by HDA Roberts
"Alive, but very unhappy."
"Good," she said, her eyes closing.
"Crystal, I have to take a look at that girl, I don't think she's well," I said.
"Oh, fine," she said, sighing, "but I reserve the right to resume my previous position."
I snorted and she let me get up. I went to the girl who'd obviously been fed on, still lying on the sofa. She hadn't moved at all.
I looked in her eyes, opening my senses.
Brain damage. Severe. She was a vegetable. Severe muscle wastage, she'd been that way for a while...
No soul.
Bastards!
Crystal stood over her sister; knife in hand, a snarl on her face. She grabbed Amber's head and moved the blade towards her sister's throat.
"Crystal..." I said gently, "Don't do something you can't take back."
"She needs to die," Crystal whispered.
"Maybe. But don't be the one that does it," I said, moving over to stand next to her. I put my hand on her shoulder, squeezing gently, "Whether or not she dies, if you're the one that does it, that'll be a scar on your soul. Don't let her hurt you again, not like that. She's not worth it."
"How would you know?" she asked, her voice shaky, aggressive.
"My brother... my twin, he... went bad. He keeps trying to kill me. But I know that killing him won't make anything better. All it will do is drag me down to his level."
She turned her head to look at me. She knelt like that for a while, the knife poised. And then she dropped it.
"Manipulative Magician," she muttered as she hopped to her feet and wiped her eyes, "That bitch wrecked my clothes!"
"Whose clothes?" I asked with a grin, gesturing at the hoodie.
"Mine," she said, turning a very intense gaze on me, implying perhaps that she didn't just mean the top...
"Alright, alright, not coming between a lady and her things," I said, walking over to the twitching heap that was Osrik.
She growled and followed me.
"Ozzy, old boy," I said, flipping over his torso with a little shove of Will. His mouth was full of black blood and his eyes were staring and insane, "Let's have a chat."
He let out a stream of invective that would have made a sailor blush; I waited for him to finish.
"Creative, isn't he?" I said to Crystal, who had linked her arm through mine and was leaning on my shoulder, sniffing me from time to time, I tried not to notice.
"I don't know, I accidentally stepped on a man's testicle during an inventively athletic evening, and he was far more expansive with his cursing," she replied.
"That is just far more than I needed to know."
She chuckled.
"Ozzy!" I shouted, smacking him upside the head with a Shadow, he shut up, "I have questions, answer them and maybe I'll let you go with what you have left. Don't, and I'll take the rest before dropping a curse that removes your powers of regeneration. Your choice."
He growled, but nodded.
"Good man. Who told you to try this little scam? This reeks of someone far more clever than you or my friend's idiot sister."
"You're wrong. All my idea," he gurgled.
"Oh," I said, "Funny, your mind just lit up with all the telltales of someone fibbing. Did I mention that I'm a Telepath? Maybe I should have."
He swallowed.
"Look, you're stressed, you're humiliated, you're hurt, so I'm going to let you have that first lie for free. Tell me another and it's going to cost you, understand?"
I think it was my quiet, neutral tone that convinced him as much as anything else. I've noticed that a jovial nonchalance in the face of horror scares people far more than shouting would.
He nodded.
"Good. So, same question."
"He was one of Greg's friends, our Magician is Greg. He told us to use the sister to get your girl and then call him. He said she'd be valuable to the right people."
"Did he say who?"
"No," he replied.
"Call him now. Tell him you have her."
"What? No! He'll kill me!" Osrik said.
"Do we really need to go through this again?" I said, letting a coil of Shadow congeal in my palm, becoming barbed and spiky. He swallowed again.
"Alright! Alright, damn you! My phone's on my desk."
I saw it and Willed it into my hand before dropping it on his chest.
"Get me a name, a location, something I can use to get him in close. And don't give the game away, alright?"
He nodded again and scrolled through to the right number.
"On speaker, please," I said.
It rang twice before someone picked up.
"What?" the voice was male and gravelly, unpleasant.
"I have the girl," Osrik said.
"She give you any trouble?"
"Killed one of my guys," Osrik replied.
"Keep her close, I'll be in touch," he said.
"Wait!" Osrik said, looking at me, "I want to meet. Right now. She told me about a Magician. He's been sniffing around. She told me some stuff, dark stuff. I don't want to talk about it over the phone."
I heard a grunt.
"Fine. Twenty minutes, your place, but this had better be good."
They hung up, "Well done. Now, you wait here while I go have a chat with my new friend."
I took his phone and left him there, heading towards the lift and up to the front door, Crystal with me.
"Can I interrogate the next one?" she asked brightly.
"Sure, why not?" I said as I pushed the button for the ground floor.
"Well, you've been having all the fun, chopping things up and eviscerating people."
"Don't remind me, I have a delicate system."
She snorted and cuddled up close to me.
"Still have a girlfriend?" she whispered.
"Yes. And anywhere up to three fiancées, depending on who you ask."
"Now that sounds like a story," she said, working her nose into my collar.
"Maybe we could leave that for a time when a Magical duel isn't in the offing?" I suggested.
