by Steve McHugh
“It’s not exactly flowing water, but it’s better than nothing,” Diana told Mac before turning back to Mordred. “The others are mopping up. These were almost entirely humans. I recognized a few more of those escaped prisoners from The Hole. What the hell is going on here?”
“Where’s Alan?” Fiona asked after sprinting up to the group, with Remy and Morgan jogging behind her.
“Fiona,” Mordred began, but Fiona shoved him aside and ran into the prison building.
For several minutes they all stood outside and waited, until Fiona re-emerged and saw Mac slowly getting to his feet. Apart from the dried blood on his face, he appeared almost normal.
“Where’s Alan?” she snapped.
“He escaped a few hours ago,” Mac said, and picked up a handful of snow, rubbing it over his face.
“Escaped? What the fuck does that mean?” Fiona asked.
“Fiona,” Diana said softly.
“No,” Fiona snapped, raising her hand in Diana’s direction but not turning back to face her. “Where is my fucking husband, Mac?”
“I don’t know,” Mac said. “That’s why they’ve been kicking the shit out of me. We were the last two left alive and decided to make a break for it. He’d stolen a key a few days ago, and we used it to get out of the cells, but we got grabbed. I held them off while he ran. Like I told Mordred, I think he’ll have gone up to the mountain. It’s where Elaine is.”
Fiona looked around at everyone and nodded before walking off.
“Shit,” Remy said. “So, we’re not done here?”
“Since when have things ever been that easy?” Diana asked him. “Besides, I’d really like to find out exactly what is going on here.”
“I’ll come with you,” Wei said. “I’d like to find out the truth, too. Besides, I think you’re going to need all of the help you can get.”
“Me, too,” Mac said as he tried on the clothes of another dead guard. “I want some payback, and more than that, I just need to finish this mission. Elaine is up there. I was meant to help find her, and instead I got captured and tortured. I can’t go home without knowing I did everything possible to fix that.” He picked up an SG 553 and checked the ammo. “Silver rounds. They might have been human, but they were armed to kill us.”
“And what a wonderful job they did,” Morgan said.
Mordred heard the gunshot almost immediately after Morgan dropped to her knees. Mordred felt like he was moving in slow motion as he ran toward Morgan, who was already on her back, her face pained, her eyes registering the shock of the bullet that had struck her.
Mordred covered Morgan’s body with his own and created a shield of dense air, just as the second bullet struck it.
Diana was picking up Mac and running with him back into the prison building, where Remy and Fiona were already heading. Mordred picked up Morgan and with Wei’s help followed the others. They descended the steps, and Mac opened one of the doors with keys he’d found in a guard’s pocket.
“It’s where they brought us to help heal,” Mac said, helping Mordred place Morgan on a bed before using scissors to cut away her jacket, revealing the blood-soaked clothes beneath it. “Mordred, you need to step back. She’s been hit in the chest.”
Mordred placed his hands where the wound was, and his light magic ignited, but nothing happened.
“I don’t understand,” he said, feeling completely helpless.
“We’ll figure it out, but I need to examine her first,” Mac said.
“Save her,” Mordred said, walking to the door.
“Where are you going?” Fiona asked.
“I’m going to find who did this and make them understand their mistake.” He turned back toward her, and she almost recoiled.
“Your eyes,” Diana said. “It’s like Nate.”
Mordred turned away.
“I’ll join you,” Wei said. “I know the forest around here.”
Mordred nodded and left the room. He didn’t care who joined him in his hunt, so long as they didn’t get in the way. He wasn’t good at waiting around and watching people die; he needed to be doing something. And that something meant spilling the blood of those involved. No matter how much he’d changed over the years, that was something that had remained inside of him.
“Mordred, wait,” Diana called as he walked down the corridor toward the stairs.
Mordred paused. “Don’t try to stop me.”
“I’m not. I’m trying to tell you there was no scent from the forest above. If I’d have smelled something, no one would have gotten close enough to fire. So, they were either too far away for me to get a scent, which makes it an exceptionally good shot, or . . .”
