Prison of Hope (38 page)

CHAPTER
37

T
he wooden bathroom door was about as useful as asking really nicely, in terms of keeping out anyone Justin sent to kill me. I was pretty certain that anyone he’d hired wasn’t going to be some gung-ho idiot and would probably behave in a professional manner. That also meant that I wouldn’t hear them coming. They weren’t going to make any flippant comments about coming to get me; they were just going to get in position and open fire.

I searched the bathroom for anything that might help. While I wasn’t entirely sure how thick the walls were, the odds were good that they weren’t going to be bulletproof. I needed something to ensure the bullets didn’t tear through me like paper. The bathtub was a possibility, but bullets shatter enamel, turning it into shrapnel.

I opened the medicine cabinet’s mirrored door, in the vain hope that there’d be something useful, although it was probably too much to hope that she kept a tiny chain gun in there. Instead, I found some makeup, a toothbrush, and toothpaste, along with various feminine products that probably wouldn’t do me a huge amount of good in a gunfight.

I took one of the many lipsticks and removed the cap as the sounds of feet trampling along the hallway filled my ears. I drew the dwarven rune on my hand and my magic sparked to life. A second later, I had a shield of air pushed out in front of me as hundreds of bullets poured into the bathroom.

The sound was deafening. I poured more and more magic into the shield. The bullets deflected off the shield, striking everything else around me. Within a few seconds, the toilet and sink had been destroyed, spraying water into the room. A few seconds more and I had to extend the shield when a piece of bath enamel sliced through my cheek and embedded itself in the wall.

Using so much magic to keep the shield in place was exhausting my already diminished power. I’d used an enormous amount in the last few hours, and I wasn’t too sure how much longer I could keep it going before the nightmare . . . Erebus decided to come out to play. And I’d really rather not have to deal with passing out once he’d left. Every second I was here, Pandora was getting farther away.

After a ten count, the bullets stopped, while the water continued to pour into the room, creating a small pond that had began to flow under the ruined door. I removed my magic and then moved as quickly and quietly as possible behind the door. I kept the rune in place, just in case, but I knew that I wouldn’t have long before it started to take more energy than I had
available
.

I removed the dagger and took a breath as the door was pushed open. The muzzle of a carbine was the first thing I saw, but I waited as its wielder took another step, and then I snapped to the side, pushing the muzzle away and driving the dagger up into the throat of the man.

He pulled the trigger on the gun, which destroyed more of the bathroom, and I twisted the dagger and pulled it free, stepping to the side to avoid the shower of blood that accompanied it. I caught the guard by his bulletproof armor and spun him round, toward the hallway, dragging his sidearm free and putting two bullets in the head of the closest guard. I pushed my shield to one side, intercepting a bullet meant for my head, and put two in my next would-be attacker. Three dead in less than te
n seconds.

I dragged the corpse farther into the hallway and dove aside, into the bedroom, as automatic gunfire slammed into it. I shut the door. It didn’t have a lock, but then it would have been useless against automatic gunfire. I considered barricading it, but thought better; anyone outside of the cell could see me anyway, so they’d know I was out of options, even if I couldn’t see them.

I put two bullets through the door, on the off chance someone was behind it, and then rolled over the bed, rubbing off part of the lipstick rune, and making me magicless once more, when a shotgun blast tore through the door handle. A second hit the bed I’d rolled over, and a third took out a lamp as the gunman stepped into the room. I lay on the ground and fired into the knee of my assailant, and he cried out in pain, dropping to the ground and releasing his hold on the shotgun. I fired a second bullet as I stood, striking his forehead, and he didn’t move again.

I left the shotgun and moved toward the door, firing blind down the hallway in a hope-filled attempt to either flush out more attackers or maybe get lucky and hit one. When no one fired back, I stepped out into the hallway, keeping my body low so as to be a smaller target. I crept along, hugging the wall, but when I reached the library and glanced into it to make sure I was free, someone fired at me from the still-open roof. I dove aside, firing up as I moved, and was thankful that I hit my target in the throat. He dropped through the ceiling to the floor, his noises disturbing and awful as he died. But the distraction had been enough, and as I got back to my feet, someone charged into me, smashing me up against the nearby wall and knocking my gun free. I tried attacking with my dagger, but he deflected my arm and struck me in the joint, causing me to drop the knife on the floor between us as pain radiated up the limb.

