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Chapter Twenty-Eight

NATE GARRETT

Realm of Atlantis

I had never been angrier. Arthur had helped murder my friends, my dad, people I cared about, people I loved. He’d taken Mordred’s eye, turned Tommy into a walking homicidal monster, left Judgement for dead on the floor, along with a seriously injured Lucifer, and hurt my mum. I was going to fuck. Him. Up.

I sprinted across the throne room, jumped over the ruined throne, and blasted Arthur in the chest with enough lightning to kill an elephant. Arthur, smoke rising off his body, dropped to one knee but was back on his feet just in time for me to grab him by the face and smash the back of his head into the wall behind him.

I created a sphere of lightning in my free hand and drove it into his chest; the resulting explosion of power took him through the wall into the room beyond. I stepped over the ruined wall to continue the assault. I wanted to check that everyone was okay, but if I gave Arthur even a second to recover, we were all in trouble.

Arthur had rolled along the ground and got back to his feet as I poured more lightning into him. A shield of blood magic wrapped itself around him as I noticed that we appeared to be in a bedroom. The remains of the huge four-poster bed were littered all across the floor, and feathers floated around the room.

Arthur pulled himself up out of the remains of the bed and launched himself at me. Shadows leaped out of the ground, smashed into his chest, and threw him aside, and he collided with the window at the far end of the room, the glass spiderwebbing from the impact.

I crossed the room and drove a blade of fire down at where Arthur’s head was, but snakes of blood magic shot up at me, wrapping around my arms and causing me to yell out in pain as I tried to pull away. I felt the magic move up my arms, the agony almost all I could think of. I ignited my fire magic, spreading it up over my hands and arms, covering my upper body and forcing the blood magic to leave.

I pulled away the second I could, putting distance between myself and Arthur as he got to his feet. “Did you think it would be easy?” he asked.

I tried to get back to my feet, but branches had covered my legs, pinning me in place. I tried to burn them away but couldn’t both remove them and defend myself from a kick from Arthur that would have probably knocked me out without a shield of fire protecting me.

The branches snapped from the heat, and I grabbed Arthur’s foot as he tried a second kick, wrapping my arms around his leg and lifting him up and over my head, then dumping him on the ground behind me with a crunch.

I was punched in the head before I could move further, then kicked in the chest with enough force to cause me to fly back across the room into the one remaining wooden bedpost, which exploded. The pieces appeared to move apart before they slammed back into me at high speed, causing the air to leave my body. I fell to the ground and saw Demeter walk into the room.

She wore red-and-green leather armor and was barefoot, her long hair flowing freely over her shoulders as she moved her hands. The wood from the broken bed launched at me while magical vines wrapped around my neck.

“Nate,” Demeter said, in the same tone one would use to call someone a shitbag, twisting the vines around my throat further.

Fire ignited over my hands, and I grabbed hold of the vines, incinerated them, and dropped to the floor. A moment too late I noticed that Arthur had gone, and I was hit in the side by a blast of air magic that threw me across the room. Arthur was on me in an instant, throwing punch after punch at me that I couldn’t block or deflect, driving me down into the floor. He stomped on my chest, and I felt something give.

“Damn you,” Arthur shouted at me, kicking me in the ribs. “You are a continuous thorn in my side. But at least I’ll get to kill you and Lucifer now.”

He looked over at Demeter, who passed him something while I placed my hand under his armored trouser leg and unleashed a bolt of lightning directly into his skin.

Arthur screamed in pain but kept his mind enough to stomp on my head, breaking my nose in the process.

More vines covered my body, and I felt them tightening as Demeter reached down and grabbed my arm, keeping it out of the vines. I used my blood magic to start healing my chest and nose, but it stopped almost as soon as it started, and I looked up at Arthur, who pointed to the sorcerer’s band on my wrist.

