by Dan Wingreen
Get over it, Lee needs you. Just be specific and careful. And do it fast.
No pressure or anything…
Aidan chewed his lip as he thought. Show me an image of where Lee is right now, in the universe my body is currently in, then show me where that is in relation to the rest of the White House.
He had less than a second to be proud of himself before the vision started.
It was like a picture frame sprung up behind his eyes, with Lee filling the whole 'picture', his shoulders just outside the fuzzy, indistinct borders of the 'frame'. He sat tied to a stone chair, his arms pulled back and bound so they were stretched out behind him; there were odd, glowing, blue cuffs of energy surrounding his wrists. At some point someone had changed his hair back to its normal color and gotten rid of his shirt. Aidan could see Lee's chest rising and falling. This is happening right now! Almost as soon as he realized it, the vision began to slowly pull back so he could see the rest of the room.
The interrogation room was almost exactly the same as the one he'd been held in, except the stone floor seemed to be dyed red. No, Aidan realized with a growing horror, that’s not dye, it’s fresh blood...
A man walked into the vision, his back towards Aidan as he carelessly strode through the pools of blood surrounding Lee. He leaned in towards Lee and slowly traced two fingers over Lee's bare torso. Aidan ground his teeth. Don't touch him! The man's hands stopped, and for a second Aidan thought he'd heard him, but the man gave no sign that a disembodied voice had just shouted at him as he tapped thoughtfully on Lee's collar bone. He moved around behind Lee and bent over further, bring his face right next to Lee's and stopping just short of touching the sorcerer. Now that he was ‘in frame’, Aidan had no trouble recognizing his face.
That's the hunter!
"Well, it looks like you can be healed with the cuffs on after all," the hunter mused. His voice was a low murmur, but Aidan could hear it like it was his own ear that the man's lips were practically grazing with every word.
"Bloody relief, that is," Lee said, his voice hoarse. Aidan's heart clenched. Lee sounded like he'd been talking for hours.
Or maybe screaming.
"Indeed, it is," the hunter said, his accented voice like molasses. "I would say sorry for hitting that artery, but I believe we've already been over my philosophies regarding rudeness and apologies. I'll try to keep myself from getting…lost in the moment again, but since I’m less than pleased with the pace of our conversation I can't, in good conscience, make that a promise. I should also mention that healing spells don't replenish lost blood, so you might want to keep that in mind while you're considering the tone of your answers."
Lee sniffed and cleared his throat as he glanced out of the corner of his eye at the hunter. "Do you know that it takes you about twenty more words to say anything than anyone else I've ever met? That like a personal quirk, or did your da never get around to teachin' you brevity before you killed him from behind, like?"
The hunter's jaw twitched, but otherwise he didn't react to Lee's taunting. You idiot! Stop provoking your torturer! Do you want to d… Aidan violently crushed that though before it could finish. He didn't know if the void would answer questions directed at other people, but he was scared that it would.
"Cutting out your tongue is becoming more appealing by the second," the hunter said as he stood up and walked around in front of Lee again.
"Can't answer nothin’ without a tongue," Lee pointed out.
"Unfortunately, that's something I can't get around," the hunter agreed. He paused thoughtfully. "However, I am starting to wonder about the importance of your eyes…"
Lee smirked, but Aidan knew a real Lee smirk when he saw it. And that wasn't it. Lee was scared. Aidan started to reach out, to hold his hand, to comfort him, to let him know he was coming and he only had to hold out a little longer…but he couldn't do any of that. He was still in the void, an entire reality away. This might as well have been a dream.
Aidan stiffened at the hunter raised his hand, one finger outstretched and pointed directly at Lee's eye—
Then the vision abruptly changed.
"No!" Aidan yelled, wincing in pain as it echoed around him. There was a moment of blackness, then the vision of the interrogation room was replaced with a still picture of the White House, basement and all, hovering in the air in front of him. The front disappeared, leaving the inside completely exposed, every floor and hallway visible in perfect detail. One room on the fourth floor pulsed with a dark purple light. The interrogation room. All of a sudden, like a river rushing out of a broken dam, routes to the room began to burrow their way into his head.
He screamed, not even caring about the echo because his head felt like it was going to explode any second—
Then it stopped just as suddenly as it started. The echoing died down as well, and just like that, Aidan knew every single possible way to get to the interrogation room from any point in the White House.
The vision faded, and he was back floating in the void.
Alone.
Lee, please hold on.
Every inch of Aidan was screaming to go back to the real world and storm the White House and tear it apart until he got to Lee. He knew where he was, he knew how to get there; nothing could stop him.
The tiny part of his mind that was still rational, though, told him he was being an idiot again. There were a lot of things that could stop him. Not the least of which was the front door. As far as the DMS was concerned, terrorists had just attacked the White House looking for the Prime Minister. They weren't going to be letting tours go through and he highly doubted they'd leave those doors unlocked with only one agent to guard them. He needed to figure out a way to get into the White House before any of those routes that were burned into his brain could be useful.
And he needed to do it fast.
