Dusk Knight, page 20
My eyes went to the TV, and I shut up. I wasn’t eager to find out anything else I’d feel sorry for asking about. When life decides to fuck you, it’s almost never just one thing that’s fucked up. The universe is a sadistic bitch like that.
Most of an episode later, I heard footsteps coming down the stairs and looked up as Victor tugged on a white t-shirt on his way down the stairs.
“So what is it you wanted to talk about?” he asked.
“I heard an interesting story from before I moved to Ireland,” Colleen answered after a moment of consideration.
Victor’s eyes immediately went to Alicia. “Hmm, well, perhaps you’d care to come upstairs and tell me about it.”
Alicia looked over at us the moment the words left Victor’s mouth; clearly curious, but I also got the impression she knew better than to ask questions. I shrugged and gave her a smile as we got up.
The hall at the top of the stairs had hardwood flooring, something polished and deep red that seemed radiant in the natural lighting coming through the windows. Furnishings were sparse, a few potted plants that looked plastic and a few paintings. Victor showed us through the door toward the back of the house which surprisingly wasn’t armor plating disguised as a door. Based on what was inside that would have been appropriate.
The room was huge, probably the back half of the floor plan, and contained multiple desks and tables, clearly sorted by function. A bookcase ran the length of the interior wall with no open space to be found. Victor waved us to the nearest desk, which had a few leather chairs sitting next to it.
I settled in one of the chairs and sighed a little. It was comfortable in the way that only old, well-cared for leather can be, which is to say in every way chairs like this the Army owned weren’t. I tried not to stare at the equipment elsewhere. The table farthest from us had reloading equipment for at least six calibers set up on it. One of them was .50BMG, but the one next to it was even bigger. Pelican cases of various sizes were stacked under it.
The next table closest sat under a wall mounted rack full of electronic equipment, some of which I could only guess at. Some, I knew. One of them was an old Navy HF/UHF radio unit, a WSC-3, mounted above an RF amplifier. Both of their displays were lit and the needles in their displays danced. Tucked above that that was something that looked a bit like an antenna tuner. Mounted above the Whiskey-3 was most certainly a stingray cellular interceptor. Pretty sure the thin box with network cables plugged into it at the top was a TACLANE. The rest of the stuff in the rack looked like only the commo guys would know what it did. Nope, I’ll be damned. Tucked away and easy to miss in the dangling cables coming from the patch panel on the side was an old nemesis of mine from when I got voluntold to help do commo as an E-4, a KG-84. Fuck KG-84s. Why the shit does this guy have military grade cryptographic equipment? Where would he get the keymat? Hell, where did he get the devices? They’re all tightly controlled.
“Well, I hope whatever you have to say, Colleen, justifies letting your friend here eyeball my electronic capabilities,” Victor commented flatly.
“He’s read in, Victor,” Colleen said just as flatly. That warranted a raised eyebrow.
“How read in?” he asked as his eyes drifted over to me.
“All the way in, Victor. He’s been to the Nevernever.”
Victor froze and by that I don’t mean he just stood still, I mean he went unnaturally still. He didn’t blink. He didn’t breathe. It was like someone had pointed a remote at him and hit pause.
A heartbeat passed. Then two.
“Explain,” he said on the third.
“We weren’t abandoned,” Colleen said quietly. I think she was trying to calm him.
Victor glanced between the two of us a few times. He still wasn’t moving much, but you could see the hamster wheel was spinning fast enough to generate a good breeze. Finally his eyes locked on me. “When?”
I leaned forward, putting my elbows on my knees. “The first time? Back in May.”
This threw him for a tick or two before he gingerly sat on the desk. “That was you. Then you crossed over twice more, the last time was the day before yesterday?”
I nodded and felt something slide against the corners of my mind, like a snake encircling its prey. Whatever it was, it felt alien and uncaring in a way that made my skin crawl. I instinctively shoved at it and Victor blinked as a number of spots in my lower back began to feel warm. I shoved harder and the feeling in my head vanished while the spots flared briefly to hot.