Arthur picked me up by my throat and held me against the wall, my feet dangling above the floor. “This is a special band I had made just for you,” he said with a smile. “Of all the bands in the world, this one is unique. No key. I’m going to make you watch as I kill everyone you care about. You were made to kill me, Nate, to hurt me. But still, I was benevolent. I gave you the chance to stand beside me, and you spat in my face.”

I spat in his face in response.

He punched me in the stomach, and I gasped in pain, unable to breathe properly.

“You sicken me,” Arthur said. “So because you were always that great hope, you’re going to get to watch as everyone and everything else burns. Only then will I kill you—only when you’ve realized that I am better than you.” He dropped me to the floor.

Demeter kicked me in the ribs. “That was because you always were a little shit,” she said.

Demeter passed Arthur his spear and a second band, and he put the latter on his wrist while she put one on hers.

“You want to know what those buildings were?” Arthur asked. “They were the destruction of Shadow Falls. Have fun watching it die.”

Arthur and Demeter placed their hands over their bracelets, and the two vanished; the bracelets clattered to the floor a second later.

I picked one up. It was almost identical in appearance to a batch of similarly used bracelets that Chloe’s mum had been making for Merlin several years earlier. These were better quality, and Chloe’s mum was very dead at this point, so it couldn’t be her. But it could be any human who knew dwarven runes.

I pocketed the two bracelets and staggered to the hole in the wall just as the building moved. It was like an earthquake that never ended, and after several seconds I’d made it to the destroyed throne and found my mum and Judgement, both seriously hurt but healing, and a critically wounded Lucifer, who looked pale and needed urgent attention.

“Okay, let’s get out of here,” I said. “No magic for me, so try not to get me to do anything stupid.”

“Define stupid,” Lucifer said as I helped him up, blood drenching his torso, his arm draped over my shoulder.

The four of us made it out of the throne room as the building began to make the noise of metal being twisted.

“Stairwell—now,” Judgement said.

She helped me carry Lucifer down the corridor as an almighty crash from above became a constant stream of noise; the roof above us was caving in. We’d only just reached the stairwell door when the entire ceiling collapsed, and the stairwell began to fold in on itself.

Judgement and my mum shoved me and Lucifer to the ground and dived on top of us, keeping shields of necromancy and magical light above us as the entire citadel caved in.

All the air rushed from my body as we free-fell for an untold number of feet while the shield around us stopped the worst of the debris from smashing into us and more than likely killing us.

Lucifer wrapped his arms around me and held me close, twisting us both in the air so I was on top when we smashed into the ground at high speed. The breath was taken from my body in one rush of pain. The shield of light took a lot of the impact, but the onslaught of rubble eventually caused it to collapse, while Brynhildr’s shield of necromantic power forced her to her knees as she strained to keep us from being crushed.

The sounds of the citadel’s destruction rang in my ears, and I blinked, noticing that Lucifer had wrapped me in magical power to ensure that I wasn’t killed in the fall.

I rolled off Lucifer and lay there beside him, my breathing shallow, despite all the help I’d been given to survive. I eventually rolled onto my side and saw the blood pooling under Lucifer’s head.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Skull fracture,” Lucifer said. “I think. Don’t have enough power to heal at the moment; the spear hurt like all hell.”

“He got hit in the chest,” my mum said, exhausted. She’d managed, with Judgement’s help, to push aside the majority of the rubble above us. “It’s lucky we weren’t further down the citadel, or we’d all most likely be turned into goo.”

My mum knelt beside Lucifer and examined his wounds. She looked at me and shook her head.

“I’m dying, right?” he asked.

“I think you took more of an impact than is survivable,” my mum said. “Arthur’s spear may have pierced your heart.”

“It’s Arthur’s blood magic,” Lucifer said. “It infested my heart. I can feel it making its way around my body, killing pretty much everything. The silver in the spear means my magic isn’t as powerful as it should be.”

“Arthur compromised Lucifer’s immune system, and then Arthur poured his own blood into him,” Judgement said. “I doubt even Mordred could heal him.”

