CHAPTER 21
Mordred
Shouts and screams filled the air as Mordred’s friends descended on the unaware guards. It didn’t take long for the guards in front of the prison building to charge off, leaving only one concerned-looking guard to protect the entrance. These weren’t Avalon agents, and they certainly weren’t blood elves. Mordred would have guessed they were human mercenaries, hired to keep people in one place. But that left the uneasy question of the location of those who took Elaine and the others. There was zero chance that any of them were going to be taken out by a group of human thugs, no matter how nice their guns were.
Mordred looked up at the cliff behind the prison building. The dense forest covered a large part of it, and the mountains could clearly be seen behind it. A winding path had been carved into the cliff. It sat behind the prison building, and Mordred figured it for the best place to take the prisoners in their attempt to escape the village. Certainly better than running back through the firefight going on behind him.
He removed his pistol and fired two rounds into the guard’s head, killing him, the gunfire muffled by Mordred’s air magic. After searching his immediate surroundings and finding no guards, he ran over to the prison door and tried the handle, finding it locked. He searched the dead guard at his feet for a key and eventually found one in a pocket on his vest.
Mordred unlocked the door and pushed it open, revealing a set of stairs leading down into a dimly lit corridor beneath the ground. He descended the stairs slowly and about halfway down felt his magic vanish. He paused and looked around, but it was too dim to see any runes that might have been drawn on his surroundings. Instead, he removed the pistol from its holster and continued.
He checked the corridor and found nothing of concern before stepping out into it. There were five shut doors along each side of the corridor, and he tried the first, finding it unlocked, so he pushed it open, revealing a small cell. The smell of blood and death hung around the cell, and the floor was wet where it had been cleaned. A drain sat in the center of the room, and Mordred remembered the werewolf nightclub and Elaine’s tortured guard he’d found there.
Mordred left the cell and tried the next door but found it locked. After the third locked door, be began to hear noises coming from one of the rooms at the far end of the corridor. He moved toward them, making sure to keep low and quiet, just in case the door suddenly opened and he had to react quickly.
It didn’t take long for him to reach the cell door, which like the others was made of thick metal. He placed his ear to the door but heard nothing apart from the muffled sound of someone being repeatedly hit. With his pistol ready, Mordred pushed on the door a little until it revealed two men standing with their backs to him. A third man sat tied to a chair, although Mordred couldn’t make out that man’s face. He was clearly male, though, seeing how he was naked.
“Where are they?” the guard questioning the prisoner asked.
“I don’t know,” the man said, his speech slurred. They’d clearly done a number on him.
“Lies,” the guard said, and punched the man in the face.
Mordred stood up and saw who was being tortured, and a cold rage filled him. With two steps he was behind the first guard. Mordred buried the dagger in the back of the guard’s neck, killing him instantly. He stepped around the falling guard, firing twice into the second guard’s head. Both men were dead, and Mordred ran to the prisoner.
“Mac,” he said, his voice soft. “Mac, you hear me in there?”
Mac mumbled something unintelligible. Mac was a water elemental, and without a supply of water, there was no way he was going to heal himself. The amount of cuts and bruises over his body suggested he’d been subjected to a prolonged beating.
Mordred looked around and found a pitcher of water on a nearby table. He picked it up and threw it over Mac, drenching the man before cutting the plastic ties that held his wrists together.
Mordred waited for a minute as the worst of the wounds on Mac’s body healed, until his eyes were no longer puffy and closed. Mac blinked. “Mordred?”
Mordred nodded. “You up for walking?”
“They removed my toenails. Fingernails too. Broke my knees and let me heal. Point is, I hurt, but not enough to stop me from removing their spines.”
Mordred helped Mac to his feet. “It’s been a long time, old friend.”
Mac smiled. “We’re friends now? I thought you wanted to kill everyone.”
“Yeah, we’ll say that’s a bad judgment call on my part.”
“I’m naked, Mordred.”
Mordred propped Mac up against the nearest wall and removed the clothes from the first guard, passing them to Mac. “You good to get dressed?” he asked.
“If I say no, will you hold it against me?” Mac asked after fumbling with a pair of trousers. “I think my hands haven’t quite healed yet.”
Mordred helped Mac into a pair of trousers, shoes, and a jacket. It wasn’t going to be the most comfortable of clothes for him, and they were a little larger than he was probably used to, but Mordred figured too large was better than too small.
“Anyone else in these cells?”
“They killed the whole lot of them,” Mac said. “Made us all watch as they killed them. Eight good people, dead.”
“Where’s Alan?” Mordred asked, feeling a ball of hurt inside him at the possibility of losing more people.
“He escaped into the mine. They took humans from some of the nearest villages and made them work in there.”
“Doing what?”
“Whatever they needed. I don’t really know. I don’t understand why they’d go to all this trouble to dig around in a mountain. They thought I’d know where Alan escaped. Thought we’d made a pact to escape and I got caught.”
“And?”
“We did make a pact, and I did get caught, but I don’t know where Alan is apart from in the mountain. Although I can’t say that for certain. He could be anywhere by now. Maybe he went for help. Is that why you’re here?”
Mordred shook his head. “No, we came to find you all. Elaine, too.”
“She’s closer to the mountain. There’s a camp up there. It was built by whoever these bastards are. I saw lorries driving up there on the road around the cliff. If Alan hasn’t gone for help, he’s up there.”
“How long ago did he escape?”
“Few hours.”
Mordred helped his friend up the stairs to be greeted by Diana and Wei, both in human form.
“Mac,” Diana said, picking him up and carrying him out of the prison building.
“Everyone okay?” Mordred asked as Diana helped Mac lie in some nearby snow.
Mordred didn’t bother asking Mac if his light magic would heal him; he already knew that it would have no effect on the water elemental.
“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 change 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.