Lies Ripped Open

by Steve McHugh

  “Olivia arranged it before she went with Tommy to get Kasey checked over. They’re LOA, she wouldn’t let me put SOA agents in her detail. Elaine has put Olivia in charge of the investigation. Apparently it pissed off some of Olivia’s bosses, but no one is going to question it. Besides, if Olivia hadn’t been put in charge, she’d have only done her own investigation. I think Elaine would rather have her doing it officially than busting heads trying to find everyone who helped attack her family.”

  “Probably for the best,” I said, knowing full well what a pissed off Olivia is capable of. Better to have her on your side, than doing it herself. “It looks like you have some bad elements among your people.”

  “It does appear that way, doesn’t it?” She sat beside me.

  “Check your people for the Reavers tattoo. All of them have it. Like some weird badge of honor.”

  “Slight problem with that, the ones we took in today don’t have one.”

  That was a bit of a surprise. “So, these won’t be the original Reavers. Felix once told me that all of them had to get the tattoo. These are new, and by the way they fought today I’d say they hadn’t gone through the Harbinger trials. On the one hand that makes them easier to fight when they present themselves, but it also makes them harder to identify. I don’t envy your job.”

  “Have you heard from Olivia or Tommy?”

  “Not yet. I’m going to go over to the hospital once I’m done here.”

  “We could be here a while longer, yet. It doesn’t sound like the prisoners are very chatty.”

  I paused for a moment. “Let me talk to one of them.”

  “Not unless I have no other choices. You interrogated a man at Hades’s compound a year ago. I heard what you did to him. I can’t have dead prisoners here; we have to be better than that.”

  “I didn’t kill him,” I objected, remembering the murderous bastard who’d tried to kill Hades before he’d been caught. Unfortunately we hadn’t stopped him from killing his own wife and children.

  “You took his hands. You know he killed himself in our jail?”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not going to kill anyone. Just talk. They wanted to kill me back in Southampton, now they want to take me to talk. I’d like to know why. And I heard your prisoner died by getting into a fight with another prisoner.”

  “He walked up to a cave troll and kicked him. The troll tore his head off and threw it fifty feet away. What would you call that?”

  “Suicide by troll. That’s new.”

  Remy came out of the building and walked over to us. “They’re not talking at all. We had to restrain one before he bit his own tongue off. There’s a possibility they’re a little fanatical.”

  “Only a possibility?” Lucie asked.

  “They could be clinically fucking insane,” Remy said with a slight shrug. “Possibly both.”

  “Do we know any of their names?” I asked.

  Remy shook his head. “They haven’t been forthcoming, and as you know Avalon doesn’t keep fingerprint or DNA records, much to my annoyance.” He turned to Lucie. “Look, boss, I know you don’t approve of violence against prisoners, but on this occasion I can’t see how else we’re going to get anywhere. These guys aren’t talking, and everyone is getting fed up with going through the same spiel. It’s getting us nowhere.”

  “I don’t want my agents committing violence against them,” Lucie said.

  “Is it my turn now?” I asked.

  “You okay doing this?” Remy asked.

  I shrugged. “It’s something I’m good at.”

  “And that is why I’m grateful we’re on the same side,” Remy said with a chuckle.

  “Nate,” Lucie said, taking hold of my arm. “It looks like I don’t have a lot of choice in this, does it? No deaths, no missing parts. I’m asking you to go in there as Hellequin and get answers.”

  “You’re Hellequin?” Remy asked.

  “You’d not heard?”

  “I’d heard rumors about his re-appearance, but didn’t know it was you. You’re a celebrity. So long as you call someone who a bunch of people actively want to kill a celebrity.”

  “No killing,” I said to Lucie, ignoring Remy. “Promise.”

  I entered the building and was taken by one of four guards to a corridor containing the first set of interrogation rooms on the floor above.

  “Which one is Bushy Beard in?” I asked as I glanced around the four identical doors, arranged as two opposite one another.

