Promise of Wrath (The Hellequin Chronicles Book 6)

by Steve McHugh

  “Has a lot changed since you were last here?” Morgan asked.

  “I’d rather not find out.”

  “What about you, Nate?” Diane questioned.

  “I was here once. I was young and didn’t stay long—a month or so. I only went to the cities, never this far out. This place is meant to be impossible to get to nowadays. There are no realm gates that go here. After the dwarves vanished, people tried to get to their cities, mostly to hunt for treasure, but no one ever could.”

  “Well, someone certainly knew how to get here,” Morgan said.

  Mordred walked around a large boulder and was gone for several seconds before returning, a smile on his face. “Cave found. It’s dry and will protect us from the storm.”

  “Any signs of wildlife there?” Diane asked.

  Mordred shook his head. “Not recently. I doubt it’s been used for a long time by anything larger than insects.”

  We followed Mordred to the cave, which was exactly how he’d described it. It was a bit cramped, and the low ceiling in part of it meant we had to stoop to get in and out, but it was dry and warm, and the oncoming storm wouldn’t be able to hurt us.

  “You get a fire going,” Diane told me after we’d inspected our new surroundings. “I’ll go get us some food and check around for anyone else who’s been dumped here.”

  “There should be deer around,” Mordred said. “Unless they’ve been wiped out in the last thousand years—which is possible, I guess.”

  “You’re going to stay here,” I snapped.

  Mordred stood. “We might be able to help.”

  I stared at him in disbelief. “Help do what? If we go out there, there’s a good chance I’ll turn around and find you trying to put a knife in my gut.”

  “Nate, I’ll say this again, as you appear to be hard of hearing: I have no intention of killing you.”

  “Yeah, yet,” I pointed out.

  “We don’t have time for this petty crap,” Kasey snapped.

  “Kase has a point,” Remy said. “We need to work together. We have no idea who sent us here, or why, although from what Mordred and Morgan said, it sounds like they were collateral damage in someone else’s plan.”

  I knew Remy and Kasey were right. I knew I should just be mature about it, but damn it if I didn’t want to argue anyway. It’s hard letting over a thousand years of bad feeling go, even if it’s for the benefit of everyone else.

  I took a deep breath, and exhaled slowly. “You do what I say, Mordred. No running off, no hurting people. Same goes for you, Morgan.”

  I saw that Morgan was about to argue, but Mordred rested his hand on her arm and her neck muscles relaxed.

  “You’re the boss, Nate,” he said to me without a hint of anything other than genuine agreement.

  Diane walked away with a sparkle in her eyes; hunting was one of her favorite pastimes, although she only killed to eat, and usually with a bow and arrow. The roar from just outside the cave, and the clothes that had been left inside, informed me she’d changed into her bear form to hunt.

  The rest of us joined her outside, and once we’d gathered enough supplies and confirmed that we were the only people sent here in the immediate area, we all made our way back to the cave. I started a small fire, and the remaining six of us sat in uncomfortable silence.

  “Nate, we have a problem,” Kasey whispered to me. She had been with Chloe since we’d re-entered the cave.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s Chloe. She fell asleep when we got back to the cave, but she won’t wake up.”

  I rushed over and checked her pulse and breathing, both of which were regular, but she still didn’t wake.

  “What happened?” Mordred asked from behind me.

  “Go away!” I snapped.

  Before he could reply, Diane entered the cave, took one look at Chloe and dropped the deer she was carrying, running over to the injured teenager to examine her.

  “There’s a cut on her hand,” Remy reminded her. “But she told us about that earlier. I don’t see anything else.”

  “The cut will fade in time, although it is deep,” Diane said as Chloe began to stir, much to everyone’s relief. “My guess is she’s just exhausted from the jump. She’s only human, yes?”

  “A witch,” Kasey clarified.

  Diane nodded. “Okay, she just needs rest. We’ll take shifts keeping an eye on her. Once this meat is cooked, everyone eats. I don’t care if you have a problem eating meat; you’ll have more of a problem passing out, because the next few days are going to be intense.”

  I didn’t think anyone was a vegetarian, but she made a good point. Morals are great and all, but surviving is a bit more important.

  It wasn’t the greatest night’s sleep I’d ever had, what with the wind howling outside and the frequent claps of thunder, but I’ve slept through worse storms. What made it difficult was knowing that Mordred was only a few feet away. While one of us stayed up at all times—discounting Mordred and Morgan, because no one in their right minds trusted them—I still woke on a regular basis to look over at them both and make sure they hadn’t moved.

  Daybreak brought a respite from bad weather, and although the smell of wet grass permeated everything, it wasn’t the worst thing to wake up to.

  “There’s some deer left,” Diane said once everyone was up. “Everyone should eat something. I’ve been out already. There’s a stream close by; I think the rainfall made it bigger than it usually is, but the water smells okay.”

  “It should be fine,” Mordred agreed. “The rain here is clean and drinkable. Or it was centuries ago.”

  “Well, I don’t feel sick,” Diane said. “And I saw animals drinking from it. That’s usually a good sign. What isn’t a good sign was what those animals were.”

