“You’re meant to be my friend,” I snapped at him.
“Yes,” Tommy said. “And that’s why I’m here. You need saving from yourself.”
“Liar,” I said, spitting blood onto the ground once more. “You’re here to stop me from what I have to do. What needs doing.”
“You’re delusional,” he said softly, even through his werewolf mouth. “You’ve lost yourself to pain, anger, hate, and hurt. You think that if you somehow drench yourself in enough blood, you’ll either make up for your wife’s death, or you’ll just become numb to it all. But it’ll never be enough, Nate. Not ever. You know this.”
“You think beating me senseless will do the trick?” I shouted.
“I’d hoped to talk,” Tommy said with a sigh.
“Why do they get to live, and Mary dies at the hands of some piece-of-shit English soldier while I’m not there? Why, Tommy?”
“I don’t know,” Tommy said softly. “I wish I did. It’s not fair. It’s not right. But neither is how you’re dealing with it. You can’t stop the hurt inside you by hurting everyone else.”
I threw another punch at my best friend, but he caught my hand again, dragging me toward him, where he enveloped me in a hug, taking us both to our knees.
“No, Nate,” he whispered softly. “No more.”
“Why is she gone, Tommy?” I screamed to the heavens. “I miss her so much,” I whispered, my voice breaking.
“I know,” he said, his own voice cracking and tears running down his face. “I’m so sorry.”
I cried then, for the first time since Mary Jane’s murder. I cried for her, for me, for the horrors I’d inflicted. I cried in a snowy, blood-speckled field in Virginia as my best friend held me and brought me back from the darkness that had enveloped me. And right then and there, I knew there was nothing I wouldn’t do to repay him for that kindness.
Chapter One
MORDRED
Somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean
Now
Mordred stood at the rear of the open cargo door on the heavily modified Airbus A400M Atlas. Hades had made some calls to a few friends who still had access to military equipment and found two identical planes that he’d been able to borrow.
The Atlas’s twin had already made its pass and was on its way back to its base in England. Hopefully without difficulty.
“Don’t tell me you’re afraid,” Hel said from beside Mordred, using her earpiece and mic to communicate over the sounds of the engine.
“No,” Mordred said as the plane continued along above the clouds. “Just hoping this works out as planned.” He touched his cheek, just under where his eye had been ripped out almost a year earlier. The eye itself had grown back, but he still couldn’t see out of it, and occasionally the constant healing itched.
“We have a good team here,” Hel assured him.
Mordred looked behind her at the team. Each of them had joined knowing they were going to do a military free fall, or HALO jump. Few of them had done one previously, and certainly never one that culminated in landing on a moving target. Mordred wasn’t even sure it would be possible, but his air magic was going to ensure it was as smooth a landing as he could make it.
“We ready, then?” Remy the foxman asked as he pulled down the visor on his specially designed mask. He made sure the two black-bladed swords in the sheaths on his back were in place and did the same for the two custom Colt revolvers in holsters against his hips. “I’m looking forward to this.”
“Me too,” Diana said, loading her MP5 with hollow-point silver rounds. As a werebear, she was acting as the muscle of the group, muscle that Mordred was fully aware was going to get a workout, but not everything could be killed by brute force or magic, so everyone apart from Remy carried an MP5.
Heading up the team were Zamek the dwarf and Chloe Range-Taylor, an umbra with the power to absorb and redirect kinetic energy, both more than capable of holding their own. Although Zamek had been less than thrilled about having to wear a face mask for the jump. He held his double-bladed battle-ax in one hand, rolling his shoulders as if about to fight the clouds themselves.
“No one tell him what happens if there’s lightning,” Remy said in a stage whisper.
Zamek gave him a scowl and placed the blade of the ax in a sheath before attaching it to his back.
“We know what we’re here for,” Mordred said to his team.
“Yes, but maybe next time we could pick something to land on that isn’t moving on an ocean,” Zamek said. “Like not a passenger ship.”
“I like his suggestion,” Diana said.
“You all complain a lot more than you did before I was king,” Mordred said as the red lights beside him flashed green.
“We’ll complain more later, if we survive,” Chloe said with a grin. She was the first to jump out of the plane, followed by everyone else, with Mordred last.
He wrapped himself in a shield of air as he fell through the clouds. He spotted his teammates below him and pushed the air out in front of them to ensure that they moved smoothly.
The target was thousands of feet below, a small patch in an ocean of blue. If this went wrong, they’d be hitting the water or the cruise ship fast enough to, if not kill them outright, certainly do a lot of damage. None of them were human, but that didn’t mean that they were invulnerable to being killed or seriously injured.
Mordred had not made his council very happy with his announcement that he’d be joining the mission. They’d wanted him to stay back in Shadow Falls, to help organize the resistance, but as he’d pointed out, the resistance didn’t need him to organize anything. His friends did need his help. Mordred was a target, and landing on this cruise ship was going to make him bait. The mission needed the enemy to be focused on him and his team.
The Harmony of Oceans moved ever closer. The ship was one of the largest in the world. According to the reports, it could hold more than five thousand passengers. Mordred hoped that there would be considerably fewer people aboard to deal with than five thousand.
“If we’re wrong about this . . . ,” Hel said over the comms.
“Then we’ll grab some cocktails, sit on a sun lounger for a bit,” Mordred said. “Nothing wrong with a lovely day out with friends.”
He heard Remy snort through the comms.
Mordred started to hum the theme tune to Final Fantasy IX’s battles as he checked the reading on the altimeter. He had several thousand feet to go before he needed to pull the cord for his parachute, so he continued to watch his friends beneath him, each of their lives in his hands.
The closer they got to the gigantic ship, it seemed to Mordred, the faster they moved. Another check on the altimeter told him he was only a short distance from needing to pull his chute.
Mordred built up a massive amount of magical air around him, pouring more and more power into it, then used the magic to reach out in front of him like a huge invisible hand. He tapped the comm button on his helmet. “Now,” he said.
Everyone pulled their rip cords at once, but there was not enough distance between them and the ship to ensure a safe landing. Not without Mordred’s magic, anyway. He used the air that he’d pushed out in front of his team like a huge brake, slowing them all down as they descended toward the ship and touched down softly on the deck, close to a huge swimming pool.