Promise of Wrath (The Hellequin Chronicles Book 6)

  “Yes, Cain and Abel. You tried to murder me, Mordred. You’ve wanted me dead for a long time. Whatever friendship we had died long ago.” I raised my hand before he could say more. “Don’t bother threatening me; it’s not going to do any good. Just let me do my job.”

  I turned to Nanshe. “We need to talk. Now.”

  Nanshe and I left the room and walked upstairs, where, once outside, I took a deep breath. We walked away from the soldiers stationed outside of Mordred’s prison, past the guard at the front of the city and across the wooden bridge, stopping in the shade of a large boulder close to where Asag and I had fought.

  “Avalon has not stationed troops here because we wanted to show that there was a mutual trust. Acre was meant to be under Mesopotamian control, and we didn’t want to screw around with that. Part of the agreement in the joining of yourselves and Avalon was that we would station SOA agents here to protect the city, but they’re going to be several weeks away. And until then we’re alone in this. If I contact Merlin or Elaine and tell either of them what happened here, they’ll send enough Blade of Avalon soldiers that it will appear as if we’re taking the city by force.

  “I would rather that not happen. I would rather we were able to deal with this ourselves. But our entire thought process was that Isabel was important to Siris because of her plan; that has just been destroyed as a theory. Isabel is important because Siris wants to hurt Mordred. No idea why, although I’m not sure it’s important. Siris, however, is important. And judging from your expression, so is Nergal. An explanation would be excellent. As would an honest appraisal of whether or not I need to turn this city into an Avalon military exercise.”

  “I don’t want anything to jeopardize the union between our powers,” Nanshe said. “There have been enough foreign powers trying to take control of this city and I don’t wish to add to it. Isabel was a ruse, a ruse that Mordred helped along because of his fear for her well-being. Siris, however, is not a ruse. She’s incredibly powerful, and apparently has a grudge against the rest of the pantheon.”

  “And Nergal?”

  “Nergal is terrifying. He’s also Irkalla’s husband—or was until he tried to kill her for disobeying him. As you might have guessed, Irkalla didn’t take well to being ordered about.”

  “Who is he?”

  “He’s a half fire elemental, half siphon. A few thousand years ago we managed to fight off an invading force, a group who wanted to take control of the area, and remove our names from the history books. Nergal siphons life force; he uses it to make himself physically stronger. The power makes those affected appear as if they’ve caught some kind of plague, spreading fear throughout the rest of the population. It works best on humans. As I’m sure you know, fear quickly leads to violence.

  “During the war, he walked into a civilian city that was under enemy control and infected hundreds, draining their life force to the point of death, making him even more powerful in the process. He watched as the fear took that city by force, and then he made them an offer. Kill the infected and the rest will be spared. Except he kept infecting more, making it look like a disease, until the streets ran slick with blood. Nergal is the single most terrifying person I’ve ever met. He enjoys warfare. It’s what he’s good at. You can’t defeat him. Not even Gilgamesh can do that.”

  That was surprising news. “He beat Gilgamesh?”

  “Gilgamesh’s last encounter with Nergal left him almost completely broken. Nergal had beaten him half to death, broken both his legs, his arms, ribs, nose, jaw, and damaged several internal organs. Gilgamesh healed, but I don’t think he was ever the same. That was thirty-six years ago. No one has heard from Nergal since.”

  “Well, Mordred and Siris have. But, Mordred said Nergal has left to do something else. I assume that’s some good news.”

  Nanshe waited several seconds before nodding. “I hope so.”

  “Okay, we leave Nergal to one side until we need to deal with him, which hopefully isn’t any time soon. That leaves Siris as the most immediate problem. Her home needs to be searched, and—no offence—but I don’t want someone who once considered her a friend to do it. I assume that counts you out.”

  Nanshe nodded. “Siris has been angry at us for a long time, but I never assumed she’d go against us like this.”

