Iron Image Read online

  IRON IMAGE

  Jonathan Moeller

  Table of Contents

  Description

  Author's Note

  Iron Image

  Other books by the author

  About the Author

  Description

  Riordan MacCormac has loved three women in his life, and lost them all.

  But he still has a chance to save Nadia Moran before it is too late.

  The cost of saving Nadia's life might be Riordan's own...

  Iron Image

  Copyright 2017 by Jonathan Moeller.

  Published by Azure Flame Media, LLC.

  Cover image copyright © idal @ istockphoto.com.

  Ebook edition published August 2017.

  All Rights Reserved.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the author or publisher, except where permitted by law.

  Author's Note

  IRON IMAGE is a short story that takes place between the events of CLOAK GAMES: TOMB HOWL and CLOAK GAMES: HAMMER BREAK.

  Iron Image

  “You’ve got to help her, Riordan,” said Russell Moran. “She’s disappeared, and we can’t find her anywhere. Lord Morvilind’s people won’t tell us where she went, and I don’t think they even know. She’s not in her right mind at all. James thinks something horrible happened to her, and I think he’s right. You might be the only one who can find her, and you might be the only one she’ll listen to.”

  I stood motionless with my phone held against my ear, listening to my ex-girlfriend’s brother beg for me to save her.

  My name is Riordan MacCormac. I am a hundred and eleven years old, and I have loved three women in my life.

  The first was Miranda, the woman I married as a young man before my tour of duty as a man-at-arms began. We had been young and stupid and in love, but as I served as first a man-at-arms and then as a soldier of the Wizard’s Legion, time and distance caused us to grow apart. When I became a Brother of the Shadow Hunters, Miranda tried to kill me. While I had been away on duty and trying to find a way to save my brother Aidan, she had joined the Rebels, and she hoped to murder me in my sleep to gain favor with her new friends.

  We fought. I won. Miranda died.

  It was my fault. I should have been there for her. I should have gotten to know her better. If I had, maybe she wouldn’t have joined the Rebels.

  The second woman was Sasha, young and pretty and fit and dark-eyed. She joined the Shadow Hunters, and I fell for her, and she fell for me. But she couldn’t control the dark urges of her Shadowmorph, and she became addicted to feeding upon life force. That transformed her into a serial killer, and in the end, I had been forced to kill her.

  That was my fault as well, as much as the Firstborn and the other elders tried to convince me otherwise. I should have found a way to help her. I don’t know what I could have done to save her, but I should have found something.

  After that, there had been a few casual encounters, but they had left me feeling colder and grimmer than before, and I had stopped pursuing them. I had been alone for a long, long time, and become accustomed to that fact.

  Then I had met Nadia Moran.

  Nadia Moran, the new shadow agent of Lord Kaethran Morvilind, the man who had sent my brother to his death. She was trapped by love for her brother, just as Aidan had been trapped by his love for our sister. Nadia was brave and bold and desperate, and she was one of the very few people I had met who could make me laugh.

  I had fallen for her. How could I not? We had been seeing each other, but slowly. She had been burned in the past, as had I. But she had told me that she loved me, and I told her that I loved her. Things had been going well.

  Then one night, out of the blue, she broke up with me. She did it over the phone, telling me that she had seen the pattern, that I had gotten the previous two women in my life killed. Nadia didn’t want to stick around for the pattern to repeat, so she had broken up with me.

  At my age, I didn’t think I could be heartbroken, but I was. The truth of her words had been like knives. I had failed Miranda, and I had failed Sasha. Perhaps it was best to let Nadia go.

  And then Russell called.

  In the end, he persuaded me to find Nadia and help her. Nadia’s brother was many things, but the boy could probably talk nearly anyone into doing almost anything. I had no idea how to find Nadia and no idea how to help her, but if it was within my power, I would.

  Then the commission and the video came from the High Queen.

  A Rebel leader named Nicholas Connor had forged an alliance with the Knight of Venomhold in the Shadowlands, establishing Venomhold as a base beyond the reach of the High Queen. The strength of the Rebels had grown by leaps and bounds, and the High Queen wanted Connor dead. The High Queen and her advisors were convinced that Connor was a mortal threat, that he had somehow devised a plan that threatened their rule of Earth.

  I didn’t care. Rebels came, and Rebels went.

  But then I saw the video.

  Connor had mounted a raid on the ruins of Chicago, stealing something from the grasp of the myothar and the undead that ruled the wrecked city. A passing helicopter had managed to catch some shaky footage of the raid. The footage included a few seconds of what the Homeland Security analysts called a short man in a dark coat and a mask.

  I knew better. I recognized that coat and mask.

  They were Nadia’s, and I would know them anywhere.

  Nadia had broken up with me, and she had joined the Rebels.

  She had hated the Rebels and hated the Dark One cultists just as much, but she had joined them nonetheless.

  Why?

  She had once made me promise to stop her if she ever went too far and became a monster.

  After that video, after Russell’s phone call, I convinced the Firstborn to give me the High Queen’s commission. Before the Firstborn and the High Queen herself, I swore to find Nicholas Connor and kill him.

  But to kill Nicholas, I had to first find him and Nadia.