“Or what?” Wei asked.
“Or, do you remember that Nate said something about a sniper killing people and leaving no scent behind?” Diana said. “A witch. The same witch Nate and Tommy said was working with Mara Range, you remember her?”
“The woman who made the tablet that let us into the dwarf realm, I remember,” Mordred said. “You think the witches are here? That they’re helping to keep Elaine prisoner?”
“Mara Range has more than a few links to Hera. And whoever took Elaine had to have a lot of power.”
“No witch has that kind of power.”
Diana nodded. “But Hera does.”
“I don’t care who’s up there right now, Diana. I’m going to find who shot Morgan. If I have to go through Hera to get to them, so be it.” He began to ascend the stairs again.
“Don’t do anything to get yourself killed,” Diana called after him as he continued to climb the stairs without listening to her. “Damn you, Mordred.”
Mordred waited at the entrance to the prison. He was grateful that his magic returned to him halfway up the staircase. He poured air magic out of the prison, manipulating it to go up above the building toward the edge of the cliff, but it was too far and there was no way he could use his magic to reach where Diana had suspected the shot had come from.
“Let me,” Wei said. She moved her hand, and a nine-tailed fox appeared on the ground just outside the prison. It ran over to where Morgan had been shot and then sprinted across the clearing to a building on the other side, close to where the path up the cliff face started.
Mordred wrapped himself in dense air and stepped outside. If the shooter had used a silver bullet, his magic wouldn’t have stopped the second shot from hitting earlier. That meant the bullet that had hit Morgan might also have not been silver, which meant despite how bad the wound might be, and how much blood she’d lost, she had a good chance of making it. Mordred pushed the thoughts of Morgan’s survival aside and had made it two paces when he extended the shield and looked up at the cliff face.
“They’ve gone,” Wei said. “If Diana is correct, how do we hunt someone who leaves no scent?”
“I have no idea,” Mordred admitted. He sprinted across the clearing toward the cliff, putting his back against the jagged rocks that made up its face. The run up the pathway was done as quickly as Mordred was able, using his air magic to increase his speed as much as he could as Wei kept up with seemingly little effort.
They reached the top of the cliff, and Wei sniffed the air. “They fired from over there,” she said, pointing to a group of rocks a few feet back from the cliff edge.
Mordred walked over and searched the ground by the rocks. He picked up a shell casing and was looking at it when Wei knocked it out of his hand.
“Venom,” she said by way of explanation.
“Any idea what kind?”
She licked the shell casing. “Gargoyle. I’m sorry.”
Gargoyle venom was exceptionally potent and quick acting, but more than that it had an awful tendency to bypass any magic that might allow someone to heal. “Gargoyles are rare,” Mordred said. “Most sorcerers aren’t stupid enough to want to become one. Hell, not even I was that far gone.”
“I never understood the appeal,” Wei admitted. “Allowing your magic free rein to ch
ange your body, allowing blood-magic curses to tear you apart and put you back together in a new form. It’s an act of someone as depraved as I could possibly imagine.”
“I’ve met two gargoyles in my life. Killed one, Nate killed the other. Both deserved to die. If there’s a gargoyle here, we need to kill it, and kill it quickly.”
“First we need to find the shooter.” Wei set off into the forest, with Mordred close behind.
CHAPTER 22
Mordred
Mordred and Wei had gone several hundred meters when Mordred thought he saw a shimmer of something up ahead. He immediately put up a shield of dense air and moved aside as a bullet tore into the tree beside him, causing it to rip apart as if it were paper.
Mordred kept running, changing direction and throwing the occasional blade of ice at where he thought the sniper would be hiding. Two more bullets hit trees close to where Mordred ran past, and a third struck a stone, showering tiny spikes of sharp rock across Mordred’s side and arm, cutting open his hand. He dove for cover to take a look at his hand, which had a three-inch shard of rock protruding from it. He removed the shard and placed one hand over the other, using his light magic to heal the wound. In seconds it was as if nothing had ever happened, although the memory of the pain still lingered.
