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Chapter Two

NATE GARRETT

The Atlantic Ocean

We tied Poseidon up and placed him in a bedroom, and Zamek drew runes on its walls, limiting his power in case he broke the sorcerer’s band I’d put on his wrist. Poseidon was one of the most powerful beings in any realm, and taking chances would get us all killed. The sorcerer’s band ensured he couldn’t use his elemental powers, and if he tried to remove it, the runes on the wooden beads would explode, turning him to steam. I hated the things, but when needs must ...

“Sorry I almost missed the party,” I said to Mordred. “There are a lot of prisoners belowdecks. A few thousand people. Mostly passengers, but a fair few crew. Lots of sirens patrolling the ocean around us too. Thanks for taking a few of them off our hands.”

“The plan was that I would make a show of it, and they were happy to oblige,” Mordred said. “We found a few crew members too. While you were in there with Poseidon, I sent Chloe to go retrieve them, bring them here. I think it would be best if we got off this ship sooner rather than later.”

Everyone apart from Chloe and Diana sat in the living room of the suite, taking a breather. Diana was on the balcony, scanning for possible siren attacks. She’d smell them well before they got to us.

“Tarron is busy making a large elven realm gate,” I said. “Fortunately we found a lot of sirens so used their blood to make it more powerful.”

Tarron was, to anyone’s knowledge, the last remaining shadow elf. His entire people had been turned into monsters who called themselves blood elves.

“How’d you get on board with so many sirens there?” Zamek asked.

“Viv,” I said. “We dropped into the ocean, and she masked us from their view. Turns out Poseidon’s friends aren’t quite as good at being guards as he’d like to believe.” Viv was the daughter of the Lady of the Lake, who had been murdered by Merlin centuries earlier. She’d helped Mordred retrieve his sword, Excalibur, although I noticed he wasn’t wearing it.

“Excalibur?” I asked, pointing to Mordred.

“It wasn’t exactly the kind of thing I wanted to bring with me,” Mordred said. “If Poseidon had seen it and contacted Arthur to tell him, we might be sailing into a shitstorm.”

“Also, you still don’t like it,” I said.

“And there’s that,” he agreed.

“So is there a second part of this plan?” Remy asked. “Just curious, because I don’t remember the plan involving Nate stabbing the guy with a blade of lightning.”

“How is Poseidon even alive after that?” Hel asked.

“He’s a water elemental,” I said. “A powerful one. Lightning and water don’t mix all that well, but I was pretty sure it wouldn’t kill him.”

“So you didn’t know for certain?” Hel asked. “I like how so many of our plans revolve around just seeing what happens.”

“Sometimes we just have to wing it,” Mordred said cheerfully. “Zamek, this bit is all you, my friend.”

Everyone turned to Zamek, who smiled. Things were about to get geeky.

“So, summoning circles,” Zamek started.

I tuned out. We all knew what they were, we all knew how they worked, but Zamek was someone who found realm gates, summoning circles, and basically anything that the ancient dwarves had been responsible for fascinating. He tended to allow his enthusiasm to bubble over to everyone in the vicinity, and while what he was saying was important, I’d already heard it three times. Once was enough.

The long and short of it was that summoning circles allowed two people to talk in different realms. They were both set up to only work for the people using them, and both parties had to agree for the link to be made. They were dangerous and easy to disrupt. Feedback would kill both involved, and that was only if they were lucky. They’d fallen out of favor, as they took a lot of power to use, and frankly people hated them, but we’d discovered Merlin and his people had begun to use them again.

“How did you know there was a summoning circle here?” Diana asked from the balcony, drawing me back into the advanced lecture on runes and their uses.

“Oh, that was easy,” Zamek said. “We knew that whoever was here was in contact with people somehow, and a lot of Avalon people don’t like technology all that much. Odds were good it was a summoning circle.”

“So you didn’t know for certain?” Hel asked.

“No,” Zamek said. “Not until I just saw the summoning circle in the room next to where we put Poseidon. I can’t hack it, before anyone says anything. It’s literally coded to Poseidon. No one can use it but him, and if they try, they only do it once.”

