“How’d you get on board with so many sirens there?” Zamek asked.
“Viv,” I said. “We dropped into the ocean, and she masked us from their view. Turns out Poseidon’s friends aren’t quite as good at being guards as he’d like to believe.” Viv was the daughter of the Lady of the Lake, who had been murdered by Merlin centuries earlier. She’d helped Mordred retrieve his sword, Excalibur, although I noticed he wasn’t wearing it.
“Excalibur?” I asked, pointing to Mordred.
“It wasn’t exactly the kind of thing I wanted to bring with me,” Mordred said. “If Poseidon had seen it and contacted Arthur to tell him, we might be sailing into a shitstorm.”
“Also, you still don’t like it,” I said.
“And there’s that,” he agreed.
“So is there a second part of this plan?” Remy asked. “Just curious, because I don’t remember the plan involving Nate stabbing the guy with a blade of lightning.”
“How is Poseidon even alive after that?” Hel asked.
“He’s a water elemental,” I said. “A powerful one. Lightning and water don’t mix all that well, but I was pretty sure it wouldn’t kill him.”
“So you didn’t know for certain?” Hel asked. “I like how so many of our plans revolve around just seeing what happens.”
“Sometimes we just have to wing it,” Mordred said cheerfully. “Zamek, this bit is all you, my friend.”
Everyone turned to Zamek, who smiled. Things were about to get geeky.
“So, summoning circles,” Zamek started.
I tuned out. We all knew what they were, we all knew how they worked, but Zamek was someone who found realm gates, summoning circles, and basically anything that the ancient dwarves had been responsible for fascinating. He tended to allow his enthusiasm to bubble over to everyone in the vicinity, and while what he was saying was important, I’d already heard it three times. Once was enough.
The long and short of it was that summoning circles allowed two people to talk in different realms. They were both set up to only work for the people using them, and both parties had to agree for the link to be made. They were dangerous and easy to disrupt. Feedback would kill both involved, and that was only if they were lucky. They’d fallen out of favor, as they took a lot of power to use, and frankly people hated them, but we’d discovered Merlin and his people had begun to use them again.
“How did you know there was a summoning circle here?” Diana asked from the balcony, drawing me back into the advanced lecture on runes and their uses.
“Oh, that was easy,” Zamek said. “We knew that whoever was here was in contact with people somehow, and a lot of Avalon people don’t like technology all that much. Odds were good it was a summoning circle.”
“So you didn’t know for certain?” Hel asked.
“No,” Zamek said. “Not until I just saw the summoning circle in the room next to where we put Poseidon. I can’t hack it, before anyone says anything. It’s literally coded to Poseidon. No one can use it but him, and if they try, they only do it once.”
“So we came here to hopefully figure out what is going on?” Remy asked.
“We came here to stop the sirens and rescue anyone here,” Mordred said. “Discovering that this is all Poseidon is a bit of a bonus. Now we just need to get him to tell us what we need to know and get off this ship.”
“And sink the ship,” Remy said with far too much glee. “Never sunk something this big before. Not even sure how.”
“Is that a good idea?” Diana asked.
“Not much choice,” I said. “The sirens here are in numbers I’ve never seen before, and this ship has been made into a floating sirens’ nest. I’d rather that nest was sat on the bottom of the ocean. If this lands somewhere and people are sent to check it out, a lot will die. We could scrub this whole place clean of them, but that would take days, at best. They’re not exactly the easiest things to hunt, and we don’t have time. This is the best lead we’ve had at figuring out where Arthur is.”
“And if he’s in Avalon?” Chloe asked as she returned.
“Then we need to figure out how to get into Avalon without it becoming a bloodbath,” Mordred said.
“Any ideas?” Hel asked.
“No,” Mordred admitted. “You?”
“Not one,” Hel said.
“Well, this is all going swimmingly,” Remy said, clapping his hands together. “Let’s go talk to the twatnozzle in the other room and see what happens.”
“Nate,” Diana said. “There are sirens at the stern of the ship. They’re keeping their distance for now, but they know we’re here. Are Viv and Tarron safe?”
I nodded and passed Diana a small radio. “Any problems and we’ll hear about it. Besides, we brought backup.”
Diana raised an eyebrow in question. “And who might that be?”
“Irkalla, Kase, and Isis are down there too,” I said. “Between the three of them, I almost pity anyone who tries to pick a fight.”
“I’m pretty sure anyone trying to pick a fight with those three deserves what happens to them,” Remy said. “I thought it was just you, Viv, and Tarron.”
“Well, it was decided that you all might screw up and blow the ship sky-high before we were meant to,” I said mockingly.
Everyone looked at Remy.
“As I mentioned earlier, I’ve never even blown a ship up,” Remy said before pausing for a second. “Okay, there was one time, but that was a boat, so shut up.”
“You okay with Poseidon being in there?” I asked Diana.
“Apart from wanting to tear his face off,” she said without any hint of exaggeration.
I left everyone to continue talking and entered the expansive bedroom, where Poseidon lay on the bed, his hate-filled eyes staring at me as I grabbed a chair from the side of the room and sat on it.
“Nathaniel Garrett,” Poseidon said, the words dripping venom.
“Nathaniel Garrett Woden to you,” I said.
His eyes opened wide in surprise. “You found out who your father was. I heard Odin is dead; that must have been awful. Good.”
I leaned back in the chair. “My father died fighting Avalon. I killed War for what he did. He did not die a good death. If you know who my father is, then I’m going to guess that you know what I really am.”
“A cross-blood mutt,” he snapped.
“If you want to think of me like that,” I said with a shrug as Mordred opened the door and stepped into the room, followed by Hel, who closed the door and leaned up against it.
“You’re both monsters,” Poseidon said. “Created from blood magic to be weapons. You’re unnatural. Hera told me about you centuries ago.”
“I assumed as much,” I said.
“That lightning hurt,” Poseidon whined.
“Good,” Mordred said. “You murdered a lot of people.”
“As I said before, the sirens did that.”
“And who called the sirens?” I asked.
“Well, me, obviously,” Poseidon said. “You going to unfasten my bonds, or do I have to lie here and stare at you?”