Scorched Shadows (The Hellequin Chronicles Book 7)

by Steve McHugh

  I reached out and took her hand in mine, squeezing it slightly. She squeezed back.

  “And you, Zamek?” Sky asked.

  “I’d like to go home, back to my own realm. I’d like to see my friends again. I’d like to save my people. I’d like to kill every single blood elf I can find. But I can’t do those just yet, so I’ll just keep on fighting whoever needs to be fought.”

  “I’m sorry about your friends,” Sky said as the group entered a lift, and she pressed a button on the control pad to take it down to the realm gate room. “I’m sure you’ll see them again.”

  “Oh, I know I will.”

  The lift doors opened, and we were greeted by several heavily armed personnel. After the compound had been attacked a few years earlier, Hades and his people performed a complete overhaul of the security. It meant a lot more guards. The realm gate room had been a target during the last attack, so Sky and Cerberus had made it their mission to ensure anyone trying again would have a hell of a time.

  Sky said hello to the four guards, who all nodded toward the rest of us without comment. They wore specially designed body armor that stopped magical power from having too much of an effect, and helms that combated psychic abilities. I wasn’t sure who had designed the items, but whoever had done it would be in high demand with every Avalon office on the planet.

  “So, you’ve made this place a lot more formidable,” I said to Sky as we walked down the ramp to a lower level, where a guard at a second checkpoint waved us through.

  “Only people who don’t get searched are Cerberus, my parents, and my siblings, and even those get checked if they haven’t been here within the last three months.” Sky sounded proud of what she’d achieved at the compound.

  We entered the realm gate room, and Cerberus walked over toward us as I started to look around. The last time I’d been here, I was in a fight for my life against two assailants and had pretty much totaled the place. It had been completely rebuilt since then with new computers and workstations for everyone monitoring the comings and goings through the realm gate that sat at the end of the room.

  “Good to see you, Nate,” Cerberus said. Cerberus was a werewolf of exceptional power. Over six feet tall, and more than 280 pounds of pure muscle, he was not a man to cross if you liked keeping the use of your body parts. He didn’t carry a gun—one of the few in the compound along with Sky who didn’t need one. I’d once seen him throw a car at someone. A gun on his hip would have looked kind of silly after that.

  “You shaved your head,” I said.

  He ran his massive hand over his baldness. “I felt it was time.”

  “You kept the beard, though.”

  He stroked the graying, chest-length facial hair and smiled. “Of course.”

  I left Cerberus with Sky and Selene and walked over to the realm gate, where Zamek stood.

  “Magnificent structure, isn’t it?” Zamek said from beside me. “Thousands of years old, maybe tens of thousands. Who knows? The ancient dwarves weren’t exactly forthcoming with dates and information about their creations.”

  The gate itself was a large archway with dark-green runes etched all around the side facing us that sprang to life when activated. While the colors differed depending on the gate, each of them looked similar in design. Realm gates were all made from a mixture of wood, rock, and metal, although no one really knew how the realm gates had been made, nor how it was that they managed to repair themselves from damage.

  “So, you want to go to Tartarus?” Cerberus said as he walked toward them. He spoke to a middle-aged woman beside him. “Meet Rhianna—she’s one of our guardians.”

  Guardians were the only ones who could activate a realm gate. They were immortal so long as they stayed within a certain distance from the gate, and were imbued with magical tattoos that adorned their bodies, linking them to one specific gate.

  Rhianna shook my hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” she said with an accent placing her from the US South, although I couldn’t identify the exact region.

  “You, too,” I said. I stepped away while Rhianna spoke to Zamek, and found Sky and Selene in deep conversation. “You two good?”

  “We’re discussing her father,” Sky said. “He can’t come out of Tartarus. You know that, right?”

  “It’s come up before, yeah,” I said. “We just need him to tell us about Abaddon.”

  “We’re ready when you are,” Cerberus said.

  The realm gate activated, and we stepped through into Tartarus.

