Scorched Shadows (The Hellequin Chronicles Book 7)

by Steve McHugh

  “Pretty much. You were right about me needing to use more than my brawn, Tommy. I’ve spent a long chunk of my life just running in without thinking. I’m going to do something else this time. I’m going to do the same thing I did with Kay when he wanted me to run after him, and I stopped myself and changed direction.”

  “You’re going to cut his head off?”

  “Well . . . yes, actually. Eventually I’m going to kill Helios, or whoever he’s working for or with. But first I’m going to use my brain and try to stop these attacks. A lot of people are going to be scared . . . A lot of those will be human.”

  “A lot of human terrorist organizations have taken responsibility for the attacks.”

  “I figured they would. Most terrorist organizations would claim responsibility for starting anything that created some fear. This is too good of a chance to pass up.”

  “Hey,” Diana said, running toward us. “You guys need to hear this.” She looked worried, an expression that I wasn’t used to seeing on her face.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Olivia just got off the phone with some people in Avalon. As of now there have been two hundred and nine attacks. Untold thousands are dead the world over. Olivia has her people trying to run down leads, but there are about a hundred different human government agencies with her people working in them that are currently freaking out. There was no warning for this, no intelligence that anything was about to go down. It literally just happened all at once.”

  “Shit,” I whispered.

  “Some countries are deploying martial law,” Diana continued. “This just got a whole lot worse. Fiona has been recalled to Camelot. She refused. I genuinely don’t know what happens now. Whoever was wearing that mask must have a problem with you personally, Nate. Or at least a problem with Hellequin.”

  “They could have been using the Hellequin name because they heard it,” Tommy suggested.

  I shook my head. “No, that was deliberate. I’d put money on it. I genuinely don’t know where to start. It wasn’t Helios on the film—I know that much. Whoever it was is stockier than he is. On the other hand, we know that Helios is involved.” I rubbed my eyes. “Maybe I should reconsider my stance on being smart and go after him anyway?”

  “You know that’s what they want,” Diana said. “If you’re right about them coming for you, then they’re making this personal. Which means they want you angry, they want you not thinking, and they know you’ll go running after them all the first chance you get.”

  “I know. I just want to hit someone.”

  “So, are you honestly okay?” Tommy asked me.

  I nodded. “I’ll be fine.” I stood and stretched, spotting Fiona and Olivia jogging toward us. “I want to go see Irkalla. Hopefully we can figure out where we’re going from there. We have company.”

  Tommy looked around. “I hear you refused to go to Camelot?” Tommy asked Fiona when they both reached us.

  Fiona nodded. Olivia kissed Tommy on the lips and sat beside him. “Not sure what Avalon is going to do next, but I think it’s safe to say that they’re no longer going to be helping Fiona find her husband.”

  “It wasn’t even a choice,” Fiona said.

  Olivia hugged me. “Don’t do anything stupid. And you can’t go back to your old house. There are human police and fire-brigade people there. I might be able to keep you from having to talk to the human police, but it’s time and effort that could be better spent elsewhere. I’m sorry.”

  I nodded. I’d expected to have to forgo seeing my house, but the thought of just leaving it all there for people I didn’t know to go through still stung. I waited until she was out of earshot before saying anything. “Stupid? Me?”

  Tommy laughed.

  “How’re Kasey, Chloe, and the others?” I asked him.

  “I checked, and they’re all good. Nothing to report. But then only a handful of people here know where they are anyway. They’re safe.”

  “Good. What about Tokyo and New York?”

  “Both offices are good,” Olivia said. “No reports of attacks, but both are going to be on high alert.”

  That was some good news, at least. “Hellequin is dead after this.”

  Tommy nodded. “Yeah, I figured you’d say that. For good this time?”

  “Someone just announced to the world that Hellequin is responsible for thousands of innocent deaths. Even if I managed to prove otherwise, the Hellequin name would never be the same. Better for everyone that it goes away and stays there. This isn’t about clearing the name of Hellequin; it’s about stopping these bastards before they kill and hurt more people.”

