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Devon had been sleeping in one chair. Angel had been sleeping in the other.
It was the end of a shift rotation when someone on the nursing staff usually came to give the psychic his drugs. He usually went out like a light, murmuring things that his loved ones weren’t quite able to understand. It was somewhat of a relief, when he was finally sleeping. But strangely enough, it was the worst part of the day. It hurt, somehow. To see him so muddied, so constricted.
His mind was accustomed to roaming those higher places, ones beyond the constraints of reality and time. It didn’t know what to do with itself, stuck in the present, lost in an opiate haze.
It was in those moments, the two would look at each other, for once, instead of him. Their eyes would meet over the hospital bed, and for a passage of time, all the nonsense between them fell away, leaving something raw and unguarded. Then he’d breathe, or he’d twitch, and their eyes would flash back. The moment would be forgotten, lost in a sea of so many others.
It was in one of these moments, Devon found he could stand it no longer. He pushed to his feet abruptly, clattering the tray of paperwork by the bed. She startled a little and glanced up.
“You want some more coffee?” he asked quietly, slipping a jacket over his arms.
She nodded, eyes drifting back to the bed. “Thanks, Devon.”
He squeezed her shoulder, and walked into the hall.
The men stationed at the entrance were something he would never fully get used to. Not that they made much effort to blend in. They looked like figurines, hands clasped stiffly at their waists. Even if it was a child, they would never return the smile of anyone who passed them, and no matter how many times he left the room, they made him identify himself before going back in.
With a sideways glance, he realized abruptly he hated them.
“You need to lighten up,” he whispered as he passed. “Philip would want you to lighten.”
Their eyes shot daggers at the back of his head.
He wandered down the hall slowly, letting his eyes adjust to the bright lights. Julian kept getting migraines from the medication, and liked the room to be dim. For a man with a physiological craving for over-stimulation, it was torture. He blinked like one emerging from a cave, eyes jumping from one thing to the next. The man stealing mints from the nurses’ station counter, the flickering light on the vending machine. The man standing in the middle of the hall.
He stopped a few steps away, regarding him quietly. “Hello, Alfie.”
It seemed rude not to address him; the man always seemed like he had something he wanted to say. Sure enough, something of critical importance leapt like wildfire to his tongue—but in a rare moment of compassion, he checked himself. Perhaps it was the look on the fox’s face.
He rerouted quickly, seizing onto a lesser offense.
“I saw your son-in-law, this morning. He flew into a heating grate.”
Devon nodded wearily. “Did he survive it?”
“He did.”
That’s a shame.
The fox drew in a breath and let it out as a sentence. “I’ll tell him not to fly into any more heating grates,” he said a bit helplessly, throwing out his arms in a shrug, as he moved past him down the hall. It wasn’t his fault if the boy had the instincts of a dumber-than-average pigeon. And he wasn’t the one who’d invited the royal infantry inside.
We have Philip to thank for that. He clenched his teeth together, feeling more irritated with each passing step. He’s making me rethink all those oaths I took in school.
“Devon,” Alfie called behind his back.
The fox turned around slowly, staring in mild shock. They had known each other since he was seventeen years old. The man had never called him Devon a day in his life.
Their eyes met for a moment, then he inclined his head.
“I’m sorry to hear about your friend.”
Devon froze into stillness, feet rooted to the floor. For a moment, he could do nothing but stare, then his eyes prickled at the corners and he ducked his head, forcing a tight smile.
“Thank you.”
They nodded in unison, then turned in opposite directions.
On second thought, they’re not so bad. At any rate, we’d better get used to it. We think the palace and the council are working closely together now? We’re about to get a whole lot closer...
He walked a bit further, pausing when he got to the end of the hall. There were two carts within range that sold espresso, but one had already cut him off. He could never remember which.
There was a vibration in his pocket.
“Hello?” he answered without looking, staring in one direction and then the next.
Gabriel’s voice echoed through the line. “I’m having an ethical dilemma.”
Devon rubbed his eyes with a sigh, picking a direction at random. The last time the assassin had called with a similar quandary, he’d followed it up with, boxers or briefs?
“Can this wait, Alden? Some of us are having actual problems—”
“I have one of the guys who hit Julian in the back of my car.”
