Scorched Shadows (The Hellequin Chronicles Book 7)

by Steve McHugh

  “And you are?” she asked again, this time with a smirk.

  “Ladies first?”

  “Abaddon. Although I’ve had many names over the millennia.”

  I went to use my magic, and nothing happened.

  Abaddon laughed. “Do you plan on telling me your name? I like to know the names of people I make scream and beg.” She kicked Rhea’s head aside with a laugh. “I always wanted to do that.”

  “What was the bracelet?” I asked. “The one you threw in the room?”

  “Am I meant to tell you everything? You probably wouldn’t understand even if I did. These two idiots certainly didn’t, not until it was too late.”

  “You put dwarven runes in the villa? Or at least in this room. It’s good. I didn’t even feel the magic go away,” I said as I backed up toward the row of windows overlooking the huge garden behind me.

  I searched around me, trying not to take my gaze off Abaddon for too long. She must have had a tattoo that allowed her to bypass the dwarven runes and use her power. I just needed to figure out what word they’d used for the rune so I could counteract it. Hopefully counteract it. It was that or die horribly, and I’ve never really been one for the latter.

  “It helps that I was there when they made them,” Abaddon said. “You’re an interesting one. On the one hand, you’re clearly no one important because I’d have remembered you.”

  “Well, you’ve probably been away for a long time. Things have changed since the seven devils roamed the realms.”

  Abaddon laughed. “It’s good you know that you are outclassed.”

  “Not sure about that. I got rid of one of your spirit snares.”

  Abaddon appeared to be impressed. “That doesn’t mean you’re going to live through the day.”

  I reached the windows and stopped and spotted the dwarven rune carved into the back of a nearby table. It was only about the size of a pound coin, but it glowed black. The amount of power that had been infused with the rune must have been immense.

  Abaddon followed my gaze. “Do you really think you can counter the rune?”

  I ran my finger through the blood on my clothes and drew a mark on my hand. Lightning crackled between my fingers. “Yeah, I think I can.”

  Abaddon’s eyes widened in shock, but before I could throw magic at her, I heard the smash of glass and turned as Atlas grabbed hold of me, dragging me out of the house and throwing me across the garden as if I were a tennis ball. I wrapped myself in a shield of air to make sure I didn’t die when I impacted with a stone hut thirty feet away.

  “Nathan Garrett, you are mine,” Atlas bellowed.

  “Now is a really bad time!” I shouted back, standing up in the ruins of the shattered hut.

  Abaddon rushed out of the house. “Stop it, you idiot,” she snapped at Atlas. “Now isn’t the time.”

  “I was told that Nathan was mine to kill,” Atlas said. “And only mine.”

  Abaddon ignored his words and took a step toward me. “So, you’re Nathan Garrett. I’ve heard a lot about you. I figured you’d be more fearsome, but you don’t look like anything particularly special. Your use of lightning has made me curious, though. Was your father Zeus, by any chance?”

  I shrugged. “No idea.”

  She placed a hand on Atlas’s chest. “Now is not the time.” She turned back to me as the clouds above us began to turn dark and thunder rumbled.

  “I thought you’d like to see my lightning close up,” I told her.

  “Maybe later.” Abaddon removed another bracelet from a pouch on her waist and placed it on her wrist. She removed another and passed it to Atlas, who put it on. Both tapped their bracelets and vanished. I turned toward a dozen blood elves who had heard the commotion and come to see what was happening, and called down the lightning. I pushed it through my body, mixing it with my magic, before throwing it out of my extended hand, which got badly burned as it went. The twelve elves vanished in a plume of gore as the magical lightning struck them, leaving a large crater in its wake.