  Tommy sniffed the air. “Mordred wants to talk to you.”

  “That’s weird and creepy!” Mordred shouted from somewhere in the shadows beyond. He stepped into the light and walked toward us. “Can I have a few minutes with Nate, please?”

  Tommy got to his feet. “I’ll see you both inside when you’re finished. We’ll make the final preparations once we’ve heard from Irkalla and Grayson.”

  Mordred sat on the bench as everyone else walked away. “I should have brought some bread for the ducks.”

  “I think they’ll be okay,” I told him.

  “You ever consider that ducks think about more than just the pond they’re in? You think they worry about how the ducks in the next pond over are doing?”

  “Never considered it, but if they had that level of consciousness, I’d feel uncomfortable eating them.”

  Mordred nodded but didn’t say anything for several seconds.

  “What’s up?” I asked eventually.

  “You know that a lot of people in Avalon are aware that Hellequin and Nate Garrett are one and the same. And a lot of those people will have seen that video. Now, most of them who know you will know you’re not a terrorist, but some of them . . .” He stopped talking for a second, leaving the sentence unfinished.

  “Some of them will have decided I’m behind all of this and come after me? The thought had crossed my mind. Maybe that was their intent all along, to get people to see me as some sort of bounty to claim. Or at least to make my life more difficult.” I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands. “This has been an exceptionally shitty day.”

  “You could go to Arthur, tell him the truth.”

  “I imagine he already knows it wasn’t me. He’s not stupid. And I can’t go back to Camelot. Not while Merlin and his people are there waiting for me to show up. That would just start a fight and make things a thousand times more complicated. Besides, I don’t trust Avalon. I don’t know who is and isn’t involved. They took Elaine—they can damn well take anyone else they like.”

  “It’s not over yet.”

  “Well, aren’t you just a ray of sunshine,” I said with a slight laugh.

  “Do you have any ideas who the head of this cabal is?”

  I nodded. “I have my suspicions, yes.”

  “You feel like sharing them?”

  “I’m mulling over your idea that it’s Merlin. It makes sense. There are still things I don’t get, though. Too many questions, not enough answers. Story of my life.”

  “These last three years have been the happiest I’ve ever had. And it feels like someone is trying to take that away from me. I know that’s selfish, I know that how all of this affects me isn’t exactly the point, but I don’t care. I finally found a place for myself in the world, I finally found friends and allies I care about, and who care about me in return, and I finally feel like I could genuinely do some good. I’m not fighting with my own mind anymore; I’m not consumed with the need to kill people just because Baldr and his people decided they needed a puppet to murder for them. I’m going to fight for this, Nate. If that means I have to be front and center when the enemy march toward us, then so be it. No one is going to take this life from me, not while I draw breath.”

  “If anyone had told me a century ago, or hell, even five years ago, that I’d come to not only respect you, but
like you, I’d have told them they were insane. I never thought we’d get anything close to a friendship back after so long at each other’s throats. I’m glad it worked out this way, though. And I don’t plan on allowing these people to destroy the lives we all have.”

  “Nate, there’s something else. The whole I-have-to-kill-you thing.”

  “I thought we literally just agreed that just because the Fates told us we had to go down a road, it didn’t mean we have to actually do it.”

  “I know, and I know that just because they said so doesn’t mean you’re going to turn into some kind of monster, murdering everyone in your path. I’m fully aware of all of that, but just hear me out—there’s something I’ve just considered.”

  I motioned for him to continue.

  “What if no matter what we do, it moves us closer to the future the Fates saw? What if they’re right on this occasion? I know they see one possibility, but they told me that every permutation of the future showed me killing you, or you killing so many people. But what if that doesn’t happen for a thousand years? I’ve spent the better part of three years trying to find a way to get around the Fates’ premonitions and found nothing. And we both know that while what the Fates say doesn’t necessarily have to happen, that doesn’t mean it won’t.”

  “That’s incredibly vague.”

