It took several hours to get everyone seen to, and by the end time we’d had thirty-six injured, three dead on our side, and sixty-one dead on theirs. I knew we’d been lucky not to suffer more casualties, but I also knew that wasn’t how Tommy would see it. One death was one too many, and he would want to ensure nothing like this happened again. I also knew that he wanted me to explain how our attackers had been sent here to die, but we were too busy to talk.
To my surprise, Mordred arrived just as it was beginning to get dark. He had Morgan with him, and they chipped in to help even though they were tired from their trip. Mordred said he had information of his own to give, but waited until after we’d helped Grayson and his staff move the injured to the medical facilities several levels below the ground floor and dispose of the corpses. Then we showered and changed into clean clothes and all gathered in an office at the rear of the reception area. Dozens of armed guards patrolled the entire compound. Tommy was going to make certain there would never be another attack against his people.
“So, we’ve all had a pretty shit day,” Mordred began after everyone had piled into the room. Along with those who had attended the original meeting, Remy, Morgan, Mordred, Selene, and Grayson had joined the group.
“You get out of New York okay?” Olivia asked.
“Yes, thanks to Hades firing up the jet for me. The human authorities had shut down the airports. It’s standard procedure, so I was repeatedly told.”
“I thought you were going straight to Scotland,” Fiona said. “To find my husband.”
“Your husband is missing, too?” Mordred asked.
“We’ll fill you in on the rest,” Irkalla told him. “Why come here?”
“I tried to contact Tommy on the phone, and no one answered,” Mordred said. “Figured you might be in trouble.”
“I think you need to explain what you meant earlier,” Tommy said to me.
“I took one of those attackers into the shadow realm and asked a few questions. Someone had tampered with his mind so that all he could say was ‘My Liege.’”
“Like what happened at Wolf’s Head?” Olivia asked, her arms crossed and a stern expression on her face. I wondered how far she was from losing her temper.
“What happened in Germany?” Mordred asked.
“A few years ago, a group of psychopaths attacked the Wolf’s Head compound. It was their goal to get the Reavers to infiltrate the compound and get into Tartarus, where they could help Cronus escape. Lots of really awful stuff. We captured one of the attackers and found that he’d been programmed to say ‘My Liege’ instead of the person who sent them. That person turned out to be Hera.”
“So, does this guy mean Hera, too?” Morgan asked.
I shook my head. “All I know is that whatever was done to this man was unlike anything I’ve ever seen. He couldn’t say anything but those two words. Blood-magic cursed.”
“That doesn’t mean he was sent here to die,” Remy said.
I placed a pistol on the table. “I took this from one of the attackers. It has normal bullets in it. No one in their right mind is going to send someone with normal bullets to attack this place and expect them to win.”
“That could just be a coincidence. Or genuinely bad planning on their part,” Mordred said. “That can’t be the only reason you thought they were sent here to do something other than kill us and teabag our corpses.”
Everyone looked at Mordred.
“I’ve been playing a lot of Halo,” Mordred explained. “It’s a thing. Honestly.”
“I don’t even want to know,” Selene said with a slight shake of her head.
Tommy placed his head in his hands and tried not to laugh, while Diana and Remy didn’t even bother hiding it.
“It’s not like I do it in real life,” Mordred explained. “It’s a video-game thing. I don’t go around doing it to people in actual life.”
“You said that already,” Remy pointed out after his bout of laughter.
“I know, I just want to reiterate. I don’t teabag people in actual life. That would be weird.”
“But in a game it’s not weird?” Morgan asked.
Mordred remained silent for several seconds. “So these people who tried to kill us, Nate.”
“Right, no, I didn’t know about the bullets until I was cleaning up,” I admitted, hopefully moving the conversation away from Mordred’s pastimes. “But these people were sent here to make a statement of intent. You don’t send people with broken minds and a complete lack of proper equipment if you want them to succeed. If any of our side died at the same time, then that was one less to worry about. I assume Helios was trying to take me out of the fight, which is why he blew up my house and tried to kill Selene and Remy.”
“He sounded like he expected you to be there,” Remy said. “He was angry you weren’t. He lost it after that. It was as if you being there was the whole point of what he was doing.”
“Helios is going to get what’s coming to him,” I said without looking at Selene. “But these attacks are just one more in a series of them across the globe. They’re attacking humans, but they attacked here because they want us all off-balance.”
“You think they attacked here so that Tommy and everyone get so angry they go storming after whoever was responsible?” Nabu asked.
I nodded. “Send a bunch of people to hit Tommy and those he cares about, but send cannon fodder. No one significant to the cause overall. The only sorcerer in the bunch was the one who killed himself. He had dwarven runes marked on his skin.”
“What did they say?” Zamek asked.
“I only saw the one on his back. It was one of the original dwarven runes, and it said contain.”
“Contain what?” Zamek asked.
I shrugged. “I’d like to see the body if possible,” I told Grayson.
“The body is still in one piece?” Mordred asked. “In New York, the bodies burned up to ash. Or at least one of them did. The other one only turned to ash where the runes had been placed.”
Grayson dropped in front of me several photos of the body of the sorcerer. “I printed these off. I thought they’d be helpful.”
I flicked through them, each picture showing the glyphs on the dead man.
“I think your magic stopped the power from consuming him,” Irkalla said as she picked up one of the photos. “Do you know what they say?”
I placed the photos in an order in front of me, showing each of the glyphs on the front and back of the man’s body. A glyph sat on his chest, one on each wrist, and one on his throat. They were mirrored on his back, the backs of his wrists, and the base of his skull.
“Power, contain, release,” I said, tapping each photo in turn. “Those on his wrists mean ‘release.’ I assume there’s more of them because of how much power is pushed out.”
“What does that mean?” Fiona asked.
The original dwarven runes had been lost in translation for thousands of years, known only to a handful of people. Even the majority of dwarves themselves were no longer capable of reading them. For some reason, when I was a child someone put the knowledge of them in my head. I got the feeling it wasn’t done so I could show off and look clever.