Author's Note: I don't know how practical it would be to use digitalis to keep a Highlander-style immortal under control, but I do know the common name of the plant that provides the toxin, and I just couldn't resist.
Sorry...
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"The Dogs and the Fox"
Trenton – 1984
Fog met his eyes when he opened them. He found that rather odd.
If anything he figured he'd wake up back in the House of the Green— or worse, if there was a worse place than that— but fog he could deal with.
"After all," he mumbled, "I was born of the fog, wasn't I?"
Somewhere a wry chuckle sounded; it was a 'toothy' one, at that.
The fog cleared enough to reveal a cocktail table draped in a crisp white cloth with a glitzy little Tiffany lamp at its center. The lamplight bounced off a pair of leaded crystal champagne flutes on either side of the table— thick enough to commit a major felony with— the liquid inside bubbling about in happy abandon. The boy sat on a tall bar chair in front of one of the flutes.
"We were born in Zaragoza, were we not?" The boy's companion at the table spoke from the opposite chair. "And we were insulated from moist air by the mountains, no?"
The fox sat with all four paws perfectly balanced on its chair, staring across the table with its massive eyes locked on Penance.
"Not so foggy as Scotland, is it?" The animal said.
The boy craned his head down and took in his outfit: an immaculately-fitted tuxedo. When he looked back up at the fox he noticed a black bowtie cinched around the creature's neck, as expertly fitted to the fox as it is possible to fit a bowtie to a canid. At least he figured as much.
"We're not a Highlander by birth, are we?" The fox asked. "We know that much. And the question we've always asked— we've been afraid to ask— is whether we earned that title, or whether we stole it, isn't it?"
In his foggy haze the boy pondered the fox's erudite and astute observation. He considered his answer carefully, at last coming to the conclusion that being a 'highlander', as Uallas defined it at least, involved stealing the title by necessity, since necessity is all that matter to a 'highlander'.
He thought that was a pretty good answer, but then another matter came to him, and he squinted, concentrating with a serious scholarly eye to the situation before him. The boy ended up asking a question of his own: the only philosophically urgent and important question that came to mind at the moment.
"Why are you wearing a bowtie?"
By now the fog had cleared completely around them, exposing a corridor of unfinished walls, exposed wiring and plywood flooring. Light oozed in from a bank of windows to either side, but the windows were all cocooned in semi-transparent plastic tarps and they only let in a ruddy amber hue. It was a wan and lazy kind of glow.
"Hazy," the boy mumbled. "Do they call this the 'Sunset Lounge'?"
The fox tilted its head.
"We don't know; do we think it is?"
Both boy and animal looked to one side as a pair of burly men in immaculate black suits dragged a third person between them. This person's shoes lifelessly skirt the floor as they're dragged along. The person's head hangs forward, limp. Each of the men grip this body with a firm, two-handed hold, arms and shoulders.
Seemed like overkill. Whoever was being dragged didn't seem to be more than 12-years-old, give or take a year or two.
Or a half-millennium.
Whatever.
"What's his problem," the boy asked the fox. "Can't hold his liquor?"
"Can we?" The fox returned its gaze to the boy, its golden eyes afire against the room's ruddy light. "And they will be waiting on our order, wouldn't we think?"
Penance squinted at the fox.
"Order?"
"We must pick our poison, mustn't we?" The fox motioned down the corridor with its head. "The bar will not be open forever, will it? Are we nearing last call?"
That final question seemed less rhetorical than the others, and though the fox's face retained an air of unconcerned boredom its eyes did blink at the boy, and the boy thought he could feel a real question in them.
He opened his mouth to ask but then somewhere far away a ratty Reebok shoe got caught on an unfinished door frame, and the boy felt a strange tug.
X
X
X
He landed face-first on the unfinished floor, kicking up a mess of sawdust all around his limp body.
"Shit!" One of the men dragging him grumbled. "Damn floorboards!"
"We were to be careful with him," another voice said.
The first man chuckled; vibrations in the plywood rang through Penance's head as the man walked to the boy's side.
