Hellequin Chronicles 4: Prison of Hope Read online

  By Steve McHugh

  Crimes Against Magic

  Born of Hatred

  With Silent Screams

  Infamous Reign (A Hellequin Chronicles novella)

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2015 Steve McHugh

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by 47North, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and 47North are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 978-1477828595

  ISBN-10: 1477828591

  Cover design by Eamon O’Donoghue

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014955279

  For Harley, our very own little Quinzel.

  CONTENTS

  LIST OF CHARACTERS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  LIST OF CHARACTERS

  Flashback

  Nathan (Nate) Garrett: Sorcerer. Once worked for Merlin as the shadowy figure Hellequin.

  Lucie Moser: Half enchanter. Employee of Hades.

  Kurt Holzman: Werebear. Employee of Hades. Married to Petra.

  Petra Holzman: Werewolf. Employee of Hades. Married to Kurt.

  Selene: Dragon-kin. Daughter of the Titan, Hyperion. Sister to Eos and Helios. Married to Deimos.

  Pandora: Created by several gods of the Greek pantheon. Able to enthrall those she touches.

  Hope: Immortal host for Pandora. Was a human girl.

  Magali Martin: Human. Ally of Pandora.

  Helios: Dragon-kin. Brother to Selene and Eos. Son of Hyperion.

  Current Timeline

  Nathan (Nate) Garrett: Sixteen-hundred-year-old sorcerer. Once worked for Merlin as the shadowy figure, Hellequin.

  Thomas (Tommy) Carpenter: Six-hundred-year-old werewolf. Owner of a security company. Nate’s best friend. Partner to Olivia. Father of Kasey.

  Kasey (Kase) Carpenter: Fourteen-year-old daughter of Tommy and Olivia.

  Hades’s Family, Friends, and Employees

  Hades: Necromancer of incredible power. Husband to Persephone and adopted father to Sky.

  Persephone: Earth Elemental. Wife to Hades and adopted mother to Sky.

  Sky (Mapiya): Half Native American. Birth parents murdered when she was a child. Adopted by Hades and Persephone. Necromancer.

  Cerberus: Werewolf. Controls the Tartarus compound when Hades isn’t there.

  Kurt Holzman: Werebear. Ex-employee of Hades. Owns restaurant in Mittenwald.

  Petra Holzman: Werewolf. Ex-employee of Hades. Owns restaurant in Mittenwald.

  Wayne Branch: Guard at the Tartarus compound.

  Avalon Members

  Sir Kay: Director of SOA (Shield of Avalon). Brother to King Arthur.

  Lucie Moser: Half-enchanter. Ex-employee of Hades. Current Assistant Director of the SOA (Shield of Avalon).

  Olivia Green: Director of southern England branch of LOA (Law of Avalon). Water Elemental. Partner to Tommy. Mother of Kasey.

  Witches

  Mara Range: Coven member. Mother to Chloe.

  Chloe Range: Fourteen-year-old daughter to Mara Range. Friends with Kasey.

  Emily Rowe: Coven member.

  Tartarus Inhabitants

  Carion: Ferryman for Tartarus. Member of the Titans.

  Atlas: Siphon. Member of the Titans.

  Cronus: Sorcerer. Husband to Rhea, father of Zeus. Member of the Titans.

  Rhea: Sorcerer. Husband to Rhea, mother of Zeus. Member of the Titans.

  Lorin: Griffin. One of the guards of Tartarus.

  Brutus, Friends, and Employees

  Brutus: Sorcerer. King of London.

  Diana: Half werebear. Roman goddess of the moon, the hunt, and birthing. Brutus’s lieutenant.

  Licinius: Sorcerer. Brutus’s lieutenant.

  Justin Toon: Head of security for Brutus.

  Hera, Family, and Allies

  Hera: Sorcerer. Head of one of the most powerful groups within Avalon.

  Ares: Negative empath. Son of Hera. Husband to Aphrodite.

  Deimos: Negative empath. Son of Ares.

  Demeter: Earth Elemental. Mother of Persephone.

  Aphrodite: Succubus. Wife to Ares.

  Eos: Dusk walker. Sister to Selene and Helios. Daughter of Hyperion.

  Selene: Dragon-kin. Sister to Eos and Helios. Daughter of Hyperion.

  Hyperion: Dragon-kin. Father to Eos, Selene, and Helios.

  Miscellaneous Characters

  Donna Preston: Thirteen-year-old friend of Chloe and Kasey.

  Robert Ellis: Australian. Vanguard member.

  Sarah Hamilton: Witch.

  PROLOGUE

  Berlin, Germany. 1936.

  The two Nazi soldiers stood outside the imposing four-story building, watching those on foot pass them by. The heat from the midday sun must have been hell on them; their shiny, smart uniforms weren’t something I’d want to be wearing when I was standing out in the baking sunshine for a large portion of the day.

