Chapter 7: The Weapon of the Enemy

Amon's hands had long since gone numb, along with his feet. The bindings were too tight to begin with, but struggling had only made the nylon cord cut into his skin, sending hot drops of blood lazily sliding down his fingers to splash one at a time onto the cement floor. The abrasions burned, but not half as badly as the points where Ivan had laid his fingers on him. Those marks were like contact burns from a lit cigar, and radiated outward to form large areas of tingling and burning.

Water; Amon would have paid any price at that moment for a drink of water. His eyelids felt like sandpaper across eyeballs that were parched, matching his tongue. The electric currents that had passed through him had taken all the moisture from his body and now he felt positively shriveled, like dry autumn leaves scraping across concrete in a cold wind only to be trampled underfoot into a fine dust.

Time was a conflicting matter of interest to him – on the one hand it had no coherent meaning, yet it was vitally important. To know how long he had been in this dank cell of a room would link him to reality and utterly dishearten him all in one easy stroke. There was one reality Amon knew now, and that was pain, confusion, and fear. He was afraid; he could admit it now that he was alone once again. He had the convenient knack of channeling negative emotions like confusion, frustration, or fear into a show of anger for others to misinterpret, and so often he lost contact with the truth behind the seething fury as well.

It didn't change anything, though. He was afraid. He was afraid for Morgan, who he hadn't seen or heard from since being brought here. God only knew what fate she was suffering right now. He was afraid for himself. Because of his foolishness he had left the protection of the only person who could have spared him from this torment. He feared for himself, though he didn't know what scared him more – that these men would kill him through torture or that he would break and tell them what they wanted to know, assuming he knew what that was in the first place.

And he was afraid for Robin. The longer he sat here the more he realized how intrinsically the young Hunter was tied to all this confusing mess. It had been her appearance, after all, that had set Amon's course to this moment. From the beginning Zaizen had shown an unhealthy interest in her, and had set Amon as his spy to keep track of her. He had even instituted the services of his daughter Touko to keep watch over Robin. Koushon had entered the picture when Robin had gone missing in the Walled City and defeated Methuselah, and it was he who had instigated a covert and unsanctioned Hunt for her. Amon had participated because he had been ordered to, ignoring the wrongness that he felt to his very bones in order to be the professional, consummate Hunter everyone expected him to be.

So what had turned him in his tracks? Juliano's letter to Robin. As he had read that cryptic, heartfelt confession he began to realize just how deep this situation might go. Robin's Hunt was not as simple as the circumstances that had been explained to him. She was not crazy. She was not a witch. No, there was something more. And for Juliano, the Premier Master Hunter of Solomon to write such personal, loving words to one of his Hunters? No, the pieces just didn't fit.

The thought of the letter only reminded him of the lack of it. He had taken the letter from the ruined apartment Robin had shared with Zaizen's daughter after the second failed Hunt. However, when he awoke in the hospital there was no sign of it. When Morgan had given him clothing she hadn't included any personal effects. Amon stared down at his bare chest, pocked with burn marks. The absence of the orbo pendant's reassuring weight around his neck was another missing personal item. He could imagine Koushon commandeering it as evidence of Zaizen's activities. But without that small glass vial of orbo against his skin he had no control over the re-awakening of his Craft, save for his own will. But his will was pitifully abused and ragged right at the moment, and he imagined he could feel the dragon stirring, threatening to open its eyes and unfurl its wings.

This contemplation was interrupted by a sound that at first Amon misinterpreted as an auditory hallucination of his fears. A female voice was heard, cursing and shouting, and footsteps, the sound of a struggle. It came from beyond the battered wooden door, and Amon's muscles flexed involuntarily which renewed the sharp cut of the cords into his skin.

The door opened inward with a bang, revealing two nameless men dragging Morgan into the room. She was putting up a fight and flinging curses like darts, but she was no match for the combined strength of these men. Following her came Ivan, who was frowning at the struggle preceding him. He looked preoccupied, or so Amon thought, without the arrogant swagger that usually marked his movements. Entering lastly was Inquisitor Koushon, with wild eyes but every hair smoothly in place.

The two man handling Morgan produced a chair similar to Amon's and tied her to it, though she struggled admirably. She emanated rage, but when Amon caught her eye for an instant he recognized the terror. So she too could channel such feelings into a show of fury. For some reason this realization only deepened his dread.

He looked to his captors. Inquisitor Koushon was observing the struggle with an air of dignified bemusement, as one would watch a child reach for an object hopelessly beyond their reach. Ivan however was standing with arms crossed, glowering at the floor.