He grabbed me by the throat and started choking me, forcing me down to the floor, but stopped once I punched him in the knee with everything I had. The padding he wore around his legs softened the blow, but he backed off, putting distance between us and allowing me to see him for the first time. My attacker was huge, nearly seven feet tall, and probably weighed twice what I did. He was an imposing figure, even without the body armor and combat fatigues.

“You’re going to get killed by a human,” he said with a slight smile. “How many of my kind get to say that they killed
a sorcerer?”

“You’re human?” I said, rubbing my neck. He was massively strong and, because my own natural abilities were unattainable for the moment, someone I probably didn’t want to go hand-to-hand with.

He stalked forward, limping slightly when he put weight on his knee. I moved back into the kitchen, forcing the large man into a much smaller space than we’d had in the hallway.

“Nowhere to run,” he said with a grin.

“You too, dumbass,” I said and flung open the fridge door, right into his face, before kicking out again at his injured knee. He staggered back as the door swung closed, but regained enough poise to throw a punch. I grabbed a paring knife from the kitchen counter and dodged the blow, pushing the blade up into the larger man’s forearm, twisting it, and pulling it out.

Blood poured from the wound, and he roared in pain. He was lucky I hadn’t nicked an artery. He staggered back and I moved toward him, grabbing my dagger from the ground and throwing the paring knife at him, which he dodged with ease. There was a look of rage in his eyes; he wasn’t used to being on the business end of an ass kicking.

As he stepped back, he removed his belt and tied it around his arm, making a makeshift tourniquet so he wouldn’t bleed too much. His left arm was useless, though. I thought about charging forward, taking the fight to him, but there was no way he wasn’t expecting it, so I turned the dagger so that the blade was pointing to my elbow and settled into a fighter’s stance while he took out his own combat knife.

The serrated edge of his knife was black, and it had a slight curve at the top. It was an evil-looking blade, designed purely to cut and hurt as much as possible. He kicked aside the chair I’d been using earlier and motioned for me to come get him.

I’d checked both sides of the hallway before entering the library, and had discovered it was all clear, but as I took another step, the man grinned, and I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I ducked just in time to see a blade come hurling at me from the roof above. I spun and threw my dagger up at him, catching him in the eye. He pitched forward, landing face first on the carpet behind me, with a noise I’d have rather not heard, as his orbital bone shattered from the impact of the dagger’s hilt against the floor.

The momentary distraction gave the larger man the time he needed, and he shot forward, low and fast, swiping the dagger up at my throat. I moved aside, pushing his arm away with the palm of my hand and striking him in the throat with the other. He whipped the knife back toward me, barely missing a beat, and once again I blocked the knife, but he switched his grip and pushed the blade across my palm, causing my hand to burn from the silver his blade contained.

He followed through, plunging it toward my stomach, but I moved aside, putting a little distance between us as I edged back toward the end of the hallway. I flexed my fingers. My palm hurt, but it wasn’t a deep wound. I was certainly losing less blood than my opponent.

No magic, no weapon, and fighting a much stronger opponent. I had to admit I’d been in better situations. And then half a dozen more armed guards entered the house. “For fuck’s sake,” I said to no one in particular. “Guys, you really don’t want to be here right now. I’d run.”

I placed my index finger against the blood on my opposite palm and then drew the dwarven rune on my opposite forearm. Magic flowed back into me, and I smiled. I wasn’t sure how much I had left, but I either used it or I died. And I was damned if the second choice was even an option.

“Too late.” I extended my hands and lightning leaped from them. White-hot, terrible lightning that destroyed whatever it touched, turning my knife attacker into a smoking hunk of jerky in seconds and turning the hallway into one long killing floor. The other guards died before any of them even got a shot o
ff. Th
e magic sprang between the walls, tearing the cell apart until I stopped it.

