Mathieu

by Irene Ferris

  Mathieu shuddered as it moved. “There isn’t always a happy ending, Dwayne. You know that better than anyone.” He closed his eyes and the mass moved back a fraction of an inch, but not as far as it had been before.

  “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” Dwayne repeated the obscenities as he backed up. “Little bro’, I don’t want to leave you like this.”

  Mathieu opened his eyes again and smiled sweetly this time. “Do this for me, Dwayne. I’m tired of fighting and I’m tired of lingering. I should have died long ago. It will be a mercy.” Mathieu jerked his head towards Marcus and Jenn, who were still on the floor nearby. “Get them out of here. Get everyone out of here. That’s all I can ask.”

  Dwayne paused a moment and Mathieu said quietly, “Dwayne, it won’t hurt. It’ll just be an end to it all. I won’t feel a thing.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise. It’ll be like going to sleep.” Mathieu cocked his head, “I haven’t slept in centuries. I’m so tired, Dwayne.”

  Nodding numbly, Dwayne opened his arms as if he was going to hug Mathieu in a manly fashion but then stopped and shrugged.

  Mathieu nodded. “Be well. Live long. Father many children and name a son after me so that I may live on.” He closed his eyes and concentrated on controlling the seething mass inside.

  Dwayne looked at the still figure and then yelled at the others. “Get out. Get out now. I see bad shit coming if we don’t get out of here now.” He looked at Amanda’s limp form in the middle of the circle. “Eddie, Susan. You need to get what’s left of her out. Carol, you need to go get her daddy out of here. Get out to the wards in the woods.” He moved over to help haul Marcus to his feet as the others shakily got to their feet and followed his directions.

  Marcus groaned in pain but managed to get up under his own power. He waved Dwayne away with a wince, hunched over like an old man.

  “We have to go. Now.” Dwayne gestured at Mathieu. The dark circle had grown wider when Dwayne wasn’t looking. That was enough to encourage him to ignore Marcus’ sound of protest, wriggle a shoulder under the injured man’s arm and start hauling ass for the door.

  “What is it?” Jenn asked. She was supporting Marcus on the other side.

  “He says it’s the power from both of those rat bastards and he can’t hold it all. We have to get out and activate the outer spell before he loses control.” Dwayne’s voice was rough as he hauled Marcus over the threshold.

  “No, he can’t hold it all. He’s not bound anymore.” Marcus gasped the words as he jerked away from Dwayne and held his ribs. He leaned against the door frame and peered back in at the kneeling figure. “He needs an anchor so he can focus it.”

  “Let me guess. He wants us to escape while he defends us to the bitter end.” Jenn said with a sigh. “He always did try to embody Chivalric ideals, even when the others treated him like dirt because of his bastardy.” She frowned at the strangeness of a memory that wasn’t hers, and then noticed Hugh’s circle beneath her feet.

  “Rest break over. Time to go before everything goes BOOM!” Dwayne made to put his shoulder under Marcus’ arm again, but stopped when Jenn put her hand up.

  Jerking her chin towards the floor, Jenn said, “He doesn’t have to die. There might be another way.”

  Marcus’ lip curled as he studied the spell. After the barest hesitation he looked back up at Jenn. “You’re really thinking what I think you’re thinking?”

  Jenn’s lips moved silently as she read the spell components. She paused and then answered. “Of course I am. But do you think it’ll work? You know what that spell is based on.”

  “Love.” Marcus said the word flatly. “Do you love him?”

  “Do you?” Jenn challenged him.

  “Define love,” Marcus answered as he started to slide down door frame, fatigue and pain winning over the adrenaline in his bloodstream.

  Jenn paused and smiled. “It defies definition by its very nature.” She moved to support him. “I love you.”

  Marcus smiled blearily. “And I love you. But I’m not the one you need to worry about. The question is if he loves.”

  Dwayne sighed as he helped pull Marcus up by an arm. “He wouldn’t have come back from wherever that scary as fuck bastard drove him if he didn’t have some kind of feelings for somebody.”

  Jenn nodded. “I agree. He feels something. We might as well call it love and work with it.”

