by Steve McHugh
“Unless they use the river.”
“They won’t use the river,” Kristin said, adding idiot in her head. “We’ll see if we can shepherd them along toward Winterborn. We can take them there with few problems. They won’t fight us when innocents are in the way.”
“You hope.”
“They’re weak like that,” Kristin said. “That Layla woman didn’t shoot me when she could have. She hesitated. The same can’t be said for all of them, but if we can separate them from the pack, we can take them.”
“Get it done. Don’t screw up again.” Nergal ended the call.
Kristin took a deep breath, climbed out of the BMW, removed her sword, and used it to smash the windows of the vehicle. She walked around the SUV, breaking the lights at the front and rear, puncturing the tires, and doing as much damage as she could until her rage had dissipated.
“You done?” Abaddon asked. She leaned up against one of the smashed windows. “He doesn’t treat you with the respect you’re due.”
Kristin tossed her sword onto the ground.
“He blames you for his failure,” Abaddon continued. “How many of his people did he send to help you do this? Too few. I know you were thinking the same. He relied on my blood elves to do the job. Unfortunately, they’re mostly reanimated blood elves, and they lack that extra bit of something living blood elves have, that extra bloodlust. He sent you to fail so he could lord it over you.”
Nergal had been upset with Kristin’s predecessor for his loss of blood elves, so Nergal had made a deal with Abaddon. She’d reanimate the corpse of every dead blood elf that they could bring back. They would only follow rudimentary orders and killing was their only goal, but they were useful fodder. Unfortunately, Nergal appeared to think that Abaddon clawed her way a little further into his organization with every blood elf she reanimated. Kristin didn’t think Abaddon could get any further into Avalon than she already had. Not unless she wanted to kill Arthur, and that was never going to happen.
As far as Kristin was concerned, Nergal’s problem was that no one else on their side was as powerful as Abaddon in terms of necromancy, so he had to use her. They’d tried to reanimate blood elf corpses with some less powerful necromancers, but the results had been disappointing and, on one particularly gruesome occasion, incredibly gooey. It meant that Abaddon was a wonderful ally, but one who made Nergal more and more resentful with every success that she was part of.
Kristin shook her head. “Allowing me to fail seems like a lot of effort on his part.”
“Nergal does not believe that women are his equal,” Abaddon said, walking over to Kristin and placing a hand on her shoulder. “He will never believe that, no matter how much we show to the contrary. And it wasn’t about you failing. It was about me failing.”
“You’re suggesting that Nergal set me up so that he could lord one over you when it went wrong?”
Abaddon nodded.
Kristin opened her mouth to argue, but thought better of it. Would Nergal have done that? Yes, there was no doubt in her mind that he would have sacrificed her to make someone else look bad. But she’d always thought that he had given her abilities because he saw something special in her. The idea that Nergal would use her as any other disposable entity, just to make a point, stung more than she cared to admit. She turned and walked away without another word.
Kristin made her way through the ranks of blood elves, which were sprinkled with several species, and enjoyed the sounds of the battle taking place inside the prison grounds. She wondered how many reanimated blood elves were dead. Until today it hadn’t mattered, not in her eyes. They were expendable. But now the idea that Nergal was using their failure as a way to gain more favor with Avalon had been placed in her head, it was all she could think about.
“How’s it going?” Kristin asked one of the living blood elves, one of only a dozen that had come with the group.
“A lot of them fled,” the elf said, its voice raspy and deep. “We caught a few.”
“How many are alive?”
The blood elf shrugged.
Kristin stepped over the rubble of the prison entrance and the sounds of fighting died away, replaced with an awful silence that she felt was almost oppressive. She was used to battle, she was used to noise, to the din all around her, but not to silence. Kristin didn’t like silence. It left her alone with her own thoughts, and she was of the opinion that no one should be burdened in such a way. And at the moment she had more thoughts to deal with than she considered healthy.
