Precipice part 4: The Reckoning
CONTENT:
Rating: Teen
Flavor: Drama
Language: some
Violence: yes
Nudity: none
Sex: none
Other: none
Author's Note:
Props to the Halestorm fans! \m/,
Like a Reckoning;
you never saw me coming, like a reaper outside your door.
You took Everything,
made me feel less than nothing; I'm getting what I came for.
Precipice: The Reckoning
==#==
Laurel tested her bonds. She twisted her wrist, causing the rough ropes to scrape her skin raw, then she relaxed. Started again. Were the knots slowly working loose? She could only hope. This was the best window of opportunity she'd have to escape. The men in the van were gone, though they would return all too soon.
Count Vertigo had his back to her, working at a makeshift table with his chemicals, and a burner that Laurel thought hideously unsafe to have in the musty old barn.
Twist. Strain. Burn. Ease off.
Try not to panic. Losing patience and thrashing about would only draw attention to her, remind the criminal to check and perhaps tighten the ropes.
Soon she heard the van return and swallowed a cry of frustration behind her gag. She tried to steady her breath and prepare. Did they have the Vigilante's body? Did they unmask him? Would she finally see his face, too late to tell him what she felt, what she thought? To give him her gratitude?
The door opened, allowing bright yellow light to spill in from the yard.
"Well," the Count said, turning from his flame and lowering his goggles to hang around his neck. "Spit it out," he added as the men just shuffled nervously.
"We didn't find the, uh... there was no bodies."
"Oh! There's a big surprise," the Count remarked in broad sarcasm. "That's incredible! I think I'm going to have a heart attack and die from that surprise." He narrowed his eyes. "Now get out there and do what you've been paid to do!"
The men slunk out, except the leader. "You ain't exactly paid us yet."
Count Vertigo heaved a dramatic sigh. "Don't get killed, and I will! There's no use giving it to you now, you might abscond with it."
The guy muttered some unflattering imprecations and stomped out. The door slid closed with a rumble and a bang, leaving the interior of the barn once more bathed in dim orange light from a fading bare bulb.
Laurel's heart had leapt with hope when she heard the Vigilante wasn't dead. She tried to keep her breathing calm; she wasn't rescued yet. She studied the Count.
He, oddly, seemed almost as gleeful as she was. He'd meant to trap the Vigilante, and he was insane. Laurel wondered what this trap consisted of, how, exactly, it would be sprung. If only she wasn't gagged, she could try to draw the man out.
Then a kitchen timer dinged, and the Count turned to his makeshift work table. "Ah, perfection." He shut off the flame, set the bubbling beaker aside to cool. "You, my little star attraction... I have new plans for you, to shine in a different way." He turned to give her a sly smile, toothy like a vampire's, and brandished his trademark double syringe so the light glinted dimly from the needles.
Laurel drew a frightened breath.
==#==
The last fifty yards were the worst. Oliver saw red every time he put weight on his injured leg. He leaned on Merlyn and narrowed his focus to one goal: saving Laurel. Nothing else mattered.
They could see a lone barn through the screen of trees, lit up by security lights on all sides. The van was there, parked alongside the front yard, where that damned tripod gun was set up.
Merlyn stopped and tugged Oliver behind one of the bigger trees. He leaned close until their hoods touched, creating a small sanctuary where they couldn't be overheard.
"We need a strategy," the Dark Archer whispered. "I counted eight men in the van, but we don't know if they had more waiting here."
"There's three at the doors and two on the side. We can take them all in a matter of seconds."
"Others could raise the alarm."
"That will draw them over here and we can pick them off." That would be optimal for his leg.
"If they know we're here, they'll start shooting, even if it is blindly," Merlyn argued. "We don't stand much of a chance against that machine gun. Worse, they could kill Ms. Lance."
Oliver gritted his teeth. "What do you suggest?"
"Stealth."
"We don't have time-"
"You stay here, rest your leg. I'll circle around. When I come back, we'll finish off these five."
"Kill them all," Oliver snarled.
The two men broke contact, and Oliver pulled his quiver free. He handed Merlyn a cluster of arrows, since the Dark Archer's had scattered when he'd gone flying off the bike.
Then the black-garbed archer melted into the darkness.
Oliver knew that if he sat down to rest, he wouldn't be able to get back up. He stood, leaning on the tree, gripping a pressure point in his thigh and willing his leg to go numb.
He kept an eye on the barn, the movement of the men, who were cradling their guns and peering towards the dark woods. What they hoped to see, with their eyes adjusted to the light they were standing in, he didn't know.
After several minutes, Oliver drew his bow and readied an arrow. What if the Dark Archer failed? What if Oliver couldn't wait any longer? They could be doing God-knows-what to Laurel in there.
The thought lit a fire in his belly. He could not wait. He pulled off his hood - it was now full dark in the trees, and he wasn't able to move as fast as he was used to - he would need every advantage, he would need to be able to see all around himself. He slung the hood over a low branch, with a vague thought of retrieving it later.
He edged around the tree trunk, enough to get a clear shot while retaining it for cover, and was about to draw on his targets when he heard a low clicking noise.