  “Local carnivores?” Remy suggested.

  “Some big ones too.”

  “Cave bears and saber-toothed panthers,” Mordred suggested. “They were both pretty abundant back in the day.”

  “I saw two bears and a panther,” Diane said. “That’s not good for us.”

  “The bears will be fine,” Mordred told everyone and grabbed a piece of meat from the fire I’d restarted. “They were hunted by the dwarves, and were a handful from what I remember, but they don’t hunt people. Certainly don’t eat them unless they’re already dead. They’re mostly scavengers, not hunters—despite the fact they’re the size of a large car.”

  “And the panthers?” Diane asked.

  “That’s a big problem. They’ll hunt anything that isn’t bear. And I do mean anything. They’re solitary hunters, but that was a long time ago and my memory of them is a little foggy. I know they used to kill townsfolk; took a few dwarves, too. If we have one on our trail, it will hunt us for miles. And they take a lot to put down.”

  “Between the seven of us, I’m sure we’ll be okay,” Diane said.

  “There are some things you should know about this place. Some of our magics won’t have the same effect on the creatures that live in this realm as it does in ours.”

  “Meaning what?” I asked.

  “Meaning, in the earth realm, you could use your air magic to blow a panther back a hundred feet, but the same amount of magic used here might only cause it to be pushed back a fraction of that. Magic will still be able to hurt anything that attacks us, but you’ll need to use a lot of it to have even a little of the impact you might expect. Flinging a boulder at something is still going to knock it back, but it might not do any actual damage to it. It might not be a good idea to rely on your magic for fighting. It’s something to do with the crystals in the mountains. It doesn’t affect the plants, which is why you were able to start a fire on those branches earlier, but it does have an effect on the creatures that live here. And that includes some things that you really don’t want to get close to without your magic at your disposal.”

  “Crystals?” I asked. “Small pink-purple ones?”

  Mordred nodded slowly.
<
br />   “I’ve seen them before,” I told everyone. “They tend to explode when magic is used on them. I once rode a motorbike that was powered by them.”

  “Why?” Chloe asked. She’d made a good improvement throughout the night, and was eating with everyone else.

  “I didn’t exactly have a lot of choice at the time. It was mostly that or let an exceptionally bad man get away. Anyway, these things are volatile, to say the least.”

  “You’re talking about Shadow Falls,” Mordred said, naming another realm free from the influence of Avalon and its rulers. “It’s a bit different there; particles of the stuff get into the air and it makes our magic unstable. A small amount will cause a big explosion. That doesn’t happen here; the crystals are more stable, and there’s less leaking, less pollution. I can only imagine that over the last few millennia those creatures are even more immune than they were back then. Essentially, don’t count on your magic being able to do an awful lot.”

  I rubbed my temples. “Okay, that makes things more complicated. Anything else we should know?”

  “That city you want to go to: Darim. I don’t think we’re going to find a lot there.”

  “Why?”

  “Bad things happened here, Nate. The dwarves didn’t leave for no reason. And their departure left something much worse in charge.”

  “What things?” I asked, slightly annoyed that he hadn’t bothered to mention any of this the night before.

  “I call them Evil Bastards, and if we come across them, we will be in trouble.”

  “Do we actually have a plan?” Remy asked. “I mean, apart from wander through the forest to a city that may—or may not—be overrun by . . . things?”

  “There has to be a realm gate there,” I said.

  “But we don’t have a guardian,” Remy pointed out.

  “There wasn’t a guardian who sent us here either,” I said. “Maybe we can figure something out. It has to be better than sitting here.”

  I didn’t want to say that I agreed with Remy’s assessment, mostly because I didn’t want to put a damper on the only hope we had. Realms, like the one we found ourselves in, needed gates for travel. Gates were operated and protected by guardians. No guardian, and the gate won’t open. Except that to send us here in the first place, we didn’t have a guardian, or even a realm gate. Which meant there really was a way to send people to realms without the use of gates, and apparently that way involved tablets covered in runes, and blood.

  CHAPTER 11

  The next day we marched through the forest, stopping periodically to drink from one of the many freshwater streams, eat the berries that were safe, and rest. There was an abundance of caves, and most of them contained nothing more than a few birds. Although one cave was home to about a thousand bats, who we left alone and trundled on elsewhere rather than deal with the stench they managed to create.

  Apart from being weak during the morning, Chloe managed to improve steadily over the rest of the day. She needed a little more rest, but was otherwise okay. It was just coming up to the evening of the first day when I found her a few hundred yards from the rest of the group, sitting on a rock next to a small stream, dangling her feet into the cool water.

  “How are you feeling?”

  She shrugged. “Weird. We’re basically in paradise—so long as you ignore everything that wants to eat us.”

  “That small matter.” I sat down beside her.

  She flicked a small pebble into the stream. “I miss training. I liked the routine.”

  As well as training Kasey, I’d been giving Chloe lessons too. She probably benefited more from having something to take her mind off her home life, although it certainly seemed to me that she’d all but moved in with Kasey and her family. “I think you can forgo it for a few more days.”

