Lies Ripped Open

by Steve McHugh

“Do you think me so awful that I could not cope without my man, here?” Matthew released me, and leaned over, kissing Gordon. “You’re free to go with him, but why don’t we discuss this inside, where it isn’t raining.”

  “Why don’t you wear a coat?” I asked. “Or a shirt or hell, a towel would be good.”

  Matthew flexed his considerable muscle and laughed. “If you had this upper body, you wouldn’t wear a shirt either.”

  “If I had your upper body, I’d shave some stuff,” I said, making Gordon laugh and pretend to cough into his hand.

  “My hair is manly,” Matthew retorted, in a mock indignant tone.

  “I have a hairy chest,” I said. “Yours looks like you might have animals hiding in it.”

  Gordon gave up on the pretext of pretending not to laugh and hurriedly made his way into the house.

  “I believe my better half enjoys your mocking of me,” Matthew said with a gleam in his eye, as he looked over at the front door.

  “I believe your better half went inside where it’s warm and dry.”

  Matthew glanced back at me. “Point taken, let’s go.”

  I followed Matthew and couldn’t help but smile. Matthew and Gordon’s relationship had been one that was responsible for certain people in his pack going against him. Matthew had seen the appointment of a female alpha, not as a necessary part of a strong pack, but as a lie to his relationship. I was glad to see that since accepting what he needed to do, he was also more open with Gordon.

  The change was different inside the house too. While Matthew had told me that he hadn’t kept his relationship a secret, there had been nothing to suggest that they were together. Now, pictures of them both adorned the walls of the house; it felt different, more comfortable.

  Matthew led me into the front room. Gordon followed a few moments later with a pot of tea, a jug of milk, and some cups on a tray.

  I sat down in a very comfortable leather armchair and waited for Gordon to finish pouring drinks and giving them out. As Matthew’s pack aide, it was his job to keep things running smoothly, to deal with problems before Matthew had to get involved.

  “I can pour the tea,” Matthew commented.

  “I love you dearly, Matthew, but we both know that what you call tea, I would affectionately call cups of warm watery milk.”

  Matthew sat down opposite me. “And they’re the best damn cups of warm watery milk you’ll ever drink.”

  “That they are,” Gordon said with a chuckle.

  “Enough frivolity,” Matthew declared. “You came seeking our help. What do you need?”

  I told them both about everything that had happened from the hostage situation to having called Gordon. They both listened intently, neither asking questions until I’d finished.

  Matthew placed his cup back on the saucer. “You sure they’re Reavers?”

  I nodded. “You’ve had dealings with them?”

  “Once back in 1532, or was it 1535? I forget. Either way, I was less than impressed with our time together. They say they’re working for Avalon, but on the evidence I saw, they work only for themselves or whoever gives them the most money. They’re a corrupt organization that gets away with more than most on the basis of some kind of tenuous link to Avalon. No one outside of the group knows who’s in charge; it’s all far too much cloak and dagger for my liking. But what does it have to do with you being here?”

  “I need to go to Avalon,” I said. “I need someone to watch my back. Someone I can trust not to be involved with the Reavers, and someone I know can handle themselves if anything happens.”

  “We’d be happy to help,” Matthew said. “My pack members will be happy to help too.”

  “I didn’t want to involve your pack. I don’t want to bring more pain to your people, but I’m short on time. I’m sorry for that.”

  “Nonsense,” Matthew exclaimed. “My pack thinks highly of you. The children here are regaled with tales of how we fought alongside you, killing something evil. You never, ever have to feel guilty about people who died helping you. You can go out there and talk to their children and they will look you in the eyes and tell you how proud they are of the people they lost. How proud they are that their names will go down in pack history as warriors of virtue. If I went out there right now and told them that Hellequin needed their help, I’d have more people here than I knew what to do with.”

  I smiled. “Thank you.”

  “Is that why we haven’t seen you? You’re concerned about dragging us into your life once more?”