Once Morgan was secured and her opponents sent off to treat the bites and kicks she had inflicted upon them, Koushon spoke, and his first words were directed to Amon. "You are really quite extraordinary, young man, I will admit it. Despite extreme physical discomfort that would break an ordinary Hunter, you have steadfastly remained silent." He nodded, as though agreeing with himself. "I applaud your strength."

"However," he continued, stepping toward Morgan whose eyes were boring into him like poison daggers, "I cannot allow you to remain silent any longer. I must have the information you possess." He stood ominously over Morgan, looking over his shoulder to Amon. "This is the last time I will ask."

"And if I have no information?" Amon rasped, the words grinding in his throat like chalk.

"Then you will have to watch her die," Koushon stated, turning from both Hunters and gesturing to Ivan. "Get on with it."

Amon felt the icy rush of adrenaline surge through his body. His eyes sprang to the woman tied beside him and he found her looking back, fear and despair making her chocolate eyes nearly black. "No," he choked, struggling in vain with his bindings.

"Don't tell them anything," Morgan whispered harshly. "Amon, promise me. Whatever they do to me, don't let me into your mind." A glistening tear slid down her cheek and clung to her quivering chin before dropping. "No matter what, Amon."

And now Amon truly understood what Koushon's intentions were. They knew that torture would not force words from his throat. But they also knew that Amon would have a much more difficult time watching someone else receive the torture in his place. And perhaps they even hoped that in his panic he would open his brain to the mind reader through his alarmed empathy toward her, enabling her to divulge his thoughts to save her own life. Amon felt the room lurch with the realization. How could he watch this happen and yet do nothing? How could he not?

Ivan, despite Koushon's order, had not uncrossed his arms or moved from his previous position, and his boss looked to him sternly. "I said get on with it." Ivan's frown deepened, and he looked from beneath his brows at Amon. "Now!" the Inquisitor's voice rang out.

Amon watched as Ivan finally stepped toward Morgan, balling his fists and releasing them several times. Amon couldn't breathe; it felt like the room had been filled with a whirlpool of ice water and he was being sucked irrevocably downwards into a cold hell. What was he to do? What could he do?

He had a choice. He could go on standing here in this bullet riddled apartment. He could go and do some absurdly mundane activity as though the world weren't ending at a prescribed time. Or he could turn and leave and go rescue Robin. He had already disobeyed orders – the dye was cast. But he had also been guaranteed a traitor's death by the head of the strike team if he interfered. His breath stilled time to a single moment. Well, he already was a traitor.

His voice was paralyzed; his mouth frozen into a wordless grimace as he watched Ivan's hands descend in slow motion toward Morgan's body, the electric currents snapping and reaching out eagerly for her skin. Her eyes were glued to Amon's, refusing to look at her tormentor, instead resolutely locking Amon's gunmetal eyes to her face to exact a wordless promise. He didn't witness when the first contact was made, but he knew it occurred when her eyes widened and her pupils contracted to pinpoints of excruciating pain.

They were pleading eyes, shock and pain transforming them into accusatory orbs that sent Amon's mind into a frenzy. Pupils contracting to dots, widening to the whites in unnatural openness, like another pair of eyes…

"Amon!" A woman screamed, an unmistakable voice regardless of how many years had passed. He had stood there then, rooted to the ground. The gun had fired from the man wearing black, all black, even the gun was black, the day was black, the air that stuck like tar to his lungs was now painted in the same absence of color. All but the blood that spilled from her chest, opening like a flower and spilling crimson liquid on the ground, that oozed over her fingers as she clasped her hand to the wound with those eyes that were contracted to the same pinpoint pupils. Mother…

He knew Morgan's pain; knew the acceleration of the senses focusing from Ivan's fingertips outward to encase the entire body into a swirling cacophony of hot, searing agony. He could feel it himself, so fresh was the sensation in his mind. Yet the room was a vacuum of silence, or was it only that his ears had ceased to function? It was eerie, and Amon wanted to cry out on her behalf but his vocal cords were paralyzed with horror at the sight of electricity passing through the woman, her eyes rolling white back into her head, her back arching unwillingly away from the straight back of the chair under the influence of the current on her nervous system.

He felt a sudden pressure in his head, something like a probing finger trying to pry open a small hole. He knew it was Morgan; the pain was somehow closer now. But he remembered her words to him, remembered the possibility of her unwillingly reading his mind. I can't bear it, his inner voice wailed, how can I sit here and watch her die? But what is she to you? The logical part of his mind pointed out coldly.

