy?” I said with a forced smile.
“My people in Berlin found something you might be interested in.” He walked over to a table nearby, where he placed several photographs.
I picked up the one closest to me; it was of a warehouse’s front door. There was a lorry standing outside, and several Nazis stood around, either guarding it or keeping watch on the warehouse. Two more Nazis—officers judging by their uniforms—were talking off to one side.
“What was in the lorry?” I asked.
Kurt passed me another photo showing the Nazis bodies littering the ground and a smoking ruin where the lorry once was.
“Helios, I assume.”
“My contact said that the Nazis removed something like artillery shells from the back of the lorry. He couldn’t get a photo of it because they were very nervous at that point and making sure to watch all around them. But once they’d finished, he said that a winged god landed on the vehicle, and it exploded.”
I flicked through the photos, but there was nothing there that Kurt hadn’t already told me.
“They were working for Helios, and he killed them all,” I said.
“Looks that way. I guess he didn’t want any witnesses, or maybe someone figured out what he was going to use it for and then threatened to pull the plug.”
“Either way, we need to go look at that sarin.”
“Hold your horses; it gets worse.” He removed a map from his back pocket and unfolded it, laying it out on the table. Red crosses dotted it at certain points, and I realized that they were all clustered around where the Olympic stadium stood.
“This is where the sarin is being placed, isn’t it?” I asked.
“We tracked down someone who worked with Magali and her husband, Jean, who live in another part of town. They eventually admitted that the sarin was going to be used in bombs placed around the stadium, and gave us the locations. Selene is very persuasive when she needs to be.”
“We’re sure of the placements? This person wasn’t enthralled by Pandora to hand out false information?”
“He was hired help. He’d never met Pandora, so it’s doubtful. He could have been lying, but I didn’t get that impression. Besides, we’ve checked the areas in question and they’re undoubtedly the best places to put the gas if you want to kill everyone in that stadium.”
“So, what’s your plan?”
“According to our man, the gas will be in place tomorrow night. There’s a team of lackeys just itching to help Helios kill Nazis. They think they’re freedom fighters.”
“So apparently ‘freedom fighter’ equates to the murder of innocent women and children now?” I asked, my words dripping with sarcasm.
No one spoke for a moment; apparently, I’d stopped the conversation in its tracks.
“So, what’s the plan?” I asked again.
“I’ll get everyone else, and then we’ll go over it.” He left the library, and I continued to study the map until he returned with Petra, Selene, and Lucie a few minutes later.
“Okay, Kurt, let’s hear it,” I said.
“Selene, Petra, and I are going to go around tomorrow evening, defusing any bombs and stopping any people we find there. In the meantime, Nathan and Lucie, you’re going to the warehouse.” Kurt grabbed a photo from the table and pointed at something on the building’s external wall. “You see this rune? No idea what others are going to be there, so, Lucie, I hope you’re up to making sure they’re not a problem. Nathan, you’re there to provide muscle. My contacts say there are no guards in the area, but if there is anyone there, they’ll need to be removed. From what we were told, a lot of the sarin is out being used in the bombs, but there’s still plenty left in that warehouse to hurt a lot of people. Hopefully, the building is empty of people, but we can’t risk letting any of this gas get into anyone’s hands, let alone it going to a group of people who will actually use it.”
“Wait a second. Only the enchanter who put the runes there can remove them. So how is Lucie going to manage that?” I asked.
“I have my ways,” Lucie said with a sly grin. “Besides we don’t know what put that rune there, and it’s only an enchanter’s runes I can’t remove. Maybe luck will be on our side, and I can just wipe it away without trouble.”
I let it drop. “Okay, so how do you know that none of the other explosives will have runes on them?”
“Their enchanter is the same man we interrogated. Helios hired him to do the job. He doesn’t really want to kill tens of thousands of people; he just wants to get paid. He’d already put the runes on the bombs before Helios’s friends took them away for safekeeping until they were ready to be used. We have him tied up in his hotel room. We’re going to fetch him, and then he’s going to remove the runes.”
