Ten minutes ago he had been dizzied at the scale of this office, filled with envy at its scale and spaciousness. Now, it seemed that there was nothing within its four walls but he and the eyes of the man sitting eight feet away across that magnificent desk.
“Are we clear on that, Michael?”
“Yes,” he said.
“How?” Dother asked. He didn’t need to specify what how he meant, and Michael knew it would be extremely unwise to play dumb at this moment.
“Dermot Scully is my brother.”
“Let’s be charitable to that precious ego of yours and pretend that I wasn’t already aware of that, Michael, shall we? Dermot…,” the man formerly known only as Mr Black rumbled, drumming his fingers on the desk. “I thought he was keeping his head down. Hence my allowing him to live. Generous of me I thought. Are you going to give me cause to regret it?”
“If by keeping his head down you mean drinking himself out of a job, then yes.”
“Drinking?”
“And running up debts. With the wrong people.”
“How foolish,” Dother said, the rope bridge over the yawning chasm of his patience beginning to fray. His fingers thumped hard on the desk, beating a tattoo that Michael could begin to feel through the chair.
“He came to me. Begged me for help. I said no, of course.”
Dother’s mouth twisted at that. “Oh, of course…” he echoed, and Michael Quinn missed entirely the mocking undercurrent in his words.
“He was drunk. And that’s when he told me about him.”
“The Morrigan?”
Michael frowned. “The who?”
Dother seemed surprised by this, but erased the surprise just as quickly. “Who, then?”
“He had this plan…to entice him, to bring him forth, and to capture him…he explained the rewards for doing so. What he could do.”
Leaning forward, Dother’s eyes blazed. “Who?” he asked.
Michael Quinn placed the bag he’d set at his feet on the magnificent desk. It was a large kit bag, and he had found it almost impossible to disguise its weight bringing it into the office.
He pulled the zipper across and the reason for the majority of the weight spilled out. Horseshoes tumbled onto the desk, clanging end-over-end.
Dother leapt back as if stung. His face changed; a ripple passed over his features and the face of the reserved businessman became bestial, fearsome to behold. He pointed a finger that now more resembled a talon at Michael. “How DARE you bring those in here!”
He motioned in the air. Michael felt a rush of air at his back as the door to the office opened behind him. Now standing himself, he shook from head to toe in terror, but it was too late now to back down, too late to do anything but press on and hope he lived through this and that crazy bastard Scully had been right about all of this-
“He captured him!” he gabbered. “He captured him and now I’m returning him to you! Please!”
Behind him, he knew, he sensed, something was moving toward him-and much as some part of him wanted to look, to see what it was, a deeper and more primitive part of his mind kept him rooted right to the spot and told him in no uncertain terms it was better if he didn’t see.
With commendable timing, that was when Brian decided to get out of the bag.
“Ohhhhh sweet Jesus,” he said, holding his head, “my fuckin head…”
Seeing this, Dother’s white-hot rage cooled. He gestured in Michael’s direction, something that had the definite gist of stop.
A hand landed on Michael’s shoulder. He glanced across.
“Hello,” said Sarah.
“Hi,” he returned, nonplussed. No-one else was behind her. From Dother’s body language he’d been expecting a squad of goons to have been charging for him, not a slip of a girl.
“Brian?” Dother said, walking to the desk where the tiny little man was still regaining his bearings, blinking in the harsh artificial light of the office, “Brian, is what he says true? Did Scully capture you?”
Brian kicked away the horseshoes with a shudder. Michael noted how Dother seemed to flow out of their way as they rained to the deep-pile carpeted surface. He reached into the bag and fished out his hat; a little black bowler, to go with his tiny little charcoal suit and pinstripe braces.
God she smells good, Michael thought, the thought managing to negotiate the otherwise all-encompassing fog of terror that had settled on him.
“That bastard Scully,” he growled and spat. “True alright m’Lord. Gave me the comehither and trapped me like a fly in amber. Wanted me to get him out of his money troubles.”
