by Dan Wingreen
The page burned as he took hold of the magic. With a sharp gesture from each hand, he sent two razor-sharp blades of magic at the agents. They stared at him, wide-eyed and uncomprehending.
You'd think agents would recognize a magical attack…
DMS agents or not, he felt bad for them. They were just doing a shitty, boring job, probably one they'd been doing for years. No different than anybody else, really. Instead of cutting their throats, at the last moment he sent the magic behind them to slice the tendons on the back of their heels. They screamed as they collapsed to the ground, blood spurting from their ruined legs.
Aidan grimaced and tried to ignore the sound as pulled the spell book out of the bag and flipped to the shield spells. He tore one out and faced the door that led further into the White House. He'd expected it to burst open any second and more agents to come pouring in, but apparently no one was around to be drawn in by their screams. He relaxed and put the loose page back in the book and turned back to the agents on the ground—just in time to yelp in surprise and dodge out of the way of a deathbolt that was flying right at his head.
He landed on his stomach, knocking the wind out of him, but even as he gasped for breath some instinct told him to keep moving. He rolled out of the way just as another deathbolt struck the floor where he'd been.
Aidan stopped rolling when he hit the wall and saw that he was right by one of the folding chairs. Without thinking, he kicked out, sending it hurtling across the floor towards the source of the bolts. The agent cried out in surprise and Aidan realized it was the younger one who was attacking him. He pushed away his shock; he only had a second or two to get to his spell book…
That he'd dropped.
He saw it on the floor a few feet away. Thankfully the room wasn't that big, and he was able to run over and pick it up before the younger agent could fire off his next spell. He ducked under it, knowing that it was only by sheer luck and bad aim he hadn't been killed already, and pulled out the shield spell from before, holding the page out in front of him as he cast.
The shield popped to life just as the older agent recovered enough to start casting, too.
Aidan poured as much magic into the shield as he could, knowing he was panicking and wasting it even as he forced more out. Deathbolts struck the shield, turning it dark blue where they hit, but only for a moment before the shield quickly repaired itself. Even Lee would have been impressed with a shield like that.
Thoughts of Lee sliced through the panic. He didn't have time for this. He stopped shoving magic into the shield and took hold of it, keeping it in place as he quickly flipped through the book until he found the spell he was looking for. Aidan may not have any practical experience with fighting, but Lee definitely did. All he had to do was follow his example.
This better not get me killed…
Without giving himself time to think about what he was going to do, he opaqued his shield, then ducked down and pushed it off to the right. Just like when Lee had done it with Anwir, the two agents followed the shield with their spells. Unlike Anwir, they never realized they'd been tricked.
"Cut."
With two gestures, he opened up their throats, blood pumping from their necks like water from a garden hose. They both stared at him, eyes wide and filled with fear as they desperately grabbed at their throats. Aidan watched in numb horror as the blood slowed to a trickle, and then finally stopped altogether.
I killed them.
Aidan swallowed heavily. He was going to be sick. It wasn't like this was the first time he'd killed, he tried to remind himself. He'd killed the necromancer, a lot more brutally than this, and didn't feel any regret.
This was different though. The necromancer was evil. He was planning on using an undead army to kill everyone on the planet. These two… They were just doing their jobs. His hands started to shake as he looked at the glossy, lifeless eyes of the young agent. He couldn't have been any older than Aidan. Probably younger.
He went with Lee to save children, not murder them.
Self-defense isn't murder. The thought came out of nowhere and he fought it, violently. He wouldn't let himself off with that. He couldn't. He'd killed a kid. Period. End of sentence.
Another thought came to him then. Something Lee had said to him once, right after he'd rescued Aidan from his own interrogation room.
"If you wanna survive, if you wanna protect what you care for, you're gonna have to kill, and it ain't always gonna be cut and dried, good and evil. Life ain't ever been like that, and it ain't lookin' to be anytime soon. So, you just shove off any romantic notions you got going 'round your head about honorable fighting or 'good guys' not doing any killing, because in the real world, that's just a load of shite."