“So we came here to hopefully figure out what is going on?” Remy asked.

“We came here to stop the sirens and rescue anyone here,” Mordred said. “Discovering that this is all Poseidon is a bit of a bonus. Now we just need to get him to tell us what we need to know and get off this ship.”

“And sink the ship,” Remy said with far too much glee. “Never sunk something this big before. Not even sure how.”

“Is that a good idea?” Diana asked.

“Not much choice,” I said. “The sirens here are in numbers I’ve never seen before, and this ship has been made into a floating sirens’ nest. I’d rather that nest was sat on the bottom of the ocean. If this lands somewhere and people are sent to check it out, a lot will die. We could scrub this whole place clean of them, but that would take days, at best. They’re not exactly the easiest things to hunt, and we don’t have time. This is the best lead we’ve had at figuring out where Arthur is.”

“And if he’s in Avalon?” Chloe asked as she returned.

“Then we need to figure out how to get into Avalon without it becoming a bloodbath,” Mordred said.

“Any ideas?” Hel asked.

“No,” Mordred admitted. “You?”

“Not one,” Hel said.

“Well, this is all going swimmingly,” Remy said, clapping his hands together. “Let’s go talk to the twatnozzle in the other room and see what happens.”

“Nate,” Diana said. “There are sirens at the stern of the ship. They’re keeping their distance for now, but they know we’re here. Are Viv and Tarron safe?”

I nodded and passed Diana a small radio. “Any problems and we’ll hear about it. Besides, we brought backup.”

Diana raised an eyebrow in question. “And who might that be?”

“Irkalla, Kase, and Isis are down there too,” I said. “Between the three of them, I almost pity anyone who tries to pick a fight.”

“I’m pretty sure anyone trying to pick a fight with those three deserves what happens to them,” Remy said. “I thought it was just you, Viv, and Tarron.”

“Well, it was decided that you all might screw up and blow the ship sky-high before we were meant to,” I said mockingly.

Everyone looked at Remy.

“As I mentioned earlier, I’ve never even blown a ship up,” Remy said before pausing for a second. “Okay, there was one time, but that was a boat, so shut up.”

“You okay with Poseidon being in there?” I asked Diana.

“Apart from wanting to tear his face off,” she said without any hint of exaggeration.

I left everyone to continue talking and entered the expansive bedroom, where Poseidon lay on the bed, his hate-filled eyes staring at me as I grabbed a chair from the side of the room and sat on it.

“Nathaniel Garrett,” Poseidon said, the words dripping venom.

“Nathaniel Garrett Woden to you,” I said.

His eyes opened wide in surprise. “You found out who your father was. I heard Odin is dead; that must have been awful. Good.”

I leaned back in the chair. “My father died fighting Avalon. I killed War for what he did. He did not die a good death. If you know who my father is, then I’m going to guess that you know what I really am.”

“A cross-blood mutt,” he snapped.

“If you want to think of me like that,” I said with a shrug as Mordred opened the door and stepped into the room, followed by Hel, who closed the door and leaned up against it.

“You’re both monsters,” Poseidon said. “Created from blood magic to be weapons. You’re unnatural. Hera told me about you centuries ago.”

“I assumed as much,” I said.

“That lightning hurt,” Poseidon whined.

“Good,” Mordred said. “You murdered a lot of people.”

“As I said before, the sirens did that.”

“And who called the sirens?” I asked.

“Well, me, obviously,” Poseidon said. “You going to unfasten my bonds, or do I have to lie here and stare at you?”

“You don’t really get to make requests,” Hel said.

“I should have killed you when I had the chance,” Poseidon said to her. “But I wasn’t sure whether I was going to get to fuck you or not, and it would have been a shame to remove such a piece of ass from the world before I got a ride.”

I looked back at Hel, who burst out laughing. “You really are a pathetic little ant, aren’t you? You think that being misogynistic is going to cause me to burst into some sudden fit of rage? I’ve been dealing with men like you my whole life. You think you’re stronger because you happen to have a penis, no matter how tiny or limp it is. You’re not. You’re not brave. You’re not strong. You’re just a child in a man’s body who never learned the word no and thinks everyone owes him something.”

