Steve McHugh - Born of Hatred

"And I shall shout at him until he relents," Gordon said, taking out a cigar and lighting it. "It's a dreadful habit, but we all have our vices."

"So, do you plan on answering my question?" Matthew asked.

"Yes," I told him. "I'm really the Hellequin. Did you expect me to be taller?"

Matthew shook his head. "More intense. I thought you'd be all fire and brimstone. Do you really think we can get Kasey and Tommy back in one piece?"

"Yeah, I do. Peter wants Olivia to suffer, so he's not going to do anything until she arrives. He won't want to jeopardise his revenge."

"Matthew," Gordon said, and pointed over to a young man who was running toward us.

"Yes, Simon?" Matthew said to the newcomer.

Simon stood up straight, clearly proud at being spoken to by the alpha of his pack. He was well over six feet tall; if he'd brought a few more wolves like him, I knew we'd have a greater chance of getting Tommy and Kasey out without injury. "The wolves are here," Simon said, "Everyone who wanted to fight came, more than fifty in all."

"Over fifty werewolves?" I asked, shocked.

Matthew smiled. "Let's go see my army."

I watched Matthew and Gordon walk off with the young werewolf, and decided to take Matthew’s old spot under the tree and make a quick call to the local hospital. It took me several minutes to find out if Sara had been admitted there, and I was finally put through to the correct department after explaining that I was her colleague and wanted to know how she was doing.

The nurse told me that Sara had a concussion and was groggy, but she was awake. She then took great pains to explain that she was to have no visitors except family for the remainder of the day, which considering how late it was didn't surprise me.

I hung up the phone with the knowledge that Sara was okay, and sighed. Reid and his cohorts were going to pay for everything they'd done, but knowing that Sara was in no danger took a weight off my mind.

"Sara okay?" Sky asked as she sat on the grass next to me.

"I'm going to make you wear a bell," I told her. "And, yes, they say she'll be okay."

"Good." Sky was silence for a few seconds. "Are you?"

"I'm going to make them pay," I said without emotion.

"My father told me about the necromancy. You don't think you can use it to kill the lich, do you?"

I said nothing.

Sky shifted from next to me and sat in front, taking my hands in hers. "Nate, promise me, you won't try to kill him by yourself. Promise me. You may have some necromancy ability, but there's no way of knowing what you can do and no way of knowing how it will work. You cannot beat this lich by yourself."

"Sky-”

"Promise me, damn it."

"I promise I won't try to kill him alone. I'll leave him for you."

Sky's shoulders slumped in relief and nodded briefly before releasing my hands. "I thought I'd lost you ten years ago, when Mordred erased your memories. We all searched, but couldn't find you. You didn't tell anyone what you were doing, that you were going after Mordred alone. We had no clue where to even start looking. I thought… Nate, I thought you'd died. I don't want to go through that again. I missed you."

I reached out and pulled Sky toward me, embracing her tightly. "I'm not going anywhere," I told her after we pulled apart.

"You're one of my closest friends, so don't do anything stupid," a faint smile crept onto her face.

"Do you remember the last lich we went up against, the one in Montana?"

"I was grateful my father was there. You were shocked."

"Well, you could have mentioned he was your dad."

Sky laughed. "Whatever happened to those kids?"

"Wapi and Tala went to live with their family on a ranch, I stayed around long enough to help clean up and make sure everything was cleared with any authorities who showed up to investigate. We all made a lot of noise that day."

"Burning a whole town to the ground will do that. Did you ever look in on Sam again, I mean after you gave him your horse and everything?"

"He went to live in California, found some gold, made some money, had a nice family. Before he left Montana, I gave him an address in Avalon to contact me in an emergency. He sent me a letter years later telling me he would like to say goodbye. He had some disease, I never learnt what. I arrived just before he died, and said my good-byes. That was 1941; the day Pearl Harbour was attacked."

"You saved him," Sky said. "He was a good kid and you made sure he stayed that way. You helped destroy the lich that day so that people could live on and have families. We'll do the same today."

I kissed Sky on the forehead. "Thank you."

"Just be careful tonight," Sky said as she stood and stretched. "Olivia sent me out here to find you. She's got some blueprints you may be interested in."

I smiled. "I guess this is where I divulge my plan."

"You have a plan?" Sky chuckled. "And I thought you just winged it."

"Not this time, everything is going to be planned out."

"Care to share?" Sky asked as we walked back to the house.

"I don't have the finer details," I said. "But the basic premise is we kill them. Every single motherfucking one of them."

We found Olivia, Matthew and Gordon huddled over a table in the dining room. It wasn't until I got closer that I could see the A3 sized print outs of the blueprints Olivia had said she'd find.

"How'd you manage to get copies of these?" I asked as I thumbed several sheets.

Olivia removed her phone from her jeans pocket and waved it in my direction. "I can access the LOA files for the building wirelessly. I knew we kept blueprints of where everything was. Now do you mind telling us all what you wanted them for?"

I flicked through the pages until I found one which showed one of the sub-basements. "Your LOA building is equipped with a similar system to the one Tommy uses. It removes the abilities of everyone who enters, unless you're wearing one of those anti-sorcerer band things," I said, bringing the sheet of paper to the top and pointing at one corner of it.

Everyone stared at where I pointed.

"That's the third floor security room," Olivia said. "There's nothing there except…" Olivia smiled. "You want to disable the security system allowing everyone to use their abilities inside the building."

"Bingo," I said. "There's no way in hell that Peter is going to come out and face us. That means we need to go in. Actually, it means I need to go in."

The shouting that followed was expected, but even so we didn't have time to argue. "Listen," I said over the din. "I have to be the person to go into the building."

"Why?" Olivia snapped.

"You promised me, Nate," Sky said. "About half hour ago, you said you weren't going to fight the lich."

"Okay, let's calm down and let Nate talk," Gordon said.

I thanked Gordon. "Right, Olivia you can't go into that building. For one thing you're the only one who knows the way to get into that security office, you're the only one of us who has been there." I removed another page and pointed to an exit at the side of the building. "You'll need to enter here, as you can't go down by lift. You know the combinations for any numerical locks. And Sky has to go with you, because she's the only one of us who knows how to disable this kind of system. It’s not like flicking a switch; you’ll need to break specific connections to the runes around the building. And you’ll have to do it in a specific order."

"It's similar to the one my father uses," Sky said. "In fact it looks like yours might be based on his. But that still…"

"Just wait, before you start yelling again," I said. "Sky knows how to disable the security and Olivia knows how to get there, that leaves me to get Tommy and Kasey away from the very dangerous lich before he kills them."