That seemed like ages ago, now, but those words resonated with Aidan in a way they hadn't back then. The truth was never easy to look in the eye, no matter how much time had passed. "If you wanna protect what you care for…" When he cut to the heart of it, he hadn't killed them just to save himself. He'd done it to save Lee. It was the same reason he'd killed the necromancer, in the end. Sure, he'd wanted to save the world, but he didn't think he'd have been able to do what he did if Lee's soul hadn’t depended on it. Aidan closed his eyes. Really, his reasoning didn't matter, and neither did his guilt. All that mattered was, would he do it again? He looked at the bodies. The child and the man. Were they worth Lee's life? Would he kill them again a thousand times over if it meant keeping Lee alive?
I would. Merlin help me, I'd kill them all if I had to, to save Lee.
Maybe that made him a monster. Or maybe Lee was right, and that kind of black and white morality was all a load of "shite". Either way, he couldn't hesitate anymore. He couldn't afford to think of the people he was fighting as people. They were enemies, keeping him from saving Lee, in service to a government that was slowly killing its own people. It didn't matter how young or old they were, if it came down to him or them, Lee or them, it always had to be them.
And when this was all over, he could spend the rest of his life mourning them all.
Aidan took one last look at the bodies of the agents, then deliberately turned away.
He needed to prepare before he went through another door; he couldn't afford to rely on getting that lucky again. He took out his old spell book and flipped through, putting his finger between two pages where the shield spells met the attack spells before closing the book around it. After that, he clipped the pen to the front of his jacket and made sure the new book was in easy reach inside the opened bag. When he was as ready as he could be, he made his way over to the door, stepping over the blood without sparing it a second glance, and slipped out of the room.
Chapter 7
"Did you know that in ancient Rome the testimony of slaves was inadmissible in court unless it was given under torture?" Noah asked.
Lee looked up at the man sitting on the edge of the table, blinking slowly. He couldn't see Noah clearly, his eyes were still blurry and they kept tearing up, but at least he could see again. It had hurt more than he'd thought it would, having his eyes torn out, and even though Noah had healed him he could still feel the awful, hollow feeling of having no eyes, a phantom pain deep inside his skull.
"It was thought that slaves had to be tortured in order to tell the truth. That they were physically incapable of it otherwise. The torture broke the bond between master and slave, you see. It was that bond that made the slave completely and wholly under the control of his master, even to the point where a slave couldn't have a thought or a feeling his master hadn’t put there. Slaves, the Romans thought, weren't able to lie under torture once that bond was broken, so everything they said after being tortured was treated as the honest truth."
Lee licked his dry, chapped lips and tried to ignore how thirsty he was. "Wouldn't have pegged you for a history buff," he said, his voice hoarse, more from tiredness than the screaming, thanks to the healing spells.
"Oh, I love history," Noah said with relish. "Es
pecially when comparing the past to the here and now. The Romans conquered over half of the known world back then, without magic even, and yet in a lot of ways they were still naïve little children, fumbling their way around a world they couldn’t possibly understand. We're a lot more enlightened, these days, than the Romans. We know, for instance, that torture isn't always the most reliable method with which to extract information. There comes a point when people will say anything if it'll just make the pain stop."
Noah pulled his legs up under himself so he was sitting cross-legged and leaned in closer to Lee. His eyes were still getting used to being back in his head, but Lee could see clearly enough to recognize the look of a man completely delighted with what he was saying. Lee had been hurt a lot by a lot of people in his life, but few and far between were the ones who seemed to enjoy the act more than the results.
It took a special kind of monster to look like a kid at his birthday party while he was inflicting pain, and this government seemed to have a knack for finding them.
"That's why torture is an art form," Noah went on.
