A Flicker of Steel

by Steve McHugh

  Kristin kept eye contact with Elizabeth. “I tried to murder your daughter several times. She’s a pain in my ass that just won’t go away. Is that a problem?”

  “Layla is tough. Tougher than you give her credit for. I think you’ll find we Cassidys are made of stern stuff.”

  Kristin noticed that Elizabeth hadn’t said anything about being unhappy with her attempts on her daughter’s life and shook her hand. “I guess I’m all yours then,” Kristin told Abaddon.

  Abaddon smiled at Kristin. “You always were, my dear.”

  21

  As they got closer to Red Rock, it became apparent that the offensive by Nergal’s people was happening in earnest. Smoke billowed from the fires that had been set around the outskirts of the town, turning a normally idyllic spot into an inferno.

  Persephone told Chloe to turn off and up a road toward the town of Nipigon. The car stopped, and everyone piled out.

  “What happens now?” Remy asked. “The guardians of the realm gate are essentially immortal when they’re close to it, but how are they going to hold a whole town?”

  “They’re going through the realm gate, too,” Persephone said. “Zamek will be able to keep the gate open and go through by himself. He’s practiced doing it before.”

  “No one will be able to use that gate until they make new guardians,” Irkalla said, still sounding as though she were not in the best of shape. “That could be a long time.”

  “The realm gate is underground, which is why they’re going to blow the building above it,” Persephone said.

  “What about everyone who left Thunder Bay on the first truck?” Layla asked, worried about those who had gone ahead.

  “They went to Pine Portage,” Persephone said, dialing a number on her phone. “I want an update on what happened to the trucks we sent to you.” Her expression darkened as she ended the call. “Harry arrived with the refugees only a few minutes ago. The first truck with Diana, Fenix, and the others arrived earlier. Your father was not among their number. He escaped just outside of Nipigon. Jared and Diana got out at Nipigon to track him down. Zamek has gone south to the tunnels to try to get into Red Rock.”

  “The tunnels?” Layla asked.

  “There’s a stretch of land to the south of here.” Persephone brought up a map on her phone. “A few streets with some apartment buildings that have been evacuated; it’s now controlled by Avalon. There’s a tunnel that runs from the basement of a house there, right up into Red Rock. It’s only on the outskirts of the town, but it’ll get Zamek and anyone who goes with him past the roadblocks. You going?”

  Layla nodded. “My father won’t know that Nergal is dead and will want revenge for what he did to my mom. As far as Dad knows, Nergal is in Red Rock. It’s a few hours’ run through the forest, so he’s probably close to Red Rock by now.”

  “What if he finds out that Nergal is dead?” Kase asked.

  “He’ll become a ghost, and we’ll have to hunt him down. I’d rather not, if it can be avoided.”

  Persephone’s phone rang, and she answered it. “Shit,” she said with a sigh.

  “Diana and Jared tracked your dad to Red Rock—some Avalon forces have grabbed him,” Persephone told Layla. “The pair of them are going to meet you at the tunnel and go with you to Red Rock. Rendezvous with them at this apartment building.” She showed the exact spot on the map on her phone. “Diana should be able to track Caleb down once you’re all in Red Rock, but the objective is still to get the refugees through the realm gate and then destroy it.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Remy said. “You could use my nose. Also my winning personality.”

  Layla nodded. “Thank you. What are the rest of you planning?”

  “We’re going to head to Pine Portage,” Persephone said. “Once Hades, Tommy, Olivia, and the others are through the gate, they’ll get the refugees to New York through a second realm gate in Norumbega. The rest of us are going to use the planes waiting at Pine Portage to fly to New York, where we’ll meet you and the others who are going through Norumbega.

  “When you reach New York, contact Felicia Hales, the woman who gave you the equipment for your trip to the Sawbill prison. She’ll arrange transport back to Greenland. Be aware: time in Norumbega works differently than it does in this realm. A few hours there will be a week here, if not longer.”

