CHAPTER 36
Mordred
New York City, USA
They arrived in New York, and after a day of planning and checking the target’s location, Mordred, Irkalla, and Remy had finally put together a way into the twenty-story hotel that allowed them to get out again without having to jump out of a two-hundred-foot-high window.
Mordred drove the black Mercedes AMG C63 to the Stewart Hotel in Manhattan and parked in one of the few available spaces in the underground parking garage. They had a valet service, but when time is of the essence, waiting for someone to bring your car back does not make for a quick escape route.
“Are you sure you want to go in there alone?” Remy asked through the earpiece that Mordred wore.
“Yes,” Mordred said as he walked through the parking lot to the lift that would take him up into the hotel lobby above. “You’re the best shot, so you get to play with the rifle and cover my ass.”
“And Irkalla gets to be my spotter,” Remy added with some enthusiasm.
“I am not your spotter,” Irkalla said tersely.
“You have binoculars—therefore you are my spotter.”
“I can see why Diana is always threatening to kill you.”
“Sky, too,” Remy said cheerfully.
“Yes, he’s a regular ladies’ fox,” Mordred said as the lift doors opened and he stepped inside.
“You still hear me okay?” Irkalla asked while the lift began its ascent.
“Loud and clear,” Mordred confirmed. “I’ll let you know when I’m heading up to the penthouse.”
The doors to the lift opened, and Mordred stepped out into a bright, albeit busy, lobby. His magic switched off as he knew it would. According to Mordred’s research, Avalon employees picked the hotel because it didn’t allow powers during visits. The runes were built directly into the very fabric of the building.
Mordred smiled at a guard in front of a set of lift doors and walked around to the reception area of the lobby. He leaned up against a wall and pretended to look at his phone while he checked out the few dozen people milling around. Most of the crowd were dressed in suits, huddled over one of the many tables, looking at laptops, or drinking coffee and chatting to colleagues. A large sign said there was a business conference in the hotel and anyone involved should go to the lobby and check in. Mordred had put on an expensive suit for that purpose. He’d also only been able to take the silenced pistol, as the MP5 was too big to hide under a jacket, so he’d subbed it for a belt of throwing knives that sat against the small of his back. Eight knives, each one with a silver finish. If he needed more than that, he was probably already dead.
There were a few people at check-in, but he discounted them as a threat since they were clearly tourists with children. So that left four people in the lobby and check-in area who presumably worked for Avalon. The good thing about having been on the outs with Avalon for so long was that most people didn’t know what Mordred looked like now. He assumed that people would be on the lookout for someone with shoulder-length dark hair, so he’d buzzed his head as close as possible without being bald, and he’d already been in the process of growing several weeks of beard, so he just left it alone. He knew it didn’t exactly make him the friendliest looking person, but he also didn’t care.
Mordred walked over to the reception and smiled at the woman behind the desk. “Hi, I’m here for the conference,” he told her.
“Ah,” she said. “The main talk has already started.”
“Is it okay if I just check in and wait for the talk to finish? The person giving it gets funny about being interrupted, so I’d rather not get shouted at. Also, it gives me time to freshen up.”
The receptionist smiled. “That’s fine. And your name, sir?”
“Matthew Drew. I believe I asked for the Azure Suite.”
She tapped a few things on the computer. “That’s right, Mr. Drew. We have you here. You get to use the private elevator at the end of the hallway over there. Please be aware that we have several dignitaries staying in the penthouse, so there will be a guard traveling up and down with you in the elevator.”
“How exciting,” Mordred said as he passed the receptionist a credit card. “Anyone famous?”
“I’m not at liberty to say,” the receptionist told him. “Sorry.”
“That’s okay. At least I know I’ll be secure with all these guards about. Best not let Jerry get drunk at the conference, just in case he gets seen as some sort of security threat. Actually that would be funny.”
“I don’t advise you do that, sir.”
“I’m joking. I won’t really let Jerry get tazed, no matter how entertaining it would be.”
The receptionist passed Mordred the keycard to his room. “Enjoy your say.”
“Thanks.”
Mordred went to the lift door and showed his keycard to the guard there. “I’m in the Azure. I assume you’ll be going up with me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Can’t have me pressing the wrong button and ending up in the penthouse.”
The lift came, and both men got in. “So, who’s here?” Mordred asked after showing his card to the reader on the control panel and watching as the word “Azure” flashed up above it. “See, you didn’t need to come with me. This only lets me go to one place.”
“It’s my job, I’m afraid.”
“Yeah, Gawain’s a real ballbuster.”
The guard took a second longer than he should have to register what Mordred said. Plenty of time for Mordred to turn and smash his elbow into the man’s throat. He removed the gun from the guard and placed his knee against his throat. “No bracelet. So, what is it, you human, or they don’t trust their employees not to go all crazed?”
