Both magical explosions had been superheated, but they’d been unlike any fire magic Mordred had ever seen. It was almost as if it were just pure energy. He stepped over remains, hoping to find someone alive, but the devastation had been total.
Mordred used his air magic to put out any fires, smothering them until they were no longer a threat, before he walked up the nearly destroyed staircase to the floor above. More dead littered the floor, and near where Mordred had sat was the body of the man who had caused it. He was dead, which was a shame, because Mordred had wanted to kill him. The skin on the man’s chest, where Mordred had seen the glyphs, was nothing but ash. Mordred wondered how the man had managed to stay mostly intact when everything around him was destroyed. Maybe the magic that allowed him to create such devastation had been designed to keep him relatively intact, despite killing him. Mordred turned in a circle as he surveyed the building. The magic had pushed out from the murderer to everything surrounding him. Maybe whoever sent him wanted people to know who had been the killer, or maybe whatever had allowed him to commit such a horrific act hadn’t worked properly. Too many questions, not enough answers.
Mordred hadn’t been able to find a second body on the floor below in any kind of state to prove conclusively that there had been two attackers, but he assumed whatever had allowed the body of the attacker above to remain intact had in fact incinerated the attacker below. Either that, or they were buried under mounds of innocent victims and pieces of the building. Either way, Mordred had no desire to go digging around for answers. One killer or two didn’t matter in the scheme of things. Mordred sighed out of a combination of sadness and frustration. He walked back down the stairs, leaving the coffee shop, where strangers hurried to help the injured.
A young boy of no more than five or six lay on the ground, his leg twisted and badly broken. Apart from the leg and a small cut on his forehead, he appeared to be okay. Mordred could use his magic to heal him. Could use his magic to do a lot of things, but then Avalon would be angry that he’d done so. Magic was not allowed to be shown to humans. Oh, humans could discover Avalon on their own—the Internet had made sure of that—but it wasn’t considered good form to use magic on humans to heal them. Or kill them.
Fuck it.
“I can help,” Mordred told the woman beside the boy, who he guessed was his mother.
“You’re a doctor?” she asked, hopeful.
Mordred just nodded and placed his hands on the boy’s leg, and yellow glyphs lit up over his arms. The boy cried out in pain for an instant before he realized the pain was gone.
“How’d you do that?” a familiar voice asked from behind Mordred.
Mordred knew who the voice belonged to, and knew that his actions would cause more questions than he was comfortable answering. “Hi, Cass.”
“I came back for my wallet. I saw what happened. I don’t understand what happened here. I don’t understand why you can heal people. What’s going on?”
Mordred stood, ignoring the look of disbelief from the boy’s mother beside him.
“An angel,” the woman said.
Mordred snapped around to the mother, anger in his eyes. “Don’t be so fucking stupid. Get your son somewhere safe. Preferably to a hospital. I healed the leg, but they’d best check for anything else.”
The mother nodded hurriedly, picked up her son, and ran toward an ambulance that had pulled up just down the street.
“I’m not human,” Mordred told Cass. “The people who did this are not human. I will find who is responsible, and I will bring them to justice.”
Cass stood, mouth open, and then cracked a slight smile. “You can heal these people.”
Mordred stared at Cass for a heartbeat, unsure if she was mocking him. Unsure if she was human, after all. He nodded anyway. Whether she was human or not, it didn’t matter at that moment. “Some, but not all. I’m not a damn angel, or anything else like one. My kind has been confused with gods and goddesses for long enough—we don’t need to add angels to the bloody mix.”
Mordred expected questions, or at least some disbelief, but instead all Cass said was “Can I help?”
Mordred wanted to find out if Cass was human, but now wasn’t the time. “Find those in desperate need of healing. I’ll see what I can do.”
For the next hour, Cass and Mordred went around the wounded, under the guise of Mordred being a doctor, and he helped heal a dozen people who would have otherwise died. Eventually, though, he’d used so much magic that exhaustion was beginning to set in, and he was unable to continue. He walked away from the scene, merging with the onlookers to duck down an alley.
“Just going to run off?” Cass said from behind him.
Mordred patted his pockets and removed Cass’s wallet. “Sorry, I forgot. This is yours.”
“What are you?”
“A sorcerer.”
“Are you really Mordred? Like the Mordred?”
Mordred nodded. “King Arthur and all that? Yep, that’s me.”
Cass took her wallet and stared at Mordred for several seconds. She opened her mouth, and Mordred thought she was going to say something, but instead she turned around and walked away, soon vanishing into the sea of people.
Probably for the best.
Mordred removed his mobile phone from his pocket and dialed a number.
“You’re in New York, aren’t you?” Olivia Green said the moment she answered. Pleasantries could be done some other time.
“I was in a coffee shop that blew up,” Mordred told her. “Now I’m about a half a mile away from that shop. He said ‘For My Liege’ before he killed himself.”
“Just the one attacker?”
“Two, I think. I assume the glyphs were meant to turn them into ash, but for some reason they didn’t quite do the job to the guy who attacked me.”
“The news is saying that thirty-six people are dead.”
“At least. This is the start, Olivia.”
“You need to come back to England, Mordred.”
“Not yet. There’s something I need to do first.”
“You’re a target, Mordred. Things have gotten worse since you left.”
“I’ve always been a target. You get used to it. Worse how?”
“It’s Elaine Garlot. She’s missing, has been for a few weeks now, from what I can tell.”
“Define ‘missing.’ She contacted me a month ago and told me to meet her here in New York today.”
“Have you heard from her since?”
“No, I didn’t expect to, though.”
“Avalon are saying she’s just taking some time to herself. But that’s bullshit. I know Elaine; she’s not the type. And she would return her calls. I need you to go find her.”
“Does Nate know?”
“Not yet. He’ll run off after her without a second thought.”
“Where was she last seen?”
“At her place in Scotland. We sent a team after her, and they vanished. Manannán mac Lir was a part of that team.”
“Mac? Damn it. I’ll be at Elaine’s tomorrow. I need a team, people you trust. We’ll find Elaine, Mac, and anyone else with her. And once we’re done, we’ll find out who this My Liege is and make him eat his own fucking hands.”