CHAPTER 14
Nate Garrett
I heard the bellows of the prisoner well before I ever got close to the beach, which was where he was being held. The cries of “Shadow Falls” appeared to be part anger and part frustration. Like the previous attacker, this one probably hadn’t agreed to have his brain partially destroyed.
The prisoner was a slight man with a balding hairline and a mustache that had probably been in fashion in the 1970s. At some point his leather armor had been partially removed, and his shirt had been torn open, revealing several dark blood-curse marks on his chest. He screamed at a nearby griffin and received a punch in the mouth for his trouble, a blow that knocked out several of the man’s teeth and caused him to spit blood all over the golden sands.
Cerberus stepped up to the griffin, who bowed her head slightly and stepped back.
“That is one angry female,” Sky said as the griffin walked away.
“How can you tell?” Zamek asked.
“Females have red feathers on the tops of their skull. It’s the only way I’ve ever been able to tell the difference.”
“And no penis,” Sky said. “But you have to get a bit closer to find that one out.”
I turned to Sky, who smiled.
“Shadow Falls,” the prisoner said to me.
“Agreed,” I replied. It was not the time for jokes, but Sky always knew how to make me chuckle.
“Shadow Falls,” the man said again, clawing at the sand.
“You’re not grasping this, but you can’t say anything other than ‘Shadow Falls.’ Your brain is fried. You were a prisoner of The Hole, you were freed, and then you went to work for someone who fucked your head up. Sound about right? Just nod or shake your head.”
The man nodded.
“Abaddon, yes?”
He shook his head.
“Glad to hear she can’t screw around with people who are alive. So, was it another woman who did this?”
A shake of the head.
“A man?”
A nod.
“That doesn’t exactly narrow it down,” Selene said.
I crouched beside the prisoner. “I have some news for you. Firstly, you’re going to die in a few minutes. Not just because whatever they did to your brain is going to kill you, but also because you either die by my hand, or the griffins will kill you.”
“Do you know how griffins deal with people like you?” Selene asked.
The man shook his head, his expression suggesting he was terrified about what was happening.
“They crucify them on a hill overlooking the lake. That’s if they don’t tear you into tiny pieces, slowly, while you beg for mercy, which you can’t do because your brain no longer works.”
The man looked at me, and I nodded to confirm she was telling the truth. “I have one last question. Did you know what you were signing up for? Did you know you were going to come here and kill people?”
He nodded.
“Did you know that you were going to come here to kill Cronus and Rhea?”
He shook his head, looked around, and went to pick up a dagger. I raised my hand to stop the griffin nearby from killing him. He placed the tip of the dagger in the sand and began writing, becoming more and more frustrated with himself when he wrote the word shadow and seemingly couldn’t stop until he’d written falls.
“We’re going to get nothing out of him,” I said, standing. “I’d like to say I feel sorry for you, but I don’t. Like all of your kind, you came here to murder.”
One of the griffins took a step toward the prisoner, who sprang to his feet and sprinted into the lake. He continued wading deeper and deeper, until he was up to his waist before he dove in, resurfacing a dozen feet further up the shore. He looked back at me and cupped his hands in the water, taking a long drink. He did the same a second and third time, before he visibly aged in front of us.
“The water won’t kill him,” Cerberus said. “Just age him. He’s only prolonging it.”
“His armor,” I said. “It’s from Shadow Falls. It’s identical to what the guards there wear.”
“I noticed,” Selene said. “That’s not great news.”
The female griffin who had stepped back earlier tested the weight of her spear and then launched it toward the prisoner. It caught him in the chest, flinging him back into the lake with a huge splash. She flicked her wings, taking off from the beach, and used the massive claws on her feet to grab hold of the prisoner, picking him up from the water and dropping him back onto the beach. No one moved toward the prisoner as she reclaimed her spear, turned, and walked away without a word.
“He deserved that,” Zamek said. “The griffins don’t mess about, do they?”
I didn’t think a reply was particularly necessary. “We need to go back to the Earth realm. We need to figure out how Abaddon and these attackers got here, and we need to go to Shadow Falls.”
“You’re not seriously entertaining the idea that Galahad is behind all of this?” Cerberus asked. “We’ve had our issues over the years, but he’s not the type.”