She walked around the corner of the prison and found several dead bodies belonging to other species, including human, among the dozens of dead blood elves. She stopped walking. “Are these blood elves dead, or re-dead?” she asked Abaddon, who she knew was walking behind her.
“How do you do that?” Abaddon asked.
“I have another clone in that tower behind you. What she sees, I see. I’m younger than you, Abaddon, but I’m not new at this.”
Kristin continued on and found the remains of the force Hades and his people had sent to find Caleb around another corner. Two were dead, leaving only four alive: two men, one much older than the other, and two women, one about the same age as Kristin and the other currently in the shape of a werebear. All three were on their knees with looks of anger etched on their faces.
“You let Layla and her kin escape,” she said to the blood elf commander next to the oldest of the three prisoners.
“They fought well,” the blood elf said.
“Commander Fenix,” Kristin said. “You plan on introducing me to your friends here?”
“I have no idea who you are,” Fenix said.
“My name is Kristin,” she told him. “Nergal has a file on you. You were human until you had a run-in with a werewolf in Germany in 1944. You worked for the military at the time, but you left when Hades made you a better offer than stalking the woods of a country you were only there to liberate. No wife, no children, no family of any kind. I hear you’re not that powerful a werewolf, but we can’t all be Tommy or Kase Carpenter, now can we? So, who are your friends?” Kristin slapped the younger male across the face. “Your name, soldier.”
“Jared Bray,” he said.
“Well, Jared, you’re going to behave, yes? I would so hate to slice up that pretty face of yours.”
“What did you do to me?” Fenix asked.
Kristin’s attention refocused on the commander. “Ah, not being able to turn into a seven-foot werewolf beginning to concern you? And with no sorcerer’s band. Well, do you remember a few years ago when Arthur had humans slaughtered in their thousands so he could jump out and save them all? Well, that’s the thing about humans: they work well under pressure. So, after Arthur . . . persuaded their best and brightest to work for him, he asked them to come up with new ways to deploy the sorcerer’s band.” Kristin motioned for the blood elf to pass her the rifle he held. Once she had it, she showed it to Commander Fenix.
“It’s a rifle.”
“It’s a specially-designed rifle.” Kristin emptied the weapon and passed it back to the blood elf, keeping the magazine in her hand. She ejected the final round and showed it to the three prisoners.
“A tranquilizer dart?” the werebear asked.
“That’s right. And you are?”
“Diana,” the werebear said. The silver cuffs she wore around her wrists must have been incredibly painful, yet she didn’t return to her human form.
“Ah, well, Diana. Now we have a celebrity in our midst,” Kristin said with a mocking curtsey. “This little dart is exceptional. You see, when it exits the chamber, the casing is designed to fall away, leaving just this tiny needle. It travels just fast enough that when it hits something not human, it’ll puncture the skin and inject the enzyme. Don’t ask me how, I’m not a scientist. You fire this at a human, it’ll kill them. Basically, they managed to distill those bracelets into a chemical compound. They don’t perform completely right yet, and it’s easier to use on
the less powerful species, but they work well for the most part. You might all pass out or something, no big deal.”
“What do you want?” Commander Fenix asked.
“You’re going to come with us and answer a few questions,” Abaddon said.
“Like hell we are.”
Abaddon reached down and picked up one of the prone soldiers by the scruff of his neck. “This one lives. I can change that if you’d like? Or I can twist his spirit so he’ll be under my control. Or I can ensure his spirit stays in the body and he gets to live. I can heal him. The others are beyond my control to heal; they’re already dead. Your choice.”
Fenix’s eyes grew cold and hard.
“If you’re thinking about saying that he knew the risks when he took the job, just remember that I can make him my personal slave for the next century,” Abaddon said. “Take his soul, twist it until it’s nothing but a raging mass of hate and bile, and then let him loose at a camp.”
Kristin walked over to Diana and kneeled in front of her. “You’re a big deal,” she said. “I’ve heard stories about you.”
