Prison of Hope (23 page)

It snapped both whips at me, but I dropped to my knees, allowing them to sail harmlessly over my head; then I sprang upward, my fist wrapped in dense air. I caught the krampus under the chin, snapping its head back with vicious force.
I followe
d up with a right hook to its jaw and a kick to the chest that sent it sprawling in the dirt.

I moved forward, creating a blade of fire in one hand and intending to finish the job, but the krampus moved quickly,
putting
some distance between us. I extinguished the blade, and the creature watched me closely, maybe trying to figure out what was going wrong for it. After a few seconds, it paused and retracted its whips. It then moved forward slowly, watching my every move, like a predator stalking its prey. Well, if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s that I make for pretty awful prey.

I dashed forward, avoiding the powerful swipes of the beast’s claws, and went to drive a blade of air into its ribs. But the
krampus
smashed its arm down on my back, knocking me to
the grou
nd and then kicking out with a hoof, which I blocked with another blast of air, putting some distance between us. I threw a ball of flame up at the monster’s face. The krampus moved back, avoiding it, but not avoiding the blast of fire that hit it in the chest.

All but ignoring the fur burning on its chest, the krampus charged me once again. I threw out tendrils of air, wrapping them around and around it, tightening them until I heard something crunch. The krampus roared in pain and rage. I tried to stop it from moving, but it kept stepping forward, despite the obvious difficulty in doing so. Eventually, the strain of keeping the magic in place was too much, and I had to release it, which allowed the monster to dart forward and catch me across the chest with one of its newly extended whips.

The pain of the silver whip cutting into my flesh and the burning sensation that followed forced me momentarily to one knee. But a moment was all the krampus needed.

It wrapped the whips around my arms and raised me to its eye level as it growled, a low rumble that seemed to echo around us. It threw me the length of the clearing. I managed to create a second shield of air before I hit the rocks, but couldn’t stop myself from landing in a heap on the ground, knocking the air out of me and giving the krampus enough time to grab me by the back of the head and smash my face into the nearest rock before throwing me aside once again.

Blood flowed from a new cut on my forehead as the krampus moved slowly and with purpose. It was like a force of nature;
no mat
ter what I did to it, it just kept on coming. I wrapped my air magic around its legs and pulled, taking the monster off its feet with a crash and giving me time to wipe the blood from my eyes.

The krampus was incensed, and once back on its feet, it tore free part of the rock cliff and threw it at me with ease. Despite the size and weight of the piece, the speed with which it reached me made dodging it much harder than it should have been, and also put me back in the path of a charging krampus.

I got back to my feet and tensed as the beast almost reached me, before I ignited my magic, creating lightning that crackled over my fingertips. I grabbed one of the silver whips and
used it
as a conductor, pouring my magic into it, which tore into the krampus. The monster fought back, grabbing my hand and pulling me toward it. I saw my opportunity and placed my other hand against its head, throwing as much lightning magic into the creature as I could possibly muster.

It released me and I kicked it away, putting distance between us as it convulsed on the ground for a few seconds and then returned to its feet.

I created a sphere of air in my palm and ran at the monster, burying the magic in the side of the krampus and then releasing it. The krampus flew back against the rock wall with a sickening crunch and crashed back to the ground—but despite coughing up blood and having more of the dark liquid stream from various cuts on its body, it refused to die.

I walked toward the krampus, a blade of brilliant flame in one hand, and plunged it through the monster’s heart, expecting that to end the fight. But the krampus remained on its knees, swayed slightly, and then growled and tried to fight back, taking swipes at me that forced me to move away.

“Stubborn bastard, aren’t you?” I said and wondered exactly what it took to put a krampus down for the count. A large, shimmering blue
jian
, a Chinese sword, appeared in my hand, one of my two soul weapons—a manifestation of my necromancy. They don’t leave a mark on the body of the attacked, but instead damage the soul. I stepped back within striking range, avoiding the monster’s weak swipes, and plunged the blade into its heart. I twisted the sword and dragged it out. The krampus, finally succumbing to its injuries, crashed down to its knees.

