Fear burned through James' veins. This was an entirely reasonable reaction to waking up in handcuffs, a headbag and a strange place. The cold voiced stranger explaining his misdeeds to him didn't help. The man sounded like a James Bond villain, or an actor in one of those crusty actors in the PBS specials which were constantly playing in the waiting room on the theory that they helped childhood mental development or some other such bullshit.
James' attempts at protest were met with calm refutations. Appeals for freedom, attorneys, or due process brought no amusement to that voice, but rather simple denials. He was not in the custody of police, but something far, far worse. Of that he was certain.
"There are an infinite number of ways this can go. Only one of the reasonably likely ways has you leave this room alive. You tell me where you hid the wealth you have been paid for selling foster children to the cult of the demon Lurcona. In return, I choose to let you go. Of course you won't continue to work for Social Services. I've already seen to that. But they're unlikely to charge you. Rather they will simply believe you were so incompetent you didn't notice the disappearance of so many of your charges."
James tried to delay, vacillate, distract. The voice cut him off. "The other likely options all end with your death, after various amounts of screaming."
His face went white under the bag and he spoke desperately, gasping through the thick material of the bag, hot breath reflecting back against his face, condensation mixing with the sweat pouring off him. Of course, he didn't tell the man everything, but the accounts and passwords would get him his freedom and then he could dig up the gold hidden in his yard. That would be enough to get him out of this city. He'd have to buy a new name, but he could begin again. There were always opportunities for a man who didn't mind getting his hands dirty.
Steps walked away without another word. "Hey! What about me?" James yelled through the bag.
"We'll see if the information you gave is good."
A door opened and closed. James pulled hard on the cuffs, writhing around, attempting to break himself free, or, at least, slide the cuffs under his legs so he could get them in front of him. It turned out he was not flexible enough for that. In the twenty minutes his captor was gone he managed to get up and get the handcuffs through one leg. This left him in a worse position than before, especially when he accidentally nutted himself, collapsing forward, he smashed his nose badly on the stone floor. Curled on the floor, tears of pain and fear pouring from his eyes, blood and snot spilling from his nose, he almost choked to death on the headbag.
Only his captor's return prevented that. James almost passed out when he felt steel press against his throat, cutting through the cord sealing the bag. The bag came loose and James blinked helplessly against tears and a suddenly harsh light. Eyes locked on his captor he saw a surprisingly young man, clean-shaven, with short hair, dressed in slacks and a dress shirt with a sport jacket.
James might have taken him for a particularly stuffy college or graduate student, but for the pistol holstered at his waist and the deadly looking knife sheathed on his other hip. The knife especially drew James' eyes as he saw the heavy metal spikes surrounding its handle. That was a knife meant to rip a man apart in many ways. A weapon for a murderer or a torturer. The automatic twitch to clear the line of motion every time his suit jacket got into a position where it might block his reach for either weapon bespoke a man who expected to need to use his weapons, even here, in the heart of his power.
Thin black gloves covered his hands like a second skin, James wasn't sure if they were to prevent fingerprints, or served some other, more sinister, function. Given the man had a dungeon, his inclination was to believe the latter, but maybe he just didn't like cleaning blood out from under his nails (it said something about the state of James's predicament that that did not sound like a 'more sinister' option).
James' interest did not go unnoticed by his captor, but the man did not smile, merely letting his left hand fall to caress the black handle of his blade as he spoke. The words escaped James, due to pants (and given his circumstances) hands wetting terror.
"What did you say?" he asked nasally, nose still blocked with blood, when he could no longer stand his captors calm staring and waiting for his response.
"Where's the rest of the money you were paid?"
"I told you—"
"We obliterated the cult you were supplying and found their records. I know exactly how much they paid you. Now, where is the rest of it?"
James folded and provided the location of the gold. A middle aged man could begin again in a new place, even with no resources. A dead one could not. His captor nodded and left. This time he was gone for longer, but left the headbag off. There was enough time to complete a close examination of his jail cell, even for a man who was hobbled.
Unfortunately, the walls were solid grey stone and there were no windows. The door was solid oak and quite invulnerable to any force James could bring forth, especially in his current hunched and weakened condition. The only interesting thing in the entire cell went unnoticed by James, because he was unable to look up with his hands chained together between his legs.
The man finally returned, carrying a heavy axe in addition to his other weapons. James has considered trying to rush him when he returned, though the middle aged and admittedly paunchy man probably would not have been a match for his captor even if unshackled and that was ignoring the problem of everyone else in…wherever he was. Therefore he'd decided on compliance on the theory that hopefully the man who could destroy a cult of demon worshippers would keep his word. The axe put that theory in severe doubt.
"What's with the axe?" he asked,
"I'm going to execute you now. An axe is the ritually required weapon. As is knowledge that you're going to be executed and why. Otherwise I wouldn't bother with further discussion."
"You said—"
"I could give you an explanation about how I said that was one path, not that it was the one I was going to walk, but, in all honesty, that does not matter. I would have killed you even if an explicit promise of your safety had somehow been extracted from me. You were assigned responsibility for the care and safety of abused and abandoned children. You chose to sell nineteen of those children to a cult of demon worshippers. I don't know if you actually knew they would feed them to a demon, but you knew you were doing nothing good. You are undoubtedly guilty of felony murder. You are undoubtedly guilty of human trafficking. You are undoubtedly guilty of enslaving children. You have also betrayed your employer and your sworn duty. Do you have anything to say in your defense?"