The mists had returned.
They were just a tiny speck of light on the nonexistent horizon, but Aidan knew how fast they traveled. After all, an infinite void was really only as big as the distance between the things inside of it.
Aidan spun around, turning his back to the mists. Looking at them wasn't helping. They'd either swallow him up or he'd get his answers and leave, but he was not leaving until he knew he could rescue Lee.
What is the safest way for me to get back into the White House?
Go back through Lee's magic.
Aidan blinked. What the hells did that mean?
Lee's magic wasn't normal magic. Not like the kind that flowed through the world. It was different. Normal spells faded into the background, given enough time. Lee's magic didn't. It was foreign, and the magic of this world couldn't absorb it back because it didn’t recognize Lee’s magic as its own. In most cases, it wouldn't matter, Lee’s magic would just hover, inert and invisible to the world at large…but Lee had used it for teleportation, which was basically just ripping a hole between two places and building a tunnel out of his magic.
A tunnel that was still there.
How do I go back through the tunnel?
He almost laughed at how simple it was. Just cast a spell. After all, there wasn't anything possible Aidan couldn't do with magic.
For the first time since Lee had said those words to Aidan, he was grateful for it.
Aidan had everything he needed. There was no point in staying in the void a second longer…and yet he found himself drifting back around to look at the mists again. They were closer, but still indistinct; a ball in the distance. No hint it was nebulous and writhing. No hint of the thing inside them, the shape that looked human, existing inside something that was supposed to kill anyone it touched.
Kill, or drive insane.
Aidan worried at his bottom lip. He had time, but he wasn't sure he wanted to know. And yet, he felt it was important. Even if he wouldn't remember the answer once he woke up, since it had to do with the mists. The thing had seen him. The least he could do was see it back.
What's living inside the mist
s?
The answer, when it came, didn't slide into his head like a newly remembered memory. It echoed throughout the void in a loud, sonorous voice that seemed to reverberate inside Aidan's very being.
"I am your god!"
◆◆◆
Aidan stood in front of the mirror hanging above the dresser, checking himself over one last time before he left. It might have been a waste of time, but he was determined to rescue Lee as himself, not in some stupid tourist disguise. The magic was gone from his hair, leaving it a shiny, clean black. The awful shirt had been thrown to the floor the second he'd woken up. In its place was one of the white button-up long sleeve shirts Lee had gotten him. Over that was his dark blue sweater jacket, the lightly singed shoulder standing out like a badge of rank. Lee's own jacket, and the black shirt that had been on the crystal ball, were rolled up inside Aidan's messenger bag, bulging out and making it hard to close. His two notebooks were stuffed in there too, on top of the clothes where he could get to them easily, along with his pen. His black jeans, another present from Lee, were crisp and clean and surprisingly comfortable for their tightness. Aidan smiled slightly. He was going to have a talk about proper jean sizes with Lee when they got back.
He nodded once. He looked confident. Unafraid. Even though he felt anything but. The fear never left him. Not just the fear of going off alone on a one-man rescue mission. Not even just the fear of failing, of getting Lee and himself killed. It was old fears, too. Fears of worthlessness. Fear of making his own choices. Fear of being responsible. His fears and dreams had always been mixed, but it had taken meeting Lee to give Aidan the strength to separate them. To push his fears aside even as he ran towards his dreams. The Shaman's words came to mind again, about how Aidan needed to be careful about being swallowed up by Lee, about losing his identity. But he’d been wrong. Sometimes being swallowed and changed was a good thing. Aidan was different now. Better now. Because of Lee, he was the kind of man who could use whatever magic he had to help other people. Whoever Drey was, Aidan felt bad he couldn't have let himself be swallowed up the same way. Maybe if he had, things would have turned out differently, and Lee would have one less regret lurking behind those steel gray eyes.
Aidan was determined not to be like that. Lee had made him better, but he'd also given him an example of what not to become. He wasn't going to live with regrets. Starting with saving Lee, he was going to do whatever he set out do to, and he wasn't going to let anything stop him.
Aidan stared into the mirror for another few seconds as the unsettling feeling he was forgetting something fell over him again. He mentally double-checked, but he had everything he needed. The carriage was packed so they could get in and go the second they got back; Excalibur was safely hidden under the back seat, and he had all his magic supplies and Lee's clothes. He shook off the feeling. It obviously wasn't anything related to his mission. And doesn't that just sound all professional? Aidan grinned.
If it was important, he was sure he'd remember it later.
He gripped the strap of his bag, the only outward sign of his nervousness, as he walked over to the symbol on the floor. Even though he'd cried on top of it for a good while, it was still perfect and unmarred. He didn't think it mattered, but he'd take every bit of possible help that he could.
He held up the slip of paper with the spell he'd need on it. It was more specific than the ones he'd been using, but he didn't want to leave anything to chance. If divination had taught him anything, it was that there was no such thing as being too specific. Even if he wasn't quite sure why he'd learned that lesson.
Again the feeling he was forgetting something came over him, and he pushed it away.