I stepped over the sizzling corpses of the guards as I made my way toward the front door, where I was greeted by a burst of machine gun fire, tearing through the open front door. I was about to launch myself through the door when the bullets stopped, replaced by a gurgling noise. I risked a glance through the h
oles th
at now littered the door and saw Justin face first
on th
e floor. A pool of blood was spreading out from beneath his head, which had an arrow sticking out of the back of it.

Diana walked up to the body, placed a foot on the back of his head, and with a terrible squelching noise, removed the arrow, taking a chunk of something unpleasant with it.

I stood and walked around the door as she cleaned the arrow on Justin’s back.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Was that lightning coming out of the doorway?”

I nodded.

“Wow, look who got all grown up,” she mocked with a smile.

“Pandora’s gone. Someone in a helicopter came and picked her up.”

“Any idea where she is?”

Tommy and Sky came through the door, Tommy in his full werebeast, the fur on his paws covered in blood. Sky had no blood or injuries on her at all and barely looked like she’d been doing anything, although the idea of Sky sitting a fight out was unimaginable. And then I saw her knuckles and knew the blood on them wasn’t hers.

“You got cut?” Sky asked, pointing to my hand. “And you’re covered in blood.”

“This will be fine,” I said, lifting my hand. “And the blood isn’t mine. Most of it, anyway.”

“Any idea where she’s gone?” Tommy asked, his voice deep and accompanied by a low growl.

“Yeah,” I said. “She’s gone somewhere public where Hera and everyone she values will be.”

“The book fair that Aphrodite mentioned,” Sky said. “When does it start?”

No one had a clue.

“Let’s find out,” I said. “And get Hades—we’re going to
need him.”

“Why? I thought you didn’t want him near her,” Tommy pointed out.

“Yeah, but that was here, when he could have been enthralled. There are going to be thousands of people at that book fair, and the four of us can’t control that many. We need some big guns to keep the people she enthralls from killing anyone, or
themselves
, while I deal with Pandora. Preferably before she decides to end our way of life and start a fucking war.”

CHAPTER
38

S
ixty-four people died that night. Twenty-two of them were innocents in the wrong place at the wrong time. The rest w
ere trait
ors. Brutus had trusted Justin to employ and manage his security staff, and he’d been rewarded with a group of people who were just waiting for the signal to turn on their supposed employer and kill those they worked with. No one dared explain the irony of that statement to a man who’d been on the other end of the betrayal in quite spectacular fashion in the past.

To suggest that Brutus was livid was an understatement. Once the tranquilizer had worn off, he’d destroyed his flat, tearing the furniture to pieces. Diana had eventually calmed him down, and after an hour we all found ourselves sitting in a meeting room on the third floor. Brutus sat at the head of the lengthy table. Diana sat between Sky and Tommy. Hades and Persephone, who’d both been flown in by Avalon, sat on the other side with me.
Licinius
had survived his attack and was apparently less than happy about being left out of the meeting, but seeing that he couldn’t walk or even talk for long, it was probably for the best.

Everyone had cups of tea or coffee. It was still dark outside, but I doubted anyone was going to be getting much sleep for the next few hours. There wasn’t long until the book fair took place, and we had to prepare.

“So, you’re sure the book fair at Earls Court is her target?” Brutus asked me.

“Aphrodite told us that they were all going to be there. It’s a big deal for them. And there will be a lot of people for Pandora to use as cover. Clearly some parts of the Vanguard are helping her, so we can expect armed resistance. Pandora knows we’re not going to want a bloodbath.”

“How long has she been lying to you?” Hades asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe decades. She’s figured out a way to enthrall a person’s soul, instead of their mind. She told me those who are enthralled don’t show up when scanned by a psychic. Pandora seems more powerful, so expect her to use that against the civilians inside Earls Court.”

“It’s a risk to bring us,” Persephone said.

“It’s a risk not to,” I replied. “You two will be providing ground assistance. Pandora is mine, but I can’t deal with several thousand people in the way.”

“Can you take her out?” Brutus asked.

“She can be hurt, therefore she can be subdued. We have no way of knowing if anyone other than the Vanguard is helping her. And we don’t know who got the Vanguard involved. There will almost certainly be unknown quantities inside the building.”

“You say she wants to show the world that Avalon exists,” Tommy said. “How?”