"He's still too pumped full of digitalis to care isn't he? Maybe we should play a little soccer with the 'tyke'."
The kick hit Penance clean in the ribs, and the force was enough to send him rolling across the uneven plywood a full three times before coming to rest, again facedown on the dusty floor. The assault was enough to force his eyes open a tiny sliver, but his limbs refused all commands and his mind lay shrouded in a dark and dreamy fog. He stared dumbly through a gap in the floor beneath him: an ugly pair of pipes met at a green-capped junction. The pair of bolts poking out of the junction sat over a gash to the metal beneath them; taken together they looked something like a frowning face.
Penance tried twisting his lips to match the 'face' looking up at him, but his muscles refused those orders as well.
He got the vague notion that he'd been lifted into the air. Strange visions came and went in his head: something about a ludicrously thick iron door, a disinfectant-scented room and a massive cutting board. Like, really massive. The kind you could serve a whole flank of beef on. The kind Alice herself would find 'curioser' than any other.
The kind that quite comfortably held a boy's body atop it.
A firefly danced in the air over his head, sedately bobbing to and fro, casting a pale red light back and forth in the darkness around him. At one of its apogees it illuminated a far corner of the room, where a pair of blue eyes stared at him beneath a set of delicate, crescent-moon eyebrows. The woman in white smiled that ineffable smile at him. Fireflies danced about her mantilla, weaving about her Cimmerian hair like ripples on a sunbathed pond's surface.
Or floaters in a drugged boy's eyes.
Penance's grip on his surroundings gradually solidified; the corner of the dark little room became empty, and the large firefly dancing over his head became a wan red bulb swinging back and forth on a rusting chain.
Rough hands were working on him; they were cocooning the boy's torso in some kind of heavy cloth swaddling. He distantly felt buckles tightening and strap winding over his chest, under his groin and along his back. When the numbness came out of his hands he started wriggling his fingers, finding his digits all securely bundled up in the reams of cloth. It took his brain a good minute more to make any sense of this, but eventually he realized he was wrapped up in a kind of straitjacket, or the like.
His head was forced up off the wooden plank and something popped over his lips and nose; strings were snapped over either of his ears, and the bite of the elastic bands helped clear more of the fog from his mind. It was a kind of surgical mask.
An open hand appeared near his head, the palm loaded with half a dozen cotton balls. Another hand appeared with a bottle of clear liquid, and the contents were squirted onto the balls like ketchup on fries.
Penance never really took his fries with ketchup; the way he figured a good French fry shouldn't really need ketchup, the same way a good steak shouldn't need A-1.
The boy's surgical mask was yanked up and the liquid-soaked cotton balls set over his face before the mask was again snapped back down. His next breath brought a sugary and cloying scent through his nose; the vapors conspired to dull his stirring senses.
"Ketchup... on the side..." he mumbled.
In whatever part of Penance's brain that was still 'open for business' it occurred to him that he needed to get moving somehow, or at least get his blood pumping. All the better to flush the toxins out of his system. But then moving seemed out of the question, and as for his heart the little thing felt like a lawnmower engine sputtering on a bad oil/fuel mix. Of all the muscles in his body it seemed his heart would be the least likely to cooperate with him.
A body leapt up onto the carving board with the boy, straddling his secured body with its knees on either side of Penance's hips. A face glared down at him, eclipsing the wan light overhead. It was surrounded by a corona of the bulb's crimson light, and as Penance's spacy eyes began to adjust his brain filled in the features: soulless black marble eyes shining with false warmth, wide lips and a set of teeth smiling with false friendliness, and a very real hatred— and hunger— in its frame.
Black Hat leered down at the boy with triumphal, hateful eyes, resting his palms on either side of Penance's head.
"Here's where the fun begins..."
Penance's heart— albeit an intransigent little thing— now made the decision to acquiesce to the boy's request, and it thundered to life like a locomotive.
The gallon of adrenaline dumped into his nerves dissipated just a bit when he realized the voice speaking those words was not familiar; as Penance's eyes adjusted further he realized that the face, too, was alien.
Under current circumstances he'd gladly take 'alien' over the alternative.