Poseidon looked over at Mordred.

“You expecting me to do something because you insulted my girlfriend?” Mordred asked. “She could pull your lungs out through your asshole. I think she’s good without my input.”

“And let’s all thank Mordred for that lovely image,” I said, turning back to a considerably paler-looking Poseidon.

“What do you want?” Poseidon asked.

“You’re communicating with Merlin,” I said. “Using a summoning circle. We know about it. We know you were using this place as a sort of stop-off point to pass information along. We’d found a few of the command centers in Europe, and they led us to you. Where is Arthur?”

“No idea,” Poseidon said. “Only spoke to Merlin. And occasionally Gawain. No one else.”

“Where is Thomas Carpenter?” I asked.

Poseidon laughed. “Your pet werewolf?”

I reached out with my air magic and wrapped tendrils of it around his chest, squeezing tighter as Poseidon’s laughter turned to wheezing and his face grew panicked.

“I don’t think this will kill you,” I said. “But I think if I explode your heart, it’s going to hurt like hell. You want to rethink your attitude?”

Poseidon nodded quickly, and I released the air. He took in deep gulps for a few seconds. “I don’t know where he is,” Poseidon said eventually. “No one has brought him up in conversation.”

“You’re going to tell us what the last orders you got were,” Mordred said.

“I write them down in a book inside the room next door.”

“You don’t use a code?” Hel asked.

“It’s in ancient Atlantean,” he said. “You know anyone who can speak it?”

“Yes,” Mordred said. “A few, actually.”

The look of surprise on Poseidon’s face was worth the journey alone.

“Is Arthur in Atlantis?” I asked.

“I told you, I don’t know,” Poseidon snapped. “It’s a dead realm. No way in or out. There’s literally nothing left of it; the Titans turned the entire realm to ash. I don’t see why anyone would want to go there.”

“You wouldn’t be lying to us, now, would you?” Mordred asked.

“About Atlantis?” Poseidon said with a chuckle. “I was there when it happened. I only just got out alive before the realm gate was turned to slag. There’s nothing there.”

“I think the fish boy doth protest too much,” Hel said.

“Wow—can you talk to fish?” Mordred asked. “Like Aquaman?”

The look of rage on Poseidon’s face suggested he was done being mocked.

“I bet Jaws is in your computer’s porn folder,” Mordred continued. “Or are you more of a Free Willy kind of guy?”

“You won’t keep me here forever,” Poseidon said, enraged. “And you won’t kill me. You need me.”

“To talk to fish?” Mordred asked. “I don’t really think that’s important right now.”

“Fuck you,” Poseidon snapped.

A smirk spread across Mordred’s face. “We do need you, yes. You’re going to contact my father, and you’re going to find out where Arthur is.”

“No, I’m not,” Poseidon said.

“Can you both give me a second?” I asked Hel and Mordred, who nodded and left the room.

“You going to torture me?” Poseidon asked.

I shook my head. “It’s going to take us a while to decode your diary, so you’re going to tell me where the next Knights of Avalon attack is going to be directed.”

“And if I don’t?”

“I let Diana in here,” I said. “You might know who Diana’s girlfriend is.”

“Another bear?” he asked with a laugh.

“Medusa,” I said.

Genuine fear spread across his face.

“You and she have history, yes?”

Poseidon nodded.

“You want to find out what Diana will do to you?” I looked back at the door. “You’re in a room that stops your power but not anyone else’s. And you have a sorcerer’s band on. I think you would die in here. Eventually. I think it would take a long time.”

“Merlin will have me killed,” Poseidon said, seemingly scared now.

“Probably,” I said. “But I let you go, and you have a chance. A chance to run and hide. You stay here, and I guarantee you nothing except pain and death.”

I got to my feet. “You have ten seconds to decide.”

“Please don’t,” Poseidon said. “This isn’t how a god dies.”

“You’re not a god, Poseidon,” I said. “You just played one, thousands of years ago.”

“How do you even know there are more orders?” Poseidon asked. “You worked for Merlin for centuries—was he all that chatty with your orders?”

