The vibration of my phone shook the memory away.
'Hello, Nathan,' Peter's voice, his actual voice, was deep and wispy, the sort of voice you'd imagine a snake would have.
'I figured you might call at some point,' I said. 'You want to brag about something really impressive? Killed a few more defenceless werewolves or something?'
'Are you really upset over Neil's death? He was a rapist, a murderer and generally the scum of the earth. I did you a favour.'
'Is that why you paid for his nice penthouse?'
'Paid for?' His laugher sent shivers up my spine. 'I think you're overestimating the cash-flow of a man who recently returned from the dead. You need to look elsewhere for that answer.'
'The answer will wait, then, I guess. So, what do you want, Peter?'
He laughed again, a humourless, evil noise that would have made fingernails on a chalkboard sound like a symphony of elegant beauty. 'How's Olivia holding up?'
'She wants you dead. Again. Preferably on a more permanent basis.'
'We both know she can't do that, but I'll give her the opportunity to try soon enough. But the reason I'm calling is you, Nathan. I warned you to leave this alone. That it didn't involve you. I warned you to run away and never come back. And you not only ignored me, you brought a necromancer with you to end my plans.'
'Sorry about her, her father just insisted I bring someone along to kill you.'
'Her father?'
'Hades,' I said. 'Her father is Hades. So even if you do manage to get away from Sky, what do you think Hades will do to you?'
There was silence for a few heartbeats. 'You think I fear him?'
'That shake in your voice tells me you do, yes. You're not stupid. You hurt Sky, even by accident, and Hades will rain down horror on you that you can barely comprehend. He will tear your soul in two and keep the pieces as a plaything for when he gets bored.'
Peter chuckled. 'He can't come onto English soil. Not without starting a war.'
That surprised me. And the shock of his knowledge quickly turned to concern when I realised that someone had to have educated him on matters of Avalon court. I decided to take a gamble. 'Your friends in Avalon tell you that?'
'My friends tell me all sorts of things. They tell me that you stumbled into this from loyalty to your friends. That was the only reason I was going to give you an out. But you wronged me, and now it's time to pay the price. I warned you.'
'Are you about to blow your old place up?' I asked flippantly as I quickly searched around the room for anything that might suddenly explode.
'I left you a gift, something very important that I think you're going to want to see. I'm looking at it right now. The cliff that lets you look down over the forest. Apparently this place is special for you. Your gift is here. And you might want to hurry. I don't think it's going to keep long.' And the phone went dead.
I don't even remember leaving the apartment. The next thing I knew, I was on the stairs, sprinting to the building's front door as Olivia's calls for me to slow down rang out behind me. I jumped onto my bike and started the engine.
'Nate,' Olivia tried again as she ran down the outside stairs.
I forced myself to stay and tell her about the call.
'I'll get help, they'll follow my GPS,' she said.
I opened the bike's throttle, speeding off toward my destination, weaving between traffic and ignoring traffic cameras and stop lights alike. It didn't take long to reach the outskirts of the forest I'd taken Sara to.
I pulled into the clearing, my heart pounding a beat in my throat. At first I couldn't see anything out of the ordinary. I stopped my bike and climbed off, ignoring the calls in my head to run and find whatever Peter had left for me. The more rational side of me insisted that the lich could still be around, waiting for me to make a mistake.
But my rational thought lost out the second I saw the woman tied to the tree, a hood pulled over her head so that I couldn't make out who it was. I sprinted toward her and pawed at the hood, tearing at the poppers holding it to her coat, ripping it off and throwing it aside.
Sara's beautiful face was untouched apart from a slight bruise on her cheek. But her eyes were closed and I had no idea if she was dead or alive. I forced myself to calm and searched for a pulse on her neck, finding it to be slow, but steady.
I used a small measure of wind magic to create a hardened blade of air and remove the cable ties that held her arms behind her, around the tree trunk. She sagged forward, but I caught her, lowering her to the ground as sirens exploded all around me. I couldn't see any obvious injuries and there were no marks on her bare legs or blood on the blue and white dress.
Olivia's car skidded to a halt near my bike, followed closely by an ambulance. It hadn't been too long ago that I'd had to watch another friend of mine, Holly, be carried away in one of those with life-threatening injuries. It wasn't something I wanted to do again.
The paramedics moved me aside and got to work on Sara. One of them, a young woman, sat with her and asked her questions, tapping her on the shoulders and shouting in her ears in an effort to get a response.
The whole event was a bit like a terrible dream. I watched with horror as nothing the young paramedic did, appeared to rouse Sara from whatever stupor she was in. And then, just as my thoughts turned to the darkest corner of my mind, Sara coughed and opened her eyes.
A flood of emotion crashed down over me and I had to place a hand against the tree until it had eased. Peter, and whoever was supporting him, had taken Sara as a message to me. And for that someone was going to suffer.
Sara's scream from the rear of the ambulance had me sprinting toward it.
'Nate,' Sara said, her voice groggy and soft.
I climbed into the ambulance and sat beside her, as she forced a smile.
'They didn't do anything to me,' she said softly. 'You need to know that. You need to know that nothing that happened here was because of you. I know that's what you're thinking. This is not your fault.'
I nodded, but daren't say anything.
'They're going after Tommy…' she started to say more, but she passed out again. Olivia retrieved her phone from her pocket and started calling.
'It's okay,' I assured her. 'Sky and your agents are with them, they're safe.'
She nodded, but made the call anyway, walking off to talk as I left the ambulance and watched it drive away, before glancing over to the tree to discover a small black bag beside where Sara had been held.
I picked it up, hoping to find something that might tell me where Peter and his men were hiding. I didn't really expect to find anything, but it was either do something pointless that took my mind away from Sara, or I start hurting people to get the answers I needed. And Olivia probably wouldn't have liked that very much.
I glanced up in time to see Olivia's face turn to one of horror as she sprinted toward her car.
Chapter 35
Olivia was in the car and off like a rocket, before I'd even had time to ask what had happened. I raced over to my bike and followed her. Unfortunately, she had a good thirty seconds head-start, but that was soon cut down as I sped through the traffic to catch up. Olivia had her lights and siren going, something the LOA rarely use. Clearly whatever she'd been told was enough to spook her into charging off.
I wasn't worried about Tommy or Kasey; they had Sky and Agent Reid with them, along with half a dozen other agents. And no lich is going to willingly attack somewhere that a powerful necromancer happens to be staying. But Peter wasn't just a lich, I thought. What he had against Olivia was personal. And personal shit often overrode any sense of self-preservation. I opened the throttle further and the speedometer shot upwards, the front wheel of the bike lifting off the road slightly for a moment.
