tarnished -- part two -- trekker |
Chapter Five | |
Onwards |
Giles hadn't bothered to turn the lights on. He liked the dark better. It was soothing, something like numbness. Something like the way the scotch burned on his tongue, warmed his throat, and made his mind hazy. Made the edges of the hard world seem soft as artistic photography.
The Council was gone. A heap of rubble and smoke stood in its place, and in that rubble, the bodies of most of the men he had worked with and worked for. And his father. Just a year from retiring, and now this.
The files Giles had snuck out of the place the day before lay on top of the dark television, and he eyed them. They were just a small handful of papers, a stack not more than an inch and a half high. That was all that was left of the Council's massive central library. Centuries of knowledge lost. Prophecies and histories and biographies and texts on weapons and strategy and magic, all lost forever, all nothing but a fine, soft ash that had settled for blocks around the building.
He rubbed his hand over his eyes, which burned, but seemed dried up. No tears. His mother was with his sister, now. Two grieving widows. He should have been with them, but he couldn't be. He felt safer not knowing where they were. They weren't Watchers, so they would be safe, so long as he didn't lead the monsters to them.
Then the door rattled and the lock clicked. Giles didn't even bother to reach for a weapon. At that moment, he felt like even standing up would be a challenge. If the Bringers had a damn keycard they could bloody well kill him.
But it wasn't Bringers, it was Ethan.
Ethan, who was, apparently alone.
So he hadn't brought back the girl then.
"Maggie?" Giles asked.
Ethan shook his head.
"She was dead when I got there."
Of course.
Giles took another drink of scotch and stared at the files again.
"They blew up the Council," he said.
"What?"
"The Bringers. They blew up the Council. It's gone."
Silence from Ethan's direction, and then, "Oh. Dear. That's... well, that's not... good."
"No, really not," Giles said, then finished off the scotch and dropped backwards onto the bed. Tired didn't even begin to sum up how he was feeling. 'Drained completely' came closer, but still didn't capture it.
"So... what next?" Ethan said. "I mean, what do we do next?"
That was always the question, wasn't it? And it was always directed at him. As though he knew any better than anyone what was going on.
Well. Perhaps he did, in fact, know better than most what was going on. But still, he knew very little. And a lot of good he was doing. It wasn't as if he'd been able to save... anyone at all yet. He only ever found puddles of blood and dead girls who had been insufficiently guarded by dead friends.
"We have to do *something,*" Ethan said.
Ironic, that it was Ethan encouraging Giles to do his duty. But these were ironic times, Giles supposed.
"Yes," he said. "Something."
They were both silent for a bit. Giles stared at the ceiling, watching patterns and constellations form in the rough, textured paint, lit by only a hint of light from outside, creeping around the curtains.
Eventually, Ethan said, "The lights are off."
"Yes," Giles said, with less sarcasm than the statement of the obvious warranted, but he couldn't seem to find the energy to be scathing.
"Why are the lights off?"
"It's peaceful," Giles said.
"Ah," Ethan said. "Ok, then."
Then Ethan granted him a few more precious moments of silence before he said, "So, what do we do now?"
Giles sighed, gave up on wallowing in the dark, and sat up, then carefully stood, only wobbling slightly as he did so. He went over to the desk and turned on the small lamp there. He cringed at the light, and groped blindly for his maps.
"There's another Potential in Glasgow," he said. "And one in Bristol. Take your pick."
***
Too easy. Too easy for Ethan to walk up to the door of this small house in Glasgow, and have this terrified Watcher hand over a defenseless girl. It was ridiculous. The address was written out on a scrap of paper in his hand, in the handwriting of one of the most white-hatted white hats Ethan knew. It was disappointing, almost. Giles hadn't even thought to doubt him.
Why hadn't he? Hadn't they tried to kill each other often enough to warrant some distrust? Hadn't Giles himself pointed out Ethan's desire for power often enough himself that he should have thought that maybe...
Ethan shook his head, and stopped thinking about Giles.
