Scorched Shadows (The Hellequin Chronicles Book 7)

by Steve McHugh

  “I know he was a cruel, vindictive tyrant, but he was my brother. And while we weren’t of the same blood, we were the same in so many other ways. I know it sounds stupid, but I feel sorrow that he’s gone. Not even Asmodeus could survive having his head cut off. They shackled him, bled him, and killed him, stuffing his soul in a jar. The elves aren’t exactly the benevolent good guys from the stories, but I didn’t expect his end to be like this. I thought he’d go out in a blaze of glory. I shouldn’t be sad, but I am. I’m sad for all of the lost opportunities. It probably sounds strange.”

  “He was your brother. No matter how evil and cruel he was, he was still your brother. I understand completely. I felt the same about Mordred for the longest time. And it took him repeatedly trying to kill me for me to get over it.”

  “He knew I betrayed his cause. He knew I had no interest in a rebellion. I told him so myself, and he told me that the next time he saw me, he’d kill me. He’d have tried, too. I just wish I could have killed him myself all those years ago; it would have saved a lot of death and destruction.”

  “You can’t think like that,” I said. “You can’t say that it would have changed anything. If Asmodeus hadn’t been alive, maybe someone else would have come along to do the things he did. More than enough people have tried over the years, and at some point someone was going to achieve their goal of being a murderous bastard.”

  “If Asmodeus is dead, who is Abaddon taking orders from?”

  “I did wonder that myself. I honestly have no idea. Who would Abaddon feel was above her?”

  “No one. She answered to Asmodeus, and that was it. Even after the rebellion, she had to be sent away to an unpopulated realm because she refused to work with anyone else. She just doesn’t think anyone but the most powerful should be in charge. Survival of the fittest in its purest form.”

  “Doesn’t that mean Asmodeus wasn’t fit enough?”

  “Who knows? Abaddon isn’t exactly what you’d call predictable. It’s what makes her such a terrifying opponent. I haven’t had to fight in centuries. And since you came into my life, I’ve had to almost fight on several occasions. And now I’m fighting again, using my magic again. They’re going to know I’m here now. They’re going to come here to find me. There’s no going back to Grayson after this.”

  “Isn’t this better? To be yourself, I mean?”

  Lucifer shrugged. “Maybe. The jury is still out on that one.” He got to his feet and looked over at me. “Once this is all done, if there’s anything left of that jar, we need to find and destroy it. Asmodeus’s soul is too powerful, too dangerous to just leave lying around.”

  “We will, but first things first. Let’s find Lee and make sure he’s not Asmodeus’s reincarnation, or however that works.”

  “You know, if he is that, it means someone out there has access to his soul. A month ago someone broke in here, opened the tomb, and took Asmodeus’s body. Leonardo said they hadn’t seen a vase, but maybe he knows something else about it.”

  Lucifer and I walked through the mountain, meeting Leonardo and Antonio outside. We waited while they sealed the entrance.

  “I’m curious: What if Lee’s not forthcoming about the answers you need?” Antonio asked.

  “If I remember Lee O’Hara well enough,” I said, “he’ll be tripping over himself to gloat about how smart he is.”

  The four of us began to walk back toward the city of Solomon. “Why is it that everyone who hates you is coming out of the woodwork?” Lucifer asked.

  “I wondered that myself,” I said. “I really wish I had an answer, but whatever it is, at some point they’re going to start running out of people to send to kill me.”

  “Or they’re going to get lucky,” Leonardo said.

  I looked over at Leonardo. “Thanks for that. Always nice to have friends standing behind you.”

  “Nate, if there’s anyone who can overcome these odds it’s you, but just once wouldn’t you prefer it if you weren’t in the middle of the storm?”

  “I get the impression that’s a fantasy, a dream that won’t come true. Too many people want me dead. Too many people will go through my friends or innocents to achieve that goal. Maybe when we’re done with all of this, we can hope for some semblance of peace and quiet.”

  “You’d get bored,” Lucifer said.

