by Mason Sabre
Xander took it and put the bottle back into his pocket. “Not if Joey is dead.”
“He isn’t.”
Xander had the soul balls too. They were in the pocket of his jeans but hidden from Lee. Not that he would have asked. The fool hadn’t noticed what Xander had taken. If he had, he’d have surely called down for someone to do the dirty work and punish Xander for it.
When they stepped out into the cold corridor ready to go to see Joey, two more Humans joined the little entourage. They were armed the same as the others, and they flanked Xander like royalty—two at front, two at the back. Lee walked ahead of them all.
Stephen walked with Joey between Lee and the first set of Humans. Joey didn't let go of his hand. In fact, if anything, he gripped it tighter. They went through a maze of corridors and then down to a set stairs Stephen had seen before. Steps led to dark cells. Stephen had been there too. He remembered the vague familiarity of it. The place he and Helena had been brought to when they had first been captured; but when they went in, instead of turning to the cages, they took another direction, and there was a door. It was hidden, cut into the stone walls and out of the way. It was all very high-tech shit, which only added to the doom in Stephen's chest. A Human guard sat on one side, and then, on the other a woman, but she wasn’t Human. Her face was bright, and she looked like anyone else. It made Stephen stop. He'd only ever seen one of her kind in his lifetime. They weren't rare, though. They just hid from everyone. It was the very nature of what they were. They were seen when they needed to be, but this one had a chain around her ankle, which probably meant she didn't blend in and couldn't get away. Smart. They were fucking good guardians. It was their purpose, their right … she was gargoyle.
She looked right at Stephen too, and he only stared back at her. They could see everything. Most of them went mad because seeing everything, while it had its uses, also had a downside. They could see worlds; they could see those who walked between. They could see those who refused to pass over. How would one decide if something were in the real world or not if you could see all the sides of the ethereal coin?
“Is the place cleared?” Lee asked as they got close.
The Human nodded. “Are you all going in?”
“Yes. Open the door.”
It was the gargoyle who got up. She moved as far as the chain would allow her and went to a small socket on the wall and pushed her hand inside it. A loud click echoed, and air sucked as the door released its seal. The Human pushed the door. It wasn’t made of stone, no. It had just been built to look the way. It was a steel door with a fake stone exterior.
When they all went through, they were in a hub built into the stones of the earth. Stephen regarded the first gate; it was a cage door, and he had seen it before. He frowned. He’d never been down here, yet.
This place was all clinical, all high-tech, buried in the old stones of the earth. He moved closer to the gate and tilted his head to peer inside. There was a faint drip at the back—a sound made his stomach turn.
Shit.
He had been there before, long ago. He'd been right inside, at the back. "Just a second," he said to Joey, and he let go of his hand, so he could slip through the bars and make his way onto the darkness. He didn't need light to be able to see. He didn't need anything else as he crouched by the small tatty bear with the little body. Hair clung to a heavily decayed head. It looked like she'd been eaten … probably rats and god knows what else that would come into these parts. She lay precisely where he'd seen her the last time … exactly the same, as the night he had been taken off the bus.
“Anya …” He shook his head.
“Get him down. What the fuck have you done …” Screams, yells, shouts … they echoed into the dark cave of Anya’s former life and made Stephen jump back. He dashed back to the hub where he had left Xander with Lee. The door was now open, and Xander stood inside the room. Two Humans held his arms, holding him back. "Oh, God … Oh, God …"
Stephen dashed to them and ran through to land in a large square room. He skidded at the sight, almost went down and then he spun around and grabbed for Joey. He picked him up and backed up. “Don’t look. God, don’t look.” He pressed Joey to him, pressed his hand on the back of Joey’s head and shielded his face in the crook of his neck. Joey strained against him. “No, Buddy. You don’t need to see it.”
Stephen could tell himself he was holding onto Joey for Joey’s sake. That he was protecting him, but chances were, Joey had already seen this. He knew what it was. He knew what Lee was. And as much as Stephen wanted to tell himself Joey wasn’t suffering because he was out of his body, he couldn’t help but look and stare and wish he could un-see what was in front of him.