  CHAPTER 9

  Mordred

  Basingstoke, England

  The helicopter lifted off from the roof of Tommy’s building with Morgan, Diana, Fiona, Remy, Nabu, and Mordred aboard. They sat three opposite one another, and no one said anything for several minutes. Mordred knew that everyone was worried about Nate and Irkalla.

  It was twenty minutes into the flight when his phone vibrated in his pocket. It was a message from Tommy: Nate and Irkalla are good. Stay safe. Mordred showed it to everyone inside the helicopter’s cabin, and he felt the mood ease almost immediately.

  “Does anyone have any idea what we’re meant to find here?” Remy asked. Everyone in the helicopter was wearing a headset that allowed them to communicate. Without one, the sound of the wind would be far too much to hear anything.

  “This is where Elaine went just before someone grabbed her,” Fiona said. “That’s pretty much all we know. We went to check the house out but found the place ransacked.”

  “So, we’re meant to find something that the people who trashed the house couldn’t find?” Morgan asked.

  “Look, we might as well investigate, and if we find nothing, we’ll move on to Moscow,” Fiona said, her voice clearly holding back the frustration and emotion she felt at the lack of information about the disappearance of Elaine and her husband, Alan. “I don’t plan on leaving a single stone unturned until we find them.”

  “We’ll find something,” Remy said. “There’s always something to find. You just have to know what you’re looking for.”

  “And what are we looking for?” Diana asked.

  “Hopefully something really big and obvious with a map and excellent directions.”

  Diana laughed. “You ever found something like that before, Remy?”

  Remy smiled. “There’s always a first time.”

  Mordred looked out of the window as they sped past everything far below. He wondered whether or not this mission was going to lead to something he’d rather not take part in. He wondered whether everyone in the helicopter with him would be okay if things didn’t go well. He pushed the thoughts aside; negative thinking would do little to help in the current circumstances. He felt a hand reach out and take hold of his, squeezing it slightly. He looked back at Morgan, who mouthed Are you okay? Mordred nodded and squeezed her hand to hopefully prove it. After the talk with Nate, he genuinely felt good within himself, although somewhere in the back of his mind he wondered how long that was going to last. There were a lot of people he’d purposefully avoided since regaining full use of his faculties, and he knew that at some point in the future he was going to have to meet up with some of them. It felt to him like an inevitability. He just hoped he could keep everything together when that happened. He didn’t want any of those people to think they could affect him anymore.

  He let go of Morgan’s hand and went back to looking out of the window. Eventually there was an announcement in his headset that they were going to begin landing, and he sighed, cracking his knuckles and mentally preparing himself for what was coming. He started to hum the Mario theme tune and got an evil look from Morgan for it, but he ignored it and carried on. He found that humming the tune calmed him, although he’d discovered some time ago that the busier he was, the fewer tangents his mind went on.

  There was a slight bump as the helicopter landed, and Fiona pulled open the door, allowing everyone to exit. Mordred walked away from the helicopter and stretched, taking in the scenery. Apar
t from a large house with a hole where the front door used to be, there was nothing for miles. Mountains sat in the distance, but between him and there were just open plains and a stream. Remote Scotland was as harsh and beautiful a place as anywhere Mordred had ever been, but he found the solitude to be tranquil.

  As the helicopter’s engines died down, Fiona brought everyone together. “An LOA team went through here just after Elaine went missing, but seeing how we’re not exactly trusting Avalon at the moment, you should still be careful.”

  “When did they leave?” Diana asked.

  “A few days ago. This place has sat like this since then.”

  “Well then, let’s go search the mansion,” Remy said, and set off toward the building.

  Mordred held back and watched the rest of the group enter the massive house. He had no way of knowing when Elaine had the place built, but it looked to be a hundred years old, at least.

  “Five bedrooms, four bathrooms, two receptions, a dining room, lounge, kitchen, and no garden,” Nabu said from beside Mordred. “And it’s been ransacked. Both by whoever came and looked for Elaine first, and then the LOA.”