“You going to threaten me, too?” Diana asked. “Because I’m not really sure that’s wise.”
Kristin shrugged, stood up, and planted the heel of her boot in Diana’s face. Diana growled and moved to stand.
Kristin ignored the threat and turned to one of Nergal’s guards. “If she won’t change naturally, stick a sorcerer’s band on her. We can’t have her walking around in her werebear form.” The muscles in Diana’s body tensed. “You going to fight me?” Kristin said with a chuckle. She cuffed Diana around the side of the head. “I think you want to stay alive long enough to escape. So, just sit there like a good little . . . bear, and behave.”
“You’re enjoying this,” Jared said. “You look happy.”
Kristin looked toward Jared and smiled her brightest smile. “I love my job. And sometimes my job has perks like today. Are you sure you really want to become the target of my attention?”
“You just don’t need to hurt anyone,” Jared continued. “We’re unarmed, cuffed, and of no threat.”
Kristin stood over Jared. She looked down at him and wondered what it would be like to smash his face in with a hammer. She turned and walked away. “Get them loaded up,” she commanded.
She walked over to the injured soldier and drove her sword into his skull, ignoring the cries of rage from Fenix. “The conversation about his life is now done,” she told him.
“You like causing mayhem, don’t you?” Abaddon said as the pair walked away.
Kristin shrugged. Killing the soldier had made her feel better. Destroying the BMW had helped, but it was no substitute for flesh and bone. “I’m going to have the prisoners taken to Winterborn. Before I head there, I’m going to bring a number of people to hunt for Caleb and Layla in the wilderness around us. Simple, really.” Kristin turned away to walk toward her waiting SUV.
“What about Madison?” Abaddon called after her. “Your sister.”
Kristin paused. She turned slowly toward Abaddon, radiating anger. She walked back to the necromancer, all sense that she was vastly outmatched forgotten. “What do you know?”
“Calm, little one. I know because your photo was on the evening news. Nergal might not pay attention to humanity, he might not care, but I find them interesting. I watch the news, I read about them. I like to know what kind of people these creatures became after several thousand years without our guidance.”
“Madison betrayed me and needs to die.”
“I assume you’ll go back and try again?”
“Eventually, yes.”
“You let a clone do it, I assume?”
Kristin nodded. “Not a mistake I’ll make again. Madison is a personal issue, but personal and work don’t mix.”
“That’s shit, and you know it. Damn, I’ve killed for personal. I’ve murdered and slaughtered for personal when I was supposed to be focusing on the bigger picture. I like you, Kristin, but unlike you, when I went out to destroy those who had crossed me, I completed my objective. And I did it no matter what the cost. Next time, just blow up the damn restaurant, or massacre them all in their beds.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because eventually Nergal will find out what you did, and he’s probably going to blame another failed plan on your lack of focus. I just want you to be aware of that.”
Kristin didn’t believe that for one second. Abaddon always had a reason for doing something, and she wasn’t known for being particularly altruistic. “I’ll deal with Nergal when the time comes. He’ll forgive me. I’m important to his plans.”
Abaddon nodded. “Just like Elias was important to his plans?”
“Elias failed where I won’t,” Kristin snapped. “Nergal plucked me out of hell and gave me everything I ever wanted.”
“Is that why you didn’t just kill Madison with a car bomb? You wanted Madison to know, didn’t you?”
Kristin maintained eye contact with Abaddon and nodded. “She needed to know.”
“No, she didn’t. You did. She wouldn’t have given a shit, because she would have been dead. And the dead don’t care how they died. That sentimental crap only matters to those who live.”
“What about spirits?”
“For the most part, spirits are just memories and energy in human form. They don’t much care how they died, and even on the occasion that they do, there’s nothing they can do to change it. You cared that Madison knew it was you killing her—it wouldn’t have mattered to her once she was dead, but you wanted to see the fear in her eyes. The same as when I killed Cronus and Rhea two years ago. You can care how they died, but don’t lie to yourself and say it’s for them.”