I shook my head. “No, you can’t die here, Lucifer.”

“I can die somewhere out there if you’d like to carry me out,” Lucifer said with a smile. “But I am dying. I’m sorry.”

My mum and I hoisted Lucifer up, and with Judgement’s help, despite her being seriously wounded, too, we all managed to drag him up onto the pile of rubble that had once been the citadel.

I was about halfway up when my legs went, and I found myself unable to move further.

“Nate?” my mum asked, sitting beside me.

I raised my wrist. “This damn thing. I can’t use my magic.”

“There’s no lock,” Judgement said. “I’ve never seen a sorcerer’s band without a lock.”

I removed one of the other bands that Demeter and Arthur had been wearing and passed it to Judgement as Lucifer was placed beside me.

“This is a realm gate band,” Judgement said. “I didn’t think these existed.”

“I’ve seen them before,” I said.

When used, the realm gate bands were left behind, so at least we had a clue as to where they might have gone.

I was wheezing and coughing, and it hurt.

“Son?” Brynhildr said.

“Arthur broke my ribs, sternum, nose, probably something else,” I said. “I was midheal when he slapped this thing on me. I think the adrenaline has worn off, and with our magical free fall now over, I think my body is starting to protest.”

The wheezing was getting worse, and I coughed dark blood onto the ground.

“You’ve got some internal injuries,” Lucifer said from beside me. “I can sense them in you.”

“You can sense them?” I asked.

“I might be a doctor now,” Lucifer said, “but I’m still a sorcerer. My matter magic means I can see injuries. It took me a long time to learn, but it’s come in handy.”

“You could have mentioned it earlier,” I said with a half-baked chuckle.

“People find it weird when I can literally see into their heart,” Lucifer said. He’d become pale and looked weaker than I’d ever seen him.

“I’m going to go see if I can get help,” Judgement said. She looked back at Lucifer. “You saved my life. Thank you for that.”

Lucifer forced a smile. “Couldn’t let you get yourself killed before Arthur was dead. Didn’t expect this, though.”

Judgement nodded slowly but didn’t say anything, and instead she turned and started to climb out.

“I’m okay here,” I told my mum. “She’s hurt; go check she doesn’t do anything stupider than what we just did.”

My mum opened her mouth to argue and nodded instead, climbing up after Judgement.

“After all this time, he finally killed me,” Lucifer told me. “Honestly, it’s a miracle that I’m still alive at all.”

“You don’t sound sad.”

“I’m not,” he said. “I’m about ten thousand years old, I think. I’ve seen everything you can imagine and things you probably can’t. I wish I could see how this plays out, but I can’t. Make sure you win. Anything else would be bad for everyone.”

I raised the bracelet. “I need to get this off before I can do anything.”

“Just rip it off,” he said.

“And be incinerated?” I asked.

“You know, I’ve never known anyone to actually try,” Lucifer said.

“You think it’s bogus?” I started coughing again, the wheezing causing me to try to control my breathing. It hurt.

Lucifer shook his head. “No. I think the runes there do act like magical napalm. I just wonder if it’s powerful enough to kill you. There has to be a second’s delay before it ignites. If you can use your magic in that second.”

“That’s a big if,” I said.

“Last-ditch plan,” Lucifer said. “Please don’t try it otherwise. I don’t want to die for nothing.”

“Look, stop saying that,” I said and felt like my chest was about to burst into flames.

Lucifer placed his hand on mine. “Nate, I wish I could do more.” He removed a knife from his belt and passed it to me. “A gift.”

I took it and looked at the intricate carvings that appeared to flow from the handle to the blade itself, which was at least partly silver. Lucifer took hold of the blade and snapped his hand up across it in one motion, the blood dripping onto my own hand.

I tried to open my mouth to stop him, but Lucifer clamped his hands around mine in a show of strength I hadn’t even known he had. I let out a cry as his power flowed through my body, healing my injuries. I felt my ribs popping back into place, the fluid leaving my lungs, my sternum finishing the job of fixing itself. Every bit of it hurt. Blood magic gave no shits when it came to your own pain.

