As they stepped into the shadows and away from the Inn, whether Michael's eyes remained closed, or he dared open them, there was nothing to see. Not unless he'd vision fashioned to see in a darkness where there weren't even the most distant celestial bodies to shed light, inherent or reflected. The Shadowlands, the Umbra, whatever the chosen name, were treacherous to travel without the right company, and even then, the journey (brief though it was destined to be) carried some risk.
The cold was insidious, the kind that burned at the lungs with each inhalation, gnawed cruelly at the bones and left the moisture of a man's breath turned to clouds of ice crystals, the gore on his boots (in Michael?s case) solidifying like morbid garnets. The ground felt solid under foot, stable, but if he did look, he wouldn't see what he walked upon, wouldn't see the man whose arm he grasped. It appeared nothing more than a void. Except for the unpleasant sensation of things pressing in around them. The sound of gargantuan things moving in the distance, howls and roars that travelled miles and the breath that licked across the back of their necks as the denizens waited for them to stray from the path.
Mesteno ignored them in the manner of a man who knew their tricks, knew better than to afford them his attention. Instead he strode with deliberate haste through the Umbral Plane for a whole eight seconds, his destination fixed in his mind. "Duck your head," was all he said for the entire unpleasant little trip, a palm reaching to press as a police officer might an arrested criminal being bustled into the back of a squad car.
Michael had never traveled anything like this Umbral Plane, though he had traveled through portals that crossed dimensions often enough to be cognizant of the unspoken rules. Stick to your path and your purpose, or risk becoming lost to the landscape, prey to the denizens within.
He had opened his eyes, taking in their passage and a stab of curiosity pushed its way through his otherwise fogged thoughts. This manner of movement was new, to him at least, he couldn?t recall that Mesteno had access to such an ability twelve years ago; though they had already established that Michael had new tricks of his own.
Were circumstances other, he would have had questions about this icy cold realm. What it was, and how the sadist could command it, or at least traverse it without alarm. As it was, before his fracturing thoughts could draw together enough to form a sentence, he was being directed to duck his head, a hand guiding him. The imagery, of being ducked into the car or wagon at the Watch?s command, was not lost on him and for a moment he wondered if he was going to open his eyes to find himself behind bars of some sort.
Then they were out. In the relative warmth that was the back of his van, a lesser shade of black and with plenty of things to stumble over back there. Probably safer to crouch. The cold spilled out behind them, chilling the armored shell of the van before retreating, reluctantly, little smoky worms of gloom still crawling about their boots.
As the cold fled his heels, like a pack of disappointed hounds, Michael blinked at the dark interior and he peered, owlishly, around the interior of the van.
?I take it, you hadn?t parked this near the Inn??
"Several miles out, actually," Mesteno confessed, stretching upward toward the overhead light and filling the back of the van with harsh, ersatz solarity that had his pupils shrinking pin-prick narrow until they adjusted to the illumination. "It's too easily recognized, and I like to get around unmonitored where I can."
There were meat hooks overhead, tell-tale stains on the dull metal. The floor space was no less sinister, with cadaver bags, zip ties, industrial strength chains and all manner of questionable materials stowed untidily. Likely it wouldn't take much digging to find a small armory tucked away amidst the chaos. He made no apologies for it, despite the likelihood that some of what they crouched amongst was likely to be a crippling reminder of what Michael had been wading through that afternoon.
Studying him quietly for a moment, though far from impassive, Mesteno was choosing his words carefully. "I'm not insinuating you can't handle whatever you found today, Michael, but I'd like you to strongly consider the possibility that you're in shock."
He had not forgotten that the past twelve years had seen team mates come and go as if through a revolving door, according to Michael, but he'd been specific enough about boundaries between colleagues and friendships that the necromancer wasn't going to assume he was handling this just as easily.
"You walked God knows how far with that shit all over your feet, and anything with a good nose for tracking could have followed you. Coming here we're going to have made anything in pursuit lose the scent, but I need you to take me back to where you found them. Or... most of what's left."
As the light snapped on, the illumination bouncing off the harsh metallic interior of the van, Michael winced. It seemed to cut through his already aching head and he raised a hand to shield his eyes briefly as he breathed through the worst of the discomfort and settled himself.
The swing of meat hooks, the body bags strewn across the floor ? even the zip ties, were all an old familiarity, that should not have been as comforting as they were. They spoke to the life the sadist led, but it was a life that Michael well remembered, despite the twelve years between them. Despite what he?d come across just that morning, there was no sense of horror or revulsion in him as he slowly lowered his hand and let himself take in the subtle changes in the van, eyes eventually coming back to Mesteno?s face.
He blinked, in response to what the sadist said, and he did take a breath in preparation of defending himself against the accusation. But once again, his teeth snapped closed before he could let the words spill and he looked down at the littered floor, finding himself a place to take a knee for a moment.
?What?s there,? he began, reaching up to brush his hand over his face and once again removing his glasses. The fuzziness helping to diffuse some of the light that was still making his head throb. ?I?ve seen wor ? no, I can?t say worse but I?ve seen it?s like.?
Folding the eye pieces over the lenses, he reached up and rubbed at one eye with the heel of his palm and then peered at the fuzzy outline of the sadist.
?But there ? they?re soldiers,? he said softly. ?Part of me knows it shouldn?t make a difference, but Colleen ? she was a friend from here. She helped me set up my office at the university.? He tapped his glasses on his fingers, blue eyes moist though tears didn?t fall.
?She didn?t deserve what I brought to her door. I?ve screwed up, Mesteno. For twelve years, I haven?t put a foot wrong, but I screwed up.?
Shaking his glasses out, he set them back on his face, giving a small nod in acknowledgement of the sadist?s actions in cutting off any scent trail, and he exhaled a long deep breath, gathering himself.
?How? Do we ? walk, the van? The ? uhm ? ?he motioned behind him, referencing the way they had come to the van.
"I can't take us to somewhere I haven't seen, somewhere I can't picture," Mesteno admitted after a strung-out spell of silence. "We'll drive. At least as far as we're able without leaving the van out in the open where it might end up subject to speculation. Then we walk."
And yet he wasn't moving to scramble into the driver's seat just yet. Instead he crouched there, poised and uncertain. He knew he should offer more than pragmatism, they were beyond a purely clinical association, and yet he would not be so bold as to assume his compassion would be welcome. Muscle twitched at the hinge of his jaw as he considered, and ultimately went with his gut instincts.