  “Yeah, but when people are after me, every day has to be my best day. That’s the kind of thing that starts to exhaust after a while. Maybe I just need a few years off. A holiday. A nice long holiday in some remote little place where no one can find me.”

  “You’d still get bored,” Lucifer said. “Or trouble would find you anyway. It seems to have that habit.”

  I smiled. He had a point: trouble and I did go arm in arm.

  CHAPTER 26

  Nate Garrett

  The forest at the northern part of the city of Solomon was big enough that some Earth-realm cities could have been placed in the middle of it and lost forever. It took several days to get from one end to the other, but we didn’t have that kind of time.

  Fortunately Galahad’s people had been tracking Lee since he fled after he’d commenced his killing spree. He’d murdered several guards in his escape from the city and had laughed the whole time he was tearing them apart. Lee was always unhinged—he once beat a man almost to death for bumping into him—but that was over the line even for him. With great power might come great responsibility, but for some people, with great power comes a need to use that power to hurt everyone. Lee definitely fell into the latter group.

  “So, do you wish you’d just killed him?” Harrison asked me as we walked toward the destination where his recon troops had said they’d seen Lee.

  “Yes,” I replied, not really wanting to dwell on the subject. “How long before we find him?”

  “It’s about an hour away, apparently. My people say he’s in some old ruins not too far from the city.”

  “Elven ruins?”

  “Apparently so. At least that’s what Leonardo says they are. He found the entrance about a year ago while trying to figure out if there was any more evidence for this place once being a shadow-elf realm.”

  I spotted several of Harrison’s men off in the front. There were fifty of them, along with Lucifer, Zamek, and Selene. Selene had taken to the sky to try and track Lee from above, but she wasn’t having a lot of luck, judging from the fact that she’d been up there an hour.

  “So, I need to ask you something,” I said to Harrison. “Are we good? I know you punched me, and you had me locked up, and that was all to make it look good, but are we good?”

  “Sure, why not? I’m sure you’re not involved with whatever is happening. And if you are, I’ll kill you.” Harrison walked away, leaving me alone, which was probably for the best considering how frustrating it was to deal with him.

  “He really doesn’t like you an awful lot, does he?” Selene said after landing beside me.

  “He’s not a fan, no.”

  “When this is over, however long that takes, I think we should go away somewhere remote and relax.”

  “Remote? Like a desert island in the middle of nowhere?”

  “I was thinking like a realm in the middle of nowhere.”

  “I’m sure we can arrange something.”

  She took my hand in hers and squeezed slightly. “If it comes down to it, and you have to kill Helios, will you do it?”

  I nodded. “He’s had his chances. He’s squandered them, and he has no interest in anything but killing and causing pain and suffering to others. He needs to be stopped, and he won’t be taken alive.”

  “I know. I’d hoped otherwise, but I know. And I know that it’s you he wants to hurt. I just wanted you to know that if you do have to kill him, I won’t resent you for it. I know you’ve spared him for me in the past, but don’t do that again. I don’t want you to put yourself in harm’s way just to keep him alive. You need to do what you need to do.”

  “I know.” I paused.
“Thanking you sounds weird, so I won’t do that, but I’m glad you told me.”

  “Do you think you can beat him?”

  “Yes,” I said without a second thought. “I’ve done it before; I’ll do it again.”

  “I’d very much rather you didn’t die, Nathan Garrett.”

  “You and me both.” I leaned over and kissed her. “I’ll be fine. I’ve survived everything else that’s been thrown at me over the years—what’s one more thing?”

  “Even if your enemy is more powerful than any you’ve faced before?”

  “You know that as far as pep talks go, you suck at them.”

  Selene laughed. “Yeah, sorry about that. I can buy a cheerleader outfit if that would help.”

  I shrugged. “It might. I wouldn’t want to commit to something until I’d seen it myself.”

  “Oh, you wouldn’t want to commit? That’s very kind of you.”

  “You’ll just have to see how I react to you wearing one, and we’ll go from there.”

