by Steve McHugh
“Why?”
“Hera and her people are going to be there. We thought it the perfect opportunity to get to them. Once the Gestapo passed us the information we required, we killed them. Then you found us.”
“Why were you naked then?” I asked.
“They gave us the information we requested and then drugged us to try to experiment on us. We could have broken free, but honestly we just wanted to see what would happen. They have some very nasty stuff waiting in their labs. It’s a good thing it didn’t harm us in any real way.”
“Why were they looking in North Africa?”
“You saw that?” Pandora asked. “Yes, they wanted the realm gate where we were created. They wanted to put another poor girl into that realm and have her bonded with a demon. Just like we were. We did not wish for that to happen. Once they decided to go down that path, the humans were no longer of any use to us. We killed them and destroyed their findings.”
A thought crossed my mind. “Did you send the German soldiers to scour the hotel, looking for me?”
Pandora smiled. “No, just the soldier who died in the alley. We needed to find you, but actually we were looking for two people.”
“Did one of them happen to be the other man who died in that alley, by chance?”
Pandora glanced at me and nodded slightly. “Most impressive, Nathan. The rapist’s last victim was someone who worked with Magali and Jean. It was coincidence that you were both in the same hotel. His punishment was a little revenge to repay those who had helped us. The SS trooper had been under our control since we went to the Gestapo in the first place. He had allies in that dreadful group; it made infiltration easier.”
“What’s your plan?” Hades asked.
“We don’t know,” she said. “It’s not our plan anymore.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“We’ve given the task over to someone else. He has orders to do whatever he wishes to ensure it’s completed. We have no say in what he does, but we’re guessing it’ll be spectacular.”
“Pandora, we need more than that.” Hades said. “Telling us that some random man in Germany is going to do something isn’t exactly cooperation.”
“He’s going to kill Hera and her friends at the opening of the Olympic Games in Berlin. Is that specific enough for you? Anyone in his way is an enemy and will die.”
She walked over to me. “Nate,” Pandora said softly. “We’re begging you. Leave this place. Leave Germany and get as far away as you can.”
“I can’t let innocent people die, Pandora. And they will if he attacks Hera in some way. She cares a lot less about the civilian population than most Nazis.”
“Can you tell us more about this mystery man?” Selene asked.
“Yes. He’s about six feet tall, with a constant deep tan and the yellow eyes of a reptile. He’s not human, obviously, and is probably a match for anyone in this hangar, Hades excluded.”
Hades and I shared a glance.
“We know what you’re thinking: Send Hades into Berlin. Well, the problem with that is, we knew Hades would come himself to pick me up. Can’t let someone as powerful as me just hang around with a bunch of security. So we left my friend with another order. If he sees Hades at any point during his time in Berlin, he’s to consider the mission a failure and attack wherever he happens to be at that time. Thousands could die.”
“You sick bitch,” Selene snapped.
“Yes, well considering who you lie with every night, we could say the same about you.”
Selene’s cheeks burned red, but she kept quiet.
“And what about me?” I asked.
She stroked the side of my face. “My dear Nate. We care about you very deeply, but you can’t beat this man. Not on your best day. If you stay and confront him, you will die. Although you’d have to find him first, which could prove difficult.”
“What’s his name?” I asked.
Pandora held eye contact for a few seconds and then sighed. “If you’re so willing to die. His name is Helios.” She turned to Selene, whose eyes were wide and full of fear. “Ah, we thought you’d recognize your brother.”
CHAPTER 7
Mittenwald, Germany. Now.
I woke up in a comfortable bed that wasn’t my own. It wasn’t even one from the hotel. I looked around the spacious bedroom and tried to sit up, but my body ached as if it were the day after I’d done the first workout of my life, and the thick quilt, in its blue and white duvet, was cozy and inviting. I decided not to bother getting out of bed, and adjusted my pillows so that I could lie down while remaining slightly propped up.
A TV sat on a chest of drawers in front of me, but the remote was several feet away on top of a bedside table, and quite frankly I wasn’t certain I could make the trip and return to the bed before the muscles in my back decided to make me yell like a little baby. I settled for looking at the expansive collection of artwork, mostly landscapes of the surrounding region, which adorned the walls.
There were three doors in the room. One was fully open, and I saw rows of clothes in the darkness beyond; a walk-in closet. The second door was closed, but as the third was clearly the exit from the bedroom to the house beyond, I figured door two was a bathroom.
Two raised voices could be heard from outside of door number three, one male and one female.
“It goes five, six, four¸” said the male voice, which was easily identifiable as Tommy’s. Any concern about where I was evaporated. If Tommy was around, then he would have made sure I was somewhere safe.
“No, you ignorant werewolf,” said the female voice, the German accent giving it away as Petra’s. “It goes five, four, and six. No one puts six over four—that’s insane.”
“I guess you’re feeling better,” a second man said as he stepped through the open door, a cup and plate in his hands.
“Thanks, Kurt,” I said, my voice a little raspy. I coughed and cleared my throat. “This is your house, I assume?”