“Shall I-?” Sarah said.
Dother held up a hand to stay her inquiries. “And this man freed you?”
Brian squinted at Michael, took off his miniature round glasses, polished them on his sleeve, and put them back on before peering intently at him again.
“Aye,” he said eventually, “aye, that’s him. Although he stuck me in that thing with naught but iron for company for the last day and night…”
“I was trying to decide what to do!” Michael replied, feeling Sarah’s grip intensify slightly and wondering why this worried him so, “I didn’t want to just let him go and have myself blamed in some way!”
Head cocked to one side, Dother regarded the human before him as a scientist would have inspected a baboon in a cage who’d just explained Pythagoras’ Theorem. “It seems,” he said, drawing out each word and turning it over to examine it from all angles as he spoke, “that we owe you…a debt of gratitude, Mr Quinn.”
“I know what you owe me,” Michael replied.
Sarah applied pressure, and a moment later he was sitting down in the chair again without quite seeming to pass through the intervening space. With her at his right hand, Dother vaulted the six-foot desk as though it were the easiest thing in the world to do to land softly on Michael’s left side. He crouched down, going on his haunches, his legs bending in ways that human legs shouldn’t be able to, or at least not with that easy grace.
“And what is that?” he asked.
“A wish.”
Dother smiled. “A wish?” he echoed, making the word seem so ridiculous that Michael cringed. “I think you’ve been watching a little too much Disney, Mr Quinn.
“Scully explained it all to me,” Michael said, keeping his voice level. “You trap a faerie, it has to buy its freedom with a wish. He said it was something to do with probability – reckoned your kind can manipulate the world on a quantum level to affect odds. Win bets.”
“Quantum,” Mr Black returned mockingly. “What nonsense words you invent for something that’s as old as time. And that’s what you want us to do for you? Win bets? Reverse the fortunes of FormorTech, perhaps?”
“No.”
“Then what, Michael?” Dother’s voice was almost a purr now, and Michael’s eyelids were, remarkably given the circumstances, actually getting heavy.
“You’re…you’re the Prince…he told me…he told me everything…about the Sword…it makes sense…that’s how you’re…so successful…I want you…want you to change things.”
“And what do you want changed? By most measures, you’re a successful man. Rich. Powerful. What in your life displeases you, Michael?”
Stay strong. The figures above him swam now, as though he were in the dentists chair and being gassed into sedation; the silhouette of Dother moved fluidly and to his right…no…no that couldn’t be the girl…much too large to be the girl…looked more like a giant…a giant…stay awake…stay awake…
“Not in my life,” he said, with an effort. “In…my daughter’s….”
The silver light…everywhere…
He slipped into darkness.
**
The silver light pulsed outward, invisible to mortals, passing through them and through their realm with the guiding force of Dother’s will behind its power to change the human world, to bend reality to the will of he who wielded it.
At that exact
moment, three floors below, Danny Morrigan’s mobile phone first erupted into static, cutting off his call to Ellie.
Back in his office, Dother lowered the sword. He stepped over the prone body of Michael Quinn and placed the sword back in its cubby in his wall.
“This. This is how it begins?”
He turned and smiled at Sarah, who had spoken. “Yes. Yes indeed. Wonderfully unexpected, but beautifully elegant, wouldn’t you say?”
Sarah merely shrugged. It was one of the gestures her human form allowed that her true form did not. She directed her attention down at the unconscious form on the office floor.
“What of him?” she said. “Should I consume him?”
“Him?” Dother laughed derisively. “This pathetic, selfish fool? He is of no consequence. Wake him up and send him on his way. And don’t look so disappointed,” he added, seeing the annoyance dance in her eyes at being denied this feast, “he’d get stuck in your teeth…”
**
Belfast, Now
“I didn’t know!” he said again.