Devon stopped where he stood, gazing sightlessly down the hall. An orderly creaked slowly past with a cart of medications. He reached the elevator, vanishing behind the silver doors.
“Did you kill him?” he finally asked.
There was a beat of silence.
“I want to.”
Another beat.
“I’m calling you instead.”
Given the nature of what was happening, given the decades of progress that had brought the moment to life, Devon probably should have come up with something better to say.
At the time, he was rather direct.
“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
* * *
DEVON SWEPT BACK INTO the room like a man made of momentum—feeling like something deeply critical had come back to life. Some vague part of him noted that he’d breezed right through his royal checkpoint; they were probably going to tase him the next time he walked past. None of it mattered. There was only one thing that mattered. And he was finally going to get a chance to—
He froze where he stood, staring at the woman in the chair by the bed.
It should be her, he realized suddenly. She’s his wife.
He clenched his teeth in frustration.
Bloody hell—now I’ve said it.
Angel stared with a puzzled expression, like he might be having a fit. “Are you sleep-walking?”
“They caught one of the guys who did this,” he blurted before he could stop himself. Or before he could talk himself out of it, he wasn’t sure which. “They’re bringing him back to the house, Gabriel just called and told me. They’re bringing him back to the house.”
He didn’t know why he said it twice. Maybe it was just to affirm it.
We finally have one of the buggers.
“So you can...you can deal with that,” he finished haltingly.
A ringing silence fell between them.
For a split second, it looked like she wanted to. The compulsion was enough to lift her out of her chair. But she sank back down just as quickly, reaching for the psychic’s hand.
“You deal with that,” she said softly. “I’m going to stay here with him.”
Devon froze like he’d been stung, staring intently at her face. “...are you sure?”
She nodded silently, never looking away from Julian. Yes, she was sure. The fox didn’t need a second invitation. He’d already made it to the door before she called out again.
“Devon?”
He pause quickly, glancing around.
Their eyes locked.
“...give him my best.”
* * *
DEVON FLEW ACROSS THE city like a madman—blurring through intersections, and streaking past red lights. He’d stolen a car from the royal secret service, so he assumed there was some kind of monarchial immunity. Or perhaps it now merely qualified as a high crime and misdemeanor.
The house was a place the gang had purchased together, under a newly-invented alias, in a forgotten section of town. They’d done so after escaped-convict had tracked down Molly in a feral vengeance and fire-bombed her car. She’d been in a coma for seventeen hours.
Rae kept him alive exactly that long, then incinerated him on the spot.
He bumped over the curb and up onto the grass, throwing open the door and leaving the car idling on the lawn. There was no time to be tidy about it, no time to worry what the neighbors might think. They could find a new house and start over, if necessary. The man was somewhere inside.
He was aching to meet him.
“Where is he?”
The door opened at his touch and he flew inside—sweeping straight past the people waiting to see him. A part of him was a bit surprised to see Jason, but it scarcely mattered. The boy was an intelligence operative, he’d seen worse. At any rate, it would give the fox a chance to reprimand him about the heating grates. Gabriel gestured down the hall, then followed in his shadow.
Two hundred eighty-seven stitches. Nine compound fractures. Seventeen broken bones.
The door was already open. The man was sitting in the middle of the floor—the only piece of furniture in an otherwise empty room. He looked up with the fox entered, his face growing still.
A collapsed lung. Three transfusions.
They hadn’t bothered to tie him up, that was telling. They hadn’t bothered to do anything except chain an inhibitor around his neck. They’d then proceeded to stand there, waiting for the fox to arrive. Luke had a bite-mark on the side of his hand. Jason’s fingers were bleeding.
A damaged kidney. A ruptured spleen.
Devon came to a stop in front of him, feeling like he was floating several inches outside his own skin. His color was high and his blood was racing. His scalp was prickling right off his head.
“Do you know who I am?” he asked.
The man stared, nodded curtly.
“So you know what this is.”
A pause, then. Another nod.
Good. That will save us both time.
Instead of starting on his feet, he sat down right in front of him—so close, their knees were actually touching. The others shared a quick glance behind him. Gabriel took a step from the door.