  “Why is she angry with you?”

  “She was given the title goddess of beer as a joke. I can’t even remember who said it first. I just remember it sticking, and her hating it. People worshipped her for their ability to get drunk. A few thousand years of that, and I think she resented those of us who were given more important roles in the pantheon.”

  “Not to sound cruel, but your pantheon hasn’t been worshipped in hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Why still hold a grudge? Why do something about it now?”

  “Only she can answer that. When you go to Siris’s house take Irkalla with you. They didn’t get along. If anyone would be happy to find something that ties Siris to all of this, it’s Irkalla.”

  “Why didn’t they get along?”

  “Petty arguments built up over time. Things that were never resolved, and so grew. Also, Siris killed one of Irkalla’s attendants for being disrespectful. It happened a long time ago, but Irkalla has never given up trying to punish Siris for that injustice.”

  “I’d like a half-dozen Teutonic Knights with me too. Can that be arranged?”

  Nanshe nodded. “Anything else?”

  “Mordred will try to escape. I’d really rather he didn’t manage it.”

  “He’s not going anywhere.”

  “You don’t know Mordred. He’ll break out eventually; he always does. And then he’ll kill people, innocent or otherwise, to get to his goal. If there’s one thing you can say about Mordred, it’s that when he’s focused on something, he doesn’t change his mind.”

  “That sounds like you admire him a little bit.”

  “I hate him, Nanshe. I hate who he’s become, I hate that I lost a brother, I hate that I’m never getting him back. And above all, I hate that I have to be the one to kill him. He’s my burden to destroy.”

  She turned to look at me. She appeared concerned, although I couldn’t tell if it was for me or the situation. “Why?”

  “Because I was the one who confronted him just before he almost killed Arthur. He’d been murdering people, Avalon members, for years. I hunted him down, begged him to stop, tried to figure out what was going on. We fought, and I had a chance to kill him. I didn’t take it. I couldn’t accept that my friend of so long was gone. And when it came right down to it, I just couldn’t take his life.”

  “It’s hard to kill those we love, Nathaniel.”

  A slight smile creased my lips, although it wasn’t one of joy. “That might be true, but Mordred is no longer worthy of mercy. His continued existence is a blight on this and all other realms. I’ll take his life, and then I’ll hopefully see the friend I grew up with. I hope his death will break whatever happened to him. He’s left me with no other options.”

  Nanshe placed her hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry for you. For that burden.”

  I shook my head. “Like I said, it’s my burden. And he knows it. But I won’t go against your wishes, and I won’t kill him while he’s under your care. I want your joining with Avalon to be peaceful, the transition easy. I don’t want it to be marred by blood and death. That’s why we need to find Siris, and anyone else involved, and stop them. Because the attack tonight was only the beginning.”

  I paused. “The attack,” I said, mostly to myself.

  “What about it?”

  “Well, it was done precisely to get to Isabel, who we’ve established was only taken to get to Mordred. The whole attack was a ruse. It was to see how well prepared we were. I found it strange that they put so few people against the whole city. If they’d wanted to overrun us, they went about it a strange way. They lost maybe thirty vampires last night, and how many soldiers did we lose?”

  “About a
hundred and fifty from all divisions, last I heard.”

  “So we lost a lot more, despite having a greater advantage in numbers. If they’d sent a few hundred vampires they’d have destroyed us. Which means they don’t have that many. Or they didn’t want to commit.”

  “It was a test. A chance to abduct Isabel and see how strong we really were. Nothing more. Siris wasn’t privy to any sort of details regarding the strength of the defenders of the city. She thought she’d do two things at once, and maybe thin our numbers a little.”

  I nodded. “Which means, more will be coming. We need to be prepared. Siris’s plan hasn’t truly started yet, but I can’t imagine her wanting to wait around while we prepare for whatever it is.”

  “I’ll go talk to the soldiers, get them ready for another attack.”