“What fuckin difference does that make?” Tony Morrigan said, disgust plain in his voice. “You went to him and you wished a baby out of existence…?!”
Finding that he couldn’t quite find the words to sum up his feelings about that, Tony Morrigan bunched his right hand into a fist and smacked Michael Quinn upside the head, sending the other man sprawling across the front room.
“He was my grandson!” he bellowed, as Dermot Scully threw his arms around him to restrain him from following up on the initial assault. “He was your grandson! You selfish bastard!”
Picking himself up, Michael wiped away a trail of blood from under his nose. There was no spark of anger in his eyes, only misery.
“I thought Danny wasn’t good enough. I looked at him and I could see – I could see he was shit scared of having found himself in this situation and I knew…I knew one day, he’d wake up and he’d think, fuck this, and he’d leave her. And that would have broken her. She’s my little girl and I didn’t want her to end up a single mother…”
“Balls,” it was Dermot who spoke up, to Tony’s surprise. His voice was heavy but he spoke with utter conviction. “This isn’t about Danny, Michael, and you fuckin know it.”
“What are you talk-”
“This is about him, isn’t it? About Da.”
Tony looked from one man to the other. “Somebody wanna let me know what I’m missing?”
“I told you before, Tony, a long time ago,” Dermot said. “Our Da walked out on us. Decided he couldn’t handle it. Left our Ma to raise us both. I was only five when he went. Michael was eight. Our Ma tried her best…she really…” his voice wavered, and both men glanced at the other before having to look away, “…she really did. But it was too much for her. The strain.”
“His fault,” Michael whispered. “His fault she died.”
“I’m not debating that,” Dermot shot back. “But just because our Da wasn’t up to the challenge doesn’t give you the right to make judgment calls about someone else’s-”
“She is MY WEE GIRL!” Michael roared back with a ferocity that stunned everyone in the room, including himself. “I would have done anything to spare her that, do you understand?”
“You sacrificed your grandchild’s life just in case your daughter ever wound up raising him by herself?” Tony asked. His surprise over the other man’s passion had subsided somewhat now to be replaced with the comforting veil of fury once more.
“I didn’t know! I thought all I was doing was changing who she ended up with! I thought things would shift – that she’d have a crack at a good career and that she’d be with someone else – someone settled – and that they’d have kids together and that she’d be happier! I would never sacrifice my grandson! I loved him!” he threw up his hands. “I thought I could make a deal with Dother! It was stupid, I was wrong, I fucked up – what do you want me to say?”
Dermot laid a hand on Tony’s arm, gently. “Be a bit rich of you to take exception to someone making deals with Dother now, wouldn’t it?” he said softly, too softly for Michael to overhear.
There was some truth to that, Tony had to admit. He allowed his rage to cool, but only by a few degrees.
“So the price for all of this,” Dermot spoke up, obviously wanting to move the conversation on from the blame game, “was you selling your company to him?”
Michael nodded miserably. “He didn’t tell me there was a price, at first. But he called. He called the day after he…did it. Wanted Formortech’s expertise on distribution for the upgraded network. Threatened to…oh God, you don’t even want to know what he threatened to do...you don’t know how he looks at you-”
“Jesus Christ,” Dermot said, as he let Tony go and sat down heavily on the nearest chair. Half-tempted for a moment to smack Michael again, Tony was dissuaded by the despondency evident on Dermot’s face.
“Jesus Christ,” he said again. “Don’t you see what he’s doing? What this network is? The last almost thirty years he’s been building up this telecommunications business of his. Super advanced. Top secret. Only within Ireland. Nowhere else. Why?”
“He said it was his home,” Michael offered, trying to feel useful.
“Yeah,” Dermot shot back darkly, “not just his home. The whole rest of his sick and twisted fuckin family’s home too. How long before the network goes live?”
“Tomorrow,” Michael replied. Dermot swore long and luxuriously, head in hands.
