by Steve McHugh
Web began to cover my legs and in moments it had reached my knees. I created a blade of fire on my hand.
“Go ahead,” she teased. “See what happens when you cut into my flesh now. The venom is all through my body. Cutting me will just spill it across you. It’ll kill you even quicker.”
I removed the blade and merged the fire and air glyphs. The sky grew immediately darker, and the sound of thunder exploded in the skies above us.
“Even the heavens want you dead,” she said with a chuckle.
I concentrated on my breathing and moved my hands so that one was pointed toward the jorōgumo and the other straight up.
“Any final comments?”
“This is going to hurt like crazy.”
She opened her mouth. “Yes, yes it is.”
The lightning exploded high above us, giant red and purple streaks across the sky. One of them shot down toward my outstretched hand, and in an instant it traveled down through my body, where it mixed with my magic, and then out through my other hand. Right into the jorōgumo.
I hadn’t used this type of attack since I’d fought Cronus, and only used it now in a desperate act. Cronus had survived that attack. The jorōgumo wouldn’t. The force of the blast flung her against a nearby tree, which vaporized when the magic hit it, along with several feet of the land that surrounded it. Earth was flung up all around, and by the time the deafening noise of the thunder above had died down there was nothing but a smoldering crater where the jorōgumo had once been. Pain exploded through my body. The lightning in Albion was considerably more potent, and I hadn’t been ready to absorb it. The fingers on my hand where the lightning had entered were broken and deformed, the skin cracked open, the wounds cauterized.
Tommy was by me in an instant. He looked at my hand. “Shit, Nate.”
“Ouch, pain, ouch,” I said with a forced smile. “Manticore dead?”
“Tearing its head off kills it, yes?”
I nodded.
“Very dead. How about the spider queen?”
“Over there.”
Tommy walked over and dropped down several feet to the bottom of the crater. “Shit, Nate,” he repeated when he reappeared. “There’s not really a body to find. Lots of bits, though. We need to get you to a hospital.” He winced.
“What’s wrong?” I asked the pain in my hand forgotten.
“My back is cut up pretty good. That thing had some damn sharp claws. Also it bit me on the leg. I don’t think I’ll be doing much fighting against Kay, sorry.”
“We need to stop him.”
“In your current predicament, do you think you can use magic to do it?”
I tried to move my fingers and roared in pain. “No. Not so much. I don’t need my hands to use magic, but without one of them, I’d be pretty hampered. Not sure how long I could keep it up.”
“Then we’re both hurt and need help.” Tommy glanced down the nearby cave entrance. “Let’s get you looked at.”
“If there’s a realm gate down there, Kay could already be gone.”
“Then we’re not in any hurry. Besides, Enfield is still out there. Elaine is in danger, and you need to heal. Both of those things need to be dealt with more urgently than Kay.”
“And you’re hurt.”
“Yeah, but I’m more capable of dealing with pain than you are.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Yes, that must be it.” I lay back on the dirt. “We need to find that son-of-a-bitch.”
“We’ll find Kay, and he’ll get his, just not right now. Now let’s go tell everyone how I saved your life and fought both the manticore and jorōgumo single-handed, while you cried like a baby. They’ll knight me for this.”
I laughed, which caused my hand to hurt, which in turn caused me to swear at Tommy. “Brave Tommy of Kissmyass.”
“That’s Sir Tommy, knave.”
I laughed again. It hurt again. I hate my best friend.
CHAPTER 34
Tommy and I managed to find a car that we could pile into, and took a moment to breathe while it ferried us to the palace. Tommy’s clothes were ruined, so he was still in werebeast form when the car stopped and I opened the door.
There were dozens of people littered around the palace; most appeared to belong to the palace guard, although there were a lot of agents from all three branches of Avalon agencies that were creating a cordon to stop people from gaining entry to the building. Me in my blood-stained, torn clothing and Tommy with his . . . less than timid appearance gained the attention of the heavily armed men and women very quickly.
When people with guns and swords—not to mention the obvious growls and crackles of energy from those who didn’t need guns and swords—sounded out, we did as we were told and lay down flat on the ground with our hands behind our backs. It was easier for us to do as we were told and explain later than to get into a fight and piss everyone off. Considering my substantial talent for the latter, sometimes I have to fight my overwhelming urge to not do as I’m told.
Once they realized who we were, and decided we weren’t a threat—a difficult thing to accomplish when one of you is just a mass of teeth, claws, and muscle—we were allowed into the palace, where some spare clothing was given to Tommy. He wandered off to speak to some people, while I jogged through to the main chamber, where Elaine sat at her place within the council, her elbows on her desk and the palms of her hands over her eyes. Several people bustled around her.
“How’s it going?” I shouted over the din of a dozen people all talking at once.
The room fell silent and Elaine glanced up at me. She looked tired, but still managed to smile. “I hear Kay is behind this.”
“Looks that way.”
There were several hushed whispers throughout the chamber.
“I’d like a moment alone with Nathan,” Elaine said without it ever sounding like it was a request.
Once we were alone she descended the stairs and hugged me. “I’m glad you’re safe.”
“Me too. Kay escaped. Enfield is his Faceless, he’s coming for you.”