As Mesteno explained the limitations of his ability to walk across a separate plane of existence, Michael realized he should have known that. It was a very basic rule for jumps of time and space, almost universal across all different sorts of teleportation. Even Michael?s own flashes of the exercise were limited to places he could envision; a destination point.
Mesteno reached across the space with both hands, closed them over the trapezius muscles to either side of Michael's neck. The squeeze was tight, verged on more than uncomfortable, but he meant it to be grounding even if it wasn't precisely comforting. It demanded the scholar's attention even if he'd rather not meet his eyes while they were tear-blurred.
"Michael." His tone had shifted, had all the hallmarks of the authoritarian he professed not to be. "Your friend - Colleen - wherever the fuck she is right now, I can guarantee that she's furious as fuck. And not with you. You live in this city and you accept that there're risks. But she's gonna be furious with whatever got to her, and she's going to be itching for you to find the bastards and make sure they regret it. So, hold it together just for now. Play the blame game with yourself later if you have to, but get that work-head on, the one you use in a crisis. You're gonna need that with what we're doing."
Which sounded ominous, because it was. Mesteno wasn't even entirely sure he'd take Michael inside with him once he knew the way, but he wasn't about to admit that yet.
Mesteno?s lean fingers dug into tight muscles and the result couldn?t be anything but painful. However, as had always been the case with the bookworm, Michael didn?t flinch away from the physical pain. His mind grasped it as an anchor that secured him back into the present, a point where his mind was no longer slipping and sliding up and down the scale of past, present, future, practical and theoretical. Just a breath in a single moment that was here and now.
It allowed him to focus on the sadist?s words, focus in a way that had been missing from him since they?d connected at the Inn. Blue eyes, shielded behind their glasses, became less glassy, sharper and the pinpoint of his pupil flared briefly and then tightened with the intensity of focus. He licked his lips and gave his head a small shake.
?That?s not ? ?he began, stopped and calculated his words and started again. ?I had gone to Colleen to ask her about some work, she and I had done. Truthfully it was little more than theory, but you know how my theories tend to work.?
In that, they did ? work.
?Colleen used to keep notes of our talks. I asked her to find those notes. She would keep them in the margins of other books, scrolls, whatever was on hand when we started to really get rolling. I knew it would take her time to find it all, that?s why I wasn?t ? worried, at first.?
Biting his lower lip, he drew the blood to the surface as he made himself speak the next words aloud. He hadn?t said them yet, not in this way, and somehow -in the ways words had- it was about to make it real.
?They were killed, for that work. I came here, to gather counter measures against what our opposition is doing in jumping across time and space; particularly time. But instead I lead them to my work, Mesteno. I was here to get the keys, but instead I lead them to the keys.?
And in doing so, had sealed the fate of three innocent people. He didn?t say that, but he didn?t need too. It was in his face and the sadist already had those pieces.
One hand slipped from his shoulder, offered a bracing squeeze to his nape, and then Mesteno sat back, heels to haunches. "You sure you're ready to go back? If you tell me where, I'll go alone."
When the sadist moved back, Michael swayed a little, unmoored. But he quickly covered it and shifted on his heels.
?I have to go back with you. I wasn?t ? it?s possible they missed something, I wasn?t able to finish searching before ? ?he trailed off and then made a gesture with his hand. Mesteno would understand when they got to the house.
?I can direct you towards the house. It?s five miles away from the University, you?ll be able to part to the south, and we can walk from there.?
Mesteno couldn't deny that Michael's mistake truly had been a clumsy one. That the onus was something he'd have claimed too, were he in the other man's position, but there was no point in acknowledging the blunder. He let it all slide past without comment, and grasped onto the business of action when it arose, the better to turn Michael's mind from grief.
"That's fine. Hop up in the passenger seat and let's get this done before anyone else gets involved."
He clambered with accustomed ease over the clutter, easing between the two seats and into the driver's side to start up the engine. It was far quieter than it should have been for such a hulking behemoth, especially with the added weight of the armor like some great insect?s carapace. Of course, there was music though, disgraceful to the image, because it was Mahler's 5th on the radio when he turned the key in the ignition, entirely too soft, too tender for the circumstances. Somehow it felt too obvious to do anything more than turn it down to a background whisper though.
He fastened his seatbelt, one of the few precautions he demanded of anyone that played passenger, and waited for Michael to join him up front and point the way before pulling out into the evening traffic.
"When we get there, we suit up. Gloves. Foot covers. We're not leaving any evidence, and you're not to touch a damn thing unless it's absolutely essential," he began, unapologetically didactic. "If there's any sign of the Watch already on site, we'll have to come back another night, and I'll see if I can get access to what I need through other routes."
Through the city morgue. But he wasn't about to tell Michael that. Distressing enough for him to have to face it all again. Worse that he might have to be the one identifying his old friend (or what was left of her) should she have no one closer to do the task.
He stole a glance across at him in the rear-view, sticking religiously to the speed limits to avoid drawing attention. "How badly were they... Will you be able to pick her out?"
?Yes,? Michael answered the question in a quiet tone. ?They ? ?he began, stopped and glanced down, pulling at the seat-belt that was secured across his chest. ?You?ll see.? He finished in a quiet tone.
Michael fell silent then, almost as if he wanted to hear the music, despite its counter tone to the general mood in the van. Mesteno had made no attempt to engage Michael in conversation beyond the necessary, though he was aware it might have been kinder to distract him from the waking nightmare of his own thoughts with something, anything - frivolous, professional, whatever did the job. It had never been his m?tier to comfort though, and anything he might have said would likely have felt flat, strained. He contented himself with the small consolation that he hadn't left Michael to handle things alone, then chided himself for his own fool involvement. It wasn't his fight. He had plenty of those.
For the drive, the bookworm was quiet, speaking only to give the necessary directions. He didn?t argue against Mesteno?s instructions, simply nodding in a biddable manner. It would be foolish to argue. This was the sadist?s dance, steps the younger man knew with an intimacy Michael recognized he would never possess.
When they finally arrived at where he?d indicated they should park, the scholar placed himself in the sadist?s hands, so to speak, in order to get properly kitted up. He did ask for gloves, though he promised not to touch unless it was necessary. When they were covered to Mesteno?s satisfaction, Michael lead the way along a path in a small wood, north.
