A Flicker of Steel

by Steve McHugh

  Layla shrugged, swinging her feet out of the bed and standing up. “Imprison both of them. Somewhere deep and dark, where I can throw away the key. She’s not my mom. You know that, right?”

  Terhal nodded. “I do. I believe her mind was a mess before the drenik was placed inside it. It’s difficult to tell exactly, but I think your mom’s mind merged with the drenik’s. The rage and hate I got from her certainly makes that a possibility. She’s a very dangerous woman. And there’s no chance you’re killing Abaddon. No offense, but you’re not in her league.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  “Layla, I’ve come to like and respect you over the last few years, but you got lucky on that runway. You fought a barely powered Abaddon and she still kicked your ass. She brought down a Hercules and survived being shot with silver rounds. No umbra is going to match that level of power.”

  “So what am I meant to do, leave it?” Layla felt the anger build up inside of her again. She closed her eyes and forced herself to calm.

  Terhal laughed. “So your options are to leave it or get killed fighting Abaddon? That’s it, no other alternatives?”

  Layla opened her eyes and sighed. “What do you suggest?”

  “Abaddon has a power base. It includes people such as your mother. You go after them, you’re going to make Abaddon very angry and, more importantly, you’re going to disrupt Avalon. Pissed off people make mistakes, and the next time Abaddon is there, maybe you can make sure you have your heaviest hitters with you.”

  “In other words, there’s a lot more I can do other than trying to kill her.”

  “That’s about the size of it, yes.”

  Layla removed the various tubes and wires that were connected to her as Chloe walked into the room and Terhal vanished.

  “Going somewhere?” Chloe asked.

  “Out of this damn bed for a start,” Layla said. “Can you please help me?”

  Together they managed to get Layla disconnected from everything and Chloe fetched her some clean clothes. “Shower in there,” Chloe said with a smile.

  “What?”

  “When you’re done, come to the command room underground. Room 614. I think there’s a conversation happening there you’d be interested in. But first, shower. Enjoy the hot water and try not to freak out about your arm.”

  “I’m not freaking out,” Layla said. “I’m just . . .”

  “Angry,” Chloe finished for her.

  Layla nodded. “My mom tried to kill me. I know she’s not my mom, not really, but even so . . . she sure looks a hell of a lot like her.”

  Chloe sat on the bed next to Layla. “I get that. My relationship with my own toxic mother is well documented.”

  “How’d you deal with it?”

  “Deal with having a mother who’d like to murder me? Well, I’m not sure I did. Not really. Avoiding her like the plague did the job. And then she got killed, so it all worked out in the end.”

  “You think that?”

  Chloe nodded. “My mother was a murderer who tried to kill me because of who my friends were. When I first told her I was gay, she told me it was a phase and called me ridiculous. She made sure my father was murdered and is personally responsible for helping Arthur murder thousands of people so that he could take control without humanity realizing what he is. She is better off dead. The world is better off with her dead.

  “Are you upset that your mum is walking around, even though she’s not the woman you remember, or are you upset that the woman you remember was helping a serial killer find targets and get away with his crimes?”

  “Both. The latter more, I guess. I’ve seen and heard some crazy shit in the last few years, but my mom coming back was not something I expected. Learning that she helped my father was unexpected, too. It’s tainted her image in my mind. I’m not sure if she did it because she loved me, or if she did it to help my dad.” Layla got up. “I’m going to have a shower, and then I’ll come find you.”

  Chloe stopped in the doorway. “Would it help if I told you that I rearranged my date?”

  “Piper? The redhead?”

  “That’s her. After fighting Abaddon and Avalon, getting a date didn’t feel so intimidating. Besides, I’m a war hero now.”

  Layla laughed. “Please don’t tell me you used those exact words.”

  “She did, and frankly I’m not sure I want to correct her. I don’t feel like much of a hero. I wonder if this is how soldiers feel when people say they’re heroic, and the reality is that you only did something because you didn’t want your friends to die. Doesn’t feel heroic, just feels necessary.”

  “You expected more?”

  “I expected to be swollen with pride at my own awesomeness. Honestly, I just feel like this whole thing is the start of something much worse. So I’m going to go on a date with a beautiful woman, drink some vodka, and watch shitty films with my friends. Not necessarily in that order.”

  “If you need to talk,” Layla said. “Don’t try to get through anything alone.”

  “That’s what everyone has said so far. I’ve been talking to Diana. For someone thousands of years old, she’s quite easy to talk to.”

  Chloe left, and Layla wondered just how much worse things were going to get before they got better. She had a shower with water as hot as she could bear, before getting out and drying herself, taking special care with her stump. It didn’t hurt and wasn’t too sore, but it was quite tender, and probably would be for a long time. Umbra healing was a thing of beauty, but she couldn’t regrow an arm. She would have to get used to her new circumstances, and sooner rather than later.

  When dressed, she left the medical facility and made her way down to room 614, where she found Hades, Persephone, Sky, Tommy, Olivia, and most of her team, along with several people she couldn’t name. They were in a massive auditorium that sat a few hundred people in total.