When it was done, I lay there on the cold black stone of what had once been the citadel, and I tried to remember how to talk. The memory of the pain that had racked my body was fading but still felt like it could come back at any moment.

“It’s a shame you can’t heal yourself with that,” I said, sitting up.

Lucifer’s eyes were closed.

“Lucifer?” I said, already aware of what had happened. “Goddamn it,” I whispered with a lump in my throat.

There was no way I was going to leave his body there, and when my mum’s head appeared over the hole above us, she dropped down to the ledge of rubble where I was and helped me carry Lucifer’s body up out of the mess. When we were out, I saw the devastation that had happened to Atlantis.

“Anyone else hurt?” I asked my mum as Lucifer’s body was carried away by the dwarves.

“A lot,” she said.

A hand was placed on my shoulder, and I turned to find Hades. We embraced, grieving over the loss of so many of those we had loved like family.

I removed the bracelet from my pocket and passed it to him, but Orfeda snatched it out of his hand. “This is where they went?” she asked, clearly concerned.

I nodded. “They both wore one. Judgement has the other. You know the destination?”

“It’s the same runes that were inside all of these buildings, or at least the buildings I’d seen inside of before they collapsed. It goes to Shadow Falls.”

“There were monsters in there,” Judgement said. “Arthur told me. Tens of thousands of monsters that had once been human. Hera’s experiments. All to go to Shadow Falls and destroy it.”

My memory flashed back to what I’d fought in Kilnhurst. “We need to get to Shadow Falls, now,” I said. “My daughter is there.”

“We’re already working to get the realm gate destination changed to get to Shadow Falls,” Hades said. “We have to hope that the humans and those we left in Washington can help deal with Arthur and his cronies. Once we’re done in Shadow Falls, we can go to the Earth realm. Everyone is waiting at the realm gate for the second it opens; we’ll stop whatever Arthur has planned.”

“Selene is in Washington,” Orfeda said as Hades walked away. “Layla and Jinayca too.”

I closed my eyes and sighed. “We don’t have time for all of us to go to both places.” I spotted a bloody and battered Tarron as he walked down the remains of the street toward us. There were two shadow elves beside him; both looked unsteady on their feet. I called him over and told him everything that had happened.

“You want me to make an elven realm gate?” Tarron asked me. “There are a lot of us; it will take time. It will take time to get so many of us to move to one place. It would have to be done in batches. And then it would take time to get from the mountain down to Solomon to help with whatever is happening there.”

“How many dwarves are working on the realm gate?” I asked Orfeda.

“Zamek and a few hundred more.”

“How many are in that prison?” Hades asked.

“My people were imprisoned, beaten, tortured, starved; they’re in no shape to do anything to help.”

“If we don’t get that gate open, Shadow Falls will die,” I said. “And everyone in it. I’ve fought these things, and they will not go easy.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Orfeda said.

I turned to Tarron. “Any chance you can work with some of the dwarves and elves we found here to make this realm gate much, much quicker? Maybe boost its power or something?”

“We can try,” Tarron said.

Orfeda paused and stared at the sorcerer’s band on my wrist. “Nate, you’re human?”

I nodded. “And a fun time was had by all.”

She lifted my hand to look at the bracelet. “There’s no lock on this. You can just remove it.”

I stared at the band. “Seriously?”

“Yes, haven’t you studied it?” she asked.

“A building literally collapsed with me inside,” I said. “Not a lot of time for reading.”

Orfeda lifted my arm and looked closer at the band, reading the runes. “This says that if you remove it, everything around you dies.”

“Yeah, we got that bit,” I said.

“Nate, this isn’t like a normal band,” Orfeda said. “Normal bands, the magical power inside them goes inward, toward the victim. This goes inward and out. This is a serious scorched-earth-policy kind of band.”