  “Okay, what if you going after this fake Hellequin is what leads you down a path of darkness? I’m concerned that the My Liege attacks are what kicks this all off for you. If people you love die, you go through people. I heard about Mary, your wife. I heard what you did to those responsible. I heard about America.”

  “What did you hear?” I asked. I wasn’t thrilled that he’d brought it up, but now that he had, I might as well discover exactly what he knew.

  “You went to America. Murdered people who you considered to be evil. Considered to be unworthy of living in a world where your wife had died. That it took Tommy coming over to stop you.”

  “That about sums it up. I’m not going back to that time. The Fates are tricky at best. It’s a shame they stayed in the dwarven realm. Maybe we’ve already done something to change the future we were told about.”

  Mordred thought about that for a second before nodding slowly. “I didn’t consider that. How would we know?”

  “We wouldn’t. But, Mordred, we can’t live our lives based on the premise that possibly, maybe you might need to stop me from going full—”

  “Sephiroth?”

  I stared blankly at him.

  “Final Fantasy Seven villain. He tries to destroy the world, was once a good guy, kills Aeris, or Aerith depending on how you consider her name is spelled.”

  “You’re literally speaking a foreign language to me.”

  “Sephiroth bad. Aeris good. That about sums it up.”

  “Glad we cleared that up.”

  “Anyway, I guess we just have to see what happens from now on.”

  “You need to relax a little. You’re going to drive yourself insane if you’re constantly trying to look out for ways to stop something that might not happen. That’s not a basis to be happy, Mordred. And you deserve some happiness.”

  “Maybe finding Elaine will keep me occupied from thinking about prophecies. Silver lining and all that.”

  I was about to agree with him when Tommy sprinted over to us. “You need to come to the medical bay. Now.”

  He didn’t have to ask twice, and Mordred and I ran after him, through the reception and into the lift, going underground several floors to the medical facility. We followed Tommy down a hospital-like corridor and into a room at the far end. The first thing I saw was Grayson standing over a crumpled Irkalla.

  “What the hell happened?” I asked, and took a second to look around the room. There were three tables in the center of a large morgue, but only the middle one was occupied. The body on the table belonged to one of the attackers. The skin of his arms and chest had been clawed open, and there was a hole where his heart should have been.

  Remy and Nabu stood against the far side of the room with Selene and Zamek beside the table. Morgan sat on a chair next to the row of a dozen drawers that had been built into one wall. Each drawer was made of silver and had various runes etched into it. Sometimes things went in them that wanted to come out.

  I focused on Irkalla, who was still unconscious on the floor. “What happened?” I asked, crouching beside them.

  “We don’t know,” Selene said.

  “We don’t have any other necromancers on staff,” Grayson told me. “I need you to figure out what’s going on.”

  I stood and glanced between Irkalla and the dead man. I hadn’t used my necromancy much except to take souls to charge my magic. It allowed me to become incredibly powerful, but it only worked on people who had died in battle, and I couldn’t use that power to do a lot of the smaller, more power-demanding feats that people like Irkalla and Hades could.

  I found out a few years ago that Mother had been a Valkyrie by the name of Brynhildr. From my research into the species, I discovered that they were able to channel their necromancy to make them faster, stronger, quicker at healing, all things I, too, was capable of. I could also create soul weapons—physical manifestations of my power, which when used against someone destroyed their soul, not their physical body. None of which was even remotely useful in the current circumstance.

  I activated my necromancy and reached out for the spirit of the deceased attacker and immediately stopped when I felt my power tugged between both the dead man and Irkalla. My vision changed, and I saw Irkalla’s spirit as it reached out and touched the darkness surrounding the dead attacker. I reached out with my necromancy to touch the darkness, but the second it made contact, a wave of power crashed over me. “Oh shit,” I said, switching off my power as I fell to the floor. I rolled to the side and vomited into a nearby bin.

  “What is it?” Nabu asked.

