I ended up passing out in the back of the nondescript car, ruining the in-and-out interrogation plan. After the adrenaline flooded out of me, it was all I could do to keep my eyes open long enough for Marcone to slide in beside Harvey Morrison. Gard told me that I ended up drooling on one of his bloodied lapels. He was probably happy to be out from under me when the guards hustled him into Castle Marcone. Any remaining servitors would think twice about trying to storm the gates. It had left me slumped over Marcone, using him as a pillow instead. When I'd finally come to, (around two hours later,) we were idling in a warehouse parking lot.
Gard gave me a quick rundown of events before shoving a cheeseburger into my hands with a terse, "Eat."
I wouldn't have argued with her even if I had the energy. The double cheeseburger and fries were greasy nirvana after nibbling on snack foods and sipping sparkling water all night. I really should have insisted on a meal before we went down to mingle. The battle would have sapped most of my strength, but I might have been able to hold out for a few minutes longer if I'd been well-fed. Well-rested was a pipe dream. I always had nightmares. The question was, about what? My disastrous sojourn with the Fallen? The lives I'd taken with the Fellowship? My dead friends? Murdering my brother? Any of the myriad horrors I'd witnessed since becoming the Black Knight?
Before I knew it, I was staring at an empty wrapper and fry carton. The food settled uncomfortably in my stomach, and I had to swallow the desire to cry. Hannah teased me about the way I ate the last time we met. I never paced myself through meals, sure some disaster would strike and I'd go hungry if I didn't stuff my face. I'd left her to Lasciel's tender mercies. Did she hate me now, or had she considered Thomas the real enemy? When was she going to come back for round two? Because that was a when, not an if. Neither woman was going to roll over and take no for an answer.
"Molly?" Marcone asked.
The tone wasn't harsh or demanding, but it made me cringe all the same. The mission had been simple. Get in, get out, dig the answers out of a servitor's head. If he didn't know anything worthwhile, it would be rinse and repeat for as long as necessary. I'd managed to botch a simple job because I didn't have the juice to take down more than one monster at a time. Harry would have served the thing up like pan-seared octopus before snapping the remaining servitors like matchsticks. I wasn't Harry. I'd never be as powerful, knowledgeable, and moral as he was. He might have ducked through a few shady moral alleyways in his day, but he'd never made his home there. Not like me. It was probably for the best I didn't have phenomenal cosmic powers. I was doomed to misuse them.
"Sorry," I said, and the apology sounded weary even to my own ears. I just wanted to lay my head in his lap and go back to sleep. The thought he'd touch my hair again was actually comforting. I hadn't been touched platonically in a long time either.
"Should I take you home?" he asked. "You look like you need to sleep longer."
I sat up a little straighter and knuckled the sleep from my eyes. Our corner of the lot was shrouded in darkness. The street lamp a half-block away was the only reason I could make out Gard, Hendricks, and Marcone's profiles. We would be hard to see, but anyone approaching would be silhouetted by the light. Hendricks had a long rifle resting on the lip of his window and trained at the street beyond. He'd loose several shots if someone approached, which would either drop the attacker or give us the signal to scram.
"No. The longer this takes, the more opportunities his buddies have to track him. I'll search for your answers and then you can take care of the rest."
The words tasted bitter in my mouth. How had I gotten to the point where I blithely referred to an execution as 'taking care of business?' Again. It was an unpleasant parallel to my time with Lasciel when killing had been par for the course. I also knew there wasn't another choice. If we let the servitor scurry back to his big boss we were screwed. He had to die so that a lot of other people could live.
It didn't mean that I liked it.
Marcone stayed close to me when we exited the car, just in case I tried to list sideways and crack my head on the pavement. The lot was cracked and pitted with potholes. It was long overdue for maintenance, but the city had bigger budget concerns than keeping a remote warehouse in tip-top shape.
"I'm not sure you should be attempting this," he said quietly.
"This is a hell of a time to get cold feet."
"I can question him without your assistance. Gard could escort you away so you can rest."
Translation, I can torture this guy while you take a nap. That's amore. A lesser woman might have just swooned had his consideration. I just let out a dry snort and walked faster.
