Fiona moved, and in an instant a blade was pressed against Viktor’s throat. “Did you send her in there?”
His eyes widened as a thin line of blood began to trickle down toward his neck. “I just told you I didn’t. They’re fucking animals in there. I hate Avalon—they abandoned me—but Elaine had promised me everything I ever wanted. I’d never jeopardize that just to get petty revenge.”
Fiona removed the knife and stepped back. “I’m going upstairs for a drink.”
“I’ll come with you,” Morgan said.
“Why don’t the rest of you go get a drink, too?” Mordred asked. “I’d like to have a little chat with Viktor.”
“Don’t kill him,” Nabu said.
“Wasn’t planning on it,” Mordred told him.
That appeared to be enough for Nabu, who left with the others.
“So, you’re having a shit day,” Mordred said, taking a seat on a nearby dark-brown leather chair. “I’m in your home, your only way out of all of this is in the den of a group of psychopaths, and you’re coming with us to help find Elaine.”
“The hell I am!” Viktor shouted. “If they find out I was working with Elaine, I’d need to be moved tonight. “
“Viktor, you’re coming with us. That’s not open to negotiation. You don’t have to step foot in the club until it’s safe, but you are coming. Because I don’t trust you not to.”
“Trust? You want to talk about trust?” Viktor laughed, a cruel, unpleasant sound. “What’s your angle here?”
“My angle?”
“Yeah, you know what I mean. You hate Avalon; you hate the people who work for it. You’ve spent the better part of your life trying to kill everyone and anyone who works there. So, what are you doing here? You expect me to believe that you’ve turned over a new leaf and now you’re friends with Avalon? I call bullshit on that. So, what’s your angle? What are you really after? Are you using those upstairs to get close to Merlin, or is it Arthur? Are you after the big man himself? You want to finish the job after you missed last time?”
“Wow, you just keep talking, don’t you?” Mordred yawned. “Sorry, you’re one boring man. My angle is nothing. I’m helping people I care about. I’ve had a . . . I guess you could call it a change of perspective on those I used to call my enemies. I’m not here to kill Merlin, or Arthur, or anyone else except for those involved with Elaine’s kidnapping. I’m also not here to be friends with you. You know why I took your arm, you know why I burned your house down, and you know why I killed your friend. You know exactly what you used to be, and I’m not entirely sure that Avalon would be as forgiving about your past exploits as I currently need to be. Honestly, it if were up to me, I’d tell Diana and Fiona and watch them turn you into a man-sized pi?ata. But we need you in one piece.”
“And don’t you forget it,” he snapped. “I’m your shot at finding Elaine. Remember that. She trusted me.”
“No, she didn’t. She needed you—that’s not the same thing.” Mordred watched Viktor for several seconds until the Russian got to his feet and exited the safe room, leaving the computer running so that Mordred could watch the percentage of encryption that had been broken.
“Did you know I was here?” Fiona asked from the other side of the room.
“No,” Mordred said, trying not to show his surprise at her suddenly appearing from nowhere.
“I can make fairly powerful illusions.”
“You left and came back, I assume.”
Fiona nodded. “Needed to check you were on the level with us.”
“You happy now?”
Fiona shook her head. “What are you keeping from us about Viktor?”
“Let me ask you a question, Fiona,” Mordred said, getting to his feet and stretching his arms above his head. “Will it ever be enough? If I tell you everything, if I prove to you time and time again that I’m not the man I used to be, will it ever be enough?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, at least you’re honest. Viktor was a very bad man, who did very bad things. I was an amoral psychopath who wanted to butcher his way through Avalon, but I had my limits, I guess. Here’s the thing, though: if I tell you, you’re going to want to kill him. And doing that is certainly going to put this mission in jeopardy.”
“You should still tell us,” Diana said from the entrance to the safe room.
“She makes a point,” Remy said from beside her. “We wondered where Fiona had walked off to. Wanted to make sure she wasn’t trying to kill you. Which is a sentence I probably should never really have to say about an ally.”
“Hey, any reason why Viktor was muttering about trust and then ran off out of the front door?” Morgan asked as she joined Remy and Diana at the front of the safe room. She looked around at everyone as they stared at Mordred. “This a standoff or something?”
“Fucking hell,” Mordred whispered. “Where’s Nabu?”
“Here,” he said with a half-eaten sandwich in one hand and a bottle of beer in another. “I was just about to eat something, and everyone vanished.”
Mordred walked over to the computer and moved the mouse to check that what he was seeing wasn’t a screen saver. “Well, he hasn’t fucked us over and run. He’s just run.”
“Who is he?” Fiona asked.
“Elaine trusted Viktor,” Morgan said. “Maybe we should, too.”
Mordred shook his head. “Elaine promised him she’d keep him safe if he helped her. She used him to run intel; she used him to keep an eye on people. He has a strange moral compass, but I genuinely believe he thinks Elaine was going to stand by him.”
“Who. Is. Viktor?” Fiona asked without even trying to hide the anger she felt.
“Viktor was the leader of a small group of people. They lived in a small hamlet in the middle of nowhere, where Avalon personnel could go and rest and get information about new activities in the country. It was a clearinghouse where all of the information from Avalon’s agencies went so it could be given out to their agents. There are a thousand of these small villages in the middle of fucking nowhere all over the world.
“Viktor used to take that information, which back when I last saw him was via physical mail, or astral projection, or telepathy—you know, the usual. Well, he took that information, and he sold it to the highest bidder, exposing Avalon agents, who they were working for, where they were, and who they answered to. I didn’t really give a shit about this when I first found out, because I didn’t give a shit about much, but two things changed my mind.
“Firstly, he sold information about me to someone who wanted me dead. Didn’t work out so well, and I was mad about it, but I figured I’d get around to dealing with Viktor sooner or later. The second thing he did was sell information about me to Hera. At the time, I’d been hurt in a fight and was being healed by a young doctor in Finland. He’d just married his wife, and they had two children. They were kind to me when they had no reason to be and believed me when I told them that several Russian soldiers had shot me as I tried to stop them from killing a young boy who stole food.”