He nodded and placed the cup and plate, some tea and toast, on the table beside me. “How are you feeling? Other than better, I mean?” Kurt was well over six feet tall and weighed close to three hundred pounds of pure muscle. His long light-brown hair was tied back, and his bushy beard had flecks of gray in it. His arms were covered in dark tattoos of swirling marks and pagan symbols. He’d had them done when he was human, which was roughly when the Roman Empire first invaded what is now Germany.
Kurt was one of the most respected members of the werebear community, and probably the only one of his kind in the south of Germany. I’d seen him fight twice, both times very long ago, and both times I was very grateful that he was on my side.
“I ache everywhere,” I admitted.
“We found you embedded in the car of a staff member. She wasn’t best pleased to find you there. You also did extensive damage to every other car in the lot as well as the windows on the restaurant. I’m not really sure how you managed it.” His voice was calm and measured. Werebears, for the most part, are incredibly calm and let very little bother them. Due to the fact that the beast of a werebear is very close to the surface—much closer than the beast of a werewolf or werelion—they’re forced to watch their emotions carefully to ensure that the beast doesn’t override the person.
“I’ll pay for the damage,” I promised and then explained what had happened.
I’d just finished when Tommy entered the room. “Excellent—you’re awake. Can you please tell this philistine”—he pointed to Petra who was standing beside him—“that episode six is better than episode four?”
Kurt raised an eyebrow in confusion.
“Star Wars,” I explained. “They’re arguing over whether film six or four is better.”
“What about five?” he asked.
“Everyone knows five is the best one,” Petra said in the same tone you’d tell a small child that fire is hot. “So, what is it? Six or four?”
“I have no idea,” I said.
; Tommy stared at me for a few seconds. “Liar. Which one?”
“Tommy, Ewoks suck. They’ve always sucked and they always will suck. Four has Peter Cushing in it. If in doubt, always go with a film that has Peter Cushing in it.”
Petra appeared to be very smug in her victory.
Tommy looked mortified. “But six has Jedi Luke and that awesome bit with the Emperor at the end.”
“And Ewoks,” I said. “Who, I’m pretty sure I pointed out, suck.”
“And to think I was going to get you your own lightsaber,” Tommy said in mock outrage.
Petra’s face lit up like a child’s on Christmas morning. “You have your own lightsaber?”
Tommy nodded. “Two of them.”
“Why?” Kurt asked. “Why do you need a lightsaber? What can you possibly use it for?”
“I think the question is,” Tommy said, “why wouldn’t I need a lightsaber? And as for what I can use it for, I use it to look awesome. Really, really awesome.”
“You just don’t understand, my dear,” Petra told Kurt.
Kurt didn’t appear to want or need to understand anytime soon.
“So, you got beat up by some humans and a witch,” Tommy said, barely containing his laughter. “Do you have CCTV?” he asked Petra, who chuckled.
“Are you both done?” I asked.
They nodded in unison.
“This witch used a huge amount of magic on me,” I informed them both. “To use runes to drain my magic is one thing, but an effete curse is a whole other league of power. That’s a decade of her life, right there.”
“I don’t understand why anyone would ever use a blood magic curse,” Tommy said. “It’s not like it’s fun for the person casting it either.”
“What do you mean?” Petra asked.
“There are several different blood magic curses you can cast on another person, and a few you can cast on yourself,” I explained. “All of the curses do various things to the person they’re cast upon, but the caster has to take some of the curse back onto him- or herself. So, in this case, Sarah cast the effete spell, making me exhausted and utterly useless, but a small portion of that will bounce back onto her. How long was I out?”
“Six hours,” Kurt said.
“If I’d cast that spell, I could have expected maybe three or four hours of exhaustion. Witches are basically human, so she’s going to be about as much use as a chocolate teapot, for the best part of a day. It was a huge decision for her to make.”
“The local police searched the house that Robert Ellis was staying in,” Kurt told me. “It’s been abandoned for a few days.”
“They’re planning something,” I advised. “I don’t know what it is, but me being here certainly concerned someone enough to get Sarah to try to get rid of me. She originally told me that she’d been told to give me one chance to leave. There’s someone else giving the orders; someone told her not to kill me.”
“Okay, who?” Petra asked.
“No one good, I imagine,” I said.
“So, what’s their job?” Tommy asked. “It can’t be a coincidence that a witch attacks you just as a bunch of other witches turn up.”
“Well, Sarah certainly knew of Mara,” I said. “In fact it seems like Sarah likes Mara only slightly less than I do.”
“Even so, it’ll probably be wise to keep an eye on those witches,” Tommy suggested. “There’s something off with them, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.”
“Witches are always weird,” Petra said dismissively.
“Do you think Emily might know something?” Tommy inquired.
“I’ll talk to her,” I said. “She didn’t exactly seem to be thrilled to be here. I don’t know what it is, but I have this notion that something big is going to happen.”
“Surely not in Mittenwald,” Kurt said. “Hades’s compound is ten minutes away. The last time anyone did anything wrong in this town, Hades’s men found those responsible and dragged them back here in chains. You would have to be insane to actively want to piss that man off.”
