Hellequin Chronicles 4: Prison of Hope

by Steve McHugh

  Selene floated to the ground in front of me, her eyes locked on her brother. Her wings, silver in color and matching her scaly skin, gleamed in the night.

  “Do you really think you can kill me, little sister?” Helios demanded to know as he used his incredible strength to begin breaking the ice. Even when the sun had settled for the day, he was still a threat.

  “Probably not. But I’m almost certain that they can.”

  She pointed behind her as a huge werebear, in its beast form, walked toward us, his eyes firmly fixed on the still-frozen Helios. This one was followed by a werewolf in her beast form, only slightly less imposing, but no less capable of tearing flesh from bone.

  “Sorry we couldn’t get here sooner,” she said to me.

  I raised my good hand and opened my mouth, but no words came out, so I lay down on the ground as the effects of the blood magic curse finally took their toll.

  CHAPTER 31

  Berlin, Germany. 1936.

  Ouch,” I said as I opened my eyes and sat up, finding myself on a gurney in the warehouse. The silver wounds in my arm and leg were still painful. My fingers, once crushed and unusable, were mostly pointing in the right direction, even if they were sore as all hell to move.

  “Three hours,” Petra said as she came out of the room that had contained the sarin, and walked over to me. “I wondered how much longer you were going to sleep. You snore, did you know that?”

  “Thanks for the information. I’ll get right on not doing it.” I swung my legs over the side of the gurney, and Petra was beside me in a moment, helping me to my feet.

  “You need rest,” she cautioned.

  “ ‘Need’ doesn’t really get a say right now,” I explained as we walked together toward the front of the warehouse. Someone had closed the shutter, presumably after repairing the chain I’d destroyed. “Is the sarin gone?”

  “They found the stuff in the warehouse as well as in the entrance to the complex beneath here. Looks like the Gestapo was stockpiling the stuff. It’s all gone, setting their chemical warfare back a few years. A lot of dead down there too. Helios certainly did a good job of killing everyone involved in the creation of sarin. Hades is getting rid of it. You should know something, though.”

  “Hera’s here?”

  “You knew?”

  “I knew she was going to tell her mother-in-law about what happened here. Whatever happened between us, it wasn’t enough for her to stay with her family.” I almost spat the last word.

  “I don’t think that’s it, Nathan,” Petra said as she opened the exit door.

  The outside was awash with people, most of whom I recognized as working for Hades. A massive lorry was sitting up against the warehouse loading area.

  “How’s Lucie?” I asked.

  “Recovering in the ambulance over there,” Hades said as he joined us. “The sarin is being taken to my facility. I assume you’re wondering about it.”

  “I trust you,” I said.

  “How are you?”

  “Sore,” I admitted, “but I’ll live. There’s a lot of information here about Pandora. About how she could take control over Hope’s body on a permanent basis. You need to get that information to Brutus. If Pandora is trying to erase Hope, that could make her more dangerous. There could be stuff about the Gestapo trying to create their very own Pandora too.”

  “We found the information after Lucie told us. We got it all cleared away before Hera and her people arrived. No one will be making a second Pandora, and she’s going to be watched very carefully for a long time.”

  “Good. What are you going to do with Helios?”

  “Helios is not my problem. Hera has claimed him as an enemy combatant. He’s in that black van over there.”

  I set off in the direction Hades had indicated, to find out what was happening. No one tried to stop me, although someone probably should have. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do or the reception I was going to receive when I arrived.

  Several of Hera’s guards watched me approach, but no one tried to intervene as I walked up to the back of the van. Helios sat in the rear, his head bowed, his hands tied together with what looked like some sort of modified sorcerer’s band.

  I wanted to say something but wasn’t really sure what. I wasn’t sorry for what I’d done to him, and I certainly wasn’t sorry that we’d stopped tens of thousands of needless deaths, but as these thoughts drifted through my head, only one question sprang to mind. “Why?”

  Helios shifted to look at me, or at least in my direction. One of his eyes was covered with gauze. “Nathan. You have disfigured me.”

  “You tried to kill me.”

  “I did this to destroy Hera. To gain vengeance for all those lives she’s torn apart.”

  “You did this for yourself,” Selene said as she stepped up beside me. “And you’re an idiot for it.” She closed the van doors before turning to me. “Nathan.”

  “Cram it, I’m not interested,” I snapped. “I see Deimos and Hera over there, watching us intently.”

  “I work for Hera. I couldn’t not involve her.”

  “You could have done nothing, but you just chose to involve her.”

  There was a silence between us. I wanted to ask if she was going back to Deimos, but what I wanted more was for her to admit it to me.

  “You want me to say it? That I’m not leaving him?”

  “Yes,” I whispered, placing all of my anger into one word.

  “I was never going to leave Deimos. I can’t.”

  I began to turn away. “Well, you’ve clearly made your choices in life, so good luck with them.”

  “Nathan.” She reached out to touch my arm, and I moved aside.