"Open up Lee's teleportation spell," he said, his voice steady and even, "and send me back through it."
The paper dissolved into ash, and there was a flash of green light from the symbol before a hole opened up in the middle of the air in front of him. The image wavered, like he was looking through water rippling in a light breeze, but he could clearly make out the basement on the other side. It was empty, and the hole they'd cut in the wall had been covered up with some kind of covering that was painted just a different enough shade of white to be easily noticeable.
No one seemed to be there.
Aidan took a deep breath as he felt the same tug behind his chest he'd felt before being pulled through the last time.
Hold on Lee, just a little longer.
It was time to save the man he loved.
Chapter 6
The basement was empty, which turned out to be even luckier than Aidan could have expected, because the second he was through the doorway or portal or whatever it was, his head exploded with a sharp, stabbing pain. He cried out and sank to his knees as every possible way he could get to the room where Lee was held flashed through his head like dozens of lightning bolts striking the same spot over and over again. As suddenly as the onslaught started, it was gone, leaving behind nothing more than a dull throbbing in his head. Aidan's body shook as he caught his breath.
I hate magic…
He pushed himself up off the floor. What a wonderful start to a rescue mission. Not even three seconds in and he was already taken out by a headache. He shook his head, then instantly regretted it.
"Ow," he moaned.
Aidan leaned against the wall as he waited for the pain to go away, cursing every wasted second. Get it together. Lee’s going through so much worse than a bad headache. Unbidden, the hunter’s last words before his vision had pulled back began to float through Aidan’s mind like sulfurous vapor wafting from a poisonous bog.
"However, I am starting to wonder about the importance of your eyes…"
Aidan clenched his jaw.
After about a minute the headache faded, and Aidan risked moving. He pushed off the wall and took a few steps. Nothing. He tentatively shook his head. Aside from some stiffness in his neck, there was no pain. Without wasting another second, he took off down the hall at a run.
He wasn't thinking about anything but Lee, which was why he'd made three seemingly random turns before he remembered he knew exactly where he was going.
At least the damn headache was worth it.
He wished he would have thought to do this when they were breaking in, because after about ten minutes of running through dimly lit halls he came to a staircase stuck back in one of the corners that led out of the basement. Yep, definitely could have used this when we were breaking in. He raced up the stairs, taking them two at a time, and without pausing slammed into the unlocked door and pushed it open.
Right into a small room with two DMS agents between him and the only other door.
Aidan skidded to a halt as they jumped up out of the folding chairs they were sitting in, one of them dropping a book and the other spilling a cup of coffee.
Fuck.
"S-stop!" one of the agents yelled, clearly still startled. He was kind of youngish looking. Definitely younger than any agent Aidan had ever seen. Which, if he thought about it, shouldn't have been too surprising. Agents were assigned their jobs when they were teenagers, just like anyone else. They all couldn't just spring out of the ground thirty-five and snarly.
"Who are you?" the other one asked sharply. He was older, in his late forties at least, and just overweight enough his slightly stained suit couldn't hide it.
Not exactly elite super agents, then. Made sense, in a way. Wouldn't want to waste good agents guarding a door that, like the rest of the basement, went out of its way to seem unimportant.
All this flashed through Aidan's head in less than a second and didn't do anything to help him. Even if they weren't the cream of the crop, they were still sorcerers. They could have three dozen deathbolts zooming at his head before he could get to his spells. He swore at himself for bursting through the door without even thinking there might have been someone on the other side.
Stupid, stupid, stupid!
No one seemed all that interested in throwing spells at him, though.
They were both frozen, staring at Aidan, and each other, with varying degrees of surprise and confusion, but strangely no hostility.
They have no idea what to do! Aidan realized suddenly.
A reckless, idiotic, very Lee-like idea popped into his head. It would never work, not in a million years…
But he had been having a lot of luck with those recently.
"Maintenance," Aidan said, struggling to keep his voice from giving away how full of shit he was. "They called me in to change some of the lights." He pointed towards the open door over his shoulder with his thumb the way he remembered the surly repairmen doing when they were dragged out to fix something in his apartment. "One of them went out and I heard a noise and, well, you know how spooky it can get down there," he added with a shrug and a self-conscious grin.
"Light…bulbs?" the younger one asked. He shook his head. "H-how did you get down there? You didn't come through here…."
He didn't sound too sure about that. The young agent glanced around the room as if he might see some clue that Aidan had passed by before.
"Service entrance," Aidan said with another thumb jerk. "Other side of the building."
"A service entrance?" the older agent asked. He narrowed his eyes skeptically. "And you were fixing lightbulbs?"
"Yep." Aidan nodded, trying to sound like he did that kind of boring work all the time. "Some of them haven't been fixed in decades. I have a work order, if you wanna see it?"
Before either of them could respond, he flipped open his messenger bag, reached into the older spell book and pulled out the first loose page he found. He glanced at it when he took it out, wincing slightly at the spell written on it.
Dammit…
"Sorry about this," he said, smiling apologetically. "Cut!"