  And that meant going to a source of help I did not want to employ.

  But the enemy of my enemy, if not my friend, would at least be my ally.

  ###

  The day after accepting the High Queen’s commission for Nicholas Connor’s life, I drove to upstate New York.

  It was a hot day in early August, and the air conditioning in my new pickup truck howled with the strain of keeping the cab cool. My thoughts roamed to odd places as I drove. It had been a year ago that I had met Nadia in Milwaukee for the first time. Only a year had I known her, and I was about to take a very great risk to help her.

  Though I had only known her for six months when my old truck had gotten blasted out beneath us when that banehound came to kill her.

  My friend and former student Nora had warned me about this. Nadia Moran, she had said, was exactly my type, a “skinny white girl with a tragic past.” If I wasn’t careful, Nora argued, I was going to kill myself trying to help her.

  “You’ll do anything to keep from repeating your pattern, boss,” Nora had said. “Even if it gets you killed.”

  “We’re just seeing each other,” I pointed out. “We haven’t done anything all that dangerous together.” Except for Venomhold. And fighting Archons. And having my truck blown out from beneath us that one time.

  “See, that’s your problem,” said Nora. “You’re a romantic. I’ve read your books.” For years I had been writing historical novels u
nder the pen name of Malcolm Lock. “You’re a romantic. It’s just who you are, boss. And the tigress is a romantic figure, isn’t she? A doomed girl with dangerous secrets. If you’re not careful, she’s going to get you killed.”

  I had laughed Nora off, but as I drove to upstate New York to do the first of many dangerous things to help Nadia, I conceded that Nora might have a point.

  But I couldn’t have done otherwise. I had failed Miranda, and I had failed Sasha. If I could do something, anything at all, to help Nadia, then I would do it, even if I never actually saw her again. My conscience would rest easier.

  That was the first reason.

  The second reason was that my duty as a member of the Family of Shadow Hunters demanded it.

  Because Nicholas Connor was as dangerous as the High Queen thought.

  He made pacts with the Dark Ones, and that alone made him an enemy of the Family. But I had read up about him in the files the High Queen provided, and what I read disturbed me. He was a rare man, a man of vision, talent and ambition fused together, and he had forged an alliance between the Rebels, the Knight of Venomhold, the Archons, and the Dark Ones cultists. Each group had been dangerous on their own, but together they were deadly and powerful, and they were getting ready to go to war against the High Queen.

  And they might succeed.

  I do not love the High Queen and the Elves, but neither do I hate them. They are arrogant, aloof, convinced of their own superiority, and occasionally ruthless. I am old enough that I can see how they have spent generations training humans to revere them, how they use Earth’s resources and human soldiers to prosecute their wars against the Archons and other enemies.

  And yet…

  It is a judgment upon humanity that the Elves’ ruthlessness is not without cause.

  I had been horrified when the High Queen had threatened to nuke Milwaukee to stop the Archons, but perhaps she had been left with no other choice. If the Archons had taken Milwaukee, they would have conquered North America. The High Queen treated humans as her subjects, as free men and women entitled to her protection.

  The Archons would have treated us as cattle and slaves.

  Even without the Archons, I knew that if the High Queen was overthrown, humanity would rip itself apart in a global bloodbath that would make the ancient World Wars of pre-Conquest history look like mild skirmishes. The High Queen Tarlia kept the peace. Save for the skirmishes between the Caliphate and the Imamate, there had not been a war between human nations for three hundred years. And if the High Queen fell, I knew that the human nations would immediately go to war with each other.

  If the High Queen fell, Earth would drown in blood. The totalitarian, Dark Ones-worshiping government Nicholas Connor wanted to raise would transform Earth into a hellish reflection of the nightmare the Archons had made of the Elven homeworld.

  If I had to choose between the High Queen’s authoritarian peace and the tyranny of someone like Nicholas Connor, I chose the High Queen.

  Because of that, but mostly because of Nadia, I drove to the first step in my plan.

  It was about 6 PM when I came to my destination. I turned off the highway in the forests near the Adirondack Mountains and drove along a gravel road for a mile, the trees transforming the road into a leafy tunnel. At last, I came to a security booth, a yellow arm resting across the road.

  An Elven commoner in a long blue coat stepped from the booth. His right hand was raised. In his left hand, he held a compact Royal Arms submachine gun pointed in my general direction. The Elf’s face was angular and alien, with upswept pointed ears and silver eyes.

  “Identify yourself, please,” said the Elf in English.

  “Riordan MacCormac of the Family of the Shadow Hunters,” I said in the Elven tongue. The Elf smiled a little at that. The Elven commoners were less stuffy than the Elven nobles, though the commoners rarely interacted with humans, keeping instead to their own cities. “In the name of the Firstborn of the Family, I seek an audience with Lady Kathromane.”

  “Wait a moment, please,” said the Elf. He disappeared into the booth, and I saw him speak on a cell phone for a moment.

  The conversation was a short one.

  “The Lady will see you,” said the Elf. He pointed. “Park in front of the house, and walk to the pond. The Lady is on the deck, and will receive you there.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “A question, Lord Elf. If the Lady Kathromane grants my request, I could depart from Earth then and there. Might I take my weapons and armor with me to the audience?”

