by Dan Wingreen
For the second time that day, the mask slipped. A slow smile spread across Noah's face. If he'd bothered to notice, which he did not, he would have seen the way the smile startled Bryce. The way it scared Barnes.
A smile on Noah's face rarely spelled good tidings.
"Well, well," he said to himself, "How very interesting."
Apparently, he wasn't going to be killed after all. Not that he didn't still think he deserved it, but there was at least one person above him who disagreed, and who was he to argue with bureaucracy? From anyone else, that might have been a flippant thought, but Noah was a true believer. If the system said he hadn't failed, then he hadn't. And if he hadn't failed, then there was still a chance he might succeed.
"I take it…we aren't going home, then?" Bryce asked hesitantly.
"Now, Officer Bryce, why would you ever think you were?" Noah asked, still smiling. "We still have unfinished business. A terrorist to hunt down, a sword to recover…"
Bryce glanced away at the mention of the sword. "About that…" He smoothed his hair down nervously. The gesture was startlingly out of place on him. "That sword…it wasn't really Excalibur, was it?"
Bryce was scared, Noah realized suddenly. He thought he knew why, too. Bryce was arrogant and independent in a society that tolerated neither. Instead of finding comfort with his place in life, he chafed at what he saw as unfair limitations, especially when they interfered with a situation he was comfortable with. It was why he'd gone out of his way to act like a petulant child ever since Noah took him away from his Wizards' Quarter patrol. A man like that wouldn't have any great respect or reverence for the Sleeping King. He might even convince himself such a man never existed. After all, if he did exist, he would be just another person Regan Bryce could never surpass. The ultimate unreachable goal. Someone like that would tear the world apart to keep someone like Arthur from devaluing his life even more. Perhaps now Noah would finally get his full effort in hunting down Aidan Collins.
"Why, Officer Bryce," Noah said genially. "Of course it was."
Bryce's jaw clenched tightly.
Yes, perhaps now indeed.
"Officer Bryce, Officer Barnes, get yourselves some lunch. Then find a hotel room and wait for me. I'm not sure how long this will take, but be ready to leave the second you hear from me."
"Wait, what are you going to do?" Bryce asked as Noah turned to leave.
He paused, his eyes flashing in the pale magical light. "I'm going to find out where our errant sword is headed." With that, he turned and walked down the hall. The mask was back now, but if someone were to look closely, they might see a bit of a spring in Noah's step; a little flaunt in his jaunt, as his daddy used to say. No longer was he walking under the weight of his failure. He still had a role to fulfill. He still had use.
He still had purpose.
But, more importantly, he had a prisoner to interrogate.
◆◆◆
The man who now thought of himself as Lee didn't expect to be alive, especially since he'd practically held a knife to his own throat and begged someone to push it in. A bit of a miscalculation on his part, there. But it was also a pretty big miscalculation on the part of whoever had kept him alive. If he was alive, then he could escape.
Except—as he found out when he tried to use magic—he couldn't.
It wasn't the Avalon stone; that much he was sure of. The table, the floor, the chair he was tied to, it was all pretty standard interrogation room stuff. Completely standard, actually, for a captured ‘terrorist’. He'd been in a lot of interrogation rooms in his time. Even though it had been years since he'd been in one, as an occupant at least, he was more than passing familiar with the exact dimensions of the accoutrements of said rooms. These were exactly the same if they were an inch. He didn't know why he'd expected any differently. Maybe because this was the capitol and he thought they'd make the table bigger or the chair slightly off balance, just for a laugh if nothing else. But, no, standard all around, same as everything else in this bloody country.
The problem was, same boring balanced chair or not, he'd escaped from rooms like this more times than he cared to remember. So, why couldn't he do it now?