“And so what?” Tony said, still struggling to comprehend the significance of all this. “He’ll be able to send porn to Cork twice as fast as he can now?”
“This isn’t about the Internet!” Dermot said, slamming his fist down on the table. “Think, Tony! Think about what those cables mean! Communication amplification! Hundreds of thousands of thoughts – human thoughts, travelling across lines…Jesus Christ…the power he’ll able to draw from that, if he’s laid those cables in the right places…”
He looked up, shaking his head.
“We have to get out of here,” he said, standing up and pacing back and forth, running his hands through his hair. “We can’t stay in here. We have to get out.”
Tony went to the curtains, twitched them aside, gestured. “There were at least twenty of them out there last I looked,” Tony retorted, “they’d tear us apart and you know it. Want to check again? I’m takin bets it’s upwards of thirty by now.”
Michael paled at this new information. “Th…thirty of them?” he choked. “But…what’s to stop them just coming in-?”
“Same thing that made them try to use you as an assassin – enchanted circle around the place. They can’t cross it,” Tony smiled with some satisfaction, “I’d like to see the bastards even try-“
It was then that the car, spinning end over end, crashed through the front window.
Instant by instant the terrible scene unfolded, as though God had the DVD remote and was repeatedly stabbing the pause button on reality.
The window imploded at the impact, each shard of glass a dagger searing across the room; Tony dimly felt a few lines of fire streak into his shoulders and hip.
The chassis of the car smashed through the wood and plaster of the house, pulverising it as it flipped, disintegrating the television utterly, turning furniture to splinters, the settee propelled backward. Freakishly, it was that which saved their lives, impacting all three of them squarely and pushing them out of range of the car’s trajectory.
By the time it had slammed to a final halt, on its left side, wheels spinning, engine running, horn blaring, the three men inside tried to collect what was left, to come to terms with what had just happened over the roaring and the horror.
“Ellie! Oh Jesus God Ellie! Ellie no!” Michael Quinn was screaming.
His daughter was slumped limply in the passenger’s seat, hair matted with blood.
He surged forward and scrambled onto the car before the other two men could react
, yanking the door open with the superhuman strength of a desperate parent, almost taking it off completely. Reaching in with abrupt tenderness to match his feat of strength, he released the seatbelt that had engaged around Ellie and lifted her into his arms, pulling her clear from the wreckage.
The driver, somehow, was still conscious, albeit in shock. He mumbled incoherencies as Tony and Dermot, unable to open the driver’s door (it was that side the car had ended up on) as they ignored the broken glass that was everywhere to kneel on the front bonnet and yank him bodily toward them; smoke was beginning to curl from the engine, to thicken in the air with each passing moment. The car was hot, and it was getting hotter.
“Steve…” Tony said, as he identified the boy he was rescuing, “Steve…you’re gonna be okay…”
“…had to come…” Steve was mumbling, his head lolling. Blood was seeping from his ears, from his nose, through his clothes. That wasn’t the problem. Tony knew the injuries he had to worry about were the ones that wouldn’t be producing visible bleeding.
“Ellie…oh Jesus…oh God…what have they done to you…”
Michael Quinn was cradling his daughter’s head in his lap, at the far end of the room, tears falling off the end of his nose and onto her head like rain. One look at him at Tony knew the man would need no further lectures. His loyalty had been bought.
He was holding the price for his wish.
Carrying Steve clear, his back to the entry wound the car had left on the house, he stiffened as he sensed their approach.
Supporting their burden’s other shoulder, Dermot was first to glance back. Tony saw what remained of the light in his friend’s face drain away.
“The circles. They’re gone,” was all he said.
“…Danny…” Steve was mumbling, “…Danny…gone below…swallowed up…have to help him…”
“Alright in there?” a jovial voice called from outside. Close outside. “I’m no expert, but that doesn’t seem to be a standard car parking space?”
Laughter. Lots of laughter.
Folk'd Up Beyond All Recognition (FUBAR) Page 25