Scorched Shadows (The Hellequin Chronicles Book 7)

  I opened my mouth to argue but immediately closed it. Despite my need to know what was happening right goddamned now, I had to swallow my outburst and wait for the information I knew was coming. I motioned for Fiona to continue.

  “A week ago we sent a small group to try and find her. This group was made up of six people who were not officially tied to Avalon. None of them worked for Avalon or lived in Camelot. None of them were on any official list of employees. They went missing three days after looking into Elaine’s disappearance. We don’t know where they are, or what’s happened to them. Manannán mac Lir was a part of the team.”

  “Mac,” I whispered. “Does Mordred know?” Mordred and Mac had been close before Mordred’s brain had been destroyed by a century of torture by Baldr and his allies. Since Mordred had become one of the good guys again, he’d reached out to find Mac, but I wasn’t sure how that meeting had gone.

  “He’s aware of them both, yes,” Olivia said. “He’s gone straight to Scotland. She has a home there. Hopefully we can find some information about where she might have been taken from.”

  “Why were Mordred and Elaine meeting in New York?” I asked.

  “It’s something to do with the prophecy that Mordred will kill you,” Nabu said.

  “Damn it,” I snapped. “I told him not to keep worrying about that.”

  “Which makes him worry more,” Irkalla said. “You know he can’t abide the idea that he has to kill you.”

  “I know, I just don’t want him living his life constantly trying to avoid me.” I turned to Olivia. “Why did you keep this from me? Elaine’s disappearance, I mean, not the Mordred thing.”

  “Because of your reaction,” Olivia said. “Tommy had no choice but to follow me on this.”

  “I’m not mad at you,” I told her.

  “Good, because we made the right call,” Tommy said. “How much do you want to run off right now and find Elaine?”

  “A lot.”

  “And that’s why we didn’t tell you. I’m sorry, Nate, but you would have cut your way through everyone in your path to find Elaine. If she’s in danger, your brand of punch and destroy might get her hurt.”

  I nodded. It was one of the harder things I’d had to agree with in recent years. Irkalla, who sat beside me, placed her hand on mine, squeezing slightly.

  “You are not always one to think with cold logic,” she said. “It is both a great asset and terrible curse.”

  I nodded again. “Okay, so why tell me now?”

  Fiona took a drink of water from the bottle in front of her before answering. “Because someone tried to kill Mordred in New York this morning, and it’s no coincidence that Elaine vanished not long before she was meant to meet him. If she’s been taken, and they found out about the meeting, they must really want Mordred dead. We think whoever this My Liege is, that they’re just about to start their endgame. Removing Elaine and Mordred must have been a part of it.”

  “We know this My Liege character is in fact several people,” Nabu said. “Baldr, Kay, Siris, and Hera; all of these were called ‘My Liege’ at some point. We know that all of these people are working together, presumably with Merlin’s backing considering he allowed Hera to kill Brutus and take London. What we don’t know is who the head of this . . . cabal is.”

  “And you think that this cabal—which is a good a name for them as any other—has taken Elaine and planned these acts of terrorism all across the world to destabilize Avalon even further than it already is?” I had to admit it sounded like a good plan—causing enough mayhem and murder across the globe, and removing those people who would be able to bring stability to an organization that is disorganized and under threat. Arthur could only do so much having been in charge for a few years. “Divide and conquer.”

  “That’s our best guess, yes,” Olivia said.

  “Did you know about Merlin?” I asked. “That he’s hidden himself away in his tower? That he tried to kill people at a council meeting?”

  Olivia nodded. “It came up, yes. About three days before Elaine vanished.”

  “Arthur didn’t mention Elaine going missing?” Irkalla asked.

  I shook my head. “No. Maybe he thought the same as you, that I’d rush off to find her.”

  “We want you to find Elaine, though,” Olivia said. “We’ll deal with everything else regarding these attacks, and Merlin if need be. If he’s helping, or orchestrating everything, we need to stop him. But in the meantime we want you and Mordred to search for Elaine and those we sent to find her. And we want you to do it covertly.”

