Hyperion turned the bracelet over in his hands. “It’s just a copper bracelet. Nothing interesting. Not even a clasp. It looks like it’s based on some old Roman design, maybe Greek.” He looked up at me. “That’s probably not important, though. I’m sort of grasping for straws.”
“Abaddon threw it back into the room, and she put on another bracelet like this one before she vanished with Atlas.” I remembered Zamek’s words. “The runes vanish after being used.”
“So, Abaddon has someone making these?”
“Yeah, but they probably take time to make—it’s not a quick thing. I don’t think they’ll be bouncing around the realms or anything, but it depends on how long they’ve been stocking them. And how quickly they can be made. Both Abaddon and Atlas had to touch their bracelet to activate it. And if they’d been able to take more than just themselves, Abaddon wouldn’t have needed to bring Atlas his own bracelet.”
“We found bracelets on the other bodies. Only plain ones like that, though. So, everyone was given their own bracelet, but only one because they weren’t meant to go back.”
“That’s what Lucifer and Zamek are confirming, but I don’t think anyone who was left here was meant to survive the trip, though. They’d have had a return-home bracelet if they were.”
“The attackers appeared from just outside of town.”
“Where?”
“To the north, about a mile from here, closer to where Cronus dug his escape route the last time you were here. It’s a massive field, big enough to house thousands of people. Hundreds of thousands. It’s good that they didn’t bring enough people to fit there.”
“The tunnel was flooded and destroyed, though, yes?”
Hyperion nodded.
“I need to go back to the Earth realm. Hopefully we can figure out where Abaddon is by tracking the carnage she’s liable to have caused. Can you search the area and report anything you find?”
“I’ll get word to Hades or Sky if we discover anything, but I’ve never heard of so many people being transported through realms without a realm gate. If those bracelets are responsible, they could come back or go anywhere at any time.”
“I never thought one of the seven devils was a friend of mine, or that I’d discover what happened to the dwarves. Life seems to be full of surprises these days. Besides, if they can jump from realm to realm as they wish, why aren’t there a lot more blood elves, and where’s Baldr?” I moved toward the nearby doorway.
“Nate,” Hyperion called after me, making me pause and turn back. “Kill them. All of them. I don’t care how, I don’t care what you have to do to achieve it, but they all need to die for what they’ve done.”
I left the room without a word and found Zamek running through the villa toward me. “Came to find you,” he said. “The griffins said that we need to go back through the realm gate. Apparently it got worse while we were in here.”
“Of course it did,” I said, and passed him the bracelet. “This is how Abaddon got in here. I think you were right. The runes allowing her to travel through realms vanished after it was used.”
Zamek turned it over in his hands, removing an identical one from his pocket and showing it to me. “Lucifer and I heard that these people had come from outside of town, so we went to take a look. There’s a huge field there, and lots of these discarded across it. They’ve been made hastily. It’s not exactly high craftsmanship. Monsters.”
“Zamek, I’m not sure if this is the right time to be correcting their craftsmanship.”
“Oh, right, force of habit. I think these were definitely used to bring the attackers here. You’d still need someone to get the words and runes right, though.”
“Which means they got someone to learn how to do this from scratch.”
“Which, considering how difficult it is, is not what I’d go with.”
“Or they broke Mara out of prison, and Selene’s earlier thoughts about her involvement are right.”
“That’s the easier of the two options.”
“And it gives us another problem to deal with.”
We both left the villa and jogged down the steps to several waiting griffins, Selene, Sky, Cerberus, and Lucifer. “So, how are we going to do this?” I asked, and then recognized Lorin, the griffin who had been guarding the realm gate when I’d last been to Tartarus. “Lorin, good to see you.”
Lorin bowed his head slightly, the white feathers on his neck ruffling, which he quickly smoothed down with one taloned hand. “You, too, Nate. I wish we didn’t always meet after something awful happened.”
“When this is done, I’ll come back and you can show me your realm without fear of some impending war.”
Lorin laughed. It’s a weird sound when a griffin does it. “That would be pleasant. As to your question, we’re going to fly you over. It’s quicker than a boat.”
“You can do that?” I asked. “I always assumed you weren’t able to.”
“We can. We just don’t like to. It’s exhausting to carry someone that length, but on this occasion, we’ll make an exception.”
“And Charon?”
“Recovering. Angry. Belligerent. Not necessarily in that order.”
The journey took less than half the time it would have by boat, but I spent most of it with hands firmly grasped around Lorin’s legs. Being picked up by huge talons that could crush me or slice me into much smaller pieces and then flying high above water that could also put me close to death wasn’t an experience I was comfortable with. When we finally touched down, I had an overwhelming urge to kiss the ground and tell it I was never leaving it again, but everyone else appeared to be okay, so I didn’t want to make a scene.
“Best of luck in your hunt,” Lorin said.
“Take care,” I told him, and joined the others walking through the realm gate.
“I did not enjoy that,” Zamek told me once we stepped back into the realm-gate room inside the Wolf’s Head compound. “Dwarves were not made for flying in such a manner. I’m going to take a seat for a minute.”
I pointed him toward one of the guards, who helped him walk to a seat. When Zamek didn’t refuse help to walk, I knew he wasn’t feeling good.
“Nate,” Sky called. She’d been talking to one of the guards inside the control room.
“Zamek isn’t feeling great,” I explained. “What happened while we were gone?”
“You’re going to need to come with us to the office next door,” the female guard said.
We did as we were asked, and I requested that the guard tell Zamek where we were once she’d left us alone with a TV.
“It’s the guy calling himself Hellequin again, isn’t it?” I asked.
Sky nodded. “Apparently so.” She switched on the TV. “This was thirty-seven minutes ago and appeared on every TV channel operating worldwide. Whoever these people are, they have some serious backing to do that.”