“Ten thousand people will be in that building. Authors, agents, journalists—all with camera phones. Someone in there is going to get evidence and write about it.”

“We can suppress a lot,” Olivia said from the loudspeaker of the phone on the table in our midst. “But that many people—it’s going be too much to stop everyone from talking about whatever they see. If the world finds out about us, there are gonna be some pretty serious repercussions. Humans won’t like learning that they’re not the top of the food chain.”

“There’d be pandemonium,” Tommy said.

“I thought you people controlled the media,” Brutus said. By ‘you people,’ he meant Avalon.

“We don’t rule the Internet, Brutus,” Olivia said, and to her credit she didn’t rise to Brutus’s comment. “And we’re not a communist state. People can find out about Avalon and the like, but the second anyone broadcasts that knowledge, they get shut down. We make up what—one percent of the entire world’s population? Maybe a little more? Someone in the crowd at the book fair will get it out, and then there will be trouble. My LOA agents will be on hand at Earls Court to contain everyone there and ensure nothing we don’t want leaked gets out. It’s all dependent on you getting Pandora subdued, though.”

“You know, I don’t understand why we just didn’t stick a sorcerer’s band on Pandora centuries ago,” Brutus said. Clearly his temper was getting the better of him again.

“She burns them out,” I explained. “Which you know.”

Brutus gave an exasperated sigh. “So, what’s the plan for containment? She’s not coming back here, I assume.”

“Do you want her?” Sky asked.

“No. She can fucking burn for all I care.”

I noticed a glance between Persephone and Hades.

“What’s the plan?” I asked them.

“Nevada. There’s a facility there where she’ll be kept isolated and away from anything resembling the public. She was threatened with being taken there back in Berlin, but she chose to cooperate. Now she has no choice.”

“You mean Area 51?” Tommy asked. “You’re taking her to an underground prison?”

Area 51, despite various alien theories popular among humans, is actually a giant underground complex where people whom Avalon deems too dangerous to remain free are placed. It’s been up and running for a few decades, and it houses just under a hundred people, most of whom are unable to shut off their dangerous abilities. They’re made as comfortable as possible, but the fact is that the inhabitants are kept mostly isolated and underground.

“I don’t see why you didn’t do that before,” Brutus snapped, seemingly forgetting that it had been his decision to take Pandora back in 1939.

“Because she’s not a mistake we can throw away and forget about,” Hades replied. “The Olympians created her, and it’s our responsibility to ensure she’s dealt with in a humane manner. You seem to forget that Hope is along for this ride; she’s done nothing to incur our wrath. Pandora said that Hope is gone, but I don’t want to believe that.”

“I don’t see Hera or Poseidon around here helping out. In fact, you’re the only one, and if memory serves, you weren’t even involved in her creation.”

“Yes, well, someone has to stop her. If not me, then who?”

“Those responsible for her creation?” Brutus snapped.

“This isn’t getting us anywhere,” Olivia pointed out. “We need to ensure that Pandora gets inside Earls Court before we go in. We can contain the building once she’s inside. We can’t lose the opportunity to take her down. If she escapes—”

Everyone was silent while we contemplated the damage
Pandora
could do in the modern world. No one wanted that
to happen.

“So, the plan’s set,” Hades said. “We’ll await for Olivia’s word that Pandora and her people are inside the place and then intervene. She won’t run; I assure you of that. She wants Hera and her people to pay. She won’t go anywhere until that happens. And she won’t afford them a quick death either. She’ll want to tell them why they’re dying. Once we’re inside, we’ll provide cover for Nate, who will go find her.” Hades turned to me. “If you have to kill her, do it.”

I nodded. I really hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but I knew Pandora wasn’t going to stop her plan without some serious, possibly very final, convincing.

Five hours later, it was 9:00 a.m., and the doors to Earls Court had opened, allowing the beginnings of a huge line of people into the massive building. By 10:00 a.m., thousands of people had gone in, and there was still a massive queue.

“Anyone seen her?” I asked into the microphone attached to the top of my T-shirt.

“Not yet. You sure about this?” Hades asked.

“Positive. She wants lots of witnesses and coverage. Anywhere else won’t work.”

