“And you are?” a woman asked as she entered the room through one of the two doors to the right of where I’d been standing.
She was of average height, with brown skin and long brown plaited hair that touched her waist. She wore dark leather armor, part of which had been cut through, revealing a deep wound that had bled profusely. She carried a gleaming gladius in one hand and Rhea’s head in the other. Blood dropped slowly onto the ground beside her. She placed Rhea’s head on the floor by her foot and removed a small metal bracelet from her wrist that resembled the one Helios had worn, tossing it over her shoulder back into the room she’d just left.
“And you are?” she asked again, this time with a smirk.
“Ladies first?”
“Abaddon. Although I’ve had many names over the millennia.”
I went to use my magic, and nothing happened.
Abaddon laughed. “Do you plan on telling me your name? I like to know the names of people I make scream and beg.” She kicked Rhea’s head aside with a laugh. “I always wanted to do that.”
“What was the bracelet?” I asked. “The one you threw in the room?”
“Am I meant to tell you everything? You probably wouldn’t understand even if I did. These two idiots certainly didn’t, not until it was too late.”
“You put dwarven runes in the villa? Or at least in this room. It’s good. I didn’t even feel the magic go away,” I said as I backed up toward the row of windows overlooking the huge garden behind me.
I searched around me, trying not to take my gaze off Abaddon for too long. She must have had a tattoo that allowed her to bypass the dwarven runes and use her power. I just needed to figure out what word they’d used for the rune so I could counteract it. Hopefully counteract it. It was that or die horribly, and I’ve never really been one for the latter.
“It helps that I was there when they made them,” Abaddon said. “You’re an interesting one. On the one hand, you’re clearly no one important because I’d have remembered you.”
“Well, you’ve probably been away for a long time. Things have changed since the seven devils roamed the realms.”
Abaddon laughed. “It’s good you know that you are outclassed.”
“Not sure about that. I got rid of one of your spirit snares.”
Abaddon appeared to be impressed. “That doesn’t mean you’re going to live through the day.”
I reached the windows and stopped and spotted the dwarven rune carved into the back of a nearby table. It was only about the size of a pound coin, but it glowed black. The amount of power that had been infused with the rune must have been immense.
Abaddon followed my gaze. “Do you really think you can counter the rune?”
I ran my finger through the blood on my clothes and drew a mark on my hand. Lightning crackled between my fingers. “Yeah, I think I can.”
Abaddon’s eyes widened in shock, but before I could throw magic at her, I heard the smash of glass and turned as Atlas grabbed hold of me, dragging me out of the house and throwing me across the garden as if I were a tennis ball. I wrapped myself in a shield of air to make sure I didn’t die when I impacted with a stone hut thirty feet away.
“Nathan Garrett, you are mine,” Atlas bellowed.
“Now is a really bad time!” I shouted back, standing up in the ruins of the shattered hut.
Abaddon rushed out of the house. “Stop it, you idiot,” she snapped at Atlas. “Now isn’t the time.”
“I was told that Nathan was mine to kill,” Atlas said. “And only mine.”
Abaddon ignored his words and took a step toward me. “So, you’re Nathan Garrett. I’ve heard a lot about you. I figured you’d be more fearsome, but you don’t look like anything particularly special. Your use of lightning has made me curious, though. Was your father Zeus, by any chance?”
I shrugged. “No idea.”
She placed a hand on Atlas’s chest. “Now is not the time.” She turned back to me as the clouds above us began to turn dark and thunder rumbled.
“I thought you’d like to see my lightning close up,” I told her.
“Maybe later.” Abaddon removed another bracelet from a pouch on her waist and placed it on her wrist. She removed another and passed it to Atlas, who put it on. Both tapped their bracelets and vanished. I turned toward a dozen blood elves who had heard the commotion and come to see what was happening, and called down the lightning. I pushed it through my body, mixing it with my magic, before throwing it out of my extended hand, which got badly burned as it went. The twelve elves vanished in a plume of gore as the magical lightning struck them, leaving a large crater in its wake.
I cradled my arm against my chest and hoped I had enough power left to heal it before we had to leave the realm. I walked back to the villa and stepped inside. Rhea and Cronus were dead, killed in their own home in a realm designed to keep them safe from harm. I picked up Rhea’s head and took it back through the door Abaddon had used into a bedroom that had been the scene of a huge battle. Pieces of plaster and destroyed furniture littered the expansive room. The rest of Rhea’s remains lay on the floor at the foot of the bed, where the final blow had been delivered. I placed the head next to the body and dropped a sheet over them before washing my hands in the en suite bathroom sink.
As I was leaving the bathroom, I saw writing on the back of the bedroom door I hadn’t noticed before. I closed the door, and the feeling of dread intensified. Written in what I could only assume was Rhea’s blood were the words For Hellequin.
CHAPTER 13
Nate Garrett
I considered removing the writing, but that wouldn’t be good if someone discovered what I’d done. People would become suspicious, so I left it where it was and went to help with any blood elf or Hole prisoners who remained defiant and just wouldn’t die.
It turned out I didn’t need to worry: the fighting had already finished by the time I left the villa. Cerberus and a platoon of his people were mopping up the last of them. “Leave one alive,” I said to the nearest soldier, who was about to kill a kneeling elf.
He looked at me as if I had lost my mind, but nodded and punched the elf in the face instead. To be fair, punching prisoners who want to eat your face isn’t very upsetting. It’s a bit like punching Nazis. I can’t bring myself to be bothered about it. They’re just inherently punchable.
I continued on and found Selene, Sky, and Zamek talking to Cerberus and Hyperion.
“They’re dead, aren’t they?” Hyperion asked.
I nodded. “I’m sorry. Abaddon was here. She had some help from Atlas.”
“Son of a bitch,” Sky said.
“I knew Atlas was unstable, but I didn’t think he’d help murder his own people,” Hyperion said.
“They vanished. I don’t know how. Oh, and someone wrote For Hellequin in blood on Cronus and Rhea’s bedroom door.”
“They’re really doubling down on the ‘Hellequin is responsible for all of this,’” Selene said. “You okay?”