Mordred concentrated, allowing his mind magic to activate. While what he’d told Fiona was true—he couldn’t use his mind magic except in defense—he could use it to see how many living people there were close by. It would only work over a few dozen feet, and he was forced to sit and concentrate, but it wasn’t like he could go anywhere while someone with a rifle was firing shots at him. It took a few seconds, but when he opened his eyes he could feel two people close by. One was Wei—that much was clear—but the other was a young woman he’d never met before. She was twenty feet to the left, trying to flank his position.
He waited until the last second before throwing a blast of water in the direction he knew she’d be. There was a scream of shock and pain, followed by a gunshot and then nothing. As he stood Mordred froze the water in place around a large tree. He walked over and picked up the rifle from the ground. It was the same make as the ones the humans had been using in the village.
Mordred moved the ice aside, revealing a young woman wearing a black balaclava and combat fatigues. “You feel like telling me your name?” Mordred asked.
“Emily Rowe,” she said.
“You’re English.”
“Yes. I’m a witch. I live in England.”
“You shot my friend.”
“I’d have shot you, too, given the chance.”
“Are you the same woman that Diana said knows Nate?”
At the mention of Nate’s name, there was a tiny amount of recognition and some fear. “You’re afraid of him?” Mordred asked.
“I’ve met him, so yes. He is incredibly powerful, and the last time we met he told me he’d kill me should our paths cross again.”
“My name is Mordred. Have you heard of me?”
“Yes, everyone has. I was told to kill you and your friends. You aren’t the scary person you used to be. Shame, I’d have liked to have met the old you.”
Mordred laughed, although there was no humor in it. “No, you really wouldn’t have. How’d you keep your scent masked?”
“Witch magic.”
Mordred grabbed her arm and pulled up the sleeve, revealing the dozens of small tattoos that were there. “That’s a lot of power for a witch. Trying to get yourself killed?”
“That’s what sorcerers always say to a witch trying to unlock their potential. The more magic we use, the quicker we die.”
“You don’t believe it?”
“I’m not dead yet.”
“An antidote for the venom. Now.”
“I’ve got a better idea.”
Mordred saw the shadow cast over him a second before he flung himself aside, dropping the SG 553 and narrowly avoiding the descending gargoyle. The creature stood to its full seven-foot height and stretched out its enormous wingspan. Its body was covered in gray armored stone plates, and it had a foot-long horn growing out of each temple. A long red tongue flicked out of its stony mouth. Venom dripped from its claws onto the soft snow.
“I think you have bigger problems,” Emily said with a chuckle as Mordred took off at a full sprint into the forest. Gargoyles weren’t great at flying, but they could move in a straight line with incredible speed, and Mordred wanted to put some trees between the two of them.
A fox ran into Mordred’s path, turning into Wei a second later. “You get to kill another gargoyle,” she said.
“You feel like helping?” Mordred asked, looking back at where Emily was and finding both her and the gargoyle gone.
“I can’t puncture the stone plates. I can, however, keep Emily occupied. I promise I won’t kill her, but I’ll keep her and her rifle busy until you can join us. I assume you have questions.”
“We need an antidote.”
“And you think she has one?”
“I’m just hoping more than anything. It’s that or make one from the venom of the gargoyle.”
“There’s another way,” she said, but a rifle round smashed into a nearby tree, forcing Mordred and Wei to cut short their conversation. Wei turned back into a fox and bounded off into the forest, vanishing from view.
The gargoyle roared and began to tear its way toward Mordred, who tried to remember how he’d managed to kill the last gargoyle he’d met. Luck, and a lot of cheating. He remembered Nate telling him about how he’d turned the air so cold that the plates on the gargoyle’s chest had moved just enough for him to get to the flesh beneath.
He watched the gargoyle crash through the forest toward him, tearing apart trees, which Mordred decided was more about instilling fear than anything else.