  The Elf smiled with genuine amusement. “Take all the weapons you wish, Shadow Hunter. The Lady will not be offended.”

  The subtext was plain. I could take all the weapons I wanted to my audience because I had no weapon that could harm Lady Kathromane. Granted, as a Shadow Hunter, that wasn’t quite true, but even if I wanted to attack Lady Kathromane, I doubted I could harm her.

  I doubted a small army could hurt her.

  “Good fortune, Shadow Hunter,” said the Elf, stepping back into the booth. He raised the arm, and I drove my truck through the gate and into the grounds of Lady Kathromane’s estate. I passed another half-mile of forest and gravel road and then came into a clearing that surrounded a small lake. A house in the Elven style sprawled at the edge of the water. It was a beautiful building, constructed of polished dark wood, the windows framed in intricate patterns of gleaming steel. I parked at the front of the house, got out, and dressed in my armor, black plates over strike fabric designed to turn aside claws and blunt the bites of fanged jaws. A sword and a crossbow went over my shoulder and a quiver of bolts at my belt.

  I didn’t bother to take any guns. If Lady Kathromane granted my request, guns would be of no use at my destination.

  I strode around the house, making for the deck at the back, sweating beneath my armor. I passed a few Elven commoners working in the gardens, and they glanced at me for a moment, and then returned to work without comment. I suspected that strange visitors were common at the house of Lady Kathromane.

  A wooden deck stretched from the back of the house, overlooking the waters of the lake, the mountains rising in the distance. It was a beautiful view and if my business had not been so urgent, I would have stopped to appreciate it. A dozen wooden lounge chairs rested on the deck, all of them facing the water.

  Lady Kathromane lay in one of the deck chairs, her face turned towards the sky.

  Standing up, she would have been nearly seven feet tall. The Elves usually had ageless faces, and Kaethran Morvilind was one of the few Elves I had seen who looked ancient. Lady Kathromane had faint lines on her face as if she had undergone tremendous strain. Her hair had taken a premature gray cast. She wore a simple white dress that hung to her ankles, leaving her thin arms bare.

  From her shoulders hung a gold-trimmed black cloak. Gold-trimmed black cloaks, coats or robes were the marks of Elven archmages.

  A thick white blindfold encircled her head.

  Her face turned towards me as I approached, and despite the blindfold, I had absolutely no doubt that she knew exactly who I was and where I was standing.

  “Lady Kathromane,” I said in the Elven tongue, offering a deep bow. “Thank you for seeing me.”

  “Riordan MacCormac the Shadow Hunter,” said Kathromane in the same language. Her voice was a deep, throaty murmur. “It has been a long time, hasn’t it?”

  “It has, my lady,” I said. She helped the Family from time to time, in gratitude for a kindness the Firstborn had done for her long before I had been born. I had been on three jobs where she had helped us. Kathromane was a wizard of immense power. Not as powerful as Kaethran Morvilind, true, but she lacked his ruthless and his cruel nature.

  Nevertheless, she was still not someone I wanted to cross.

  “It was…ten years ago, yes, was it not?” she said. “Ten years ago, in Miami. Those Dark Ones cultists. Do you remember?”

  “I do, my lady,” I said.

  “Did it matt
er?” said Kathromane. The blindfolded eyes gazed at me. “The servants of the Dark Ones are now stronger than they ever have been.”

  “Perhaps,” I said.

  “For nearly all my life I have fought against them,” she said. “They twisted my countrymen and made them into the Archons. They drove us from Kalvarion and turned out beautiful world into a death camp. Now they pursue us to Earth, and they will do to your race what they have done to mine.”

  “Stronger or not,” I said, “that changes nothing. I am a brother of the Family, and we fight the Dark Ones.”

  “Indeed,” said Kathromane. “For that is why you are here, is it not? A mission from the Family?”

  “Yes, my lady,” I said.

  “What would you ask of me, Mr. MacCormac?” said Kathromane.

  “I ask of you a rift way to the Shadowlands,” I said. “To the demesne of Grayhold, if possible.”

  “I see,” said Kathromane. She leaned her head back against the chair, blindfolded eyes turning towards the skies. “Then the High Queen has given the Family the task of killing Nicholas Connor.”

  “Yes, my lady,” I said.

  “Connor is a dangerous man,” said Kathromane. “A very dangerous man. For three centuries, we have ruled your world, and for three centuries we have known the enmity of the Rebels, the cultists of the Dark Ones, and the Knight of Venomhold. Each dangerous in their turn, but not individually powerful enough to overcome us. But Connor has forged an alliance between the three of them and the Archons. Just as tin and copper together make a metal stronger than both, so has the alliance made them stronger. Strong enough to kill us all, perhaps.” Her face turned back towards me. “Why do you wish to go to Grayhold?”

  “To speak with the Knight of Grayhold,” I said.

  “Why?” said Kathromane. “As I recall, you knew the Knight before he assumed his current office.”

  “Yes,” I said. “We were both men-at-arms in service to Duke Tarmegon of Houston.”