“He keeps us informed when some of the more violent criminals come his way. He’ll help some rich banker move his money around, but he’s not too keen on helping some assassin asshole hide a million dollars in blood money. He has his limits. Doesn’t mean I have to like him. And I certainly don’t trust him, but you squeeze him every now and again and he gives up something worth knowing.”
“Like who is the leader of this cabal, this My Liege character?” Diana asked.
Polina shook her head. “I doubt it. He’s not the kind of person I’d trust with that knowledge. If this werewolf pack is involved with any cabal, they’re not exactly on the inner circle, and Viktor isn’t the kind of man you’d want to bring into that circle.”
The two cars stopped a short time later outside of a large, white-bricked building with a long, curved driveway that led up to a set of steps, at the top of which was a wooden front door. On the side of the house sat a massive garage, which was easily big enough to keep four cars side by side. There were no trees on either side of the house, although Mordred spotted some at the rear of the property. Presumably Viktor wasn’t a fan of not being able to see who was walking up to his front door. The lights on the top floor were on, but other than that it was bathed in darkness.
“How many entrances and exits?” Mordred asked.
“Is he going to run?” Polina asked.
Mordred shrugged. “People tend to run when they see me. It’s something I’m used to.”
Polina stared at Mordred for a few seconds. “One back, one front. He could leap from the windows, but that’s not his style. He’ll wait to be grabbed. We’ve done this dance a few times. He never puts up any resistance.
“The building is two stories above, and two below. Vault in the bottom level. It’s all custom designed, and the first floor underground contains a safe room. This is his home, so there’s not a lot of collector stuff here—that’ll be in his workplace. Four bedrooms, although he lives alone, so don’t expect much in the way of other people. He has at least three different girlfriends that we can tell, all of whom like to stay over on occasion. Sometimes more than one at a time. The downstairs has a large kitchen, two reception rooms, and a lockable door to his office. I know that because I kicked it in the last time I was here and he refused to open it. It was empty. He likes to play games.”
“I’m just going to knock on the front door and see what happens,” Mordred said. “I’d rather not give him any excuse to not work with us. We need his help.”
“Why?” Polina asked. “What does he know that’s so important?”
“I have no idea,” Mordred said, opening the car door. “I’m hoping he can tell us that.” He stepped outside into the cold and walked over to the steps, bounding up them as quickly as possible before pushing the doorbell.
The rest of the group soon joined him as footsteps inside the house could be heard.
“Step to the side,” Nabu said to Mordred. “If he sees you first, he might run.”
“Then we chase him,” Mordred said, but he did as Nabu asked and moved aside so that when Viktor looked through the eyehole he saw only Diana and Nabu.
After unlocking it Viktor opened the door, beckoning everyone inside to the foyer of the house. Viktor was a tall, slim man, with a bald head. Several tattoos adorned his arms and hairy chest, and he wore purple silk pajama trousers with no shirt.
Viktor ran his hand over several days’ worth of stubble growth and sighed. “Mordred.”
There was an icy silence for a few seconds, and Mordred watched as several of his group tensed up, prepared for a fight.
Mordred stepped forward. “Viktor. It’s been a long time.”
“I always swore I would kill you when I saw you next.” Viktor looked down at where his arm had once been. It now ended just after the elbow. “I wear a state-of-the-art prosthesis now. It moves to the commands of my brain. An alchemist designed it. Very expensive, very unique. Much stronger than my old arm ever was. But even so, I wanted you dead.”
“If you want to try to kill me, I’m right here. Go ahead so we can get this over with.”
Viktor grinned and clasped a hand on Mordred’s shoulder. “I’m not going to try to kill you, Mordred. I’m going to go one better. I’m going to give you everything you ever needed, and then when you go off to find Elaine, the people who took her will kill you. They will torture you horribly for a long time, and when you finally die at their hand, I’ll know. And on that day I’m going to sleep like it’s the best day ever. I don’t need to kill you; I just need to point you in the direction of the people who will.”
“Point away, Viktor,” Mordred said, smiling the whole time. “I know I did awful things to you, and I’m sorry about that. I really am. But if you screw with us, and I survive—and I’m excellent when it comes to surviving, just so you know—I’m going to come back here, remove your other arm, and I’m going to beat you to death with it.”
CHAPTER 11
Mordred
Elaine told me you would turn up at some point,” Viktor said after everyone had calmed down.
He took the group into his office at the rear of the property, which, for a reason Mordred couldn’t quite grasp, had a bar in it. He poured himself a large glass of red wine and sat behind his desk, as if Viktor were in some sort of completely normal business meeting.
“What did she say?” Mordred asked.
“That you’d turn up and I was meant to help you. You have the USB drive, yes?”
Mordred removed it from his jacket pocket and placed the little blue and silver device on the desk.
“What’s on it?” Remy asked.
“Documents and software,” Viktor said with seemingly no interest in explaining further.
“Yeah, we’re gonna need more than that,” Morgan said. “I doubt very much that drive is full of Excel spreadsheets and the occasional PowerPoint presentation.”
“We’ll have to go into my safe room to access the drive. It’s the only place in the house with a secure server. I don’t trust a lot of people.”
“Me, neither,” Mordred said. “But on one hand, they only have to betray that trust once.”
Viktor paused before getting to his feet. “Your thinly veiled threats mean little to me, Mordred. You took my arm. You killed my friends, and you burned my home to the ground.”
“Don’t say there’s nothing I can do to you,” Mordred said. “It’s clichéd, and you live in a fucking mansion. There’s about a million things I can do to you, and half of them still allow you to remain in use of your other limbs. Look, I’m tired. It’s been a long day. Can we just get on with it?”
Viktor sighed and took the group down a set of stairs, where they stopped on a landing. There was another set of stairs, leading down into the level below, and a set of large metal doors. Viktor punched in a number on the keypad and scanned his hand before there was a hiss of air and the doors slowly opened.
“That is not what I expected from a safe room,” Remy said.
“It’s more of a safe flat,” Fiona said. “It’s huge.”
“It looks like a penthouse suite,” Nabu said.