  Marcus shrugged off both Jenn and Dwayne as he studied the circle again. He stood a little straighter and then said, “We can’t do this. It’s slavery.”

  “It’s survival,” Jenn corrected him. “It’s only slavery if we make it that way—if we force him to do things he doesn’t want to do and we won’t do that. We can work out the fine details of it all later, after we’re done.”

  “Survival at what cost?” Marcus took a deep breath and felt broken ribs twinge deep in his chest. “If we do this, we’re no better than Gaap or Gadreel. He’ll think we’re just as evil.”

  “If we don’t do it, what are we then? I’ll take being evil over being a murderer any day.” Jenn cocked her head to one side as she studied her husband’s face. “You risked all our lives to try and save him. Why is it in line with your delicate sensibilities and scruples to try and kill us but not to save him?”

  “Fuck you.” Marcus glared at her and then bowed his head in defeat.

  “What the fuck are you two on about?” Dwayne shifted from foot to foot and then glanced down at the circle again. “Oh,” he said in dawning realization. “Oh,” he repeated as the full impact of their discussion hit him.

  “Dwayne, give us your Sharpie.” Jenn helped Marcus lean against the wall and started to unbutton his shirt.

  “My Sharpie?” Dwayne echoed the words.

  “Your Sharpie. Your fucking pen. You always carry one and we need it. Give it to us, Dwayne.” Jenn barked the words as she gently pulled the shirt off of her husband’s bruised shoulders.

  Dwayne paused, watching Marcus closely. “What are you going to do with it?”

  Marcus sighed and closed his eyes in defeat then jerked a nod at Dwayne. “Please, Dwayne. Just give us the pen.”

  With a sigh, Dwayne dug into his right pocket and pulled out the pen. “I hope ya’ll don’t mind that it’s green. That’s all I had with me when push came to shove.”

  “It won’t make a difference.” Jenn squeezed his hand tightly but left the pen there. Instead she started unbuttoning her blouse. “But we still need your help.”

  “My help?” The ridiculous thought that he sounded like a Mynah bird flashed into Dwayne’s mind and he bit down on a panicked giggle. “What? What do you need? What are you doing?” He carefully stared at her face and only her face as she revealed she wasn’t wearing a bra and that yes, her freckles went down that way.

  “Help us copy the spell.” Jenn stripped off her shirt the rest of the way and then leaned forward to wrap her arms around Marcus, concealing that distraction. “It needs to go all the way around both of us. It needs to be a circle we can take in there.”

  “No.” Dwayne said flatly, forgetting her half nudity instantly. “Little bro’ doesn’t deserve that shit and you know it.”

  Jenn’s eyes flared with anger and she shook her head. “We don’t exactly have time to debate this, Dwayne. If we don’t do it now, we can’t save him.”

  “He doesn’t want to be saved. He wants to die. He wants to stop hurting.” Dwayne stood toe to toe with her and glared, forgetting her nudity in his anger. “Don’t you get that?”

  “He wants redemption and he thinks he can find it in some kind of blaze of glory like a bad action movie.” Jenn gestured at the pen. “C’mon, Dwayne. We can stop this and give him another chance.”

  Dwayne hesitated. Marcus coughed painfully and said, “He’s just a kid. Don’t you think he deserves a chance to live this time? Really live?”

  “How about giving him a chance to earn the forgiveness he really wants?” Jenn half-glanced at
her husband before returning her attention to Dwayne. “Dwayne, you just found someone who gets you. You don’t want to lose him already, do you?” She pitched her voice lower, “Could you live with yourself if any of those possibilities you won’t act on meant he didn’t have to die?”

  “Shit.” Dwayne extended the word into two syllables. “Shit. He’s never going to fucking forgive me for this,” he said half-heartedly as he popped the pen cap off with his thumb. The plastic lid clattered on the floor and he took a deep huff of the fumes before reaching over to start copying glyphs onto her soft, pale, freckled skin.

  Chapter Forty - Six

  Mathieu had reached a state of perfect stillness. The floor was cold beneath his knees but the cold did not bother him—it never did anymore. He sometimes wondered if that was because of the frozen emptiness of his soul, but that was not a train of thought he wanted to pursue right now.