  Selene stopped walking and pulled me back, kissing me on the lips. “Oh we will, will we?”

  I winked. “I could wear the cheerleader outfit, if you’d prefer. I’m not sure I have the legs for it.”

  Selene laughed again. “I think you’d look sexy.”

  “Are you two done?” Harrison called. “Or do you need to get a room?”

  “Do you have a room available?” I asked. “Just curious.”

  “We’ll resume this conversation at a later date,” Selene said. “In private.”

  “I look forward to it.”

  I kissed Selene and ran to catch up to Harrison. “You might not be taking this seriously, but my men sure as hell are,” he snapped.

  “Harrison, I take everything seriously when I hunt someone. But you know what? I don’t think a little levity in a situation like this is a bad thing. I’m not a soldier, I’m not regimented and regulated, and we have some time until we reach the area you think Lee is hiding. But for you, I’ll look somber and scowl a lot more.”

  “You want to know why I don’t like you? It’s because you don’t take things seriously. You joke and mock. You don’t show anyone the respect they’re due.”

  “I show a lot of people the respect they’re due, if I think they’re due it. I respect Galahad. I mock him because we’re friends.”

  “He’s a king.”

  “Not my king. You don’t have to like me, Harrison. I may joke and mock people, I may be sarcastic and a smart-ass, but when it comes down to it, I’m fairly sure you’d rather have me on your side than opposing you. The joking is just my way of dealing with everything, of allowing myself to not be consumed by the awfulness of everything happening around me. If you don’t like that, tough, because I haven’t changed for people I respect a lot more than you.”

  “I understand why you have so many people who want to line up to kill you,” Harrison said through gritted teeth. “I just don’t understand how you’re not dead a hundred times over.”

  “Essentially it’s because I’m stubborn. I’m just too stubborn to lie down and let death take me. And it won’t be taking me today, either.”

  “Commander,” one of Harrison’s guards said.

  “Yes, trooper,” Harrison said to the young female guard.

  “We’ve had a report from the recon team. The ruins are approximately twenty minutes’ walk from here. There are no obvious guards there, and nothing to stop us from going inside.”

  “Excellent. Tell everyone that they’re to maintain silence on the way there.”

  “No,” I said. “I want you all to make as much noise as possible and move on beyond the ruins, as if you have no idea they’re there.”

  “That’s insane,” Harrison said. “Why would we want to let Lee know we’re coming?”

  “Because you’re not.”

  “Want to explain?” Selene said as she caught up with us.

  “I’m going in alone,” I said.

  “That seems foolish,” Lucifer said. “Even by the standards of stupid things you do.”

  “And there have been a lot of them,” Zamek said. “And I haven’t known you long.”

  “Okay, and thanks for that,” I started. “But something has been bothering me about all of this. These people . . . Lee, Deimos, Helios, and Atlas. They’re all people who have wanted me dead, and they’re all working for this My Liege group. On top of that, they’ve all come out at the exact same time as someone pretending to be me. So, I want you to make a loop around the ruins and come in after I’ve had a few minutes to get inside and hopefully find Lee.”

  “You’re seriously considering this?” Harrison asked. “This isn’t time for a dick-measuring exercise.”

  “Actually that’s exactly what it’s time for,” I said. “Lee is all about the dick measuring. That’s the most important thing to him. Looking like the biggest, baddest asshole in the room. That’s all he cares about, and when someone questions that, or makes him look weak, he goes after them. But he always wants people to know why he’s gone after them. He always liked to explain to people why he’s doing it.”

  “He’s a James Bond villain,” Lucifer said.

  “Yeah, but even dumber. And I don’t plan on getting killed by someone whose IQ is comparable to a wet sponge.”

  “And if you’re wrong and he tries to kill you right off the bat?” Harrison asked.

  “Then I kill him and bring out his corpse. Or most of his corpse, depending on how it goes.”

  “If he’s a creation of Asmodeus, that won’t be easy,” Lucifer said.

