“Yeah, Gawain’s a real ballbuster.”
The guard took a second longer than he should have to register what Mordred said. Plenty of time for Mordred to turn and smash his elbow into the man’s throat. He removed the gun from the guard and placed his knee against his throat. “No bracelet. So, what is it, you human, or they don’t trust their employees not to go all crazed?”
“We use guns, not magic. No powers allowed on site—that’s the rule. We can’t be seen to scare the humans.”
“That comes later, right?”
The doors opened, showing a hallway with only one door, and Mordred placed the gun against the man’s temple. “Out. Now.”
The pair of them walked out of the lift, the guard first. When they got to the door, Mordred made the man kneel and link his fingers behind his head while Mordred opened the entrance to his suite.
“In,” Mordred said, helping the man to his feet and pushing him inside. “Don’t fuck about. You might live.”
“Who are you?” the man asked.
Mordred shot him in the head with the silenced pistol. Unlike most human silenced guns, it made no noise at all. “What a waste of ammo.”
Mordred removed the keycard from the dead guard’s pocket, which identified the man as William Talbot. He went back to the lift, using William’s card pass to activate it. He stepped inside and placed the card against the reader, where a star flashed on the screen above. “Classy,” Mordred said as the lift began to ascend.
Mordred stood to the side of the lift as the doors opened, showing a hallway identical to the one below. He stepped out and shot the two guards in the head, moving on past them toward the door.
“You ready?” he whispered.
“When you are,” Irkalla said. “You’ve got a two-story penthouse. My necromancy says there are nine souls in there. Four upstairs, five down. Two are directly on the other side of the door, three further in. You got this?”
Mordred placed the card against the reader outside the door. “Oh yes.” He opened the door and shot the first guard in the temple before he even stepped inside. He had to move around the open door to get the second, who required two shots in the chest before a third took him in the center of his forehead. He holstered his gun and drew two knives—he wanted to save as much ammo as possible.
He looked around and found himself in a long hallway with stairs to one side leading to the floor above, and a large arch in front of him. “Guard coming your way,” Irkalla said.
Mordred ran to the side of the archway, out of sight of the guard, who clearly spotted his dead friends. He called out to one of them, stepped into the arch, and never breathed again, as Mordred buried one of the knives in his heart and slit his throat with the other. He pushed the guard aside, removing the blade, and threw it at a fourth guard, catching him in the head.
Mordred cursed himself as he spotted the problem of a paladin walking up the stairs to the floor above. “Shit, we have an issue here.”
“What’s wrong?” Remy asked.
“There’s a paladin here.”
“That’s not great,” Remy said. “Did you know?”
“It was always a possibility. He’s why you’re here with me,” Mordred whispered. “Can you see him from above?”
“No, the windows on the top floor are covered with something.”
“Guard right on the other side of the wall,” Irkalla said.
Mordred stepped into the main area of the suite, grabbing the guard’s arm, and forcing the gun up toward his head. Mordred pulled the trigger, shooting the guard in the throat. The noise was deafening, and as his secrecy was well and truly up, he shot the guard with his own gun twice more in the head.
Mordred dropped the gun, ran off to a kitchen area, and huddled behind the counter.
“There’s a mass coming toward you,” Irkalla said.
“Can you see me down here?” Mordred asked Remy.
“Yep. You want me to shoot you?”
“Does that honestly need an answer?” Mordred almost shouted.
“Just checking.”
“Mordred, is that you?” the paladin asked from just outside the archway. “It can’t be Nate, he’s dead, but I figure you or one of your idiot friends would try something stupid. Didn’t think you’d try to hit us here.”
“I like to be unpredictable,” Mordred said. “Shouldn’t you be with my father? Or Arthur, or Gawain? I forget whose ass you’re currently kissing.”
A bullet smashed into the top of the kitchen counter, spraying pieces of marble all over the floor. “Your father was turned to us a long time ago. I helped.”
“You’re a traitorous piece of shit.”
“A realist. Unlike you and Nate, I know what Avalon should be. I believe in the vision of an Avalon where the powerful rule and everyone else bows before us.”
“Well, you’re already a massive dick, so you’re halfway there.”
“You remember when you told Merlin about being experimented on? Do you remember when it drove you over the edge?”
“Well, I guess I know why he didn’t listen.”
“I remember Gawain telling me about it. My word, how we laughed.”
A second round hit the kitchen counter just above Mordred’s head. “I’ll get you eventually,” the paladin said. “I prefer swords, but a gun is just as good in a pinch. Actually I’d prefer my magic, but I can’t have everything.”
“Take the shot when you get it,” Mordred said.
“Oh, I will,” the paladin told him.
Mordred stood up and made sure to put part of a wall between him and the paladin, forcing the larger man to come into the room to get a shot.
“You’re going to die here,” the paladin said. “I might send your head back to Morgan as a gift.”
“You first,” Mordred said.
The first the paladin knew of the shot was when his chest exploded and he was thrown back onto the floor.
“He dead?” Remy asked.
Mordred glanced at the hole in the extra-thick glass window, and then down at the paladin. His white shirt was quickly turning dark red. Mordred walked over to the severely injured man. “I want you to tell my brother that I’m coming for him. I want you to tell him that I’m going to end everyone who stands beside him and Abaddon. If my father and Arthur are truly gone, they’ll have to die, too.”
Mordred took a step and turned back to the paladin. “Fuck it, they’ll figure it out.” He shot the paladin three times in the head.
Mordred loaded a new magazine and walked toward the staircase, keeping his gun up as he ascended. He reached the top, which consisted of a large open-plan room with two doors at the far end. He turned into the room and found it empty but noticed two more doors at the other end, where he thought the bedrooms were.
“You happen to see anyone here?” he asked Irkalla.
“Two to your left, one to your right. Who’s the third target?”