Victor’s skin seemed to shimmer, and for an eye blink I thought I saw scales. Scales like the cat lizard’s. He growled as he asked, “Which Queen sent you, Knight?”
Colleen shot me a look of concern as I shook my head. I doubted she was privy to what just happened, neither to the mind touch or the glamour faltering.
I answered honestly, “No Queen, Victor. They’re both dead. They’ve been ash, like the rest of the Nevernever, since the day the veil slammed shut.”
And suddenly I saw the first emotion bloom as his eye twitched: confusion. It got swallowed up by disbelief and then both vanished back into the flat stare he’d started with.
“The Queens were assassinated, Victor. Both of them, simultaneously. The fireball that followed left your world an ashen husk.”
Icy menace chilled the question he asked, “Then how do you bear the mark?”
It was my turn to respond with a questioning look.
“Faint as yours is, the Knight’s oath marks those who take it. How do you not know this?”
“Probably because there wasn’t a lot of time for in-depth explanations. I was a bit busy bleeding to death at the time. Someone left their Cat Caorthannach unsupervised. Nibbles had to be put down.”
I was pretty sure the YouTube equivalent to what happened to Victor’s mental process at that moment would involve throwing a frozen turkey into a turbofan running at full power.
“It’s true, Victor,” Colleen said as I stood. “I went with him the last time.”
Before he had much of a chance to make a reply I lifted my shirt enough he could see the fast fading scars the beast had left me with. I got the impression from his blinking that you could count the number of times Victor had been bewildered on one hand. After holding onto a lit quarter-stick of dynamite a bit too long, even.
“If not the Queens, then who? Only the Queens could perform the oath,” he finally managed.
“The Morrigan,” I replied.
Victor blinked. And then blinked again.
“She survived?” he finally asked.
I nodded. “And enlisted me to find those responsible for the assassination of the Queens and bring justice to them.”
“That sounds like her,” Victor responded, almost wistfully. The almost non-human affectation he’d had since his first words to me outside melted away. He gave an honest smile that suddenly vanished when he sniffed the air and then looked directly at me. “You have iron in you.”
“I do. Shrapnel from old wounds the Army surgeons refused to take out.”
He seemed to consider his words a moment before saying, “That must have made taking the mark interesting.”
“It’s still a little foggy,” I admitted. “I don’t remember much about the process. I was bit on the nearly dead side to start with.”
“You know, I could take them out for you?” Victor offered.
NCO laughed. I didn’t, if only because I wasn’t about to fuck this up. “Yeah, no. I think I’m good. Docs left them there because they were worried about permanent damage and paralysis.”
“Tom, think about it a minute,” Colleen said. “Victor’s not a human surgeon. If anyone could take them out, it’d be him.”
“And also, given the mark, you should heal from almost anything that isn’t immediately fatal,” Victor added. “But I still would need to see where they are before committing to even try. I may be more capable, but even I have my limits.”
I shrugged. “So what do you have in mind?”
Victor pushed off the desk and lifted a hand toward the door we’d come in. Why am I not surprised?
“Colleen, be a dear and keep an eye on the radio, if you would?” Victor asked as we stepped out. She replied with a nod. If she didn’t seem concerned I figured I probably shouldn’t be either. Instead of going downstairs, Victor showed me through the other door on this floor.
I guess I was getting used to being creeped out here, seeing as stepping into Victor’s very spartan bedroom didn’t faze me. And spartan it was: just a chest of drawers, a wall locker, a closet, and simple cot like the ones from boot camp that had been made up the same way as well.
We went through the door on the far side into what I could best describe as a machinery space. I guessed the machinery to our left was the air pumps for the man trap below us. I didn’t ask why they were tarped off with clear plastic sheeting, floor to ceiling, and taped off. I spent enough time with the chemical warfare boys to know better. To the right, on either side of the windows, stood a pair of racks I was very familiar with. Same with their contents. As much government-owned equipment as Victor seemed to have, now I was very curious where he got it all, much less how he got it in here without anyone noticing. I mean, the gun racks you find in armories are neither small, light, nor cheap. At least his taste in firearms matched mine, right?