The strange man rested his palms to either side of Penance's head and stared down at him with a set of eyes that seemed too far apart for what was healthy; his hair was a brambly mess of sparse tumbleweed.
"Up close you don't really look like much ado, do you?" He said. "Nah. There's not much to you at all, is there?"
Static sounded from some far distant place. It turned out to be relatively close, but to the boy's fuzzy senses anything beyond his nose was a little 'distant'.
The other cultist in the room removed a walkie-talkie from his suit jacked and held it up.
"Tha an nighean beò." A voice sounded from the other end.
The man straddling Penance smiled at this, motioning for the cultist to hit the reply button. When he did the man called out across the room.
"Innis dhi gu bheil feum aice air bràmair ùr." The man chuckled.
It took Penance a moment to decipher the Gaelic— not only on account of his drugged state, but also on account of the number of years it'd been since he'd spoken it. Eventually, however, the words gelled in his head. He'd say remembering languages was like riding a bicycle, but then he'd been alive centuries before bicycles were even invented, and the first one he'd learned to ride wasn't so easy on the muscle-memory.
Or the feet.
"Laufmaschine..." he spoke with as much contempt as he could manage at the moment.
The man straddling him gripped Penance's chin and forced the boy to make eye contact with him, leaning down even further.
"Recognize my face, little twit? Do I look familiar to you?"
Penance blinked unevenly at the man; he said nothing, and this only seemed to enrage the man even more. He roughly slammed the boy's head down against the board and pointed to himself.
"My name is Measan, and we have a history, Penance Cameron. A history spanning centuries, in fact."
The man hissed his words with a haughty and affected staccato; if he had more of his senses about him Penance might've found it funny. As it was he didn't have the wherewithal to be amused, so instead he was honest.
"I dunno... who the fuck you are..." Penance slurred his words through the drugged cotton balls and his mask.
Measan's eyes bulged and he gave the boy a slap to the forehead. The other man walked up to his side.
"We were ordered not to—"
"—harm him," Measan smiled as Penance's eyes fluttered in the aftermath of the slap. "I'm not. This is just a little trip down memory lane." He crossed his arms and raised his head, looking down at the boy like Zeus from Olympus. "You remember a man named Abhag, don't you?"
Even in his drugged state Penance's brow ticked at the name. Again he looked up at the man.
"Ah," Measan smiled. "You do remember..."
"Wha," Penance mumbled, "he your granddaddy, or something?"
"Give or take about ten 'greats', yeah."
"Oh."
For a moment Penance was genuinely surprised by this, thinking that it surely hadn't been that long since he'd slaughtered Abhag and his friend Mister Jungle Cat on the shore of that little isle in Loch Maree. In a way it seemed like yesterday. How long ago was it? Had the telescope been invented by then?
Wasn't that the same year Baltimore was founded?
Had Crocodile Rock been released, yet?
He wasn't trying to be a smartass, but he also wasn't ingratiating himself to Measan.
"Why..." the boy squinted, "why would you think you'd still look like him enough for me to remember? Unless you're like... really inbred—"
Again, in his drugged state he was actually trying to be as serious and logical as he could be, but his logic didn't impress the man, who rewarded the boy with another slap to the face. Measan got off the large board and moved to a table on the opposite side of the room. He retrieved Penance's little knife, which rested beside both Galabeg and Penance's carlanca necklace, though where his backpack had gone the boy couldn't tell.
"Measan," the other cultist clucked his tongue.
The man held a hand up to his compatriot and approached the boy; he held the liquid steel knife up to Penance's eyes, turning the blade over in the red light of the room.
"Funny, isn't it? You're just a worthless little thing, but this knife you carry— carried— is probably worth more than the Aurelia Arms, itself. And to think the Banrigh wants you buried with it..."
Measan turned the little knife over again, his eyes scanning the delicate bands in the steel. He made a grand gesture of securing the blade into the side of his belt.
"Measan," the other cultist repeated himself, now drawing out the name like a disapproving schoolteacher.
