by Kay Williams
“Isn’t it curious how you mock my work but out of the two of us I yield better results more frequently,” Valdine snapped at Long’s direct insult.
“Children,” I complained. “Please.”
I'd had just about all I could stand of the Dependants' need to ruffle each other’s feathers.
“Mind your manners,” Long turned his attention on me.
“Mind your own,” I replied.
I didn’t expect him to pull a gun and point it at Cornwall. I had no idea what the wildling was thinking but he didn’t even blink at the action. Either Cornwall didn’t care, wasn’t afraid or Long had whipped out the weapon so often that it had lost its impact.
“I will kill him,” Long threatened.
“No you won’t, you need him.”
“You think I can’t take you any time I want?” Long sneered.
“I think if you could you wouldn’t have bothered attacking Simon to start with,” I replied. “I think if you could take me at any moment you wouldn’t be threatening him now. You are really very stupid.”
Long’s hand shook but he lowered the weapon and stalked forward instead choosing to point the gun at me. Instinctively I erected a shield. I had no idea if I could stop bullets but I would rather give it a go then resign myself to being shot, not that I thought Long would pull the trigger, my blood all over the Hyde Park memorial wall wouldn’t be conductive to what he wanted from me.
“Explain yourself,” he hissed.
“It’s like the first time we met all over again. I offered you what you wanted but you turned me down choosing to try and take it, forcing me to defend myself. And you are making the same mistake now. I offered to come to you willingly but you are waving a gun about and attempting to force an issue that doesn’t need forcing, which is only going to make me defend myself again.”
“You think your actions against Charlie should go unpunished?”
“He killed a man.”
“One useless old man,” Long sneered
“Snow was an old man,” I reminded Long.
Aolir growled low in his throat, I knew it was a warning that I was about to over step myself but I didn’t need his intuition this time. Long was furious and gripping the gun so tightly I worried for a minute that he was going to break his own skin and do something drastic. Eventually he managed to get a hold of himself, I had no idea what perverse thoughts he had used to cool his temper, but I was sure that I didn’t want to experience them.
“Give them her friend,” Long ordered.
The man with the wand lowered it long enough to shove Cornwall forward, the wildling spun and a very disturbing snarl issued from his throat, the Dependant tapped his cheek as in inviting retaliation but Cornwall didn’t rise to the bait, using his claws was only going to make the Dependant bleed and that wasn’t going to have happy results.
Cornwall straightened his clothes, appearing more pissed off than particularly upset by his participation in a hostage situation.
Once he was safe with the Council I walked forward while discreetly biting into the capsule glad that Valdine had warned me that it would taste bitter and numb my mouth because it stopped me gagging on reflex at the taste and the instant cold burn that swept through my mouth and hurt my tongue.
“You are letting her go through with this idiocy?” Cornwall’s surprise was coupled with a protective step back towards me that was stopped only by Aolir’s quick reflexes and dragon strength. “You are all mad! You have no idea what he is going to do to her!”
Long holstered the gun and came to meet me with a triumphant gleam in his eyes that faulted at the same time as my shield and the strength in my legs.
I hit the grass with my vision blurring, I had no coordination to stop Long from grabbing my arm, the skin to skin contact giving him the confirmation of any suspicions he might have had.
I was half aware of Aolir’s bellow and Long’s scream of pure rage. I was too far gone to really feel it when his fist back handed me for the defiance and for us outmanoeuvring him, then the blurring became black and I knew I was either going to face the Dark before Lore or wake up in hell.
# # #
“No GPS tracker but there is one hell of a Spell on her.”
“Can you remove it?”
“I’m not qualified, Quinton, I can’t guarantee the results.”
“Unless you want to end up like Charlie, become qualified in the next five minutes.”
# # #
“How much longer?”
“Her metabolism is working through the sedative.”
“Still?”
“It was specially made, Quinton, it will take as long as it takes.”
# # #
“What do you mean you missed something in the Spell?”
“It was layered! I told you I wasn’t qualified!”
A scream abruptly cut short.
# # #
My bed shuddered and I winced at the lingering aching pain in my joints and muscles.
Fragments of conversation came back to me in snatches, I had been fighting Valdine’s sedative and I had let myself rise just enough to confirm I was still alive before I had exhausted myself and been dragged back into unconsciousness, but Valdine’s concoction was wearing off now and I instinctively knew I hadn’t been rescued yet.
It was the bed that gave it away; it was too cold and hard for it to be somewhere safe.
I remembered Long's ice cold voice unruffled and calm when he felt I had been in his power and all he had to do was exercise some patience and wait. A young man's voice full of uncertainty at first and then later it had begged for forgiveness in an apology, and its scream in fear before it was unceremoniously silenced. Later there had been one time I had heard a woman’s voice, clinical and detached with knowledge of Valdine’s sedative and my metabolism.
Now I was coming around and everything hurt in the deep aching way that I had only ever experienced when I had slept in an awkward position and cut off the blood flow, I felt dizzy, disconnected and exhausted.