  I walked away, needing some time to myself, and wanting to think about what had transpired since I’d arrived in the city. It had been a long few hours, and I doubted it was going to get better soon.

  “You know, if you keep looking like your mind is elsewhere, there’s a good chance someone is going to try to take advantage of you.”

  I stopped and nodded a greeting to Irkalla. I’d walked half the length of the city and found myself close to a small patch of grass, bordered by colorful flowers I didn’t know the names of. Children played on the grass without a care in the world. I envied them that.

  “Nanshe said I should come find you,” Irkalla told me. “I heard Siris was behind the attack.”

  I nodded. “Not sure how behind it she was, but definitely involved. Nanshe says you don’t get on.”

  “I think she’s a manipulative, murdering shrew. She disagrees.”

  We started to walk together toward Siris’s house. The morning sun was just beginning to warm up the city and it wouldn’t be long before the heat would be unbearable.

  “She killed someone under your protection.”

  “I think she’s killed a lot of people if it helps her. There’s no proof, and Nabu and Nanshe refused recompense for the killing. A few days later someone turned up confessing to the crime and was executed before I could question them. Sound suspicious to you?”

  “That’s one way of putting it. Nothing since then?”

  “She got more careful after that. My former husband is involved, too.”

  “It looks that way, yes.”

  “Marrying him was a mistake. He got more and more angry over the years, involving himself with human wars until he killed indiscriminately just because he could. He felt we should be ruling them all, that they should still be bowing down to us and worshipping at our feet. Others, like myself, felt differently. Our union was dissolved. It was that or they’d find his body nailed to a wall.”

  “You wanted to kill him?”

  “Every. Single. Day.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  Irkalla stopped walking. “Let’s say I kill Nergal. His allies then try to kill me. It leaves Nergal’s allies down one person, but it leaves those of us who want change down one too. So we lived for centuries in this sort of stalemate, no one willing to do anything to move things forward because of the fear of repercussions. That was until Elaine arrived and made us an offer to join Avalon. Then those who reveled in the status quo got upset. I couldn’t kill Nergal then; I couldn’t jeopardize the peace we’d created. Besides, not long after, Nergal went missing and stayed that way for a long time. I’m not surprised he’s involved. I just wish he’d stayed missing.”

  We turned the corner and found ourselves outside of Siris’s house. “This is it?” I asked, confused about the one-story house on top of a slight slope.

  “She asked for this house specifically.”

  “How big is your home?”

  “Taller than this, although hers is a lot wider and goes quite far back.”

  “It’s just somewhat smaller than I was expecting.” I pushed open the wooden door and six Templar knights inside turned to look at me.

  “I know I asked for some knights to be sent here, but you’re the wrong type, and a lot quicker than I was expecting.”

  One of the knights drew a knife.

  “Going to guess they’re not on our side,” Irkalla said.

  “Which one of you is in charge?” I asked. Several of the knights couldn’t help but stare at one large man in the rear of the room. “Keep that one alive.”

  Irkalla stepped back from the dagger strike, then grabbed the man’s arm and broke it. She quickly defeated the knight, attacking a second and third, while the remaining three stared at me.

  “Do any of you plan on doing something, or are you all going to attack her?”

  One of the knights screamed when she hit him in the face so hard she probably broke most of the bones: nose, cheek, and jaw. I saw him stagger off, his face a ruined mess.

  “Let me start,” I said and threw a ball of fire at the nearest knight, who dove aside, giving me a clear run at the next one. A blast of air smashed him into the wall and he dropped to the floor, unmoving.

  The one I wanted alive came at me with a large hammer, swinging it toward my ribs. A shield of air blocked the blow, and I spun toward the knight, driving my foot into his chest and knocking him back. He tried to get up, but a knee to his face sent him back to the floor. He still refused to lay down and accept defeat, so I grabbed the back of his head with one hand and drove my knee into his jaw, knocking him out, but hopefully not breaking bones.