  The room was still and empty, the shattered circles having collapsed around him. The glyphs on the walls and ceiling, while still very colorful, were dead. The only sound was the rasp of his breathing.

  The only tangible sensation was the pulse of the power that ran through his veins and writhed around him in an ever expanding circle.

  It leapt and strained at his barriers, trying to escape his control and the room and the house and the wards. There was something out there that wanted it, something that would call to it and use it. And Mathieu would not let the power do that. He could hold it long enough for the others to escape, even if it was winning this battle inch by inch. It would soon lose the war.

  “After all, everything always comes down to power in the end.” He said the words to the empty room as he reflected on them in his deepest thoughts behind closed eyes.

  “Does it?” Jenn’s voice whispered from a few feet in front of him.

  Mathieu’s eyes flew open, his calm shattered. She stood before him, shirt half unbuttoned and billowing in the air currents that the swirling energy patterns generated. “What are you doing here? You need to get out. I can’t ….” He saw Marcus and Dwayne behind her but she stepped forward to the very edge of the roiling darkness and blocked his view.

  “You swore you’d never hurt me. You swore you’d never hurt me or anyone I loved.” Mathieu focused on her face, a face so different than the one he remembered. He shook his head, confused. She continued. “I’m going to hold you to that promise now.”

  She raised her foot and took a small step forward into the darkness.

  Mathieu gasped and strained and the darkness retreated from her. “Don’t. I can’t…”

  “You can and you will.” Jenn inched her other foot forward as she spoke. “You won’t fail me. You won’t let us get hurt.”

  With a small sound of effort, Mathieu drew the darkness inwards as she advanced on him. It fought him, pummeled his shields. It strained to reach Jenn, to corrupt her, to strip the flesh from her bones and he held it back with everything he had in him.

  When she dropped to her knees in front of him, he was trembling in exhaustion but he held the power tightly clamped down inside.

  “I knew you could do it,” she said quietly. “And I’m going to make you a promise now: We’ll never hurt you either. Ever.”

  He was panting when he answered, “I can’t keep this held in for long. What are you talking abo…”

  It was then that she unbuttoned and threw off her shirt.

  Mathieu stared openly at her breasts, the question dying unspoken and totally forgotten on his tongue.

  Jenn cocked her head and repeated, “It’s okay. I promise we’re never going to hurt you.”

  Eyes finally traveling up to her face, Mathieu blushed and fumbled with words. “I don’t … Yvette, I don’t understand.”

  He didn’t see the expression of pain cross Jenn’s face because it was then that he noticed the disjointed line of green glyphs that crawled up her biceps and onto her shoulders.

  His eyes narrowed at the same moment she leaned forward, catching him in an embrace. “You won’t hurt us. You promised. We won’t hurt you. I promised. Remember that.”

  Touching him didn’t exactly hurt--it was more like sticking a finger in a light socket. She gasped in surprise as the power tingled against her skin.

  Mathieu clamped even further down on the power and cringed back and away from her at her exhalation—and into Marcus’ bare chest and equally emblazoned arms.

  Marcus gasped in pain as his ribs were jarred but reached forward and twined arms with his wife, trapping Mathieu between them.

  Recoiling forward and then backwards again from the contact, Mathieu wobbled on his knees as if trying to find an escape. “Please..,” he gasped. “Don’t touch me. I can’t bear…”

  He stopped and watched in growing horror as Jenn and Marcus’ arms slid together next to each other and the disjointed symbols started to line up, forming a circle around him.

  “No. Oh God please, no.” He moved as though to push Jenn away and stopped in mid-motion, palms a hairsbreadth from her bare shoulders. A choked sob escaped his lips as his hands trembled in place before ghosting over to the place her arms joined with Marcus’. “I don’t want to hurt you. Please…”

  Jenn leaned forward and whispered, “you won’t hurt us. You promised.”

  Mathieu drew a deep, shuddering breath and made to shove her away. Once again, the movement to break free was aborted before he made contact. Mathieu’s hands scrabbled at the air before falling limply at his sides. “No.” The word was barely audible. “Please don’t do this.”

  “I’m sorry. You know we don’t have any other choice.” Marcus whispered the words and swallowed the bitter taste of bile that filled his mouth.