  I leaned toward Selene. “Your husband is over there,” I whispered. “You know, the one you cheated on last night? Twice.” Despite my having assumed she was going to go back to her husband and his family, the realization that I’d been right hurt. My heart felt heavy. I’d wanted to be wrong so badly I could taste it. Being right made me angry. I knew I wasn’t blameless in what had happened—I knew I was being an asshole, but once I started, I just couldn’t stop. “I wonder, was fucking me part of the plan? Was that your job all along? Because if it was, you should get a bonus; you were excellent.”

  Selene slapped me hard enough that I needed to place my hand against the rear doors of the van to stop myself from falling over.

  “I should never have done that with you. It was a mistake.”

  “Lucky me,” I seethed. “Go back to Hera and her friends—to your husband. I don’t care why you left me anymore. I’m just grateful you did.” I walked away, noting Deimos’s anger as he moved to intercept me.

  Deimos was like a smaller picture of his father, Ares. He was about my height, but even wider. His long blond hair fell over shoulders that strained to be contained within his gray suit. Everything about him was designed to intimidate. He’d grown a long beard since I’d last seen him, but the same arrogant, malicious, little bastard still oozed out of every part of him.

  “She’s mine now,” he said, his accent British, something he’d clearly worked on over the years. “If you ever touch her again, I’ll tear your eyes out.”

  Movement from the corner of my eye caught my attention. I turned slightly, to see Hera watching Deimos and me. She had a slight smirk on her face. I got the feeling she was enjoying this whole show a lot more than her grandson was.

  “That’s the difference between you and me, Deimos,” I said, returning my full attention to him. “When Selene was with me, I never felt the need to tell anyone that she belonged to me.” I walked past the angry man and toward Hades, who had quite probably been watching intently everything that had happened.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “Define ‘okay.’ ”

  “Well, I’m about to make your day worse. He slipped a shoebox-sized box into my hand. “It’s time,” he told me.

  “You sure?”

&nb
sp; “Yeah, she needs to know the truth.”

  “Why now?”

  “Petra and Kurt convinced me to let her know the truth. Apparently, her anger at you has gotten the best of her a few times in the last few days. I promised her dad I’d watch over her and keep her safe. Lying to her doesn’t do that. She needs to know the truth. She needs to decide how to deal with it.”

  I took a deep breath and walked over to the ambulance where Lucie sat, telling those inside it to give us some time. “What are you?” I asked when I saw that the wounds on her stomach had vanished. “You’re not just an enchanter.”

  “My father was a siphon,” she said. “I got his long life and ability to heal and use energy. Without it, I might not be alive.”

  I passed her the box that Hades had given me.

  “What is this?”

  “This is the truth about what really happened with your parents and brother. This is what’s been kept from you.”

  I let Lucie look through the contents of the box, and when she looked up at me, there were tears in her eyes. “Is this real?”

  I nodded. “The first letter is from your father. He wrote to Hades, asking for his help because someone was turning your brother against him and your family. When I got to the house with Hades’s guards, it was too late. Except your father wasn’t dead yet. He told us that your brother was responsible and that he’d left a tape recording in the house for proof. His last words were to ask that you not know anything about who helped your brother. He knew what your response would be. Everything is in the box.”

  I turned to leave the ambulance.

  “Tell me. Tell me all of it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t want to read cold words about what happened. I want you to tell me the truth. Please.”

  I sat back beside her. “Your brother did murder your stepmum and father, but someone else killed the others. Your brother escaped and began doing experiments on people, trying to see how runes affected different people in different ways. When I found your brother, there was no fight; he simply gave up and asked to be executed. The person who had twisted him and shaped him into the man who helped murder your family had set him up. You were that person’s real target. You were the only one to be kept alive; that’s why it was done on a day you weren’t there.”

  “Who helped him?”

  “Your mother,” I disclosed. “She contacted your brother. The letters about it are in there. But your brother discovered her plan too late. He was killing people with runes in the hope that he could find one that would protect you from her. He just went about it in the most horrific way possible. He wrote a confession—that’s in the box too. It explains everything he was doing. The tape from your father asks Hades to keep you safe, to keep the truth from getting out.”

  “Where is she?” Lucie asked, her words full of barely contained emotion. “I haven’t seen my mother since I was four years old. Where is she?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. No one does. She vanished soon after the murder of your family, when she realized that your brother wouldn’t give you up. You’re under Hades’s protection, and she’s evil, but not stupid. All we know is that she managed to find a way to extend her life, even though she’s an enchanter. I’m sorry for lying to you all these years, but no one wanted you going after her.”

  “I’m going to find her,” Lucie said with iron determination. “Thank you for telling me.”

  I left the ambulance and found Hades sitting on the steps to the warehouse, eating an apple. “You think telling her was the right thing to do?” I asked.

  “She needs to know. Deserves to know, if nothing else. I’m not sure she’ll forgive me or you or anyone else who was involved in keeping it quiet. She might go work for Avalon. Depends on how much she wants to find her mother.”

  “So, this sarin? Where are you taking it?”

  “Well, thanks to Kurt, Petra, and Selene, we’ve got all of the sarin and the explosives they used to create the bombs. The warehouse is now empty of the rest of the sarin too. We’ll dispose of it all in a secure facility I run north of here. It’s evil stuff. I’ll be glad to no longer have it near me. You and Lucie did a good thing here today.”