“Do you know what I’ve been doing this last year?” I asked. “I’ve been fighting Avalon bastards. The Knights of Avalon, the Blade of Avalon—same bunch of arseholes, different names and uniforms. Human governments are slowly returning to being controlled by humans. There are large pockets of resistance fighting in every country against you, more than I can think of. More than once Avalon forces got hold of nuclear material and threatened to detonate a bomb. More than once, I’ve been forced to kill people who believe in nothing but their own superiority, simply because they had the fortune to be born with or be given powers.

“You are like them, Poseidon. So convinced of your own self-importance. You will tell me, because I stopped playing games with you people years ago. Who is the next set of orders for?”

Poseidon stared at me for several seconds before sighing. “Secretary of state, in DC.”

“He’s one of yours?”

Poseidon nodded. “He relays information to those senators, congresspeople, and pretty much everyone on the president’s Secret Service detail who work for us.”

“Not the president?” I asked.

“He does as he’s told if he knows what’s good for him.”

“Why is this important?”

“DC is about to enter a very difficult phase. There’s going to be a civil war in a country with enough firepower to burn the entire planet to ash.” Poseidon smiled. “If Arthur can’t have Earth, if you people are so intent on stopping him, he’ll turn it into a wasteland and see how you like it then.”

“Where is Arthur?” I asked.

“Go fuck yourself, Nathaniel Garrett,” Poseidon said. “I hope your pet wolf got skinned.”

I leaped forward, grabbing Poseidon by the throat and dragging him off the bed, across the floor, and to the window, where I smashed him through the glass to the balcony beyond. He fell to the floor, bleeding badly from several cuts, before I lifted him off the floor again and smashed his forehead into the steel railing. The sky above darkened, and thunder rolled across above us.

“Where is Arthur?” I asked again, turning Poseidon over so he could see the heavens as lightning streaked down and slammed into the balcony a foot away from his head.

“Want me to repeat myself?” I asked, moving his head to the singed metal, letting him feel the heat of what the lightning had caused.

“Killing me won’t bring back your friend,” he screamed.

“No, but it will kill you,” I whispered. “I think that’ll be enough.”

Poseidon looked up at me, genuinely terrified. “Atlantis. He’s in Atlantis.”

“And what’s the real plan in DC?” I asked. “Arthur would never burn this entire realm. He’s spent too long wanting to rule over it and crush the resistance. He can’t rule over a wasteland.”

“The last person I received orders from was Gawain,” Poseidon said. “President Reed is going to sign a declaration stating that Avalon is now in control of both the military and policing inside the country. There are people inside every organization inside the country ready to take control. We’re going to turn the United States of America into a police state.

“The resistance might have taken back the UK, and you might take back some of Europe, but you’ll never take back all of America. We’ve worked too long to set this up. The blood of those who oppose Arthur will run in the streets. Once the USA is ours, we’ll finish with Canada and South America. Russia is already falling into line, most of eastern Europe too. Those countries who resisted will be small fry compared to those who are loyal.”

Arthur would cause the deaths of millions of people. “What’s he waiting for?”

“What?”

“Well, why not just sign the damn law?” I asked. “What’s he waiting for?”

Poseidon shook his head. “I don’t know.”

The sky rumbled.

“Honestly, no idea,” he said hurriedly. “All I know is it has to wait until midnight. Gawain is doing something and needs time to prepare. I swear, I don’t know what.”

“How do you contact President Reed?”

“I don’t,” he said. “I contacted Gawain and the head of the Senate. The latter by encrypted phone.”

I dragged Poseidon back into the room and dropped him on the floor before opening the bedroom door. “Anyone found a phone?”

Chloe had one in her hands and tossed it to me, which I caught one handed. “It was in the room with the summoning circle. The circle and its runes are drawn in blood, by the way. Because of course they were.”

I looked back at Poseidon. I placed a foot on his chest and pushed down. “Make the call,” I said.

“I need assurances,” he said.

“I can assure you I’ll rip your face off if you don’t,” Remy said from the doorway. “I bet none of the fishes will want to fuck you after that.”