  The guard pointed to the room closest to the end of the corridor. “Best of luck,” she said and walked off.

  I opened the door to the room and found Bushy Beard sitting on a chair with a table between us. I grabbed a second chair, which was closest to the door, and sat down. There were no two-way mirrors or hidden cameras in the room. There was one quite visible camera above the door and another at the rear of the room. They recorded on a continuous loop when someone was inside the room. The feed was displayed on a monitor on the ground floor, which I was sure was currently the most popular monitor in the building.

  Bushy wore a sorcerer’s band. It’s a small metal bracelet with runes carved into it, which negates the magical abilities of whoever wears it. I hate the things, but I had to admit I didn’t mind Bushy wearing one.

  “Do you know who I am?” I asked.

  “Hellequin, of course I know. I’ve been waiting for you.”

  “You have? That’s nice, why’s that?”

  “You are one of those we will slaughter for past transgressions against the Reavers. You thought us dead, we will never die.”

  It didn’t surprise me that he knew I was Hellequin. Those in West Quay had known who I was, so I assumed it was common knowledge throughout the Reavers. “You attacked me and my friends. I wondered why there were no magic users or elementals in your group.”

  “Too flashy. We were meant to overpower you. But Lucie and Olivia arrived. We hadn’t expected them. Nor that werewolf and his young bitch.”

  I fought the urge to dent the table with his face. “I wonder, why not just wait until I was alone?”

  “I was impatient. I thought you’d be an easy target with so many of us.”

  “That’s not working out so well for you. First West Quay, now Camelot. Two public venues, precisely zero me deaths.”

  “West Quay was a mistake. They should have waited. They did the best they could.”

  “So, who’s feeding you information about what happened in West Quay?”

  Bushy paused. “We are a large organization. With many willing members. The information will always get to those who need to know it.”

  “Why did you want to talk to me? You wanted to kill me back in Southampton.”

  “Things have changed.”

  “What things?”

  “You know where Felix Novius is. You will tell us.”

  “Who told you I know that?” I wondered.

  “That’s not important. You will tell us where he is or we will exact pain upon those you care about. After that you will die, and die soon. At the hands of the newly reborn Reavers. Once our enemies are out of the way, we will ensure that Avalon becomes the force it needs to be. A force of power and strength.”

  “Tonight, twelve of you got your asses kicked by two werewolves, a fox-man, an enchanter, an elemental, and a sorcerer. And one of those werewolves is a fifteen-year-old girl. That doesn’t strike me as an overly strong group. You’re not even the original Reavers. You haven’t gone through the Harbinger trials, you haven’t got tattoos. You’re a pale imitation of those I helped destroy. Lucie is going to make it her mission in life to root out any and all Reavers within the SOA and purge you from existence.”

  “We may not have the knowledge of our predecessors, but we have the numbers and the will to do what must be done. As for Lucie, she’ll be dead long before that happens.”

  “You’re going to kill Lucie?” I laughed. “I’ve seen her go toe-to-toe with Helios. You think a few assh
oles with delusions of grandeur are going to stop her?”

  “I’ll see your head on a pike beside hers, before our mission is done.”

  “Does Merlin know you’re back? I’m betting not. I doubt Elaine allows him the sort of freedom he used to have.”

  “Elaine is a traitor. She will be purged too.”

  “You’re going to kill Elaine, now? Wow, you really are fighting above your weight class. Even Merlin wouldn’t start that fight, and from the last time I spoke to him, I didn’t think there was much he wouldn’t do anymore.”

  Bushy launched himself up, his face a mass of redness. “Merlin is not aware of our existence. We do these things to make us strong. Not to make him strong.”

  He immediately realized his error in having told me anything, and lunged at me. I grabbed his hand and twisted, forcing him face first onto the cold metal table. I punched him in the kidney, and the air rushed out of him.

  “That was rude. We were having a nice chat and you had to go and ruin it by being rude.” I held his arm steady; if I’d decided to I could have broken it in half a dozen places. “Now, if I let you go, what are you going to do?”