I kicked the monster onto the ground and replaced my
jian
with my second soul weapon, a large battle-axe. The krampus took one last halfhearted swipe in my direction with its whip, and I used my air magic to pin the weapon to the ground before driving the battle-axe down into the krampus’s head.

With the creature finally dead, I extinguished the soul weapons and resisted the urge to collapse to the ground. I searched the cave but found that the bones I’d seen had belonged to various animals, and there was no sign that any other abductions had taken place. Whatever else I’d learned, at least I knew for certain that no mere bullet was going to kill a krampus—not unless it was attached to the end of a nuclear bomb. The fact was that
it wa
s Sarah’s friend who was meant to have killed the krampus, and from what I’d overheard from the two men leaving the cave, it sounded like Sarah herself was responsible for the creation of the krampus. That meant she was also involved in the kidnapping of Chloe, and by extension, for what had happened with Cronus’s escape from Tartarus.

I made my way back outside, thankful that the krampus was truly dead. The last twenty-four hours had been fairly exhausting, and I was unsure how much more I could have done against it. Even so, I kept glancing over to check that it hadn’t moved.

I placed a hand just above the krampus’s body and concentrated. A second later I sensed the soul inside the krampus. A dark and twisted mass, full of corruption. Part of me didn’t want to bother trying to absorb a soul that dark, but another part of me wanted the power it would undoubtedly give me. The words of Hades as he was training me to use my necromancy months ago flickered to the front of my brain, telling me that the corruption wouldn’t carry into me, so I set about taking the krampus’s soul.

Absorbing the soul only took seconds, but once I’d consumed it and felt the power inside me, it was almost too much. It forced me to my knees as I coughed and spluttered. It felt like something was trying to break me open from the inside. I placed my head against the ground and allowed the sensation to pass, as the ground beneath me began to crack. Power leaked out of me while I tried to control the soul. A soul belonging to something as powerful as a krampus would be useable for a long time. I wouldn’t need to worry about having sufficient reserves of necromancy to power my magic or heal myself if I became injured. But, at the same time, it was the single most powerful soul I’d ever absorbed, and the shock was a lot to take.

As the sensation finally subsided, I mentally prepared myself for the memories that came with absorbing a soul. Unlike most souls I’d absorbed, the krampus’s crashed into me like a wave, and in an instant I knew everything about the man who had eventually become the monster beside me.

His name had been Ben Anderson, a career criminal from America who had moved to Germany. He was forty-six years old and had spent his life murdering and stealing from many. I saw Sarah Hamilton as she tortured and killed people in front of him, until she used a huge amount of blood magic to create the
krampus
. She was a serial killer and had created a creature of evil. She had to be stopped. But first my body protested that it had suffered enough, and I passed out on the soft ground, next to the dead krampus.

CHAPTER
23

I
was more than a little surprised when I woke up in bed. In my own bed at the hotel, to be more exact. I wasn’t particularly happy that three times in the last twenty-four hours I’d either passed out or been knocked out, and on two of those occasions I’d woken only to discover that someone had dragged my sorry ass to safety. On the plus side, waking up in bed was probably better than waking up next to the corpse of a . . . well, anything.

I flung my covers aside and glanced at the clock on the bedside table: just after 7:00 a.m. The memories of the previous night came flooding back. Sarah Hamilton and her friends were responsible for what was happening. I didn’t know why, but I intended to find out.

Someone knocked on the door; then it opened, and Sky walked in, waving a keycard at me. “Glad to see you’re up and about,” she said.

“Who dragged me back here?”

“Emily, that witch friend of yours. She went back for you when you didn’t return. Used your mobile to call me, and I rushed right down to mock you.”

“Thanks for that—it means a lot.”

