“His Faceless . . . sorry, Enfield, told me that he was the sorcerer who attacked me at Hades’s compound last year. Kay was involved in breaking out Cronus if that’s the case. He was working with the Vanguard.”
“The Vanguard and Reavers working together. That can’t possibly be good news. But what’s his end game? Hera was the one who wanted Cronus free, it was her plan. Is Kay working for her? Or are they both working for someone else?”
“Questions for later, maybe. First thing is to find Kay and Enfield.”
“I can have people looking into it.”
“Good, I’m going to have a look around his office in the SOA building. If he’s into something stupid, he’ll have left evidence there.”
“You can’t possibly think going alone is a good idea.”
“If you have a better one, I’m all ears.”
“I’ve got one,” Tommy said from behind me.
I turned around as my friend strolled into the hospital. A lot of the SOA agents nodded their greetings. Tommy was a bit of a legend among the SOA; the fact that he’d quit when Kay took control didn’t appear to have diminished people’s opinion of him.
“I’m coming with you,” he said. “Can’t let you get killed just before you’re meant to be at Kasey’s naming ceremony.”
“You don’t have to do that,” I protested.
“Yeah, I do. Kay was the reason I quit working here. He’s a nasty little shit and if I can help bring him down, I’m all for it. Besides, you need the help. And I can track them to where they went, saves wandering the city looking for them.”
“Thanks.”
“We’ll keep an eye on Fiona and Alan,” Lucie told us. “But I can’t put a citywide announcement out for Kay’s arrest. If he has SOA people under his control, it could turn into a war out there. The LOA have taken charge of the investigation, and apart from those in the SOA I know are loyal to me, I’m not taking any chances. The rest of the SOA are still under lockdown. No matter what Kay’s plan is, I’d rather you managed to get him before other options need to be discussed.”
In other words, we were on our own for now.
“Kelly knows of a second realm gate in Albion,” I told her. “I don’t know where it is though.”
“A second gate?” Lucie asked, surprised. “Shit. We’ll get her to talk, don’t worry.”
We told Lucie we’d be in touch and Tommy and I left the building, where he immediately took a deep breath. “They went this way.”
“How do you know that’s Kay’s smell?” I asked as we walked through the hospital grounds to the nearby car park.
“He smells like blood,” he said. “Always has.”
“Like blood?”
“When a sorcerer uses magic they smell different, it’s like they smell of power, or death, depending on the person. But very few smell of blood.” He paused and glanced back at me. “You know what that means don’t you?”
Kay always did like to use his blood magic to hurt people. Blood magic is addictive and scary stuff, but is usually only used by sorcerers for healing or increasing the power of their spells. I’d lost my ability to use it when my necromancy activated, but I’d used blood magic just as much as anyone else when it was available. For a sorcerer to smell of blood, that would indicate that Kay was using blood magic a lot . . . that he was possibly a blood leech. And that would be very, very bad, because that means he could be involved with blood curses and sacrifices. Basically all the bad stuff that blood magic allows.
“Shit,” I whispered.
“That about sums it up,” Tommy agreed and continued walking, before stopping once again in front of an empty parking space. “They got into a car.”
“Well, they could be anywhere then.”
“Car fifteen,” he said, pointing to the number plate on the car beside it. “The cars all park themselves in numerical order. So car fifteen is the one they took.”
“How does that help?”
“Get in,” he told me and opened the front door of car sixteen.
I opened what would have been the passenger-side door—if the car had been fitted with a steering wheel—and waited for Tommy to explain what he was going to do.
One of his fingers grew long, the nail forming a claw. “You see the road out there?” he said while he prized off the center console of the car, just above the destination indicator, and flung it onto the back seats. “Well those little sensors take a sort of fingerprint for every single car that goes along the road, feeding all of that data into a central processor in a building about a mile away.”
“Why can’t we just contact that building and have them tell us where car fifteen went?”
