by Steve McHugh
She had a point. “I know, but I still can’t believe that Galahad would be behind everything that’s happening. It just doesn’t seem like his style. And he would have to know that using my name as the person in charge of it all would just make it personal between us. The last time I saw him we left as friends. I’d like to believe that’s still the case. Even so, Arthur asked me to go see Galahad because of rumors about some kind of Shadow Falls attack. I still don’t think they’re involved, and this cabal has used the name of an innocent person to get what they want, but we still need to see Galahad.”
“We’ll know soon enough,” Selene said.
“I’ll join you, if I may?” Lucifer asked. “Abaddon’s involvement makes it necessary.”
“Speaking of which, where’s Hyperion? We came here to talk to him about Abaddon.”
“He’s in the villa,” Selene said. “I’d tread carefully with him. I don’t think he’s in the best of mental places at the moment.”
I promised not to piss off the exceptionally powerful dragon-kin and made my way back to the villa, walking past several groups of griffins and Cerberus’s people, who were still helping tend to the injured or deal with the dead. I got the feeling that Tartarus was going to feel the blow of this attack for a lot longer than it took for the physical injuries to heal.
I found Hyperion in the same place where Cronus had been crucified, although the old Titan’s body had been removed. Hyperion stood before the wall where his friend had died and stared at it. I waited at the doorway, unsure of the best approach. We hadn’t exactly had the best of relationships, especially when I’d believed that he’d been the one behind Selene’s marriage to Ares’s son, Deimos, a man for whom the phrase “creepy little bag of dicks” was probably invented.
“I did not think he could be killed,” Hyperion said without turning toward me. “Rhea, either, for that matter. I thought they would be as close to immortal as possible. I think for the first time ever, I wish I were human. I’m not sure I want to live another thousand years without Cronus and Rhea.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“You fought Cronus. He was genuinely shocked at how close you came to defeating him. Even in his weakened state, he said that you were a worthy foe. Do you think you can kill Abaddon?”
There was no point in being anything but 100 percent honest. “I have no idea.”
Hyperion turned toward me, his eyes filled with tears that slowly cascaded down his face. He made no move to wipe them aside; he’d long since stopped caring about what anyone else might think of his show of sorrow. “I think that’s the right answer. You’re . . . courting, is that the right word? Courting my daughter, Selene?”
The rapid change of conversation threw me a little. “We’re in a relationship again, yes.”
“Do you love her?”
I nodded.
“I know she loves you, but I also know that Helios is involved in what’s happening here. You fought him, didn’t you? You’re going to have to kill him if you have any hope of stopping him.”
“I know.”
“Are you prepared to be the murderer of my son, and Selene’s brother?”
“I’m prepared to stop Helios from murdering more innocent people. If I have to take his life to do it, I will. I left him alive in the past because I love Selene and I wanted to give Helios a chance to consider his actions. That punishment, that incarceration, made him worse, not better. He tried to kill a friend of mine. He tried to, at the very least, incapacitate Selene. He came here to help Abaddon, and he’ll come for me again, sooner or later, and then he’ll die. I’m done giving him chances.”
“And Atlas?”
“We were going to have to fight sooner or later.”
“Your list of enemies grows larger by the day, it seems.”
“Hera and her people, Helios, Baldr, Siris, Abaddon, Atlas, probably a few other people I’ve forgotten about. Yeah, I like to collect them. Everyone needs a hobby.”
“And you believe you can beat them all?”
I shook my head. “Not even slightly. Doesn’t mean I’m not going to fuck their day up by trying, though.”
Hyperion laughed. “You sound like Zeus. He had a habit of enjoying the misery he caused his enemies. I guess Cronus and Rhea will never get the justice they wanted for his death. And yes, Zeus is dead—we all know it, so don’t try to convince me otherwise.”
“I had no intention of doing that. No one really knows what happened to him. Except Hera, and she’s not exactly forthcoming about whatever awful stuff she decided to do.”
“Why did you come here? To Tartarus? You couldn’t have known about the attack. Not even Sky and her people knew.”
“We found someone who had Abaddon’s handiwork on them and thought it would be best to talk to the people who last dealt with her. I can’t say it turned out well, but had we not come here, it might have been worse.”
“Abaddon was someone who worked with the Titans. I knew her very well, possibly better than Lucifer himself, considering how long they were apart. She was part of our ranks for a thousand years at least, which made her betrayal to start a rebellion with Asmodeus all the more galling. Even worse was how soon after we defeated them, Zeus was born. And then when he was powerful enough to overthrow his father, he did. We made a lot of mistakes back then, mistakes that cost lives, which separated families. But the biggest was leaving Abaddon alive. We should never have taken in any of the devils. We should have just executed them all and been done with it. But we were younger, stupider, and the possibility of controlling that much power was hard for many to resist.”
“Can she be killed?”
“Anything and anyone can be killed, but in Abaddon’s case, I couldn’t imagine how much power someone would have to wield to be able to do it. I’m not sure if Cronus and Rhea would have been able to defeat her with anything less than their full strength. And Asmodeus is considerably worse.”
“That’s what Lucifer said.”