Mordred started to hum the battle tune to Final Fantasy IX and readied two blades of ice in preparation for what was coming.
“You can’t hide from me!” the gargoyle shouted. “No one can hide from me.”
Wei stepped out from behind a tree, as if appearing from nowhere, directly between Mordred and the gargoyle.
“Where’s Emily?” Mordred whispered.
“Busy hiding from me,” Wei said. “I gave her a nice bit of poison to slow her down. She didn’t have an antidote, by the way. I checked. She’ll be preoccupied for a while as she tries not to throw up her lungs. “
“Classy.”
The gargoyle laughed. “You’re going to stop me?” he asked Wei.
Wei took a step forward and then vanished from view, leaving a trail of mist where she’d once stood.
The gargoyle looked around, trying to find her, until he’d turned in a complete circle and was staring at Mordred again. He looked confused.
Wei reappeared next to Mordred. “He’s forgotten I was there,” she said. “It’s easier to do with simple people.”
She sprinted toward the gargoyle and vanished again just before reaching him, causing the gargoyle to roar out in anger for a second before once again appearing to be incredibly confused.
“That has got to be winding you up,” Mordred said, and his thoughts immediately went back to Morgan, who was dying not too far away. He blasted the gargoyle in the chest with ice, taking the large creature off its feet and smashing it through several trees.
“You want to hear my plan?” Wei asked as Mordred walked toward the gargoyle, who was pinned to the side of a tree with thick ice.
“Morgan needs help,” Mordred said. “What’s your plan?”
“My blood can be used to poison people,” she said. “But if I’m infected with poison or venom, I can also use it to create an antidote.”
“Which means you need the gargoyle’s venom inside of you.”
Wei nodded. “I’d rather not be sliced to ribbons by those claws, though, and Morgan doesn’t have long enough to wait while we kill it.”
The sound of shattering ice filled the air, followed quickly by a roa
r of anger as the gargoyle freed itself, dropping to the ground. It charged forward without a word, forcing Wei to vanish once again while Mordred threw himself aside, using his air magic to propel him further than his own strength would have managed. He threw a ball of light into the gargoyle’s eyes, blinding it enough to send it careening into a huge, ancient tree, knocking it slightly askew. The gargoyle tore into the tree, cutting through it with ease, until he could smash it down onto the ground where Mordred had been.
Mordred wrapped air around the legs of the gargoyle and pulled, tripping the beast and forcing it headfirst into the tree trunk. The gargoyle roared in anger once again and leapt toward Mordred, who blasted it with jets of ice, freezing it in place. He continued to pile on the pressure as Wei reappeared next to the gargoyle.
“Leave one claw free,” she called over to Mordred.
“Just do it so I can kill it already,” he said.
Wei took hold of one finger of the gargoyle, the claw popping out into her palm. She yelled and stepped back as the ice began to crack once again.
“Go,” Mordred said. “I’ve got this.”
Wei nodded and turned into a fox, sprinting off through the forest to hopefully save Morgan’s life. The brief lapse in concentration was all the gargoyle needed to tear his way out of the ice and move toward Mordred at frightening speed. He picked Mordred up in one hand, throwing him back into a nearby tree. Mordred’s shield of air saved him from serious injury, but even then the wind was knocked out of him, and he fell awkwardly to the ground.
The gargoyle was upon him in seconds, forcing Mordred to block the attacks lest he be infected with the same venom that was killing his friend. His mind was on Morgan, not on the fight at hand, and that would get him killed.
Mordred blocked a swipe of the gargoyle’s claws and blasted him in the chest with blinding light, allowing Mordred to escape and put some distance between the two of them. Whoever the sorcerer had been before turning into a gargoyle, he’d been incredibly powerful. Much more so than the gargoyle who Mordred had fought all those centuries ago.
“You’re like a rat,” the gargoyle bellowed. “I’m going to enjoy crushing the life out of you.”