  A man she’d never met stood at the front of the room next to a white board, loudly humming the theme to Super Mario, while several people on the chairs in front of him looked like they’d heard this song more times than they cared to mention.

  “Ah, the woman of the hour,” the man said, gesturing to Layla as she entered. He was of average height with a bald head and the beginnings of a scruffy beard. He wore jeans and a t-shirt with a picture of Link from Zelda on it. “Please do take a seat.”

  Layla was motioned toward the front of the room where she sat next to Chloe and Harry.

  “I’m sorry,” the man said to Layla. “I haven’t introduced myself.” He came over and offered Layla his hand.

  “Layla,” she said.

  “Mordred,” he told her.

  Her eyes widened in shock. Everyone had heard about Mordred, the son of Merlin. The man who was meant to be the king of Avalon centuries ago before Arthur, Gawain—Mordred’s brother—and their people betrayed him. They sent Mordred to be tortured for decades by blood elves, who broke his mind and sent him on a quest to murder those who had once been his friends. Layla had heard that he was better now, but a few people were still cautious around him, not least of all because he was an incredibly powerful sorcerer.

  “I see you have heard of me,” Mordred said with a smile.

  “A little, yeah,” Layla replied.

  “Well, I assure you, I’m not quite as crazy as people make out.”

  “Not quite as crazy?”

  “I’m a bit crazy. But it’s all my own crazy, so it works out well.”

  Layla couldn’t help but smile.

  Mordred walked back to the whiteboard and tapped it, changing it into three parts. “Abaddon,” Mordred began. “She’s a big pain in the ass. But she’s not the only pain in the ass. These three realms are places where Avalon’s forces are fighting the Resistance. We are not winning. At best, we’re fighting to maintain a stalemate.”

  There were a lot of unhappy murmurs at that assessment.

  “I’m not saying we’ve lost it forever,” Mordred continued, h
is voice carrying over the crowd, “but we need to make a decision. We need to decide if we want to win this war, or merely maintain this current stalemate. Winning will mean we have to do something that will make a lot of you unhappy. We have to let one of these realms go. At least in the meantime.”

  “You’re suggesting we let that be the Earth realm?” Hades asked.

  “I am,” Mordred said. “Arthur and Avalon have already taken it. Whether we want to admit that or not, it’s true. They own the governments; they control most of the major cities on the planet. Going to war against Avalon on the Earth realm will kill billions of people. There’s no other way. We can stay here and we can help people who need it, but the idea of preparing for a war here at the moment is folly. It’s simply not going to work and will only get innocent people killed.”

  “What’s your plan, then?” Sky asked from next to her father.

  “These three realms are where the fighting between us and Avalon is the most intense. We need to win these realms. We need to force Arthur to take troops from Avalon and send them to these realms because they’re losing. Once he does that, we take the realm of Avalon. And we crush him like a Goomba.”

  A few people exchanged looks of confusion.

  “They’re the little brown things in Mario,” Mordred said. “Not quite mushrooms, but maybe they’re like evil mushrooms . . .”

  Silence descended on the room.

  “I’ll move on,” Mordred said. “The realms are Nidavellir, Helheim, and Midgard: all Norse realms, because the battle between Arthur and the Norse has raged for centuries. If we can win them, we will get a lot of power on our side. And not just from the Norse; there are a lot of people who went to the Norse’s aid. I have been fighting there for the last two years. And we’re gaining nothing.”

  “Where do you suggest we put our forces?” someone in the back asked.

  “Asgard and Midgard are connected. What some of you might not know is that Midgard is separate from the Earth realm. To get to Asgard, you have to go through one of the other realms, Midgard being one of them. I suggest we put our forces in Midgard and Helheim. That’s where the fighting is most intense.”

  “And what about Nidavellir?” Zamek asked from across the room after rising to his feet. “My people are there fighting for their lives.”

  “I know,” Mordred said. “I have special plans for them, trust me.”

  Zamek nodded and returned to his seat.

  “Why am I here?” Layla asked. “Why am I the lady of the hour?”

  “I’ll explain when we’re done,” Mordred said. “I just need you to hear the rest.”

  No one else spoke for the hour that Mordred continued, spelling out his plan to force Avalon back and defeat them in the realms that Arthur had put so much time and effort into claiming. It made sense, but no one was happy about leaving Earth with vastly fewer people than were currently here.

  When the meeting finished, only a few dozen people remained behind, most of whom had taken part in the attack on Nergal’s compound.

  “You’re not going to Helheim or Midgard,” Mordred said. “I need a small number of you to go to Nidavellir. I need to you get those dwarves out and bring them to one of the other realms. There are hundreds of dwarves in Nidavellir and each of them is just as good a warrior as Zamek. We need their help.”

  “Are you forgetting about the blood elves?” Zamek asked.

  Mordred shook his head. “Six months,” he said. “You have six months to get something working that will take us into that realm, away from the blood elves.”

  “We’ve been working on it for hundreds of years,” Zamek said. “Six months isn’t going to make much of a difference.”

  Mordred removed a stone tablet from a bag that Layla hadn’t noticed before and gave it to Zamek, whose mouth fell open in shock.

  “Can you do it?”