  “I haven’t spoken to my mum in six months,” she said out of the blue. “Had barely even thought about her until we got here.”

  Kasey’s mum was a witch, and frankly, one of the most unpleasant people I’d ever met. Not speaking to her for six months—or six years—sounded like my idea of heaven.

  “It’s weird; she used me, she almost got me killed, and she showed no remorse over either, but she’s still my mum, you know?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, I know. It took me a long time to get over knowing that Merlin was, in fact, a colossal asshole. But eventually the realization just stopped hurting and I did something about it. Took me a lot longer than it took you, though.”

  “The last time I spoke to her, we fought. I’d called to give her important news, and she managed to disappoint me yet again.”

  “I’m sorry she sucks so very, very hard at being there for you.”

  Chloe shrugged. “I’ve gotten used to it. I’m seventeen. I’ve had my naming day at Avalon. I’m a relatively powerful witch. I don’t need her or her negativity in my life. But part of me says, ‘She’s your mum, the only one you’ve got. Try.’ I’m just so fed up of trying. You’d have thought almost getting me killed would have made me give up having anything to do with her.”

  “Maybe your time here will do you some good. You can relax, enjoy the scenery, run from anything with sharper teeth than you have: good, wholesome fun.”

  Chloe laughed. “Someone really wanted Diane out of the picture, and didn’t care who got taken with her.”

  “Yep. Kay’s grubby little mitts are all over it.”

  “Could just be a coincidence.”

  “Could be, but the fact that it all happened on the same day, and that Jerry admitted to having people in Brutus’s organization who work for them, makes me think otherwise.”

  “Maybe they’re going after people you care about?”

  “If that’s the case, there would be a lot more people here. No, this has been kept small for a reason. There’s something I’m missing, but I can’t put my finger on it.”

  “Could Mordred be behind it all?”

  “No. He couldn’t fake how scared he was when he realized where we are. I still catch him looking around. He’s nervous, and worried, and that’s keeping him pretty subdued. Something is wrong with this place, and he knows it. He either doesn’t want to talk about it, or doesn’t want us to know. Probably the former, as the latter would mean he’d intentionally try to sabotage his own escape.”

  Chloe got down from the rock she’d been sitting on and shook her feet dry, using her red hoodie to finish off before putting her socks and trainers back on. “That thing I told my mum,” she said without looking back at me as she tied her laces.

  “Yeah?”

  “I told her I like girls.”

  “So do I. Welcome to the club. We have cookies.”

  She looked back at me. “I mean, I’m gay.”

  “I know what you mean, Chloe. I’m just trying to be funny and failing. Thank you for sharing it with me.”

  “My mum asked me if I was sure, and then told me it was a phase I’d grow out of.”

  “Your mum’s a dick.”

  Chloe’s laugh was from the belly, full of actual humor. It was nice to hear. There’d been precious little laughter since arriving here. “Yes, yes she is. It would have been nice if she’d given me a better response, though. When I told her that, she flipped out. Haven’t spoken to her since.”

  “If she can’t support you, don’t worry about it. Did you tell Kase?”

  “Kase has known for years. Tommy and Olivia thanked me for telling them and didn’t bat an eye. It’s weird that they’d have a better reaction than my own blood. Especially to something so important to me.”

  I put my hand on Chloe’s shoulder, squeezing slightly. “When we get back, I’ll make sure you have a good punch-bag session. You can pretend it’s whoever you like—no judgments from me.”

  Chloe smiled. “Thanks, Nate. It felt like something I should tell you since you’re so important to Kase.” She paused. “And to me. You’re like an older brother or something.”

  “I’ve never been an older anything. Do
I need to do anything?”

  Chloe shook her head. “Bring me ice cream when I’m upset. Get me alcohol.”

  “I think I can do both of those things, so long as you like vodka or whiskey, because I’m not buying that swill people your age call beer.”

  We were both still laughing when we heard the growl coming from the darkness of the woods nearby. I turned slightly and saw a saber-toothed panther pad out of the woods onto a large rock formation a dozen yards upstream, before launching itself into the water below.

  The panther was bigger than any cats we had back on our realm, tigers and lions included. Even on all fours, its head probably came up to my shoulder. The cat’s fur appeared to be black, but as it moved it seemed to shimmer under the sunlight, turning almost dark blue on occasion. Two gray stripes ran from its nose up over its muzzle and finished just behind both ears, which were twitching as it moved in the water.

  “Move slowly,” I whispered, and we both took a step away from the stream.

  The large cat watched us and took a step forward, mirroring us. I didn’t know much about panthers, saber varieties or otherwise, but I vaguely remembered that big cats don’t usually like to have their prey watch them as they attack.

  I heard a rustle in the leaves, and spun toward it, casting a jet of flame at a second panther that was sneaking up behind us. The animal ran back several yards, its fur slightly singed from the heat, but otherwise unhurt.

  “Any chance you have a weapon?” I asked.

  “Spells. I have magic. But magic might not do a lot. And witch magic isn’t exactly fireballs and lightning.”

  “Any chance you know something a little more subversive? Like making us disappear?” We continued to back away, until both saber-toothed panthers were directly in front of us.