A Flicker of Steel

by Steve McHugh

  Irkalla raised an eyebrow in question.

  “A very British way of calling someone a dick,” Chloe clarified.

  “Yes, yes he was,” Irkalla said.

  The soldiers opened the two doors at the end of the chamber and stormed into the rooms beyond, preceded by more gunfire. They moved from room to room until they came to a large courtyard with half a dozen identical doors on either side of it, and another three opposite where Layla stood. The doors were Gothic in design, and the courtyard was paved with white brick. The lack of roof meant that the sounds of battle were easy to hear.

  “It’s like Nergal recreated the Coliseum, but made it really Gothic,” Chloe said. “It’s a bit weird.”

  “We’ll take the left, you the right,” Diana said, pointing to the soldiers and Sky. “We’re all wearing mics, so stay in contact.”

  The groups split, with Chloe, Diana, Remy, Tommy, Zamek, and Layla taking the first door that led to a long empty corridor with another door at the end of it.

  “This is becoming more and more maze-like,” Tommy said. “I’m beginning to wish we’d brought a ball of wool or something in case we get lost.”

  Tommy’s joke made Layla smile and eased some of the tension. She looked back as the rest of the group split into their various teams. They hoped that a small force could get in and out with what they needed, while Abaddon’s and Nergal’s forces kept one another busy. Layla just hoped they stayed that way until they had the chance to get out again in one piece.

  The door at the end of the corridor opened into a large room with yet more doors.

  “This is getting silly,” Diana said. She took another step, pulled the tactical vest she was wearing over her head, and turned into her werebear form, her other clothes shredding as she did. She sniffed the air. “Those two are empty,” she said, her voice a low rumble. She kicked open the closest door, causing it to disintegrate from the impact, to show them the empty room behind it.

  The next door was the same, but the last two doors both opened into stairwells, one going up, and the other down.

  “I’ll go up,” Layla said.

  “I’ll join you,” Tommy told her. “Zamek, you care to help out?”

  Zamek cracked his knuckles and drew his battle-ax. “I’ve been waiting all day for this.”

  The other three went downstairs, and Layla, Tommy, and Zamek took their time ascending, pausing outside the door at the top of the staircase. Tommy counted down on his fingers from three to one, before opening the door and revealing a huge hallway.

  “This man liked his pomp,” Zamek said, pointing toward the dozen suits of armor that stood at attention along the hallway. A red-and-white rug on top of a black-and-white carpet ran the length of the hall, and the windows along one side looked down over the rear of the compound and across dozens of smaller buildings. The compound looked big enough that some might have called it a town.

  “This was built with alchemy,” Zamek said, sounding angry. “I can sense it. It’s everywhere. Dwarves built this place.”

  Tommy stood beside Layla. “There’s a runway over there,” he said, pointing. “The Hercules and Black Hawks will meet us there, but we’ll need to clear it for them once we’re done here.” He looked back at Zamek. “You think the dwarves are prisoners?”

  “I don’t know of any dwarves who would have willingly helped Nergal and his people, but then I can’t speak for all dwarves. It’s perfectly reasonable to assume that some will see his way as the right way. That some will ally themselves with the bastards who caused us to lose our own realm. It’s unforgivable, but reasonable to assume.”

  “How are we going to get the umbra out?” Layla asked.

  “That depends on their number,” Tommy said. “Hopefully, we can commandeer transport for them. That hangar at the side of the runway looks big enough to house some impressively-sized planes.”

  “One thing at a time,” Layla said. “I know.”

  “There are three doors up here,” Zamek said. “I say we each try a door and see where they go. Then we’re not far away from one another if it turns out we’ve opened a door into hell or something.”

  “A door into hell would be a step up right now,” Tommy said, placing his finger to his ear. He said little, but the expression on his face told the story.

  “How many dead?” Layla said when Tommy lowered his arm.