"And if you don't get the answers you want, I'll be back in a few hours, and I'll have to wade through the psychic stink of the torture to get to you. No thank you. My way is faster."
"Have it your way. I'm just trying to accommodate your limits. I hadn't realized the fight would cost you that much."
I sighed. "That's because the last time you saw me fight with magic I was still in possession of a coin. It makes you stronger, faster, and hellfire is high-octane fuel for destructive spells. There's not a lot you can't do when you have a fallen angel backing your play. Without her, I'm still good at the complicated stuff, but I'll never be a combat mage. It's why I train with weapons instead of trying to bulldoze through every situation with magic. I fight smarter, not harder."
"A good philosophy," Marcone said.
He reached the doors first and opened them for me. I scowled at him, hating that I needed the help. My noodle arms wouldn't have been able to shoulder the heavy doors apart.
"After you," he said pleasantly. I caught a gleam of white teeth in the dark. He was grinning at me, clearly enjoying my discomfort. Bastard.
Someone had flicked halogen work lights on inside. The concrete floors were layered with tarps for easy cleanup. At least a handful of people had met their end here. The walls soaked up misery like whiskey in an oak barrel. It grew over time and repeated exposure until the building itself would repel even your average vanilla mortal. You got that in bad places. Slaughterhouses. Mass graves. Insane asylums. Anywhere enough suffering had occurred to saturate the air and send the rational mind scrambling to be anywhere else.
The servitor had been trussed neck to foot with heavy chains so he resembled a steel mummy. Someone had slapped a roll's worth of duct tape on the lower half of his face. It was overkill, but I appreciated it. I could kneel by his head without worrying that he'd kick or bite me. He did cringe when my fingers splayed on either side of his face. The technique was so reminiscent of a Vulcan mind meld that it made me want to laugh. A desperate, half-strangled laugh that would probably make Marcone question my sanity. Well, more than he already did. What I was about to do wouldn't help me on that front, but it was better than letting him suffer hours of torture before Marcone killed him.
It was disgustingly easy to breach his mind. I'd expected (or maybe just hoped) that years without performing black magic would have made me rusty. Perhaps I'd even hoped I'd fail so I could run away from all of this. I knew that if I succeeded here, there would another victim. And another, and another until insanity clenched me like a fist and dragged me down into oblivion. Marcone would make sure I was put down before I could do any serious damage, but the thought didn't make me feel better. How many would I have hurt in the meantime?
The servitor's name was, or rather had been Sam. A Fomor Sorcerer had scooped out any personality he'd possessed and filled the space with stagnant water. Ideas and orders floated easily on the surface and as long as he followed them, his mind remained placid. If he stepped out of line, monsters rose from the deep and reduced him to a screaming, subhuman pile. The thought of rebellion rarely surfaced. The name was all I managed to pry from him easily before the safeguards sprang into action, trying to violently capsize my metaphorical boat. I kept pushing, able to see faint lights in the murk. Back in reality, blood was running under my fingernails as I struggled to hold him. He was seizing under my hands, a low, piteous whine easing through his teeth. His pulsed hammered through his veins. If I wasn't quick enough he'd have a heart attack before I was through.
It hurt. It hurt to bat away the safeguards chewing at his thoughts like angry piranhas, tiny needle teeth shredding through his mind with astonishing speed. But most of it all, it hurt to hurt him. I'd changed my mind. Letting Marcone rip out his toenails would have been the more merciful option. He'd still have what little was left of his will. Even if I succeeded, there was no way he'd live long after I exited his mind. He'd be gone, whatever was left of him just flung aside like pumpkin guts. I'd give him the only comfort I could.
When I finally surfaced, tears were pouring down my cheeks and dripping onto Sam's pale face. His gills had stopped flapping. The black of his pupils had expanded, drowning most of the pale color of his iris. He was very still underneath me. I'd straddled him at some point, trying to keep him still. Now I rolled off, curling into a ball on the nearest tarp, the cold of the concrete leaching through the plastic and my ruined formalwear. I must have been shivering, but I didn't realize it until Marcone's hand settled on my shoulder, his touch a firey brand against my skin. He sighed when I flinched.
