“Nate, you okay?” Selene asked.
“I’ve seen the markings on that vase before,” I told her. “I saw them a long time ago. In London. Merlin had the Reavers collecting souls for him to feed to Arthur. They’re called soul jars. The markings on this one here are the same as on the jars I saw in London. They killed Asmodeus and placed his soul in a jar and drained him of his blood. That’s not a cell—it’s a tomb.”
No one spoke for several seconds until Leonardo broke the silence: “So, the elves killed Asmodeus. But you think he’s involved with what’s going on? That can’t possibly be right.”
“No, it can’t,” Selene said.
“Nate, soul jars are bad news,” Sky said. “You don’t think that someone out there has Asmodeus’s soul jar? Because if they fed that soul to someone, like Merlin was feeding souls to Arthur, how long do you think it would take for that person to be completely taken over by the evil in Asmodeus’s soul?”
“Not long,” Lucifer said.
“Did you find anything with blood, or soul jars while you were poking around in there?” I asked.
“No,” Leonardo said. “Just old drawings and pieces of paper. It’s amazing how it’s survived for so long with barely any degrading. Elven magic was impressive.”
“That means someone broke in and stole his body, but nothing else,” Lucifer said. “Why would someone want to steal Asmodeus’s body?”
“Was his soul jar in the cell?” I asked.
“We didn’t see it,” Leonardo said.
“Could they have taken him and the jar to try and bring him back?” Antonio suggested. “Is that even possible? He is a vampire.”
Lucifer didn’t look convinced. “I honestly have no idea. He surprised a lot of us with the range of his power, so I never counted anything out when it came to dealing with him.”
“Maybe Lee will have some of the answers we need,” I suggested.
“This is all very theoretical,” Harrison said. “You’re all just guessing that someone has used his soul. We don’t know that it’s been used.”
“That’s true,” Galahad said. “But what if Lee wasn’t turned into a vampire by Asmodeus, but found the soul jar and opened it? How much work does it take for a soul to be transferred into a person?”
“A lot,” Sky said. “The way Merlin used to do it required dwarven runes and a lot of magical power, but a soul as corrupt and evil as Asmodeus? It’s possible you wouldn’t need as much. Either way, you’d need to know the correct runes and glyphs and have magical ability. People can’t just bleed on them and suddenly you’ve absorbed one.”
“Okay, if this Lee is possessed by Asmodeus, just how powerful will he be?” Zamek asked. “I’m only asking because if you four go find Lee, and he is Asmodeus, or has part of that devil’s soul in him, then it’s going to take a lot more than the four of you to subdue him. I get that you’re all very powerful, but are you powerful enough to bring down someone who absorbed even part of a god?”
“Either way, we need to find Lee,” I said. “Whether he’s involved with Asmodeus or not, he still murdered people and said it was Hellequin. Maybe he knows who this fake Hellequin is.”
“I’ll join you,” Harrison said. “I’ll bring some of my men with me. A few dozen soldiers should even the odds a bit.”
“They can’t know what we’re going up against,” Lucifer said. “It’s one thing to go up against a powerful vampire, but to know you’re about to fight the king of the devils, that’s going to give people some pause. And we can’t have any. Not today.”
“Give us an hour,” Galahad said. “We’ll have to smuggle you out of the city to do this. Too many in the council would see you walking about as me putting our friendship before the safety of this realm. Hopefully, by the time you return, I’ll have convinced the council that you’re not here to set us up for your Avalon overlords’ invasion.”
“I have overlords now?”
“I never said it was a rational problem,” Galahad said. “Just one that is yelled at high volume.”
“I forgot to ask. Caitlin, is your mum still a guest of the prison?”
“Oh yes, she’s still a joy unto all who meet her,” Caitlin said. “Why, you think she’s involved?”
“She has ties to people who have ties to whatever is behind all of this. I don’t think she’ll directly know anything because she’s, well, she’s nuts—no offense.”
“None taken. She’s a big box of frogs in the crazy department. But I’ll go see her. You never know; it might be worthwhile. And at the very least she can call me a long list of names and threaten to hurt people I care about. You know, normal mother-daughter bonding.”
“Your mother sounds evil,” Selene said.
“She is. But it’s the stupid kind of evil, not the try-and-take-over-the-world kind. She’s a werewolf who is never leaving her prison cell. She murdered my stepfather in front of me, tried to murder my real father, and butchered her way across this realm and the Earth realm. She’s a monster.”
“You want company?” Sky asked. “I like pissing off evil people. Since meeting Nate it’s sort of become my hobby.”
“See, I bring people together,” I said with a smile.
“To annoy people,” Galahad said. “And trust me, he’s been doing that for a long time.”
We all got up to leave, except for Lucifer, who sat on the floor beside the dais. “I’ll catch you up,” I said to everyone. “I assume there’s a way out of this place?”
“We closed it up after we found all of this,” Leonardo said. “But I’ll wait with Antonio for you outside.”
“You will?” Antonio asked. “I was going to go home and sleep.”
“You can sleep when you’re dead,” Leonardo said.
“Which, working with you, will be a lot quicker than I would doing something less dangerous.”
“The only thing dangerous about working with me is that you run your mouth,” Leonardo said with a grin as the two of them walked away.
“I’d hoped to see him again,” Lucifer said. “I wanted to ask him why. I wanted to see if he’d changed. I wanted to see if he’d become the force for good he could have been if he wasn’t so interested in making everyone bow to him. When he was first made, we were just children and he was kind and sweet. He helped people; he felt sadness and empathy for those who were weaker than him. Or maybe he didn’t and it was all a game? I really don’t know anymore.