Scorched Shadows (Hellequin Chronicles #7)
Steve McHugh
CHAPTER 1
Mordred
Manhattan, New York, USA
By the time Mordred reached the front of the queue in the coffee shop, he’d read their winter menu a dozen times and discounted each of the drinks available as either too sweet or something he’d only drink under torture. Coffee, he decided, should not have sprinkles in it, on it, or close to the cup.
“Large Americano, please,” Mordred said with a smile to the young man standing behind the counter.
The server looked vaguely disappointed that it was something so simple but rang up the order. “Your name?” he asked, poised to write it on the side of the cup.
“Mordred.”
The young man was ready to write but instead looked back up at Mordred. “Seriously?”
“Who would possibly make up that name for themselves?” Mordred asked. “Yes, my name is Mordred.”
The young man wrote something that was at best barely legible on the cup and passed it over to a second young man, who made Mordred’s drink.
Mordred began to hum the theme tune to The Legend of Zelda, gaining a few strange looks from people, which he promptly ignored. A minute later Mordred was passed his drink, and he walked off up a set of stairs to find a comfortable seat on the floor above.
The red leather couch he found was exactly what he’d been looking for, and he sat down with a slight sigh and looked out a large window beside him at the street below. He placed his drink on the pale wooden table in front of him and shrugged off his jacket. He was in Manhattan to meet Elaine Garlot. Elaine had been the ruler of Avalon before Arthur woke up and everyone assumed he would take control. She was also Mordred’s aunt, and someone he had a genuine affection for.
Over a decade ago Mordred had been shot in the head, and instead of finding himself very much in the land of the dead, he woke up sans bullet hole. There had been a few benefits to being shot, a fact in and of itself he found strange, but the main one was that after over a thousand years of wanting to murder people, he was finally free from his homicidal desires. He was finally able to start putting things right.
It had been nearly three years since he’d revealed to Nate Garrett that he was alive, something Nate had been at first unhappy about considering he’d been the one to shoot Mordred in the first place. Gradually Nate began to trust Mordred, and now they were both in a place where they could be friendly, each man not having to worry about the other trying to kill him. Well, mostly, anyway.
It had been foretold by the Fates that Mordred had to kill Nate, because otherwise Nate would go crazy and murder everyone. Nate was, understandably, upset by this news, but the very idea of killing his friend made Mordred feel queasy. He’d spent the better part of twelve hundred years trying to kill him, but at last he was in a place where they could be friends again. Yet this specter of the future hung over them both. Mordred hoped they could find a way to avoid it; in fact he’d spent several months trying to figure out just that but hadn’t come up with any ideas.
Concerned that he’d have to murder his friend to fulfill some prophecy he wanted no part of, Mordred avoided Nate for the better part of a year, trying all the while to find a way out of a future he was certain would come to pass.
Mordred took a drink of his coffee and thought about the many changes that had occurred in the three years since he and Nate had begun to re-form the bonds of friendship. Arthur Pendragon, once comatose by Mordred’s own hands, had woken and taken charge of Avalon—the organization that secretly ran the world far from the gaze of humanity. Mordred hadn’t seen Arthur since he’d reclaimed his position as the head of Avalon, and he had little interest in doing so. He was almost sure that Arthur would be in a much less forgiving mood than even Nate had been.
The enemies of Avalon had seemingly dropped off the face of the earth, too. Even Hera, who had claimed London as her own only months before Arthur had woken, had been quiet. Any trouble had seemingly been taken control of by Avalon as Arthur sought to regain control of an organization that had been trying to tear itself apart for too long.
The lack of people trying to kill him and his friends had made it easier for Mordred to walk away from that life and try to find answers. He’d traveled the world and eventually arrived in America so that he could talk to people there who were considerably older than even his own sixteen hundred years. Elaine had been around for thousands of years. She’d probably seen everything there was to see. If anyone had an answer, it would be her. Elaine had contacted him a month earlier to give a date, place, and time to meet. She told him she had information about the prophecy that he needed to hear.
One of the big problems with the Fates was that while they often saw a future, it was not necessarily the future, and frankly the whole thing made Mordred’s head hurt. Just because the Fates saw something didn’t mean it would happen, but they’d told Mordred that they had seen no other way forward for him and Nate.
He was still thinking about his reason for being in New York, and trying to stop whatever future lay before him, when someone cleared their throat. Mordred looked up at a woman on the other side of the table, standing next to one of two leather chairs.
“Is this seat taken?” she asked.
“Of course,” Mordred said with a smile. “Sorry, I was miles away. Do you do miles? It’s kilometers here, isn’t it? I’m never all that sure which British words Americans understand.”
The woman smiled. She had a nice smile, Mordred thought. In fact she was a very attractive woman. Her long hair had been dyed a mixture of greens, blues, and even a little red. Several strands of bright-green hair had been tucked behind her ear. She had a multitude of hoops in both ears, and a dragon tattoo on one arm that started on her wrist and vanished up the sleeve of her blue T-shirt. The other arm had several different tattoos, but Mordred was only interested in the Mario and Princess Peach tattoo on her forearm.
“So, it’s taken?” she asked.
“Sorry, I said of course, didn’t I?” Mordred motioned toward the chair. “Please take a seat and ignore my inane ramblings.”
She placed her drink on the table between them and sat down.
“Nice tattoos,” Mordred said, pointing to her arm as he tried to decide whether she was human. Or whether she was an enemy.
“Thanks, I’m a big Mario fan. You play?”
Mordred smiled. “I’ve been known to annoy friends by humming the theme tune, so a little, yes.”
The woman laughed. “I’m Cass, by the way.”
“Mordred.”
She offered him her hand, which he shook, and he noticed that on each of the nails on her hand was a Mario 1-Up mushroom. The small green image made Mordred chuckle.