  Zamek nodded and ran from the room with Harry in hot pursuit.

  “Where does that leave us?” Layla asked.

  “In six months, you and your team are going to go to the worst place I’ve ever been to and you will rescue our allies,” Mordred said. “The blood elves there are trapped in the realm, but we took an Avalon stronghold in Midgard and found those tablets. They allow you to go from one realm to another, but, more importantly, they give instructions on how to make your own realm gate. A realm gate that is able to change its destination.”

  “You’re going to build a realm gate in this compound?” Chloe asked. “And then you want us to go back to the place where the worst thing in my life happened?”

  “I never said it would be easy,” Mordred said. He looked down at the floor for a second, before sighing and looking back up. “There’s one more thing.”

  “And that is?” Layla asked.

  “You have six months to find your father, because you’re going to need his help tracking people.”

  “This is getting better and better,” Remy said.

  “Oh, it’s going to get worse,” Mordred said. “Abaddon has gone to London, under Hera’s protection. We can’t get to her without turning the city into a war ground.”

  “Great, so our enemies are fortified, and we have to go to a place of monstrous evil,” Diana said. “Sounds like a normal day.”

  Layla’s mind turned to the six months during which she’d need to find her dad and persuade him to help, and then go to another realm and save a bunch of people. She had no idea if Caleb had enough decency left in him to want to do that, but hopefully they would pass that bridge when they got there.

  “I’ll do it,” Layla said. “Six months. And then we piss off Avalon a lot more than we’ve ever done before.”

  Epilogue

  Three months later. New York State.

  Layla stood on the sidewalk and stared at the place that had once been her childhood home. The house had been demolished. Layla hadn’t been told, and no one in the car that had brought her seemed to have any idea why or when it had happened, but the house was definitely not there. It was as if it had been plucked up and then erased from existence.

  Three months ago, Layla had asked that her mother’s old boss at the law firm be put under surveillance. It hadn’t taken long to look into the man’s background and discover that he’d given up Caleb to the FBI and was one of the reasons they’d managed to catch him. Layla was convinced that her father would show up to do him harm.

  Two days ago, her mother’s old boss had vanished on his way home from work. He’d got into his car that evening and no one had seen him since. It hadn’t taken long for Layla to think that her father was involved.

  Mordred stood next to Layla. He’d been keen on going with her, and despite the fact that Avalon would have liked to kill him—even more than most of the people working against them—he said he wasn’t concerned. New York had been independent of Avalon’s influence for centuries, and while it could no longer claim that status, there were still enough people there who fought against the oppression in their own way, by turning a blind eye to Avalon’s enemies.

  “Any idea where your father would take this man, if not here?”

  Layla shook her head before an idea formed. “Actually, yeah. I have a plan. There’s a cemetery nearby. Mom’s grave is there.”

  “I wonder who is actually buried there?”

  Layla hadn’t wanted to think about it.

  “Sorry,” Mordred said as they set off to walk the short distance to the cemetery. “I didn’t mean to say anything upsetting. My brain and mouth aren’t always in sync.”

  Layla smiled. “Don’t worry about it.”

  They walked for a few minutes down quiet sidewalks, past dozens of houses in which the majority of occupants were still asleep. It was almost peaceful. The cold night air and the stillness of the neighborhood created something that made Layla feel nostalgic for those childhood evenings when she’d wake up in the middle of the night to watch the snow fall outside.

  “How’s the new hand?” Mordred aske
d as they reached the entrance to the large cemetery.

  Layla raised her gloved hands. “It’s weird,” she said. “Really weird, if I’m honest. Stay here, please. I want to go check for myself.”

  Mordred nodded. Layla found him to be an interesting man, one who had suffered a lot at the hands of his enemies and taken a long time to come to terms with what he’d been forced to become.

  She stopped and readied herself. This wasn’t going to be a fun meeting, but her dad was either going to come with them peacefully, or in a less pleasant manner. The end result would be the same.

  Layla stepped into the dark cemetery, and with a combination of moonlight and the flashlight she’d brought with her, walked along the path between the rows of tombstones. About halfway into the park lay six crypts in a row. She knew that there were six others on the opposite side of the patch of grass that ran in between them. She remembered walking along them after burying her mom.

  Layla continued on until she reached the top of a steep slope that led to a large pond. She followed the slope until she was halfway around it, and then continued along the path for a few feet until she came to a wooden bench. The bench had been put there by the groundskeeper as a favor to Layla, and it sat opposite her mom’s grave.

  A man lay bound and gagged on the grave, next to Layla’s dad, who leaned against the tombstone.

  “I did wonder if you’d find me,” Caleb said. “Peter here, well, he didn’t believe. He thought that offering me money was the way to go.” Caleb punched Peter on the arm. “Didn’t you, Petey?”

  Peter made a soft noise, muffled by the gag.

  “He sold you out,” Caleb said. “Sold you and your mom out to Nergal. I always wondered how they found you after the LOA had taken such pains to keep you safe. Now I know. Your mom had gone to see Peter to tell him she was going, and he sold her out. A million dollars was the price. Which I guess is a lot, but it sounds like small change in comparison to how much this piece of crap is worth.