Insisting that Michael go the extra mile and don one of the unflattering, plastic ensembles forensics teams wore to avoid contaminating crime scenes, even if the damage likely had already been done in his initial visit, he locked up the van with a canvas hold all slung over one shoulder, crammed with items better left unmentioned, and then fell into step with Michael, the silence springing back into place as soon as the necessities had been discussed, accomplished. Half a mile at the side of a man he'd never truly expected to see again. Half a mile on silent feet, half-expecting for the culprits to find them before they reached their destination. It was almost a disappointment to have nowhere to spill the nervous energy.
It was not lost on him, as they walked along, how familiar this felt. As if the twelve years apart had been little more than twelve days.
Inwardly, Michael chastised himself roundly for allowing his thoughts to gain traction in that direction. At one point, as they stepped through the woods, he reached up and rubbed almost violently at the side of his temple; as if he could scrub the thoughts out of his head. There was a voice in there, violently protesting the way he was allowing this. From the point of allowing Mesteno to have any involvement at all -the risk to the sadist ? just look at Colleen- to the way he was slipping back into those old habits as naturally as breathing.
Following Mesteno?s direction. Looking to the sadist to call the play and then moving to support the action accordingly. All the old habits. And the worst of it was the sense that he was being a selfish fool to allow it. The little, vicious whispers that taunted him for being weak, where he should have stood on his own two feet and never let on something was wrong.
It was with that thought; his internal tormentor began to laugh aloud. So, clear and real was the sound that Michael jumped a little as if he could hear the brutal taunt. The scholar quickly wrapped his arms around himself, fingers gripping tightly to the arms of his sleeves. Struggling to contain what reason told him was just in his head; even if it felt so damn real.
By the time, they had approached the house, he?d gotten himself under some semblance of control, so as they came through the door and back into the library, he?d prepared himself for the horrific image within. The blood-soaked message.
The two-story house was set approximately half a mile from where they had parked, five miles from the University. In the light of day, it had probably been a charming residence, the front gardens neatly tended and brilliant with May flowers. Built with stone and large wooden beams, the windows suggested that it was a bright and airy space, evidence that the lives within had known love and laughter.
There was no Watch presence either in the house or anywhere around it. If anything, the air seemed respectfully still, as if it were standing silent vigil for the unfortunate souls within. Because, despite the tidy appearance, there was a stark stillness about the residence that seemed to warn of darkness within. To someone who knew the scent of such things, the stench of blood, excrement and offal perfumed the air just outside the house, causing the scent of the gay little flowers to become sickly sweet.
The front door had been latched behind the bookworm, when he?d left only a little while ago and it looked as if he?d had the wear-with all to step away from the path leading up to the door, as there were no bloody footprints to be traced.
Leading them up the path to the house, Michael paused and cocked his head to the side, listening for a moment, before he reached for the door.
?No one?s been here since I left,? he said, voice mortuary soft.
Before Mesteno could make a play to take the lead, the bookworm slipped through the door and into the dark entrance way. He reached, automatically for the lights but then thought better of it.
?Lux.? He whispered softly, casting his hand ahead of him and pushing a soft violet light, like a lantern, into the space between the entrance way and the stairs.
?They?re upstairs,? he explained, with a glance over his shoulder, before he moved for the steps.
On the strength of blood scent alone, anyone with a nose would be able to find their way to the scene of the carnage. At the top of the stairs, it was a turn to the right, along an open balcony to the library. As they approached that room, Michael whispered the Latin for light once again, only this time it ignited the lamps within the library. At least he knew that Mesteno wouldn?t be thrown by what those lamps illuminated.
The blood had been tickling Mesteno?s nose, subtle as right hook to the chin ever since he'd stepped out of the van.
It wasn't the pure and beckoning thing it might have been had only blood been spilled, but the repulsive co-mingling he'd smelled dozens of times on the battle field. The full impact of all the foul scents that the fume hood in the morgue dutifully sucked away as he went about his twisted business for the sake of angry clients.
He didn't need the light which Michael summoned, but permitted it anyway, even if the gleam through the windows might alert any sentinels left posted of their presence.
The scene was as Michael had found it. Book cases over turned, papers scattered, furniture busted. The walls were painted in murals of blood, brain matter, piss and excrement.
The first body that came into sight was that of young Dan. He was impaled upon an upturned table leg, set upon it in a Judas Cradle manner, with his torso cut open, ribs broken to allow the extraction of lungs. The manner in which the lungs were left to hang just outside the rib cage, still attached suggested he had been alive as this had been done.
Along with the dissection of his penis, he had been castrated, his balls wrapped around his neck by the epididymis. His skull had been carefully opened, again suggesting he had been alive for the act, though how long he?d lived as his brains had been carefully scooped out, was anyone?s guess. One eyeball dangled from its socket, the other was imploded and it looked as if part of his nose had been bitten off.
Just behind Dan, Marcus? body was bound to the four corners of the only table still upright and intact in the room. He had also castrated but rather than having the testicles fully removed, the scrotum has been opened and the balls pulled out, unwinding the epididymis to the very ends. His face has been peeled off his skull, the blood around the wound suggesting this had been done while he was still alive. At some point his throat had been carefully slit and his tongue pulled down and through the cut, like an obscene necktie.
Finally, there was the woman. Her face was intact, her expression almost peaceful where she dangled, hanging by hooks set in the skin of her back. Her legs had been pulled spread eagle above a pile of books that are now covered in blood, guts and other viscera, due to the fact that her abdomen was sliced open. The cut, to the experienced eye, was of a size to suggest that her entrails had slowly wormed out of her body, in such a way that she would have felt every inch of her organs as they escaped her body. At some point both legs had been skinned, the dermis cut at the point of her hip and then ripped down to hang off her body in tatters at knee for one leg, the calf of the other.
Slices of her flesh had been twisted into words and pasted to the wall by a mixture of blood and shit.
?Gratias tibi, Libre. Vide te mox?
Mesteno didn't intend to keep them there long enough for an ambush. In fact, the bodies in their present state were more salvageable than he'd expected, despite the obvious trauma they'd suffered.
"Go and look for whatever they might have missed," he urged sotto voce, casting his eyes over the Latin scrawled foul on the wall. "Try not to step in any blood or spread it further than it is already." It was a long shot, hoping that the disturbance wasn't already telltale. Then he turned his attention to the corpses, and set his bag down in a relatively clean spot.
It was Colleen he approached first, unflinching, impassive, but he wasn't there to make a study of the brutality, to solve a mystery with something so simple as physical evidence. Instead he risked upsetting Michael all the more when he crouched to gather up the slippery cold entrails and began to feed them back into the incision they'd made in her abdomen, the foul stink thickening as he disturbed the ruptured offal.