His hands were resting on his knees. He raised one finger, moving it in slow, lazy patterns and carving lines of thin, burning pain into Lee's chest with his magic. Lee winced, but really it wasn't too bad. Not compared to everything else he'd been through.
"It isn't enough to just inflict the pain on a person; you need to bring them to the point of breaking without pushing them over. You have to recognize when someone is strong enough to survive, say, having his eyes torn out without turning into a drooling, screaming mess, but not so strong that he thinks he can endure it again, and again, and again…" Noah made a thoughtful sound. "Or even when the carrot might be a more productive approach than the stick."
"The Romans also knew when to get to the bloody point," Lee mumbled.
Noah laughed and stopped his tracing. "The false bravado of the unbroken man. You are everything I'd hoped you'd be, Mr Mystery."
Lee snorted. It was less false bravado and more Lee being desperate to provoke him, to keep him from thinking about Aidan and how much time he was wasting with his cutting and his talking, but he'd take it.
"Always happy to meet expectations."
"I'm sure you are," Noah said. "But to get to the point, as the Romans would, sometimes just hurting somebody isn't enough. Sometimes, you need to offer them an incentive beyond just an end to the pain. As knowledgeable as you are, I assume you're familiar with the concept of the carrot and the stick, yes? So, consider this carrot. You mentioned 'standard interrogation technique' before, did you not? I think it's pretty obvious at this point you don't want to tell me where your boyfriend has run off to with his stolen relic of antiquity, so, let me change the question to something maybe you will answer." He leaned in. "Where is King Arthur?"
Lee blinked, in confusion this time instead of just trying to clear his eyes. "What?"
Noah uncrossed his legs and let them dangle in front of him. "You stole the sword to wake the Sleeping King, so I can only assume you know where said king is sleeping."
"And what does it matter if I do or not?" Lee asked. "You gonna wake him up yourself?"
"I will not," Noah said, his voice suddenly cold. "Arthur will awaken when and only when the world needs him again. Nobody gets to get in the way of that."
"Then why are you askin’ about him?"
"Because," Noah said, "I want to move him. Tell me where he is, and I'll put him somewhere he will never be found by anyone with the means to force him awake. I'll hide him, and then there will be no need for me to hunt down your Aidan. Arthur will stay asleep, you'll be killed, and your plans will fail. I think that would count as a win for us on any scorecard, even under the most biased judging, don't you?"
He hopped off the table and crouched down in front of Lee, looking up into his eyes. That surprised Lee as well. With all the power games Noah had been playing, he wasn't expecting the hunter to put himself in a weak position.
"Tell me where he is," Noah murmured softly, "and Aidan will never have to suffer the way you have. He'll live a hard life, on the run and outcast from society, always looking over his shoulder, but he will live. And when he dies, it will either be of old age or a quick, relatively painless deathbolt to the chest. Neat and clean. No blood. No screaming… No me.”
He let his words hang in the air for a long moment before he grabbed Lee’s knee and squeezed.
“This is your one chance to help him, I will not offer it again. If you don't tell me, I will find Aidan Collins, and I will hurt him in ways you can’t possibly imagine. And all of it, every ounce of pain I inflict, every defilement I perform upon his unwilling body, every second of suffering he has to endure, will all be on you."
It was the last bit that got to Lee. That hit him behind his layers of armor and hollowed him out. It was all his fault. Everything that happened to Aidan could be laid at his feet. It didn't matter what Aidan said about Lee being the best thing that ever happened to him, and it didn't matter if Lee thought Aidan was better off now than he was a few weeks ago. The fact was, bad things had happened to Aidan that never would have happened if he had never met Lee.
Guilt was nothing new to Lee. It was his constant traveling companion, the one that whispered in his ear when he wanted to give up and gave him the strength and the will he needed to fix everything he set wrong; and that wasn't even so bad, some days. Even in his darkest moments, he could recognize some good things had come about because of that guilt.