"He's not dead yet," the man looked back at Penance with a sadistic smile on his face. "Maybe he dreams of freedom; maybe he's still got delusions of escape?" Measan leaned down over Penance's face. "You try, Do-bhàis beag, and you'll face the grand line of Abhag again— the living blood of his blood— and this time his descendant will be using your own weapon against you!"
Penance's drugged eyes vainly attempted to lock onto the man; the boy slurred his words.
"Still don't see... the family resemblance..."
Measan ground his teeth together tight enough to make his jaw tremble. He reached for the knife on his belt but a squeal of static from the other cultist's suit jacket made them both alert like startled deer. The cultist again removed his walkie talkie and spoke into it.
"Tha?" He said.
Another voice bounded back through the device.
"Tha i a 'tighinn a choimhead air a' ghille."
Both Measan and the other man exchanged puzzled glances; the man put the walkie-talkie back into his jacket.
"She wants to see him now?" Measan asked.
The other cultist blinked in confusion.
"Would she not wait for the Moonset Ceremony? Her exertions in the park last night were extraordinary, as was her draw on the Source; surely she won't be fully recovered until toni—"
Measan hissed at the man like a snake and made a slashing motion over his throat. He shook his head and motioned to the door.
"Meet her at the great hall," he said.
The other cultist looked at Penance, then Measan.
"And, in the meantime, you will be..."
"—sweeping up the corridor out there, to make it presentable for her." He looked over his shoulder at the boy. "And guarding the door, in case this chickenshit gets any ideas..."
"One assumes the digitalis in his heart, the ether in his head and the straitjacket on his body are enough," the other cultist knocked his fist against the room's massive red metal door, "not to mention half-a-foot of steel..."
"Well, six inches isn't anything to scoff at, is it?" Measan chuckled. "Certainly better than whatever hardware our little Shroudless One here is packing."
The man hammered his fist into the crotch of Penance's straitjacket; between the thick cloth fabric and the boy's drugged state, however, Penance paid little heed to the act. That set Measan back in an awkward way; he merely crossed his arms and nodded down to the boy in response.
"Part of me hopes you do somehow get free. Part of me hopes I'm the one to end you, brat!"
Penance lulled his head to one side, thumping his temple against the scratched-up carving board like a carelessly tossed potato. For a moment the boy's rusty blue eyes locked right on to the man, and they were wide and lucid.
"You talk big," the boy mumbled. He managed to tilt his head a bit, eyes still focused on the man like lasers. His gaze was enough to further unease Measan, who took a small step back and licked his lips, fumbling to find some words. He didn't have to worry: Penance had some for him.
"It's easy to kick a man when he's down, isn't it?" the boy said.
Again Measan licked his lips, obviously fighting to shake off the sudden chill he got from the boy's predatory glare. This time he did manage to find a few words.
"You're no 'man'!" He growled.
"No, I'm not," the boy mumbled. "If that was all I was, then you wouldn't be so royally fucked right now—"
"Easy to talk big when you're in no position to back your words up," Measan said. "This isn't Letterewe, and you don't have some soft-hearted smithy around to fuck things up for us!"
At this the boy's eyes went from saucers to narrow slits; the blood pumped faster through his sputtering heart and his breaths came faster, but that only accelerated the collection of ethereal fumes in his lungs, and his head soon set to clouding over once again.
The other cultist got between Measan and the boy, pointing a finger at Penance.
"You behave and the girl lives," he said. "You don't and she dies. Understood?"
The boy didn't acknowledge the man, instead merely turning his head back and staring up at the wan light on its chain.
"Still don't see the family resemblance," he mumbled.
Measan scoffed at the boy, waving a dismissive hand in the air.
"And I don't see any dangerous 'Rabid Fox', either, but then here we are."
The men passed beyond the thick iron door and pulled it shut. It hammered into its frame with more force than a bank vault. Seconds later the rusty scrape of a heavy bar sounded from the other side, locking down on the handle. The boy was stored safer than a million dollars in cash.
"Prolly... won't be back... in circulation..."