It didn?t surprise the bookworm when Mesteno set straight to work, the sadist?s words luring the bookworm out of his own skull. He blinked a couple of times, saw the younger man heading for Colleen and quickly looked away. He didn?t want to know.
Not that his ears failed to alert him. The soft, wet squelch that was like no other sound in the world.
As he moved towards the wrecked rows of books and paper, he stopped and offered over his shoulder.
?I can destroy, all of this. If it?s faster.? His words were low but at least his voice was steady by now. ?It was what I intended to do ? I just ?? had become overwhelmed.
Acting had never been his forte, but somehow, Mesteno managed to feign being oblivious to all those ticks he knew so well. Anything to offer Michael some comfort, and he didn't doubt that he'd only feel worse about himself if he knew they were being observed, monitored in a fashion not entirely clinical for the frequency, the severity ? how fucked is he? Do I need to make him sit this out? They were fogging the necromancer's pragmatism, infiltrating the hard-drilled habits that kept him working efficiently. No. Let him deal with this. He's not a fucking child.
It was easier indoors, confronted with the gore-slicked aftermath of the murder. His back to Michael, he could give him the privacy he needed to gather the scraps of his composure, grease the cogs of his coping mechanisms. Mesteno meanwhile, greased the latex gloves with human fat, with the jellied gobbets of blood and tissue clinging to the organs he rehoused in the hollowed-out trunk of the woman's corpse.
"Destroy nothing until the bodies are out. Then do whatever you want with it all," he murmured, feeding the gleaming ropes of intestine home without bothering to look back over his shoulder.
It was a messy job, intended only as a temporary fix rather than offering some decorum. The innards re-situated, he extended his own energy to meld flesh already beginning to turn necrotic back together, fleshkrafting clumsily. The feel of his energy was cool, dark. It has a taste to it, thick on the tongue, something to drown in (should Michael be sensitive to such things), and though the scholar had never been about him when he'd used it in the past, it had always been there, locked up as potential, carefully sealed away until trauma had shattered the requisite seal.
He tackled the flayed limbs next, stroking the stripes of drying hide back upward as if pressing the petals of a drooping bloom back into place. The same sinister feel, and now with a palpable chill in the air, the wet suction of things sticking, an obscene, ugly sound as flesh bound to flesh and held.
He hoped Michael wasn't watching. He hoped he was entirely absorbed in his search elsewhere, though his ears strained toward the sound of his footsteps.
The wash of power, when Mesteno truly set to it, stole the scholar?s breath as shards of dark ice sank like tiny slivers of glass into his awareness. He had always suspected, the raw power had always been there, even back when the man was nineteen years old. Following, like a faithful hound in the shadows, waiting for the moment when its master would crack deep enough into his own sight to call it forth.
Michael shivered. In a normal human being, it would have been a shudder of revulsion; the natural reluctance to face death and all its trappings. It had been a long time since the scholar could veil his own gaze with such sweet ignorance. Though not a power he possessed, his own abilities recognized the strength unfolding a mere shattered bookcase away.
Instinct told him not to look. Trust kept his eyes faced down towards the papers, though his heart beat at a rapid pace as curiosity wanted to overrule him. Instead, he reached a hand out and whispered a soft spell, attempting to call words that would have been unique to his theories, to him. Using turn of phrase, the way a bloodhound would use scent to hunt down any scraps that had been left behind.
When Mesteno finally tore her down from the hooks keeping her aloft, cradling the corpse so that she pressed to his chest like a lover, he set her on her own two feet.
Colleen did not keel over, and that she stood unsupported was not some ugly trick of rigor mortise either. She stood entirely as if she were a living woman, even down to the relaxed posture, and stood waiting, patient slave to the necromancer's whims for as long as he animated her flesh, threads of that terrible darkness hiding under his skin pulling her into ungodly coordination like puppet strings. He wasn't going to carry her out. She was going to walk.
Given the way Mesteno had spoken about the Watch, Michael had expected an argument about his plan to obliterate the house. Of course, he?d meant to do it with the bodies inside and the sadist was making it clear, that wasn?t an option. The bookworm weighed the effort of arguing, against the natural inclination to trust, where trust had become an emotion so far removed from Michael?s life it felt like the old friend.
For a moment, he watched those blade like shoulders as they shifted beneath the forensic suit as the necromancer worked. Again, he was struck by the sense that he shouldn?t be allowing this. The silence between, while it felt as comfortable as an old blanket, it also felt as fragile as spun lace. Just one wrong words, one catch at the threads and it could be unraveled; possibly beyond repair.
?It would be a kindness,? he whispered softly, suspecting those predator sharp ears could hear him. ?To make you hate me.?
Words, spoken almost sadly because they both knew there was now power to them. Michael no more had the ability to suit those words to action, than he had the power to change twelve years. The sentences were an apology, and a gratitude. As was the way he forced himself to move away, out of the direct line of sight as the necromancer worked.
Mesteno didn't respond to the words.
True enough, he knew Michael couldn't accomplish it, that forced hatred, but Mesteno wondered just what measure of grievous offense he might cause himself that might make the Bookworm change his mind and decide it wasn't so far beyond reach after all. It would take manipulation, a cruelty that tore more viciously than the teeth of a bear trap, and he'd been capable of it with others. Compelled to do it, where the subject felt like prey. Fragile though Michael was, Mesteno found he hadn't the appetite for it. He didn't want Michael to be so horrified with him that he decided hate was an option after all. For some reason, his opinion mattered.
Animating a corpse wasn't a tricky business. It was nothing that required the flexing or breaking of soul matter, nothing that required great sacrifice (he'd spent his own energy in this instance, rather than offering blood) and it was because the threads of his own energy were extended, unspooled as it were to maintain the macabre puppetry that he felt the observation so clearly.
Like knows like. Isn?t that the saying? As Colleen stood there, an obedient puppet to her master?s strings, there came a thrum along the strings, like a spider testing the strands of another?s web, investigating what was on the other side.
The inquiry came as a sense, rather than anything as mundane as words. A whisper of curiosity over who was exerting such force to bend the rules of the dead?