“He did once get you to kill people for him by lying to you,” Sky reminded me. “He’s not always been the trustful, honest guy people seem to think he is.”
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 tablet 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 some 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.”
“Just play it,” I said.
The Hellequin character that came on screen sat in the same pose as before and appeared to be the same person. It was hard to tell with the mask and lack of lighting, but he spoke with the same voice as before. “We are the people who will put humanity in its place. We will take this world and make it better, make it in our own image, and all who stand in our way will be killed. To those of you who want to rise up, or disbelieve what we’re saying, you’ll soon see just how much power we have. Human, Avalon, or other, I no longer care. If you stand against us, you are our enemy, and you will be destroyed. My name is Hellequin, and we are Shadow Falls.” He gestured behind him, and several people appeared, all wearing dark clothes with similarly styled masks: black with a white pattern of some kind.
The video stopped, and I realized I’d been holding my breath. “The prisoner said Shadow Falls. Arthur wanted me to check on Shadow Falls, and now everyone who watched that is going to think any rumors they might have heard are correct. This is bad. This is really bad.”
“We need to get to Galahad,” Selene said.
“We need to contact Olivia and find out if she can head this off in Camelot before Arthur decides to declare war on the people living in Shadow Falls,” Lucifer said.
I stared at the screen, where a man using my name just threatened people I cared about, and felt the rage and hate course through me. I pushed it aside and picked up a phone that was on a nearby desk, then asked the man on the other end to patch me through to Olivia’s number, before placing it on loudspeaker when she answered.
“Olivia, this fake Hellequin has declared war,” Selene said. “Can you head this off at your end?”
“I’ll do what I can,” Olivia said. “Won’t be easy, though. I’m starting to hear whispers of people who want to go to Shadow Falls and take it by force. At best, I might be able to convince Arthur to go alone, or give you a few days.”
“With no concrete proof they were involved?” Zamek asked.
“Some people have been wanting to annex Shadow Falls for centuries. They just needed a reason to try.”
“Anything you can do is good,” I said. “Also, we think Mara is out of prison.”
“I’ll look into it,” Olivia said. “Sounds like I’m being kept out of the loop on a few things. I’ll call back soon.”
She hung up, and we all waited while a jet was readied to take us to America. Before we were due to board twenty minutes later, Olivia called back. I answered and put it on speaker.
“I managed to get you two days,” Olivia said. “I pulled a few favors with people who have Arthur’s ear. And Arthur agreed to go to Shadow Falls with only a small contingent of bodyguards. That’s the best I can do. Forty-eight hours, Nate—that’s all we’ve got to figure out this Hellequin’s true identity. After that Arthur is going to turn up, and when Galahad doesn’t play ball, he’s going to declare war on Shadow Falls and we won’t be able to stop it. You know Galahad isn’t going to just stand down and let Avalon troops into Shadow Falls. The east coast of North America is going to become a war zone.
“On top of that, Hera has walked away from Avalon and locked down London. The human news is calling it a terror drill and a high likelihood of an attack. She’s sorting out her defenses for what’s coming. Oh, and Mara had been transferred to The Hole about six weeks ago. I, of course, was kept out of the loop.”
“Who ordered the transfer?” I asked.
“Merlin.”
“Shit,” I said.
“Hera won’t be the first to leave and show their true allegiance,” Selene said with more than a little anger.
“Oh shit,” Olivia said after several seconds of silence. “Oh, no, no, no, no.”
“What’s happening?” Selene asked.
“Olivia?” Lucifer said after waiting a short time.
“There’s been another attack,” Olivia said. “We don’t know all of the details yet, but it looks like multiple magical detonations in North Carolina.” She paused. “Nate, whatever you have to do, get it done soon. A lot more people are about to become casualties.”
“Keep us informed,” I told her, and hung up. “I know we don’t number a lot, but we have to stop this. Or at least stop Arthur from making a huge mistake.”
“What if these people are a part of Shadow Falls?” Lucifer asked. “What if Shadow Falls is about to have its own revolt?”
“Let’s go ask.” I turned to Sky. “We’re going to need some things, if that’s okay?”
“The jet is almost ready, but I’ll speak to Cerberus. I’m coming with you. Galahad is going to need as many people as possible to convince him not to start a war he can’t win.”