  “Kill you,” he seethed through gritted teeth.

  I punched him in the kidney again. “Either you be nice, or I’ll stop pretending I don’t want to hurt you.”

  I applied a little more pressure on his arm.

  “Fine,” he snapped and I released him, pushing him back onto his chair, while he rubbed his elbow.

  “Who’s in charge of this new movement? Please remember, I’m being very nice. If you’d like I could just as easily stop.”

  “I don’t know. We get our orders from an agent who works in Avalon.”

  “And that agent’s name?”

  “We called him Daniels. He was in charge of taking those injured prisoners to the hospital. I assume none of them made it.” He finished his sentence with a smirk.

  “Okay, so who attacked Fiona?”

  “I don’t—” he began.

  “Let me finish. If you say you don’t know, I’m going to hurt you.”

  “I can’t tell you the answer to something I don’t know. You might as well hurt me.”

  I sat back on my chair. “I have a better idea. You’re going to tell me about the Reavers, about their command structure, about why you’ve suddenly started killing people, and why you’re interested in finding Felix Novius.”

  “Are you going to beat me if I don’t talk?”

  “Actually, I’m going to go into those other three rooms and tell your friends that you told us everything. And then I’m going to make sure that it gets out that you’re cooperating with me, personally. Then we’re going to take you and your friends to a holding facility, where you can all bond together and discuss how much you betrayed them. Or we can let you all go, and see how long it takes for your old friends to find you. I wonder how they’d punish a traitor to their cause.”

  For the first time since I’d arrived in the room, Bushy looked genuinely scared. “You can’t do that.”

  “Can. And will. I don’t give two shits about your piss-awful excuse for a life. So, wanna help and have it be kept secret, or wanna keep schtum and be a traitor to your precious Reavers?”

  “Schtum?”

  “Means keep quiet. So which one is it?”

  Bushy bowed his head slightly. “They use these on traitors,” he said quietly and lifted his hand. “Sorcerer’s bands. Then they force the wearer to remove it without the key.”

  Apparently Bushy feared his allies and what they’d do to him a lot more than anything I could do.

  Anyone trying to remove a sorcerer’s band without the key activates another rune inside the metal, which turns the band into a magical napalm bomb, killing its wearer in as horrific and painful a way as possible.

  “If no one has ever mentioned it before, the Reavers are one classy group.”

  He ignored my taunt. “What do you want to know?”

  “Everything you do.”

  “You swear whatever I say is between us?”

  “Not quite ready to die for the cause?”

  Bushy looked at the floor.

  “You tell me what I want to know and we’ll keep it between us. If you decide to mess me about, I promise to turn and look the other way while your friends tear you apart.”

  Bushy nodded and looked up at me. “The Reavers are set into different groups; each one is given a different task. No one knows the current command structure. That way if any of us get caught, we can’t give the game away. My group was tasked with your questioning and murder. We were also tasked with killing Remy, he’s become too vocal an opponent of ours to be allowed to live. His friendship with Fiona sealed that deal.”

  “Who attacked Fiona?”

  “I’ve already told you, I don’t know. I can’t tell you how many Reaver groups there are in Camelot, but it wasn’t done through mine.”

  “How many more members of your group are there?”

  “Those of us who attacked you. Then there’s Daniels, three other SOA agents, and a few others who have probably gone to ground by now. Twenty in all.”

  “I want the SOA agents’ names.” I removed a piece of paper and pen from my pocket, and passed them to Bushy.

  He wrote down four names, including Daniels, although I didn’t recognize any of them.

  “Why now?” I asked.

  “I don’t know the answer to that. We’ve been Reavers for years, waiting in the shadows for a chance to strike.”

  “Waiting in the shadows? Seriously?”

  “What would you call it? We’ve lived our lives as good Avalon subjects, and now we’re joined as one to remove those who once tried to destroy us. Why now, I have no idea. But I’m glad to be a part of it.”