I wanted to sleep but I knew the ache and pain in my limbs wouldn’t have let me rest, plus the fact I was laying on something cold and hard and I didn’t have a pillow or even the imprint of scales I had become so used to.
At any other moment in anyone else’s company I would have known that keeping still and quiet would have been an advantage, but as it was highly likely that I was being watched by a Dependant then they would easily be able to hear the change in my heart and pulse. They would be able to scent my distress at coming around as I was and be able to taste that the sedative was in its final stages. So there was no point in trying to hide.
I managed to blink my eyes open and what I saw made me wish I hadn’t.
I was in a small white room with bright lights. The walls were lined with steel trolleys covered in surgical tools.
I was tied into a chair that would have been more at home in my dentist's if someone could have upholstered and padded it. I couldn’t move my hands or my feet and would have panicked if I hadn't found my abstract normal in its quick response to my mental commands. The rope that bound me was looped several times over and tightly tied, but I knew I could unwind the ropes with a single thought.
It seemed that a pained body and sluggish physical responses didn’t dull my ability to function with my abstract. I didn’t bother untying myself now, partly because I wouldn’t have been able to move anyway and partly because I wasn’t alone. My abstract, its strength and my ability to wield it were the only elements of surprise I still had.
The woman who I shared the room with was sitting to one side at a small desk covered in papers and she was typing up notes that were being dictated to her from an appliance she had clipped to her ear.
The only other thing in the room I could see was a body, and bile rose in my throat when I recognised it to be that of the mage who had led Cornwall with a wand in his back. The mage who I had heard tell Long that he didn’t know much about the Spell A
olir had crafted into my hand. The mage who had later admitted his error with its deconstruction to Long and now I knew why his scream had been so short. A part of me had already known that Long had killed him, but I shouldn’t have had to come around to his body slumped against the wall in a large pool of his dark tainted blood and his head given pride of place on the counter.
How I hadn’t been coated in arterial spray was a mystery, unless Long had decided that it would not be very fitting to whatever plan he had for me to be turned.
I shuddered at the thought and pushed it to one side. If he did that then he would have no access to my abstract, it was genetic and therefore present in every strand of my DNA. So I didn’t think that being turned would cause it to become muted or to fade completely, but my blood was the easiest way of tapping into it and the only way it could be passed on.
The woman looked up from her work and took off her earpiece discarding it on her desk before coming to the side of the chair. I could have stopped her but I was busy trying to swallow the bile in my mouth and get my extremities to respond. She felt for my pulse, timing it against her watch. At the same time I noticed how her eyes dilated slightly with bloodlust; if she was trying to Bespell it was lost amongst the last of the sedative and I wasn’t aware of it.
“You’ll be fully around in five minutes or so I would guess,” she offered in a conversational tone. “Someone did a very good job with this; I should like to see their work.”
I decided to keep my mouth shut, I wasn’t sure I would even be able to talk without it being muffled or coming out backwards so I didn’t try. If I was being honest with myself all I wanted to do was get my hands on Valdine and snap his neck, I hadn’t signed on for painful cramped limbs or the inability to even twitch them without feeling exhausted.
A crash sounded from far above, muted from the layers of bricks and mortar between it and us, but it still rattled the light fitting and sent dust drifting down from the tiles.
“The dragon,” the woman answered my frown. “The one who cast the tracer on you I would imagine, Quinton was amazed at your circle of friends though. The dragon was smug when he shifted right in front of us and managed to burn three of Quinton’s men to ash before he got airborne.”
“Let me guess,” my voice felt far away and gravelly but she seemed to understand. “You lack anti-aircraft defences?”
“He can tear at the building all he likes, his scales won’t protect him when we get close. He’ll make a mistake,” she frowned.
Not Aolir, he knew what he was doing.
I knew what he was doing as well, he was providing a distraction, that’s why I was waking up with only this woman and a dead body on guard duty. She hadn’t mentioned the Council but I doubted that they would be that far behind and they wouldn’t have anything to fear from the Dependants. I didn’t think that Valdine or Ross would be particularly interested in a pitched battle but I could see Carson and Shay in the fray.
At the very least providing another distraction to those got in their path. Perhaps even assaulting a few. Not in a True Death permanent kind of way of course, snapping a few necks wouldn’t kill a Dependant for long but it would take a couple of hours for the virus to repair the damage and reanimate them.
The room shook again and I mentally wished Aolir luck, and most importantly safety. Feeling was beginning to creep back into my joints in the uncomfortable prickly burn of pins and needles signalling that it wouldn’t be long before I was back on my feet and capable of trying to find my own way out. That was after I had found something in this room to take this woman’s head off with. With enough speed and force anything would do, it didn’t have to be sharp.
“You aren’t afraid,” she cocked her head as if she thought that was interesting.
“I don’t see anything to fear, your boss is loco and my dragon is coming for me, you never should have killed an innocent man, kidnapped one of my friends and made the assumption that I was unprotected.”
“I can kill you.”
“That’s what Snow thought, look how he turned out.”