The residual effects of that damned room were still bouncing around my lymphatic system and I wanted very much to take Crystal in my arms. Thankfully, time with Tethys had taken what had been already relatively strong willpower and turned it into something iron-clad.
Still, having her pressed up against me like that just wasn't helping my blood pressure at all...
Chapter 16
The place seemed to have emptied of staff, which was good; I didn't want bystanders getting in the way (even the sort of people who worked at places like Michelangelo's). I sensed a few minds on the lower levels (aside from the ones I'd fought), but they wouldn't be in the way down there. I'd go have a 'chat' with them later.
We waited by the front door, I was sitting on one of the sofas with Crystal next to me, holding my hand.
"Why are you doing all this?" she asked after a while.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean all this. You... you went to war for me. Why? When men do things for me, it's because they want... something. But you... you don't. So why?"
"Why wouldn't I? You needed a hand, and goodness knows you were there for me. And this is hardly a war. I could tell you stories. But as for motivations, I look out for my friends, and I look out for my allies. You're both, how could I do anything else?"
"But this could get you into real trouble," she said, her tone worried.
"Hardly," I said with a chuckle, "this is the least stupid thing I've done in a while."
She sat there for a moment, chewing her lip, looking thoughtful.
"Thank you. In case I forget to say it later," she said finally.
"Any time," I said, squeezing her fingers.
"Magicians don't tend to go out of their way for non-humans. You're different from the others. I like that."
"Some of my best friends in the world are supernatural beings. I live with a Succubus, my land has Fairies on it and I can't get my
Pixies to let me bath in peace. The one thing I've discovered is that humanity has very little to do with biology. It's who we choose to be that matters."
"You really believe that?" she asked, smiling at me.
"I have to."
"That sounded ominous," she said, nudging me.
The door opened before I could answer.
Showtime.
He was tall and thin, with dark hair and a neatly trimmed beard speckled with grey. My Mage Sight told me that he was a Sorcerer, a strong one, with an Air affinity. He wore a dark pinstripe suit and carried a cane, which was enchanted heavily, probably a weapon.
"Hello," I said as he walked past. He jumped. His energy surged and I recognised his signature instantly.
This was the man who'd scrambled that poor bugger Clayton's brain for Namia Sutton. Things started to fall into place at long last.
He raised his Shields and an impressive set of Mental Blocks that would have taken me half an hour to smash through. My defences were already in place and I had been steadily collecting force and heat over the last twenty minutes. I was in a good state for a fight, while he was caught on the back foot and he knew it.
"Let me guess," he said, looking us over, "Mathew Graves."
I nodded, not taking my eyes off him. He struck me as dangerous.
"I told that bitch we shouldn't try this. I told her,' you don't screw with the Archons'. Would she listen? Of course not."
"Namia does have some strange ideas, doesn't she?" I replied.
He nodded. I felt him gathering static, readying lightning bolts, no doubt. I let him.
"So, how hard are you taking the whole 'kidnap the girl' thing?" he asked.
"They were going to put her in one of these rooms," I said coldly.
He winced.
"I told them they should treat her right. I gave specific instructions," he said, his tone almost pleading now.
"Why?" I asked, "Why do any of this?"
"I'm not telling you that! She'll kill me!"
"Only if she finds out, and who's going to tell her?" I pointed out.
He swallowed, "The idea was to turn her, or if she proved unwilling, adjust her; then use her as a Trojan Horse and have her either kill or enthral you after trading her back to you for some concession or another, that bit wasn't my department."
"Who are you, by the way?" I asked, digesting the information.
"Dirk Wallace," he answered slowly.
"And you support places like this, Dirk?"
"It's a free country," he said, rubbing the back of his head, looking uncomfortable.
"You know what they do here. You're a Magician, for heaven's sake! How can you allow it?"
His face went red.
"Not all of us are cut out to be heroes, Graves," he said, "I don't want to die. I barely want to live like I have been. But it's better than the alternative."
His voice was tortured, agonised.
"Then why stay with her?" I asked, "Why not just leave?"
"You think I'd be the first to try and leave her?" he asked, "People have tried! She finds them, she takes them to pieces and she makes the rest of us watch."
I looked him over, up and down. I looked in his grey eyes, full of fear and desperation.
"Can't you go to the Conclave?" I asked, "Tell them what you know?"
"I wouldn't last a week, and that's assuming they believed me."
I nodded, understanding that idea better than anyone.
"What's her connection to Source? There have to be easier ways of making money."
"I don't know, I swear! All I know is that she's using her Legion to do the technical stuff. Nobody except Sutton really knows what Source even does. What I do know is that every time the subject takes a dose, he loses a little something, energy of some sort. I don't know where it goes or what Sutton's doing with it, but by now there has to be buckets of it stored somewhere."
"Do you know where the other factories are?"
He shook his head, "Since you hit the first one, all that information's been clamped down on."
I sighed, "Can you tell me anything that might be useful?"
"She hates you. Sutton. I've never seen her hate someone this much. And she's also scared. She gave explicit orders that your family and associates are to be avoided at all costs. They are untouchable."
"Then why go after Crystal?" I asked.