  I placed the newspaper, an obnoxious piece of journalism that painted the Nazis as some sort of savior, beside me on the park bench and watched the two men nod to a pretty woman who walked past. The men were young, blond, and everything those in charge would want to show as their master race, whatever the fuck that was meant to be.

  Nearly eighteen years previously, Germany had lost the Great War and was then humiliated by the British, French, Americans, and anyone else who happened to want a piece of their pie. The German people were angry and hurt by what happened, and that allowed someone like Hitler and his merry band of thugs and killers to come into power. It only took a few years for the Nazi flags to fly proudly on every street and for those deemed lesser, in their narrow vision, to be removed from sight.

  For those people the regime had targeted, the Olympics had brought a brief respite, publically at least, but I knew it wouldn’t last. The rumors of people forced to relocate to camps if they were the wrong kind of people, were rife. The rest of Europe, if not the world, had its head firmly buried in the sand, hoping against hope that the frankly obvious war that was looming wouldn’t start anytime soon.

  With the Olympics only
a few weeks away, and the world watching, the Nazis had done the equivalent of putting their hands in the air to show they weren’t carrying any weapons, while pushing a stack of guns under the table with their feet.

  The majority of Germans were good people, but the minority held the power, and they were going to use it to do whatever they liked, no matter how many lives they destroyed in the process. And what they held in the building before me was going to make that destruction a thousand times greater than anything people could imagine.

  As the civilians on the streets thinned out, the sun began to creep toward the west, painting the sky orange and purple. I picked up my fedora from next to the newspaper and after putting it on, walked across the road. There were few cars about, although no matter what country I’d traveled to, more and more seemed to be appearing with every passing year.

  “Guten Tag,” I said to the two soldiers.

  They stared at me, but there was no hostile intent in their body language; they appeared calm and relaxed. “How can we help you?” one of them asked.

  I glanced past them into the empty reception area of the building. “I’d like to speak to Captain Dehmel.”

  The men glanced at each other.

  “This is the Gestapo HQ for Department F, yes? He’s expecting me.”

  One of the men removed a key from his pocket and unlocked the door, holding it open for me to step inside. Both men followed me into the expansive, but empty, foyer; the one closest to me pulled his revolver and aimed it at my head.

  “You will come with us until Captain Dehmel can confirm your appointment.”

  I glanced over at his partner, who had also drawn his revolver. Both men were confident and experienced, and I had no doubt that they’d pull the trigger without hesitation if I gave them a reason.

  I took a few steps and then stopped. “What floor is Dehmel on?”

  “No questions,” the first Nazi snapped, shoving me forward.

  “Are you not listening to us?” the second Nazi demanded when I stopped walking. “We said move or we will shoot.”

  He shoved me again, but I rolled to the side and spun around, pushing his arm aside as he pulled the trigger, so he ended up removing a portion of his partner’s head. The dead Nazi crumpled to the floor, while the sound of the gunshot echoed around the room.

  A split second of hesitation on the part of the second Nazi, presumably brought on from the killing of his comrade, was all I needed, and within moments I’d removed his revolver and hit him in the jaw hard enough to knock him to the floor.

  “Where’s Captain Dehmel?” I asked.

  “Go to hell,” he snapped, so I shot him in the leg. Any pretense of getting to the captain quietly had evaporated the second the first explosion of sound had flown around the floor.

  “Don’t make me ask you again,” I ordered as he writhed on the floor.

  “Fourth floor,” he said immediately through gritted teeth.

  “How do I get there?” I aimed the gun at his good leg.

  “There’s a key to get onto the left stairwell. It’s where all the experiments are run.” With some awkwardness and pain, he fished the sizeable iron key from his belt and passed it over.

  “Danke,” I said.

  “Are you going to kill me?”

  “You never should have taken her,” I said and shot him once in the head, dropping the gun onto his body.

  I picked up my hat, which had fallen to the floor as I’d disarmed the second Nazi, and ran to the left side stairs. I used the key to unlock a silver gate that sat in front of the door and then continued my run toward the top of the building.

  As I opened the door to the fourth floor, the silence hit me. There was no one in the hallway directly outside of the stairwell, and a few seconds of checking the nearest rooms showed there was no one anywhere. I was about to curse my luck and wonder if the Nazi had given me the wrong directions, when I heard the unmistakable sound of a scream, followed by a gunshot.

  I made my way toward the noise, passing by laboratories with doors torn off and blood splattered inside. One room had a blackboard with smudged white chalk on it. What had been intelligible was now covered in blood splatter. Paper littered the floor, and a man sat hunched over in the corner, a puddle of blood underneath him. I took a step into the room as more screams sounded from the far end of the floor, and I quickly changed my mind.