“Charlie never wanted to hurt you, he just wanted you to come without a fuss.”
“I offered Long my willing assistance and he didn’t want it, he seemed to think that my life was his to take, and farm, and live off as if I was a cow to be milked.”
“You are.” She spat the words out.
“Don’t look at me as if I am the inferior species,” I snapped back angrily. “You are the ones who need Humans, if we all turned around tomorrow and didn’t support the Blood Bars and treated you as the parasitic leeches you really are you would starve. You are nothing, a worthless Faction spawned of a stray virus. You don’t recycle, you don’t contribute, and you don’t breed. You are just dependant!”
During my rant feeling had come back to my limbs and I had watched her cheeks hollow angrily as the truth was laid out before her, a truth she must have been aware of as a doctor but that she had chosen to ignore in order to cope with this new state of being.
I could have used Aolir though because I had pushed one too many of her emotional buttons and with a shriek she lunged at me only to bounce off my hastily erected shield, I freed myself and tumbled out of the chair watching that I didn’t go anywhere near the mage's blood.
She looked so bemused I was almost sorry for her before her anger took her again and she threw herself at me. This time a swift command pushed her three feet into the air and she flew across the small space connecting with the far wall with enough force to crack the tiles, she hit a counter as she bounced off the wall and then the floor.
The one thing to remember about Dependants was that they were dead, once a body had died it lost feeling and its nerves became redundant which meant in a physical punch up they would never tire, they would get back up instantly and they wouldn’t stop coming. But they were also capable of practical thought, and this time instead of just charging me pointlessly, the woman crouched on the floor waiting for inspiration or a weakness to show itself.
I kept my shield up and took in my surroundings. Long had killed the mage with something and I couldn’t imagine that he would take it away to clean it. The moment I took my eyes off the woman she threw herself back at me, smacked into my shield and another stray mental thought sent her back on to her ass on the other side of the room.
Then I saw it, beneath the body of the Mage was an axe, it was a standard red heavy weapon that was usually mounted in glass cases for a firefighter to use in an emergency.
Being very careful of the blood, I closed my abstract around it and hefted it, learning its weight in my mental grip. Remembering to leave it pointed down so the mage's blood dripped onto the floor as I lifted it to wield it.
I was confident that with my shield up no stray droplets were going to infect me, but I wasn't about to the run risk of infection.
I turned back to the woman and watched her hesitated.
“Let me guess,” I said advancing a step with the axe safely to the side of me and my shield; if there was splatter it would hit the floor, not me. “Long didn’t mention my abstract?”
“Yes, but...”
“He underestimated it, and me, and so have you. So your choice is the same as the one that Snow had even after he ripped out the throat of a friend. Leave me alone, and I leave you alone. Push me and you die.”
“Your blood has the potential to give us such power,” she whispered with reverence.
“It does not transfer well. Once consumed you barely have the power to push spoons.”
“You lie,” she hissed. “Quinton says Carson squandered the gift he was given.”
“Leave me alone,” I made it an order.
The room vibrated again, her eyes darkened with bloodlust, and I reflexively tightened my grip on the axe and reinforced my shields. When she leapt again it was with twists and turns and darting and ducking as if she felt my abstract had to be aimed like an arrow and had to strike true rather than tightened in a grip. I
corrected her mistake by throwing her back against the wall and this time pinning her there.
Her eyes were wide with fear this time. Her hands clawed uselessly at her own flesh but she couldn’t grip my abstract, her lower half struggled uselessly, she hammered at the tiles with her fists, but it made no sound that would be heard by anyone else.
I hefted the axe and just like with Snow I made the blow swift and lethal, putting enough force behind the blow to drive the blade into the tile.
The blood coated wall and the the axe, her body slumped to the floor leaving a vivid trail down the surgical white walls with her head balanced on the blade of the axe. I wrenched it out of the wall and her head fell into her own lap.
It was only when I was safe that I realised what I had done without even thinking about it, the multiple use of my abstract. The precision and control I had never attempted before, and the fact that I still felt strong and capable. I took my shield down now there was no need of it, I might have felt alright but I couldn't run the risk of running out of energy just as I needed it. It seemed that between my resolve to eat more and Aolir’s offerings that I was stronger than ever, but I couldn’t rely on this strength to last, I had crashed so quickly after I had killed Snow. I needed to get out and reassure Aolir that I was well and to take Long’s head before it was too late.
I walked to the door, the handle turned but it refused to open, so I moved to one side and ripped it off its hinges. The hallway was empty and I kept my shield down so not to drain myself but the axe remained in the air behind me. Following along like an obedient puppy while the edge dripped the doctor's blood in a trail behind me. At the end of the corridor was a door, this one was unlocked and with a set of iron steps that led up, I took them. The higher I was, the closer to Aolir I felt and the happier that made me. The next door was open and opened out into an office with a large set of windows instead of a wall. Crossing to it I realised I was in a derelict warehouse, even almost eighty years after the Pause there were still plenty of them in the less restored portions of London.