It was Merlyn, quietly warning him he was back and not to shoot him. Oliver peered into the brush but couldn't see the Dark Archer until the figure was practically on top of him.
"Take the right, I'll take the left," Merlyn whispered. "On three."
They raised their bows and after a silent count, the strings thrummed with rapid shots. Oliver struck the machine gunner first, then his cohorts even as they started to turn, to register something was happening.
Merlyn felled his targets with similar deadly accuracy, and the fifth man went down with two green arrows in his chest, making it impossible for either archer to claim the killing shot.
Then Merlyn dashed towards the barn door, an arrow nocked. Oliver, fearing the Dark Archer was going to charge in and get Laurel killed, started after him. He bit his tongue as he clenched his jaw to keep from crying out as his leg nearly collapsed under him.
The Dark Archer was in the brightly-lit circle before Oliver could push himself halfway, heedless of stealth at this point. Merlyn drew, aimed at the lights over the door.
No! The breaking glass would surely alert those inside to the archers' presence!
Merlyn fired, hitting not the light itself, but the electrical wire powering it. Darkness descended on the yard. Oliver blinked to get his eyes to adjust. In the light leaking from the sides of the barn, he saw the dark silhouette motioning for him to slowly approach.
He swallowed blood and crept to the doors with the Dark Archer. They heard voices within.
==#==
The Count loomed closer as Laurel tensed, pressed back against the wooden chair. He reached out with his free hand and removed her gag.
She twitched her head away from his grasp. "What do you want with me?" she demanded.
"Well, I was going to make you a star, but your over-eager boyfriend put the kabosh on that."
"What?" Laurel was confused. What did Oliver have to do with the Count? Surely, they weren't working together!
"There was a plan, television was involved, but oh well." The Count gestured grandly. He seemed caught up in his own delusions and obsessions.
Laurel twisted against the ropes again. "What does any of this have to do with my boyfriend?"
"I needed you to lure him here, but he followed you anyway."
Followed? There was someone with the Vigilante, was it Oliver? He had been on his way to CNRI to meet up with her. "What do you want with him?" she asked.
The Count looked down at her. "Don't you know who I am?"
Of course she recognized him. She tried to remember his name, his real name, just to annoy him. It was some ridiculous name, and she couldn't dredge it up.
"Your boyfriend poisoned me."
"What?"
"He pumped my heart full of Vertigo - this very formula, in fact." He brandished the syringe.
"That was the Vigilante! He is not my boyfriend!"
"No? Then how do you explain his untimely appearance on your trail?"
She frowned in thought. Vertigo thought Oliver was the Vigilante? But it was proven he wasn't... Except there was that blip on the lie detector results. There was circumstantial evidence. The Vigilante appeared just after Oliver returned. Oh my God, it all makes sense!
The Count nodded knowingly. "Mmmhm."
Laurel narrowed her eyes at him and schooled her expression, hiding her thoughts.
"You know, I was going to kill him with this. Make him suffer the same way I did."
"The way you made people suffer from your damned drugs!"
"I did no such thing! Well, perhaps for certain individuals who crossed me," he amended with a sick grin. "But as I was saying... death is too... easy. Too... final." He paced back and forth in front of her. "It should be served up after a long course. Instead, he should watch someone he loves go through every step of Hell he put me through. That way, he'll know what's in store for him."
"He'll stop you!"
"Not soon enough." Her confidence was shaken by the man's secure smile. He gripped her shoulder with his free hand and prepared to inject her with the Vertigo.
Laurel pressed back in the unforgiving wooden chair, eyes fixed on the tips of the dual syringe, like a serpent's fangs seeking her flesh. She barely heard the barn door open over the thumping of her heart.
The Count paused only momentarily to look up. "You're too late!" he shouted with glee.
Needles pierced Laurel's chest and she cried out. In the next instant, a green-fletched arrow slammed into the Count's chest. He jerked back, a look of shocked surprise on his face. Then two more arrows followed in quick succession, and the drug pusher collapsed in a heap, coughing one last bloody breath before convulsing and lying still.
"Laurel!"
She stared down in horror at the syringes dangling precariously from the inner curve of her breast. She froze, terrified the poison was inside her, but she forced herself to look at it - Look at it! The plungers weren't depressed. It couldn't get into her.
She sucked a breath and twisted, hard, dislodged the needles, which tumbled sidewise into her lap, and forced the chair to turn. A figure came through the door, into the light.
"Oliver!?" she cried in relief and shock.
So it was true. Oliver was the Vigilante!
==X==
End Notes:
"Oh! There's a big surprise," the Count remarked in broad sarcasm. "That's incredible! I think I'm going to have a heart attack and die from that surprise."
- 1000 Bloodsong points if you recognize the Count's bad impersonation of Iago. )
Count Vertigo heaved a dramatic sigh. "Don't get killed, and I will! There's no use giving it to you now, you might abscond with it."
- Trivia: the Count didn't really plan on paying these guys; he figured the Vigilante would kill them all. Hmm. Kinda less dramatic than when Oliver killed The Count during his 'no kill' pledge.