  “Hades found a building not far from this one, and in the rear of it, a prison. There are hundreds of bodies. Diana said maybe five hundred people are buried in the pit at the back. She thinks they were all umbra who didn’t accept their powers or refused to deal with what they’d become.”

  “Damn him,” Layla said softly. “Let’s just get what we need and leave. This place makes my skin crawl.”

  Tommy and Zamek walked over to their doors, which were close to one another on one side of the hallway, while Layla’s was on the other side. She opened her door without pausing and found a room full of old weaponry and armor. Most of it hung on the walls, but there were pieces on mannequins that made Layla double-check to make sure they weren’t real.

  She turned back to Tommy and Zamek as several orange marble-sized balls landed on the rug between them. She didn’t even have time to shout a warning before they exploded. Layla was flung back into the doorway as the ceiling between her and her friends collapsed, making it impossible to get to them.

  Layla’s ears rang and her head felt dizzy as dust clouded her vision. She blinked and looked around as a golf ball-sized red marble stopped at her feet. She had the wherewithal to use her power to drag the metal armor in front of her. It shielded her from most of the blast, but it was still powerful enough to throw her through the window behind her.

  She fell twenty feet onto the roof of a much smaller building below. She landed on her back, feeling several ribs pop, and slid down the roof tiles, unable to stop until she managed to turn a suit of armor that had fallen with her into an anchor. She wrapped a part of it around herself and stuck the rest firmly into the roof.

  For the first time, she realized that she couldn’t hear anything, but unfortunately Layla had bigger issues to deal with. Her legs dangled off the side of the building, and she looked down to see that it was a good forty feet to the ground below. The towering building that she’d been blown out of stretched another hundred feet above her, and she could smell the stench of burning wood and plastic.

  She grabbed hold of the hastily made chain and pulled herself up onto the roof, stopping only when she reached its peak and could finally lie down to rest. She removed the earpiece and tossed it aside after discovering a crack in its casing. It was pretty much useless to her now. And it wasn’t like she would hear anything even if it did work. Her body was already healing any internal damage, but it would take time before she was back to full health; time she probably didn’t have.

  She didn’t see Jared jump from the shattered window above, but she felt the impact on the roof as he landed a dozen feet from her. She looked up at him and saw his lips move, and a hot rage filled her. What had once been the face of someone she cared about, someone she thought cared about her, was now the face of her enemy, a face of lies and betrayal. Layla had wondered how she’d feel seeing Jared again. As it turned out, all she really wanted to do was break his jaw.

  The ringing in her ears hadn’t quite stopped. She tapped her ears to indicate that she couldn’t understand a word he was saying and wondered whether or not she was meant to care anyway.

  “I said,” he shouted, the words getting through to Layla as her ears repaired themselves, “that I’m glad to have found you.”

  “You lied to me about everything.”

  “That is true. I did.”

  “You made me think you had feelings for me.” In that moment, she wasn’t sure she’d ever been so angry with someone she’d cared about. She sucked down the hurt and pain, the feeling of shame that she hadn’t seen through his lies. She took it all and turned it to rage. She wasn’
t going to let him manipulate her emotions ever again.

  Jared smiled. “That was my job. I wasn’t meant to get into a relationship with you; it just seemed like the easiest thing to do when it became apparent that you liked me. If it’s any consolation, I quite enjoyed playing the part of your boyfriend.”

  Layla looked beyond Jared and tried to figure out if, in her injured state, she could get to him and throw him off the roof before he overpowered her. “So, what’s your play? You going to take me to Abaddon?”

  “That’s up to you. If you don’t think you can behave, I’m happy to drag your corpse over to her, too. Your father will help us either way. He’s here, by the way. Hopefully where I left him, but who knows with your dad, am I right? I’ll give you one chance to behave your blasted self, or I’ll kill you and be done with it. Doesn’t bother me one way or the other.”

  “If you can’t kill him, I’ll be happy to,” Terhal said from beside Layla. “I can peel the skin from his body.”