“Yeah, I like to get my mocking in before breakfast if
possible
. Tommy was a bit concerned about you, but he’s
downstairs
stuffing the equivalent of a whole pig’s worth of bacon into his mouth.”

I smiled and stood up, ignoring the fact that I was only wearing a pair of boxer shorts. “I need a shower,” I explained to Sky.

“Go for it,” Sky said and sat on an armchair by the window. “I’ll wait.”

I didn’t bother arguing and instead had the hottest shower that I could manage to get without using my magic to heat the water. Once finished, I dried off and, with a towel still wrapped around my waist, opened the bathroom door.

“You’re still here,” I said.

“We need to talk,” Sky said, her tone serious. “I’m worried about you.”

I sat on the bed. “You want me to put some clothes on first?”

Sky shrugged. “Don’t change the subject.”

I grabbed a clean pair of boxers and put them on,
throwing
the towel over the top of the door. “I’m not. Why are you
worried
?”

“You threatened a few other people yesterday. Almost beat one siphon to death, tortured a man. Oh, and let’s not forget that you killed a krampus.”

“It was a big day,” I said with a smile.

“Not now, Nate.”

I sat on the bed again and nodded. “I’m fine. I actually feel pretty good. For a while, I was more concerned about the loss of my blood magic than I let on, but for some reason I’m now okay with it. Also, I took the soul of the krampus last night, so I know that Sarah Hamilton created it.”

“We’ll talk about that later. I’m more concerned about you. What’s going on in your head?”

“Those four marks on my chest are still there. One has been fading for the better part of a year, but it hasn’t gone yet. I don’t know what any of the remaining ones do. Once they started vanishing after my little escapade with Mordred a few years ago, and I got my memories back that he’d taken from me, I expected to get
all
of my memories back. But those first eight years of my life, before I woke up outside Camelot, are still blank. I can go back to any point in my life and pick up traces of memory. But right before that day is a giant black hole. There are no sensations, no memories—nothing.

“It made me wonder exactly why someone would go
to th
e trouble of removing them while at the same time putting t
hese ma
rks on me. Does one of these blood curse marks
hold tho
se memories, or do they do something else?

“Other than that, I’m good. Really good, actually. I got knocked out in the control room, and I woke up feeling refreshed, like my worries about my necromancy and blood magic had been dealt with.”

Sky got to her feet and walked over to the window, propping herself up on the small ledge. “You don’t find that odd? And what about that rune on your hand?”

“I do find it a bit odd, now that you mention it, but it doesn’t really concern me, so I’m taking that as a good thing. As for the rune . . . I don’t know. I just knew how to draw it—and knew it would do what I needed. How’d you get rid of your blood curse mark? Back in Montana, when we first met, you saw my marks. But you can’t see them anymore. You’ve asked me about them twice in the last few years.”

“I didn’t realize you knew about them,” she said and then sighed. “About a decade ago, I found some of the people who’d put the curse on me. They did it when I was ten years old,
considering
me someone they could possibly use because of my parentage. One of them was a sorcerer. I used him to kill the
others
who’d been involved in my family’s murder and used their
sacrifice
to remove the curse from me.”

“Did you let him live?”

“He assumed I would. He assumed wrong.”

“What did the curse do?”

Sky was quiet for a moment, and when she spoke, it was almost a whisper. “It made me forget that they were the ones who had my parents murdered. They didn’t do it themselves, but t
hey ma
nipulated people within the tribe to do it for them. Once they heard that my father worked for Hades, they brought m
e bac
k to those who had murdered my parents and then
scattered
. They not only murdered my family but allowed my family’s entire tribe to be wiped from existence.”

“You never told me any of that.”

Sky shrugged. “Bad things happened. Eventually, I tracked down and killed some evil pieces of shit. Not much to say.”

“You okay?”

“Yeah. The curse fucked around with the memories of my parents. I knew who they were but couldn’t remember anything about certain people in the tribe, like they’d been erased from my memory. Anyway, we’re slightly off track. My dad asked me to talk to you about the rune. The other stuff was just me; I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“It’s just a rune. Maybe something got dislodged when that sorcerer used his mind magic on me.”