“Asmodeus is the closest thing I’ve ever met to an actual godlike being. He was placed with the Norse pantheon, and they used to burn through specially created sorcerer’s bands. His power was just too difficult to contain. He needs blood to continue using it, though—that’s his only downfall. Like all vampires, he has to feed to maintain power. And he feeds a lot.”
“I’m going to do everything in my power to stop these people.”
“And it won’t be enough.” Hyperion sighed. “I’ll help deal with what happened here, and then I’ll come help. Hades told me I can leave whenever I like, but my power will take too long to charge for it to be anywhere near a level that would be considered useful. Selene tells me that they’re attacking humans in the Earth realm? That this cabal has finally shown itself, and they used your name to do it.”
“That about sums it up, yes.”
“Don’t be drawn into a battle you can’t win. Whoever is behind all of this is powerful enough to appeal to Abaddon for help. And it’s not Asmodeus—he’s not the shy type. It’s someone who doesn’t want to be known until they’re ready. Until it has the most impact on whatever long-term game they’re playing.”
“This game has gone on long enough already. At least since they corrupted Mordred, and I presume even longer than that. I don’t know why they finally decided to strike now, though.”
“Abaddon has been trapped in another realm for thousands of years. My guess is her emergence from that realm has allowed these people to finally put their plan into action.”
It made sense: you wait until most of your heavy hitters are in the same place before you destroy your enemies. “Baldr,” I said aloud as my mind began to race.
“Baldr is not the leading type.”
“No, Baldr and the blood elves were trapped in the dwarven realm. And Abaddon was trapped in some other realm. Now Abaddon is here, and she’s brought blood elves. She can seemingly jump between realms with some sort of portable version of the old realm gate t
ablet we found.” I walked toward the room where Rhea had been murdered, and Hyperion stepped in my way.
“No,” he said.
“I need to look in the room.”
“I won’t have her property be thrown around while you search for something that may or may not be helpful.” Hyperion didn’t make it sound like he was going to leave me a lot of choice.
I really didn’t want to get into a fight. “Look, when Abaddon left the room, she threw a bangle or something like it back inside. She put one on her wrist when she left the realm with Atlas, too. I need to find that bracelet. It’s important.”
“Rhea died in there, and you want to start rummaging around, desecrating her home even more than has already been done. What if it’s nothing? What if it was just a piece of junk?”
“Then it’ll have been eliminated as important.”
“I couldn’t save them,” he almost shouted. “They were my friends, and they died because I wasn’t here.”
“And if you don’t let me in there, a lot more could die.”
Hyperion reacted as if he’d been slapped. He shoved me. “You dare lecture me about the consequences of my actions. I was ruling the piece-of-shit realm you call home before your parents gave even a second of thought to you.”
“Move, or be moved. No more playing, Hyperion.”
He took a step forward, and shadows tore out of the ground, wrapping themselves around him and dragging him to the floor. “I don’t want to put you in my shadow realm,” I said softly. “But if you push this, I will hurt you.”
“You’ll try,” he said, changing into his golden dragon-kin form, and opening his mouth, burning away my shadows with molten flame, causing feedback that made me yell out in pain.
“Didn’t know the shadows could hurt you, did you?”
Before Helios had managed to do the same thing earlier, I hadn’t thought they could, no.
He stood to his full height and unfurled his massive wings, knocking over a vase beside him that crashed to the floor, scattering remains all around. He turned and looked at the vase, the anger on his face softening, and the dragon-kin form melted away, leaving only the man.
“I’m sorry,” I said as Hyperion dropped to his knees and wept for his fallen friends.
“Do what you need to,” he said to me without looking up.
I left him to his sorrow and walked into the bedroom where Rhea had been murdered. Her body had been removed already, but the blood remained, and nothing else appeared to have been touched. I moved several piles of belongings that had been discarded during the fight but found nothing. I used my air magic to push the bed several inches and spotted what I was looking for on the floor beside a bloodstained dagger.
I picked up the dagger and placed it on the bed. I didn’t know whose blood it was, but Abaddon had been given a deep wound from what I’d seen, so it might have been hers. I picked up the copper bracelet and found it to be devoid of anything even close to a mark. There were several indentations on the top of the bracelet, but other than that it was completely smooth.
I left the room and found Hyperion sitting on one of the sofas, waiting for me. “I need to apologize. I’m sorry. I allowed my grief to override common sense.”
“We’ve all done it,” I told him. “And I found this.” I passed the bracelet to him.
Hyperion turned the bracelet over in his hands. “It’s just a copper bracelet. Nothing interesting. Not even a clasp. It looks like it’s based on some old Roman design, maybe Greek.” He looked up at me. “That’s probably not important, though. I’m sort of grasping for straws.”
“Abaddon threw it back into the room, and she put on another bracelet like this one before she vanished with Atlas.” I remembered Zamek’s words. “The runes vanish after being used.”
“So, Abaddon has someone making these?”
“Yeah, but they probably take time to make—it’s not a quick thing. I don’t think they’ll be bouncing around the realms or anything, but it depends on how long they’ve been stocking them. And how quickly they can be made. Both Abaddon and Atlas had to touch their bracelet to activate it. And if they’d been able to take more than just themselves, Abaddon wouldn’t have needed to bring Atlas his own bracelet.”