Mesteno took a sharp breath, eyes gone wide, and met the curiosity with a denial as subtle as a bludgeon to the head. The hum of energy, a black morass which seethed like smoke just beneath his skin lashed outward in all directions, a wall of frigid energy that filled up the room, cut through bricks and mortar and shoved any seeking, spidery entities out, jealously guarding what he'd claimed. Mesteno had fought for command of other necromancer's toys in the past, and done it a damn sight more subtly than he did with Colleen, but he wasn't taking any risks in claiming her.
There was a sentience to Mesteno?s energy, a keen intellect that was entirely separate (and often had other inclinations entirely) to his own. It rarely had opportunity to stretch its metaphorical limbs so extensively, uprooted from the channels it swam in the sorry flesh which housed it. Now it was sniffing around like a blood hound, keen to latch onto anything even remotely edible.
It wanted to taste Michael. It raged when it was disallowed.
Instead Mesteno sent it out snapping at the thing that had been probing, not merely chasing it off, but attempting to take bites out of it. A fierce prohibition.
"Michael," Mesteno had always known how to throw his voice, no matter how softly spoken he tended to be. "Whatever was here, it knows we're here. Be quick."
As Mesteno alerted to the intruder, there was a sense of amusement initially, interwoven with curiosity and the whisper of temptation. Whatever was on the other end of those gossamer soft quivers of sticky threads, it tried to sniff -impertinent! - at the sadist and oh but it was in for a surprise.
Because it hadn?t expected what came back up the thread towards it. The force, cut loose from its leash that snarled and when re-directed from the subject close at hand -Libre- came hurtling towards the watchers. The bloodhound caught its bits of ? well, not flesh exactly, but?s bits all the same. Dark, putrid with rot, maggots squirming in the carrion ?flesh?.
But this was not the watchers? first encounter like this. Rather than rail or strike out towards the necromancer and his ?hound?, once the initial shock was extinguished, the entity turned back with a whispered song of welcome. A sickly sweet, whistle with an extension of power that knew it?s like.
Come closer, interesting one. We would talk with you. The words were not form with any sort of voice but were rather a sense, a feeling, a song of welcome. A warm blanket on a frosty night, a cry of praise to lift a battered soul; a temptation.
Even if their soft whispers went ignored, they passed out yet more of their ?flesh? to the unseen hound. Encouraging those snapping jaws to glut their fill. Have a taste, have a meal. Come back for more.
The Watcher was bound to be disappointed with the response to the glutting it offered. Instead of being pleased, instead of sniffing about for more, the sentient energy simply played buffer, keeping the Watcher repulsed, laying claim to the space it inhabited both within and without its host's body. Anything that tried to worm beyond it, it withered, nullifying it. Even the plants outside of the house were beginning to crumple, touched by the death specter it seemed to represent.
Mesteno felt his way along the far-flung energy, monitoring not only its unguided efforts, territorial and savage, but its willingness to cooperate. In the past, and of late more frequently, its sense of self had become more of an issue, and he didn't trust it (unfurled the way it was) not to try and take the reins. That he was in close proximity to Michael, that he might inadvertently do him harm if he didn't keep his grasp tight, only made it more of an effort, and he was beginning to sweat beneath the smothering suit, thoughts turned to auto-admonition for the foolishness of using his talents when he hadn't fed in weeks.
Focused in the bubble of his own power, Michael did not immediately recognize the close quarters with their hunters. It took Mesteno?s voice to penetrate his focus and even then, it was only the fact that the sadist?s voice had always been capable of reaching him -no matter how far gone- that saw him turn sharply.
?Fuck.? He said, the word raw out of his normally cultured tones.
Turning towards the shadow shrouded destruction of the bookcases, he exhaled a long breath. Well, there went any hope of being discreet. Hopefully there were no curious bystanders moving in on the house, because the soft lamp light was suddenly overwhelmed by a wash of violet light. Extending his arm, Michael opened the channels to his own well of strength, pushing what had been a whispered call, up to a full-throated bellow; so to speak his voice never rose.
Now it was his power that flooded the room. It did not bring with it the cold touch of the dead, like the sadist?s, but at the same time there was no warmth or comfort in the touch of the energy. Rather, it was like stepping into an archive, something that held the artifacts of time and was flavored with the burden of their age; tasted of the merciless march of inevitability.
From somewhere towards the back of the room, there came an almighty crash. The crack and splintering of wood and the rustle of papers, like disturbed starlings taking wing. Soft thwaps sounded, the scholar catching that which came to him, and then the shifting of feet.
?I have what I need.?
Unfortunately, his words were observed by what was both within the room and what was not. Mesteno was in the position to feel it first, the race of death along finely woven threads. Colleen was still, she was Mesteno?s to command, but on the table the body of Marcus was starting to shift.
With Colleen's body trailing him like a faithful mutt, Mesteno turned away from where she'd been suspended meaning to go and find Michael. He'd had no time to use the contents of his bag to try and eradicate signs of their visit, nor would he now, he suspected, as the Watcher grew tired of throwing scraps and became distracted, not coincidentally, he thought, by the splash of violet illumination. Mage work. That was going to take some getting used to, some revelation, but now wasn't the time to discuss change. He could only assume it had 'felt' what he was numb to, and that they could expect incoming company imminently.
That was when he sensed the corpse of the young man begin to move.
With no lapse in control of Colleen, and no outward show of concern, he strode straight across to the table with its shifting occupant, peeling off his latex gloves as he did so and wedging them into his bag. Wresting control of a second body would require concentration he couldn't afford if he was going to stay alert, so when he slapped his calloused palm down over the arm of the male's body, it wasn't for the sake of a second flesh doll. Instead, rot bloomed beneath his fingers, ran riot in cold tissue and bone, blackening and putrefying, disabling the sinew and rapidly reducing the body to a foul and stinking mulch, drying to dust as it radiated outward under the press of his hand.
The easiest way to stop another player from joining in was to break their toys. If the Watcher was smart, it wouldn't waste efforts with attempting the same with the other young man... unless it was deliberately trying to slow them down.
"We go now," he called, heading out to meet up with Michael and lope back down the stairs. He offered no warning that they'd have company.
Colleen, stark naked in a way Michael had likely hoped never to see, and moving with all the sprightliness of someone half her age. From a distance, no one would think her anything but a woman daring the cold without her clothes. It was only the ugly seams of fleshkrafted skin that, up close, and along with the vacancy of her eyes, gave it away. She kept pace without any difficulty whatsoever.
"Think we can expect some of your friends to try and ambush us on our way out?" Mesteno asked, refusing to let their company be a subject they discussed until they were safe.