His lips rose in a twisted smirk, even as tears brimmed on the edges of his eyes. Tears, now? Really? What were they for? His rage? He could be angry only at himself, as usual, and as he grit his teeth and screwed his eyes shut his addled mind began summing phantasms out of the ruddy darkness surrounding his carving board altar. Shadows moved on the corners of his vision, but by now Penance was well-accustomed to their presence.
The fact he needed to face was this: whatever they were, whether malignant or benevolent, they weren't. They weren't real. Couldn't be. No, he was utterly and entirely alone, as he had been almost all his life, in one way or another. These specters were just as alive as Galabeg, and they were all born of the same source: a small boy's very disturbed brain.
He held that thought in his head, and it clung to him like a wet sheet. Penance didn't think of himself as a 'boy' often, although Measan was right to say he was no 'man' either. A 'man', after all, surrounded by the creeping darkness, on the edge of eternity's grasp, all alone— helpless though his situation might be— well, even then a real 'man' surely wouldn't feel so... so...
He let the tears flow, a few sobs escaping his surgical mask as his reddening eyes fixed themselves on that red light overhead. It wasn't a long cry, but enough to send a trickle of tears down his temples to land on the cutting board beneath him. He'd be watering it with an entirely different fluid before long.
And then he'd be gone.
But that was the worst of it: thinking that. In all his years combating his fellow immortals and their lackeys he seldom had much chance to ruminate on the outcome, should it be bad for him. His battles were brutal, quick, usually over in the span of several heartbeats. And a beating heart in the thick of battle hasn't got the time to consider the travel plans for after one's head parts ways with one's body. But Penance knew what train he'd be leaving on when that happened, and he knew his ticket had been punched long ago.
His eyes, still misty with tears and unfocused from the drugs, did their best to lock on to that lightbulb overhead.
"Get used to the color red, kid," he mumbled.
The shadows in the room soon stirred, and out walked the woman in the white mantilla, her steps calm and deliberate—regal, actually, in a way that went beyond mere 'queenly' royalty— and her gossamer dress billowed in a nonexistent breeze, as if caught by a gentle wind rolling off some distant hills on a summer night. When she reached the boy he looked up at her with eyes that were too tired for fear, and a heart too worn-down for panicked pumping.
And if Penance were being honest with himself then he had to admit that at that moment— no matter the company— this at least felt better than being alone.
The woman leaned down towards the boy, one hand on his shoulder, and her crescent moon eyebrows widened as she gripped him through the straitjacket. She leaned down further, still.
She would get him at the neck, he figured, tearing his flesh as easily as a Doberman might rip up a newspaper. But then maybe she'd start by slurping his eyes out of their sockets, or perhaps tearing a chunk of flesh from one of his cheeks. That'd be a very amusing amuse bouche
Just a little bit of 'boy barbacoa'.
He had to laugh at that joke, terrible though it was. Still he smiled, eyes screwed shut, as the woman set her mouth to him, but instead of a cold, vicious bite to his neck he instead felt a of a pair of warm lips pressed against his forehead. The feeling wound down his body like an electric shock, but in the aftermath all his muscles seemed to slow, his heart included.
Penance opened his eyes, finding himself once again alone in the room. The light of the bulb overhead slowly faded as he watched it, only it wasn't really fading. He was. Numbness began creeping in all over his body, starting at his chest and winding through his torso, limbs and head. It wasn't like the unpleasant tingling of a sleeping limb; there was something overwhelmingly serene in the feeling. Just before his mind took its leave Penance drew a low, sputtering breath, and there was some strange contentment in his core that he couldn't place.
What followed was perhaps the most shocking thing imaginable, so implausible that Penance could not, in a million years, actually imagine it happening in the first place. It was something that he couldn't remember experiencing in the past hundred years, at least.
But still it happened.
Penance slept, and his sleep was entirely dreamless and untroubled, as if all the weights on his body and soul were somehow lifted, if only for the moment. And in that moment his rest felt more eternal than whatever was about to come his way.
The horrors that awaited him— the terrors that would surely happen on this very floor of this building— were at the moment of no concern to the sleeping child.
In that moment, at least, the boy in the creeping darkness wasn't afraid.