“We found bracelets on the other bodies. Only plain ones like that, though. So, everyone was given their own bracelet, but only one because they weren’t meant to go back.”
“That’s what Lucifer and Zamek are confirming, but I don’t think anyone who was left here was meant to survive the trip, though. They’d have had a return-home bracelet if they were.”
“The attackers appeared from just outside of town.”
“Where?”
“To the north, about a mile from here, closer to where Cronus dug his escape route the last time you were here. It’s a massive field, big enough to house thousands of people. Hundreds of thousands. It’s good that they didn’t bring enough people to fit there.”
“The tunnel was flooded and destroyed, though, yes?”
Hyperion nodded.
“I need to go back to the Earth realm. Hopefully we can figure out where Abaddon is by tracking the carnage she’s liable to have caused. Can you search the area and report anything you find?”
“I’ll get word to Hades or Sky if we discover anything, but I’ve never heard of so many people being transported through realms without a realm gate. If those bracelets are responsible, they could come back or go anywhere at any time.”
“I never thought one of the seven devils was a friend of mine, or that I’d discover what happened to the dwarves. Life seems to be full of surprises these days. Besides, if they can jump from realm to realm as they wish, why aren’t there a lot more blood elves, and where’s Baldr?” I moved toward the nearby doorway.
“Nate,” Hyperion called after me, making me pause and turn back. “Kill them. All of them. I don’t care how, I don’t care what you have to do to achieve it, but they all need to die for what they’ve done.”
I left the room without a word and found Zamek running through the villa toward me. “Came to find you,” he said. “The griffins said that we need to go back through the realm gate. Apparently it got worse while we were in here.”
“Of course it did,” I said, and passed him the bracelet. “This is how Abaddon got in here. I think you were right. The runes allowing her to travel through realms vanished after it was used.”
Zamek turned it over in his hands, removing an identical one from his pocket and showing it to me. “Lucifer and I heard that these people had come from outside of town, so we went to take a look. There’s a huge field there, and lots of these discarded across it. They’ve been made hastily. It’s not exactly high craftsmanship. Monsters.”
“Zamek, I’m not sure if this is the right time to be correcting their craftsmanship.”
“Oh, right, force of habit. I think these were definitely used to bring the attackers here. You’d still need someone to get the words and runes right, though.”
“Which means they got someone to learn how to do this from scratch.”
“Which, considering how difficult it is, is not what I’d go with.”
“Or they broke Mara out of prison, and Selene’s earlier thoughts about her involvement are right.”
“That’s the easier of the two options.”
“And it gives us another problem to deal with.”
We both left the villa and jogged down the steps to several waiting griffins, Selene, Sky, Cerberus, and Lucifer. “So, how are we going to do this?” I asked, and then recognized Lorin, the griffin who had been guarding the realm gate when I’d last been to Tartarus. “Lorin, good to see you.”
Lorin bowed his head slightly, the white feathers on his neck ruffling, which he quickly smoothed down with one taloned hand. “You, too, Nate. I wish we didn’t always meet after something awful happened.”
“When this is done, I’ll come back and you can show me your realm without fear of som
e impending war.”
Lorin laughed. It’s a weird sound when a griffin does it. “That would be pleasant. As to your question, we’re going to fly you over. It’s quicker than a boat.”
“You can do that?” I asked. “I always assumed you weren’t able to.”
“We can. We just don’t like to. It’s exhausting to carry someone that length, but on this occasion, we’ll make an exception.”
“And Charon?”
“Recovering. Angry. Belligerent. Not necessarily in that order.”
The journey took less than half the time it would have by boat, but I spent most of it with hands firmly grasped around Lorin’s legs. Being picked up by huge talons that could crush me or slice me into much smaller pieces and then flying high above water that could also put me close to death wasn’t an experience I was comfortable with. When we finally touched down, I had an overwhelming urge to kiss the ground and tell it I was never leaving it again, but everyone else appeared to be okay, so I didn’t want to make a scene.
“Best of luck in your hunt,” Lorin said.
“Take care,” I told him, and joined the others walking through the realm gate.
“I did not enjoy that,” Zamek told me once we stepped back into the realm-gate room inside the Wolf’s Head compound. “Dwarves were not made for flying in such a manner. I’m going to take a seat for a minute.”
I pointed him toward one of the guards, who helped him walk to a seat. When Zamek didn’t refuse help to walk, I knew he wasn’t feeling good.
“Nate,” Sky called. She’d been talking to one of the guards inside the control room.
“Zamek isn’t feeling great,” I explained. “What happened while we were gone?”
“You’re going to need to come with us to the office next door,” the female guard said.
We did as we were asked, and I requested that the guard tell Zamek where we were once she’d left us alone with a TV.
“It’s the guy calling himself Hellequin again, isn’t it?” I asked.
Sky nodded. “Apparently so.” She switched on the TV. “This was thirty-seven minutes ago and appeared on every TV channel operating worldwide. Whoever these people are, they have some serious backing to do that.”