Though its offering was rebuked, the Watcher didn?t seem to take personal offense. It was so far beyond the idea of personal slights and the petty fits of temper that came with them. Instead, it appeared enchanted and though the hound was still loyal to its master, the Watcher still coaxed.
It could multi-task. The sweet whispers were not just for the hound but for the necromancer as well. Not words, in the clumsy way of the sounds that fall from our tongues, but still the opening volley of a soft courtship. Such power, how could the Watcher be anything but fascinated. Even the way Mesteno quickly identified to remove the tools, rather than try to face power against power, was observed and approved of. Oh yes, this entity was enchanted.
Michael could almost feel the glee of his age-old nemesis and he shuddered, once again, with a combination of personal distress over having brought Mesteno to this point and the realization of just how much of a mess he?d allowed things to become. Discipline of the past twelve years made his feet move as the sadist snapped directions and discipline kept his eyes off Colleen as the three of them executed a strategic retreat from the house.
Once they were back out of doors, the bookworm turned and face the structure. He would try to pass off the one book and handful of scrolls he had retrieved from the library to Mesteno but if the necromancer was otherwise occupied, the scholar would set them on the ground.
?They?re going to come through,? he warned the sadist, his hands lifting and the violet waves of light swirling around his fingers once again. Glancing over his shoulder, he sought the younger man?s eyes. ?Don?t let them scratch you.?
With that, he turned his attention back towards the house and what remained within. The next words that fell from his lips, were Latin.
"Ne quid in fabricae est consutum vitae, quae teritur absumitur. Adiuro te ad voluntatem meam, et ricini semet explicare et horologium.?
As he spoke, the violet swirls of power arched from his hands and reached across the space to swirl around the house, from foundation to roof. The purple light was reflected in the scholar?s glasses, his blue eyes fixed on the spell work he was casting, lips moving though no sound fell from them. Within the embrace of the violet light, the house began to unravel.
The wooden planks being unmade from their shaped timber, rolling back up into the trunks they had originally started their lives as; trees. The stones began to meld back together, into larger boulders, which had at one time been broken by heavy mauls, but those boulders began to give way to smaller and smaller bits of stone, unmaking before them.
Depending upon the attention of his hound, the necromancer may have felt the moment when the bodies within began to regress. The way the dead, did not so much come back to life -that would have been impossible for the scholar- but rather the life force began to unwind. An infant?s first cry echoed on the air, perhaps imagined, before the thread of life, now death, that Mesteno had encountered simply ceased to exist.
As if written out of the existence of time.
It might be clearer now, that the entire house was being written out of the fabric of time, as if none of it had ever existed.
Focused on the undertaking at the end of his fingers, Michael didn?t turn when the shadows cast by the trees on either side of him, suddenly reared upwards. The constructs came together with effective swiftness, their skeletal bodies arching upwards, dragon like maws gaping and red eyes glittering with fierce focus as they crashed together; aiming for the scholar?s back.
Of course, staying put was the last thing Mesteno wanted to do. Better to get to the van and put distance between them and whatever was hounding the Bookworm. Better to get the walking corpse somewhere where he could safely begin the real work. However, this was Michael's show, not his, and he caged his impatience behind his teeth, skin prickling with the urgency to move rather than stand about like hobbled prey.
His passenger, still firmly anchored (as it would always be) left the crime scene with them. Yet out there amongst the gardens he'd so carelessly driven to early rot, it still stretched out, eager for conflict, eager for the potential for fresh death. It saw the world through the same, golden eyes, but analyzed it all with a very different, perfectly inhuman mind, and it wasn't at all phased by what it saw Michael accomplish - unmaking things. Mesteno on the other hand watched the display with a great deal more unease. If this wasn't a form of chronomancy, he didn't know what was. Typical that he'd consider it a more sinister magic than anything he might wield!
Still, how could he complain? The evidence was gone. The bodies, the DNA, the fingerprints and the disturbance Michael had inadvertently caused on his initial visit. Gone. No Watch to worry about.
Thankfully there was something demanding his immediate attention, and though he hadn't come to play bodyguard, that was precisely what he found himself doing as Michael worked his magics. Leaving Colleen to stand mute and still, he turned to face the rapidly forming constructs, a killing calm settling about the candleflame-brightness of his eyes.
Now this dance he knew.
The first of the constructs came through without offering him any time to prepare an effective barrier, and so he met like with like. The enemy weren't the only ones with shadow oriented talents, and from the trees opposite those where they'd spawned, he dragged a great swathe of it, thick and dark as pitch, a great wave to batter down on the skeletal bodies, steel-solid and, in a pinch, a fit weapon. No shaping required. Just a swift crushing, their bones carried out on the tide of it to keep the scholar's back safe.
The darkness snapped back into place with near immediacy, the shadows cast where they should be, albeit restless at their edges, curling like smoke.
Mesteno didn't stand about inactive while the Watcher could conjure up more though, or resurrect the first swarm. Instead more shadows came crawling, this time just enough to form a slim, razor edged blade of darkness which he used to cut straight through the plastic crime scene suit and the sleeve of his shirt, opening a cut in the back of one forearm. The blood ran thick, dark enough to pass for black given the hour, and when it was slicking his knuckles he cast it out in a wide arc, letting beads of it spatter on the ground, evidently harmlessly.
At least until anything tried to cross it.
Mesteno had no spells to work for his craft, unless it was of particular complexity. He simply spent his blood (or preferably that of others - when occasion allowed) and infused it with that same decay that he'd inflicted upon Marcus' corpse. If any more of the draconic nasties approached, they'd find themselves crumbling as surely as the dead man's bones had, their energy gnawed on and drained just as Mesteno's passenger had begun to back in the house. Fighting in close quarters would have certainly been more fun, but with Michael's warning not to let them scratch him, maintaining a distance seemed sensible.
"Velox!" He demanded of Michael, as if he weren't already exerting himself.
His mind caught up in the intricate work of chronomancy, there was still a small part of his consciousness that was aware enough to want to howl at the necromancer to stop making himself so alluring! Michael knew how his enemy thought, how they worked. The power that Mesteno was calmly casting about them would be like catnip to very big, dangerous cats. Part of the scholar was desperate to bundle the sadist up and hurry him away from the threat.
But he had to finish what he started.
The threads of creation had been unraveled, leaving the lines of existence upon time, until Michael drove even those back into dust. The house, the bodies, the gardens and the gay little flowers from just a half hour ago, were gone. An odd pattern of dusty ground lay in their place, perhaps enough to be curious to an onlooker but no usable DNA would be found. Just plain, dirt.