  Layla shook her head. She didn’t trust herself to speak; she didn’t want words to just tumble out of her mouth, to scream at Jared about how she felt. She wanted to show him.

  A huge explosion tore through one of the buildings close by, and the power of it threw debris high into the sky, scattering it all over the massive courtyard below them. It took Jared’s attention away for just a second and gave Layla the chance to turn the metal anchor into a pad around her shoulder and arm and then launch herself into Jared’s stomach.

  The pair fell from the roof. Layla headbutted him, changing the metal into a chain that hooked into the brick wall. The momentum carried Layla toward the building, and before she could do anything to stop it, she crashed through a window. She landed on a table and rolled over it onto several chairs before hitting the hardwood floor.

  She exhaled and wished she hadn’t. Pain wracked her body, and it took a count of thirty to realize that she was in a classroom. There was a whiteboard on the far wall next to the window she’d destroyed. The desk she’d slammed into looked like one she’d had back in her childhood school. And there were a dozen small tables and chairs facing the whiteboard. There were no drawings or pictures on the walls, only a map of the world with various parts of it circled in red pen.

  Layla got to her feet and, after managing to stay upright, got closer to the map. The red circles didn’t seem to have any real pattern to them, but she saw one in Red Rock and wondered if they were realm gate locations. If so, there were hundreds of them all over the globe.

  “You sow,” Jared said from the open doorway. Blood covered half of his face, and he limped as he stepped into the room.

  “Feeling pained?” Layla asked.

  Jared’s face changed; his eyes turned deep red, and the skin around them went orange and started cracking, as if the power inside was forcing itself out. His hands became claw-like, with talons replacing fingernails, and two huge horns grew out of his head. He charged Layla, picked her up and ran with her into and through the exterior wall behind them. They fell ten feet to the ground with Jared on top, who then threw a punch at Layla’s head, which she caught in her own taloned hand.

  Layla kicked drenik-Jared in the stomach, sending him sprawling, and got to her feet. She’d allowed Terhal to take control of her body the second Jared had grabbed hold of her. Now, like him, her eyes were red and the cracked skin on her body glowed orange. She reached up and tapped the ridge of hardened bone that ran the circumference of her head. That was new.

  “So, the bond between us is strengthening,” Terhal said. “That’s nice to know.”

  Layla activated the ring on her finger and she felt her power vanish, but drenik-Jared continued unaffected. Layla immediately switched the ring off.

  Drenik-Jared was already back on his feet, throwing ball after ball of orange explosives at Terhal, who gathered metal from the legs of the tables and chairs around the room for a shield. She was considerably more powerful in their merged form, but that power wouldn’t last long. She had to make it count.

  Drenik-Jared threw a dozen small explosive balls at her, and Terhal flung herself aside. She wrapped her power around the door of a nearby car and threw it at her opponent as he dove through the window after her. Jared managed to avoid it at the last second before it smashed into the wall with enough force that it disintegrated in a cloud of red brick dust.

  Terhal used the distraction to get in close, smashing her fist into drenik-Jared’s stomach and following up with a knee to his face. He grabbed hold of Terhal’s foot and dragged her off balance, punching her in the stomach as she fell toward him. Drenik-Jared stood and grabbed Terhal’s hair, intending to pull her up to face him, but he didn’t get a good enough hold, and Terhal twisted aside, pushing his hand away and whipping her head up as quickly as possible, cracking Jared on the nose with the back of her skull.

  In response, Jared smashed Terhal face first into the wall before darting away to put distance between them.

  Terhal dropped to the ground, feeling the blood stream from her busted nose, but had no time to think as several marbles dropped beside her and exploded before she could use any metal to shield herself. Drenik-Jared stood above her, a triumphant look on his face. “I beat you,” he said, spitting blood onto the ground. “I assume you’re not going to give in?”

  Terhal was about to reply when there was another huge explosion from behind her. She turned and watched in horror as a third explosion blew out the side of a nearby building. Black smoke billowed from the gaping hole. A helicopter that had been too close was caught up in the blast and began to fall toward Terhal, flame trailing from the tail rotor.

