by Steve McHugh
Everyone had cups of tea or coffee. It was still dark outside, but I doubted anyone was going to be getting much sleep for the next few hours. There wasn’t long until the book fair took place, and we had to prepare.
“So, you’re sure the book fair at Earls Court is her target?” Brutus asked me.
“Aphrodite told us that they were all going to be there. It’s a big deal for them. And there will be a lot of people for Pandora to use as cover. Clearly some parts of the Vanguard are helping her, so we can expect armed resistance. Pandora knows we’re not going to want a bloodbath.”
“How long has she been lying to you?” Hades asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe decades. She’s figured out a way to enthrall a person’s soul, instead of their mind. She told me those who are enthralled don’t show up when scanned by a psychic. Pandora seems more powerful, so expect her to use that against the civilians inside Earls Court.”
“It’s a risk to bring us,” Persephone said.
“It’s a risk not to,” I replied. “You two will be providing ground assistance. Pandora is mine, but I can’t deal with several thousand people in the way.”
“Can you take her out?” Brutus asked.
“She can be hurt, therefore she can be subdued. We have no way of knowing if anyone other than the Vanguard is helping her. And we don’t know who got the Vanguard involved. There will almost certainly be unknown quantities inside the building.”
“You say she wants to show the world that Avalon exists,” Tommy said. “How?”
“Ten thousand people will be in that building. Authors, agents, journalists—all with camera phones. Someone in there is going to get evidence and write about it.”
“We can suppress a lot,” Olivia said from the loudspeaker of the phone on the table in our midst. “But that many people—it’s going be too much to stop everyone from talking about whatever they see. If the world finds out about us, there are gonna be some pretty serious repercussions. Humans won’t like learning that they’re not the top of the food chain.”
“There’d be pandemonium,” Tommy said.
“I thought you people controlled the media,” Brutus said. By ‘you people,’ he meant Avalon.
“We don’t rule the Internet, Brutus,” Olivia said, and to her credit she didn’t rise to Brutus’s comment. “And we’re not a communist state. People can find out about Avalon and the like, but the second anyone broadcasts that knowledge, they get shut down. We make up what—one percent of the entire world’s population? Maybe a little more? Someone in the crowd at the book fair will get it out, and then there will be trouble. My LOA agents will be on hand at Earls Court to contain everyone there and ensure nothing we don’t want leaked gets out. It’s all dependent on you getting Pandora subdued, though.”
“You know, I don’t understand why we just didn’t stick a sorcerer’s band on Pandora centuries ago,” Brutus said. Clearly his temper was getting the better of him again.
“She burns them out,” I explained. “Which you know.”
Brutus gave an exasperated sigh. “So, what’s the plan for containment? She’s not coming back here, I assume.”
“Do you want her?” Sky asked.
“No. She can fucking burn for all I care.”
I noticed a glance between Persephone and Hades.
“What’s the plan?” I asked them.
“Nevada. There’s a facility there where she’ll be kept isolated and away from anything resembling the public. She was threatened with being taken there back in Berlin, but she chose to cooperate. Now she has no choice.”
“You mean Area 51?” Tommy asked. “You’re taking her to an underground prison?”
Area 51, despite various alien theories popular among humans, is actually a giant underground complex where people whom Avalon deems too dangerous to remain free are placed. It’s been up and running for a few decades, and it houses just under a hundred people, most of whom are unable to shut off their dangerous abilities. They’re made as comfortable as possible, but the fact is that the inhabitants are kept mostly isolated and underground.
“I don’t see why you didn’t do that before,” Brutus snapped, seemingly forgetting that it had been his decision to take Pandora back in 1939.
“Because she’s not a mistake we can throw away and forget about,” Hades replied. “The Olympians created her, and it’s our responsibility to ensure she’s dealt with in a humane manner. You seem to forget that Hope is along for this ride; she’s done nothing to incur our wrath. Pandora said that Hope is gone, but I don’t want to believe that.”
“I don’t see Hera or Poseidon around here helping out. In fact, you’re the only one, and if memory serves, you weren’t even involved in her creation.”
“Yes, well, someone has to stop her. If not me, then who?”
“Those responsible for her creation?” Brutus snapped.
“This isn’t getting us anywhere,” Olivia pointed out. “We need to ensure that Pandora gets inside Earls Court before we go in. We can contain the building once she’s inside. We can’t lose the opportunity to take her down. If she escapes—”
Everyone was silent while we contemplated the damage Pandora could do in the modern world. No one wanted that to happen.
“So, the plan’s set,” Hades said. “We’ll await for Olivia’s word that Pandora and her people are inside the place and then intervene. She won’t run; I assure you of that. She wants Hera and her people to pay. She won’t go anywhere until that happens. And she won’t afford them a quick death either. She’ll want to tell them why they’re dying. Once we’re inside, we’ll provide cover for Nate, who will go find her.” Hades turned to me. “If you have to kill her, do it.”
I nodded. I really hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but I knew Pandora wasn’t going to stop her plan without some serious, possibly very final, convincing.
