by Alan Marble
“I’m sure,” Abe responded, rather sarcastically.
Jonah tried to move his head to get a look at what was going on, and while his muscles protested he was able to twist himself just enough to get a look at Abe standing next to him, also once more in human form, his double breasted suit a little dusty but no worse for the wear. Nearby was Carolus, also neatly dressed and looking well groomed, his watery blue eyes fixated on the bald man with a curious lack of anger.
Nearby, Jenna was perched on an outcropping of rock, the big emerald dragon looking down at all of them with a rather dispassionate gaze. As he tried to look further his muscles complained, and he groaned softly in response.
Carolus turned to regard him with those watery blue eyes, mocking a smile. “And you brought your young protege with you, too. Is that all? I had kind of hoped we might have a bit of a reunion, Ibrahim.”
“We can still have a reunion, Carl. Lot of folk are pissed off at you and rightly so, but you can still turn your back on this foolishness. Come back with us.”
“Please.” The old man turned his attention back to Abe, wearing a rather disappointed looking frown. “What reason could I possibly have for doing that? Things are proceeding quite well here, perhaps it is you who should reconsider. The Syndicate can be rather accommodating of those who seek forgiveness, as can I.”
Abe turned to look up at Jenna with more than a hint of pain on his face. “Is this your version of success, Carolus? Look at her. Look at what you’ve made of her.”
The old man fumed a little bit at the accusation, shaking his head. “Come now, Ibrahim, you misjudge what is happening here. You know as well as I do that she would never have given up the fight. The Syndicate only want peace, just as you and I only wish for peace. They grant it to those who wish it. More drastic measures are required for those who reject their offer.”
“This is not peace, Carolus,” Abe responded, once again using the old man’s proper name, as if to underline the sobriety of his statement. “This is slavery. I know how power hungry you are, but is this really the kind of clan you dreamed of ruling over? Mindless zombies?”
“She is no mindless zombie. She has only been made to see the error of her ways, and now she serves those who seek true peace.”
The bald man shook his head and frowned. “You are fooling yourself if you believe that, and you are fooling yourself if you believe the Syndicate is going to let you stay in your position of power.”
Carolus frowned as well. “And what is that supposed to mean?”
“Look at her,” Abe repeated, gesturing toward the impassive Jenna perched nearby. “Look at what power they have. When you have subdued the rest of the clan, what possible use could the Syndicate have for you? Why would they bother leaving you in charge? You’re a middle man, Carolus, and disposable to them. Look at what they have done to her, and know what they have in store for you when you have outlived your usefulness as a pawn.”
“Ridiculous,” the old man spat, growing angry. “Absolutely ridiculous.”
“Think about it, Carl. Please. I’m telling you this as a brother, not as …”
The sound of footfalls approaching caught their attention, both Carolus and Abe turning to look and see who it was. The former responded with little more than a curt nod, but Abe’s eyes widened a little and his jaw went slightly slack while an unfamiliar voice spoke up. “Carolus, what is this nonsensical argument out here about?”
“I am merely hoping to convince my brother Ibrahim of the error of his ways,” he responded dourly.
“The man is a traitor twice over. There is only one purpose left for him, and we’ve only a few of the others left. The latest conversion was another easy success, I do not believe we are going to lose any others to the process.”
Abe’s expression went from one of shock to terror to raw anger, clenching his jaw and shaking his fist. “Lost? Carolus, what has happened here?”
The unseen man was the one to answer. “Not that it is any concern to you, but we lost two of your miserable compatriots who fought against our methods. However you can rest easy knowing that we have perfected our methods, and when we are ready for you there will be no risk of any permanent damage.”
Jonah managed to shift himself a little more, rolling partially to his side to get a look at the man. He did not look particularly intimidating, a rather thin and unassuming man with plain brown hair and gray eyes set behind a pair of glasses, dressed in a business suit less gaudy than Abe’s. Yet, for some reason, Abe did not attack the man in spite of the anger apparent in his eyes as he turned to look back to Carolus with a shock. “Lost … Carolus … is it true?”