  “Yeah, I get it. Who’s coming with me?”

  “Diana, Zamek, and I assume Selene and Remy,” Fiona said. “And me, obviously. My husband is out there, and I intend to find him.”

  I was about to reply when the phone on Tommy’s desk went off. Tommy got up and walked over to answer it.

  “I’m in an important meeting,” he said.

  There was a pause while someone said something on the other end, but I didn’t want to use my air magic to have the words carried over to me.

  “No,” Tommy said.

  Another pause.

  “Yes, okay, I’ll be right down.” He hung up the phone and turned back to us. “I need to see someone in reception apparently. There’s someone there who is upset and will only speak to me. I’ll be back momentarily.”

  “I’m coming with you,” I told him, getting to my feet.

  “Nate, you don’t need to,” Tommy said. “It’s probably just a client who doesn’t know anyone else here. It’s fine.”

  “Someone tried to kill Mordred,” I persevered. “I’m coming.”

  Tommy nodded, and as I turned around, I found Zamek behind me. “I’m coming, too. Don’t fucking argue.”

  Diana got to her feet. “I’ll keep you all safe.”

  “It’s not a bloody outing,” Tommy said. He sighed. “Fine, we’ll be back in a moment.”

  The four of us left his office and made our way over the walkway to the first tower. We were about halfway across when I saw a huge articulated lorry barrel through the security post and crash into several parked cars. The occupants, all wearing body armor and carrying guns, spilled out of the back of the truck, shooting at anyone close by.

  I was already sprinting before my brain caught up with my body, and reached the lift the same time as Tommy, Zamek, and Diana. I considered using my magic to blast the glass apart and jump out, but I wasn’t certain my magic would be strong enough inside the building to do anything close to that, and before I thought to ask, I was already in one of the lifts going down toward the reception below.

  Security inside the reception was already in response to the threat outside, and a low growl from beside me indicated that Tommy had turned into his werewolf beast form, before the lift stopped and the doors parted. Tommy and Diana were first out of the lift, with Diana turning into her werebear beast form within seconds and bounding out toward the exit.

  Gunfire could be heard outside of the building, and several people were lying on the pavement. It was impossible to tell how many were injured and how many were dying or dead.

  Tommy and Diana ran through the doors to the outside, engaging with the enemy while Zamek and I went over to Matias, who was talking to two guards flanking a large man with a black hoodie and shaved head.

  “Matias, all okay?” I asked, eyeing the stranger.

  Matias nodded.

  “We’re going to need weapons,” I said, leaving no room for conversation on the subject. “We don’t know who is what out there.”

  “I’ll get them,” he said, and turned away.

  The tall man spun away from the reception and two guards beside him, sprinting toward the exit. I moved to intercept, but he quickly shrugged off his hoodie, dropping it to the floor, revealing glyphs tattooed all over his body. I was already creating a shield of air large and dense enough to try and wrap around the coming explosion when the man detonated. The shield kept the force c
ontained, but it also managed to find a weakness, the point of origin—me. The shockwave tore through my shield of air hard enough to throw me back over the reception desk and into the wall behind me. I crashed to the ground, my vision darkening, and my head swimming while my magic quickly repaired my destroyed eardrums. When I could hear again, all that came to me were the sounds of fighting all around me.

  CHAPTER 4

  Nate Garrett

  Nate, Nate, are you okay?”

  I looked up at the face of Grayson, who was kneeling over me, an expression of concern on his face. Speckles of blood sat in his trimmed white beard, and judging from the lack of bleeding anywhere I could see on his face or bald head, I was sure the blood didn’t belong to him.

  “What happened?” I asked. The last I remembered was hearing gunshots and explosions before I was smashed into a brick wall.

  “You tried to get up, fell back down again, and blacked out for a few seconds. You suffered a fairly serious wallop to the back of your skull, and you’re lucky it wasn’t worse.”