Five hours later, it was 9:00 a.m., and the doors to Earls Court had opened, allowing the beginnings of a huge line of people into the massive building. By 10:00 a.m., thousands of people had gone in, and there was still a massive queue.
“Anyone seen her?” I asked into the microphone attached to the top of my T-shirt.
“Not yet. You sure about this?” Hades asked.
“Positive. She wants lots of witnesses and coverage. Anywhere else won’t work.”
“What if she knows we’re waiting and decided not to bother?” Tommy asked from beside me. We were both, along with Sky, Hades, and Persephone, in a building above the tube station directly opposite the front of Earls Court.
The empty room we were in was one flat in a block currently under construction. Brutus had made a few calls, and suddenly everyone who was supposed to be working there had a day’s holiday. The wall on one side wasn’t entirely built, and there were no doors or glass in the windows to keep the wind and drizzle out, but the plastic tarpaulin over the wall meant no one could see us, while we could see out after a few adjustments were made to its position.
“She won’t care that we’re here,” I explained. “By now she has to know that Justin didn’t make it out of Brutus’s building, so she’s down several accomplices. She’ll have to assume the worst: that we got the information we needed before disposing of him. She’ll expect people to try to stop her. She just believes she’s better than everyone else. There’s no part of her plan she’s considered where she doesn’t win. She isn’t wired to think otherwise.”
“So at best we’re an annoyance to her?” Sky asked.
I nodded. “We always have been. It’s why when she’s caught she doesn’t fight to escape; it’s why she let the Gestapo take her. She wants to see what we’ll do to her next. She can’t die, so any pain inflicted is only fleeting. She knows eventually she’ll escape, kill everyone who wronged her, and go through the whole thing again. But this time, she finally has specific knowledge of where Hera will be and when. She’s not going to wait another four thousand or so years for a second shot.”
>
The three of us returned to watching the street below for a few minutes until Tommy broke the silence, “You need to name that sphere thing you do in your hand.”
“I assume ‘spinning sphere of magical destruction’ isn’t a good name?”
“It’s not exactly catchy, Nate. It should be one word.”
“I’m not trying to market it, mate,” I pointed out as Sky chuckled. “I think a toy of me with a real spinning sphere of death, is an unlikely action figure.”
“It just feels like it’s begging to be named. There’s a show that Kasey watches—it’s an anime—and one of the characters uses something similar to it.”
“I think Rasengan might be too on the nose,” I said.
Tommy’s mouth dropped open in shock as he stared at me.
“Yes, I’ve seen it. Yes, I know what it is, and no, I’m not calling it that.”
Sky’s chuckle broke into full laughter. “Tommy, you’re the geekiest person I’ve ever met. Looks like you’re dragging Nate down with you.”
“We’re moving slowly,” Tommy said. “The anime was a nice surprise, though.”
“Kasey made me watch a bunch of stuff the last time I looked after her,” I explained.
“How much is ‘a bunch’?”
“About two hundred episodes in three days. I sort of got into it,” I admitted.
“Geek,” Sky coughed into her hand.
I turned to Sky. “If I remember correctly, you cried when Spock died.”
Sky stopped laughing. “We need to keep an eye out for Pandora. This is serious stuff—no time for joking around.”
She walked to the window while Tommy tried to stop himself from laughing and failed miserably, earning a glare from Sky.
“He sacrificed himself for his friends, damn it,” Sky said. “It was heroic.”
The three of us started to laugh, until Olivia’s voice came through the radio. “Got her. You guys ready to go, or do you need some more bonding time?”
The laughter stopped immediately, and I grabbed my jacket from the back of a nearby chair. “Let’s go catch Pandora.”
We left the construction site and ran across the busy road to a waiting Olivia, Hades, and Persephone.
“My men are trailing her,” Olivia said. “It looks like there’s no one with her, but that doesn’t mean she won’t have help in there.”
Brutus had allowed Olivia to bring her LOA agents into the capital for several reasons. The one he told us was that Avalon needed to capture Pandora because he simply didn’t have the room to store her. But Diana told me before we left that he couldn’t trust any of the guards who were left and wasn’t about make things worse. He had a lot of pieces to pick up when this was all over.
We crossed over to a heavyset man in a suit, standing near the entrance. He nodded at us, and we followed him inside. He couldn’t have been more obviously an agent of Avalon if he’d had it stamped on his forehead, but this wasn’t a stealth mission.
After running up some stairs, we entered the main area of the building, and I was immediately taken aback not only by the size of the place and the number of people there but also by the sheer level of noise they all made. It took a few seconds to get my bearings as I searched the crowd.
One of the LOA agents, wearing plain clothes, came over to us. “She’s gone down the middle aisle.”
“Thanks,” I said and began to walk in the direction the LOA agent had pointed.
The hall contained dozens of stands of various sizes, all advertising a different publisher. Some small publishers had tiny stands with only one or two people there, but the larger companies had huge stands, with dozens of people all talking or looking at the books that were sitting on shelves.