  The first of my opponents was back on his feet and running for the door. I wrapped air around his legs and tripped him, causing him to fall headfirst into the door itself.

  “Are you quite done?” Irkalla asked, her three opponents on the floor. At least two were dead, with the third seriously injured but still breathing. “I’m just wondering if I should go find something to drink while I wait?”

  “These weren’t knights—not of any kind I’ve ever seen. They were sloppy, disorganized, and fought like thugs down at the docks.”

  Irkalla pulled up the sleeve on one of the dead men and showed me his arm, where there was a crude tattoo of a ship. “Sailors, I would guess. Maybe pirates. Either way, they were hired to find something and stop anyone coming. Maybe Siris didn’t do as good a job of cleaning up after herself as she thought.”

  The thug whose jaw I’d introduced to my knee stirred. When he opened his eyes, he saw the tip of the short sword I’d taken from one of his dead friends.

  “We have questions,” I said. “You’re the only one in a position to talk.”

  He spoke in a language I didn’t understand.

  Irkalla came and stood beside me before talking to him for several minutes. “He’s speaking Sumerian,” she told me.

  “That’s still taught?”

  She shook her head. “These men were just thugs, hired to perform menial jobs. This man here, he’s different. He calls himself an etlu—a warrior. He was taught the language as a child. They live in another realm. They are five thousand strong, and they’ve been brought here to wage war on this city.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s what he’s been told to do. He wants to please Siris and his masters, and considering the fanatical stuff spewing out of his mouth, I’m going to guess he’d be okay dying for the cause.”

  “What’s the name of the realm?” I asked.

  Irkalla asked him.

  “Phalanx,” he said.

  “Now that I understood.”

  Irkalla spoke to him again. “He says he’ll answer questions because you can’t stop the flood that is coming. We can’t stop them from razing this city to the ground and killing all who live here. They want to unleash a monster of some sort: a serpent.”

  “A serpent?” I repeated. “Why?”

  “He says it will end us all and allow their masters to remake the world. He’s saying a lot of crazy things.”

  “Where’s the realm gate?”

  Irkalla asked him, and when he’d finished, she turned to me. “All he
knows is that it’s at least a day to the east of here, in an old, abandoned village. He was blindfolded when he left his realm, then taken to a small dock and ordered to sail here. He sailed to the harbor as the attack took place under cover of night. Once here, he met with the men who are now scattered on the floor around us. They were meant to destroy any evidence left here, and then assassinate Nanshe and myself.” Irkalla’s eyes narrowed at the mention of her name.

  “What were you trying to destroy? What did Siris leave behind?”

  Irkalla asked him, and even I could tell that his answer wasn’t any kind of pleasantry. I got the feeling he was done talking.

  “I do not believe he will answer us.”

  “Anything else useful?” I asked.

  “No,” Irkalla told me and then she snapped the man’s neck. She paused and kept her hand on his chest, her eyes closed. “Everything he said is true. He didn’t come alone to infiltrate the city. Three more started with him, but two died in the attack last night, killed by vampires who didn’t know who they were.”

  “And the last?”

  “She was with Siris when Isabel was taken. I think this confirms that Mordred was telling you the truth: apparently Siris was always planning on taking Isabel.”

  “He didn’t happen to say why, did he?”

  “He said that Siris really doesn’t like Mordred. At all. No idea why, though.”

  We gave the place one last search and found several charred pieces of a scroll that had been set alight and then stamped out on the floor. I picked a piece up and turned it over. “This is part of a map.” I passed it to Irkalla. “Recognize it?”

  “I can’t actually tell what this is; it’s too small,” she said, turning it over in her hand. “Looks old, though.”

  “We need to talk to Nanshe and Nabu,” I said as I placed the piece of scroll onto a nearby table. It was too fragile to take with me, and it might be useful. “And Mordred. But let’s do the one that won’t make me feel nauseous afterwards first.”