“What if she knows we’re waiting and decided not to bother?” Tommy asked from beside me. We were both, along with Sky, Hades, and Persephone, in a building above the tube station directly opposite the front of Earls Court.

The empty room we were in was one flat in a block currently under construction. Brutus had made a few calls, and suddenly everyone who was supposed to be working there had a day’s
holiday
. The wall on one side wasn’t entirely built, and there were no doors or glass in the windows to keep the wind and drizzle out, but the plastic tarpaulin over the wall meant no one could see us, while we could see out after a few adjustments were made to its position.

“She won’t care that we’re here,” I explained. “By now she has to know that Justin didn’t make it out of Brutus’s building, so she’s down several accomplices. She’ll have to assume the worst: that we got the information we needed before disposing of him. She’ll expect people to try to stop her. She just believes she’s
better
than everyone else. There’s no part of her plan she’s considered where she doesn’t win. She isn’t wired to think otherwise.”

“So at best we’re an annoyance to her?” Sky asked.

I nodded. “We always have been. It’s why when she’s caught she doesn’t fight to escape; it’s why she let the Gestapo take h
er. Sh
e wants to see what we’ll do to her next. She can’t die, so any pain inflicted is only fleeting. She knows eventually she’ll escape, kill everyone who wronged her, and go through the whole thing again. But this time, she finally has specific knowledge of where Hera will be and when. She’s not going to wait another four
thousand
or so years for a second shot.”

The three of us returned to watching the street below for a few minutes until Tommy broke the silence, “You need to name that sphere thing you do in your hand.”

“I assume ‘spinning sphere of magical destruction’ isn’t a good name?”

“It’s not exactly catchy, Nate. It should be one word.”

“I’m not trying to market it, mate,” I pointed out as Sky chuckled. “I think a toy of me with a real spinning sphere of death, is an unlikely action figure.”

“It just feels like it’s begging to be named. There’s a show that Kasey watches—it’s an anime—and one of the characters uses something similar to it.”

“I think Rasengan might be too on the nose,” I said.

Tommy’s mouth dropped open in shock as he stared at me.

“Yes, I’ve seen it. Yes, I know what it is, and no, I’m not c
alling it that.”

Sky’s chuckle broke into full laughter. “Tommy, you’re the geekiest person I’ve ever met. Looks like you’re dragging Nate down with you.”

“We’re moving slowly,” Tommy said. “The anime was a nice surprise, though.”

“Kasey made me watch a bunch of stuff the last time I looked after her,” I explained.

“How much is ‘a bunch’?”

“About two hundred episodes in three days. I sort of got into it,” I admitted.

“Geek,” Sky coughed into her hand.

I turned to Sky. “If I remember correctly, you cried when Spock died.”

Sky stopped laughing. “We need to keep an eye out for
Pandora
. This is serious stuff—no time for joking around.”

She walked to the window while Tommy tried to stop himself from laughing and failed miserably, earning a glare from Sky.

“He sacrificed himself for his friends, damn it,” Sky said. “It was heroic.”

The three of us started to laugh, until Olivia’s voice came through the radio. “Got her. You guys ready to go, or do you need some more bonding time?”

The laughter stopped immediately, and I grabbed my jacket from the back of a nearby chair. “Let’s go catch Pandora.”

We left the construction site and ran across the busy road to a waiting Olivia, Hades, and Persephone.

“My men are trailing her,” Olivia said. “It looks like there’s no one with her, but that doesn’t mean she won’t have help in there.”

Brutus had allowed Olivia to bring her LOA agents into the capital for several reasons. The one he told us was that Avalon needed to capture Pandora because he simply didn’t have the room to store her. But Diana told me before we left that he couldn’t trust any of the guards who were left and wasn’t about make things worse. He had a lot of pieces to pick up when this was all over.

We crossed over to a heavyset man in a suit, standing near the entrance. He nodded at us, and we followed him inside. He couldn’t have been more obviously an agent of Avalon if he’d had it stamped on his forehead, but this wasn’t a stealth mission.

After running up some stairs, we entered the main area of the building, and I was immediately taken aback not only by the size of the place and the number of people there but also
by the she
er level of noise they all made. It took a few seconds to get my
bearings
as I searched the crowd.