Kristin didn’t like that Abaddon’s words were true. Madison hadn’t needed to know. “Are you coming with us to Winterborn?”
Abaddon shook her head. “I have things to do. A friend is coming to visit after some time apart. I think I’ll take her to Texas when you finally manage to grab hold of Caleb. I’m sure she’d like to see him.
“In the meantime, it was a pleasure to see you work, Kristin. I hope you don’t get yourself killed. Nergal isn’t half the boss he thinks he is. He’ll be perfectly fine with you doing all the heavy lifting, but don’t expect him to think of you as an equal. He didn’t think his own wife was his equal; he doesn’t think I’m his equal. Women are beneath him, they always have been. That’s why eventually someone will surprise him and put a knife in his gut. Probably his ex-wife.”
Kristin watched Abaddon walk away and get into a car, which soon drove out of sight. The blood elves who had been reanimated dissolved to nothing. Kristin looked down at her phone. Nergal had been mean to her on one-too-many occasions. She was loyal to the man, but loyalty had a limit. Hopefully, things would get better once Abaddon was gone from Nergal’s day-to-day operations.
12
After an hour of running, the group stopped to rest. They had no water, little food, no shelter, and an unsatisfying number of weapons. Harry, Cody, and Malcolm in particular were having trouble keeping up with those members of the group who weren’t human.
Layla sat beside Harry. “You okay?” she asked.
“Exhausted from all this running,” he said. “It’s hard enough to run for an hour at the best of times, but my adrenaline wore off a while ago, and it’s cold. And my boots are not made for running. They’re made for stomping and keeping my feet dry.”
“It’s a day’s walk from the prison to Winterborn,” Cody said. “And that’s in good weather. Thankfully we have the whole day ahead of us before we need to camp.”
“Hopefully the weather will hold out,” Malcolm said. “Do you think your friends are okay?”
“There’s no way a bunch of blood elves could take out Diana,” Chloe said, “and the strike team are more than capable of keeping themselves alive. Jared will be fine.”
“I know,” Layla said, hoping her confidence shone throu
gh. She really didn’t want to start thinking about what Nergal might do to the people she cared about. To Diana. To Jared. “Hopefully Remy got the call out and reinforcements will be on their way soon.” She removed the phone from her pocket. “Still no reception.”
“We need to keep moving,” Kase said as she returned from scouting the area. “There’s no one chasing us. At least no one I could smell. We need food, though. There’s a fresh water stream about a mile to the north of here. I drank from it and didn’t suffer any effects. I checked for dead animals nearby, but it looks good. I say we get there, drink, and see whether or not we can find a way to contact home and let them know what happened.”
Harry got back to his feet. “In the meantime, we march until we drop.”
“Hopefully it won’t come to that,” Layla said looking over at her dad. “You coping?”
Caleb nodded. “First time I’ve been outside of a prison for a while. I’m quite enjoying the freedom. Wish I’d spent more time doing laps in the yard, though. That would have come in handy. Be better if this sorcerer’s band could go.”
“Not a chance,” everyone said in unison.
Caleb sighed, but the smirk on his face suggested that he wasn’t overly bothered. Layla wondered how long it would be before he started looking for a way to escape.
“We’ve got a long trek ahead,” Chloe said. “Let’s get started.”
They walked in silence for the better part of two hours, the wind increasing in strength as the day wore on. Trees loomed high above them on all sides, their leaves a mixture of reds, oranges, greens, and yellows. Layla thought it would probably have looked beautiful at any other moment in time. A large number of leaves littered the ground, making any kind of stealthy approach all but impossible, which was at least a small comfort.
“We have company,” Kase said from the head of the group.
“Good company or bad?” Chloe asked.
“Fox company.”
Everyone turned as Remy walked toward them. “Hello, people. I checked and you’re not being followed.”