“We use guns, not magic. No powers allowed on site—that’s the rule. We can’t be seen to scare the humans.”
“That comes later, right?”
The doors opened, showing a hallway with only one door, and Mordred placed the gun against the man’s temple. “Out. Now.”
The pair of them walked out of the lift, the guard first. When they got to the door, Mordred made the man kneel and link his fingers behind his head while Mordred opened the entrance to his suite.
“In,” Mordred said, helping the man to his feet and pushing him inside. “Don’t fuck about. You might live.”
“Who are you?” the man asked.
Mordred shot him in the head with the silenced pistol. Unlike most human silenced guns, it made no noise at all. “What a waste of ammo.”
Mordred removed the keycard from the dead guard’s pocket, which identified the man as William Talbot. He went back to the lift, using William’s card pass to activate it. He stepped inside and placed the card against the reader, where a star flashed on the screen above. “Classy,” Mordred said as the lift began to ascend.
Mordred stood to the side of the lift as the doors opened, showing a hallway identical to the one below. He stepped out and shot the two guards in the head, moving on past them toward the door.
“You ready?” he whispered.
“When you are,” Irkalla said. “You’ve got a two-story penthouse. My necromancy says there are nine souls in there. Four upstairs, five down. Two are directly on the other side of the door, three further in. You got this?”
Mordred placed the card against the reader outside the door. “Oh yes.” He opened the door and shot the first guard in the temple before he even stepped inside. He had to move around the open door to get the second, who required two shots in the chest before a third took him in the center of his forehead. He holstered his gun and drew two knives—he wanted to save as much ammo as possible.
He looked around and found himself in a long hallway with stairs to one side leading to the floor above, and a large arch in front of him. “Guard coming your way,” Irkalla said.
Mordred ran to the side of the archway, out of sight of the guard, who clearly spotted his dead friends. He called out to one of them, stepped into the arch, and never breathed again, as Mordred buried one of the knives in his heart and slit his throat with the other. He pushed the guard aside, removing the blade, and threw it at a fourth guard, catching him in the head.
Mordred cursed himself as he spotted the problem of a paladin walking up the stairs to the floor above. “Shit, we have an issue here.”
“What’s wrong?” Remy asked.
“There’s a paladin here.”
“That’s not great,” Remy said. “Did you know?”
“It was always a possibility. He’s why you’re here with me,” Mordred whispered. “Can you see him from above?”
“No, the windows on the top floor are covered with something.”
“Guard right on the other side of the wall,” Irkalla said.
Mordred stepped into the main area of the suite, grabbing the guard’s arm, and forcing the gun up toward his head. Mordred pulled the trigger, shooting the guard in the throat. The noise was deafening, and as his secrecy was well and truly up, he shot the guard with his own gun twice more in the head.
Mordred dropped the gun, ran off to a kitchen area, and huddled behind the counter.
“There’s a mass coming toward you,” Irkalla said.
“Can you see me down here?” Mordred asked Remy.
“Yep. You want me to shoot you?”
“Does that honestly need an answer?” Mordred almost shouted.
“Just checking.”
“Mordred, is that you?” the paladin asked from just outside the archway. “It can’t be Nate, he’s dead, but I figure you or one of your idiot friends would try something stupid. Didn’t think you’d try to hit us here.”
“I like to be unpredictable,” Mordred said. “Shouldn’t you be with my father? Or Arthur, or Gawain? I forget whose ass you’re currently kissing.”
A bullet smashed into the top of the kitchen counter, spraying pieces of marble all over the floor. “Your father was turned to us a long time ago. I helped.”
“You’re a traitorous piece of shit.”
“A realist. Unlike you and Nate, I know what Avalon should be. I believe in the vision of an Avalon where the powerful rule and everyone else bows before us.”
“Well, you’re already a massive dick, so you’re halfway there.”
“You remember when you told Merlin about being experimented on? Do you remember when it drove you over the edge?”
“Well, I guess I know why he didn’t listen.”
“I remember Gawain telling me about it. My word, how we laughed.”
A second round hit the kitchen counter just above Mordred’s head. “I’ll get you eventually,” the paladin said. “I prefer swords, but a gun is just as good in a pinch. Actually I’d prefer my magic, but I can’t have everything.”
“Take the shot when you get it,” Mordred said.
“Oh, I will,” the paladin told him.
Mordred stood up and made sure to put part of a wall between him and the paladin, forcing the larger man to come into the room to get a shot.
“You’re going to die here,” the paladin said. “I might send your head back to Morgan as a gift.”
“You first,” Mordred said.
The first the paladin knew of the shot was when his chest exploded and he was thrown back onto the floor.
“He dead?” Remy asked.