  Matthew stood and strode over to me, lifting me onto my feet. “You are welcome here any time.” He hugged me. “But on this occasion, I don’t think I’ll need to get a volunteer. I know someone who’s already going to Avalon. She’ll join you. She’s on her way there for Kasey’s naming ceremony.”

  “Ellie?” I asked. I knew that Kasey and she had grown close over the years.

  “She’s going down there for Kasey’s naming ceremony as one of her sentinels,” Gordon said. “She couldn’t get away from pack duty until now, so she’s been here. I called her while I was making tea, she’ll be here shortly.”

  Matthew slapped me on the back, and my lungs protested that they weren’t meant to try and come out of my chest.

  The three of us sat and drank tea, talking about various topics to catch up until Ellie arrived twenty minutes later. She walked into the room wearing a pair of dark green combats, an orange T-shirt, and with her dark blue hair pulled back into a ponytail. She saw me and smiled.

  It didn’t take long before Matthew had explained everything to Ellie, who looked over at me when they’d finished and smiled. “Road trip,” she said.

  “Looks that way, you sure you’re okay with me tagging along?”

  “Do you have a change of clothes?”

  To be honest, I hadn’t thought about it. “I guess we’ll need to swing by my place.”

  “Good, you can drive. Saves me taking my car too. If needs be I can always get a lift back with Tommy and Olivia.”

  “What am I going to do without my alpha?” Matthew asked.

  “Hopefully nothing stupid,” Ellie replied with a smirk.

  “I’ll keep him out of trouble,” Gordon assured everyone.

  “You do all realize I’m right here, yes?” Matthew asked which got a laugh from everyone in the room.

  Once Ellie and I had left Matthew’s house, with both of us promising to keep safe, we went back to my car and then took the hour or so drive back to my house. Ellie waited in the car while I grabbed some clothes from my bedroom and threw them in my bag, along with my jian and a silver dagger. If the griffin reappeared, I was going to be prepared.

  I climbed back into the car and we set off on the four-hour journey.

  CHAPTER 10

  So, it appears that congratulations are in order,” I said to Ellie as I drove onto the A31 dual carriageway.

  “Thanks. Being an alpha is a lot of responsibility, but I’m enjoying it. It’s been over a year now, and no one has challenged me for the position, so I guess I’m doing something right.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  We were both quiet for a moment. “You can say it, you know,” Ellie eventually said.

  “What?” I asked.

  “That I’ve only been a werewolf for eighteen years, that’s very young to be an alpha.”

  “I didn’t want to bring up any unpleasant discussions.”

  “I was twenty-six when that bastard turned me,” she said softly. “In eighteen years, it doesn’t look like I’ve aged a day. I hate him for what he did to me, but if I can be strong, then others like me, those who weren’t born a werewolf, those who were turned by a maniac, maybe they’ll gain something from that.”

  “I’m happy for you. It takes a lot to put what you went through behind you.”

  “Yeah, well, it helped that someone tore his head off. Saved me the job.”

  The man who’d changed her was a nasty piece of shit
by the name of Neil Hatchell. He’d been a werewolf who’d raped and bitten a number of women, the latter act turning each of them into werewolves. Without the aid of a pack when they had their first change, most of the women died or were mentally broken. Eventually, something even more evil than Neil decided he was better without his head. Precisely zero people mourned his passing.

  For several miles we listened to the various local radio stations, none of which played anything I was a huge fan of, until Ellie said, “You know, you’re a real idiot sometimes.”

  I wanted to slam on the brakes and ask where the hell that had come from; instead I waited for her to continue.

  “You know why I’m going to Avalon, yes?” she asked.

  “Kasey’s naming ceremony. Gordon told me.”

  “You know that Kasey wanted to ask you to be her second sentinel.”

  “What, why?” I asked, taken aback by the news, and I decided it best to leave the road and park the car outside a small pub.

  Naming ceremonies were carried out for all of those who wished to take part in Avalon life, and had started to show their powers. The person being named was then granted the full privileges of anyone of Avalon, including being able to work for them and use those appointed for their species, such as Matthew for the werewolves, to push forward a vote that they wanted. Kasey, at fifteen, was still considered a child, and would be until she turned eighteen, but it was a big step toward her life in Avalon.