This guilt, though, was different. It was personal. It wasn't regret about a situation or some long ago failing; it was here and now and he could see the results of what he'd done every day. He hadn't had that kind of personal guilt looking at him and smiling in his face for a long time. Falling in love with Aidan had just made it worse, but he probably could have turned the Earth inside out a lot easier than he could have stopped falling for his little fire. It was because of that love he'd give up anything, Arthur included, if it meant keeping Aidan safe.
In the end, what it all came down to was trust. Aidan had trusted him and Lee had done nothing but lead him into one dangerous situation after another, all because he couldn't stand to see the hurt look in Aidan's eyes when he tried to leave him behind, the one that said, clear as day, Aidan thought he wasn't good enough, that he didn't matter. He trusted Aidan, but he also trusted Aidan's limits, because he knew them better than Aidan did himself. Aidan couldn't stay on the run with a hunter chasing him. Even if he got to Arthur and woke him up, there would always be the very real chance he'd be found one day, especially since Arthur wouldn't have the same stake in protecting him Lee would. He'd try, he'd try his hardest, because that was just who Arthur was, but in the end, the world would always come first. One day he wouldn't be looking, and Aidan would just be…gone. And there wasn't a single person on this planet who Lee would trust to keep that from happening other than Lee himself.
Lee looked down at Noah, kneeling there on the floor like one of those ancient supplicants in a dreary temple. The lined face. The thin lips that spoke of pain and death as easily as they spoke of mercy and compromise. The eyes that may have been made from stone themselves for all that Lee could see past them. It really was like looking in a mirror.
And that was why Lee could never trust him.
"You know, if I thought even for a second you were tellin’ the truth, I'd probably take you up on that," Lee said quietly. He looked into Noah's eyes and thought he saw…something…flash behind them, just for a moment. Recognition of a kindred soul, maybe. Or maybe it was all in his head. "But you're a monster, no matter what made you that way, and it ain't easy for monsters to change what they are. I'd know. But you are a monster, and you ain't changed, and if there's one thing you lot got right about Arthur, it's that monsters don't ever get to see him except at the end of his sword."
Noah's eyes narrowed. He stared at Lee for a long while, the silence between them seeming to echo off the stone walls, before he slowly s
tood up. He leaned in until his face was inches away from Lee's. This close, Lee could see past the stone in his eyes; or maybe it was just that Noah wasn't bothering to hide behind it anymore. There was rage there, cold ice quickly melting beside a growing fire. As much as he didn't want to, Lee once again found himself pitying this monster. All that rage and fanaticism built on a foundation of lies. A man like Noah could have, under a different set of circumstances, changed the world for the better. Instead, he was nothing but anger and belief surrounded by the outline of a man.
"You speak of monsters so casually, Mr Mystery, as though you aren't one yourself. Maybe there's one line you won't cross, and you think that makes you different. Maybe you won't kill women, or children. Maybe every once in a while you help an old lady cross the street or take it upon yourself, when the mood strikes, to save someone from what you see as injustice."
He leaned in even closer. "But it's your ideas that are monstrous, not your actions. Sedition and insanity follow you like they follow all terrorists and you think that the Once and Future King will strike me down? Arthur would kill you before your first sentence was out of your mouth; because, what you are? That's what a monster really is."
Noah's voice never rose above a low murmur, but he spat the words at Lee like they were venom. It was the most emotion, real emotion, Lee had seen from the man. It was scary, coming face to face with belief that strong.
Lee smiled.
"If you're sure Arthur ain't gonna listen to us, then why are you so desperate to stop us from wakin’ him up?"
He could see in those suddenly too-expressive eyes, the exact moment Noah decided to kill him. It was odd, seeing his death written in the face of someone who actually had the means to deal it out. Lee usually had an out from situations like this; even in the cave he could have teleported blind and hoped for the best, if he was prepared to leave Aidan behind to die. Which he wasn't. And that was his choice. This death was someone else's.