  I cradled my arm against my chest and hoped I had enough power left to heal it before we had to leave the realm. I walked back to the villa and stepped inside. Rhea and Cronus were dead, killed in their own home in a realm designed to keep them safe from harm. I picked up Rhea’s head and took it back through the door Abaddon had used into a bedroom that had been the scene of a huge battle. Pieces of plaster and destroyed furniture littered the expansive room. The rest of Rhea’s remains lay on the floor at the foot of the bed, where the final blow had been delivered. I placed the head next to the body and dropped a sheet over them before washing my hands in the en suite bathroom sink.

  As I was leaving the bathroom, I saw writing on the back of the bedroom door I hadn’t noticed before. I closed the door, and the feeling of dread intensified. Written in what I could only assume was Rhea’s blood were the words For Hellequin.

  CHAPTER 13

  Nate Garrett

  I considered removing the writing, but that wouldn’t be good if someone discovered what I’d done. People would become suspicious, so I left it where it was and went to help with any blood elf or Hole prisoners who remained defiant and just wouldn’t die.

  It turned out I didn’t need to worry: the fighting had already finished by the time I left the villa. Cerberus and a platoon of his people were mopping up the last of them. “Leave one alive,” I said to the nearest soldier, who was about to kill a kneeling elf.

  He looked at me as if I had lost my mind, but nodded and punched the elf in the face instead. To be fair, punching prisoners who want to eat your face isn’t very upsetting. It’s a bit like punching Nazis. I can’t bring myself to be bothered about it. They’re just inherently punchable.

  I continued on and found Selene, Sky, and Zamek talking to Cerberus and Hyperion.

  “They’re dead, aren’t they?” Hyperion asked.

  I nodded. “I’m sorry. Abaddon was here. She had some help from Atlas.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Sky said.

  “I knew Atlas was unstable, but I didn’t think he’d help murder his own people,” Hyperion said.

  “They vanished. I don’t know how. Oh, and someone wrote For Hellequin in blood on Cronus and Rhea’s bedroom door.”

  “They’re really doubling down on the ‘Hellequin is responsible for all of this,’” Selene said. “You okay?”

  I shook my head. “Not really. Cronus was crucified and Rhea beheaded. I think Abaddon was in there for a while before all the fighting started out here.”

  I saw Grayson coming toward us, and I ran over. “How’s Charon?”

  “He’ll be fine. I’ve left him with some of Cerberus’s people. I think it’s time we all had a chat.”

  We walked back over to the rest of the group.

  “Lucifer, is that you?” Hyperion asked. “It’s been a long time.”

  “Well, that deals with the ‘How do you tell everyone who I really am?’ part of the day,” Grayson said, and shook Hyperion’s hand. “It’s been a long time.”

  “I’m sorry, I feel like we’ve overlooked something,” Sky said. “He’s Lucifer? As in the devil? The opposite of God? You know, the whole Bible thing?”

  I stared at Grayson for several seconds. “Lucifer? You’re real?”

  “Let’s go somewhere a little less crowded, and I’ll explain,” Grayson promised.

  No one wanted to go into the villa, and as Hyperion already seemed to know that Grayson and Lucifer were one and the same, he went to deal with his friends’ bodies. It was a task I didn’t envy him for having.

  The rest of us walked into a small nearby house, which, apart from having the contents trashed, was devoid of anyone living or dead.

  “This was Atlas’s house,” Sky said, the anger radiating off her in waves. “Although now I guess it’s the house of a traitor.”

  I picked up a wooden chair and sat down in it, crossing my arms and waiting for Grayson to tell us whatever it was he was about to say.<
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  “I am Lucifer,” he started. “A few things. I’m not a suave, womanizing nightclub owner. I’m not evil. I’m not the Prince of Darkness. I have never met God, or an angel, or demons. I’ve never been to hell. I have no idea if heaven and hell are real. I am not the Prince of Lies. My last name isn’t Morningstar. I am not a dragon. I have not once accepted souls from someone at a crossroad in exchange for anything. Ever. I do not know anyone with the surname of Winchester. I am not the devil, or Crowley, or Satan, or any of the other dozen or so names that person possesses.”

  “Well, that summed up a lot of my questions,” Sky said. “And all sarcastic questions, too.”