At some point after he was passed out, but before he'd woken up, they'd taken his tourist shirt. A sad little smile pulled at his lips when he remembered how much his little fire hated the stupid thing. It was the last thing he'd worn that Aidan had touched. It was ridiculous to miss it, but he resented the hells out of anyone who'd take even that tiniest bit of his Aidan away from him. The lack of shirt, plus the usual stolen shoes and Cernunnos knew how many hours of being knocked out touching the stone explained why he was as dry as a wrung-out dishrag, magically speaking. Even the spell that dyed his hair had been leeched away, which was no big loss since Aidan looked much better with the auburn than Lee did anyway. He still should have been able to use his magic, though; should have been able to tear open a gate and teleport himself right back to that hotel room. But every time he tried to draw it out, it was like trying to get a grip on the wind. And that was what was bothering him.
If the Avalon stone had taken his magic, he wouldn’t be conscious to gripe about it.
So, what had happened to it?
The only other thing that was different this time as opposed to every other time he’d found himself in one of these rooms was that he was tied to the chair, and in such an odd way, too. He was bound across his chest with heavy rope that went under his arms and held him tightly against the stone back, but his arms were also separately bound. They were pulled back behind the chair and more rope was tied tightly around each arm from mid-bicep to a few inches below his elbow, keeping his arms completely straight behind him. His shoulders burned with pain. There was something else binding his wrists together. It wasn't rope. It didn't feel like much of anything actually, but it held his wrists as immobile as if they were iron manacles.
"And I'd know, too," he muttered under his breath.
Lee hated that he couldn't escape. Not just because he should have been gone the second he woke up, or the more pressing and completely understandable need to be anywhere else but an interrogation room, but because he was terrified for Aidan.
Ever since he'd woken up it was like there was a rabid wolf gnawing at him from the inside. His Aidan was out there alone with half the DMS out looking for him—most likely that hunter too—and Lee couldn't protect him. It wasn't a trust issue; he trusted Aidan. He believed in him. But as powerful as Lee knew Aidan would be one day, as much unlimited potential there was locked away behind those pretty eyes and that adorable scowl, none of that was a substitute for experience. Lee had spent almost his whole life hiding or running from one thing or another. He knew how to stay hidden. He knew what shadows to trust and which ones to kill. Most of all, he knew the last person in the world he should trust was himself.
Aidan didn't know any of that.
"If there are any gods that ever lived and they're still alive, or even if you ain't, please just let him listen to me this once. Have him out of that room and on his way to Arthur before they get to him."
That prayer, like so many others in his life, was met with deafening silence.
He struggled against his bondage for the…he'd lost track, actually. It didn't matter. Everything was as tight as ever. Whoever'd tied him up knew what they were doing. Or maybe he was just too exhausted to get out the hard way. He hated having his magic drained. It always made him feel like an overcooked noodle.
"Someone's gotta be in here to ask me somethin' eventually," he mumbled to himself.
Lee let out a small laugh. "'You're bloody talkin' to yourself,' says I. 'Oh I hadn't noticed, thanks for the heads up,' I says."
A louder laugh echoed through the room. Maybe he was finally going crazy. Or maybe he only wished he was crazy, so he wouldn't be so damn scared that he might have sent Aidan to his death.
"Forgot how bloody hard it was, being in love," he said quietly. Then he snorted. "But si
nce when the hells did I ever go with the easy life?"
If there was somebody else around, he might have grinned.
It was an indeterminable amount of time later—too many ticks of a clock he couldn't hear spent wondering if Aidan was already dead, wondering if anyone would bother telling him if he was and if he could believe them if they did—when the knob on the heavy stone door began to turn. Seconds later it opened, the sound of stone scraping lightly against stone almost deafening after so long with only his own ramblings to listen to.
Then the hunter walked in.
"Well, hello again," the hunter said, his flat, deliberate voice at odds with the delight in his eyes. He turned away from Lee to push the door closed, and by the time he turned back around his eyes were blank, like still water under a starless sky. Eyes like that were made for keeping secrets.
Lee wondered if Aidan ever saw his eyes the same way.
