I walked to the door and turned the massive handle, pulling it toward me, and I heard voices on the other side. I peered through the crack I’d created between the door and its frame and saw two blood elves. They were in a long hallway with dark-blue carpet and normal house doors along one side. The other side had windows overlooking the courtyard I’d been brought through when I’d first arrived. From the angle I was at, I couldn’t make out much in the courtyard except for its size and the several guards that were patrolling it. One problem at a time.
One of the blood elves in the hallway was only a few feet in front of me. He was leaning up against the wall, talking to his comrade, who was looking out of the window in front of him. They spoke in blood elvish. “You think they’ll break him?” the one closest to me asked.
“We’ve broken better,” his friend said.
“You think we’ll be able to get our brethren out of that horrific dwarf realm? I’d like to think that we could help Gawain destroy his enemies.”
“What if we’re not like them? What if we changed in different ways?”
“They’re still blood elves. We were meant to be there when they slaughtered the dwarves. Instead, we got to spend a thousand years buried in a mountain. On Earth realm. Just the word ‘Earth’ makes me feel ill.”
“Humans are worse than dwarves. At least dwarves taste nice.”
I opened the door and stepped out, driving the blood elf sword I’d taken into the back of the closest elf, piercing his heart. The second elf turned toward me and was about to scream something when I charged toward him, knocking him off his feet and dumping him on his head. He tried to push me off, but I smashed my forearm into his face, breaking his cheekbone, and ripped out his throat. Rage and hate filled me again, and I forced myself to drop the lump of flesh in my hand and stagger away.
“You won’t break me,” I whispered, staring at the black blood on my hands. “You won’t.” I remained where I was until I calmed, by which point the elf with no throat was still making noise. Blood elves were hard to kill if you didn’t take the head or destroy the brain or heart. I raised the elf’s blade and stabbed him through the skull, pinning his head to the floor, killing him.
I fought back the anger as I searched both elves and took a belt with two sheathed daggers. For some reason it had taken me this long to realize I still had no shoes. I thought of Tommy making a joke about Die Hard and chuckled before the image of his death at my hands tore itself into my head.
“No,” I said. “I will not kill my friends. How do I stop this?”
“Kill Ares,” Erebus said from beside me. “The change he tried to implement isn’t complete. You kill him, and hopefully you’ll break free from his grasp.”
“Kill Ares? Is there another way?”
“You find someone with mind magic and get them to fix your brain.”
“Okay, so both ways suck.” I looked down at the blood elf. “For now I can use this hate Ares has filled me with.”
“Just make sure not to get too used to it. An empath like Ares controls people in part because he makes them believe that the emotions he forced into them, and the memories he created, are something to revel in. Something to enjoy. He’ll make you think that without those memories, you are nothing but a shell of yourself.”
“I’m going to kill Ares for this at some point. Gawain, Abaddon, any other fucker who happens to be involved. I’m going to pile those bastards up behind me.”
“That’s Ares talking.”
I shook my head. “No. It really isn’t.”
Erebus disappeared, leaving me alone in the hallway. I decided it was best to hurry and continued along the hallway, taking a set of stairs down one level. I stopped at the bottom and took a quick glance along each direction of hallway. The left side had eight blood elves, all standing around a door. The windows on the side of the hallway gave me a clear view of the stairs and courtyard that the door led to, but being quiet and fighting eight blood elves did not go hand in hand.
I looked to my right, and apart from a set of double doors, the area was void of anyone that I could see. I crept around the corner of the stairs and ran the length of the hallway, making sure to keep on the rug to muffle my steps. I reached the double doors and pushed one of them open a fraction of an inch to look inside and, when I was satisfied the room beyond was empty, pushed the door open and slipped inside.
I’d entered a huge ballroom filled with a dozen tables, all with chairs around them, but the tables were bare. Large red-and-gold curtains hung from one side of the room. I ran over to peer behind one, but the window behind just showed a large number of blood elves running training exercises. I spotted Atlas and put the curtain back; he was close to the last person I wanted to run into.
I tried a second set of double doors at the end of the ballroom, but they were locked, and the sounds of laughter from behind me made me sigh. I placed my head against a metal strip on one of the doors and controlled my breathing before turning around to face Ares.
“You got somewhere to be?” he asked me with a slight chuckle.
“I just thought I’d come and make sure you got my food order right. I would hate to think you’d bring me something I didn’t like.”
“You humiliated my son all those years ago. You beat him like a drum.”
I nodded. “He’s a piece of shit just like you. You must be proud.”
Ares shook his head. “Can’t stand the sniveling little bastard. But he is my son.”
“So, what happens now? You kill me, tell Gawain I died trying to escape?”
“I thought about it. But you know what? I think I’d prefer to just beat you into a coma and screw around with your brain some more.” He removed the bracelet that allowed him to use his abilities and placed it on a nearby table. “Now you can’t bitch and moan about it not being fair.”
“You had an advantage with your powers. You’ll really wish you’d kept it.”
“I prefer to fight without my powers. I’ve seen people like yourself rely on them, allow them to be the best you have. I saw what you did to Helios, though—that was impressive. Pissed off Gawain a little, as Helios was in charge of murdering all those humans, although I guess you saved him the job of removing him from our organization when he eventually fucked up.”
“You really don’t like many people, do you?”
“I like Aphrodite, but only for about an hour at a time.”
“An hour? Aren’t you kind of exaggerating?”
Ares’s eyes narrowed with anger. “I am all man. I should show your woman that. I should have shown her when she was married to my son. Maybe if she’d got some, she wouldn’t have betrayed us by running off with you the first chance she got.”
“What a surprise, Ares is a misogynistic prick. Who could possibly have seen that coming?”
“I just know what women really want.”
“You know, I should have just let you kill me instead of listening to your inane drivel.”
Ares shrugged off his coat and carefully unbuttoned his dark-blue silk shirt, laying both over the back of a nearby chair.
His body looked like it had been carved out of solid granite. He rolled his shoulder and flexed his biceps, making the veins in his neck pop a little.
“You done?” I asked. “Or do you need some oil to really seal the image?”
He ignored me and removed his shoes and socks, spending time to ensure that each shoe had one sock in it.