  “Maybe they’re one and the same.”

  “That’s an unfortunate possibility. I believe she was taken from here, although the lack of magical damage suggests otherwise. Maybe she was taken in Moscow and they wanted to ensure she hadn’t left anything here that might lead us to them.”

  “You know, Elaine isn’t stupid. She knew about the cabal; she knew that several of its key players are members of Avalon. She knew that Hera was at least partly behind it all, and that Merlin is quite probably helping. Yet she came up here, to the middle of nowhere, with her guards, who are nowhere to be found, for what? A bit of a holiday?”

  Nabu thought about it for a few seconds. “It is suspicious, isn’t it?”

  Mordred nodded. “There’s no way Elaine would leave Avalon to crack on with everything while she swans off on her holidays.”

  “Crack on?” Nabu raised an eyebrow in question.

  “It means get on with it.”

  “And swans off?”

  “Storm off in a huff. Admittedly she’s not the storming-off-in-a-huff kind of person, but I wasn’t being literal.”

  “So, you believe she came here for another reason?”

  Mordred nodded. “She was meant to come see me in New York. She said she had info on the prophecy about me and Nate. So, why come here two weeks beforehand? Why bother to leave Camelot? Why come all this way to do”—he waved his arms around him—“fuck all? There’s nothing here. That’s the beauty of this part of the world: there’s fuck all bastards to ruin it.”

  Remy left the house and walked toward Mordred and Nabu. “You two planning on helping? Because at the moment you’re just standing there like a couple of scarecrows with even less dress sense.”

  “That’s not as good as your usual insults,” Mordred said. “I feel kinda bad for you.”

  “Less swearing than usual, too,” Nabu said. “Maybe his earlier death has given him much to ponder.”

  Remy raised his middle finger. “Ponder this.”

  “Have you found anything?” Mordred asked.

  “No, because you two are out here with your thumbs up your asses.”

  “That was better,” Nabu said.

  “Remy, I need your nose,” Mordred said.

  “You what?”

  “Nose, Remy, nose.”

  “I heard you, Mordred. I just don’t know why.”

  “Did I not say that bit?” Mordred asked, wondering what he had and hadn’t said aloud.

  Remy shook his head. “I find it helps, though.”

  “Right, yeah, sure. Anyway, she has a secret stash. She uses it for information, not drugs.”

  “Why would we think it was drugs?” Remy asked, and turned a full circle. “There’s nothing here.”

  “Kind of why I need your nose.”

  “You want me to pick up her scent? Because any tiny parts that are left are mixed with about fifty other scents. You’d be better off asking me to turn back into a human, because that might be easier.”

  “Isn’t that impossible for you to do?” Mordred asked.

  “Kind of my point there. Your brain gone weird again?”

  Mordred shook his head. “About the same as it ever is. But in this instance, no, I don’t need you to track her scent out here.”

  Remy remained silent.

  “On the way over here, I checked on my phone and there’s a cave system over to the north. People go climbing in it . . . ‘Spelunking,’ that’s the word, right? Anyway, I’m not much of a spelunker, never really saw the point of it. You know? I know that Elaine likes to go climbing. She’s a big fan, always has been. Again, it’s a bit weird. Only reason to climb is to get away from something, in my opinion. Yes, I know I’m rambling, but my point is while she likes to climb, anyone who knows her will also know that. But going underground? Well, that might not be the first thing people think of.”

  “Mordred?” Nabu asked in a tone that suggested Mordred was rambling.

  “Ah, yes, sorry.”

  “You think she’s hidden important information in the cave?” Remy said. “Do you know the kinds of things that hide in caves?”

  “Trolls, monsters of various shapes and sizes. It’s going to be a blast. You’d probably better get Diana, though, just in case we need something torn in half.” Mordred watched Remy run off and turned toward Nabu. “Useful skill to have around, tearing people in half. Never know when it’s going to come in handy.”

  Nabu stared at Mordred for several seconds. “You okay?”

