CHAPTER 25
Nate Garrett
Selene, Sky, and Zamek all dodged aside as two of the stone giants moved to attack them. One of them swiped with its massive shield, catching Lucifer in the chest, sending him flying into me.
I tried to catch him, but the force was too much, and we collided, throwing us back toward the edge of the island. I used my shadow magic to anchor both myself and Lucifer to the ground as I caught a glimpse of Zamek scaling one of the giants and using his alchemy to tear it apart with his bare hands as Galahad and Harrison removed its legs.
Lucifer was on his feet before me, and pure magic leapt from his fingers, smashing into the closest giant and taking it off its feet, making the ground shake from the force of the landing. Sky brought one stone giant to its knees so that Leonardo and Caitlin could place their hands on its head, turning it to dust, while Selene jumped up onto the last giant, turning into her dragon-kin form as she moved. Her strength and power tore into the giant with vigor, and it took only seconds for the fifteen-foot goliath to be turned into several tons of rubble.
I got to my feet and brushed myself clean.
“Glad you could help out!” Zamek shouted to me.
“You could have left me one,” I said with a smile.
“Sorry, I guess I figured if you wanted to take part, you wouldn’t have been lying on the floor.”
I walked over to the nearest giant, which swiped at me with its one remaining arm. I darted back, activating my matter magic. Purple glyphs appeared over my hands and arms, and my world became a purple haze. I took a step toward the giant and focused all my power into my right hand, pouring as much matter magic as I could into it.
It took only a second for the punch to completely destroy the giant, showering everything around it with dirt and rubble. I stood there for several seconds as I removed my matter magic and my body got used to seeing normally again.
“How’d you do that?” Zamek asked. “That was crazy.”
I shrugged. “Everyone okay?”
Everyone made it known that they were fine.
Selene took my hand in hers and kissed me on the cheek. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I am. I haven’t used my matter magic like that before. I wasn’t really sure how it worked until I switched it on, but I figured I’d give it a try. Erebus said he’s drip feeding knowledge into my head. He told me about an elven magic echo.”
Caitlin poked the destroyed giant and looked back at me, surprised at the devastation my punch had caused. “That’s new.”
“I’ve got a lot of new things since I saw you,” I told her. “I don’t know who set that trap, but I’m guessing it was done by whoever came here a month ago and removed Asmodeus.”
“What’s a magic echo?” Galahad asked.
I quickly explained what Erebus had told me.
“So, we need to go back to the realm gate?” Leonardo asked. “This is turning into an incredibly interesting day.”
“Yeah, I’m not sure ‘interesting’ is how I’d put it,” Galahad said. “I guess it at least breaks up the day’s council meetings.”
Everyone made their way back to the realm-gate cavern and stood around the outside of the cave, near different pieces of writing.
“So, how does this work?” Galahad asked from beside me. “Do we each have to bleed, or is this a one-off thing?”
I shrugged. “Leonardo assumed that the color changed because someone used the realm gate.”
“I thought the same thing,” said Lucifer.
“Maybe that’s not what the color is for,” I suggested. “Pass me your knife, will you?” I asked Harrison, who removed the dagger from his belt and gave it to me.
I used it to cut into the palm of my hand, then placed my hand against the purple writing. The effect was instantaneous as all the writing in the cavern turned a deep red and several figures started to appear on the dais in the middle of the cavern.
I took my hand away—my magic would heal it within moments—and watched the six figures flicker for several seconds until the picture settled.
“It’s like they’re holograms,” Selene said. “Tommy would be comparing it to Star Wars about now.”
To my mind it wasn’t a bad comparison. The figures were all in light blue, and we couldn’t hear sound, but we got the gist of what was going on. One man, his arms shackled behind his back, was kneeling on the floor.
“That’s Asmodeus,” Lucifer said. “It’s weird seeing him like this. It’s been so long since I had contact.”
One of the elves around Asmodeus was talking to him, and after listening for several seconds the king of the devils started to laugh.
The two elves behind Asmodeus each took one arm and held him down while a third elf slit his throat, allowing the blood to pour into several vessels below the dais. The vessels were a few feet high and sat in front of Asmodeus and the two guards, who continued to hold Asmodeus until he had no strength left to fight. It was at that moment that I noticed a vase.
The elf who had slit his throat unsheathed a curved sword that sat at his hip and cut Asmodeus’s head off. He picked it up by the hair and dropped it into one of the containers that was full of blood.
“That’s not exactly what I was expecting,” Galahad said.
I walked to the dais as the elves dragged Asmodeus’s body away, toward the cell in the other cavern. The picture of the blood-filled containers and the vase remained for several seconds before they, too, vanished from view as the footage ended.
“Nate, you okay?” Selene asked.