“The meeting rooms are upstairs,” Olivia said. “If Aphrodite has business to take care of, I imagine she’ll want privacy. The entrance is over there.” She pointed off toward one side, several hundred meters away.
The six of us spread out as we got farther down the spoke-like aisle, while more agents took the other aisles. We’d made it about halfway down when I spotted Pandora at the bottom. She was watching us advance, with a wicked smile on her face. She said something that we were too far away to hear, but then abruptly everyone down the aisle fell silent. There was no gradual drop in noise—it went from loud to quiet in an instant.
“Apparently, I can do more than I thought,” she said. “Enthralling a few thousand was quite hard work, although it got easier when I volunteered to be the one stamping everyone’s hand as they entered.”
I looked around at the statue-like group that surrounded us. They all had their eyes on us.
“You’ve been here awhile then?” I asked.
“Broke in last night. Prepared myself until I was ready for you, then used the corridors under the building to get out to the street above. It was simple really.”
There was a bang behind us as the doors were closed, followed by a jangle of chains as they were locked shut.
“You plan on killing us?” Sky asked. “It didn’t work so well for your men last night.”
Pandora shrugged. “I assumed they were all dead. Nice to know for sure, though. So, I’m now left without my Vanguard helpers. Come get me, Nate. I dare you.”
She turned and ran off, and I took a step after her only to be clouted in the head with a laptop wielded by a middle-aged woman in a suit. I grabbed the erstwhile weapon and threw it aside while she tried to claw at my face. A second later she went limp and then fell to the floor, as all around us those controlled by Pandora woke up to do her bidding.
“Don’t kill any of them,” I shouted.
“Just go,” Tommy replied as he threw one man into a group of others, knocking them all to the floor.
A few hundred people blocked the way forward, but before I could ready any magic, they all stopped moving and collapsed to the ground in unison.
“Go,” Hades told me. “I’ll keep them still for long enough.”
I wondered how long he could keep the souls of hundreds of people tampered with. Probably not long enough to be able to help subdue anyone else. As much as I wanted to stay and help, I left everyone and sprinted after Pandora, dodging anyone who got too close or tried to stop me, and blasting a few with air to make sure they left me alone.
I rounded a corner, watched Pandora run through a door at the far end, and hurried after her. I was about a hundred feet from the door, with several dozen controlled people in front of me and an unknown number behind, when someone shouted, “Stop!”
Everyone did as they were told.
“He’s mine. Go find someone else.”
The people did as they were told, walking away as Deimos stepped out from behind a pillar.
“I don’t have time for this,” I explained. Fighting anyone would take time I didn’t have, but especially fighting an empath as powerful as Deimos.
“Yes, you do,” he said. “Pandora made sure that all of these people would obey my commands. She’s going to kill my bitch of a grandmother and everyone else with her while I make sure no one stops her.”
I took another step.
“Well, if you’re going to be like that,” he said, and suddenly terror crept up inside me.
I took another step, determined not to let Deimos affect me, but the emotion overcame me, and I crashed to my knees.
“Now we get to have some fun,” he said and kicked me in the head.
CHAPTER 39
I woke up unable to move. I wasn’t entirely sure where I was, but it didn’t take me long to realize that I was tied to something. I pulled at my arms, but there was no give in the straps. I glanced down and saw Deimos sitting at my feet.
“We’re going to play a game,” he said. “It’s called ‘Let’s Make Nate Relive His Worst Fears and Memories.’ It’s not a catchy title, I’ll admit, but it’s pretty accurate.”
Somewhere inside me I knew what had happened. Deimos had used his empathic ability on me from the moment I’d
stepped toward him in the hallway, and he’d started to raise my level of terror. The moment he’d touched me, he was able to invade my memories, finding the ones to use against me. But knowing what he was up to and being able to do something about it were two different things. Deimos was easily powerful enough to force me to relive whatever he chose, and there was nothing I could do but continue to try to fight it in the hope that he screwed up.
I glanced over at the door and saw Jenny walk toward me, as if she’d just appeared out of nowhere. Jenny had worked for Mordred, but at some point she’d decided she didn’t want to work for a monster anymore and had tried to save the lives of two young girls who were essential to Mordred’s future plans. She’d been key to me recovering the memories that Mordred had stolen from me. I knew what was coming, but there was nothing I could do to stop it.
She was exactly how I remembered her—bruises on her exposed shoulders, running up her neck. There was a cut just above one eye. Stitches had been applied to close the wound. All of this was so familiar. The anger and pain at seeing her that way, the fear at what was going to happen to her, to me. I’d lost all of my memories, I didn’t even know who I was. I had no power, no nothing. I’d played the fool, jumping from beautiful woman to beautiful woman, playing thief while I tried in vain to block out the fact that I was just scared. Scared of who I was, of what I might become if my memories ever returned, but more scared about never getting them back.
“They said you could go free,” I found myself telling her. I wanted to scream at her to run, to leave and never come back, but that wasn’t how it really happened. That wasn’t how Deimos was going to play the game.
Jenny nodded. “Death is their version of setting me free. They only let me talk to you because they want to watch you suffer.”