“Who?” I replied.
Apep smiled again. I was getting really sick and tired of seeing that. “Don’t worry, Nathan. You’ll be singing all of your secrets soon enough. Baldr will definitely want to talk to you before the day is over. And I don’t think you’ll like the way he asks questions.”
An image of my friend Mordred popped into my head. He’d been asked questions by Baldr for years, breaking his mind and spirit along with his body. Baldr knew how to keep you alive, how to make you suffer far beyond what you might think was possible. On top of that, I was pretty sure that the second Baldr saw me, he was going to recognize me, and then all hell was going to break loose.
Come on, magic, I thought to myself. If there was ever a time for you to burst free and come back into my life, now is a good time. But still nothing happened. Erebus, if you’re still in there, come say hi. I could really do with the help. Nothing happened, not that I’d expected it would, and I looked out the window, hoping to figure out exactly how I was going to get out of this mess. I was being driven to meet the man who would torture me to death. Who would kill Brooke without a second thought. Who would get information out of us, because no one stayed silent forever. And once he had that, he was going to kill Frigg and everyone protecting her. And I had no magic to stop it. I sighed. It turned out being human could really suck.
Chapter Eighteen
NATE GARRETT
The drive took a few hours, but thankfully, Apep stayed quiet for most of it, and the Harbingers were about as conversational as a brick wall. A long time ago I’d gone through their mental training regime, although at the time I’d had no idea, as it had been forced upon me under some misguided attempt to make me a better warrior. I understood why Harbingers tended to socialize only with other members of the same order—those who understood the kinds of things they’d gone through—but I also knew that it helped them appear scary and mysterious to anyone having to deal with them.
The car stopped, and the door beside me was opened. The Harbinger gave me a shove out onto the tarmac next to a huge hangar that I’d seen through binoculars only a day ago. There were oil drums still burning next to the warehouse, but all other signs of the frivolity that had occurred were gone.
The smell of cooked meat wafted through the air, and my stomach growled in response. The Harbinger forced me to my knees on the snow-covered ground, with Brooke joining me a few moments later.
“This isn’t going to end well, is it?” she asked.
“Nope,” I said, looking over at the buildings next to the nearby field. There was no way we could make it over there without being killed or captured. For now we were at the mercy of Avalon and their cronies.
Robert Saunders exited through the open door of the hangar and walked over to us. “Hello, Nathan and Brooke,” he said, clapping his hands together. “We were only meant to have Daniel and Jessica today, but this is a nice surprise.”
“How’d you find them?” I asked. “Just curious.”
“We had a trace on the phones of the Kuro family. It seems that Daniel needed to contact his other grandchildren to let them know he was okay. And then we got them. Don’t worry; we don’t need to go after anyone else. We have all we need right here. Shame about the innocent lives, but if Jessica hadn’t been a bitch all those years ago, we wouldn’t be here now.”
“This is a lot of effort to get revenge for being dumped,” I said.
Robert crouched down to my level and grabbed my jaw in one of his hands, forcing me to look at him. “She humiliated me. She fucked another man and then left me. People laughed at me behind my back. That kind of behavior can’t go unpunished. Took me a long time to find her, though, as she went off grid. And then we were sent here for another reason, and I found them. Call it coincidence, but I like to think of it as fate. I get to come here and deliver the justice I need, and I get to do my job at the same time. Everyone wins. And on top of it all, we found out that Frigg was in Portland, and so Baldr came along for his own little mission. I’d already been looking into Clockwork and knew I needed help doing my job, so I hired some local talent.”
“Hence the Nazis,” I said. “Although they’re not exactly local, are they? I’ve never seen them before.”
“Yes, hence the Nazis,” Robert repeated. “They’re from all over several states. I brought them together to be something more than the ineffectual small groups who met in dingy bars in the middle of nowhere. A few of them, Bryce, Jackson, and several others, they lived in Clockwork as kids. It wasn’t hard to get them to go back and do what I needed. They’re idiots, but they really hate people who aren’t white, and they really like money. Surprisingly the second one more than the first. Bryce is looking forward to seeing you.” He looked over at Brooke. “And Addison is . . . chomping at the bit to get back in touch with you, Brooke. We’re all really looking forward to the reunion.”
“Why are your eyes yellow and black?” I asked. “I didn’t notice it the last time we met. Does it only happen when you’re emotional?”
Robert smiled at me. “That is a surprise I’m almost shaking with excitement about. Why don’t you both join me at the facilities around the rear of the hangar? I think you’ll like this.”
Apep hauled me to my feet as the Harbingers did the same to Brooke.
“Quick question, Apep,” I said as Robert strolled off in front. “Why are the KOA using humans? I thought that Avalon was all about only using the best.”
“Humans are helpful,” he said. “They can go places we can’t. Runes can’t take power that doesn’t exist.” He shoved me into the hangar wall hard enough to knock the air out of me. “Sorry, slipped.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “Not everyone is capable of simple things like walking.”
Apep’s eyes narrowed, and he shoved me inside the hangar, which instead of containing a plane was actually a garage for a dozen cars, most of which appeared to have seen better days.
I was marched through the throng of people working on the vehicles and out through the rear of the hangar, across a hundred meters of tarmac to the field beyond, where someone had constructed a much smaller version of a coliseum.
The structure was horseshoe shaped, with the open end pointing toward the hangar. There was a tall chain-link fence that separated the staggered seating area from the arena floor, which mostly seemed to consist of the frozen field. The whole thing was big enough to seat a few hundred people comfortably, and the arena floor itself was about the same size as two wrestling rings placed side by side. A pickup drove toward the arena, with a man standing in the back holding an AK-47. The pickup had a large cage in the back, although I couldn’t see what was inside due to the black tarp that partially covered it.
As we reached the edge of the field, I spotted Jess and Daniel in the front row of spectators, with Robert standing behind them at the top of the seating, looking down on the full arena as if he were a Roman emperor.
“I’d just like to welcome Nathan Carpenter and Brooke Tobin to the festivities,” Robert said.
“I’m going to enjoy this,” Apep said from behind me before walking away to take his seat.