  “Okay,” Layla said, looking over to Remy. “You ready?”

  “You get in—do what you need to do—and you get out,” Persephone said. “No screwing around. I don’t know how long it’ll be before Nergal’s people realize that he’s dead but once they do, Abaddon will almost certainly be in charge. If you see her, do not engage. She is more dangerous than you can possibly imagine.”

  Chloe walked over and hugged Layla. “Please be careful,” she said. “I don’t want to have to come find you.” She looked at Remy. “Either of you.”

  “In and out,” Remy said. “No one else is dying today.”

  Remy and Layla left the car and moved into the dense forest as the others sped off. “You got a plan?” Remy asked.

  “It’s a ten-minute run from here to the tunnels, but we’ll have to go through a defended area.” She wondered how Jared and Diana were faring in their trek across the wilderness. Hopefully they’d meet up with them soon enough. “We also need to wait for Diana and Jared before we do anything. There were three apartment buildings in that area. I can’t imagine that any of them will be without soldiers.”

  “So, we need to wait for allies, find the apartment with the tunnel, and clear it of enemy forces?”

  Layla wondered about the clearing part of the idea. She wasn’t against it, but the discovery of the unresponsive soldiers they’d leave behind could be a giveaway to their plan. “I think we might need to clear all of the buildings. We can’t leave any indication that one of them was our target.”

  “Hopefully, there won’t be too many soldiers. At least they’ll be easy to deal with.”

  “Persephone’s map showed a bunch of roadblocks along the street that led past the apartments and the tunnel entrance. I don’t think they’ll post many guards outside these blocks since the apartment buildings aren’t near any strategic entrances to the town. Even so, let’s be careful.”

  The pair moved through the forest, stopping only when they saw four men in combat fatigues standing beside an armored vehicle on the side of the road. Each one held an M4 carbine, and a patch depicting a red dragon was sewn on each of their shoulders. They were Avalon’s forces. The three five-story apartment buildings further along the road were Layla and Remy’s target.

  “You think they’re human?” Remy whispered.

  “I don’t know. Avalon uses a mixture of humans and non-humans. But the humans only seem to be used for the less important parts of their plans. These guards could be a patrol.”

  The pair crept closer to the soldiers until they were just out of sight and stopped behind a huge boulder at the bottom of a slight embankment, twenty feet away from their targets. It was winter, and the lack of foliage meant they would be seen when they got to the top of the bank. Remy and Layla remained where they were and looked around to ensure they weren’t about to be spotted by anyone else.

  “I don’t see any others,” Remy whispered, before raising a finger at Layla to stop her from replying. A few seconds later he continued. “They don’t have great hearing. A were would have been able to hear what I said.” He sniffed. “They smell human.”

  “What do non-humans smell like?” Layla asked before she could stop herself.

  “Depends,” he said. “You smell human most of the time. So maybe they’re umbra.”

  “That would be bad,” Layla said. As every umbra had their own unique power, there was no telling what the four soldiers would be able to do. “We need to separate them.”

  Remy picked up a rock and threw it into the forest behind him. It hit a large tree and spooked something unseen that ran further into the forest.

&nb
sp; “What was that?” one of the soldiers asked, raising his M4 in the direction of the sound.

  “Probably a deer,” a second soldier told him. “There’s nothing here. We were told to hold this road, and that’s what we’re going to do.”

  “What if some of Hades’ forces are going around the city to attack from the north?” The third soldier asked, a tinge of fear in his voice. “I knew we were left behind because we’re human.”

  “We were left behind because, as humans, we can help settle the human population of the town and get them somewhere safe,” the first soldier said. “Hades has brainwashed these people into thinking he’s one of the good guys. Avalon knows better, and now so do we. We stay, we help keep the peace while Nergal and his people deal with the corruption in Red Rock, and then we all go back to Texas for some well-earned R&R before we’re deployed again.”