“Or I’ll remove parts of him,” Selene said.
“How are we going to remove any sarin left in the warehouse? We can’t just carry it out and hope for the best. For that matter, where are you going to put the stuff you find when you defuse the bombs?”
“I’ve contacted Hades,” Petra said. “He’s going to be on his way up here with a containment team. They’ll arrive tomorrow night too, but they’re coming to us first to take whatever sarin we find, so you need to sit on that warehouse and make sure no one gets in or out until they arrive.”
“Any idea where Helios is going to be?” I asked.
“He’ll be wherever his base of operations is,” Selene said. “Probably going over plans in his head. He’s very detail oriented. He’ll be holed up somewhere once the sun starts to dip. He won’t want to risk anything happening to him that could disrupt the plan.”
“Any idea where his base is?” Lucie asked. “I don’t want to run into him at the warehouse.”
“We don’t know,” Kurt admitted. “Somewhere in Berlin is our best guess. If he is at the warehouse, you’re going to have a hell of a fight on your hands. Just contact us on the radio—there’s one in the back of your new car. We’ll come running.”
“Basically our plan for dealing with Helios is to hope like hell he isn’t there,” I said.
Selene smiled, and Kurt rolled his eyes.
“Good—just checking.” I turned to Lucie. “Bring some weapons because I guarantee you Helios will now be at the warehouse.”
“How can you possibly know that?” Lucie almost snapped.
“Because I can’t think of anything that would piss me off more than having to fight Helios while making sure a bunch of exceptionally deadly nerve gas doesn’t explode all over us. And if the last few days are any indication, whatever pisses me off the most is exactly what will happen.”
I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to burn off the nervous energy I felt coursing through me. There were only twenty-four hours until Kurt’s plan was due to be placed in motion, and I wanted to get some sleep before then.
After a few hours spent working out in the sizeable garden behind the house, I showered and then tried relax. Grabbing one of the many books from the library, I returned outside to read, trying to dislodge my thoughts about what was
, in my mind anyway, the impending fight.
“We never finished talking,” Selene said as she sat on the chair beside me, drawing my attention away from the book.
I placed the novel on the small glass table beside me. “We did. You ran off.”
“Okay, let me rephrase: I don’t want to leave it like that.”
“How should we leave it, Selene? Am I meant to want you to drop everything and divorce your husband, so I can take you back with open arms? You left me.”
“I had no choice. There’s more to it than I can tell you.”
“So, someone physically forced you to leave me and marry your asshole of a husband?”
Selene remained mute.
“Good old dad, marrying off his daughter so he can get out of Tartarus. He made a deal with Hera and used you as collateral. I don’t know what makes me angrier: that they arranged it or that you let them.”
“Believe what you like, I guess,” she said and stood. “It was stupid of me to come here and expect to change your mind.”
“Yes, it was,” I agreed. I closed my eyes and leaned back in the chair.
After a few seconds of silence, I opened my eyes to discover that Selene wore an expression of hurt, and my anger subsided.
“I think about you all the time,” she said. “We were perfect. I wish every day that I could tell you why I left. I can’t, though. And I’m sorrier about that than you can possibly understand.”
Words caught in my throat. “Were is the word you should focus on.” I stood and picked up my book, catching a whiff of Selene’s perfume. It made my heart beat faster, but I was damned if I was going to let her win.
I inwardly cursed myself. Win—what a fucking stupid notion. As if this were all some game being played. In my mind there was no winner. No matter the outcome, I had still lost someone I cared for.
“I’m angry at you,” I found myself saying. “Not because you left me, although, that’s certainly part of it, but that you come here to work with me and let your feelings show for me. I could deal with this if you were cold, if you kept your distance. It would mean I wouldn’t have to deal with this shit. But when we were in that house, and you saw me hurt . . . I saw in your eyes how worried you were about me, and that was more than I wanted to take.”