Joey was hooked to the wall. He was trussed up in leather and a t-shirt two sizes too big. His arms were held in straps at either side, and wires came from so many different places. Screens monitored god knows what. One tube was filled with blood, and it dripped into a transparent box on a metal table in front of him. Another box that connected to the first and another tube ran from Joey's hand. The Humans had created a blood circulation system outside of Joey’s body, and it went through the boxes on the table.
Beneath him, a bucket of shit and piss overflowed. It even stuck to his skinny bare legs, globules of waste that no one bothered to clean up. They’d shaved his head and strapped a bandage across his eyes. Even his mouth hung open and created a thin slit. He was so filthy. Blood and shit stained his t-shirt.
“Fuck.” They had him to the wall like Jesus on the cross. They even had the nails through his small palms to hold him in place against the wooden beam on the wall. His head bowed.
Stephen clutched Joey harder. The monitor said he was alive, but for a second, Stephen wished to god he wasn’t. He pressed his face into the side of Joey’s and screwed his eyes closed. “I’m so sorry.” His eyes burnt at the sight of it, at the rising gorge in his throat at what they had done … at what this child had suffered. He opened damp lashes and made himself look again. He made himself look just like he had with Amelia, with the others in the cages … with them all.
“As you can see, he is alive,” Lee said.
One Human had a gun to Xander's temple. Two more held an arm each, but the man visibly shook in their grasp. He heaved with it, not sobbing, but something close to feral in those eyes, in that body, in his entire demeanour. He clenched his fists, unclenched them, looked, looked away, made a sound worse than an injured creature. "That is not alive. This is …"
Lee stepped in front of him. “He is alive.” He waved at a Human from behind, and he went across the side of the room where the computer was. "He is science and breakthroughs. He lives in everything we do. You should thank me. Because of him, because of you … we have made so many discoveries."
The Human at the machine did something, clicked buttons here and there, tapped into the device, then a whirring sound echoed and the structure holding Joey lowered and another Human went to the other side. An alarm sounded on another machine.
“What are you doing?” Xander ground out.
“Showing you that he is alive.”
The Human went to Joey. He had a bottle of oxygen on a trolley and a mask in his hand. He put the mask over the boy’s nose and mouth and turned it on. Seconds later, Joey started to twitch, and the Joey in Stephen’s embrace dug his fingers into the back of Stephen’s neck, painfully so. Stephen stepped back. “Stop it.” Whatever they were doing to the solid version of Joey, to Subject Zero, caused Joey to shake and make sounds like a cat in pain. He slipped from Stephen, and as he tried to catch him, he faded … faded the way Freya had. “No …”
Zero came to life with a shocking piercing sound. He thrashed his head back, kicked against the frame, pulled with his arms. His mouth opened, letting out rasped screams.
“Joey …” Xander bucked against the men holding him. He pushed and pulled and twisted, and in one movement he snatched the gun from his temple and yanked it from the Humans hand.
“Let him go …”
Joey kicked his feet against the bucket and spilt his own waste around his feet.
“I told you to hold your shit together.”
“You never told me this. You bastard. Let him down.”
Joey let out a wail from his voiceless throat.
"Stop it," Stephen shouted, but all the sounds in the room, all the chaos. It had erupted. Everyone ran in different directions, yells, screams, echoes of pain that no man, let alone a child, should ever have to witness, but all around it, all inside it, Lee stood so still, so purposeful as he watched Xander and the pain of a father.
One Human grabbed for Xander, but Xander was faster, got the jump on him and slammed him against his chest, and then he put the gun to the Human’s throat. “Let him down,” he said to Lee. “Or I’ll kill this one.”
The other Humans stood around him, ready, looking for that moment they could grab Xander and free their friend, but Lee put his hands in his pockets, no cares, no ties. That was him. Don’t care about anyone and it won’t matter.