She squeezed my hand a bit tighter.
"The idea was to turn her. She'd have made the choice," Dirk said.
"Like hell, I would!" Crystal chimed in.
"Ten million. That's what I was going to offer you. And we'd have let you keep him if you could enthral him."
"Enthral? An Archon?"
"Saphyron Venom," Wallace said with a shrug, "It's potent stuff."
I shook my head, "What about the business side of things; distribution, sales; is there anything I can exploit?"
He shook his head, "Not that I can think of, but that's not where I work."
"Okay," I nodded, "You can go. Tell her whatever you want."
"Just like that?" he asked suspiciously.
I nodded again, taking a card out of my pocket and writing a number on it, "That's one of my people's numbers. If you think of anything or learn something I can use, leave a message there."
"Yes my lord," he said, "and... and thank you. I'll not forget this."
He started backing towards the door.
"It goes without saying that anything concerning my friends or family should be passed on with great speed?" I said.
He nodded quickly and left. I relaxed back into the sofa.
"You're just letting him go?" Crystal said, aghast.
I nodded again, "I know that look. Hopeless desperation. If we'd fought, we would have levelled this place, and he would probably have killed himself trying to escape. Besides, he was the hand, not the brain."
"You realise what he wanted for you? What he wanted me to do to you?" she asked.
"Not really. Vampires aren't a speciality of mine."
"Every Vampire race's venom is different," she explained, "Most are some variant of a painkiller and sedative; with the Strigoi it's a simple paralytic. Mine is... an enhancer of sorts, kind of a social lubricant, if you could put it like that. It's like a chemical aphrodisiac. If we give enough of it to our thralls, they become little more than mindless slaves to our desires. Hell, even a single bite is enough to make a victim very pliable to the Vampire that did it."
"Oh," I said.
Damn, Vampires were dangerous, who knew?
"I... I want to do that to you," she said, looking away, "Not the slave thing, I mean. But I want you to be my servant. That's the term, not the sentiment. I'd never want you subservient to anyone, especially me. I want to bond with you."
Well, that was a little terrifying.
"You've already fed me," she continued, "If you didn't want more, then you shouldn't have done that. If we feed and the victim remains alive, we start to bond with them; we can always find them, as long as they're within a dozen miles or so."
Ho boy...
I swear, no good deed ever goes unpunished.
We sat like that for a while.
"Say something," she said quietly, and then in barely a whisper, "And please don't hate me."
"Oh, I don't hate you. I mean, I'm a little more wary of letting you near my neck, but I don't hate you. It's your nature after all. But like I told you, I'm not a cheater. I'd not hurt my Cathy for anything in this world. It doesn't matter that she'd never know. I couldn't live with it, do you understand?"
She smiled, "Figures, I find a man worth spending time with, and he's too honourable to do it. This girl, she human?"
I nodded.
She grinned evilly, showing fang again, "So, what do you think, eighty, ninety years left to go?"
You know, that was the first time I'd ever thought about that?
I swallowed hard. Cathy...
When I thought I was just a Sorcerer
, I knew I had centuries in terms of life span, more even. As an Archon, I didn't really have an expiry date. I was functionally immortal, not that this meant I couldn't die. I could die, alright, just not of old age.
Cathy wasn't a Magician. She was human, she was mortal.
She'd... eventually she'd...
I couldn't say for certain, but I think I went white as a sheet; certainly my hands started shaking.
"Sorry! Sorry, oh, God, sorry!" Crystal said, taking my shaking hands, "I meant it as a joke!"
"I know," I gasped, "Not your fault. Just never... never thought about it before, that's all."
There were tears in my eyes and she threw her arms around me.
"Hey, look," she said, "It's not all that bad. There are any number of ways a human can live longer. I know for a fact that living around Magicians makes people live longer and healthier. I can only imagine that she'd live a lot longer around an Archon."
I nodded, shaking with fear. How had I never thought of that before? It felt like there was a spectre hovering behind the girl I loved, one that was getting closer and closer with every passing second. One that I couldn't shield against. I'd fix it somehow. I'd find a way, damn it.
Crystal kissed my cheek and held me tight (which was very reasonable of her, bearing in mind the circumstances).
"It's okay, I'm good," I said. She pulled back and planted a little peck on my lips.
"Okay," she said, "You know, for someone as dangerous as you, you're surprisingly touchy-feely and girly."
"You're not the first to notice that," I said as I walked back towards the lift.
I spent the next half an hour turfing everyone out of that place. The rooms that were still full... those were some things I couldn't unsee. Crystal seemed to enjoy watching some of what was happening in the L-Rooms though.
I dragged the pile of mangled Ghouls out with Magic and left them in a twitching heap in an adjacent alley.
Then I had an awful time removing the fish from the aquarium.
"What are you doing?" Crystal asked after coming back from scaring off the last patron.
"Rescuing the fish?" I offered. I'd found a cooler and it was now full of the things and their water.
"Why?" she asked as I hefted the vegetable-girl in a Shadow and led the way out.
"Because they'll die otherwise."
"Am I missing something? And why are we moving everyone out into the street?"