Mordred glanced at the hole in the extra-thick glass window, and then down at the paladin. His white shirt was quickly turning dark red. Mordred walked over to the severely injured man. “I want you to tell my brother that I’m coming for him. I want you to tell him that I’m going to end everyone who stands beside him and Abaddon. If my father and Arthur are truly gone, they’ll have to die, too.”
Mordred took a step and turned back to the paladin. “Fuck it, they’ll figure it out.” He shot the paladin three times in the head.
Mordred loaded a new magazine and walked toward the staircase, keeping his gun up as he ascended. He reached the top, which consisted of a large open-plan room with two doors at the far end. He turned into the room and found it empty but noticed two more doors at the other end, where he thought the bedrooms were.
“You happen to see anyone here?” he asked Irkalla.
“Two to your left, one to your right. Who’s the third target?”
“Who says there’s a third target?” Mordred asked. “Okay, yeah, there is, but we’ll get there in a minute.” He took a step to the right and grabbed hold of the door handle just as it was pulled in, forcing Mordred to stagger forward into a punch to his jaw.
Mordred rolled to the floor, coming back to his feet in the open area of the floor as Daria appeared. But he noticed he’d dropped his gun under the nearby cupboard.
“No powers this time,” Mordred said.
“Means I can take my time,” Daria said with a slight snarl. She dove toward Mordred, who smashed his elbow into her face, breaking her nose and knocking her over a nearby chair.
She got back to her feet, and kicked Mordred in the knee, and he dropped to the ground, rolling away to put distance between the two of them. He got back to his feet slowly, watching Daria as she removed a long, curved dagger from behind the nearby chair. She unsheathed it and wiped her bleeding nose with the back of her hand, smearing blood over her face.
“You’re not exactly right in the head, are you?” Mordred said. “And that’s coming from someone who knows that look.”
Daria screamed in rage and charged Mordred, who threw two of his knives at her, each one taking her in the chest, but she kept going, as if they’d done nothing. He drew another blade, parrying her strike, but she kicked him in the stomach and he fell back against the wall, unable to stop the cut that went across his stomach.
Daria darted back, and Mordred reached down, relieved to feel the attack hadn’t gone through the lightweight stab vest he’d taken from Hades’s quartermaster. Daria’s expression darkened, and she moved toward Mordred once again, swiping with the dagger, forcing Mordred to move along the wall as he waited for an opening.
After the fifth swipe from Daria’s blade, she overstepped her reach just a little, giving Mordred the moment to move to Daria’s side and slam a throwing blade up into her armpit. He cut down toward her ribs before twisting the blade free, then punched a second blade up into her throat.
She swiped at him with her dagger, but it was feeble, and Mordred easily disarmed her, stabbing her in the heart with her own blade and leaving her to die on the expensive carpeted floor. He noticed the six-inch cut along his forearm for the first time and cursed himself for not being quick enough to dodge her.
“You okay?” Remy asked.
“No,” Mordred said, retrieving his gun from under the wardrobe. He walked to the other side of the room and pushed open one of the doors, revealing an empty bathroom. He kicked the second door with everything he had, causing whoever was behind it to yell out in pain.
Mordred stepped into the room and kicked Viktor in the face as he lay on the floor. He looked over at Mara, who sat next to the window, staring at him with a mixture of hate and fear.
“Please don’t kill me,” Viktor said. “I did not know they’d come for me. I just wanted to be left alone.”
“I read Polina’s report. You stabbed one of her agents in the throat as you escaped. The man was forty-two years old; he had a wife and children. A wife and children you told Polina you’d kill the first chance you got.”
“Not true.”
“Don’t care.” Mordred shot him four times in the face before aiming the gun at Mara.
“You won’t kill me,” Mara said.
“Really? Because I’m almost certain I want to.”
“Can you explain that to my daughter? You like her. You know she’d hate you if I was murdered at your hand.”
“Only because I’m sure she’d like you to rot in a deep pit for the rest of your life.”
Mara smiled. “You’re an empty man, fighting on the wrong side of a war you can’t win. You’ll be running around hiding in the shadows while I stay in places like this and make bracelets for Arthur and his people to rule this realm, and then all of the others.” She raised her hands. “Shoot me. I’m unarmed.”
“Oh, shut up.” Mordred shot her in the palm of one outstretched hand. “How quickly do witches heal?”
“You fucking bastard,” Mara seethed. “I’m going to have someone cut out your fucking eyes. I’m going to heal and make bracelets just so his people can pillage those you love.”
Mordred grabbed her good hand, placed it on the table next to her, and shot her three times. “Make something now, you evil piece of shit.”
Mara collapsed to the floor, holding her heavily bleeding hands against her chest. “They’ll kill me if I’m useless.”