The hunter walked over to the stone table and pulled out the steel chair before sitting down across from Lee. He was dressed the same as he'd been the last time Lee had seen him, so that probably meant he'd been unconscious for less than a day. The only change in his outfit was the pair of thin, white interrogation room gloves he was wearing.
"I didn't get to say this before, but that fake invasion was a nice diversionary tactic. It had our agents running all over for hours trying to root out the 'foreign invaders'." He chuckled quietly. "You have a wonderful accent, assuming that was you over the PA spell and not Mr Collins. Although, and I admit my Frankish is a bit rusty, did you say that you were going to 'string the Prime Minister up by his goat and cut off his cat'?"
Lee was surprised that anyone in this country even knew who the Franks were, let alone spoke the language as well as he did. Which wasn't very well, apparently.
"Is it going to be the silent treatment again, then?" the hunter asked after waiting a few moments for Lee to say something. Honestly, Lee hadn't even been trying, he was just too tired to think of anything to say. This hunter didn't seem like the kind of interrogator who would get rattled by a bit of silence.
"Or maybe you only like talking to yourself?" The hunter's lips quirked.
Lee blinked slowly. So. They do have crystals in the room somewhere. He'd always wondered about that. He quickly weighed his options. Silence would probably either get him tortured or left alone. Neither one was all that appealing, especially since he didn't know if the hunter would be back later on or if he'd give up and just go after Aidan. The second he thought that, he wanted to smack himself for being all kinds of a damn fool. Stupid sluggish magic-drained brain! He should have realized it the second the hunter came in.
They had no idea where Aidan was.
Why else would the bloody hunter be talking to a prisoner? Lee held back a grin. All he needed to do was keep the hunter here and thinking that he might get Lee to talk. Every second he spent with him was another second that Aidan could use to get farther away.
"You heard that, then?" Lee asked. His voice seemed slightly slurred to his ears, but that could have been the exhaustion or the throbbing head or a dozen other things messing with his perception. Having his magic drained was too bloody much like being lagered-up. Always thought that was a great argument against both, he did. He tried pushing the feeling away with sheer willpower, but that never seemed to work. In either situation. "How's that work, anyway? Can't use spells or crystals with the stone and all."
"You're familiar with Avalon stone, then?" the hunter asked. Lee couldn't tell if he was surprised or not.
"Familiar with a lot of things Avalon-related," Lee said with a smirk.
The hunter studied him for a long moment. Lee wondered how much he saw. Hunters were a tricky lot, trained to see the world in ways as odd as they were. He knew how to read people and he knew how most people read him, but with hunters he didn't have the first clue.
Any other time, this might have been fun.
"There are tiny hollows filled with iron set into the stone. The crystals are placed in those," the hunter said finally.
Lee let out an appreciative laugh. "Bloody inventive that is."
"I'll be sure to pass on your regards to the architect," Noah said, his voice threaded with quiet irony. "Of course, I only tell you this because I still think there's a chance we can have a civil conversation."
"It's civil to tie someone with their arms all up their back then, is it?"
The hunter gave Lee a small smile. "Not exactly, but precautions are necessary even in civil times such as ours."
"Precautions?" Lee snorted. "I can barely keep my head up; doubt I'd be up to leapin' across the table and throttlin’ you."
"I'd think not," he responded. "But you do have a magic that I've never seen before. Most magic fades after a while; you can see it happening, if you know how to look. But there's a thread of the brightest green I've ever seen, like a tear in the world itself, hovering in that basement and it hasn't lessened even the slightest since we captured you."
Lee froze. "What's that, then?" His voice was rough, and he cursed the stupid bloody stone again for sapping his wits with his magic. The hunter saw exactly how much that bothered him.
He smiled. "You have a magic I've never seen," he said again. "And I'm not entirely sure that Avalon stone can take it out of you. Hence the spell on your wrists keeping you from using any magic at all, and the arms bound so that you can't touch said spell to the stone and dispel it."