  “It was like every piece of magical power was leaving his body at the same time.” I rolled onto my front and got back to a kneeling position. “Never seen anything like it.”

  I looked over at the fighting, which continued outside.

  “This is bad,” I said, grabbing hold of the remains of the reception desk and hoisting myself up.

  “You should not be walking,” Grayson said. “Or moving in any way. You’re lucky you don’t have a fractured skull.”

  “It’s too dense to fracture,” I said with a smile.

  “You should know there’s blood over your face, so you smiling is pretty damn awful.”

  I stopped smiling. “Sorry.” My head continued to swim for a few seconds, and I wondered why my magic wasn’t doing more to heal me. I looked down at my wrist and found that the bracelet was partially broken.

  “Help me outside,” I told Grayson.

  “Have you lost your mind?”

  “Not enough magic in here to heal me. I need to get outside to do it.”

  “People are trying to kill you out there.”

  “Me and everyone else. Beggars can’t be choosers, and probably other useful sayings.”

  Grayson put my arm around his neck. “You hit your head again and you’re going to sound like Mordred.”

  “Nah, I’ll need someone to shoot me in the head first.”

  “There are people with guns outside. I’m sure they’ll help you.”

  “How many are hurt?”

  “We don’t know.” The pain in Grayson’s voice was easy to hear even in my less-than-ideal state. “The fighting is still happening.”

  As we made our way through the room toward the exterior doors, several people who worked alongside Grayson as doctors and nurses helped the dozens of wounded.

  “You need to get the security shut off,” I told Grayson. “Too many people in here don’t have the power to heal properly. The bracelets don’t let enough power through.”

  Grayson barked an order to a nearby nurse, who ran off to do as he was told.

  “You must be a fun boss to work for,” I said, and swayed slightly as we reached the exit.

  “There’s a time for shouting, Nate.”

  I took two steps outside of the building and felt my magic wash over me, filling me, healing me. Grayson let go of me, and I dropped to my knees.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  I nodded. “Body is healing. It uses a lot of power, but I had some souls stored up.”

  “Won’t that leave you vulnerable?”

  I noticed he didn’t ask who the souls had belonged to, nor how I’d come across them. At one point the idea of using my necromancy to take someone’s soul to use as a makeshift battery for my magic would have been difficult to imagine, but now . . . well, now times were different. I didn’t take souls lightly—it came with the unwanted gifts of living that person’s life, of seeing every awful thing they’d ever taken part in. But sometimes that was necessary, and using my necromancy to power my magic was considerably more powerful than using my magic alone.

  I looked around the chaos-strewn parking area where Tommy and his people were fighting for their lives. Several dead enemies lay on the ground, most missing parts of their bodies . . . fighting against a werewolf of Tommy’s caliber often left his opponent with fewer limbs than when they’d started.

  “Nate,” Grayson said as I got back to my feet, feeling a lot more like my old self. “You’re going to be vulnerable without a soul to boost your power.”

  Gray glyphs ignited over the backs of my hands and arms. “I won’t be for long.”

  Grayson looked back into the reception area. “I need to go.”

  “Help people. I’ll be fine.” I turned to face the battle and heard the war cry of one of the assailants as he ran toward me, a machete raised high above his head.

  I flicked my hands toward him, and the shadows closest to him tore out of the ground, enveloping him as he screamed in fear. Several of the attackers closest to me stopped for a moment, and I noticed the fear on their faces. “I’ll be right back for the rest of you,” I told them, and sank into the shadows beneath my feet.

  I ended up in my shadow realm. Every sorcerer who could use shadow magic had their own personal realm which they were able to move into and out of with ease. Once in the realm, I knew where nearby shadows back on the Earth realm were, and could move between them easily—essentially allowing me to teleport between shadows. Unfortunately it wore me out quickly, so I wasn’t able to do it for long distances, but it was useful in a pinch.

  Also, as my would-be attacker discovered, I was able to drag people who couldn’t use magic into the shadow realm. He threw the machete at me, but the shadows around me leapt up, picking it out of the air where it vanished into the darkness around us.

