Adrestia tried to launch herself at me again, but Baldr kept hold of her. “We will give him to Arthur and Hera,” he said. “They will let you watch as he is torn to pieces. They will probably let you have a go yourself, but for now, he remains in one piece. Am I clear?”
Adrestia stared at me with a burning hatred behind her eyes. “Agreed,” she said, radiating anger. “But if he becomes a problem, I’ll put him down hard.”
“Heaven forbid,” I said, climbing back into the chair and wincing.
“You’ll get your chance,” Baldr said, shoving Adrestia out of the room and closing the partially broken door behind her.
“She’s just as nice as I remember,” I said.
“She would make you suffer given the chance,” Baldr said, picking up the chair he’d been sitting on before Adrestia had knocked it out of the way to get to me. He put it back in front of me. “She’s not officially a part of Avalon. It means she can be disavowed if she gets caught doing anything awful, like killing large numbers of humans.”
“What are you going to do, then?” I asked. “We just going to talk about things until I want to stab myself in the ears?”
“You will not be harmed while I’m here,” he said. “You will be kept safe until all of my plans are done, and then you’ll be taken into Portland to witness the deaths of everyone you care about.”
“Why do you have a grendel?” I asked, completely ignoring his posturing.
“What?”
“The grendel,” I said slowly and slightly more loudly than necessary, as if I thought he was especially stupid. “Why do you have one?”
“You don’t know?” Baldr asked.
“If I knew, I wouldn’t have asked, dumb ass,” I said.
He punched me in the stomach, and I tried exceptionally hard not to show it hurt as much as it did, but I still had to gasp for several seconds.
“Grendels are rare,” Baldr began. “And there’s an entire . . . pack, I guess, of them in the forest around Mount Hood. Eight in total, we think—enough to ensure that we have a steady supply of blood for generations to come.”
“You’re weaponizing their blood,” I said.
Baldr smiled. “Very good, Nate. Yes, we are. You see, when injected into a human, grendel blood gives you an increase in strength, speed, durability—basically everything you could want in a human soldier. The first time is . . . rough, I’ll admit, but over time we can make an army of humans who are actually better than human. But we messed around with the blood and created a way to give it to a lot of humans in a short period of time.”
“Airborne,” I said. “That’s what the smell was in the pharmacy.”
“Yes, that’s exactly it,” Baldr said with enthusiasm. “I’ve seen the film of those humans tearing each other apart in seconds; it’s very entertaining. We came to find more grendels, and we found Jess for Robert. And obviously, my mother is in Portland. You’re going to tell me exactly where.”
“Am I bollocks,” I said.
Baldr slapped me across the face, knocking me out of the chair. “For someone in the predicament that you’re in, you’re just a little too smug, I think.”
I rubbed my jaw. “I’ve been tortured by the very best the world has to offer,” I said, remaining on the floor. “Then I killed them. Guess where this is heading.”
Baldr laughed. “You’re human,” he said. “What are you going to do, make my fists ache when I beat you to death? And you couldn’t even do that because I heal so quickly.”
“Avalon arranged the protests, didn’t they?” I asked. “It feels like something you’d do to get your enemies in one place.”
“Not all of them,” Baldr said. “In fact, most of them we just hijacked and told everyone that they were violent toward our forces.”
“That can’t possibly go on forever,” I told him.
“Oh, it won’t. Portland will be the last protest.”
“You’re going to use it to get more powers at a government level, yes?”
Baldr laughed. “You worked for Merlin for a long time; you know how he thinks.”
“Get the enemy to do the work,” I said. “Get the government to welcome you with open arms and allow you to take control. Yeah, I’ve been there before.”
“You going to tell me it won’t work?”
I shook my head. “We both know it’ll work. You do something in Portland so big that the world sits up again. You’re going to use the grendel-blood thing to drive people crazy, aren’t you?”
“Partly,” he said with a smile. “The rest is just a big surprise.”
He got up, opened the door, and left me alone until he returned a short time later with Robert in tow.
“Hi, Rob,” I said. “Baldr thinks you’re a dick.”
Robert looked at Baldr, who nodded, so the former walked across the room and planted a kick to my ribs.
“You see, Nate, I can’t be seen attacking you,” Baldr said. “The punch earlier was one of anger, and I can’t allow that to happen again. I might lose control and really hurt you, and then Hera would know, and Arthur would certainly not be happy. But if you were roughed up by guards, well, that’s out of my control. Also, Adrestia and I would be able to kill you with one punch, and that would be far too quick. It’s better this way.”
Robert slammed on my already-broken ribs, causing me to cry out.
“You’re saying I shouldn’t have asked about the grendels?” I asked as I took another kick, this time to the back.
“Robert, do not kill him,” Baldr said.
The beating didn’t last long, and it mostly consisted of Robert methodically kicking me in the ribs and back. Occasionally, he stamped on my arms or legs, but he never did anything that would result in serious long-term injury.
“Today, this town will burn,” Robert said, crouched beside me. “Metaphorically, anyway. We’ve got plans for a large test run of the grendel blood.”
“You haven’t used it before?” I asked, unable to keep the surprise out of my voice.
“Not at large public gatherings,” Baldr said. “We’re going to film it so that Arthur can sign off on our plan to give it to humans. Right now, we’re just in the planning stages. Clockwork has happily agreed to be our first guinea pig.”
“And if it works, then the protests?” I asked.
“Got to keep checking those variables,” Baldr said. “We’ve had a lot of people using it in isolation, but it’s time to go big or go home.”
“And obviously, you want to kill your mummy,” I said. “I assume because you were so shit at it the first time.”
Baldr punched me in the jaw, knocking me to the ground. “You know nothing,” Baldr almost screamed.
“You know, you suck at not hitting me,” I snapped.
He went to kick me, but Robert surprisingly stopped him, presumably so Baldr didn’t actually kill me.
“You want to start Ragnarok, and you think that your mum’s death will accomplish that,” I said. “But you’re delusional, because Ragnarok isn’t going to happen. There are no end-of-the-world myths that are anything more than tall tales.”