Agent of Equilibrium

by N. J. Mercer

  “What’s going on? I feel terrible.” The words were clear in Boyd’s mind, but as he spoke, he became aware of his speech slurring; he needed more time to recover. He strained against his bindings to try to sit up, aching every inch of the way.

  “No you don’t,” said a deep, harsh voice, the accent was thick Glasgow. It was the big man with curly hair; his strong hand pushed Boyd back down.

  Boyd looked around to see where they were holding him, it was a large, bare room lit by a single, faint bulb. Sloping ceilings, wooden beams and the noise of a dripping water tank indicated that he was in an attic.

  “What’s going on, fellas? Why am I tied up?” he managed to croak through his dry mouth. He was going to play the role of a lost biker who accidentally crashed on a tricky stretch of road.

  “Why don’t you tell us that?” replied the smaller, cruel-faced man with a Midlands accent.

  “What do you mean? I’m just passing through. What’s going on?” Boyd said, trying to sound as sincere as possible.

  “Oh, don’t worry about him, mate, he’s just passing through, completely innocent. Tell you what, why don’t we untie him now and let him go on his way, eh?” said the cruel-faced man to his larger companion, his accent soaked in sarcasm. He turned to Boyd. “Shall I untie you now, mate?”

  The two captors burst into vicious laughter. Boyd just watched them as he lay there. Their laughter faded slowly. “What are you doing here?” questioned the smaller man.

  Boyd kept his nerve. “I don’t know who you think I am, but you’ve got the wrong man; like I said, I’m just passing through. I’m sorry if I’ve made any mistake.”

  “Oh, silly us; we’ve got the wrong person,” said the big curly man, wearing the joke thin. He didn’t do sarcasm as well as his companion; they each still managed a laugh.

  Boyd watched them closely; they were decidedly the two most wretched and uncharismatic individuals he had met in a very long time. As if he had just read these thoughts, the cruel-faced man leant over Boyd and without warning started to throttle him, sneering as he squeezed his neck. Boyd coughed and spluttered.

  “Why are you here, you bastard? Who sent you? We know you know something,” demanded the miserable soul as he strangled away, releasing some of the frustration he felt at being part of the trio who had lost Rachel in the woodland earlier. Even if Boyd had wanted to answer he could not have done so, the wiry fingers around his neck and the pressure they exerted made sure of that. He felt his eyeballs bulging … and the man continued to squeeze. Finally, he let go and Boyd found himself gasping for air; both captors towered over him, their faces deadly serious.

  The man with bad skin, his chief tormentor, seemed to relish the prospect of inflicting further pain; Boyd sensed the big, curly-haired chap would be more measured in his actions. It could be something to play on – or he would die here.

  “By the way, do you always carry a gun and runic textbooks with you?” asked thin lips before they curled into a smile at the look on the prisoner’s face.

  Boyd realised he had been searched already and that his story of being an innocent passer-by was not going to wash.

  “Where’s the girl?” asked the smaller man sharply, hoping to optimise on the surprise he had sprung.

  Boyd just shrugged without saying a word; it was an honest response. With a gentle shake of his head, the man slowly gripped Boyd’s neck between his thin fingers before going into a frenzy.

  “Who are you?” he repeated as he squeezed.

  Boyd felt his eyes bulge, just like they had done before; this time, his hearing also became muffled as the pressure around his neck cut off oxygen and engorged his veins. The man was strangling harder and longer than on the first occasion and if there was any confirmation required for this fact, the determined look on his cruel face was it. Boyd felt his senses shutting down; the man did not stop. His cackling voice asked the same question over and over. “Who are you?”