"So, where's the car, again?" the girl said.
"Not far," Ethan said.
Gullible girl. Though that wasn't as odd as gullible Giles.
"Ok. 'Cause, this whole warehouse thing is kinda creepy, you know? I'm, like, expecting, like, an ambush or something."
*My, my,* Ethan thought, *Whatever would make you think that?*
Maybe the fact that this was the spot-on perfect cliched setting for an ambush... Honestly, if this was a normal sort of plot for this First Evil thing, then perhaps it was strongly overrated. After all, Ethan himself had some prior experience with working dirty deeds himself, and this ambush-in-an-alley set-up was downright trite and completely lacking in any sort of elegance. Very much not Ethan's style.
"Kind of exciting, though," she was rambling, "Like a spy movie! And you've even got that whole, you know, dashing mysterious stranger in a trench coat thing going."
"Dashing, eh?" Ethan said.
"Oh, yeah. Well, you know, in a old-guy sort of way."
"Thanks ever so, my dear," Ethan said.
Old guy?
They reached the alley and he stared to turn down it. "This way. Nearly there."
She balked.
"*That* way? I dunno. That's... that's all creepy and dark and stuff. Are you sure about this?"
"It's perfectly safe," he lied.
"I dunno," she said again, looking deeply dubious. "Isn't there some other way?"
"It's much longer. I thought your feet were tired," he said.
She looked very young and small, there, standing at the mouth of that alley, all wide eyes and small white teeth nibbling at her lower lip in a gesture that made him think of grammar school children. He didn't speak for a moment, and felt another rush of distaste, and had a flash of memory of the first Potential he'd been sent to retrieve, the one he'd found torn apart. She'd hardly been human anymore, she'd been an object by the time he found her, nothing but meat and bone and blood.
This girl was moving, blinking, something entirely else than just the flesh that she was made of. She was something animate, and alive, and somehow more than the sum of her parts.
Then she took a few steps into the alley, then a few more, growing more confident with each. He didn't move, couldn't move, as she approached him and reached his side, and stopped there. She laughed nervously and said, "Sorry, I'm acting like a little kid afraid of the dark. Silly."
Of course she wasn't silly. She was exactly right, and her instincts were impressive. And now, right on schedule, dark cloaked figures were stirring themselves from the shadows. Three of them, one at the mouth of the alley, the other two from the far end. Ethan saw them first, but she saw them a moment later.
She grabbed his sleeve and said, "Or maybe not silly. Are those--"
Bringers, yes.
Scarce light flashed on a wicked curved blade.
"What d'we do, Ethan?" she asked, hanging close to him, a warm presence against his side.
*Nothing,* he thought, *we do nothing. I do nothing. Then you die, and I don't. That's the deal.*
The deal hadn't sounded so bad in theory. It had sounded bad, of course, but it had sounded doable. Now, though...
"Damn it," he muttered, as his damned conscious roared at him, then he strode forward and threw his arms open and yelled, "Offenso!"
The power felt as though he'd yanked it out by the roots. It spread in sharp concentric circles, and it knocked the Bringers back. They only had a few moments, but it was enough for him to grab her hand and enough for them to run.
It wasn't long, though, before he heard footsteps behind them.
"They're chasing us!" she yelled, breathless and obvious.
"Yes, I know," he snapped, "Run faster."
"What if they--"
"Hush!"
They just ran. The footsteps getting closer. Closer. He waited, giving his magic as much time as possible to regenerate and then, as he felt a hand swipe between them, and the girl shrieked, he shouted, "Occultare!"
He hauled them both over against the rough brick wall, and the three Bringers ran right past.
"Whoa," she whispered. "How'd you--"
"No time," he hissed. The ache of using too much energy at once building in his chest. "Come on."
He pulled her back the way they came, then through a different alleyway to his car.
All the while, one thought kept buzzing through his mind. He'd just betrayed the original Evil.
He was going to die.
tarnished -- part two -- trekker |