The fox stared for a split second, anticipation rippling through him like a living thing.
He could imagine exactly how it would feel—the muffled snap of bones as he tore the man into tiny pieces, the warm resistance of his skin before it eventually gave way. A part of him needed it, needed it like oxygen. Such exquisite retribution, and he would exact it. Inch by bloody inch.
A resuscitation. They had to restart his heart.
He drew in a breath, and went abruptly still.
They had to restart his heart.
Suddenly, the image twisted—perforated with the beeping of monitors, the rattling of ice chips in a paper cup. Suddenly, he could imagine those injuries a little too clearly. The room dimmed and he felt sick and tired, out of place with himself—like he’d switched bodies with someone else.
He didn’t want to beat the man. He didn’t want to look at him another second.
“You’re just going to tell me,” he said in a burst of weariness, throwing up his hands. The others tensed behind him, staring at the back of his head. “You’re just going to tell me, because I’m going to bloody kill you if you don’t. But first, I’m going to torture you. I’m going to do everything to you,” he pushed a finger into the man’s forehead, “that you did to my best friend. My best friend who I carried across half the city. My best friend who kept dying on street corners in my arms.”
An involuntary tear ran down his cheek, falling unnoticed between them. The man was completely rigid, watching without breath, but the fox was in a different world. If anything, it only added to the quiet mania that had come over him. This was a man who’d nearly lost everything.
A man who wasn’t prepared to lose a single thing more.
“I’ll do it slowly,” he concluded, tired and honest, “so I remember your breaks, instead of his. I’ll do it over, and over, and over...” He spoke in a quiet rhythm. “Get it all out of my head.”
He leaned closer, almost whispering by the end. “Or you can just tell me...why are you doing this?”
It might have been the question itself. None of the hard-hitting logistics—numbers and locations—just motive. Asking a separatist, his motive. It might have been that silent tear.
The man froze another moment, like it might have been a trick.
Then he found himself answering.
“Why are we doing this?” he repeated, casting a look over the fox’s shoulder. “You should ask him—he knows. Tell me, Luke. Why are we doing this?” He didn’t wait for an answer, merely turned back to the fox. “Some of us were tired of playing second fiddle,” he replied simply. “Living in a relic, dedicating every waking moment to someone else’s vision of the greater good. Like we were born with this ink, so it makes us servants? A lifetime of servitude? Some of us thought we could get better value in the real world for our skills.” He paused a second. “And so we can.”
There was a restless shifting behind him, but Devon never broke his gaze.
“Why target the council?” he asked. “Why target my friend?”
It wasn’t a unique idea, there had been supernatural splinter-groups before. The ones who survived the longest had done so by keeping entirely off the PC’s radar. Very few would have been foolish enough to reach so high. Fewer still, would have had the nerve to attempt an assassination.
The man blanched, then shook his head.
“Do you think we wanted to do that?” he asked incredulously. “Stealing from a PC research facility, calling in a favor from one of the knights’ own financiers?” A look of frustration swept over him, settling into the lines on his face. “None of that was ever supposed to happen.”
Devon stared back at him, a fevered intensity darkening his eyes. “Are you denying involvement?”
“No, I just...” The man trailed into silence, like the words had been lifted straight off his tongue. He sat there for moment, before repeating, “...it was never supposed to happen.”
Interesting.
The fox had been interrogating suspects long enough to spot a lie when it was right in front of him. If those decades of experience weren’t enough, he’d also raised two teenagers.
The man wasn’t lying. The frustration was real.
“Where are the others?” Devon asked without inflection.
He won’t know that either.
“I don’t know,” the man replied without hesitation, eyes flickering a bit nervously to the fox’s hands. “They don’t let anyone who knows the location leave. We have a nmemokinetic; the memories are removed and then replaced when we’re collected by a recovery team.”
There was a pause, another glance at those deadly hands.
“I’m not lying,” he insisted preemptively.
And he wasn’t. The man was telling the truth.
It was the only thing that saved his life.
* * *
TWO MEN LEANED AGAINST the side of the house, white clouds of breath in front of them. The city felt a thousand miles away, and the roads were quiet. Their thoughts flitted from one thing to another. A crooked mailbox, last night’s dinner. It felt like years since they’d been home.