The old man looked away for a moment, frowning visibly. “There were unfortunate results in the first experiments, yes.”
“Carolus …”
“Enough,” the unidentified man interjected, cutting him off with a frown and summoning over a pair of bulky men - bull drakes, by the look of them - to stand at either of Abe’s sides and grasp him roughly by the arms. “We’ll get to him later, but he is no longer any concern of ours. What of the young one?”
Jonah realized that he was referring to himself when the man cast a rather disinterested gaze down in his direction. Carolus cleared his throat a little, sounding somewhat resigned. “He is young and idealistic, but I fear that he has spent too long under Ibrahim’s tutelage. It will take me some time to properly convince him of our cause …”
“Useless,” the bespectacled man said, shaking his head and stalking away. “There’s no time for that, Carolus. He can follow his tutor right into our own methods of persuasion.”
Carolus continued to look at him with those watery blue eyes, a curious mixture of anger and disappointment as he shook his head and gestured to someone out of Jonah’s vision. Another bull drake appeared, leaned over to grasp him by the shoulders and haul him to his feet. It was too fast, too sudden, and all of the blood seemed to rush from his head, letting the darkness wrap around him and knock him unconscious.
#
“Jonah? Hey, kid, you all right?”
Light came back to his vision with an uncomfortable jolt, accompanied by a sharp stabbing pain in the back of his skull. With a pained groan, he reached back and pressed his palm against his head. He was lying on his side on a hard, uncomfortable surface, and after a moment he pushed himself up to a sitting position, slowly. “Ugh. What happened?”
“You took a pretty good spill back there. Knocked yourself on the head.” It was Abe, though Jonah could still not yet bear to open his eyes, the light causing the stabbing pain to increase. “Was afraid we might have lost you for a moment.”
The memories of what happened came rushing back to him fairly quickly, the confusion bleeding away where the pain would not. He remembered plummeting from the sky, remembered lying flat on his back while Abe and Carolus had their brief argument. Forcing his eyes open, he squinted to try and get a look around.
He was in a small room that amounted to little more than a concrete box, lit by a bare incandescent bulb hanging overhead, unadorned with any furniture. A heavy iron door, partially rusted, closed off the only exit to the room that he could see. “Where are we?”
“Carl had us thrown in here after … well, after what happened. It hasn’t been that long actually, maybe an hour. Haven’t heard a word from them since they left us here,” he replied a little morosely.
Pushing himself back against a wall to support himself, Jonah pulled his knees in against his chest and breathed a quiet sigh. “So then we’re trapped. No way out of here, is there.”
Abe shook his head a little, trying his best to retain his grin in spite of the circumstances. “Afraid not, kid. The whole places is probably warded and there’s not a thing we can do to help ourselves get outta this room, and even if we did there’s nothing but traitors, bulls and mages on the other side.”
“Then that’s it.” His head throbbed lightly again and he let his eyes rest shut. “We’re done.
And it’s all my fault.”
“No need for that kind of mood, it’s depressing enough that we’re locked away like this.”
Jonah shrugged it off. “Does it really matter? Besides, it’s true. If I’d just listened to you and been more careful we might have stood a chance, but … I mean, we didn’t even last ten seconds before I was downed. If you hadn’t chased after me you might have gotten away, too.”
He felt a big, meaty hand on his shoulder, giving him a sort of squeeze. “Look at it this way, kid. We rolled the dice and lost. Happens to everyone, from time to time, and it’s just a matter of how big you lose. We lost big this time. It’s not a matter of whose fault it is or isn’t.”
Opening his eyes again, Jonah turned to look at the weak but sincere grin that Abe was still wearing. “How do you do it? We’re in a hopeless situation and we’re gonna be dragged off to die, or have our brains sucked out, or something weird.”