James stared up at the man hunched slightly, face bloody and wrecked with tears. The best he could muster was a soft, sobbing 'please…'
That was insufficient to halt a quick kick from knocking him onto his back. Before he recovered from the stunning impact of his skull on the stone of the floor, his captor was in position above him. James' eyes were focused on the falling axe, so much that even staring straight up he did not see the intricate and mystical signs painted on the paper which was stretched across the ceiling, before the axe fell.
Nor afterwards, obviously.
However, those signs swallowed down his death, his execution in the old style, as the consummation of five days of elaborate and often unpleasant ritual. The summoned and bound guardian spirit would protect his home.
A quick word with Quintin Cavendish, the butler, on the way out ensured the body would be taken care of. The efficient butler also took the axe off him to be cleaned, sharpened, the nick he'd put into it by pounding it straight through a throat into a stone floor would be dealt with and it would be packed away for him when he next needed it. Cavendishes were nothing if not efficient. They would not have survived so many generations in service to his family were that not true.
With that business complete, he headed for his quarters at the top of the mansion. The view was fantastic, straight over the fountain in the courtyard, out over the expansive grounds. However as he looked out over his domain, Wesley Wyndam-Pryce's mood was bleak. The chill landscape, not quite ready to thaw suited his mood well.
The man's death had been necessary. The Order of Taraka had not stopped sending assassins. The last one had made it into the house, killing two of the staff before being hacked to pieces. The assassin's guild was simply not taking the hint. Whichever of the factions had paid them had paid for a guaranteed contract and the guild kept coming. His best efforts to find out anything about the group were frustrated by its disorganized and chaotic nature. There was some sort of central control. There had to be, if only to inform members of the contracts, but so far he had come up empty. Desperate ideas were beginning to seem reasonable and that meant that it was time to shore up defenses until actually reasonable ideas could be found.
The cult had unfortunately invested almost all of their wealth in demonically tainted mystical artifacts. It had made tracking and dealing with them easy, but meant that eliminating them had not helped resolve the financial difficulties refitting the mansion with bullet-resistant glass and additional electronic defenses had created. Still, with what he'd taken from the child-seller, they were almost back where they'd been financially and far better off security-wise, on both a mystical and a mundane level.
None of which changed the fact that he had Human blood on his hands (and face), once again. Some part of him laughed, bitterly, filled with self-mockery and self-hatred, remembering the boy who'd tried to turn Faith over to the Council for accidentally killing someone. The rest of him howled for the loss of that innocent boy. What was left of him that anyone would recog—
That thought vanished as cool arms twined around his waist and lips pressed against his neck, a tongue flicking out to trace the line of his carotid. Fire rose through him as he remembered that the ritual had required him to remain 'pure' for five days. With breasts pressed against his back and a tongue pressed to his skin, that suddenly seemed like a very long time.
Still it wouldn't do to seem too eager. He wasn't that desperately needy boy any longer. Or so you like to pretend, a voice whispered in the back of his mind. With her hands on his belt, he found he could ignore the voice easily enough. "Aren't you supposed to be—" Shit, what had she been doing? It wasn't a staff training day and they didn't have any operations coming up. None of their outside allies were on the grounds until the security upgrade was complete, so she couldn't have been helping them, but she was supposed to be—RIGHT, he continued almost smoothly enough that the stutter could be passed off as a badly placed breath, "planning the menu for our grand re-opening," this pause contained just a hint of sarcasm as he used the term she'd insisted upon, "gala?"
"I smelled blood," she rose up onto her tiptoes, breasts pressing more firmly into his back as her tongue licked a drop of spatter from his cheek. Only her hands pulling him back kept him from stumbling forward. No matter how many times he experienced it, it was still shocking to experience superhuman strength from such a slender frame. "I had to make sure my puddin' was all right."
His lips twitched at her explanation. "You can tell whose blood it is by smell too, you know."
"I can?!" her excited squeal pulled forth the smile he'd been trying to control. He could never tell when she was playing stupid to get her way and when she actually didn't understand something. In the end, it hardly mattered, she was sunshine in the darkness after the Council and Slayers alike had fired him.
A slow turn, which she had to loosen her grip to permit and he was face to face with her. With the blood on her tongue, she naturally had her vamp face on. The first time he'd seen it, he'd flinched away. That had taken away his sunshine for almost three days. And it had taken a month before he'd managed to convince her to show it to him again. The fact that she now wore it unselfconsciously in front of him, without fear that he secretly thought it, or she, was ugly was something he took immense pride in. Golden eyes flashed with lust and he couldn't resist the urge to drop a quick kiss on her pronounced forehead.
A purr slipped from her lips as he bent further down to kiss her more properly. She shook off her game face (as kissing while she had vampire face on tended to lead to accidental cuts on the lips and/or tongue) and stared up at him. Harmony Kendall's usual features were lovely as well, of course and as she pulled him back to the bed, taking care to place his holstered weapons outside the range of even their more athletic bedroom activities (one accidental discharge had been enough and resulted in no end of jokes). He realized that five days had been a long time for her as well.
Author's Note: Okay, I promise that will all make sense. Eventually. Probably.
Maybe I shouldn't have promised that. Next chapter: LOTS OF TALKING