  Boyd started to go limp, and his eyes rolled upwards so he could not see what was going on. He vaguely heard the other man with curly hair bellowing in his Glaswegian accent, “Stop, you’re gonna kill him!” The slackening of the grip around his neck Boyd was hoping for did not occur. There was the sound of a struggle, and his head was tossed from side to side; the grip around his neck remained firm. The big man shouted at his smaller companion again, “The boss wants him alive, for fuck’s sake. We didn’t find the girl so finding this idiot could save our arses! Don’t kill him for fuck’s sake or I will knock yo—” Those were the last words Boyd heard before he passed out for the second time following his accident.

  **

  “Oh, you’ve done it now! I am going to beat the shit out of you for that,” said Curly Hair to his smaller, meaner companion. His face was flushed with anger as he stared at Boyd’s limp body.

  “Oh calm down, you big girl’s blouse! He’s alive,” said the man with the cruel face, finally releasing his grip and surreptitiously examining Boyd – just in case he had gone too far. The curly-haired man leant over their captive and carefully watched his chest; it was slowly moving up and down. He heard the faint sound of breathing and straightened up again, relief apparent all over his face.

  “What were you thinking? You could have killed him.”

  “I just wanted more information. They’ll blame us for losing the girl, even though it wasn’t our fault she got away in the first place. If we could at least find out who this fucker is or, even better, where the girl is, we could report back with it and that would make us look all right again; don’t want to let the team down, you know?”

  The curly-haired man shook his head. “You’re a fucking psycho. Let’s go and inform the Pharmacist, like Mrs Devilliers asked us to.”

  “What? Leave him here?”

  “Well, I think you’ve made sure he’s not going anywhere. Besides, he’s still tied up. I’m not facing the Pharmacist by myself; he scares the shit out of me, any other night maybe, but not tonight.”

  “One of us ought to stay.”

  “Let me put it this way, either you go alone and I stay, or we find the Pharmacist together.”

  With his pockmarked face screwed into a sneer, the man from the Midlands checked Boyd’s wrists and ankle bindings again. “Okay, he’s secure; let’s go and get the Pharmacist,” he said.

  They both left the attic by the old creaking staircase.

  Chapter 31

  Rachel moved from cover to cover, sometimes she hid her waif-like body behind a tree and at others behind a wall. She slipped silently through the night, her feet not making a sound. Gradually, she made her way to the mature Leylandii that grew alongside the south wall of the old house. She knew exactly where she was going; after all, this was her home. Rachel crouched down low to crawl between the hedge and the house until she reached a long-forgotten window, a dirty, narrow pane of glass that sat in a rotting frame a few inches above the ground. Three feet long and less than a foot high, it was too small for an adult to pass through; not for petite Rachel though. She pushed its grubby glass, there was some resistance from the rusted hinges, and her heart leapt when they squeaked gently. The window opened, and she was able to crawl through backward and lower her body into the small, dark coal cellar; a few feet away were the locked wooden doors through which the coal itself would have been deposited. It was a space that had not been used for many years, ever since the house’s need for burning coal was superseded by mains electricity and its own diesel generator. At some point there had been an attempt to convert it into a store room of sorts. Rachel had never entered here at night, and it was almost pitch black inside, but even in the daytime, it would have been a dark and dingy place. It was the smallest of three such cellars, and despite the darkness, she felt confident of being able to feel her way along its walls to the old wooden staircase that led back into the house.

  As she moved through the dark, she was suddenly gripped by an icy coldness. A sudden short hiss made her turn abruptly; ther
e was nothing to see. She chided herself for being so jumpy, it was a frightening situation. She could not afford to panic – that would lead to mistakes. Once again, there was the faintest suggestion of a hiss. Get out quick, she thought, and moved briskly, past some discarded furniture, up the creaking steps to the door at the very top of the cellar where she listened carefully. When she was certain there was nobody beyond it, she tugged hard at the handle; after a few determined jerks, its damp, rotten frame gave way. It opened, just like it had done all those months ago when, together with Lisa, she had first discovered this coal cellar. She proceeded further into the house.