  He was beginning to sound like the same idiot I’d met when I’d first arrived. Apparently just telling me their plans raised his confidence.

  “Why Felix?”

  “He betrayed us. He needs to die. After Liz Williams, we couldn’t risk trying another psychic and having them alert the wrong person, or not being powerful enough to track him. However, we will find him, no matter how long it takes, or how many bodies have to be piled up. We will find Felix and we will extract our vengeance for his betrayal.”

  “What happens once all of your enemies are dead? What’s the plan once you kill Felix?”

  “Felix’s death will usher in a new era for the Reavers. He was the one who helped create us, and from his blood and knowledge we will be reborn.”

  It sounded like the ranting of someone who’d listened to the spiel so many times he believed it. But then one of his words stuck in my mind. Knowledge. “He knows too much, doesn’t he? That’s the problem here. You’re scared that Felix knows who you are. He once had the greatest catalog of Reaver activity; he monitored all of you, and you’re scared he’s still doing it. You’re scared he has this massive file of Reavers and he’s going to expose those of you in charge.”

  “You don’t know anything,” he stammered far too quickly, the confidence evaporating once again.

  “That’s really is it, isn’t it? You need Felix dead because if he’s still alive, he could give away who’s in charge of your little group before you reveal yourself. But you don’t know where he is, and once you killed the Williamses, you somehow got it into your head that maybe I knew where Felix was.”

  Bushy turned away from me. “We will be victorious.”

  “The Reavers are an antiquated idea, a group whose very existence is an affront to everything Avalon is meant to hold dear. You can throw as many people at me as you like, I’m happy to keep killing you until you finally get the message. Your kind isn’t wanted.”

  Before he could say more, I turned and left him alone in his small room.

  “He’s still alive,” I told Lucie and Remy, who’d waited outside.

  “We found the escaped Reavers and SOA agents,” Lucie said. “All dead.”

  “B
ushy said that there were a few who didn’t take part, I’d keep an eye out for them.” I passed her the paper with the names. “All of these SOA agents are working for the Reavers.”

  Lucie scanned the list. “Two of these are dead, including this Daniels person. The other two will be taken before the morning. Anything else?”

  “Whoever killed those injured Reavers will come for your guests.”

  “I know. That’s the plan,” Lucie told me. “They come for these men and we grab them.”

  I should have expected Lucie to have already come up with the idea to use the prisoners as bait. “I’m going to the hospital to see everyone. If you need me . . .” I patted my pocket. “I didn’t bring a phone, I’m sure Olivia has one.”

  “I’ve got her number. Be careful, Nate, these guys aren’t the type to stop after only one try.”

  “I’m coming with you,” Remy said. “They want me dead too. I’d like to give them a harder time of accomplishing that plan.”

  “Like I said before, happy to have you on board,” I said.

  “You need anything else?” Lucie asked.

  “They won’t know who attacked Fiona. There’s at least one other group of Reavers in Camelot. I’d guess more SOA are involved. I’m going to be leaving the realm soon, take care of yourself.”

  “You’re leaving the realm?” Lucie asked, slightly surprised. “You just arrived.”

  “These people are after Felix. They thought I might know where he is, but there’s only one person on Earth who knows where Felix is. I think Felix has been looking into the Reavers again. The Reavers certainly believe he has, and from knowing the man, it’s not exactly a difficult leap to assume. At some point, the Reavers are going to go after the man who knows where Felix is. I plan on getting there first. That is if they haven’t already gone after him.”

  “And who might that be?” Lucie asked.

  I considered not telling her. For a brief moment I wondered, what if she’s involved, what if Lucie has betrayed us all? I immediately felt foolish for thinking it. Lucie was, while not my friend, someone I knew I could trust. “Fiona’s husband, Alan.”

  Remy gasped, which is an odd thing to hear from a fox. “She never told me that Alan knew where Felix was.”