As the necromancer?s voice issued its sharp order, quick, the scholar was already turning, dropping the lines of power and reaching to scoop up the papers on the ground next to him.
Now, his eyes couldn?t help landing on Colleen, where she stood waiting obediently for Mesteno?s next command. For a moment, the reality of what he was seeing, threatened to overwhelm him and he shuffled his burden into one arm, reaching out with the other in order to erase his dead colleague from existence. But even as the words came to his lips, he stopped them and looked towards gold eyes.
In many ways this was a greater testament to the trust he had in the necromancer, than anything that had come before. Despite the chaos swirling around them, the whispered courtship of his enemies towards Mesteno, the bookworm dropped his arm; leaving Colleen to Mesteno?s protection.
Feet slipping a little on the dark, dew (blood?) kissed grass, he got his legs under him and began to stride towards where they?d left the van. He was moving, but at the same time he wasn?t simply allowing Mesteno to take the brunt of flank guard; believe it or not, he hadn?t brought the man out to be a body guard either.
Casting his hand out ahead of him, light flared from his fingers. While nowhere near the brilliant, life giving intensity of Taneth?s sun, it was still brilliant enough to dispel the shadows ahead of them, clearing a path at least.
?Can the van travel?? He asked in a quick, perhaps surprisingly calm tone. He didn?t try bother to elaborate the statement, he merely expected Mesteno to understand what he was asking.
Twelve years, fading to the click of seconds.
If it was any consolation to Michael, Mesteno seemed entirely un-enamored with the temptation the other side were attempting. He couldn't have been more dispassionate to their offer had he been making a deliberate effort!
As for the power he wielded, he'd nothing else to rely on given present circumstances, and so he'd have to shoulder the risk. No point in bringing a gun to a fight with shadow spun bone constructs when there was no flesh to maim. It would have taken a small cannon to do enough damage to the morbid creations to slow them down, if he relied on contemporary armaments. Perhaps they needed to visit the Tech sector and invest in some futuristic hardware that would simply vaporize whatever they fired it at.
There was a moment where Michael stood there staring at Colleen where Mesteno thought he was going to have to intervene. "Michael, don't..." he murmured. None of the snapped commands on this occasion. He knew it was too personal a thing to have her stood there and expect not a flicker of reaction. He said no more though, and waited for him to come to the conclusion himself. That's not to say he didn't let spill a soft sound of relief when Michael's common sense overrode his sentimental response. He gave a brief, approving nod as his arm dropped, and then with hand still blood sticky, he set off alongside the other man in the direction of the van.
Again, Colleen set into motion at their backs, moving with the easy stride of a living woman and not once snagging her feet on any of the undergrowth they trekked through.
"If you can manage without the light, let it go," he advised Michael as they hastened beneath the trees. "I don't need it." No more than he had in the Umbra to see where he was going. He didn't want the light drawing attention if anything was out there looking for them.
?The light keeps them from having anything to latch on to,? he explained softly, though as they continued along without further intervention, Michael closed his hand and extinguished the violent wisps of power.
"I can't take the van with me where you and I went. The path wouldn't support it. I couldn't... I'm not that good. The most I've managed is two people at once."
And he used the term 'people' loosely. Hadn't even been sure they'd make it through.
Still, half a mile was nothing. The span of a few minutes even in the dark. Before too long its ugly, armored shape would become apparent, and there was nothing getting in there (if it'd been found!) Mesteno warded his property thoroughly these days, after it turned out RhyDin residents had a habit of demolishing his property.
"If you think you can stomach it," he went on tentatively while the words were flowing, "I think it might benefit you to have a chat to your friend here. Find out what happened." Now he waited for the emotional backlash. He hadn't saved her just to get her buried somewhere nice and give her the appropriate funeral rites after all!
Truth was, what Michael had done back at the house, particularly the two living -sentient- beings had been exhausting. Though Marcus and Dan were dead, they still represented a combined forty plus years of memory and being that had to be unwritten. Even if their memory would still linger in the minds of those who had known them, the foot stamp of their existence had been undone and that was no small undertaking.
As they approached the armored van, ugly thing that it was, Michael had never been so grateful to see something in his life. He nodded to show his acceptance of the limitation on Umbra walking. It made sense, moving a living being was a small operation but also offered up the ambient power that came with the living. Sort of like a traveling battery pack, even if it was on so subtle a scale as to be almost unnoticeable.
An inanimate object like the van would be almost impossible.
"I think it might benefit you to have a chat to your friend here. Find out what happened."
The words produced an owlish blink from the scholar and an expression that lack any immediate comprehension. He hadn?t had time, or more to the point hadn?t allowed himself the time to think too deeply on what Mesteno was doing with Colleen?s body. It was true, what corner of his mind had been working on the question had assumed some sort of removal of evidence, maybe a proper burial as opposed to what Michael had been driven to do to the two lads.
There was no way he could hide the flash of horror that moved across his features. It wasn?t horror at Mesteno or the necromancer?s power, but rather the natural horror at the idea of using a friend; someone who had already paid the ultimate price. Without words, Michael started to shake his head, stepping back, and attempting to denounce the very idea of it.
For a moment, a breath that hung suspended between the three of them, it looked as if he couldn?t stomach it. Was going to refuse, balk and bolt away. Twelve years ago, he would have done just that. Ducked his head, perhaps hidden behind the sadist and left it in Mesteno?s hands to take care of it. The thought of it would have been too overwhelming for the scholar?s less than stable conscious cognitive functions.
But even as the words to refuse, swam in his eyes, his gaze locked on the flash of lionized gold. Mesteno didn?t need to say anything further. The bookworm recognized that in refusing, he would be casting the sadist?s efforts aside in a manner that was dishonorable to both the necromancer and Colleen. Mesteno hadn?t come out with him tonight for fun, this was not the nineteen-year-old terror who tore at the world just because he could. What the younger man had done, he was certainly under no obligation, no more so than Colleen had been obliged to help find those old, cast aside notes.
Reaching up, Michael scratched in a pensive manner, at a point over his shoulder. It was an odd little gesture, but it probably spoke volumes to someone who understood what lay back there.
Mesteno braced himself, not just for Michael's horror at the suggestion, but potentially for condemnation. He knew a great many people would protest having someone they cared for subjected to the horror of necromancy just for the sake of aiding the living, could even understand their revulsion despite his own insouciance toward the whole sordid business.
