“Do your worst, Mordred.”
The fact that his magic was useless against the walls and doors suggested that the runes had been placed inside them, which, without knowing exactly where they were, and what rune was used, meant that it would have been impossible to use the correct dwarven rune to counteract whatever Daria and her people had placed there. But Nate had spent some time teaching Mordred some of the more rudimentary original dwarven runes. Specifically one to increase the power of whatever runes were close to it. It was a rune that absorbed magical energy, but pouring too much in caused both the original runes and any rune close to it to explode.
Mordred used the blood on his hands to power his own magic before using the blood to draw the rune on the door. Once done, he poured more and more into the rune he’d drawn until it flashed and exploded. Mordred wrapped himself in a dense shield of air, stopping the explosion as the entire wall and door separating him from the next room vanished. The shock wave picked Mordred off the ground and flung him back over the chair in the center of the room.
“What have you done?” Daria screamed.
The dust settled, and Mordred saw that several rooms beyond were now missing large parts of their walls. He got to his feet and cracked his knuckles, removing the shield and considering using his water magic to wash his hands but deciding against it.
“Daria, I see a metal door in there. Is that an exit from this place?”
“You’ve destroyed it all!” she continued to shriek.
“Daria, can you hear me?”
“Fuck you, Mordred. I’m going to rend the flesh from your bones.”
Mordred smiled. “Excellent, it’ll save me the bother of having to search for you.”
CHAPTER 17
Mordred
Mordred kicked the door in and discovered that it led to a long corridor with a set of lift doors at one end, and a door to another stairwell halfway down. He descended the stairs and went through the door at the bottom, into another hallway—although one with black tiles and dark-red walls. It had only two doors along it, so Mordred opened the first, which led into another staircase, presumably one that went around the giant maze above. He wondered if he had time to go back to the club level and kill the werewolf for making him go through the maze but decided it could wait. Someone else needed to feel his ire first.
He opened the second door and stepped into a massive open room with several couches, and a pool table in the center. A TV larger than any Mordred had seen before hung on the far wall, and there were dozens of beanbag chairs dotted around, along with an even greater number of beer bottles. There were more doors along the wall opposite him, and adjacent to where he stood an open door showed a large kitchen.
A werewolf already in his beast form left the kitchen and growled.
“You all live down here, I guess,” Mordred said. “I assume those doors lead to bedrooms and bathrooms, that kind of thing. It strikes me more as a club for parties than anything else.”
The werewolf pounced but didn’t make it half the distance before a whip of air struck it in the chest, wrapping itself around the werewolf’s torso, crushing it. Mordred removed the air, walked over to him, and punched a blade of ice through the werewolf’s throat, expanding the blade until he’d decapitated it.
Mordred checked the kitchen but, apart from a particularly vicious-looking potato peeler on the counter, found nothing of note. He tried the door closest to him, which led to another large room, although this one appeared to hold only bookshelves, computers, and large piles of cash. The next door along led to another hallway, while the third and fourth just opened to rooms full of pillows and beds.
“Because every werewolf pack needs a good orgy room,” Daria said over the loudspeaker.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, are you still there?” Mordred asked, exasperated from having to put up with the disembodied voice.
“I want you to know that there’s a gift coming for you. I hope you enjoy it. I know I will.”
Mordred waited in the middle of the room for whatever was about to appear but after ten seconds wondered if there was anything, or if Daria was just trying to get inside his head. A few seconds later the door to the hallway opened. A young woman walked into the room. She wore leather armor with what appeared to be runes drawn on it. She was close to Mordred’s height, with short gray hair. She carried a pair of daggers that she tapped almost absentmindedly against one another.
“Hello, Mordred,” Daria said. “Surprise.”
“So, I assume you’re the boss fight?”
Daria nodded. “That’s one way of putting it. If we’d met under other circumstances, I might feel bad about what I’m going to do to you.”
“If we’d met under other circumstances, I’d have killed you already. Whereabouts in Siberia are Elaine and the rest of her people?”
“You mean those who came looking for her, or the ones she was with when we took her? The ones who were with Elaine when we took her died here. Those who came looking for her—we sent them to Siberia. Do you know how we grabbed her?”
“Viktor told you, I assume.”
Daria smiled. “Not Elaine. Those I worked with grabbed her. They brought them all here for safekeeping, until they were ready to take Elaine to Siberia. But the people who came looking for her. Well, that’s a different story, isn’t it? Turns out that money can buy allegiance. At least where Viktor is concerned. And we were so worried that he was working with Elaine.”
“Elaine was looking for the people who were working with this cabal against her and Avalon. I assume you know who those people are.”
“I know a little. Elaine thought she was so smart. Her investigation wasn’t as covert as she’d like to believe. She didn’t feel so smart when we started killing her people.”
“You weren’t so smart for keeping them alive. Gareth, the one you killed earlier, had a tracker on him. You unknowingly set yourselves up for me to find. And now you’re going to tell me exactly where Elaine is, and then you’re going to die.”
“So, what’s my incentive to tell you anything?”
“If you tell me what I want to know, you won’t die screaming.”
Daria’s expression darkened. She tapped the daggers again and charged Mordred, who threw a gale of wind at her, trying to knock her back. The magic had no effect, and Daria slashed at Mordred, who was forced to dart back away from the blades.
“Rune-scribed armor. Your magic has no effect on me,” Daria said, sounding as smug as possible.
“But you can’t transform, either, so I guess we’re both at a disadvantage.”
Daria grinned and raised her hand, showing it turning into a werewolf hand with elongated fingers and bladelike nails.