“Because in the century since you were last here, the ability to gain information has gotten slower, not quicker. By the time we’ve contacted them, and they’ve contacted their higher-ups to see if they can share that information, Kay would have enough time to get a nap in before his murderous plan.”
“Okay, so what are you doing?”
“Like I said, each of these cars leaves a fingerprint when they go over the surface.” He held down one of the buttons beneath the screen until it turned completely blank. “It’s a little-known trick, but you can program any of these cars to think that they’re another car. They all store the last half a dozen routes in their memory. You just need to find the one you want.”
The screen came back to life and a few taps later, the car’s engine started. “Now it thinks we’re car fifteen,” Tommy said with just the right amount of smugness.
“How do you know about this?” I asked.
“Some of Olivia’s people were the ones involved in the creation of this system. They told her, she told me.”
The car began moving off as Tommy reaffixed the center console to appear that nothing had happened.
It didn’t take long before we knew the car was headed to the city limits. A few minutes later it stopped behind car fifteen, which had been abandoned.
I glanced across the open fields that sat between us and a massive home in the distance.
“Kay’s mansion,” I said as I climbed out of the car.
“We’d best hurry then,” Tommy said and we both set off at a jog, although mine was considerably wearier than his. There was nowhere an ambush could logistically be arranged, the entire area was one flat plain, but a forest began directly behind Kay’s home, with thick trees stretching up as high as any redwood could manage. It was a good spot for a sniper, but we made it to the imposing front gate of the property without incident.
The gate opened with no more than a slight push, and Tommy and I walked through the immaculate garden to the front door, which was ajar.
“This feel weird to you?” I asked.
“More than a little,” he agreed and took a big sniff. “Kay was here, and recently too.”
“What about Enfield?”
“The Faceless? I can’t get anyone else’s scent, just Kay’s. You think he’s waiting for us?”
“I assume so, yes. Can’t imagine why though.”
I moved slowly into the mansion, with Tommy right behind me. The foyer was both gigantic and full of light, which came in from the floor-to-ceiling windows along the front of the building. The room was full of artwork and artifacts like vases. It was the kind of room someone would have if they wanted everyone to know how cultured and important they were.
We moved through the house, using Tommy’s nose to distinguish between old scents and new ones, until we came to the rear of the building. The doors that led to the woodland behind the house were open.
“He’s out there,” Tommy said with a low growl. “This feels like a trap.”
“Yes, yes it does.” I stepped outside and scanned the tree line. “Any chance you can smell anyone other than Kay?”
“No, not from here.”
We crossed the open land between the trees and the house, and stopped a few hundred feet short when Kay stepped out of the shadows. “Welcome to my
humble abode,” he said, with a wave of his hands.
“You’re going to come with us, Kay,” I told him. “You and Enfield.”
“Ah, but Enfield isn’t here. I’m sorry about that, but he’s gone off to do his job. And I’m about leave this little realm and relocate somewhere else until Elaine’s successor can be chosen; hopefully they’ll be a little more open to doing things the proper way.”
“You mean by making people fear you?” Tommy said, his words dripping contempt.
“Is there a better way to get what you want?” It wasn’t just a flippant mark, Kay genuinely believed that fear was the best way to get results.
“Kay, you come with us, or we’re going to take you,” I told him. “You don’t really want to fight me, do you?”
Kay stared at me for what felt like a long time. “No, I can’t say I do, Nathan. You were always more than you appeared. The revelation that you are Hellequin was a shock, I won’t lie. I heard you killed Mordred too. That was an even bigger shock.
“But I can’t stand here all day, I have important work to do. I need to prepare for what’s coming. So, no, I don’t think I want to fight you, but I’m not going to go with you either.”
I took a step toward Kay and readied my magic. “Then we’re going to take you.”
Kay stepped back into the shadows of the trees. “Then come get me.”