After a moment, the bookworm took a deep breath and lowered his hand, straightening his shoulders and nodding to the sadist. Stepping forward, he moved until he was within a foot of the naked, misshapen corpse of his friend.
?Col ? ? even prepared, he choked on the word and had to turn his head to the side, breathing through his mouth until the bile that had suddenly risen in his throat, fell back down to roil in his gut. It that moment, it dawned on him that there was nothing in her stance, face or even fogged eyes to suggest she was anything more than an inanimate doll.
A meat puppet on strings.
He lifted a hand, as if to touch her cold cheek, but then lowered it and turned back towards Mesteno.
?What do we do??
And there Michael was, backing away, shaking his head. Mesteno's lips parted, ready for the cold logic he thought might just have a chance of usurping the sense of injustice, but he was struck silent when instead, the scholar subsided.
Michael really had changed.
Studying him for a moment, skeptical ? he'll change his mind - he let the span of a few heartbeats pass, and was rewarded by seeing Michael take the first steps, or what he thought would be the first, to try and communicate. Better for him to do it himself rather than be bullied into it, but it wasn't quite time, as the man seemed to have realized.
"We take her somewhere safe," and ourselves, "where we won't be disturbed. I'll call her back to talk to you, and once it's done, we'll cut her loose. Whether she passes over or lingers in Sheol, that's up to her, her beliefs, the acceptance of what's happened to her. There's a good chance that in the aftermath of the trauma, her soul is confused. If she's drawn back to where we stand now and finds things she might have recognized are just gone, this at least will be opportunity to set her to rest, by listening to you. Keep her from haunting a spot needlessly. You can help her this way, just as whatever information she has to share will help you. If that doesn't work, I'll have Vadriel come and find her when we've finished."
Usher of the dead, Vadriel had the capacity to calm a soul, relieve it of the confusion that violent death could cause in a soul once untethered from the flesh. Mesteno's talents were decidedly insidious by comparison, the souls fled far, sensing inherently that he was a being best avoided. If Colleen's soul had been there when they arrived, he didn't doubt she'd have fled with all the others, until she could no longer feel the pulse of the dark energy he harbored.
Unlocking the van, he hauled the rear doors open and without a word, had Colleen climb into the back, sitting neatly cross legged amidst the clutter. He settled his bag in there with her, before pulling the foot covers off and shedding the unflattering plastic suit. He encouraged Michael to do the same, before locking up the back again and heading for the driver's seat to start up the engine. There was no better place to take them than Sanctuary, even if the potential for unbidden memories was high.
For the moment, it might have seemed as if Mesteno had two bodies, souls adrift, under his command. With no more than a nod, the bookworm fell into place behind the sadist, waiting while the younger man got Colleen?s body stashed within the van -and it was an effort not to ask about a blanket- before shucking out of his plastic suit.
Walking silently around to the passenger side door, he climbed in and set the seat belt, all on automatic pilot as he held the precious book and scrolls in his lap. It stirred in his mind that he should suggest the Walk or something, but the sadist?s words were enough to forestall his own commentary. Mesteno knew where in Rhydin would be considered safe. The necromancer knew what he needed, and he?d had a taste of what lurked in the shadows, sniffing at their trail. Michael left it to Mesteno to decide where they went.
Again, he made no effort to fill the silence with words. Neither did he try to hold up a fa?ade. Instead, his head leaned over until he could rest it against the window of the van, eyes staring sightlessly ahead.
I?m so tired. He thought to himself, not for the first time but there was weight to the sentiment this time. Away from Rhydin, when he was in the thick of the war, were it reached every last brick and piece of fabric that surrounded him, it was easy to push the exhaustion to the back. The relentless need to keep moving forward, the almost never ending jump of frying pan to fire and back again, didn?t give the body, mind or soul time to dwell.
Coming back to Rhydin had alleviated the intensity of that environment. The silent peace of the Walk had seeped into the craquelure spidering across the surface of his fragile varnish. It was pushing the cracks further apart, exposing more of the scholar than Michael had allowed in years and emotions he?d held at bay for so long, were scratching across the surface; like nails on a chalkboard.
The Bookworm was not begrudged his silence. Mesteno knew the value of it, and was again glad of the chance to fix his mind to simpler tasks. Driving. Taking the roads less travelled. Making sure there was nothing on their tail.
As his thoughts ran riot around the interior of his skull, it took him longer than perhaps it should have to recognize where they were driving. Always somewhat wild, Sanctuary was even more serene beneath the scars of twelve years. Different and yet familiar in a way that set the barbed hooks of memory into his chest. His breath caught, and perhaps it might have seemed as if he were taken aback by Sanctuary?s current state. But he sat up and came back to the present in a way that suggested he couldn?t quite get enough of what he was seeing.
Mesteno didn't allow himself to think further on what it must be like for Michael to see Sanctuary, to pass through the gaping space where the wrought iron gate had once stood in the high, barb-topped walls. Now it lay crumpled, vine choked to one side, and the manicured lawns had given way to kweneskat grasses that would-be gold by mid-summer.
Where once a thick stretch of woodland had been, there were now only a few mature trees picking out its old perimeters, silver trunked and with dark, plum leaves, branches strung with moss like an old man?s beard. A few spindly saplings had thrust their way up through the dirt, but not densely enough to disguise anything. Here and there, the gleam of metal poked up through the dirt, the old trappings of domestication, twisted through the heat - the spindly arms of an umbrella, a knife going green with mossy stains.
Three pavilion style tents, evidently occupied, were situated beyond where the cabin had stood and where a small lake gleamed distantly, though once they'd exited the van, and Mesteno had brought Colleen from the back to travel to their rear, he led them far from the tents and towards the center of the property, past a few skittering lizards, by a curious owl, through a swarm of silver-winged moths disturbed by their passage, to where the morgue lay beneath the ground.
This was where the cabin had been. The debris had been cleared away though, and someone had made an effort to make the space around the entrance to the morgue appear like a cross between a garden and an overgrown cemetery, using the old stones from the original funeral home. There was even a gate, waist high and topped by a thick board decorated with a multitude of little carved figurines clinging inexplicably to the wood.
Michael was silent, until the van stopped, at which point blue eyes would look over towards the sadist?s profile.
?You?ve redecorated,? he remarked. It was the non-sequitur of a mind pushed to the brink of capacity and probably a couple centimeters beyond.
cont in part two[/b:768f11