  “I’ve never seen anything like this.” I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and lay back on the cool floor. I tried to get the image I’d seen right in my head so I could explain it. When I no longer felt nauseous, I sat up. “Irkalla’s spirit is trapped. She reached out to the corpse, trying to get a read on his spirit, but it was a trap, and the second her power touched his spirit, it snapped shut like a bear trap. She struggled, and it began to tear out her spirit, forcing it partly into the darkness that now surrounds the body. I don’t even understand what that is. I don’t know how it was done, or how to stop it.”

  “There has to be a way,” Morgan said.

  “Maybe, but it’s far beyond the power I have. I can try to take the darkness into myself, I can try to absorb whatever remains of his spirit, but doing so might mean taking Irkalla’s spirit, too. I don’t know if I can untangle them. I don’t even know if trying will kill her. We need Sky or Hades—both of them are vastly more experienced than I am.”

  “And both are unable to help,” Nabu said, kneeling beside me. “You’re here, Nate. You’re all we have. Hades is in Canada, and Sky is trying to make sure Tartarus isn’t a target. Neither will get here soon enough.”

  I shook my head. “I’m not sure I have the . . .” I stopped and sighed. “I’m going to pass out for a few minutes. I’d really appreciate it if no one panics.”

  A few people in the room shared nervous glances. “You’re going to pass out?” Zamek asked. “On purpose?”

  “Are you sure?” Remy asked. He was leaning up against the far wall, his arms crossed over his chest, his eyes fixed firmly on the floor. “This isn’t a great idea.”

  “Do you know what he’s going to do?” Morgan asked Selene.

  Selene stared at me. “You’re going to talk to your nightmare, aren’t you?”

  I nodded.

  “Have you lost your mind?” Zamek asked. “Nightmares are bad. They take control of sorcerers, and they kill people. They kill the sorcerer.”

  “Not quite,” Mordred corrected. “I don’t believe that’s tr
ue. Mine certainly didn’t kill me; it protected me. I think we’ve been lied to for a long time about what they do.”

  Zamek looked between me and Mordred. “You’re both nuts.”

  “They’re telling the truth,” Grayson said. “Nightmares aren’t a threat. Their default behavior is to protect the sorcerer. It’s why so many of them attack; they lash out because they feel threatened, or the sorcerer was scared when the nightmare took control. If Nate remains calm, there’s no reason for the nightmare to do anything other than help. It’s Nate’s power amplified. The nightmare taps into that potential and, in theory, could make Nate powerful enough to do this.”

  “Or he could go crazy and try to kill us all,” Zamek said.

  I shared a glance with Mordred. Was this the moment the Fates were talking about? Was this the moment the Fates warned us of?

  “Mordred,” I started. “I want you to—”

  “I know,” he interrupted. “If this is the Fates’ prophecy, I’ll make sure to stop it before it starts.”

  Tommy’s growl echoed around the room. “You will not kill him,” he said slowly.

  “Tommy,” I said, my voice calm and soft. “If we’re wrong and this nightmare becomes a concern, it needs to be stopped.”

  “Are you certain the nightmare isn’t a threat?” Tommy asked Grayson.

  “I was there when the pact was made to keep it secret from the world,” Grayson said. “I was there when Cronus, Rhea, Amaterasu, Tsukuyomi, Susanoo, Odin, Nergal, Ra, Seth, and a dozen more made the decision; any sorcerer accepting their nightmare was to be considered a danger to all living things and delivered a death sentence. A few discovered how to accept their nightmare, to control it. Most hid this information from the world around them, escaping their death sentences. Zeus, Hera, Merlin, and a few others managed to accept their nightmares, but most sorcerers who accepted their nightmares were hunted down and executed.”

  “Why?” Zamek asked.

  “It was a way to manage the power levels of sorcerers,” Grayson said. “It was a way to ensure that no one could activate their nightmare without the proper training. If you break a sorcerer’s mind before allowing the nightmare to take control, you have a monster on your hands. A monster that does not recognize friend from foe. Some people discovered that they could manipulate a nightmare to turn it into a weapon to be used against their enemies. A lot of people died before that pact was made. A lot more died after, too, but it was deemed an acceptable loss. The law was flawed. Not all nightmares are evil.”