“I’ve seen the markings on that vase before,” I told her. “I saw them a long time ago. In London. Merlin had the Reavers collecting souls for him to feed to Arthur. They’re called soul jars. The markings on this one here are the same as on the jars I saw in London. They killed Asmodeus and placed his soul in a jar and drained him of his blood. That’s not a cell—it’s a tomb.”
No one spoke for several seconds until Leonardo broke the silence: “So, the elves killed Asmodeus. But you think he’s involved with what’s going on? That can’t possibly be right.”
“No, it can’t,” Selene said.
“Nate, soul jars are bad news,” Sky said. “You don’t think that someone out there has Asmodeus’s soul jar? Because if they fed that soul to someone, like Merlin was feeding souls to Arthur, how long do you think it would take for that person to be completely taken over by the evil in Asmodeus’s soul?”
“Not long,” Lucifer said.
“Did you find anything with blood, or soul jars while you were poking around in there?” I asked.
“No,” Leonardo said. “Just old drawings and pieces of paper. It’s amazing how it’s survived for so long with barely any degrading. Elven magic was impressive.”
“That means someone broke in and stole his body, but nothing else,” Lucifer said. “Why would someone want to steal Asmodeus’s body?”
“Was his soul jar in the cell?” I asked.
“We didn’t see it,” Leonardo said.
“Could they have taken him and the jar to try and bring him back?” Antonio suggested. “Is that even possible? He is a vampire.”
Lucifer didn’t look convinced. “I honestly have no idea. He surprised a lot of us with the range of his power, so I never counted anything out when it came to dealing with him.”
“Maybe Lee will have some of the answers we need,” I suggested.
“This is all very theoretical,” Harrison said. “You’re all just guessing that someone has used his soul. We don’t know that it’s been used.”
“That’s true,” Galahad said. “But what if Lee wasn’t turned into a vampire by Asmodeus, but found the soul jar and opened it? How much work does it take for a soul to be transferred into a person?”
“A lot,” Sky said. “The way Merlin used to do it required dwarven runes and a lot of magical power, but a soul as corrupt and evil as Asmodeus? It’s possible you wouldn’t need as much. Either way, you’d need to know the correct runes and glyphs and have magical ability. People can’t just bleed on them and suddenly you’ve absorbed one.”
“Okay, if this Lee is possessed by Asmodeus, just how powerful will he be?” Zamek asked. “I’m only asking because if you four go find Lee, and he is Asmodeus, or has part of that devil’s soul in him, then it’s going to take a lot more than the four of you to subdue him. I get that you’re all very powerful, but are you powerful enough to bring down someone who absorbed even part of a god?”
“Either way, we need to find Lee,” I said. “Whether he’s involved with Asmodeus or not, he still murdered people and said it was Hellequin. Maybe he knows who this fake Hellequin is.”
“I’ll join you,” Harrison said. “I’ll bring some of my men with me. A few dozen soldiers should even the odds a bit.”
“They can’t know what we’re going up against,” Lucifer said. “It’s one thing to go up against a powerful vampire, but to know you’re about to fight the king of the devils, that’s going to give people some pause. And we can’t have any. Not today.”
“Give us an hour,” Galahad said. “We’ll have to smuggle you out of the city to do this. Too many in the council would see you walking about as me putting our friendship before the safety of this realm. Hopefully, by the time you return, I’ll have convinced the council that you’re not here to set us up for your Avalon overlords’ invasion.”
“I have overlords now?”
“I never said it was a rational problem,” Galahad said. “Just one that is yelled at high volume.”
“I forgot to ask. Caitlin, is your mum still a guest of the prison?”
“Oh yes, she’s still a joy unto all who meet her,” Caitlin said. “Why, you think she’s involved?”
“She has ties to people who have ties to whatever is behind all of this. I don’t think she’ll directly know anything because she’s, well, she’s nuts—no offense.”
“None taken. She’s a big box of frogs in the crazy department. But I’ll go see her. You never know; it might be worthwhile. And at the very least she can call me a long list of names and threaten to hurt people I care about. You know, normal mother-daughter bonding.”
“Your mother sounds evil,” Selene said.
“She is. But it’s the stupid kind of evil, not the try-and-take-over-the-world kind. She’s a werewolf who is never leaving her prison cell. She murdered my stepfather in front of me, tried to murder my real father, and butchered her way across this realm and the Earth realm. She’s a monster.”
“You want company?” Sky asked. “I like pissing off evil people. Since meeting Nate it’s sort of become my hobby.”
“See, I bring people together,” I said with a smile.
“To annoy people,” Galahad said. “And trust me, he’s been doing that for a long time.”
We all got up to leave, except for Lucifer, who sat on the floor beside the dais. “I’ll catch you up,” I said to everyone. “I assume there’s a way out of this place?”
“We closed it up after we found all of this,” Leonardo said. “But I’ll wait with Antonio for you outside.”
“You will?” Antonio asked. “I was going to go home and sleep.”