  The entrance, an airlock door, had been scorched and twisted, and was covered in even more blood. A young man lay beside it, a revolver in his hand. As I got closer, I saw the bullet hole in his head. A second man lay farther inside the airlock, his charred remains jamming the opposite door open.

  There was a crash from the room beyond, and I darted inside, confronted with a dozen bodies, most of which appeared to have been bludgeoned or stabbed to death.

  “Hello, Nathan,” a woman said to me as I stepped over the body of a man in a now-red lab coat. “It’s nice to see you again.”

  She was quite beautiful, her olive skin and long dark hair a product of her birth millennia ago. Her deep red eyes were from something much less human. She was naked. To many, she appeared to be a perfect woman; to others, she was the devil incarnate.

  “Pandora,” I said with a slight bow of my head, “it’s good to finally have found you.” Scorch marks licked the remains of the shattered window, and a man in a German officer uniform cowered in one corner, his eyes darting between Pandora and me.

  “Dehmel?” I asked him.

  He twitched slightly and then stood, waving a scalpel in my direction.

  “What’d you do to him?” I asked Pandora. “And where did those burns come from?” Several small fires had been started on the far side of the room, destroying books and documents that been piled up.

  Pandora glanced over at the window and then down at a badly burnt soldier. “We had a friend help us. These men should not have overstepped their boundaries while we were in their company.”

  “I assume you allowed yourself to be taken. You could have left at any time, so why didn’t you?”

  “We wanted to see if they could help us with our needs. Obviously, their helpfulness has ended.” Pandora always spoke about herself in the plural—some people call it “the royal we.” I guessed that was what happened when you stuck a human and a monster in the same body. It took some getting used to.

  She took a few steps toward Dehmel and whispered something to him. He immediately slit his own throat, dropping to the floor beside Pandora, who was busy putting on a pair of trousers and some boots that had been placed neatly on a nearby table.

  “If you’ve got plans to run, Pandora, don’t. It only makes things worse.”

  “Oh, my dear Nathan, things are going to get much, much worse.” After she finished getting dressed and lacing up some army boots, she ran at the window, then jumped through without pausing.

  By the time I’d reached the window, Pandora was speeding away on the back of a motorbike, her helper in control of the machine. I sighed and looked around the room. I walked over to the fires and found several singed documents that hadn’t yet been consumed by the flames, but nothing was intact. More information about North Africa, and something about human test subjects. I put the documents in my pocket and searched for any survivors, but there was no one left alive to help me find Pandora’s destination. And help was the one thing I really needed. Because if I didn’t find Pandora soon, the Nazis would no longer be the worst thing that could happen to Europe.

  CHAPTER 1

  France. Now.

  My mistake came in the form of saying “yes”—a simple, but powerful word that along with its brother, “no,” can do a lot of good or a lot of damage. Once that first word had left my lips, I was duty bound to follow through. I could have come up with an excuse to get out of it—hell, I could have shot myself and said someone was trying to kill me. Should have, would have, could have. Instead, I convinced myself it wouldn’t be bad, that it might even be fun. I was wrong. It
was hell in a carriage.

  I’d agreed, for some foolish reason, which I liked to believe had to do with drugged food and drink, to accompany Thomas Carpenter and his daughter Kasey on a school trip to Germany. Traveling along with my closest friend and his teenage daughter were over a hundred of her school friends, several parents and guardians, and their teachers. All spread out over a four-carriage train.

  Avalon—the hidden true power of our world—arranged the trip, like it did for all Avalon-funded schools. But teenagers are moody and temper prone at the best of times. Throw in the beginnings of their powers, be those magical or otherwise, and you had the makings of a tense atmosphere.

  Many of the kids with parents in attendance pretended that their parents didn’t exist, while most of the parents silently watched their offspring with the attentiveness of an eagle searching for its next victim. Occasionally, one of the teenagers would say something inappropriate and receive a chastised glance or a discreet cough aimed in their direction, which in turn made the teen sigh or roll their eyes. It was like the Cold War all over again. I was half-expecting someone to turn up and start building a really big wall between the two sides.

  Even Kasey, normally one of those rare teenagers who didn’t mind sitting with her parents, was some distance down the ornate train carriage, surrounded by an unknown number of other teenage girls.

  Fortunately for my sanity, I’d decided to take an eBook reader with me. Unfortunately, Tommy didn’t have anything to do, so I’d managed about three pages in the hour and a half since we’d left London.

  I glanced through the touch-activated tinted window beside me, as the scenery flew past. The train’s interior reminded me of the Orient Express: everything was of the finest quality, and no expense had been spared. Despite the antique feel to many of the fixtures and fittings, there was nothing antique about the technology contained within. The exterior was no different; the train looked like one of Japan’s bullet trains and was capable of speeds that easily matched them. Hades’s engineers had worked wonders with the train, which was now in regular use, ferrying school trips from whatever country they came from to the compound in Germany.