He opened the only other door which opened into a very narrow spiral staircase lit by an LED lamp that flicked on the moment he opened the door. How narrow? Looking at it, I was pretty sure I’d have to duck most of the way down, even with the steep steps. And of course the metal creaked as we started down. A few steps down, Good Idea pondered that the creaking floor in the first unit and this staircase wasn’t an accident. NCO agreed, figuring that there was probably no way to cross either without making enough noise you’d be heard. Good Idea noted that some of the old Japanese castles had been built with floors like that to give away stealthy would-be assassins.
The bottom opened into a small cinderblock lined room with doors to either side. I’d gotten turned around a little, but I was pretty sure that we were below ground level and the door to the left went under the house. The door to the right, on the other hand, clearly went somewhere that wasn’t the backyard because we were under it. Was it an escape tunnel? I mean, this was an evil mastermind’s lair. Escape tunnels would totally make sense.
“The other goes to the garage,” Victor pointed out as he opened the door to the left. “This way please?”
We entered a short hall that turned right up ahead, and Victor opened the first door on the left past the bend.
I stepped into a tiled, brightly lit room that reeked of antiseptic. I looked around. Yeah, Victor had a surgical suite in his basement. Again, why am I not surprised?
“Go ahead, sit over there, I’ll be with you in a minute,” Victor told me. By the time he came back with the lead vest, I was long past fresh out of surprise. We stepped through the process for him to use the portable X-Ray machine he had. Thanks to the machine being digital, we had imagery immediately, which he put up on one of the wall mounted screens.
“So,” he said after a few minutes of study, “Judging from the scar tissue, you had small fragments in your hands. They’re effectively gone, probably burnt out due to the last few exposures to magic. By the time the mark clears the scarring up, they shouldn’t bother you further. The shards in your back and side are clearly migrating. One appears to have fragmented sometime after migration started. This is easily doable, even by most human surgeons now. Should take me less than an hour. You’ll need to rest a few days afterward, possibly less depending on how effective the mark is. Oh, I would like apologize for earlier, and offer a thank you as well.”
“Thank me for what?”
“You didn’t tell Colleen what you saw, and I know you saw it. Knights are quite gifted in their ability to see through glamours. Maintaining one that is capable of fooling a Knight is both taxing and difficult.”
I regarded him quietly a moment and cautiously commented, “I’ve seen scales like that before.”
Victor gave me a mirthless smile. “And thus you are the first person in millennia to suspect my secret. I ask only that you leave Colleen unaware. She doesn’t need to know.”
Cautious, I prodded, “Let’s say I’m inclined. Why?”
“She would likely not understand, Thomas. None of the fae on this side would. Relations between their kind and mine have never been, ah, amiable.”
Uh, did he just imply what I thought he implied? Yeah. Yeah, he did. What the hell was he, if not fae? Not on the same side, maybe?
“I was raised by the Morrigan as a child, Thomas,” Victor began. “She taught me to pass as fae, to see value in honor, friendship, comradery. She kept me from becoming like my kind, my family. She is the sole reason I was not put to death when the Queens discovered my secret.” I didn’t need to ask. Victor continued, “Caorthannach was my mother, you see. My family made war upon the fae and your kind many millennia ago. The Queens and their Knights put them all down for it, or thought they did at any rate. Their purge missed some of her creations, like the cats. They missed an infant as well, me. The Morrigan found me, redeemed me. So you can see why the Queens and I parted on less than friendly terms. Under threat of immediate execution were I to be found relapsing into my family’s ways, I exiled myself to your side of the veil. That was long before their assassination.”
I couldn’t really say anything. Not because I was speechless, but because I didn’t know anything about this bit of fae history beyond what little Colleen had told me, which wasn’t much. What he was saying clearly meant a lot to him, given the troubled tone.