“You can sleep when you’re dead,” Leonardo said.
“Which, working with you, will be a lot quicker than I would doing something less dangerous.”
“The only thing dangerous about working with me is that you run your mouth,” Leonardo said with a grin as the two of them walked away.
“I’d hoped to see him again,” Lucifer said. “I wanted to ask him why. I wanted to see if he’d changed. I wanted to see if he’d become the force for good he could have been if he wasn’t so interested in making everyone bow to him. When he was first made, we were just children and he was kind and sweet. He helped people; he felt sadness and empathy for those who were weaker than him. Or maybe he didn’t and it was all a game? I really don’t know anymore.
“I know he was a cruel, vindictive tyrant, but he was my brother. And while we weren’t of the same blood, we were the same in so many other ways. I know it sounds stupid, but I feel sorrow that he’s gone. Not even Asmodeus could survive having his head cut off. They shackled him, bled him, and killed him, stuffing his soul in a jar. The elves aren’t exactly the benevolent good guys from the stories, but I didn’t expect his end to be like this. I thought he’d go out in a blaze of glory. I shouldn’t be sad, but I am. I’m sad for all of the lost opportunities. It probably sounds strange.”
“He was your brother. No matter how evil and cruel he was, he was still your brother. I understand completely. I felt the same about Mordred for the longest time. And it took him repeatedly trying to kill me for me to get over it.”
“He knew I betrayed his cause. He knew I had no interest in a rebellion. I told him so myself, and he told me that the next time he saw me, he’d kill me. He’d have tried, too. I just wish I could have killed him myself all those years ago; it would have saved a lot of death and destruction.”
“You can’t think like that,” I said. “You can’t say that it would have changed anything. If Asmodeus hadn’t been alive, maybe someone else would have come along to do the things he did. More than enough people have tried over the years, and at some point someone was going to achieve their goal of being a murderous bastard.”
“If Asmodeus is dead, who is Abaddon taking orders from?”
“I did wonder that myself. I honestly have no idea. Who would Abaddon feel was above her?”
“No one. She answered to Asmodeus, and that was it. Even after the rebellion, she had to be sent away to an unpopulated realm because she refused to work with anyone else. She just doesn’t think anyone but the most powerful should be in charge. Survival of the fittest in its purest form.”
“Doesn’t that mean Asmodeus wasn’t fit enough?”
“Who knows? Abaddon isn’t exactly what you’d call predictable. It’s what makes her such a terrifying opponent. I haven’t had to fight in centuries. And since you came into my life, I’ve had to almost fight on several occasions. And now I’m fighting again, using my magic again. They’re going to know I’m here now. They’re going to come here to find me. There’s no going back to Grayson after this.”
“Isn’t this better? To be yourself, I mean?”
Lucifer shrugged. “Maybe. The jury is still out on that one.” He got to his feet and looked over at me. “Once this is all done, if there’s anything left of that jar, we need to find and destroy it. Asmodeus’s soul is too powerful, too dangerous to just leave lying around.”
“We will, but first things first. Let’s find Lee and make sure he’s not Asmodeus’s reincarnation, or however that works.”
“You know, if he is that, it means someone out there has access to his soul. A month ago someone broke in here, opened the tomb, and took Asmodeus’s body. Leonardo said they hadn’t seen a vase, but maybe he knows something else about it.”
Lucifer and I walked through the mountain, meeting Leonardo and Antonio outside. We waited while they sealed the entrance.
“I’m curious: What if Lee’s not forthcoming about the answers you need?” Antonio asked.
“If I remember Lee O’Hara well enough,” I said, “he’ll be tripping over himself to gloat about how smart he is.”
The four of us began to walk back toward the city of Solomon. “Why is it that everyone who hates you is coming out of the woodwork?” Lucifer asked.
“I wondered that myself,” I said. “I really wish I had an answer, but whatever it is, at some point they’re going to start running out of people to send to kill me.”
“Or they’re going to get lucky,” Leonardo said.
I looked over at Leonardo. “Thanks for that. Always nice to have friends standing behind you.”
“Nate, if there’s anyone who can overcome these odds it’s you, but just once wouldn’t you prefer it if you weren’t in the middle of the storm?”
“I get the impression that’s a fantasy, a dream that won’t come true. Too many people want me dead. Too many people will go through my friends or innocents to achieve that goal. Maybe when we’re done with all of this, we can hope for some semblance of peace and quiet.”
“You’d get bored,” Lucifer said.
“Yeah, but when people are after me, every day has to be my best day. That’s the kind of thing that starts to exhaust after a while. Maybe I just need a few years off. A holiday. A nice long holiday in some remote little place where no one can find me.”
“You’d still get bored,” Lucifer said. “Or trouble would find you anyway. It seems to have that habit.”
I smiled. He had a point: trouble and I did go arm in arm.