Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-One

NATE GARRETT

Washington, DC, United States, Earth Realm

The Washington Monument was not created to withstand a blast of pure magical power. Even so, I threw enough to hopefully force Arthur back and put distance between him and his crowd.

Instead, Arthur dragged Demeter into the blast, disintegrating her upper torso. The magic still smashed into Arthur, lifting him off his feet and throwing him back into the monument.

He unleashed his own magic a second later, and the monument began to crumble from the impact of vast amounts of magic.

Shadows continued to leap out of the ground, pulling down the remaining creatures who got too close. Their deaths kept my magic at full power while I calmly strolled toward the monument as it toppled forward.

The crowd of KOA realized they were in deep shit about ten seconds before it hit them. Over five hundred feet of monument crashed down onto the watching masses, most of whom had tried to flee only to find themselves trapped by their own people. Huge amounts of dust and mud were thrown into the air, covering those closest to the impact.

I ignored the screams, the pleas for help. They'd murdered and destroyed with impunity. I figured a monument falling on them was probably about as close to karma as I was ever going to see. Besides, I wasn't feeling particularly charitable at that exact moment.

To compound their misery, the creatures had managed to get free and were—to put it mildly—freaking out. The fight-or-flight instinct had kicked in, and most had run into the park, but quite a few had chosen the direction where the remains of the KOA audience stood. Which meant fresh meat and blood, driving those who went that way into a frenzy.

I ignored the sudden and inevitable betrayal of animalistic monsters and continued on toward Arthur.

Part of the monument had fallen onto him, and I'd reached the earth steps when it exploded, raining pieces of stone and metal all around. A shield of air kept me from being injured in any serious way, but the same couldn't be said for the KOA. It really was turning into a bad day to be a follower of Arthur.

"Why do you insist on ruining everything?" Arthur shouted as I walked up the stairs toward him. He was covered in blood, although whether it was his or Demeter's was hard to tell.

"Bet you wish you'd worn armor," I said. "But you just had to be a show-off. Just had to be sure that everyone knew how powerful you are."

I charged the last few feet, dodging a punch from Arthur, and drove my left elbow into his ribs. He gasped, taking a step back, as I created a sphere of lightning in the palm of my right hand, which I slammed into his chest and detonated.

The platform of earth we both stood on was decimated as the power from the sphere tore it apart, and Arthur was thrown back off the platform, collided with the side of the Washington Monument, and remained there as I picked up a small microphone from the floor, attached it to my lapel, and leaped across the gap, using my air magic to make the jump possible.

Arthur spat blood onto the ground and got to his feet. "You want to complete what you were made for," he said and spat again.

"Your people are dying," I told him as some of them cried to Arthur for help.

"I don't care," he said.

"They can hear you," I said, pointing to the microphone.

"Let them," Arthur sneered. "I don't need them. I don't need anyone. I was born to rule all. I will not let some experiment stop me."

I flicked down a whip of fire toward Arthur, who caught it in one air-wrapped hand, smiling the whole time. "You will have to do better than that."

I removed the fire whip and rolled my shoulders. I created a blade of lightning in each hand and closed the distance between Arthur and me. He rushed to intercept me. I drove one of the blades toward his face, and he blocked it with a shield of blood magic, the tendrils leaping out to wrap themselves around my hand. Pain lanced through me, but instead of trying to pull free, I detonated the magic in the hand that was covered.

Arthur screamed in pain as the lightning tore the blood magic apart, leaving him open for me to drive the second blade into his chest and immediately explode the magic. Arthur headbutted me and drove his own blade of fire into my side, twisting it as I noticed that the clothes he'd been wearing had taken the brunt of the impact from my magic. So he hadn't come quite as unprepared as I'd expected.

I grabbed the arm that had driven the blade just under my ribs and wrapped tendrils of air around it, crushing the limb and trying to block the agony as I moved. Arthur removed his hand and tried to twist away, but I snaked the air around his arm, crushing the limb further before unleashing an electric shock as I activated my lightning magic.

Arthur stepped back again, and I raised my hand to the sky. Lightning streaked down, hit my hand, traveled through me, mixing with the magic inside, and exited through my other hand directly into Arthur.

I kept hold of Arthur as the lightning magic tore into him as if it were a hungry predator. His roars of pain were lost in the maelstrom of noise from the power I threw at him. I didn't see until too late that Arthur had created a sphere of pure magic and detonated it between us.