  Kurt and Petra walked past, Kurt slapping me on the shoulder before they continued on.

  “What about Pandora?” I asked Hades. “Is she settling in to her new accommodation?”

  “Pandora’s housing in London is considerably nicer than Helios’s will be.”

  “Do you think Pandora will stay this time?”

  “She’ll stay put for as long as she needs to, and then she’ll escape and we’ll go through all of this again.”

  “Except next time we might not get so lucky as to avert a war.”

  Hades shook his head. “We’ve averted only one war, Nathan. Mark my words: there’s another one coming, and there might well be a day when you think to yourself, ‘What if I’d just let Helios succeed in killing Hera?’ ”

  CHAPTER 32

  London, England. Now.

  I got out of the SUV and walked toward one of the two guards standing outside the lengthy driveway that curved up toward Hera’s mansion in St. John’s Wood. The large metal gates, and a nearly ten-foot, red-brick wall with spikes on top, stopped people from gaining easy entry to the property; the guards were just a nuisance, albeit, if their jackets were any indication, an armed one.

  I stood well back while Olivia spoke to them, showing her credentials. One of the guards, a large man with a South African accent, made a call on the radio and nodded as the reply came back in his earpiece.

  “You can go in,” he told us and opened the gate without another word.

  We walked up the drive to the massive white house that sat in an elevated position above the main road we’d pulled up on, as if the owners wished to be able to look down on everyone around them. A lofty goal in a place with as many million-pound properties as St. John’s Wood.

  Two more guards met us at the front door, and once again Olivia showed them her ID before allowing us inside. We were immediately surrounded by opulence and grandeur. The reception area held only the finest of furniture and artwork. A large spiral staircase sat at the end, with two doors behind it and two more on either side of us.

  A man appeared from one of the doors behind the staircase. He wore a black suit and white shirt, with a black tie. “Please come this way,” he told us.

  We followed without question, through the door he’d arrived from and down a corridor to a door at the end. The man knocked on the door and then opened it, motioning for us to go inside.

  We all did as we were asked, and I felt a slight trepidation as he closed the door behind us with an audible click.

  The room was some kind of living room, with a large TV in front of a couch that could probably sit a dozen people comfortably. A cabinet behind the couch held enough bottles of alcohol to drown the sorrows of a substantial number of people.

  Tommy walked over to some doors that led out to a patio and stared at the immaculate garden outside. “How much do you think this place is worth?”

  “Lots,” I said. “Lots and lots.”

  “I thought my house was impressive, but this is a GDP-of-a-small-country kind of price.”

  “Hera will be glad you like it,” said a woman from the side of the room.

  I turned to the direction of the voice and found myself smiling. “Eos,” I said as I crossed the room to embrace her. “It’s been a long time.”

  Eos’s smile was a sight to behold. It lit up her face and put a sparkle in her eyes. In many ways she looked a lot like her sister, Selene, although her skin was slightly darker and her hair cut shorter. Unlike her siblings, she wasn’t dragon-kin. She was a dusk walker, someone who could use shadows as a method of transport.

  “It’s good to see you, Nathan. I’ve missed our sparring sessions.”

  “You’ve had no one’s ass to kick in the last few decades, I assume?”

/>   “On the contrary. I just preferred kicking yours.”

  I moved aside and Eos embraced Tommy before being introduced to Olivia, who went to shake her hand but was dragged in for a hug anyway.

  “I hope you’re prepared for this,” she whispered to all of us.

  Eos led us through the door into a large room with windows along the rear and a large meeting table between the windows and us. Around one side sat Hera, Demeter, Ares, Deimos, Aphrodite, and Selene. It took everything I had not to glance her way, not to acknowledge that she was even there. It was made easier when another door opened behind them, and Hyperion walked in.

  Eos instinctively grabbed my wrist hard enough to remind me where I was. She could have broken it if she’d desired, and I took the hint: Behave.

  Hera looked as attractive as ever, in a long green dress, with her natural light-brown hair highlighted with blond and cascading down her back to just above her tailbone. The dress hugged her in all the right places, and it was easy to understand why Zeus had fallen for her. It was less easy to understand once you’d actually met Hera, but Zeus never had thought with his brain when it came to members of the opposite sex. She stood and embraced Hyperion, offering him a seat at the table. I didn’t point out that she hadn’t even offered us a seat yet, but decided it probably wasn’t the time.

  I glanced at Aphrodite, who sat next to Hera and could have easily graced the front cover of every magazine and newspaper in the world ever. Hell, Gardeners World would have put her on the cover to sell a few copies. There was something about her that wasn’t quite right, though, as if the beauty you were seeing was so total that it couldn’t be real. But most people ignored that aspect and settled for being intoxicated by her presence. She’d dyed her hair a bright red since I’d last seen her. It matched the rubies in her dangling earrings and the lipstick on her full lips, and her black, low-cut dress clung to her curves in a way that made my internal man do a little happy dance. I dug a nail into my palm; as a succubus, she could have made me take my clothes off and dance around a little if she’d really turned on her power. Reminding yourself of the viper hiding behind the façade was a pretty good way to stay alive.