“Best learn to make them with your feet, then, because Gawain and his people aren’t getting any more bracelets until someone else can be trained. And then I’ll do the same to them, too. You’re the only one they have who can make these—you said so yourself in Siberia. Now he has no one.”
“This won’t stop him forever!” Mara screamed as Mordred walked toward the exit.
“No, but it’ll stop him until I can kill him.” Mordred paused. “Damn it, you’re right. I don’t want to be the person who takes your life. I like your daughter, and she doesn’t deserve to have a friend of hers kill you when she should have that privilege. But you’re too dangerous.” Mordred shot her in the head and left the room.
He made his way back downstairs and to the lift, hitting the button for the lobby. He reached the ground floor and walked across the lobby, just avoiding several armed men as they ran toward the now-empty lift.
“You’ve got quite a few people coming your way,” Irkalla said as Mordred entered the lift to the parking garage and selected the right floor.
“I’m done here. I’ll see you all back at the heliport in a few hours. I’ll make sure I’m not followed. Thanks for your help.”
“Our pleasure,” Irkalla said. “See you soon.”
Mordred removed his earpiece and exited the lift, walking through the garage to his Mercedes.
“Hello, Mordred,” a woman said as she got out of a nearby red BMW M4. She was just over five feet tall, Asian, with long hair that had been dyed a multitude of colors.
“Hi,” Mordred said. “And you are?”
“You can call me Ami,” she said with a smile. “I believe you know my friend.” She motioned toward another woman, who got out of the driver’s seat of the M4.
“Cass?” Mordred asked, his happiness at seeing her again fighting against any potential threats.
“We need to talk,” Cass said.
“About what?” Mordred asked.
“About fighting Arthur,” Ami started, “about stopping a civil war between the Norse pantheon, and about trying to save everyone you love.”
“I don’t even know who you are,” Mordred told them. “Cass isn’t an ex-soldier.”
“And Cass isn’t my real name, but I needed a reason to talk to you. To find out if you were still the monster I’d heard about, or if you genuinely had changed.”
“So, what’s your real name?” Mordred asked.
“Not important,” Cass said.
“Then goodbye,” Mordred replied, unlocking the AMG.
“Amaterasu,” Ami said.
Mordred blinked in surprise. “Okay, I didn’t expect that.”
“We need to band together if we have any hope of stopping Arthur,” Amaterasu said. “We need to see Hades, and his people.”
“I can arrange a meeting, but Cass needs to tell me who she is, too.”
Amaterasu looked over the car roof at Cass, who continued to stare at Mordred for several seconds.
“Better hurry, exceptionally bad people are going to arrive here soon. I sort of made a mess.”
“Hel,” Cass said. “I’m Loki’s daughter. Odin and Frigg’s granddaughter.” Her appearance changed slightly, and her skin tone took on a bluish tinge.
“I know who Hel is,” Mordred said. “What I don’t know is why you’re coming to me.”
“Because we need Hades, Diana, Selene, Irkalla, and all of the others who oppose Arthur. Because we need to get into the Norse realms and defeat those opposed to Odin’s rule. And we need to do it before we are overrun.”
“Why me?” Mordred asked again.
“The blood elves have found a way into Asgard, and they’re going after Yggdrasil. If they capture it, we will fall. And then Arthur and his minions will rule over the Norse realms.”
“You need to speak to everyone else, too,” Mordred said.
“That was our request,” Hel said, clearly trying to keep her patience.
“And what of the other weapons like yourself?” Amaterasu asked.
“I only know of Nate,” Mordred said.
“So, what of Nate?” Hel asked.
“Yeah, that’s where we’re going to have a problem. Nate’s undergone his nightmare transformation.”
“So we have one weapon, four missing, one dead, and one in a coma?” Amaterasu asked. “This is not the best news.” She looked over at Hel as the sounds of shouting came from the lift area.
“Shit,” Hel snapped. “You talk too much, Mordred. We’ve wasted time. Where is the base? Where can we find you?”
“Greenland,” Mordred said as both women jumped in their car, and sped off.
Mordred got in his car and hunkered down as another car sped past him out of the garage, presumably going after Hel and Amaterasu. He waited for a few seconds to ensure there was no one else, then drove out of the garage as quickly as possible. The car that he’d seen only a few seconds ago had been hit by a bus. He had no idea whether it had been an accident or not, but it was a hell of a coincidence.
He drove away from the wreck with several thoughts on his mind. Of all the things he might have expected today, Hel and Amaterasu’s appearance wasn’t one, and had given him more questions than answers. And he didn’t need even more things to add to the already-large pile of worry.
He wondered how long they had before Yggdrasil was breached. He realized that if the blood elves had left the dwarven world to go into the Norse realms, then that meant Baldr could be there, too. Mordred smiled. That was something to look forward to.