“I have the advantage of knowing I led a full, rich life. Full of ups and downs, full of mistakes, and full of victories. The important thing isn’t what happened, though, it’s where I stood at the end, it’s how I went out. Fighting for what I believe is right, fighting for my friends and family. Hard to beat that, Jonah. Rolled the dice big and lost, but I still rolled ‘em big.”
It seemed to be some little comfort as far as Jonah was concerned, and he pulled himself up to his feet, slowly, Abe rising up next to him and helping him to his feet. “Well that’s good and fine for you, but what about me? My life is full of nothing. I’ve never done anything important or noble or good. I get by on the bare minimum. Work just enough to pay my bills and buy a few toys. What sort of life do I have to celebrate?”
“It’s like I told you,” the big guy said with a soft smile. “It’s not about what you’ve done but what you were doing. Chasing after someone you cared about, sticking your neck out for her, putting yourself on the line to try and do a good thing. It didn’t pay off but that’s not what’s important. You went out doing something that mattered.”
Once more Jonah shrugged. “I guess. I’m still not ready go go out. You sure there’s no way out of here?”
Satisfied that Jonah was not going to black out again, Abe nodded and walked over to the door, giving it a little smack with the palm of his hand, letting it ring dully against its hinges. “Solid iron, three inches thick. The walls are reinforced concrete, six inches thicker. If I remember correctly this place was originally built as a sort of bomb shelter, back during the Cold War. Even the Syndicate was worried about getting nuked, so they had to build themselves a command center that would last. The walls are built to withstand a bomb, no way we’re getting through.
“Worse still,” he said, looking upward as he continued. “We’re a ways underground. Not sure how far, fifty feet, a hundred feet, just depends on where they’ve stuffed us away, but in any case there’s several levels we’d have to get through to escape. Watched, guarded, the whole works. Trust me, kid. I’m not ready to go out, either. I just don’t see any way around it.”
As if to punctuate his statement, the sound of a bolt being pulled against stone rang in the room, and Abe took a step back to look dismally at the door. “And it looks like they’re coming for us now, in any case. I wish that I’d gotten to know you better, kid. It’s been a pleasure working with you.”
The finality of that statement made Jonah feel sick to his stomach, his mind beginning to spin once more as he came to grips with the possibility that not only was his end inevitable, but it was now only moments away.
With a slow grinding creak the door was pushed inward. On the other side was not a bull drake, but another face that Jonah did not recognize, a middle aged man with hair that was beginning to go gray around the edges, steely gray eyes that regarded them with a dispassionate gaze, and a slightly unkempt salt and pepper beard.
Abe, on the other hand, seemed to recognize the man, his countenance falling visibly as he shook his head. “Oh, Jeffress. Not you, too.” Jeffress, the dragon that he and Rebekah had gone in search of, days before and kidnapped by the Syndicate. In a sad twist of fate, he would be the one to take them away to their fate.
TWENTY TWO
“Oh come on, Abraham. For being a Syndicate conspirator, you aren't very well informed.” The man at the door abandoned the somewhat vacant look that he’d been wearing, a faint hint of a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.
The reaction caught even the usually unflappable Abe off guard, the bald man staring at the doorway with his jaw slack, reaching up to smooth down his nonexistent hair. “Holy hell, Jeffress … it’s you? I mean, like, the regular, real you? How?”
“It’s a long story and we don’t really have the time for it right now. Short version is that what the Syndicate thinks they’ve done to me and what they really managed to do are two different things,” he said, briefly stepping inside and pulling the door partially shut behind him. “But I can’t say the same for the others, and I won’t be able to say the same for you two if we don’t get your asses out of here, pronto.”
Jonah watched the exchange with a slightly confused look, his head still throbbing a little, but the brief spark of hope once again flickering inside of him. “You’re here to get us out of here?”
The man turned to look at him with a bit of a squint and then a smile. “Well, I’m not here to make pleasantries, but I suppose introductions are in order. My name’s Matt Jeffress,” he said, sticking his hand out.
He took the offered hand a little unsteadily, blinking. “Jonah.”