Fuck! Fuck! Bloody fucking fuck! Lee clenched his teeth to keep any of that from slipping out. How in all the bloody fucking hells did he ever figure that out? No one had ever discovered Lee's 'family' magic. He cursed himself for being stupid and careless in using it, even though he knew there had been no other choice.
How the bloody hells was I supposed to know there were still people who knew how to see magic?
Apparently, hunters were even trickier than he thought.
"I'd extend my apologies," the hunter said, seemingly oblivious to Lee's reaction except for a slight widening of his smile. "But the last time I offered an apology all I got was rudeness in return and my daddy always taught me that rude people aren't worth my time."
He placed his hands on his lap. "And I'd very much like you to be worth my time."
"My time's pretty expensive," Lee said, raising an eyebrow. Never let it be said that he didn't recover quickly. On the outside, at least.
The hunter laughed. "Well I'm not exactly overflowing with money, but maybe a name would do?" He didn't wait for an answer. "I'm Noah."
Lee almost snorted at that. "Nice to meet you then, Noah." He sketched a bow. Or as much of one as he was able to, tied up as he was.
"And do I get a name in return? Or should I just call you Mr Mystery?"
Lee laughed. "Mr Mystery. I'm kinda likin' that, actually."
"All right then, Mr Mystery," Noah said lightly, leaning back in his decidedly-not-stone chair and looking comfortable. It made Lee aware all over again how distinctly uncomfortable he was. Good interrogation tactic, that. "Why did you steal Excalibur?"
Getting to the real questioning right out of nowhere, another good tactic. "Why do you ask a question you already know the answer to?" Lee could do it just as well.
Noah smiled again. "I do need to figure out if you're going to be lying to me, don't I?"
Lee grinned. "You're pretty good at the whole interrogation thing, ain't ya?"
"And you've done all this before, haven't you?" Noah grinned back.
"Maybe a time or two," he said modestly.
"Interesting, since I couldn't find a single report in the last thirty years of someone with your"—he deliberately let his eyes roam over Lee's bare, scarred torso—"unique injuries, ever being captured."
Lee could feel his grin turn slightly brittle. Too good. Noah was too good at this. "Not everyone's as eager to get my shirt off as you are."
"Hmm. That's odd, seeing as that's standard procedure for someone who gets brought in knowing full well
that they're being interrogated. And you don't exactly strike me as the type that would walk into an interrogation room and give up your shoes because you were politely asked."
He was too good, and Lee was too damn drained to hold his own. "Maybe there are some questions that are better left unanswered," he said, dropping the grin entirely.
"If those do exist, I haven't run into one yet," Noah said.
"Maybe you just never recognized one when it was right in front of your face."
"My daddy always taught me that sometimes we're blind to our own faults, so it's entirely possible," Noah agreed. "But if I were a betting man, I wouldn't lay money on this being one of those times."
Lee shook his head. "Like a bloody dog with a bone you are. Standard interrogatin’ procedure's to find a question the subject don't wanna answer, then move on to try and get him to open up on other questions to keep from havin' to answer the one he don't. What exactly are you gettin’ out of this anyway, that you're so determined to find out all my secrets?"
"Personal curiosity," he said. "And I'm not getting anything except the knowledge that I've done my duty and protected my country and my government from terrorism at its worst."
Lee snorted. "I suppose the promotion you’d get from bein’ the one to bring down the boys what stole King Arthur’s sword don’t exactly hurt either, yeah?”
For the first time since he walked through the door, Noah seemed legitimately perplexed. "Why would I want to get promoted? I serve best where I am."
He meant that, Lee realized. It was a rare moment of absolute honesty from a man Lee thought was rarely honest with anyone. He knew more than most what it was like to be on both sides of a moment like that, and despite the fact that he wanted to hate this man who so casually threatened to hurt his Aidan, he couldn't help but feel a little bit sorry for him.
"Ah. You're a true believer, then." Lee shook his head sadly. "I mean, everyone's a believer, I guess, but you…you really buy it, don't you? Can see it in your eyes, I can."