“Why would Kay do this? Why would he try to kill me?”
“He wants you out of the picture, to make Avalon feared throughout all the realms. He thinks that’s best for when his brother awakens. Personally, I think someone he works for has fed him a bunch of shit. Kay was never the type to have enough patience for the long game. I’m surprised you gave him the job you did.”
“I didn’t. Merlin put him forward and the council voted for him. Barely. I’d rather have had Vlad the Impaler as head of the organization. It’s why I agreed with Hades to allow Lucie to take the job as assistant director.”
My pause was enough for her to realize she’d mentioned something she shouldn’t have. “Ah, I assumed you knew that. Hades and Lucie came to me just after the Second World War. They wanted Kay kept an eye on. Hades had his doubts about the man, and Lucie was looking for a job within Avalon. It worked well, she’s excellent. She’s also on her way here with Olivia. I want to talk to them about their plan to capture this Enfield. And yes, I said capture. We have questions for him.”
“I can’t see him being the answering type.”
“Do you believe he can get to me?”
“Anyone can get to anyone with enough patience, talent, and luck. He’s got the first two. He worked as a Faceless for Kay for over a century, he must have patience in abundance.”
“I’ll have to have it petitioned for Kay to be excommunicated from Avalon. I can’t have him running around out there arranging plans to try and kill me, or anyone else for that matter.”
“We’ll find him.”
“Yes, we will,” Olivia said as she walked over to where Elaine and I stood. Lucie and Tommy flanked her, along with several guards, who stood back and kept their distance. Fiona, using a walking stick, and Alan took the rear.
I walked over to Fiona and hugged her. “I’m glad you’re okay,” I whispered. “You had a lot of people worried.”
&nb
sp; “I’m fine,” she said. “Well, I’m on the mend, which is pretty much the same thing.”
“I’m good too, thanks,” Alan interrupted, holding up the cast on his broken arm for emphasis. “Got beat up by a psychopath, and I’ve got to wear this for a few days but other than that, just dandy.” He looked serious, but kept glancing at Fiona, his hand locked tightly in hers.
Fiona rolled her eyes. “He’s milking it.”
“Do you have a plan?” Elaine asked, interrupting us.
“We’re going to use you as bait,” Lucie told her. She unrolled a map, spreading it over the circular table that Elaine and I had been standing in front of. “We want to take you to the east of here, as if leaving the city.”
“That’s by that woodland where we were attacked when I first arrived,” I said.
“Those woods are perfect cover for someone to hide. We’ve put enough people in them to make it look like we’re taking it seriously, but leaving enough gaps for someone with Enfield’s talents to exploit the weaknesses we’ve created.”
“Why would Enfield go there?” Elaine asked.
Fiona stepped forward.
“It’s good to see you up and about,” Elaine said with genuine warmth.
“Thank you, ma’am. Kay and that spider woman were the ones who attacked me in my home. But Enfield was the one who searched through my head for information on Felix. It took him a while, but he found it. The funny thing about mind magic is that if you remain locked to another person as you search through their memories for a great length of time, the route goes both ways. I saw Enfield and Kay discussing your murder; I saw that he planned to do it away from the palace. He knew that if word ever got out that you’d be inundated with security. He also knows your escape plan. Go east, out of Camelot to the secure compound next to the river.”
Elaine was shocked. “No one is meant to know that. Only my security and guards know it.”
“My guess is, you have a leak in your guards,” Alan said. “A pretty big one.”
We all looked to Elaine and waited for her to speak, but she remained quiet for several seconds, as her expression hardened. She didn’t like to lose her temper in front of so many people, but she was pretty close to doing so. If she found Kay before her people did, I didn’t pity what she’d do to him.
“Let’s say that Enfield takes the bait,” Elaine theorized, her voice steady and soft. “What’s to say that someone else isn’t going to pull the trigger, what if Enfield is what we’re meant to be looking at while someone else slips a dagger in my ribs?”
“Nothing,” Olivia said, inspiring zero amounts of confidence. “Although the fact that we’ll have people with you at all times, people we trust, including us, should go some way to ease those concerns.”
“I want Nate there too,” Elaine said.
“Like you could keep me away,” I said and flexed my almost healed fingers. I’d used a portion of Felix’s soul to heal myself. My hand was going to be sore for a while, but at least the broken bones had set.
“How long before we’re ready to go?” Elaine asked.
“Our people are working on it,” Lucie told everyone. “We need to ensure that Enfield has enough time to get there. It’s close to residential homes and hotels, we don’t want any engagement to spill over.” She looked at me. “No big magical bursts. I don’t want any innocent people to get hurt.”
“And what about whoever else is working for Enfield and Kay?” I asked. “What if they start opening fire on whoever is nearby?”
“Do you have a way to find out who is loyal and who isn’t?” Olivia asked. “A quick way, I mean.”
“Give me a list of names,” I told everyone. “I have Felix’s memories in my head. Most are jumbled up still, but I recognize names of Reavers. That should narrow it down.”
“The SOA are still stood down,” Lucie said. “Several members are unaccounted for, they appear have vanished into the realm, or left it altogether.”