  Each named person got to pick up to two people to be their sentinels. They couldn’t be family, and had to be people who would take responsibility to help show the named how to use their abilities, and live within the world they were accepting. It was an honor to be asked.

  “I don’t understand. Kasey never asked me, not once,” I explained.

  “She knows that you and Avalon aren’t exactly best friends. She didn’t want you to feel like you had to go, like you had no choice. She didn’t want you to feel uncomfortable. So she simply didn’t ask you. I’m surprised you didn’t think it might be worth talking to her about, didn’t you realize she might ask you?”

  I sighed and shook my head. “She should have said something.”

  “She might have done if she hadn’t heard you say that you wouldn’t go back there if you could manage it.”

  “I was talking to Tommy. I didn’t mean to . . . hell, if she’d have asked me I’d have gone back there like a shot.”

  “Tommy and Olivia told her that, but she didn’t want to risk it. She looks up to you like an uncle. I think if you’d have said no to her, it would have hurt more than she wanted to admit.”

  “I don’t even know what I can offer.” During the ceremony sentinels state what they would bring to the table.

  “Are you serious? Hellequin doesn’t know what he can give her?”

  “Ah, yes I think the ability to murder people, might not be the way she wants to go. These things are logged forever. Kasey gets paperwork with what the sentinels say on it.”

  “You can protect her, you can always be there for her, and you can help her. You cannot be so damn blind not to realize she needs you.”

  “Who did she get to do it?”

  “She hasn’t decided yet. There are some people in Avalon she wants to ask. But if you get there first, she’d love it to be you.”

  I sighed. “I’ve never done this before.”

  “This is my first time too. I had two friends be my sentinels. We were all terrified together.” Anyone not born into their abilities can also undertake the naming ceremony; it’s exactly the same process.

  “I mean I never had a naming ceremony,” I corrected. “I got all of the paperwork and the like, but never had a ceremony.”

  “How the hell does that happen?”

  “It wasn’t high on anyone’s list at the time. I was twelve, nearly thirteen, when I started to show my magic. I wasn’t given the chance to do anything else before Merlin told everyone we were off to China.” The memory brought with it fresh anger. For centuries, I’d believed I was in China with Merlin, I’d remembered the journey, learning the language. It was all a lie.

  “I think you must be the only person I’ve met who never had one.”

  “It was less popular back when I was young, certainly less of a big deal than it is now. People want the ceremony and all that goes with it; it’s a sort of rite of passage. But back then, we were all too busy, and it wasn’t seen as an important thing to do.”

  “I feel bad for calling you an idiot now.”

  “Don’t. Why didn’t Tommy or Olivia mention it to me?”

  “It’s her decision at the end of the day. Both of them knew she wanted to ask you, but she’d decided not to, so that was that. She made them promise not to tell you. She didn’t make me promise, though.”

  “When we get to Avalon, I’ll go find her. I’ll tell her I’ll do whatever she likes. My dislike of Avalon has nothing to do with not wanting to be there for something that’s important for her.”

  I put my foot down and we soon returned to the dual carriageway, although this time I was driving a bit quicker than I had been a few minutes earlier.

  The remaining two and a half hours of driving were done in relative quiet, as Ellie took the time to get some sleep. She woke as we reached the outskirts of Tintagel village in Cornwall.

  “We there yet?” she asked.

  I told her exactly where we were.

  “Tintagel, eh? How long has it been since you were last here?”

  “Over a century,” I admitted. Things had certainly changed since I was last in the area. There were more houses and shops, and at some point in the 1990s people had come to excavate the nearby castle—Tintagel Castle—as it was believed incorrectly to be the birthplace of King Arthur. Olivia had informed me a while back that the number of tourists was negligible; the village kept the number of accommodations low as a way to control the number of outside visitors.

  “Damn Monmouth,” I said as I drove past several obvious tourists, taking photos of everything and everyone in sight.

  “What?” Ellie asked.