  “I’ll leave you to this,” Jared said, having shed his drenik form. He kicked Terhal once in the face and ran away.

  Rage tore through Terhal’s mind and she reached out with all of the power at her disposal. She couldn’t stop the helicopter from falling; she didn’t have enough power for such a large machine moving so fast. Instead, she adjusted its position, moving just the nose of the helicopter so that it fell straight down, slamming into the ground. The metal frame of the craft bent and broke with an ear-splitting noise. It exploded a second later, raining pieces of metal all around. Terhal managed to deflect anything coming her way, and then looked over at Jared, who just stood there, smiling.

  Part of the main rotor tore free and Terhal moved it, mid-flight, toward Jared with enough speed and power that he had no hope of avoiding it. The rotor hit him in the chest like a spear, throwing him back and pinning him to the wall.

  Terhal got to her feet and walked toward him. When she was close enough, she allowed Layla to take back control. “You won’t die,” she told him.

  Jared looked up and opened his mouth to speak, but only blood came out.

  Layla nodded. “Not silver, so you won’t die, but I bet it hurts like hell.”

  Dozens of marbles dropped from Jared’s open hands onto the floor beside Layla, who sprinted away before they exploded. Jared vanished as part of the building collapsed on him.

  “You think he’s dead?” Rosa asked.

  Layla wasn’t sure. She took a step toward the rubble and heard the shouts of combat further inside the compound. She couldn’t search the rubble for Jared and go help her friends. She sprinted off toward the sounds of fighting. If Jared wasn’t dead, she was certain she’d get a second try later.

  27

  Layla discovered that the sounds of fighting belonged to Abaddon’s and Nergal’s people trying to kill one another. Layla ignored them and continued on, avoiding large groups of soldiers from both sides, who were mostly too interested in killing each other to bother with her. She only had to dispatch one blood elf who decided to come at her with a sword. She took it from him mid-swing and threw it back into his skull as he turned to run. She was in no mood to play nice.

  She didn’t know where any of her allies were, and she was in enemy territory. Her options weren’t exactly brilliant, and she half expected to run into Abaddon at
any moment. Layla’s only thought was to find her friends and make sure they were okay. She opened a set of doors and discovered only dead blood elves and soldiers. Scorch marks littered the walls and ceiling of the room, and more than one blood elf had been burned so badly it looked like it had been in a furnace.

  She opened the only door leading from the room and stepped into a huge hall, which had a table that ran its length. Dozens of chairs had been destroyed in the fighting. Bodies littered the floor and the stench of blood and death was so thick Layla had to take a moment and center herself so she wouldn’t vomit.

  Tommy and Zamek burst through the doors, both covered in blood and sporting a few injuries. Tommy had removed his armor and was bare-chested, his trousers ripped. He’d turned into his werebeast form at some point.

  “Did you do this?” Tommy asked, pointing to the bodies.

  “They were like that when I got here,” Layla told him. “Jared is out of the picture.”

  “He’s dead?”

  “I’m not sure. He got impaled by a helicopter rotor, and then a building fell on him. You look like you had fun.” She expected to feel sorrow for what had happened to Jared, but she just hoped that his physical pain matched how he’d made her feel with his betrayal.

  “Nergal’s people still don’t like us, despite him being dead,” Zamek said.

  “You heard from the others?” Layla asked.

  “They’re meeting over by the domed building close to the runway. I’ve heard they found a lot of blank scrolls there,” Tommy said. “We were trying to get you on your comm earpiece.”

  “It broke, so I threw it away,” she said. “You see the explosions earlier?”

  Tommy nodded. “No idea what happened there, but hopefully it did something awful to our enemies.”

  The three of them left the building only to run into a large number of blood elves, who were searching for survivors.

  “Well, shit,” Tommy said, transforming into his werewolf beast form and charging into the pack of blood elves. Zamek waded through what remained, killing several before they had a chance to fight back.