I was thrown back fifty feet, bouncing along the monument—I hit the ground hard. The pure magic hadn't hurt me; I was as immune to its devastation as Arthur.

I rolled onto my front and got back to my feet. The KOA had all but scattered now, leaving only a few, and they had bigger problems than me.

My hand was a ruined mess but was healing itself quickly enough. Most of the Washington Monument lay on its side along the ground. I started after Arthur, whom I'd last seen running along the remains. I climbed the monument, using air magic to punch holes in the side of it until I'd reached the top. Arthur was gone.

I sprinted toward where I'd last seen him and spotted him running back toward the Lincoln Memorial. I sank into the shadows and darted from light to light, hitting four before I dragged myself back up into the daylight above. I hadn't seen the wraith, but I knew it was there and would always be there when I needed it.

I was thirty feet behind a fast-moving Arthur when the shadows tripped him and he fell to the ground. He saw me running toward him and activated his matter magic, the purple glyphs burning across the backs of his hands as he got to his feet. I activated my own matter magic and slowed to a walk.

"Where's your spear?" I asked him, having only just remembered that he'd had hold of it earlier. "Did you drop it?"

Arthur got to his feet, brushing the grass and dirt off his trousers. "I don't need it to kill you, whelp."

I laughed. "Whelp?" I asked. "That's it? All of these years of hating me, and that's the best you can come up with, you contemptible piece of weasel shit?"

Arthur's eyes narrowed.

"I know—I can do better," I admitted. "And Remy has a whole dictionary of words for you."

I was only a few feet from him now, and if I started throwing around magic, there was no telling what his matter magic would let him do with it. All I knew was that while he had it activated, he couldn't use his blood magic. That was enough.

He threw a punch, which I avoided, and I hit him in the jaw with one of my own, causing him to stagger back. Instead of staying back, he immediately sprang forward, and I couldn't avoid the knee to the chest, which picked me up off my feet and threw me back. I landed in front of a tree and rolled aside as Arthur sprinted toward me and tried to drive a knee into my face. He missed and hit the tree, which was all but vaporized from the power, showering me with thousands of tiny blades of wood.

Arthur didn't stop, and I was forced to block or dodge punch after punch and, when he got close enough, kicks and knees. He kicked out at my knee and the outside of my thigh, trying to cause me to slow, to give him a chance to close the gap between us, but I continued to block. My matter magic ensured that I was stronger, but occasionally a blow got through and caused me to retreat. Unfortunately, it quickly became apparent that Arthur was not about to tire, and I spotted a number of KOA agents who were holding back and watching the fight with interest.

I sidestepped Arthur's punch and drove my fist into his jaw, snapping his head aside, and followed up with a knee to his ribs, where I pushed out my matter magic into a physical force. Arthur's ribs snapped like kindling, and I followed it up with a punch that he blocked, wrapping his arms around mine and snapping my elbow before kicking me away.

We stood there as the rain began, both of us hurt, neither of us giving up. I activated my blood magic, and it set about healing me, the magic fading the longer it lasted.

A KOA agent ran over to Arthur to check on him, and Arthur tore out his throat with his teeth, drank the blood down, and pushed the body away. "One of the benefits of being a vampire," he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and leaving a smear of red on his face.

"Not sure your KOA fans will enjoy that," I said.

"Fuck them all," Arthur said. "They'll enjoy what I tell them to enjoy. If I want them to give me their blood, they'll willingly do so. This isn't a democracy. They get no vote, no say."

I moved my neck from side to side as my arm reset itself. "Wow, we're onto the hard sell of your shitopia, are we?"

"We can do this all night," Arthur said. "But you don't have all night, do you?"

"Why's that?" I asked.

"The creatures have run off into the city. They will tear it apart in search of sustenance." Arthur laughed. "And there are still thousands of angry KOA over there. Watching us. Waiting. If you succeed, you die. If you lose, you die. You cannot win here, Nathaniel."

"I don't know," I said with a sigh. "I think killing you would be winning enough for me."

"You'll never see your loved ones again," Arthur said, pushing himself off the tree he'd been leaning against. "Let me tell you something, Nate. When you're dead, I am going to murder everyone you love."

"You keep saying that," I told him. "You've had chances to kill me, and yet here we are. You either want my approval, or you just suck at killing me. What is it? Do you still think I'm going to join you? Do you still think I'm going to stand by and watch? You put a sorcerer's band on me, and I survived it. You made sure that the only way to get that off was to kill myself. No key needed. And I survived it. You can't kill me, can you?"