“Pleased to meet you, Jonah. Yes, I’m here to bust your asses out of jail, and get myself the hell out of this place while we’re at it. I’m sick of working with these Syndicate creeps and pretending to be on their side. Particularly after seeing what they’ve been doing to the rest of the clan.”
Abe stepped in and touched the man lightly on the shoulder to get his attention. “I’ve heard that some were … lost.”
The observation was met with a nod and a brief moment of silence. “Yeah,” Jeffress said, gnawing on his lower lip for a moment. “I’m afraid I don’t have much information on what happened, I wasn’t there to see it. I just know that at least two attempts have ended in failure.”
“Do you know who it was?” Abe wore a grim expression but there was a real curiosity behind his eyes, a curiosity that Jonah felt as well as a bit of dread.
“Sorry. I don’t know. Just that some of the attempts went badly for the subjects. They didn't make it. The rest have been, well, more successful as far as the Syndicate is concerned.” He paused to look down at his watch, scowling a bit before pushing the door back open. “But we’ve got to move now if we’re going to make sure that the two of you don’t follow suit.”
The space beyond their makeshift little cell was not much more inviting, matching the character of a Cold War era bomb shelter: concrete stained in places from water seepage, bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling at regular intervals, and iron doors largely too rusted to be of use. A narrow steel framed staircase spiraled upward from one end of the short, narrow hallway. Jeffress made his way straight to that stairway, grasping at the flimsy handrail and peering upward.
“Excuse my doubt, Jeffress, but how are you supposed to get us out of here? This place has got to be as as well guarded as Fort Knox,” Abe murmured a little dubiously.
“Not as bad as you’d think,” came the response, as Jeffress glanced down at his watch again. “They’re all getting ready for something up there. I’m not sure what’s going down but they’re getting ready to take all of the dragons up the mountain. I think it has something to do with the elder.”
While the statement didn’t really carry that much meaning for Jonah he could tell by watching Abe’s reaction that it must have been a big deal. The big bald guy rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Well, still. It looks like we’re at the bottom of this damned thing, you think we’re gonna make it all the way out without being caught?”
&
nbsp; Jeffress flashed a mischievous smile. “Well, I've been working on a little distraction, but I don't think the Syndicate really trusts me, either. Hard to get away without them noticing. If I only had a little more time ...”
“You? Need more time?” Abe looked at the man doubtfully.
“Wards,” the man said with a dour expression.
The big guy nodded a little, his gaze suddenly looking a little distant. “Of course,” he said, chewing on his lip as he seemed to be caught in thought. “Pretty good one, too. Must have learned their lesson. I might be able to help out, but it'll only be for a few seconds. Then they'd be on to us.”
“Plenty of time,” Jeffress said with a grin.
“All right, I'll give you what I can, but make it quick,” Abe said, stepping over to a wall and resting a palm on it, closing his eyes as he worked his jaw a little. “Ah. What I wouldn't give for a cigar right about now.”
Jonah looked on with a bit of confusion, first back to Jeffress, then over to Abe as he stood at the wall. “What are you doing?”
“It's a little hard to explain,” the big guy said, furrowing his brow as if he were concentrating. “Thing about wards, they don't propagate through air. They need something physical. So it goes through the walls … it'll take me a minute to feel it out, figure it out.”
Continuing to watch with that confused expression, Jonah nodded a little. He tried to imagine that he could feel something happening, some kind of energy coursing through the air, some taste of magic or something of the like, but for all he could tell Abe was merely mapping out the indistinct little bumps in the concrete wall. “Then what?”
Abe grinned, though kept his eyes closed. “Then I'll take it down for a few seconds and let our friend Jeffress here do his thing. If you'll be quiet a moment, that is.”
Jonah almost apologized, but then bit his tongue, feeling a little chagrined. Another moment passed as Abe slid his hand lightly against the wall, his grin fading as he was now clearly deep in concentration. Finally the big man paused, his fingers splayed against the concrete as he inhaled deeply, and then nodded. “Now.”
