“What the hell are they?” I asked as one of the two men looked at Sheriff King’s body with what could only be described as hunger.
“Wendigos,” Chris said grimly. “They’ll eat every corpse in this house by sunrise. Trust me when I tell you you do not want to be here for that. I’ll go see Fred and leave my associates to deal with the wendigos.”
I’d heard about wendigos being used to clean up particularly incriminating crime scenes over the years. Hence the masks—better safe than dead.
“There’s a young boy and teenage girl in the house,” I said. “Neither of them needs to see all this.”
“Take them to yours,” Chris said. “It’s safe for now. No one knows you’re alive, because the only person who did is now dead. I get the feeling you’ll have some explaining to do.”
“I can’t lie about this,” I said.
“I agree, so don’t,” Chris told me as the occupants of the house came out. Jess carried Simon, his face buried in her shoulder, as they walked over to the nearby double garage and went inside.
“Where do we go now?” Donna asked.
“You’re all coming to mine,” I said.
“You’ll be safe there,” Chris told them. “How are all of you?”
“I took one in the shoulder to go along with the one in the ribs,” Brooke said. “They hurt.”
“I have some medical supplies at home,” I said. “We’ll get you patched up.”
“And explain exactly who you are,” she said, clearly trying not to look at the dead body of Orestes.
“Yeah, that too.”
“Take care,” Chris told me as we got into the car. “At some point Orestes’s death is going to lead people to you. They weren’t here for you, but they will be now.”
“Feel like telling me exactly who they are here for?”
“Later,” Chris said. “We’ll talk later.”
Back home, after ensuring everyone was settled and the security sensors were all functioning, I had a long, hot shower and changed into some clean clothes. After taking a glass and bottle of whiskey outside to the conservatory, I sat on one of the wicker sofas and switched on the heater. I poured a small measure of whiskey and knocked it back, allowing the warmth to fill me.
It took an hour for Ava to arrive to join me. “Jess will be along shortly,” she said, sitting next to me.
And true to her word, Jess was soon along. She put a blanket over Ava and sat in the wicker chair next to the sofa.
“Anyone else?” I asked.
“My grandmother is asleep with Simon,” Jess said. “And I think she already knew you weren’t who you said. My grandfather has finished patching up Brooke and went to wash up.”
“We’ll wait for Brooke, then,” I said.
Brooke arrived shortly after, while Jess and Ava chatted about Ava’s attempts to talk with the shinigami. Brooke had a blanket wrapped around her and an empty glass in hand. She took the bottle of whiskey from the table next to me and poured herself a huge measure.
“This everyone, I assume?” I asked.
“Think so,” Brooke said. “Time for the truth.” She sat on the second sofa on the other side of the conservatory.
“Okay,” I began. “Well, first of all, my real name is Nathaniel Garrett, and this is going to be a long story.”
Chapter Ten
LAYLA CASSIDY
Realm of Helheim
A few hours had gone by before Tarron eventually returned to the library. He looked excited, which wasn’t exactly something anyone had gotten used to over the short time they’d known him.
“We can do this,” he said, laying out the elven markings that Layla had given him.
Kase nudged Harry in the shoulder, and he woke with a start. “Sure, what’s up?” he asked, looking around.
Hyperion had also rejoined the team, with a sheepish-looking grin.
“What’s the plan?” Layla asked Tarron.
“I need to create a new elven realm gate from this realm to there,” he said, rubbing his chin. “Unfortunately, this isn’t as easy as it has been before.”
“Why?” Harry asked.
“Well, I still need blood to make it work,” Tarron said.
“There are a multitude of dead bodies all over this realm,” Kase said. “They’re still being buried, so I don’t think that part will be an issue. Gross and awful, but not difficult.”
“Okay, well, we need somewhere bigger. Much bigger than anywhere inside the city. And somewhere that Hel won’t mind possibly destroying.”
“Possibly destroying?” Zamek repeated.
Tarron nodded. “These markings that Seshat gave Layla are locks. They’re essentially designed to make sure that no one goes in and out without suitable levels of power, or they know the exact key. This doesn’t have the exact key. This has the destination runes, which means I can get us to Jotunheim because there’s an elven realm gate already created on the other side, but it’s locked.”
“And you know that how?” Hyperion asked.
“There has always been a realm gate there,” Tarron said, removing a book from the pile beside him and opening it. “But more specifically, this here says that there’s a realm gate there. It also says that it was locked, although not by whom.”
“And all of this means?” Harry asked.
“Well, I don’t know the key,” Tarron said, closing the book. “So our choices are . . . one: go through the realm gate without bypassing or using the rune that corresponds to the lock in Jotunheim, and we all die horribly. Or two: we use enough power to break the lock on their end.”
“Define enough power,” Layla said.
“Well, we’ll need somewhere with”—he looked down at the writing on his paper—“approximately sixty-two thousand five hundred square feet of space. Also, when we go, we’ll be destroying everything in that space.”
“Oh,” Kase replied with a slow, methodical nod, as if she was thinking about it. “That would be bad.”
“I believe Hel would say so, yes,” Tarron said.
“Right, you find a place; we’ll talk to Hel,” Hyperion said.
“We’ll help Tarron,” Kase said.
“Yes, I’m fascinated about this whole thing,” Harry said. “I know that’s not the most important part, but my brain likes what it likes.”
Hyperion and Layla left the others to it and made their way into the city of Niflhel. The bustle of the people who lived in the city was a stark contrast to when Layla had first arrived. The civilian population had lived under the mountain at the rear of the city while the city itself had been a giant military installation. Layla found it surprising that so many thousands of people had moved back into the city and started their lives again in such a short space of time.
She looked up at the orange-and-red sky, something that had only a few weeks ago seemed alien to her. Now it barely got a second glance.
“You look concerned,” Hyperion said as they walked along the cobbled streets to the hall where Hel and her advisers worked.
“Sometimes I remember I’m only twenty-three,” Layla said. “And some of you are thousands of years old, and I’m in charge. And that’s . . . weird to me.”