My arm was fixed, and I tested it, hearing the joint crack. My blood magic faded to nothing a moment later. At least it had gone out with one last use. "You ready to go again?"

"I will stand alone," Arthur said. "Against you all. I will stand alone."

I shook my head sadly. "Come die, you little cretin."

Arthur unleashed a torrent of fire and air at me, tendrils of blood magic slithering through it all, while I wrapped myself in air and shadows and stood, bracing myself against the power. And then it stopped, the trees around me reduced to ash, the ground now a charred mess.

I removed my magic as one of the KOA presented Arthur's spear to him. Oh shit.

Arthur's smile was cruel, and I spotted a sword on the ground that had belonged to a now-dead Horseman and picked it up. It was a wicked, dark-bladed weapon with a slight curve. It was less than ideal quality-wise, but I wasn't about to complain. Arthur had the gall to laugh before he launched his spear at me.

The spear moved faster than I'd have thought possible, and I had to throw myself aside to avoid being skewered. Arthur strolled casually toward the spear, and I charged him, hoping to reach him before he could get his weapon back. But blood magic snaked to the spear and pulled it back to Arthur just as I launched my attack, and he blocked the sword swipe to the neck. The side of my sword hit the shaft of the spear, and the sword broke from the impact. He twisted the spear and drove it up toward my chest; I had to dart back and swipe it away.

"I always loved this weapon," he said smugly. "It increases my power; it removes your power. It's frankly wonderful."

I ignited a ball of flame in my hand. "Your spear is broken," I said and pointed to the fact that I'd hit the spear so hard that the sword had cut into it, removing one of the runes there.

Arthur was incensed. "How dare you," he snapped.

"I can't believe no one ever did that before," I said with a shrug, picking up another sword from the ground.

I closed the gap between us, driving my one-handed sword toward Arthur's face. He snapped the spear up, knocking the sword tip aside, and brought the spear down on the back of my hand. I couldn't move in time to stop him from cutting through it.

I let out a yell of pain but moved back. The silver in the blade burned, and it wouldn't heal as well as it might have otherwise, but it wasn't a killing cut. I was beginning to wonder exactly what I needed to do to kill Arthur, who looked no worse for wear.

We'd reached the steps to the Lincoln Memorial, and I walked up them backward, keeping an advancing Arthur in my sights. His KOA were in the distance, moving closer with every moment. There were still hundreds of them. How was I meant to stop them all and stop Arthur? I needed to find a way to neutralize his ability to use blood magic so quickly and to stop him from using his magic, which was as potent as my own. And now he had a weapon that made him even stronger. The runes were cut, which meant he couldn't stop my magic, but that didn't make much of a difference. Where was a sorcerer's band when I needed it?

"You can't do this forever," Arthur said. "Whether you have your magic or not, while I hold this spear, I'm more powerful than you can possibly imagine. We might have been tied without it, but with it, you will die at my hands."

I'd reached the top of the steps and was happier to be on the same level again. I still had no plan. All the talk about power and being Death—sure, it was designed to make me go fight, but in reality, once you'd thrown everything you had at someone and they were still there, it didn't really matter what you could and couldn't do. You couldn't beat them.

I took a deep breath and created a sphere of lightning in my hand, spinning it faster and faster as I poured more and more magic into it. Shadows leaped out of the ground, joining the sphere, as Arthur continued to stalk toward me.

"You think that will beat me?" he asked.

I kept quiet, concentrating on the sphere, making it grow until it was a meter in diameter. I sprinted toward Arthur, who looked surprised that I'd chosen to attack. He readied his spear and jabbed it toward me, trying to catch me off balance, but I knocked the blade of the spear aside with my sword, which opened up Arthur's side. He tried to step to the side, but shadows leaped out of the ground, forcing him to step back. A shield of blood magic appeared between us, and I detonated the sphere, sank into the shadows, and appeared directly behind Arthur, instantly creating a second sphere and pouring everything I had into it.

Arthur turned to me the second I plunged the sphere into his side.

The crater I created took out most of the promenade in front of the Lincoln Memorial. The blast was big enough that Arthur's top half was now raw and looked painful as he dislodged himself from the stone he'd impacted with. His jacket and shirt were gone, his trousers now a tattered mess. He held the spear in one hand, but the shaft had broken in half, the second half lying on the ground at his feet.

