Scorched Shadows (The Hellequin Chronicles Book 7)

by Steve McHugh

  “Couldn’t another master vampire have turned him?” Sky said. “They can make powerful people quickly. It would have been within the last month, so that’s a lot quicker than usual, but it’s possible.”

  “It is, but it’s also unlikely,” Lucifer said. “I’d need to see Lee to be sure. Asmodeus’s vampires had a very specific way about them. They were more bloodthirsty than most, capable of acts of depravity that shocked people. They murdered whole families just to bathe in their blood.”

  “He did that,” Harrison said. “My men found him lying in a bathtub full of the blood of the family he’d slaughtered.”

  “Sounds like Asmodeus to me,” Lucifer said.

  “Have any of you been in the cell?” I asked as Leonardo rejoined us.

  “Of course,” Leonardo said.

  “Is it safe?”

  “It appears to be, why?”

  I got up. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  “Did you know he was trying to make a realm gate?” Zamek asked me as I walked toward him.

  “Who, Leonardo?” I replied.

  “Yes, I’m trying to see if I can manipulate the crystals to make a larger realm gate,” Leonardo said. “Essentially I want to operate one of the gates we have and then use the crystals to widen the gate. It should allow a lot more people in and out of a realm.”

  “Or blow up,” Galahad said.

  “That’s why I haven’t tried it yet,” Leonardo said.

  “That and they won’t let you,” Antonio sniped.

  “Yes, and that,” Leonardo replied.

  I walked away, across the bridge, repeatedly telling myself not to look down. I took a moment to myself when I was over, and looked around at the four stone giants, trying to make it appear as though the walk over a narrow, old bridge wasn’t something completely awful.

  Writing I couldn’t read had been carved into the legs of each of the giants. “I presume this is elvish?” I called back, and discovered that Leonardo had crossed the bridge and was closer than I’d expected. “Sorry, didn’t mean to shout at you.”

  Leonardo smiled. “It’s elvish, yes. And no, like everything else I have no idea what it says.”

  I walked to the door of the cell and looked up at the writing above the thick metal cell door. “That says Asmodeus, though.”

  “Yes. I’ve found his name in a few pieces of writing, but the elves didn’t have an alphabet like we do, so translating an A in ‘Asmodeus’ isn’t the same as an A in ‘apple.’ It’s a . . . frustrating exercise.”

  “I can imagine.” I pushed the door open fully and stepped into the cell. “Give me a minute. I have an idea.” I took a deep breath, and in my head I called for Erebus.

  “Hello, Nate,” Erebus said. He sat on the bare floor of the cell, wearing a pair of black jeans and a white T-shirt. “I didn’t expect to hear from you again so soon. This isn’t back inside your head, by the way, so we’re operating on real time here.”

  “You said the last mark would gift me with knowledge.”

  “Yes, your mother told me that.”

  “What knowledge?”

  “Whatever it was decided you needed to know. Things about history, about the various players in the game of Avalon, all kinds of things.”

  “Elven writing?”

  “Ah, not so much, no. Elven writing is a by-product of their magic. The elves had a very odd magical ability. Part nature magic, part blood magic. They could instinctively understand one another’s writing. It was the intent of the word, not the word itself, that mattered. It makes it almost impossible for anyone to learn more than a word or two, and even then not everyone would have written that word the same way.”

  “Okay, so there’s no way to know what any of this all meant?”

  “Not unless you can absorb the spirit of an elf. And even then you might not be able to.”

  “And the elves here died thousands of years ago, so that’s out.” I thought about the problem for a few seconds. “Any chance you know any elvish?”

  Erebus smiled. “No, unfortunately not.”

  “Any chance you could just pour all of the information that the mark held back into my head at once?”

  “Only if you’d like to be turned into a vegetable for the next decade. My role now consists of giving you that information at a rate your brain can cope with. This has nothing to do with your power of a sorcerer, and everything to do with the fact that too much of this information at once will overload your synapses.”

  Okay, so that was out. “You know, it’s weird you’re Erebus, but you still look like me. Any chance you could . . . not?”