“So Arthur put a band on me I can remove at any time so long as I’m willing to kill myself and anyone near me,” I said.

Orfeda nodded.

“Well, shit,” I said with a sigh.

“We’ll find a way,” Orfeda said. “Have faith.”

“Tarron,” I said as the dwarves ran off. “Get that realm gate done. We’re going to have to send people through both parts for as long as we can.”

“I assume we can’t make more bracelets?” he asked.

“They take too long to make, and we don’t have any humans who know runes that could do it,” Hades said. “Oh, you should know. Merlin’s dead.”

That was a surprise. “How’s Mordred?” I asked.

“Good, considering,” Hades said. “Or as good as Mordred ever pretends to be. He killed his own father.”

“I’ll go find him when I get a moment,” I said.

Everyone set about their jobs. Then suddenly I spotted Tommy at the far end of the road. He was alone, in human form, his clothes tattered and bloodstained. I walked toward him cautiously and noticed that a lot of armed guards had appeared close by, their weapons ready.

“Tommy, that’s close enough,” I said. “Don’t really want to have to fight you again.”

“I saw the citadel collapse,” he said.

“Lucifer died; Arthur escaped; I’m human,” I said. “It’s been a shit day.”

There was a growl to the side of me, and Kase, in full werebeast form, crouched low and moved toward us, her mum, Olivia, behind her.

“Hey, honey,” Tommy said.

“Dad?” Kase asked.

Tommy nodded. She took a step forward, and Tommy moved back. “I ... I can’t. I can’t turn into a wolf, or I lose control again. It’s everything just to stay human. That sword of Mordred’s really did a number on my brain. It cleared it long enough for me to turn back into my human form, but I’m not sure for how long.”

“We can fix it,” Olivia said. “We can try.”

“We will,” Tommy said. “I just ... I need to be shackled. I need to be restrained. I can’t be trusted.”

“We can arrange that,” I said.

“I want to kill you, Nate,” he said, tears in his eyes. “I want nothing more than to tear you in half, and it’s breaking me to fight it. I don’t know how to stop it. I want to kill all of you. I want to hurt my wife, my daughter, my son, everyone. The bloodlust is all-consuming. The need to taste death almost too much.”

A soldier ran over, and I stopped her from getting too close. She tossed a set of shackles and a sorcerer’s band to Tommy, who put them on eagerly. He sighed when it was done and sank to his knees, openly weeping as Olivia and a now-human Kase, both still wearing leather battle armor, ran to him. They, too, dropped to their knees as they were reunited.

“We’re going to Shadow Falls,” I said. “There’s an army of monsters there.”

Tommy looked up. “My son,” he said.

I nodded. “And Astrid. It’s not like Shadow Falls is defenseless,” I said. “But we need to get there as soon as we can.”

“And we’re both essentially human?” Tommy asked me.

“I never said it would be easy,” I said, offering him my hand, which he took, and he got to his feet and hugged me. “Glad you’re back.”

“I’m not, Nate,” he said. “I can’t risk turning into a werewolf. I can’t fight like this.”

“We’ll figure it out,” I told him. “In the meantime, go find some clothes—we’ve got a lot to do and not a lot of time to do it all in.”

Tommy and Olivia walked off together, leaving me with Kase.

“My dad’s not exactly back, is he?” she said.

“While he stays in human form, he’s good,” I said, hoping I was right. “I think your dad shouldn’t be left alone with anyone right now. We need to make sure he’s clear of Arthur’s influence even while in human form. Persephone is over by the realm gate; go see if she can give you some people to ask. There are a few psychics and empaths, I think.”

“Mum and I are heading to Shadow Falls to help stop Arthur’s attack. My dad has to stay here; keep him safe.”

Kase ran off, and I looked down at the bracelet on my wrist. Arthur had made sure I couldn’t fight him again. But I’d find a way. Even if I had to grab hold of him, tear the damn bracelet off, and let the magical napalm incinerate us both.