  “This is the only choice in my life that I’ve been able to make for myself. I thought you understood that. How can you take this away from me?”

  “It was a bad choice, Mathieu.” Jenn tightened her grip on Marcus, pulling him closer. “It was a bad choice and you know it. You shouldn’t have had to make it. We got you into this mess, we’re going to get you out.”

  Mathieu cringed as she tightened the circle around him again, bringing her bare skin in contact with his chest. Marcus tightened his grip from behind and pinned Mathieu between the two of them. The symbols on their arms lined up to complete the spell, warm skin against warm skin making contact through the tears in his shirt.

  “Don’t touch me,” Mathieu sobbed. “Don’t make me touch you. I don’t want to hurt you. I can’t hold it all back.”

  “You won’t hurt us,” Jenn repeated in a wheedling tone. “You swore. I’m holding you to that. And besides, you love us.” Her skin still buzzed with the contact but it was starting to take on a slightly painful undertone.

  “I’m not capable of love. I have been broken beyond all mending, beyond all feeling,” Mathieu sobbed as he writhed weakly in their grip, starting and then aborting efforts to break their grip as he realized anything he did would cause them harm.

  “You always were a horrible liar.” Jenn whispered the words and then nodded to her husband, reached inside for the last of her strength and poured power into the spell on their arms.

  “Noooooo,” Mathieu howled as Marcus poured his flagging strength into the spell as well, causing the symbols on their arms to light up in sequence, glowing first green and then mellowing to gold. “Not again, I beg you. Please don’t. Anything but this.”

  “Mathieu de Bourgueil,” Jenn said. “Mathieu de Bourgueil, I… We… we bind you. I bind you with the love that you bore and still bear for what I once was.”

  “Mathieu de Bourgueil, I bind you with the love that you bear for us now.” Marcus awkwardly tightened his upper arms and chest around Mathieu’s shaking shoulders as he spoke, trying to comfort and confine at once.

  Mathieu shook his head, denying the words. “No. I don’t. I can’t.” He shifted his shoulders to force their arms and the circle apart, but Marcus and Jenn held onto each other tightly. He sagged against
Jenn’s shoulder and sobbed quietly, “Yvette, please don’t… I beg you for what we once were…”

  Jenn raised an eyebrow and continued, “Mathieu de Bourgueil, I bind you with the love you will bear for me in the future.”

  Marcus gave his wife a penetrating look and finished the spell with what was obviously missing. “Mathieu de Bourgueil, I bind you with the affection we have for you now, and the love that it will become in the future. I bind you.”

  “I bind you,” Jenn echoed him as she glared at her husband over the shuddering shoulders of the man they’d trapped between them.

  “We bind you to us and us to you,” Marcus completed the spell and watched as the golden glyphs brightened, flared and then moved in to encircle Mathieu’s neck, the brilliance slowly fading and leaving a thin, fine golden chain in its wake.

  Jenn released her husband’s arms and sat on her haunches, leaning back to look at the two men before her.

  Mathieu had fallen backwards limply to lie against Marcus’ chest, head lolling against the man’s neck. Marcus winced in pain but made no sound as he carefully lowered them both down, him to sit on the cold earthen floor and Mathieu to lean bonelessly against him.

  With cautious fingers, Marcus investigated the chain around Mathieu’s neck. It was slender and barely looked able to bind anything, much less a creature—a person, he corrected himself—of such power. Some of the links were misshapen and flawed, their roughness catching on the whorls of his fingerprints. He wondered if that meant the binding itself might be as flawed as the chain.

  “Who knows?” He muttered the words under his breath and then gently stroked Mathieu’s hair. Jenn’s eyes narrowed as she watched.

  Staring straight ahead, Mathieu’s eyes were open and unblinking as his hair was stroked. His breathing was calming from the panicked gasps he’d been taking when they’d bound him.

  Stepping forward, Dwayne dropped into a crouch and cocked his head to look into Mathieu’s eyes. “Little bro’? You okay? You still in there?” He hesitantly reached forward and gripped Mathieu’s shoulder and squeezed, touching his friend for the first time. “You okay, little bro’?” Mathieu was warm and solid under his hand, nothing more.