“That...did not go as I expected,” Gabriel finally admitted, gazing over the street. It was a pretty neighborhood, especially covered in the newly-fallen snow. He’d been expecting to stay well into the evening; he’d been expecting to dig a grave in the backyard. Now, perhaps, he would make it home after all. “You’re really going to send him to the abbey? You’re really going to let him live?”
Devon stood beside him, staring at the unblemished snow.
“I’ve seen enough blood to last me a while. Besides,” he added, casting a glance toward the house while Luke stabbed a sedative into the guy’s arm, “we promised Anthony that we’d try.”
It was the reason he would give on paper, when they scrabbled the pieces of this into some case report to make the exchange. The man had been a knight, so it was the knights who should have claim to him. He’d committed crimes against the council, so it was them who’d gotten to interrogate him first. The rest was nothing more than a political favor. A big one. Even Carter would be pleased.
The real reasons were more complicated. He was still figuring them out himself.
“You never told me what happened,” he said suddenly, throwing a look at the assassin. “I saw the guy’s ink—he makes lightning, not portals. Where’s the other guy from the flat?”
“Dead,” Gabriel said shortly, looking over the road. “We took the place from three sides, but they’re giving their people poison capsules. By the time we broke down the door, one of them was already gone. Luke caught the other one by the teeth. He’d already cracked it, but we managed to get it out of his mouth in time. The stuff burned right through Jason’s gloves.”
It was a rather dramatic visual, but Devon absorbed it with a blink.
“We can give the capsule to the lab, have them analyze—”
Gabriel was already shaking his head.
“It’s a toxin derived from the Strychnos plants found native in the Brazilian rainforest. Hard to transport without raising alerts, so most of the syndicates that use it are local. I’m having our people look into a few different names now, but it’s likely they’re pretty new to the neighborhood.”
Devon nodded in agreement, then glanced over with a frown.
“You couldn’t possibly have the results back already. How do you know all that?”
The assassin merely shrugged. “I’m thorough.”
His friend absorbed this in silence, seeming to accept it. There was a muffled impact in the room behind them, followed by a quiet thump. The sound of something sliding across the floor.
“You’re really going to let him live,” Gabriel repeated with an incredulous smile.
Devon nodded, rethinking it even now.
It’s what Julian would have done.
He hesitated, considering.
...maybe.
There was a buzz in his pocket.
His eyes snapped shut in dismay, while his stomach dropped to his shoes. It might have been what the psychic would have done, but the same did not hold true for his wife.
Gabriel glanced at the screen, then shook his head.
If only...
Devon pulled in a breath, and answered.
She spoke before he could. He was forever grateful for that.
“Jules had his first vision,” she whispered, unable to hide the tears. The sound was a bit muffled, like she was speaking through her fingers. “He said to remember your coat.”
The fox stilled a split second, then doubled over at the waist.
“That’s great,” he said in an exhaling of breath, unable to immediately right himself. He stayed there a moment, before resurfacing with a smile. “That’s really great to hear.”
Gabriel caught his gaze curiously, and he tapped a finger to his eyes. The assassin nodded with a smile. It was a gesture the psychic often made himself. He often followed it with gloating.
For once, some good news.
“Have you gotten there yet?”
The smile froze on Devon’s face. “No, I...I’m stuck in traffic.”
“Call me after.”
The line went dead.
The fox stood there a few seconds, still holding the phone to his ear, then he slipped it into his jacket with a blank stare. It seemed like he’d been having a lot of those moments lately—little Band-Aids over bullet-holes of panic. Gabriel nodded consolingly, unable to hold back a grin.
“She’s going to be pissed,” he offered.
“Yeah, she’s going to hate me.”
It was quiet a few seconds, then Devon chuckled in spite of himself. A fractured, exhausted kind of sound. He raked back his hair with a touch of hysteria, staring into the endless gray sky.
“I just want to close my eyes and forget the last forty-eight hours ever happened. I just want to breathe...just for a second, without feeling like the entire world is about to cave in.”
Gabriel stared for a moment, then smiled. “I have something that can help with that.”