  “So, what are you?” Selene asked.

  “Thousands of years before any of you were even born, when humanity was in its infancy, when warlords roamed this planet, and murder and destruction were all they cared about, there were those who wished only for conquest. These people would later become revered, worshipped by people who didn’t know better. The gods before even the Mesopotamians, Egyptians, or Titans were anything but the future. Those people created us.

  “Magic was dark and powerful back then. Sorcerers were rare, and many quickly discovered that blood magic was capable of feats of power that instilled fear in those who followed. I do not know whose idea it was to create me. I never met him.”

  “Why were you created?” I asked.

  “There were seven of us. Each one conceived and born during a blood-magic ritual. The sorcerers discovered that taking the blood of various species and performing the magic with it had certain effects on the conception and birth. I don’t know how many humans were used in these rituals. I know that those performing the rituals used as many different types of human as they could get hold of. They roamed the lands, looking for people to capture. I don’t know if they tried it with people who weren’t human, but I do know that the seven of us were born from different sets of human parents. Each of us gained some of the power from the ritual and the blood used, but it was power on a scale no one at the time could possibly imagine. I barely think anyone even now would be able to understand it.”

  “What happened to you after you were born?”

  “We were sent to another realm to train and become warriors, but something happened and it took us a millennium to get back. In the meantime we conquered our new home, honing skills and slaughtering our enemies by the thousands.

  “Eventually we managed to find a way back to the Earth realm, and by then people like Nergal, Cronus, and Ra had taken their seats of power. It would still be hundreds of years before the Olympians came to power, and thousands before Merlin and his Avalon. And we set about conquering this realm, like we had the last one. Unfortunately we didn’t expect the resistance we received, and we were defeated. The pantheons of the age decided to take each of us to use as a sort of deterrent. We agreed to pledge ourselves individually to that pantheon, and in exchange we’d live like the gods.”

  “It was an ancient cold war,” I said.

  Grayson nodded. “No one made a move against the others, because each group had one of us. There was a kind of stalemate until our leader organized a rebellion. His name is Asmodeus, and he was the first and strongest of us, thus we made him our king.”

  “What is he?” Selene asked.

  “A vampire. Possibly the first—we’re not sure. We assumed there were vampires before him, because the blood magic must have used them to create one, but we were never able to find information one way or the other. Anyway, that doesn’t matter. What matters is that he is a vampire in the same way that a space shuttle is a method of transport. He’s so much more powerful than you can possibly imagine. He’s essentially a sorcerer with the powers of a master vampire.”

  “What happened to him?” Zamek asked.

  “Asmodeus’s rebellion rose up and fought against the pantheons. They killed some, destroyed so much. Murdered so many that the streets of towns were slick with blood and death. The dwarves, elves, and pantheons of this world rose up to fight as one, and after much bloodshed, Asmodeus was driven into a realm. The gate was destroyed. Each devil who had taken part in the rebellion was sent through a different realm gate. Those who said no to his offer, who fought against Asmodeus, were spared under the promise we’d never contact the other devils again.”

  “How many were spared?” I asked.

  “Two. I was one, and Beelzebub was the other. She hated me for not joining Asmodeus and hated herself for not joining him. I figured out too late that she’d been working as his spy, sowing discord along our ranks. She vanished from this realm not long after.”

  “And you never saw any of your kin again?” I asked. “Is ‘kin’ the right word?”

  “We were not blood. Abaddon and Asmodeus were in a relationship for at least part of our lives together. They were a fearsome couple. If she’s come back, it’s either to bring Asmodeus with her, or because she knows where he is and wants to free him. Either of those options would result in the destruction of a large part of this world. Humanity has grown in numbers in the millennia since the last war, and even back then the casualties were high.