“Hendricks said that everyone on the list Bushy gave is dead.”
Lucie nodded. “Someone killed them all. There were another four not on the list there too. It looks like they weren’t expecting an attack. It was at an outpost about twenty miles north of the city.”
“Enfield?”
“I don’t know, but when we find him, I plan on asking.” Lucie’s words were said with absolute certainty. There was no doubt in her mind that she’d be having that conversation with Enfield. She left the chambers, returning a few minutes later with a memory stick and a laptop, while everyone was in the middle of discussing how Enfield was going to be subdued.
“Kill him,” Alan said.
“I’ve explained,” Elaine said, rather tersely. “We need him alive.”
“Maim him then. He hurt Fiona; I want him to feel some pain for that.”
“Oh, he’ll feel pain,” Elaine assured him. “But we can’t kill him. We need him in one piece.”
Lucie placed the laptop in front of me and opened the lid. “There are a lot of names here, a thousand throughout all of Avalon. I’ve narrowed it down to just those SOA agents working within Camelot itself, and exported the data to a spreadsheet. Are you sure that no one outside of the SOA is involved?”
I searched through Felix’s memories. “Only the SOA was corrupted. And only those who worked within branches that Kay created.”
Lucie changed a few things in the spreadsheet. “That narrows it down to a few hundred.”
“Give me a few minutes then.” I took the laptop and walked off to Elaine’s chair before taking a seat and reading through the list of names. I highlighted each one when I recognized it. Out of the three hundred and nineteen names on the list, seventy-six were Reavers.
“Out of every chair here, you pick mine,” Elaine said with a chuckle. “If Merlin saw you there, he’d have had an aneurism.”
I told them all how many names were in my head.
“That’s less than I was expecting,” Lucie said.
“Are there names in your head that aren’t on the list?” Olivia asked.
“I wrote them all down in the next tab. There’s another fourteen.”
Olivia and Lucie scanned the names before passing the laptop to Fiona and Elaine.
“I know some of these people,” Fiona said. “I’m friends with some of them. Are you sure?”
“Some people might have the same name, so they need to be gone through and eliminated, but everyone on that list is a name that Felix discovered were working with the Reavers.”
“I want everyone on this list arrested and taken in for questioning,” Elaine told Olivia. “You okay to oversee that?”
“The SOA won’t like LOA agents arresting people,” Alan said, verbalizing what everyone else was probably thinking.
“Don’t care. Olivia, I know you’re in charge of the investigation into what happened, but as of right now, you’re also on point for the arrest and interrogation of these people. This will be a permanent rank increase, although what your new job title can wait. Assemble people you trust and hunt them down. I’ll have your new rank cleared with the council . . . somehow, but I’m enacting emergency rules to have you outrank every member of the SOA, including the director.” She turned to Lucie. “Kay did us a favor by being a traitor, it means that there’s a job opening that needs to be filled. You are, as of now, the director of the SOA. You will give Olivia every single assistance in rooting out the corruption that Kay started. Officially, Olivia will answer to me and the council members I select to oversea this operation. Unofficially, I trust you both will work well together.”
“Yes, Elaine,” Olivia said with a bow. “I’ll get to work on it.”
“Of course,” Lucie said with a smile. I got the feeling that anyone trying to put one over on the Lucie and Olivia team was going to have a very bad time of things.
“Good. Lucie, let’s get this plan for me to be a giant bulls-eye in motion. Nate, you’re with me, mostly so I can keep an eye on you
. Alan and Fiona, please accept my apologies that I’m leaving. When I return, I’d like to talk to you both about how you’re doing.”
As we were leaving, Alan grabbed my arm. “When you get him, give the bastard a kick from me.”
“I think he’s going to be getting a lot of those in the coming weeks.”
“And he will deserve all of them.”
I glanced over at Fiona, who was reading the list of names on the laptop. “Is she okay?”
“I think so. She’s exhausted, but refused to stay in bed. And she’s jumpy. She didn’t expect Kay to attack her in her . . . in our home. I’m full of barely controlled rage, the only reason I’m not out there hunting this cunt down is because she needs me more.”
“She’ll be okay,” I said. “And once this is over, she’ll never have to worry about Kay or the Reavers again.”
“We said that before, remember?” Alan said. “When we took the Reavers to pieces? When Elaine had them hunted down and arrested or executed. You remember that, yes? What’s so different?”
“We didn’t have Lucie and Olivia doing it. I don’t think they’re going to be so lax.”
“You have a lot of faith in your friends.”
I glanced at Alan and then back to Fiona. “That’s because my friends are worth having faith in.”
“Where’s Remy?” I asked Lucie as we left the palace.
“Hospital. He took a bit of a whack from that explosion, so we’re keeping an eye on him. He should be fine though.”
“And Kelly.”
“Interrogation.”
I left the conversation there as we were joined outside by Tommy and about a dozen agents, none of whom I’d met before. But I was pretty confident that if Olivia or Lucie had allowed them to take part in the mission they’d been thoroughly vetted. Both of them had been betrayed by people they trusted: Olivia by Reid a few years ago, and Lucie by Kay and a large number of SOA agents.