“I wish there was another way,” Hades said, creating one of his soul weapons—a bident. It almost had the appearance of a pitchfork, but there was no mistaking that the blades instead of prongs were very much meant for war. “You need to calm down.”
Erebus roared in defiance, and Hades punched the soul weapon into the nightmare’s chest. Erebus screamed in pain and, as soon as Hades withdrew the weapon, collapsed to the ground.
Selene was there in an instant. “Will he be okay?”
“Yes,” Hades said. “I didn’t use enough power to kill. And nightmares are quite capable of healing almost any wound.”
Hades walked off to the helicopter and could be heard shouting at the guard who’d nearly gotten people killed, before he returned with a pair of shackles. “Zamek rune-scribed these,” he said, passing them to Selene, who put them on the nightmare’s wrists.
“What will they do?” Tommy asked.
“Stop him from killing everyone,” Hades said matter-of-factly. “We’ll deal with the rest of his treatment when we get him to a secure facility.”
“I assume we’ll all be staying in Greenland,” Diana said with a slight sigh.
Since Nate had gone missing and Gawain’s goons had started to eliminate people who would oppose his new world order, Hades had moved most of those he knew to be loyal to a secret complex in Greenland.
“You like the weather,” Mordred said. “You’ve mentioned it several times.”
Hades glanced at Mordred, who winked, causing Hades to smile.
The trip back was one of anxious anticipation. While everyone fit in the Black Hawk, no one wanted to be there when the nightmare woke from its forced slumber. Fortunately, apart from everyone being nervous, the flight was relatively uneventful, and they eventually landed on a helipad on the northwest coast of Greenland.
Hades and the medical staff at the facility unloaded Nate and took him away before anyone could say anything more to him, while the others went through the large, open hangar bay doors that signified the entrance to the complex. Most of the complex was underground, which Mordred thought was a running theme with nonhumans.
“It’s been a long few weeks,” Sky said, causing Mordred to turn around and hug her.
Mordred watched as Nate was wheeled onto a lift large enough to fit a tank.
“They’ll take good care of him,” Sky assured Mordred. “My dad isn’t exactly the type of person to let something go.”
“How’s your mum?”
“Down there waiting for her patient.”
“It took us a long time to find him. You think he’ll be okay?”
“Yes, it’s Nate. I can’t imagine him being anything else.” She passed a manila envelope to Mordred. “This is the information you asked for. I hope it helps.”
Mordred didn’t bother opening it. “It will. Or it’ll get me killed.”
“Nice extremes there.”
“Yeah, I’m all about the living-dangerously kind of life.”
Sky chuckled. “Be careful, okay?”
An alarm went off, and Mordred and Sky ran toward the main command center, which was situated on the top floor of the aboveground portion of the facility. The pair took the stairs two at a time and almost burst through the stairwell door before spotting several guards go for their holstered weapons in the hallway beyond.
“Whoa, guys, we’re on your side,” Sky said, raising her hands.
Everyone relaxed and allowed Sky and Mordred to head into the situation room.
The room had several banks of computers, and more than two dozen employees working there on a round-the-clock basis. The alarm stopped, and Hades, who stood at the front of the room beside the viewing window, turned toward them.
Irkalla, Remy, Nabu, and Elaine were all in the room, too, and Mordred was glad to see he and Sky hadn’t been the only ones worried by the noise.
“What the hell happened?” Sky asked.
“Nate’s magic is . . . unpredictable,” Hades said.
“Meaning what?” Mordred asked.
“His lightning is striking the facility,” Elaine told them.
“A lot,” Remy finished. “We’re essentially the epicenter of a storm. Which is a lot less pleasant than it sounds.”
“It doesn’t sound that great,” Mordred said.
“Yeah, kind of making my point for me there.”
Mordred nodded that he got what Remy was saying, although he wasn’t entirely sure he did. “So, we’re all stuck here until it stops?”
“You have somewhere you want to be?” Irkalla asked.
“Yes.”
“I would advise against leaving the compound,” Hades said. “But considering you’re going to do whatever you like, I can tell you the best way out of this country would be to take one of the four-by-fours to the nearby airport and fly from there. The storm is localized directly above us.”
“Just how powerful will a fully healed Nate be?” Elaine asked.
“I have no idea,” Mordred said. “When I woke up from my time as a nightmare, I’d frozen the building I was in. Made it look like a palace.”
“I swear if you sing one word of that fucking song, Remy, I will kill you,” Sky said, forcing Remy to mime locking his mouth.
“I’m coming with you,” Irkalla told Mordred.
“You don’t even know where I’m going,” Mordred said.
“Hades, how’s Nate doing?” Irkalla asked him.
“He’s stable, unconscious, and still trying to kill us all. There’s no idea how long he’ll be out for.”
“After the initial waking up, I spent months as a nightmare,” Mordred said. “We’ve got a long way to go yet.”
“Then I’m coming with you,” Irkalla said. “Wherever you go, there will be people to punch in the face. I quite like that idea at the moment.”
One of the workers in the situation room walked over to Hades and whispered something to him.
“Thank you,” Hades said. “I think we need to see this.” He switched on a large TV screen at the far end of the room and flicked to a news channel that showed the start of a news conference of some kind.
“That’s the president of the United States,” Nabu said, almost absentmindedly. “Along with several other leading figures from a variety of countries—the UK, France, Germany, China, Nigeria, South Africa, Japan, and Russia. There are dozens of people there. I had no idea there was a summit going on.”
Hades turned up the volume.
“These last weeks have seen some of the worst attacks on our freedom that our people have ever had to endure,” the president said. “Innocents have died the world over, and we have had to change the way we work to ensure that we can protect people from further atrocities. We can now tell the people of this world that our countries have come together to stop this menace. And in doing so the United Nations has created a new worldwide organization that will help to combat these forces of evil. Forces we don’t quite yet understand, but it’s my hope that with thanks to this new organization’s leadership we will destroy these forces. I’m proud to introduce you to the leader of this group, Arthur Pendragon.”