  “As for your other question, yes, I saw one of them. Our powers are linked, so the use of our powers in the Earth realm is like a shining beacon to the others. I’ve purposefully not used my power at anywhere near full capacity for thousands of years. I used a little bit here and there, only enough to help out at the time. If the others knew I was alive, knew I was here on the Earth realm . . . they might all try to find a way back. Even so, I spent a long time hopeful that none of them would ever make it back here. One did. Sathanus. He was an incubus. A cruel, vile man with a taste for inflicting pain on people and making them enjoy it.”

  “You killed him, didn’t you,” I said. It wasn’t a question.

  Grayson nodded. “I did. I killed him and burned his body until it was ash. I saw him before he saw me, and I watched him. It was a thousand years ago in Eastern Europe. He used his power with impunity, reveling in the chaos and pain he caused. Every time he used his power, it drew me to him, and I killed him before he ever knew I was there. I regret a lot of things in my life, but not killing Sathanus. He was one of those who truly deserved to die for his crimes. For the evil acts I knew he’d performed over his life. If there is a hell, I really do hope he’s burning in it.”

  “If you can tell when one of the devils is using their power, why couldn’t you sense that Abaddon was here?” Sky asked.

  “She’s blocking me somehow. I don’t know how.”

  “Dwarven runes,” I told everyone. “She used them in the house. She could use those to block her power from being detected.” A horrible thought came to my mind. “Or, like you, she hasn’t used her full power yet.”

  “That is possible. She is exceptionally powerful, and I cannot imagine that her power has diminished over the years.”

  “So, could she be behind the My Liege cabal?” Zamek asked.

  “That is also possible. I haven’t seen any of them for several thousand years, so yes, maybe. But she was never the type to hide in the shadows for long. She likes to show off too much. She likes people to be afraid of her. If she’s the one behind it all, I imagine she’ll make a very large move soon.”

  “And if Asmodeus is back?” I asked.

  “Then we will know soon. Asmodeus will lay waste to this realm in the pursuit of whatever he’s after. Humanity is nothing but a nuisance to him, and Avalon will be little more than something to crush. He’ll make it an example. Either way, they are not the kind of people who want to work for someone, not if previous experience is anything to go by. People do change, though, and it’s been a very long time since I last spoke to them.”

  “How likely is it that Abaddon is here to bring the rest of the devils alongside Asmodeus?”

  “Highly. There’s something else you should know. The method they used to give us our power was used by the Olympians and other pantheons. Together they used this method to cre
ate the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. They were created, at least in part, in case we ever resurfaced. A weapon to counteract us. But it’s said that the Horsemen were killed to stop their continued plague on humanity. They’d discovered their true origins and took it out on humanity, hoping to drag their creators into a war to stop them. They wanted to destroy humanity, make the world an example for their anger and hate.”

  “History repeating itself,” I said. “You remember what I told you back in Basingstoke? Erebus said I was created to be the same thing. I was born to be a weapon. Did you know that?”

  “Yes. But I only figured out after you told me about the dwarven realm and the vision of the pit of blood. I think they tried something new with you. Mordred, too. They tried to create you to be less unpredictable. I’m not sure it worked.”

  “So much has happened. I’d barely had time to sit and think about it, but we were experiments.”

  Selene reached out to hold my hand.

  “My mother said she loved me, but we were creations of people who wanted to play God.” I was sure I should have been furious at being conceived and born while a blood-magic ritual took place, but it just seemed like getting upset about it would achieve nothing. It happened, I couldn’t have stopped it, and without the power it gave me, I probably would have been killed a hundred times over throughout my life.

  “You okay?” Selene asked me.

  “Yeah, oddly enough, I am. I’m not sure how I’m meant to feel at being told that I was created to be a weapon for someone, but calm wasn’t what I’d expected. If my mother was a Valkyrie, does that mean my father was from the Norse pantheon, too?”

  Grayson shrugged. “The ritual they used to create me was called From Burning Blood.”

  “Catchy,” Zamek said.

  “It was called that because those humans who did not manage to conceive were set alight, and their throats slit to allow more blood to pool.”