  “You can’t hurt me here,” I told him. I motioned to the tiny pockets of light, the locations of the Earth-realm shadows. The closest ray of light moved toward us in an instant. “That’s your way out.”

  The man was terrified and clearly wanted out of the predicament I’d placed him in.

  “Who sent you?” I asked.

  “My Liege,” he said.

  “Why are you here?”

  “My Liege,” he snapped, seemingly angry.

  “Is that all you can say?”

  “My Liege, My Liege, My Liege!” He screamed the last word and sank to his knees. “My Liege, My Liege, My Liege.”

  I sighed. “Someone broke your mind.”

  He looked up at me.

  “You were sent here to die. If you were ever captured, your mind would snap like a twig; you’d be able to say nothing but whatever they needed you to say. Blood magic did this. Very powerful blood magic.” I walked over to him and crouched. “I’m going to undo your shirt. I need to see if you have any marks.”

  He tore his shirt open, the buttons making no sound as they hit the floor. A large blood-magic curse mark sat on his chest. It was different than the marks I’d seen on the man who had exploded in the reception area. The attacker kneeling beside me was never meant to take his own life. He hadn’t been a sorcerer, so had been given a different, but no less fatal, job.

  I stood and pulled up my T-shirt. “Do you see the mark on my stomach?”

  The man looked up and nodded as he saw the dark mark. I’d lost one a year ago, which had given me a further boost in magical power. Five down, two to go. The last mark was invisible and had been placed on my mind to ensure I remembered nothing of the first eight years of my life. I hadn’t even known of the final mark’s existence until a few years ago, and its discovery was still somewhat of a sore point.

  “Someone put that mark there, and more like them. Someone cast a blood-magic curse on me so powerful hundreds had to die to fuel it. Do you remember anything about the person who did this to you?”

  He shook his head. “My Liege, My Liege.” He tried to stop himself from saying
it a third time. “My Liege.” He struck the floor beside him.

  “You were told to come here, to kill and hurt, and in return you’d be given something. Power, money?”

  He shook his head.

  “Freedom?”

  He looked up at me and nodded slightly.

  “Freedom from what, though? You were in someone’s servitude?”

  He shook his head.

  “A prisoner?”

  A nod.

  I walked away as sounds began to gather in the darkness around us.

  “It’s nothing to fear,” I told the man.

  That was a lie, and it was an exceptionally big one. Somewhere out in the darkness was a wraith. All sorcerers who used shadow magic had one. They fed on anyone sent to the shadow realm. While I was here, the man was safe, but the second I left, the wraith would pounce, devouring the man to make me stronger.

  “Ordinarily I might take your soul and see the information I need, but with your mind broken, I’m unlikely to see anything useful.”

  The man stared at me.

  “You shouldn’t have come here. You shouldn’t have tried to kill my friends. Did you see this My Liege person?”

  He nodded.

  “Just one person?”

  He nodded again.

  “A man?”

  Another nod.

  “Did you see his face?”

  He shook his head.

  Ordinarily I wouldn’t have believed someone in his position, but he appeared to be so angry about his brain being fractured by the blood-magic curse that I was certain he was being honest. The expression on his face told me that he knew he’d been betrayed. Yet I felt little sympathy for him. He’d come here to kill and maim innocent people.

  I took a step toward the light. “Thank you for the information. I’m going to find this My Liege character, and I’m going to kill him.”

  The man laughed and started shaking his head.

  “Enjoy the last seconds of your life,” I told him, and stepped into the light, vanishing from the shadow realm and reappearing in the shadows of an overturned car.

  The fighting had continued to rage while I was in the shadow realm, with many of the attackers lying dead on the floor. The group I’d been with in Tommy’s office were fighting their own battles all around me. A second truck had arrived, increasing the number of attackers. But Tommy’s people outnumbered those who would hurt them by a considerable margin. The fight wouldn’t take long. I got the impression that wasn’t the point.