  “No. I’m still essentially the nightmare in your body, so I get to look how your nightmare would. Most sorcerers don’t even get a chatty nightmare. You could always use the elven magic echo.”

  “The what?”

  “Elves wrote things down, but sometimes they could imbue their words with blood magic. Creating a magic echo. Essentially it records everything that happened in the few minutes after the magic was used. It was quite the interesting use of power. Also, it only works with words that glow.”

  I looked around at the words written on the walls of the cell. “None in here, but there are a lot of those back at the realm gate. I assume that is a realm gate?”

  “Yes. Very few of us knew about them. The elven civil war was fought because the shadow elves wanted to tell the world about what they knew, and the sun elves refused. The realm gate requires blood to use, though. Quite a bit of it.”

  “A sacrifice.”

  “You can see why they weren’t popular.”

  “The blood elf they found?”

  “That would do it. If someone came here through a realm gate, they’d need a sacrifice to get back out again.”

  “So a month ago they come here, open the cell, drag Asmodeus out, kill a blood elf, and escape. We need to know exactly what happened. I need to go use one of these echoes. Thanks.”

  “Glad to have helped,” Erebus said before vanishing.

  “I have an idea,” I said, running out of the cell to see that several of the group had made their way across the bridge. There was a rumble from beside me, and I had to throw myself aside just in time to avoid one of the massive swords of the now-moving stone giants.

  Soon all four giants were moving, ready to destroy anyone close to the cell.

  CHAPTER 25

  Nate Garrett

  Selene, Sky, and Zamek all dodged aside as two of the stone giants moved to attack them. One of them swiped with its massive shield, catching Lucifer in the chest, sending him flying into me.

  I tried to catch him, but the force was too much, and we collided, throwing us back toward the edge of the island. I used my shadow magic to anchor both myself and Lucifer to the ground as I caught a glimpse of Zamek scaling one of the giants and using his alchemy to tear it apart with his bare hands as Galahad and Harrison removed its legs.

  Lucifer was on his feet before me, and pure magic leapt from his fingers, smashing into the closest giant and taking it off its feet, making the ground shake from the force of the landing. Sky brought one stone giant to its knees so that Leonardo and Caitlin could place their hands on its head, turning it to dust, while Selene jumped up onto the last giant, turning into her dragon-kin form as she moved. Her strength and power tore into the giant with vigor, and it took only seconds for the fifteen-foot goliath to be turned into several tons of rubble.

  I got to my feet and brushed myself clean.

  “Glad you could help out!” Zamek shouted to me.

  “You could have left me one,” I said with a smile.

  “Sorry, I guess I figured if you wanted to take part, you wouldn’t have been lying on the floor.”

  I walked over to the nearest giant, which swiped at me with its one remaining arm. I darted back, activating my matter magic. Purple glyphs appeared over my hands and arms, and my world became a purple haze. I took a step toward the giant and focused all my power
into my right hand, pouring as much matter magic as I could into it.

  It took only a second for the punch to completely destroy the giant, showering everything around it with dirt and rubble. I stood there for several seconds as I removed my matter magic and my body got used to seeing normally again.

  “How’d you do that?” Zamek asked. “That was crazy.”

  I shrugged. “Everyone okay?”

  Everyone made it known that they were fine.

  Selene took my hand in hers and kissed me on the cheek. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, I am. I haven’t used my matter magic like that before. I wasn’t really sure how it worked until I switched it on, but I figured I’d give it a try. Erebus said he’s drip feeding knowledge into my head. He told me about an elven magic echo.”

  Caitlin poked the destroyed giant and looked back at me, surprised at the devastation my punch had caused. “That’s new.”

  “I’ve got a lot of new things since I saw you,” I told her. “I don’t know who set that trap, but I’m guessing it was done by whoever came here a month ago and removed Asmodeus.”

  “What’s a magic echo?” Galahad asked.

  I quickly explained what Erebus had told me.