“My dad says it’s not just a rune. It’s one of the original Norse dwarf runes.”

The Norse dwarves didn’t like to write a lot down, as they believed that words held literal power. To be fair, in their case, it was true, as runes were a big part of their written language. All runes currently used, no matter what they do, come from the original twenty-one runes that the dwarfs created and then modified as needed. Each original rune was an exceptionally powerful version of those that followed.

These original runes were lost to time millennia ago, or so the legends say. Certainly, not even enchanters know what they look like, and since the dwarves disappeared a few decades after I was found in Camelot, no one has ever been able to ask them about the runes.

I glanced at the back of my hand. “One of the twenty-one? Are you sure?”

Sky nodded. “Dad said he’s positive.”

“It let me bypass the security restrictions to access my magic and necromancy. Hades said that if I keep wearing it, it’ll just drain any of my magic that’s not being used.”

“Dad said it ignores any kind of dampener runes placed in its vicinity. Apparently, it only works for a set period of time, based on how advanced the runes are that it’s trying to override, but it would basically let you bypass any rune-based
security
anywhere on the planet. At least temporarily. And when
it’s n
ot actively working, it absorbs energy anyway to ensure it’s
always on.”

I glanced at the back of my hand. The rune had come off some time ago, but I could still recall the image in my mind with ease. “How am I able to remember it?”

“Dad doesn’t know. He thinks someone must have put the knowledge deep inside your subconscious. If my curse mark fucked around with my memories, I’m sure one of yours could easily have hidden some information about runes.”

“Except none of the four marks have faded completely away, which would have been necessary for me to retrieve anything it had hidden.”

“Then I have no idea. Dad’s worried there are more runes hidden inside that head of yours. Some of them are insanely powerful. People would quite literally kill to have access to them. He doesn’t want you to make yourself a target, and quite frankly neither do I.”

“I’m always a target,” I countered. “But he has a fair point. If my brain starts throwing out more rune knowledge, I’ll go see him before I start writing them on my body.”

“I guess that’ll have to do. He’s not too happy that you found a way to bypass his security with one rune, though. He had to make some pretty important phone calls to see if he was right about the rune being dwarven and to find out whether it could be counteracted. He’s going to have to change his security.”

“If it makes him feel better, I’m not going to go around
telling
people about this rune. If someone buried it deep inside my head, they did it for a reason.”

“You think it was done before you ended up at Camelot?”

I nodded. “That would be my guess. Now, can you let me
get dressed?”

“Oh, yeah, that was the other thing: Tommy spent most of the night hiding in some woods near the house he tracked those men to. A big place about a mile outside of town. He said there are guards patrolling the perimeter, four or five of them. They were there this morning when he left. Kurt, Petra, Tommy, you, and I are going to go pay them a little visit.”

“Sounds like a plan. What happened to Chloe?”

“Oh, they’re gone.”

“Who’s gone? Chloe?”

“All of them. The witches all left en masse this morning. Can’t say I blame them. From what some of the other guests said, that Emily woman brought Chloe back, and she was rushed up to her floor, and none of the witches or those with them left the floor till they all packed up and departed at first light.”

“I had questions,” I said.

“Yeah, a lot of us did.” Sky’s tone didn’t suggest she thought the witches innocent in all that had happened.

“Well, one thing at a time. Hopefully, Sarah Hamilton and her friends can tell us where Cronus is. Or at least give us more information than we have right now.”

“I’m sure we can persuade them,” Sky said as she opened the room door. “Are you sure you’re up for it?”

“They kidnapped a fourteen-year-old girl and gave her to a krampus for reasons only they know. Even if the fact that they’d aided Cronus’s escape was unknown to us, I’d still want to kick some people’s teeth in.”

“Put some nice boots on then,” Sky said and closed the door.