“My mother was, in no uncertain terms, quite evil. My kind were reviled before their extermination. While not every fae here would remember the slaughter, they would remember the stories. I would keep my secret if possible.”
“Uh,” I stammered, stalling for time. From the look in his eyes, he was pleading with me and here I was with no real context for any of it. Still, Colleen trusted Victor, trusted him with her life. Sure, her level of paranoia was nothing compared to Victor’s, who was I was pretty sure didn’t trust anyone but himself. Now that I thought of it, with the OCD, maybe he didn’t even trust himself.
Honestly, he didn’t seem evil. I mean, my time in the Army had shown me some pretty vile shit over the years, but being in the same room with him didn’t make my skin crawl quite the same way it did with a few of those fuckers.
“I have no reason to expose your secret, Victor,” I told him. He visibly relaxed.
“I’ll try to make sure you never do,” Victor said quietly. “When the Free Fae became a thing, I almost thought I’d found a home with them. I didn’t quite believe in their cause when Alexei started muscling in, but after a century and a half of paying him back, I can say I do now. It is odd how one only begins to truly value something until after one has lost it.”
I nodded. “So what are we going to do about getting this metal out of me?”
“It’ll have to be next week at the earliest,” he answered.
“Really? Maybe I don’t understand how things work, but it didn’t sound like it would take long.”
Victor grinned sheepishly. “It’s the anesthesia. I don’t have any on hand. The sort of people who usually see this room don’t get that consideration.”
Okay, I take back what I said earlier. My skin was definitely crawling now.
Victor sighed, clearly trying to not roll his eyes. “That sort earned their pain, Thomas. Agents of the Princes, murderers, rapists. I will not lie to you; I am not nearly as angelic as my cousins, but thanks to the Morrigan, I do have a strict code of honor. I enjoy helping people, but I enjoy hurting them much more. My work as a surgeon is fulfilling because it fulfills both needs, even if they can’t feel it.”
“Oh. Well, what else do you do as a hobby then?” I asked, trying to keep the sarcasm out of my voice. For once I was surprised when Good Idea and NCO didn’t comment.
“Other than my war against Alexei? I won’t make the mistake of enlisting again, so nothing as of late. My favorite form of recreation got preempted by the Church Committee back in the 70s.” Victor continued before I remembered why I knew that name. “Unfortunately, your Congress is not made of as stern a stuff as it used to be. When they forced the CIA to shut down most of its mercenary and assassin operations, remaining in the field became dangerous. I could no longer enjoy relative anonymity in the system that remained after they cut back. As you can see, I go to no small effort to avoid the innocent.”
Well, I guess there’s a sort of logic there. Logic I could appreciate, anyway. I can’t deny that if I’d been presented the opportunity to get away scot free, I probably would have shot a few of the truly evil fuckers I ran into while I was in the Army too.
“One question, Victor. Why are you telling me all this?”
“You already know the biggest secret I have. What do I lose by being honest now? It isn’t like I’m disclosing operational capabilities or putting myself at higher risk by telling you any of this.”
True. Man, dealing with Victor was going to take some getting used to. “Fair enough. Actually, random off the wall question, if you don’t mind?” Victor nodded. “Alicia calls you Vincent or Mr. V, but Colleen introduced you to me as Victor. Is Victor your actual name or just a cover you use like Vincent?”
He looked at me a moment with that unnerving, unblinking stare he had I’m pretty sure meant he was seriously thinking about something before answering, “It’s the name my mother gave me, or at least the human translation of it anyway.”
“Fair enough.” I noted he didn’t specify if he meant his birth mother or his adopted mother. Good Idea idly wondered if that meant Victor wasn’t just a name, but an actual word. Like victor, as in he who wins. I shushed Good Idea. He insisted it was a valid point to ponder and more than a little creepy, given who his birth mother was supposed to be. I shushed him again and asked Victor, “Is that all we’re doing here?”