  “So, we need to go back to the realm gate?” Leonardo asked. “This is turning into an incredibly interesting day.”

  “Yeah, I’m not sure ‘interesting’ is how I’d put it,” Galahad said. “I guess it at least breaks up the day’s council meetings.”

  Everyone made their way back to the realm-gate cavern and stood around the outside of the cave, near different pieces of writing.

  “So, how does this work?” Galahad asked from beside me. “Do we each have to bleed, or is this a one-off thing?”

  I shrugged. “Leonardo assumed that the color changed because someone used the realm gate.”

  “I thought the same thing,” said Lucifer.

  “Maybe that’s not what the color is for,” I suggested. “Pass me your knife, will you?” I asked Harrison, who removed the dagger from his belt and gave it to me.

  I used it to cut into the palm of my hand, then placed my hand against the purple writing. The effect was instantaneous as all the writing in the cavern turned a deep red and several figures started to appear on the dais in the middle of the cavern.

  I took my hand away—my magic would heal it within moments—and watched the six figures flicker for several seconds until the picture settled.

  “It’s like they’re holograms,” Selene said. “Tommy would be comparing it to Star Wars about now.”

  To my mind it wasn’t a bad comparison. The figures were all in light blue, and we couldn’t hear sound, but we got the gist of what was going on. One man, his arms shackled behind his back, was kneeling on the floor.

  “That’s Asmodeus,” Lucifer said. “It’s weird seeing him like this. It’s been so long since I had contact.”

  One of the elves around Asmodeus was talking to him, and after listening for several seconds the king of the devils started to laugh.

  The two elves behind Asmodeus each took one arm and held him down while a third elf slit his throat, allowing the blood to pour into several vessels below the dais. The vessels were a few feet high and sat in front of Asmodeus and the two guards, who continued to hold Asmodeus until he had no strength left to fight. It was at that moment that I noticed a vase.

  The elf who had slit his throat unsheathed a curved sword that sat at his hip and cut Asmodeus’s head off. He picked it up by the hair and dropped it into one of the containers that was full of blood.

  “That’s not exactly what I was expecting,” Galahad said.

  I walked to the dais as the elves dragged Asmodeus’s body away, toward the cell in the other cavern. The picture of the blood-filled containers and the vase remained for several seconds before they, too, vanished from view as the footage ended.

  “Nate, you okay?” Selene asked.

  “I’ve seen the markings on that vase before,” I told her. “I saw them a long time ago. In London. Merlin had the Reavers collecting souls for him to feed to Arthur. They’re called soul jars. The markings on this one here are the same as on the jars I saw in London. They killed Asmodeus and placed his soul in a jar and drained him of his blood. That’s not a cell—it’s a tomb.”

  No one spoke for several seconds until Leonardo broke the silence: “So, the elves killed Asmodeus. But you think he’s involved with what’s going on? That can’t possibly be right.”

  “No, it can’t,” Selene said.

  “Nate, soul jars are bad news,” Sky said. “You don’t think that someone out there has Asmodeus’s soul jar? Because if they fed that soul to someone, like Merlin was feeding souls to Arthur, how long do you think it would take for that person to be completely taken over by the evil in Asmodeus’s soul?”

  “Not long,” Lucifer said.

  “Did you find anything with blood, or soul jars while you were poking around in there?” I asked.

  “No,” Leonardo said. “Just old drawings and pieces of paper. It’s amazing how it’s survived for so long with barely any degrading. Elven magic was impressive.”

  “That means someone broke in and stole his body, but nothing else,” Lucifer said. “Why would someone want to steal Asmodeus’s body?”

  “Was his soul jar in the cell?” I asked.

  “We didn’t see it,” Leonardo said.

  “Could they have taken him and the jar to try and bring him back?” Antonio suggested. “Is that even possible? He is a vampire.”

  Lucifer didn’t look convinced. “I honestly have no idea. He surprised a lot of us with the range of his power, so I never counted anything out when it came to dealing with him.”

  “Maybe Lee will have some of the answers we need,” I suggested.