By the time we’d reached the trees, Kay had vanished into the darkness beyond. Tommy took a step forward and then stopped as if frozen in place. “Death,” he whispered. “So much death. Nate, something is wrong here. Something I can’t quite put my finger on. But I’ve smelled it before.”
I created a blade of flame in my hand and overtook Tommy as I entered the woods.
There were grunts of pain from behind me as Tommy shifted into his wolfbeast form.
“Definitely something I’ve smelled before,” he said, his voice now deeper and more menacing. “Something very bad.”
“Can you smell Kay?” I asked.
“He went that way,” he told me, bounding off in front. His wolfbeast form wasn’t as fast or agile as his pure wolf, but it was stronger. A lot stronger.
A few hundred meters into the woods they opened out a bit, allowing more room to move. Another hundred and the trees stopped when we arrived at a clearing. There were half a dozen dead Avalon guards all around the entrance to a cave.
“Second realm gate,” I said. “It’s got to be down there.”
“So is Kay,” Tommy said with a sniff. “And something else is watching us from the trees above.”
It wasn’t often that Tommy sounded genuinely concerned, and his tone made me search the treetops for some evidence of his worry. “There’s nothing there,” I told him.
“There is, trust me on this.”
I used my magic to change my vision, allowing me to see in thermal vision, or as close as magic could get to it. I couldn’t see anything for a while, and then something scurried around the trunk of a massive tree. I switched off the thermal vision just as strands of web hit me in the wrist. I used my free hand to cut through the web with my blade of fire, but more strands shot out toward Tommy and me. We dodged them all, diving behind nearby trees.
“What is it?” Tommy shouted.
“Jorōgumo,” I said, and noticed that my hand was cut where the web had hit me. I raised my hand to Tommy, showing him the wounds. “Although her web couldn’t do that the last time I encountered one.”
“Hello, Nathaniel. Although I guess you go by Nate now,” a woman said, accompanied by the rustle of leaves as she made her way through the bushes. “It’s been a long time.”
Tommy risked a glance around the tree trunk. “It’s a giant fucking spider woman thing. Wait, is that the female we let live back when we were trying to find Mordred before he killed those two princes?”
“I assume so, yes,” I told him.
“Oh shit.”
“I’ve waited centuries, Natha . . . Nate,” the jorōgumo said. “You let me live, and after I dragged my useless husband back into the forest, I mated and then ate him. It was only then I learned the true horror of what you’d done to me. I can’t have children anymore. All of my babies that you killed that day, they were my last.”
“You killed her babies?” Tommy questioned.
“Hundreds of venomous spiders,” I corrected.
“Good.”
“How’d you end up here?” I shouted.
“Kay found me. Brought me here and gave me prey in exchange for my venom. When he told me that you were chasing him, I offered to stay and remove you. And I get your wolf friend into the bargain.”
“Ummm . . . hate to break this to you, lady,” Tommy said. “But there’s no hope in hell you can take me and Nate all by yourself.”
“Oh, I never said I was alone.”
There was a low roar that came from above, before a crash signified that whatever it was had landed beside the jorōgumo. I glanced around the tree and really wished I hadn’t.
“You look pale, what is it?” Tommy asked.
“Manticore.” A manticore is a large red lion, with bat wings and a large scorpion-like tail, which it uses to shoot venomous spines that, as I knew far too well, can quickly paralyze and render its victim unconscious. Its mouth is like that of a shark, with several rows of razor-sharp teeth. It eats every part of its prey, including bones and clothes.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Tommy glanced around his tree, and narrowly missed having several venomous spines hit his face. “Okay, our odds of survival just took a drastic spin down the shitter.”
“You want the manticore or the spider-beast?” I asked.
“I want to have never decided to come with you. I’ll take the big, ugly lion.”
“I’m going to enjoy feasting on you, wolf,” the manticore said, its voice sounding almost musical.
“They can talk?” Tommy said.
“This your first one?” I asked.
He nodded. “You?”