  “I never realized just how much these bastards had infested our world,” the fourth soldier said. “They’ve been hiding in the shadows, pulling our strings for so long. The fact that Arthur and his people want us to work together makes me feel less concerned about the future.”

  The first soldier fist bumped the fourth. “And I don’t care how scary they are—these silver rounds will take them down good.”

  The four men laughed, and Layla felt a pit of anger open up inside of her.

  Remy picked up a second rock and threw it after the first, where it hit the same tree.

  “There’s something out there,” said the nervous soldier.

  “Go look then,” the second soldier told him.

  He raised his M4 and set off into the forest.

  “If you piss yourself because you find a squirrel, you’re never going to live it down,” a soldier shouted after him, causing the others to laugh.

  “I got this,” Remy said, darting off into the forest.

  There were no noises to signal what Remy had done, but when he returned he passed Layla the M4 and drew the two daggers he’d taken earlier.

  She switched the firing mode onto single shot and raised the rifle at the soldiers. Layla could take all three out before they had a chance to respond, but that would alert everyone who heard the gunshots, turning their stealthy approach into something a lot less pleasant.

  She placed the M4 up against the tree and reached out with her power, wrapping it around the weapons carried by the soldiers. Their M4’s fell apart as she turned her hands. The soldiers were baffled for an instant, which was all the time Remy needed to dart among them, killing all three with the twin daggers before any of them could call for help. When it was over, Remy and Layla dragged the bodies into the forest, where Layla took a dagger from one of the soldiers and slid it into a sheath next to the one she already had.

  Layla ignored the M4’s, which she wasn’t going to need, but retrieved a Glock .22 that was loaded with silver-tipped bullets. She removed the hip holster the soldier wore and put it on. “That’s much better,” she told Remy, and grabbed two magazines of bullets from one of the soldier’s pockets.

  “It’s about two hundred feet from here to the first building. Best course is to go through the trees until we get there. It won’t take long before someone comes looking for these assholes, so I’d rather not be here when that happens.”

  “Can you smell Jared or Diana?”

  Remy sniffed the air. “Nothing, sorry. Hopefully I’ll pick something up when we get closer to the town.” Remy had scooped up his own holster and Glock, and a belt for the two daggers. “This is going to get messy.”

  Layla nodded that she knew. “My father can’t be allowed to stay in Avalon’s hands, and we need to destroy that realm gate.”

  “And if that means . . .” Remy trailed off.

  “Whatever it takes. My father escaped our custody. If he can’t be removed from Avalon’s hands, or he refuses to come with us . . . I’ll do what I need to do.”

  Remy rested a hand on Layla’s. “You sure you can do that? I don’t know many who could.”

  “My father, or the thousands of innocent people he’ll help Arthur kill. It’s . . . I don’t exactly have a choice.” Inside, Layla wasn’t at all sure she could do it. How could she kill her own father? Even a father as evil as hers? She wasn’t sure that she could go through with it. And even if she put their relationship aside, she would only be killing him so that he didn’t fall into enemy hands. There was a big different between killing in self-defense, killing on a battlefield, and straight-up execution.

  “Layla, I hated my father,” Remy told her. “He was an awful, awful man. But I’m not sure I could have killed him. My brother had to do that for me. You can’t help who your parents are, and although some people have parents who should have been placed in a deep, dark hole a long time ago that doesn’t make it any easier to remove them from this world.”

  The pair moved through the forest in silence until they reached a burger restaurant that appeared to be closed.

  “There are no lights on in there,” Layla said, looking through the windows facing her. “No cars in the lot. No semblance of life.”

  Remy sniffed the air. “We’ve got friends coming.”

  Diana and Jared crept through the forest toward them. Layla’s elation at seeing them both was short lived.

  “Two dozen soldiers at least,” Diana said, nodding toward the apartment buildings. “There are prisoners in there. No sure how many, but I saw some people handcuffed and left on the floor of their apartment. I climbed one of the trees and took a look. I think some of them put up a fight.”