  “This is all very theoretical,” Harrison said. “You’re all just guessing that someone has used his soul. We don’t know that it’s been used.”

  “That’s true,” Galahad said. “But what if Lee wasn’t turned into a vampire by Asmodeus, but found the soul jar and opened it? How much work does it take for a soul to be transferred into a person?”

  “A lot,” Sky said. “The way Merlin used to do it required dwarven runes and a lot of magical power, but a soul as corrupt and evil as Asmodeus? It’s possible you wouldn’t need as much. Either way, you’d need to know the correct runes and glyphs and have magical ability. People can’t just bleed on them and suddenly you’ve absorbed one.”

  “Okay, if this Lee is possessed by Asmodeus, just how powerful will he be?” Zamek asked. “I’m only asking because if you four go find Lee, and he is Asmodeus, or has part of that devil’s soul in him, then it’s going to take a lot more than the four of you to subdue him. I get that you’re all very powerful, but are you powerful enough to bring down someone who absorbed even part of a god?”

  “Either way, we need to find Lee,” I said. “Whether he’s involved with Asmodeus or not, he still murdered people and said it was Hellequin. Maybe he knows who this fake Hellequin is.”

  “I’ll join you,” Harrison said. “I’ll bring some of my men with me. A few dozen soldiers should even the odds a bit.”

  “They can’t know what we’re going up against,” Lucifer said. “It’s one thing to go up against a powerful vampire, but to know you’re about to fight the king of the devils, that’s going to give people some pause. And we can’t have any. Not today.”

  “Give us an hour,” Galahad said. “We’ll have to smuggle you out of the city to do this. Too many in the council would see you walking about as me putting our friendship before the safety of this realm. Hopefully, by the time you return, I’ll have convinced the council that you’re not here to set us up for your Avalon overlords’ invasion.”

  “I have overlords now?”

  “I never said it was a rational problem,” Galahad said. “Just one that is yelled at high volume.”

  “I forgot to ask. Caitlin, is your mum s
till a guest of the prison?”

  “Oh yes, she’s still a joy unto all who meet her,” Caitlin said. “Why, you think she’s involved?”

  “She has ties to people who have ties to whatever is behind all of this. I don’t think she’ll directly know anything because she’s, well, she’s nuts—no offense.”

  “None taken. She’s a big box of frogs in the crazy department. But I’ll go see her. You never know; it might be worthwhile. And at the very least she can call me a long list of names and threaten to hurt people I care about. You know, normal mother-daughter bonding.”

  “Your mother sounds evil,” Selene said.

  “She is. But it’s the stupid kind of evil, not the try-and-take-over-the-world kind. She’s a werewolf who is never leaving her prison cell. She murdered my stepfather in front of me, tried to murder my real father, and butchered her way across this realm and the Earth realm. She’s a monster.”

  “You want company?” Sky asked. “I like pissing off evil people. Since meeting Nate it’s sort of become my hobby.”

  “See, I bring people together,” I said with a smile.

  “To annoy people,” Galahad said. “And trust me, he’s been doing that for a long time.”

  We all got up to leave, except for Lucifer, who sat on the floor beside the dais. “I’ll catch you up,” I said to everyone. “I assume there’s a way out of this place?”

  “We closed it up after we found all of this,” Leonardo said. “But I’ll wait with Antonio for you outside.”

  “You will?” Antonio asked. “I was going to go home and sleep.”

  “You can sleep when you’re dead,” Leonardo said.

  “Which, working with you, will be a lot quicker than I would doing something less dangerous.”

  “The only thing dangerous about working with me is that you run your mouth,” Leonardo said with a grin as the two of them walked away.

  “I’d hoped to see him again,” Lucifer said. “I wanted to ask him why. I wanted to see if he’d changed. I wanted to see if he’d become the force for good he could have been if he wasn’t so interested in making everyone bow to him. When he was first made, we were just children and he was kind and sweet. He helped people; he felt sadness and empathy for those who were weaker than him. Or maybe he didn’t and it was all a game? I really don’t know anymore.