“I do not have sex with fish!” Poseidon screamed.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Remy, looking contrite. “I meant make love ...”

“Nate, I think you’re going to want to see this,” Zamek shouted from the doorway of the room he’d been investigating.

“Keep an eye on Poseidon,” I said to Remy and went next door to find a glowing purple summoning circle on the wall and a second one on the bare wooden floor.

“What’d you do?” I asked. “They’re not meant to activate unless someone uses them. Did you use it?”

Zamek shook his head. “I tried to figure out exactly where it goes to. And it goes to Avalon.”

“Like we expected,” I said. “But?”

“But it doesn’t end there,” Zamek said, pointing to several runes drawn on the floor and mirrored on the wall. “This pings the signal. You can’t use a summoning circle and bounce around the same realm, but if you figured out a way to send it to one realm, you could ping it back to this realm and a third circle.”

“So that’s what this is doing?”

Zamek nodded.

“Do you know where it’s being pinged to?”

“No,” Zamek said. “But if we activated it and got Poseidon to talk to whoever is on the end, I could, yes.”

I went next door and found Poseidon still on the floor, while Remy sat on the bed beside him, using the remote control to scroll through the films on the internal entertainment system.

“You okay?” I asked Remy.

“Just trying to find Poseidon Dolphin Tale to watch,” Remy said with a snigger.

I pulled Poseidon to his feet. “You’re going to talk to whoever is on the end of that summoning circle.”

“They will kill me,” Poseidon said.

“Maybe, but I will for certain if you don’t,” I said. “And I’m here right now.”

Poseidon walked with me into the other room, where I untied his hands, although I kept the band in place. He knelt in the circle on the floor and placed his hands on the runes. A second later the circle on the wall shimmered.

“Say what you like,” I told him.

“What?” Gawain asked a second later.

I could see Gawain from where I stood, all long blond hair and handsome features. He was a monster the likes of which I’d rarely met before. I wondered how many people had lost their lives because of his charm and looks and the way he used them to make himself appear approachable. Until it was too late.

“Nate is here,” Poseidon said.

I walked around until Gawain could see me. “Hey, Gawain. How’s being a mass-murdering dickhead?”

Gawain smiled. “My brother is with you, I assume.”

“Fuck you, Gawain,” Mordred called out from the doorway. “I look forward to cutting your head off.”

“I did wonder if you’d eventually be able to track down Poseidon and his sirens,” Gawain said. “It took you long enough. I assume he told you about everything.”

I glared at him.

“Arthur is in Atlantis, and you’re in the Earth realm,” I said, looking beyond Gawain at the library of books behind him. “Bit weird how you got here, though, considering there’s no realm gate from Avalon to here that we don’t know about and aren’t keeping tabs on. Oh, wait, I guess there must be.” I took a guess with the last part, but the look on his face told me I was right.

“Arthur will rule this realm,” he said. “We will make an example out of those who stand against him.”

“Yeah, I’ve read the brochure,” I said. “Still not buying.”

“Poseidon,” Gawain said. “You have been of great service to our cause, but now our time has ended.” He removed a small device from his pocket. “Goodbye, gentlemen.”

There was a massive explosion outside the room.

Zamek, Mordred, and I ran out to find black smoke billowing out of both sides of the ship.

I ran back to Poseidon, who stood in the middle of the room. “Gawain will hunt me down and make me pay for what I told you. There’s no way out for me now.”

“We’ll keep you safe,” Mordred said.

“Fuck you,” Poseidon said. He tore off the sorcerer’s band, and the explosion of magic threw me back out of the doorway. My magic protected me as I smashed into a wooden cabinet, obliterating it.

“Shit,” Remy said. “I wanted to blow up the ship.”

“You okay?” Chloe asked me, offering me her hand, which I was happy to take.

“Let’s get the fuck off this ship,” I said before thanking Chloe and looking over at the pile of ash that used to be Poseidon. There was a third explosion, which rocked the boat, and it started to tip slightly to one side and then the other, as if we were in an earthquake.

“And fast,” Mordred said.

“Women, children, and foxmen first,” shouted Remy, heading for the door.