  “My brain is moving very quickly. It happens every now and again when I feel stressed or concerned about something. Doesn’t help that I’m impatient to get going, and my brain doesn’t like it.”

  “I thought you were all better. Thought you’d managed to keep your manic side under control.”

  Mordred smiled. “That’s a very subjective term. Compared to being a drooling wreck who wants to eat someone’s face, I’m goddamned dandy. Compared to someone who doesn’t sing ‘Mario’ fifty times a day, I might be slightly unhinged. But one man’s unhinged is another man’s sane.”

  “That’s one way of looking at it.”

  Mordred’s smile vanished. “I’ve spent a long time being damaged. I’m not going to be that anymore. I might be quirky, I might be strange, but I’m me.”

  “I never wanted to suggest otherwise.”

  “I know. I know you’re just looking out for me. Everyone is always just looking out for me. Sometimes I think they do it because they’re expecting me to revert to my old evil ways.”

  “I don’t think that,” Nabu assured him.

  “Every day is a battle not to let my past actions crush me. Every day I tell myself that today I’m good, that today will be a good day. And for the last decade or so, I’ve been right.”

  Nabu remained silent.

  “You’re wondering what happens if one day I’m wrong?”

  “The thought did cross my mind,” Nabu admitted.

  “Then one of two things will happen. Either I murder those I love, or they kill me before I get the chance. Neither appeals. I tolerate my slight brain farts because to do anything else might drive me even more insane than how I was before Nate shot me.”

  “Every day is a battle for many of us, my friend,” Nabu said, resting his hand on Mordred’s shoulder. “You are not alone in this, I promise.”

  Mordred turned to Nabu and smiled. “I know. And that helps me think I can do better. Can make amends for those I wronged.”

  “Is that why you’re here?”

  Mordred turned to watch as the rest of the group left the house. “No. I’m here to find a way to stop me from having to kill Nate. I’m here because Elaine is missing and she’s pretty much the only member of my family who gives a shit about me. And I’m here because I want to find the people behind all of this and crush them into pas
te. They’re killing innocent people, Nabu. And that shit won’t stand.”

  “Remy says you have an extremely stupid idea,” Morgan said. “I cleaned up his words a little.” She paused. “A lot, actually. Damn, that fox-man can swear like a sailor.”

  “Thank you,” Remy said.

  “You want to go spelunking?” Fiona asked.

  “Do people just like saying that word?” Mordred asked. “Spelunking. It is quite fun, I guess.”

  “Mordred,” Fiona snapped.

  Diana rested a hand on her shoulder. “Easy, my friend. He’s not the enemy.”

  Fiona shrugged off the hand and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry.”

  Mordred shrugged, as if it were no big thing, although he wondered just how tightly wound Fiona was, and whether she might snap if she wasn’t careful. “Not specifically, no. I came here a few years ago to talk to Elaine, and she told me about a cave system. She made a really big deal about telling me of this system. Pointed me in the right direction and everything. I promise you, she hasn’t hidden anything in that house. Anything anyone found was of no real importance.”

  “And if you’re wrong?” Fiona asked.

  “We waste an hour and know I was wrong. I’ll even let you sing a song about how wrong I was.” He paused and held Fiona’s gaze. “I’m not, though.”

  “A hidden cache of some kind?” Diana asked.

  “Yes,” Mordred said. “It’s in those caves over there. I’ve never been down there myself, and I don’t really know exactly where she would have hidden anything, but we won’t find anything here.”

  The group set off across the plains, making good time as the morning sun warmed the cold just enough to make it bearable. They reached the cave entrance, and Mordred peered inside, expecting to see something of interest, but it was far too dark, and far too deep.

  “There’s a thirty-foot drop,” Remy said. “I can smell the insects inside. Lots of them. Also, something else. A scent. Two scents. The first is Elaine, no doubt about it, but the second is—”

  “Perfume,” Diana finished, and took a sniff of a nearby rock. “I think Elaine dabbed perfume on these stones. It masks her scent, but more importantly it gives us something to track.”