  “Geoffrey of Monmouth. He was the guy who wrote the History of the Kings of Britain. In it, he wrote about Arthur. It took a long time for Avalon to get people to believe it was all myth, and even then, centuries later, people still want to believe that his words were the truth.”

  “Everything he wrote was true?”

  I shook my head. “Most of it was half-truths, rumors he’d heard from working with Avalon, that sort of thing. But in amongst it all were kernels of truth; such as Arthur being born in this area. At some point that became the idea that he was born in Tintagel Castle, despite it not having been built when Arthur was born. Oh, and he wrote a lot about Merlin, who I can tell you was less than pleased to play a starring role in someone’s story. After that, it was made known that anyone publicizing his or her knowledge about us will be killed.”

  The practice had lessened somewhat over the years, and now anyone trying to reveal information about Avalon and its allies are only discredited and vilified. It’s still a crime to publicize our existence, but actually discovering it isn’t even frowned upon. I have no idea how it’s enforced, what with the increasing use of the Internet, but as we haven’t been on the front page of every newspaper in the world, I guess it’s working.

  I drove through the small village and parked outside an ancient building. The old dark stones that had been used to build the property had vines that ran up the side of them, presumably to help keep the building upright.

  “Who lives here?” Ellie asked.

  “Nathaniel Garrett,” a voice boomed from the newly opened front door.

  “Lir,” I said with a smile.

  Lir enveloped me in his gigantic arms, but I never felt crushed. He was well aware of his own strength. Eventually he released me and held out his hand for Ellie to shake.

  “I assume this isn’t a personal visit?” he asked in his thick Irish accent as he rubbed
his beard. “You want to go to Avalon?”

  I nodded and he beckoned both Ellie and me into his home.

  Lir’s home was barren, and the little furniture he had—which amounted to a small coffee table, a unit with a TV which had probably been purchased twenty years ago, and a bookcase overflowing with miscellaneous crap—was all handmade, and so held the same rugged look that Lir himself had.

  The couch was a collection of large beanbags, which threatened to envelope me as I sat down. The entire room smelled like cannabis, and I suspected that no amount of window opening or scented candles was going to change that. The smell was part of the building now.

  “I’ve always liked a spliff,” he said as if aware of my thoughts. “It calms me.”

  “Probably for the best then,” I said, which got a laugh from him. A calm Lir was unpredictable at best, but one who’s lost to his emotions was downright deadly.

  “You want a drink?” he asked Ellie and me.

  “What have you got?” Ellie asked.

  “Tea, ale, vodka, water, and coffee. I’ve discovered in my travels that a man needs very little else.”

  “Water, please.”

  “Same for you, Nathaniel?”

  “Yes, and you can call me Nate.”

  “Nate, what kind of name is that?” Lir asked with a shake of his head.

  “What kind of name is Lir?” I asked before I could stop myself.

  Lir’s smile dropped. “It’s the one me dad gave me,” he said sternly.

  “I was jesting,” I quickly told him. “Meant nothing by it.”

  Lir smiled again. “I know, just pissing about. Back in a second.”

  “Who is this guy?” Ellie asked when we were alone. “And is he high right now?”

  “Probably, yes. He usually is. As for who he is, Lir is a water elemental. People used to think of him as the god of the sea, or at least the Irish did. That was before his son took over, and Lir settled for living in a small house and smoking pot.”

  “And he can get us to Avalon?”

  Apart from being an organization that existed throughout the world, it was also an island about ten miles off the Cornish coast of England. The only way to get to the island is to use a ferry crossing. There are three. One of which goes from a private harbor just outside of Tintagel, one from the western coast of Wales, and one from Ireland. The ships that go have a water elemental of exceptional power on board, making the normally incredibly dangerous crossing a much safer prospect. At a certain level of power, elementals can fuse themselves with their elements, allowing them a much easier time of controlling them. They have to be careful not to lose their mind within the element, however, as their body can become broken up over a vast distance, especially with water elementals. But it does mean that they can control large amounts of their element at once.