“Insane or very sure of yourself,” I said.
“The trip is in a few hours,” Tommy said. “We’ll talk to Hades and see if he’s heard anything. And if Mara and her coven are involved, they’ve got their own children with them. What kind of parent purposely puts her own child in danger?”
Tommy was probably right. Security would be stepped up in preparation for the school’s arrival. I couldn’t foresee how anyone would want to target the compound—not until security was back to its normal level, which wouldn’t be until a few days after the trip ended.
“Maybe a bank job?” Tommy suggested.
Kurt shrugged. “It’s possible. There are also many wealthy people in town. Maybe Robert stays in town for a few weeks, scopes out the targets and then, when his people arrive, one of them who’s a witch realizes that there’s a sorcerer running around the place. They call their boss, who tells them to get rid of you quietly. It all goes to shit because they’re human, and they run off to try to figure out their next move.”
“It’s plausible,” Petra agreed.
“No, they knew that I was here,” I objected. “Sarah came looking for me in particular; I wasn’t a random sorcerer to them.” A witch willing to give up her own life just to defeat me screamed of desperation. Maybe she’s sick, maybe she needs the money for bills—I don’t know. The only thing I know for sure is that if she was willing to sacrifice so much of her own life just to take me out, she must really want me gone from this town.
“So what’s your plan?” Kurt asked.
“I’m going with the school to see Hades. After that, I’ll see if I can figure out what these people are here for.”
“In the meantime, get a shower and something to eat,” Kurt suggested.
“I’ll go back to the hotel and grab you some clothes,” Tommy offered. “I’ve been away for a few hours, I should probably check on Kase.”
“Just in case the second you left they had some huge rave,” I said with a smile.
Tommy’s face dropped. “That’s not funny, man. That’s cruel.” He eyed the door.
“You have met Kasey before, yes?” Kurt asked. “She doesn’t seem like the rave type.”
Tommy relaxed slightly. “I know. But I also remember the sorts of things I was doing when I was her age. Boys are bad, Kurt. Bad, nasty little evil fuckers, who need to be stopped at all costs.”
I laughed and it hurt my ribs.
“And that’s what happens to those who mock me.”
“Tommy, your daughter is smarter than you,” Kurt said and paused, presumably to think about his statement. “Very much smarter. I think she’s a bit more savvy about boys than maybe you’re giving her credit for.”
Tommy nodded slowly, as if this was new information he needed to assimilate. “You’re saying I should just trust in her judgment.”
“Which is what we’ve all been telling you for weeks,” I pointed out.
“Yes, but Kurt’s older and wiser than you.”
Kurt winked at Petra, who laughed.
“Look, Tommy,” Kurt said, “let Kasey learn how to deal with what she’s going through. Let her make her own mistakes. You can hate boys from afar, and when she brings one home, you just explain that if he hurts her, you’ll make him vanish. That’s how I did it for our daughter.”
“And now she lives in Canada,” Petra said.
“Okay, maybe don’t tell him that you’ll make him vanish,” Kurt conceded. “Turns out daughters don’t like their dates being threatened.”
I laughed again. “This is the oddest conversation I’ve ever woken up to. Tommy, just let Kasey figure it out. You’re there for when she can’t. And if anyone ever does hurt her . . . well, you’re a werewolf—you’ll figure something out.”
Tommy smiled. “I love my devious-minded friends.”
“ ‘Never has there been a more wretched hive of scum and villainy,’ ” Kurt said.
Petra practically launched herself on her husband, kissing him on the cheek. “You quoted Star Wars. I love you.”
Kurt looked down at his wife and, without smiling, said, “I know.”
Petra’s smile lit up her face like a firework.
CHAPTER 8
By the time I’d gotten dressed and returned to the hotel, the kids were already being loaded onto the buses. The witches, once again, were being ferried in their own private bus. Mara glanced at me as I got onto one of the buses, a look of anger on her face. She was quickly ignored as the sounds of a hundred school kids took over, and I wished I’d decided to hike up to the compound.
The journey was short, but even ten minutes with forty sugar-hyper kids and someone talking through a megaphone is about five million years in “how-it-feels” time.
We drove away from the hotel and toward the mountains. The road cut through the forest as it snaked away from the lake, eventually leaving the mass of greenery behind as we started the climb upward toward Hades’s compound. It took several minutes’ drive along steep mountain roads to reach the compound itself, and although the roads were well maintained, it was still a slightly bumpy journey as the smaller rocks regularly fell from higher up the mountain.
After a few hundred yards, the rocky exterior that had been on either side of the road began to change to dense woodland. As we climbed higher, those trees became covered in snow. During previous visits, I’d gone running through the woods that stood all around us on the mountain ridges. They contained enough security that anyone uninvited who was trying to get to the compound would never be able to do it stealthily.
The tree cover only lasted a short distance before the mountains took over and the compound came into view. The sides and back of the place were protected by mountain ranges; the only safe entrance or exit that didn’t include helicopters was the main road that we traveled.