“Third.”
“How’d you kill the others?”
“Luck. Just avoid the tail and claws and mouth, and you’ll be fine.”
“That’s the shittiest pep-talk anyone has ever given. I’m regretting my choice in becoming your best friend.”
“Too late now,” I said with a smile. I spun to the side of the tree and threw a ball of fire at the pair of monsters. They both easily moved aside, but it gave Tommy the opening he needed to sprint around the tree and barrel into the manticore’s ribs at full speed, taking it off its feet and smashing it into the nearest tree trunk. The manticore screamed in pain, and Tommy narrowly avoided becoming skewered by its tail.
“You have more important things than your friend,” the jorōgumo told me. “I’m glad to see you remembered me.”
Jorōgumo are half spider, half human. The woman was naked from stomach to neck. Her face had two dark mandibles that had torn through the skin around her jaw, one on either side, and two long fangs protruded from the top of her mouth. Her dark abdomen was now that of a spider, with six dark legs, each one tipped with a sharp claw. Her belly was almost touching the ground, she was getting ready to attack.
“Can’t really forget,” I said. “Although I wish I hadn’t shown you mercy and let you live.”
“Mercy?” she screamed. “You murdered my family, you tore me apart.”
“You were trying to eat me,” I pointed out. “And what in the world makes you think you can win this time?”
“Experience,” she said and spat at me.
I dodged the venom, which bubbled and sizzled as it hit the tree trunk behind me. I blasted her legs with air magic. She staggered to one side and spat again, this time turning at the last second to send out a stream of her web, which caught me in the leg, tearing at my jeans and stopping my momentum solid. She dragged the web back, dumping me on the wet woodland floor. I swiped at the web with another fire blade, cutting through it, but two more strands hit my arm, pi
nning me once again.
“I know all about your fire and air magic, Nate. You almost burned me to death once, remember?” More web wrapped around my hand. She pulled it tight and I felt the web slice into my flesh.
I spun on the ground, cutting through the webbing once again and scrambled back to my feet. I burned the web off, noticing the tiny hooks that covered it.
“Took me a long time to perfect that,” she said. “Webbing that cuts people who try to escape. The more you struggle, the more it bleeds you.” She smiled as the manticore charged at me.
I dodged aside, my hand only just evading the deadly jaws of the animal, and rolled along the ground, throwing a torrent of air at it and driving it back toward the jorōgumo, who jumped up into the trees above.
“You okay?” Tommy asked. He was bleeding from a cut on his chest, but appeared to be otherwise unhurt.
“Grand, thanks. You?”
“Bastard will not go down. It’s like punching a wall. I tear chunks out of it and it just wants to keep fighting.”
As if on cue the manticore shook its massive head and roared, fixing his glare back on Tommy and me. “Get ready,” I whispered.
“For what?” Tommy asked.
“You’ll see.” I gathered my magic inside of me, the glyphs on my arms brightening as a sphere of fire magic began to rotate in my palm. It moved faster and faster until it was a blur. “Come get some,” I told the manticore, who roared again and charged us.
I stood my ground, feeding more and more power into the sphere. The manticore threw spines and charged at me. It was the opening I was waiting for. Just before the monster was almost on top of me I plunged the sphere into its head. And released the magic. The flames all but consumed the beast, tearing into the flesh and muscle that surrounded its skull.
“Now,” I shouted.
Tommy ran past me at the manticore, tearing out its throat a second later as the beast struggled to cope with the flames that were both blinding it and causing it considerable pain.
A web struck my back and I was pulled from my feet, back to the ground. Tommy was winning against the manticore, and had only attention for the fight in front of him as the jorōgumo landed on top of me, her massive leg pinning my arms to the ground. She let her venom drip onto the ground next to my arm. “What can you do now, Nate? There’s nothing you can do that I won’t come back from. I will feast on your dying body, and I will do it slowly so that you can understand the pain I went through.”