“We have a deal,” he said, his voice slow, calm … everything the opposite than the room. “You wanted to see him, and now you see him. You didn’t believe he was alive, so you forced me to wake him.” He gave a shrug. “I told you to hold it together. I told you none of what happened last time.”
“You lied …”
“No. I have never lied to you.”
Xander heaved and shook his head.
"Keep it together," Stephen said to him. Of course, Xander couldn't hear him, but Stephen hoped there was a way he could feel it … feel the calm. Dying here wouldn't get Joey back. No. Dying meant Lee would keep the boy for the rest of his life. Dying meant more pain, more suffering and no chance of the freedom he desperately needed.
Xander raised his fist in front of his face, but he kept his eye on Lee as he started to clench.
Lee grabbed for his own throat. “Don’t be a fool,” he wheezed out as he threw his head back and then clawed at the invisible hand around his neck.
Xander wasn’t listening. To Xander, there was only him and Lee. He held his hand higher, formed a fist harder.
“Let him down,” someone shouted.
The Humans ran to Lee, reaching for him, grabbing for him, crowding him. He pushed them all away and fell to his knees, coughing, his face went red. His eyes bulged, and he gasped for air. One Human got up to go to Xander, but Xander clenched his hand again, ground his jaw … "Come closer, and he dies."
Lee fell forward. He opened and closed his mouth like a fish drowning on nothing, then he arched his back, head going back with it. There was a pop, hot and loud like it was outside and inside, and in Stephen and on Stephen, and everywhere.
Xander dropped, a dart stuck out of the side of his neck, and the gargoyle stepped into the room.
Chapter 41
Xander jolted awake with a scream that rang out into the night as he sprang to his feet, arms out, right back to thinking he was exactly where he had been in the facility, but at least two hours had passed. Well, it felt like two hours; for Stephen, it could have been two days, and he wouldn't have a clue.
“Easy,” he said, reaching a useless hand out to his friend.
Xander wobbled, and a second later he was back on the floor. Whatever the gargoyle had shot him with was short and sharp. Probably the same knock-out juice Stephen had experienced in captivity. "Give yourself a minute to gather your bearings. It's disorientating stuff." But it was the good stuff. Lee tended to prefer the other kind of tranquilliser … one that shut everything down except the head and locked a person into their own mind with a paralysed body.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck …” Xander twisted on the ground and rolled onto his knees. He clutched at the grass and pulled it out in big fistfuls of torn green. “Fuuuuuuck.” He beat the ground with the sides of his fists over and over, beating it until he exhausted himself. Only when his energy began to wane, did he curl himself into a helpless ball and rock. “Joey …” Hands thrust into his hair, fingers pulling at his scalp, and feeling a pain he couldn’t reach.
“I’m sorry,” Stephen said.
Lee and his little entourage of fucking Humans had dumped Xander while he was out cold. At least they had put Joey back under whatever it was. Probably the same as himself, but the screaming had stopped, the agony had been put away for a little while, and Stephen could breathe, but Xander … they'd barely bothered to stop the car as they pushed him out and let him roll into a ditch. Stephen had stood and watched and hoped to hell Xander didn't roll all the way to the watery ditch below, because there was fuck all he could have done about it.
Xander tried to get up again; he pressed his hands to the sides of his head and crushed his own skull. Yeah, the come down was a bitch. In a second, he would …
Yep. There it was. He buckled over and made the most godawful sound as he heaved up whatever had been in his stomach. Vomit projected into the small body of water at the end of the ditch, and he heaved until his eye watered and until he forgot to breathe. With a deep breath, he panted. His face flushed red, and his eye went wide as he dug into the ground beside him, grasping onto it like it might help to stop before he puked out every vital organ.
No more heaves came, only shuddering realisation that he was awake and not at the facility anymore. When he was done, he stayed on his knees, his head to the ground.
“We’ll get him back,” Stephen said.