I slumped to my knees as pieces of stone continued to fall all around the stairs.

"That it?" Arthur asked, looking unsteady on his feet.

I'd used the amount of magic that had killed War back in Asgard. And Arthur just stood there. Goddamn him.

"That it?" Arthur asked again, his body already repairing itself at an alarming rate.

I let out a long breath and raised a shield of air beside me as my magic felt something close by. The bullet struck the shield, followed by a second and a third, taking my attention off Arthur. He punched me in the jaw, knocking me to the ground, as his blood magic tendrils began to wrap around my body.

"I took your friend's eye," Arthur said as I tried not to scream from the pain. "Maybe I'll take your tongue first."

I tried to sink into the shadows, but Arthur dragged me away, his fire magic burning the shadows and causing me more pain.

Darkness had reached the edge of my vision when a massive werewolf charged into Arthur, picked him up, and threw him away. The magic around me stopped, and the werewolf looked back at me.

"Tommy?" I asked.

Tommy nodded. "Brought friends," he said as dwarves charged over the crater, dropping down and running toward Arthur, who was back on his feet and killing anyone who got close enough.

Hundreds and hundreds of dwarves charged down the steps toward the KOA as I got to my feet and saw Zamek and Tarron.

"We had to help," Tarron said. "My people needed to help."

The shadow elves were at the rear of the charge and moved considerably more slowly than the dwarves, but they still wanted to help stop the people who had used them for centuries.

"Thank you," I said. "The creatures ran off into the city; they need to be hunted."

"On it," Tommy said and ran off with dozens of shadow elves and dwarves following him.

"How?" I asked before I could stop myself.

"A conversation for later," Zamek said and ran off.

Tarron ran into the fray and helped several dwarves and elves who were keeping Arthur busy.

My body felt weak, and I needed a moment to catch my breath, but in that time Arthur killed three dwarves and plunged the broken spear through Tarron's throat. The elf staggered back, and Arthur drove the spear up into his heart, killing him instantly.

"You keep getting your friends killed," Arthur shouted, pushing Tarron's body aside as he walked toward me.

Thunder rumbled overhead.

"I'd suggest that you could end this now," Arthur said, parrying the strike from an elf and killing her where she stood before moving on as if nothing had happened, "but you can't. You will all die."

Arthur was only a few feet away from me when a sword struck the ground in front of me. Excalibur. I looked up to see Mordred standing above me. "Kill him," Mordred said.

I gritted my teeth, took hold of the hilt, and raised the sword as I got to my feet, and Arthur charged me. I felt power flow through me, and lightning left my fingers, smashing into Arthur and throwing him across the crater.

I ran after him and activated Excalibur's ability to remove the power in another. Arthur, realizing what had happened, threw the broken spear at me, but I moved aside and kept on coming. He turned to run, and I reached him and drove the sword through his back, pinning him to the stone.

"You always wanted this," I whispered in his ear as I kept hold of the hilt. "You always wanted Excalibur. Well, congratulations—you got your wish."

I twisted the sword, and Arthur let out a cry.

"No power, no magic, no army, no nothing," I said. "I just want you to see how much you've lost."

Arthur turned his head toward me. "I always hated you," he said as blood flowed freely out of his mouth.

"Feared," I said softly. "You always feared me." I pulled Excalibur out, and Arthur crashed to his knees. "And you were right to do so."

I swung the sword down, cleaving his head from his neck. Magic exploded out of him, throwing me back across the crater. Excalibur was still in my hand as I landed next to Mordred's feet.

"I would have tried to fight him on his terms," Mordred said, taking Excalibur from me. "I would have tried to beat him fairly. I knew you wouldn't. You'd just win."

"How'd you get here?" I asked.

"We got one of the realm gates working. It's not everyone, but it's enough."

"Tarron is dead," I said.

Mordred nodded and offered me his hand to help me to my feet, which I accepted. "So are Jinayca, Roberto, and thousands of others."

Hearing Jinayca's name among them hit hard.

"Arthur is dead," Mordred shouted at the top of his voice as hundreds of others began to run past: Diana, Irkalla, Hades, Layla, Loki, Hyperion, and so many other friends and allies.

"We still have a lot to do," I said.

"Yes, my friend," Mordred agreed. "Yes, we do."