"What happened?"
"Failsafe," I whispered. "They take people off the street and when the sorcerers are through with them, they're just puppets. The Fomor's answer to Renfields, I guess. He was worse than dead. As soon as I started searching for the answer, his mental framework collapsed. I barely got out of there with a handful of details. His name was Sam. He lived in Cleveland, Ohio, he had a girlfriend with...red hair, I think. Curly. Soft, and..." I closed my eyes, more tears squeezing past my control. "I don't know. I'm sorry. Physical force wouldn't have worked either. As soon as he even thought about turning on them, he'd have ended up like this."
"He'd just drop dead?"
"Not exactly. It would take hours, just to make sure he suffered for the betrayal." I waved a hand behind me with a sniffle. "That was me. I didn't want him to go through that. It wasn't his fault he ended up here."
Marcone was silent for a long moment. I flinched when he rounded Sam's body and came to tower over me. His face was made of stark, sharp angles and pooling shadows under the work lights. His gaze searched my face, his expression cool and remote. Gone was the man who'd cradled me in my sleep. Maybe he couldn't afford that show of weakness with more of his people waiting in the wings. A traitorous part of me wished he'd scoop me into his arms and escort me out, but he just kept staring.
"A block in the hypothalamus," he said quietly, eyes still intent on my face. "Autonomic functions cease and you just...stop. Isn't that what you said?"
I cringed away from the words. It seemed like a lifetime ago that I'd held my trembling father close and threatened to end his life. Marcone, bruised and bleeding, had been chained not far away.
"Yes," I whispered.
"You said that to your father."
"Yes." The admission was barely audible.
He shook his head. "I'll give Lasciel credit. She's a creative and sadistic bitch."
"She didn't come up with it."
Marone's gaze flicked down to me again, registering surprise and a little wariness before he could slip his mask back on. We just stayed like that for a bit. I wondered if he was grappling with the same duality I was. Marcone was a cold-blooded killer, a ruthless businessman, and one of the most dangerous men I'd ever met. He was also compassionate when given a private moment to extend the gesture. The monster was his front, hiding the man. I was the opposite. From the outside, I looked like a fragile, mentally-scarred woman. That was my front. Underneath was the sleeping monster. God help everyone if I decided to indulge that beast again.
An eternity later I struggled onto my hands and knees, smearing blood onto the plastic tarps. Gard's hand wrapped around my bicep and guided me to my feet. She exchanged a glance with Marcone. He nodded, and then she swept me into her arms, bridal style.
"We're going to the Castle," she said when we'd gotten halfway to the car.
"No," I said sharply. "No, I...I want to go home."
A pause and then, "Alright. Do you want someone to stay with you?"
"No, I just want to be alone."
Which was a whopper of a lie. I wanted to be snuggled back in the hotel room, basking in the presence of someone who gave a damn. Probably not a good idea now. Marcone's anger was a nebulous thing, not aimed at me, though it should have been. Because I'd lied to him. I had gotten more than Sam's name. I'd dug out the only thing that mattered to the servitors on his detail. The name and location of the traitor. I couldn't trust Marcone to deal with things cleanly, so I'd do it myself.
Gard dropped me off and loitered for close to thirty minutes just in case I changed my mind. I waited two hours to be sure that no one was watching me and slipped out under a veil. Half-past one I skirted security in the Maddison Hotel and ascended to the second floor. The gym was open twenty-four hours, only too eager to please its clients. Health was no respecter of business hours, after all.
I found her office at the end of the hall off the gym, the door propped open with a wedge. Lamplight spilled onto the expensive hall carpet and illuminated a woman in the gap. Blonde, middle-aged, with an almost expressionless face. She was wearing a black dress with a conservative neckline and a strand of pearls that looped around her neck twice. She was toying with them as she did paperwork. Her head snapped up and she reached for her desk drawer when I stepped in, kicked the wedge aside, and closed the door behind me.
Too late. By the time she'd gripped the handgun inside, I'd crossed the room, dropped the veil, and leaned in. She had to cross her eyes to keep the muzzle of the Glock in sight. Her swallow was audible.
"It's time we had a talk, Ms. Demeter."