Xander couldn't hear him. He probably couldn't hear anyone right then as he beat the ground. With another scream, he rocked back onto his heels and thrust his face toward the sky to let out a howl. Arms outstretched beside him, he opened his hands and blasted air into the trees close to them. They bent to the point of snapping. His power was a twister ripping through the earth, a gust of so much pain it forced branches to snap and fallen leaves to whoosh away and clear the ground.
Joey stayed with Stephen as they watched and waited. Neither could feel the air as Xander threw it around, but Stephen could imagine it … cold, breathtaking—a powerful force pressed against his skin. One tree behind gave way, and a crack echoed through the woods as it crashed through the other trees and landed at an odd angle.
The tree seemed to break through Xander's rage, and he lowered his arms and breathed. After a minute, he said, "Are you here, Nick? Can you hear me?"
Stephen edged closer. “I’m here. I’m right here.”
They sat face to face, but Xander couldn't see, and he searched a little, straining his ears to pick something up, anything. "I did it. I got them. Now what?" Every moment that passed seemed to make Xander sink into himself a little bit more, and that look of defeat etched his features. With shaking hands, he fumbled in his pocket and pulled out the three balls. "I don't know which one yours is, so I got them all. What do I do now?" He held them out. "Please be here, Nick. Please …"
“Is there a way for me to talk to him?” Stephen asked Joey. “Or something I can do to let him know I’m here without pulling him out of his body?” He didn’t want to do that. Not just because he wasn’t sure of the consequences, but because Joey was with him and perhaps seeing the kid for another time would just send him off the edge. He already walked along a thin edge as it was.
Joey did what Joey always did—said nothing, but he did go to his father and lay a hand on his shoulder. Whether Xander could feel that or not, Stephen had no idea, but it brought silence and an ease seeped in through Xander’s skin. Joey took the cracked soul ball from his father’s hand. His little face locked into concentration and he moved his hands slowly.
“How do you—”
Joey didn’t even look at him. His eyes were on his job.
“I guess you’ve had a while to learn how to do this, huh?”
“You’re here?” Xander’s eye was on the ball too, and he sat still as if he was almost afraid something would happen if he moved.
“We’re here.”
“Did you see what they did? Did you see my son?”
“I saw.” He wasn’t sure if Xander heard him or not. He wasn’t looking at where Stephen’s voice came from, but maybe he didn’t need to hear. Maybe knowing Stephen had seen was enough. “I saw everything.” He looked to Joey when he said the last part. Guilt rested so heavily in his chest he could have easily ripped inside himself and pulled it out just to kill it. “I will get you out of there. You just hold on for me, okay?”
Little Joey gave him a nod. Not an eager one, or a sad one, just a nod that said he didn’t have hope, and why would he? How many people had seen him hanging from the wall? How many people had worked in that room with him and ignored his screams, felt him and done nothing? He was a child … a child. Fuck. Even Stephen couldn’t fathom doing that to a Human kid, and he hated Humans. Kids … his weakness. They always had been. It explained why Freya appeared as a young girl. He’d figured that out not long into his captivity. If she’d have come to him as a woman, he’d have told her to piss off.
“What do we do now?” Freya hadn’t told him more than get the ball … find the boy, he’d done that too. Joey dropped the ball, but he pushed it along, towards Stephen with the tip of his finger.
“Nick. Joey?” Xander asked, but neither replied to him. He had to trust they were there.
When the ball was close enough. The air grew thick and vibrated on the verge of a pop. Electrical snaps ran along Stephen’s skin … tiny ants of power running up his arm. Joey lifted the ball and Stephen put his hand out to catch it.
He half expected it to fall through, but he focused on his skin, on the feeling of his fingers outstretched and his hand ready. The ball landed in the centre of his palm and stayed there. He blew out a breath.
“What now?” Like it had with Xander, the edges of the ball trickled down, and melted to form a small pool in the centre of his hand. “Shit, that’s hot.” It burnt, but not like fire or ice, not with pain or suffering, but a heated poker through his skin that didn’t hurt. Fire spread into his body and seeped into every tiny sliver of flesh. He ground his jaw and forced himself to be still.