  “If he somehow got hold of Asmodeus’s soul jar and absorbed a part of the soul, that means he has friends who got him the jar, got him the runes he needed to get the jar to work, and got him the ritual he needed to absorb part of the soul. He didn’t trip and fall and absorb Asmodeus’s soul.”

  “Okay, we’ll do it your way,” Harrison said. He turned to the trooper beside him. “Tell everyone we’re going past the ruins. We’re going to make a loop all the way around, and come back at it on the second pass. Officially it’s so we can scout out for possible traps and allies of Lee. Do not tell anyone Nate’s stupid plan. I’d really rather not have people think that stupidity is a good trait to have.”

  The trooper ran off.

  “You believe in me—that’s touching,” I said to Harrison.

  “You’re an idiot, but you’re a powerful idiot who I’ve seen fight. If this Lee asshole wants to fight you, I’d rather you were down there containing him than allow him to have full rein to go at my people. If you do get yourself killed, though, I’m going to laugh my ass off. Fair warning.”

  Harrison walked off, leaving me with Selene, Lucifer, and Zamek. “This is a stupid idea,” Lucifer said. “But it’s probably the least stupid idea we could have at the moment. You want someone to come with you?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t want him to realize that there’s more than just me, and if fifty soldiers go down there, he might start trying to pick them off in the darkness.”

  “What if Lee has allies down there?” Zamek asked.

  “He’ll want me for himself,” I said, feeling hopeful about being right.

  “You have three minutes, and then we come in,” Selene said. “If he has help, and they’re ignoring you, that gives us something to do while you have Lee’s attention.”

  “See, I’m all about delegating the hard work to everyone else,” I said.

  We stopped at the entrance to the ruins. “If you didn’t know they were there, you’d walk right past,” I said after crouching down behind a tree large enough to conceal a dozen people. The only part of the ruins that were visible were three large stone columns, and even they had been mostly consumed by vegetation.

  “The entrance is behind the columns,” Harrison said. “My people are already moving on around the back of the ruins. If anyone is watching for us, they’re going to think we couldn’t find them. Or at the very least that we’re
going to ambush them.”

  “I don’t have to tell you to be careful, do I?” Selene asked.

  “I’ve done this kind of thing before,” I said.

  “You’ve done this kind of thing before?” Zamek said. “You’ve gone up against a vampire who may or may not have at least part of the soul of an ancient vampiric devil inside of him?”

  “Every Tuesday,” I replied. “And twice on Fridays.”

  “You’re so full of shit,” Zamek said with a grin as he removed the battle-axe from his back and tested it for weight. Harrison had made sure the things taken from us when we were first arrested had been returned, and Leonardo had given us all any extra weapons we’d need. For a man who hated the idea of his inventions being used for war, he sure was good at creating them.

  I unsheathed the silver broadsword that Leonardo had given me and walked around the tree toward the hidden ruins. As it turned out, they weren’t so hidden when you got close, and while vegetation had grown all around the steps moving down into the ruins, it only made them difficult to see from a distance.

  Small purple crystals lit the inside of the ruins. I’d been worried that I’d have to use my fire magic to let me see in the dark, a simple proposition in the Earth realm but one that was liable to start a forest fire in Shadow Falls.

  I waited at the bottom of the long staircase into the ruins and allowed my vision to become accustomed to the new lighting before continuing. The plant life of the realm had long since overrun the ruins, and occasionally I’d hear something scurry around in the darkness, but I had no interest in finding out exactly what it was, so I hurried on.

  The elven ruins would probably have been beautiful back in their day, and evidence of that beauty still existed in the ornate carvings on the walls, and pillars with stone that shone brightly as the light from the crystals touched it. After thousands of years of disuse, their work remained functional and impressive. Occasionally I saw something that interested me enough that I wished I’d the time to stay and examine it more, and it was easy to understand why Leonardo loved coming here to excavate. Elven culture was a mystery to most of us, and even to those who lived at the time it was something that had been kept largely secret, so to be able to wander around their achievements, even after millennia had passed, felt like how humans must have first felt when they’d finally discovered the Rosetta stone.