  “You got a plan?” Jared asked Layla.

  “There’s a building to the east of here,” Diana said. “Seems like some kind of storehouse. There are a few soldiers there—I think that’s where they took most of the prisoners.”

  Layla thought for a second. “Jared and Diana, go to the storehouse. See if you can free the people there. If any of these assholes get a shot off at me or Remy, I don’t want them to be able to use the prisoners as target practice.”

  “On it,” Jared and Diana said, running off into the woods.

  Remy and Layla moved slowly through the forest, keeping along the treeline until they came to an alleyway between two of the five-story buildings. A fire escape sat on the side of one of them, the ladder hanging down as if recently used.

  “How many soldiers do you think there are at the front of these apartments?”

  Remy ran to the end of the alley and peered around the corner before running back. “Half a dozen,” he said. “It sounds like the third apartment building is their main base of operations. There’s an APC outside of it. My guess is more human soldiers. They smell human, anyway.”

  “We need a prisoner,” Layla said. “Hopefully we can find out anything we need to know about their attack on Red Rock.”

  “Like where they would have taken your father?”

  “That would be helpful, yes.”

  Remy and Layla found the building in question without any trouble. There was a ten-foot-tall fence and fifty feet of open space between the building and the forest. They stopped behind a large tree and watched. A small balcony led to an open set of French windows on the fifth floor. A soldier stood there smoking a cigarette while he looked out at the mass of greenery in front of him.

  “My guess is the soldiers here don’t expect trouble. They seem quite relaxed.”

  Layla had to agree, considering the amount of raucous laughter coming from the back of the building. “Any way we can get in there without them noticing?”

  “I doubt it. And I don’t think we’re equipped to deal with what could be dozens of soldiers until we’re sure the prisoners are safe.” Remy took a long sniff. “At least a dozen in there. It smells like a gym locker room.”

  “We only need one,” Layla said.

  “My vote is for the smoker on the balcony.”

  “He’s forty feet above the ground. I’ll have to get him from the roof.”

  “You could always get captured an
d have them take you to wherever the others are.”

  “Not more than once per war.”

  “Fair point.”

  Layla looked back over to the first building they’d passed. “I have a plan.”

  “Is it a stupid one?”

  “Probably, yes.”

  “My kind of plan. What do you need?”

  “On my signal, give me a distraction.”

  “What kind of distraction?”

  “One that involves a lot of noise.”

  “Should I go back and get the M4 that still works?”

  Layla thought about it. “Actually, that’s not a bad idea. The rest, I’ll leave to your devious little mind.”

  Layla ran toward the apartment building with the fire escape and quickly scaled the wooden fence, climbing the fire escape to the roof as quickly as possible. She stopped just before she reached the final flight of metal stairs and peeked over the top of the roof.

  Finding no snipers keeping an eye on things, Layla climbed onto the roof and ran over to the side. It wasn’t too far to jump, but the other buildings all had slanted roofs, so getting it wrong would cause her to slide off the side of the building.

  It didn’t take her long to bend the metal railings circling the roof into a walkway to the next building. She made an ever-changing path until she was directly above the smoking soldier and anchored part of the railings to the roof. Then she made a harness that wrapped around her torso and waist and slowly lowered herself headfirst down the slope of the roof. Layla stopped when she reached the gutter and looked down at the soldier. He was still leaning over the railings of the balcony, and for a moment she considered just making the railing grab and drag him to the roof. But that might cause noise and alert the soldiers inside the building. She didn’t want to give any of them a reason to come searching.

  She waited, hoping the smoker wouldn’t look up, as the sound of an M4 burst through the chatter of the soldiers below. It sounded like Remy had emptied the entire thing, and the noise was quickly followed by two loud explosions. Remy had found grenades, a fact that the rising smoke gave testament to.