  Having cleared the nerve-racking cellar and a small passage, she now stood in a cold corridor, intent on finding the downed biker and any clues to Martin’s whereabouts. She hoped desperately that she would not get caught in the process. A damp, musty atmosphere pervaded this part of the vast country mansion. Edward Devilliers had closed the doors on the uninhabited sections of his house many years ago, and this was where Rachel now found herself. For a family of five to be using the whole building was simply impractical, and because Edward had plenty of money, there was no need to open any of the property to paying visitors or the like. Besides, most of his real work took place in the chambers that lay deep beneath the building’s foundations.

  Rachel felt safer in the emptiness she found in this part of the house and wondered why she had bothered running away from the building at all. The flooring in the corridor where she stood was parquet; layers of dust and mould had long ago dulled the appearance of its once polished surface, and she could smell damp plaster everywhere. From here, Rachel knew a way to the topmost floor and the attic.

  Pale moonlight from large windows at the end of the corridor provided the bare minimum of illumination needed to get around, and her progress, although stumbling, was swift. A broad staircase took her up to the first floor. She did not stop here; only a few feet away, there were more stairs that continued on to the second floor where she found herself in yet another wide, long corridor, one she needed to cross. She walked along its musty carpet, nervously eyeing the rows of doors on either side until, finally, she reached the smaller staircase at the other end which took her to the third floor.

  This floor was built into attic space, and its appearance was far less distinguished than that of the rest of the house. The sizes of the rooms on this highest of floors were comparable to those in an average urban dwelling. Rachel went straight for the old box room; a square, undecorated space with bare, wooden floorboards and a sloping ceiling. In one of its walls, there was a small hatchway. She crouched before its little door, slid back the bolt and crawled all the way through it into the attic proper.

  She could hear him before she could see him, groaning from the opposite end of the huge attic. Using moonlight from the windows to guide her and keeping to the shadows, she followed the sound to its source.

  **

  Boyd gasped as he felt the sudden cold over his face; it was invigorating. Sharp intakes of breath filled his lungs with air, and he felt life slowly ebb back into him. There was another wave of refreshing coldness, and his level of consciousness increased; he felt as if he was waking from a deep sleep – only to enter a nightmare. Bound, with his body still aching from its recent abuses, he became aware of someone leaning over his prone form, and he braced himself for whatever was to come next; nothing happened. He blinked a few times, and by the light of the bare bulb that lit this part of the attic he could see a slight, dark-haired girl beside his bed, a definite improvement on the two ghastly men who had been here earlier. She had collected water from the nearby tank into an old mug and poured some onto his face.

  She stood there, motionless, looking at him with wide eyes. He watched her; strange, he thought, she looked familiar. She put a finger to her lips, the look on her scratched face imploring him to keep quiet. He did not say a word. She wore a loose, sporty jacket over a dirty dress, the fine hair on her head looked dishevelled, and her cheeks were grazed; none of this detracted from her pretty, elfin face.

  Good lord! he thought as recognition set in. It was the girl he had nearly run over earlier. How long ago that was, he could not be sure; unconsciousness had altered his sense of time.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “Great! Another interrogation!” Boyd muttered. He took a gamble. “Rachel?” he ventured.

  She looked startled. “How do you know me?” she asked innocently.

  “I’m a friend of Martin’s. What were you doing outside? I could have run you over; in fact, what are you doing here? It’s not safe, you know!”

  “It’s not safe out there either; they’re already looking for me. I came back because I thought you needed help and that you might help me. In fact, when I saw them pull a gun out of your jacket I thought you might even be Martin. He said he would do something to get me out … even though he didn’t turn up the other night … Is he all right?” She looked at Boyd with pleading eyes.

  “I don’t know where he is, and I don’t know if he is all right,” Boyd answered honestly; the sadness in Rachel’s face was painful, especially as he knew that the other man was probably not going to be all right.

  “See if you can get me out of these ropes, Rachel, then we’ll head out of this attic and get you somewhere safe.”

  She started fumbling at his bindings; despite working furtively, progress was slow. Boyd let out stifled grunts of pain as the rope around his wrist tightened then loosened until it finally became slack, and she moved on to the other side.

  “Do you know this house well?” he asked as she tried to free him.

  “Uh huh,” she responded, without a break in her task.

  “Good; I thought as much, sneaking in here like you did. What’s going on tonight, Rachel? Why did you try and run away?”

  “I don’t know what’s going on; there have been people coming and going all night. It’s something that involves me and my sisters. I know that because Martin told me and because of these strange dresses they gave us to wear.”

  She had just about managed to loosen the ropes sufficiently for Boyd to yank his hands free from the bed and shake the circulation back into them. Pain signals fired simultaneously from every fingertip; ignoring them, he sat up and got to work frantically on his ankle bindings, not stopping until he pulled his legs out of their tethers with a great heave. He closed his eyes, took a few deep breaths and then stood beside the bed frame, rubbing his stiff neck.

  “Martin told me I was in danger; me and my sisters too … I’m scared,” said Rachel.

  Boyd could see the girl was confused and frightened; she was definitely a brave one. Coming back to this place was probably a bad move for anybody he thought; however, she had done it, and he swore on the Grimoires that he would do whatever he could to get her out again.

  “Don’t worry, honey, before you know it we’ll be leaving,” he reassured her; it was the only thing to say. After a few stretches, he limped over to the attic window to see what was going on.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” said Rachel as she watched him. Boyd glanced at her self-consciously, a little uncomfortable about his new responsibility. He managed to flash her a brief smile before looking outside.

  “Son of a bitch!” said Boyd as he looked down from the attic window. Rachel walked over to see what it was that had warranted such profanity. Two men in black robes were rolling Boyd’s damaged motorbike along the driveway. It seemed that the Disciples were intent on hiding all traces of him being here. He automatically moved a hand to where his pistol was supposed to be holstered; its familiar shape was not there. That’s no surprise, he thought and turned from the window.

  “Okay, Rachel, if we’re gonna survive tonight you’re going to have to listen to me carefully and be very brave. Okay?”

  Rachel nodded meekly.

  “There were two men here earlier, nasty pieces of work – we need to get out before they or anybody else gets back.”

  A
lmost as soon as he had said this, there was the sound of footsteps from the corridor below. They both turned towards the main staircase that connected the attic to the second floor. Boyd’s survival instincts were working overtime.

  “Quick, go and stand there.” He motioned to a dark corner, and Rachel ran to it. Boyd collected the rope that he had been tied up with. He caught sight of an old, disused water tank lying beside the current one; attached to it was a length of lead pipe. He briskly walked over to it and with a few deft twists, removed the pipe from the tank. The footsteps below were much closer now and definitely heading in their direction. Boyd gave the length of pipe to Rachel as she stood in the shadows. “Use this when you get the chance,” he told her.

  “When … how?” she asked desperately.

  “When you get the chance, you’ll know what to do!” he assured her with a wink, and she nodded.

  Boyd quickly lay back down on the hard iron bed and arranged the rope around his hands and feet again to give the impression that he was still tied up. A spell of brilliant moonlight spilt in through the windows and added to the illumination from the dim bulb.

  There was a click followed by a creak as the door at the foot of the staircase was opened. Heavy footsteps echoed on each wooden step until the ascent was complete, and the Pharmacist was in the attic. He walked towards the bed. Lying on his back, Boyd was unable to see who was coming, so he listened carefully instead to each clunking footfall and the sound of deep, slow breathing that accompanied it. Through partially closed eyes, he could vaguely see Rachel crouched in the corner, clutching the makeshift weapon he had given to her. She looked afraid; he wanted to give her a quick nod, or some other sign for reassurance; he couldn’t, the figure that had entered the attic was almost upon him. He lay still; his eyes were slits, just wide enough to see the outline of whoever was approaching without giving the game away. This time he would spring the surprise.