He couldn't completely guarantee the neutrality of his countenance and so he looked over Zaizen's head and sought to quiet the angry squabbling of voices fighting it out in his mind. "Koushon's strike team will handle the actual Hunt," his administrator was saying in a tone that rung hollow to his ear, "they only require that you set up the circumstances and guarantee Robin is there." Amon couldn't even force himself to nod in reply. Robin was being Hunted as a witch. They were going to kill her, and they were asking him to help. No, not asking. They were ordering him to. He couldn't say no, not without giving reasons he didn't even have himself. And even then it would make no difference. With or without him they would Hunt her. And the thought had flung itself directly into the path of his conscious mind in that moment: How can I sit here and watch her die? And then the reliably trained mind replied, but what is she to you?

Morgan's breath burst from her in a great wrench and a deep guttural moan began to reverberate from somewhere deep inside her, a resonance Amon could feel in the marrow of his bones. The single probing finger had become a scrabbling hand with very healthy fingernails, scraping and reaching for purchase on the outer casing of his brain. She was fighting it, Amon sensed, she was trying to hold it back – the Craft, her screams, everything. But she was losing. She would burn brightly, inhumanly bright for this endless stretch of seconds, and then Amon knew that light would burst and die like an imploding bulb. She was losing…

"Mother!" the young Amon had screamed and he raced to her just before her legs folded and she fell. His adolescent body staggered under the weight but he kept her from hitting the ground. Cradled in his thin arms, his mother looked up into the face of her son, her vision already impeded by the death that was claiming her. His mother's blood seeped over his hands, hot as the tears that drowned his face. "Why?" he had implored to her, "Why did you try to save me?" Her lips opened and tried to form a reply, but a wracking cough erupted from her and blood spilled from her mouth.

Blood erupted from Morgan's mouth in a wracking convulsion. "No!" the memory and the man shouted simultaneously.

"Mother!" Morgan gurgled wetly around the blood still dripping from her lips, and Amon, in his utterly manic frame of mind was uncertain whether she was imploring on her own behalf or reading his mind.

Sweat was pouring from Ivan's pale brow and his eyes were pained. "Say something you stupid son of a bitch!" he spat in Amon's direction. "For Christ's sake!"

The voice of the Inquisitor was close to his ear. "Start talking and I tell Ivan to stop," Koushon wheedled with greasy insincerity. "All you have to do is tell me what I want to know."

Amon's chest was locked like a vice grip. To talk, to save Morgan's life was to kill Robin. He couldn't do it, he couldn't help these men. But in this moment he could scarcely differentiate between Robin and the woman screaming in agony. Mother, Robin, Morgan, who was who anymore? Morgan was a human being, just as Robin was, just as his mother had been. How could he remain silent and kill her? How could he speak and sentence Robin to death? Robin – who meant so much that he had to deny it, whose life was so valuable to him that he had forfeited his own on her behalf.

But they were all dead anyway. It was only a matter of time. Even to talk would mean his death. They would Hunt Robin with or without his help. Morgan would die too. Everyone was a shade in the world of the living. What did it matter?

It mattered. Painfully, hopelessly mattered.

"What's stopping you?" Koushon interrogated more loudly. "Is it stubbornness? Is it honor?" His words hit home with the next strike. "Or is it to spare the life of your partner?"

Morgan's moaning had turned to something scarcely human, bubbling, shuddering monosyllabic nonsense. Ivan was looking desperate and crazed. "For fuck's sake you asshole, I shot your little girlfriend, all right? I killed the bitch and loved every second of it. Now talk! Do it!"

And the entire world constricted in that moment to the impossibly slow, impossibly loud heartbeat in Amon's ears.

Robin was dead.

No.

But Ivan had said it.

No.

Morgan was dying.

No.

All this was for nothing… she was already gone… all of them gone…

"NO!" Amon roared this at a volume capable of physical destruction, and his body filled with a howling that swirled everything else away. A roaring like a cyclone, the power of a hurricane gathering strength from the heaving ocean threatened to tear him to fragments. The room became a vacuum and the breath was sucked from his lips as every ounce of air in the room gathered to him and coalesced into the funnel that had replaced the core of himself.

It was effortless, an almost overwhelming relief to release the energy and so he did, lifting Ivan from the floor and sending him rocketing into the wall. He was on his feet with no recollection of having escaped his bindings, and he turned now to the author of this evil scene. The power, having released, had regrouped at double the speed and so he sent the next burst at Inquisitor Koushon.

And it erupted with a flash directly before the old man. He tried again, focusing his will to surgical precision. And again, it exploded harmlessly before Koushon.

The priest smiled and reached for the collar of his robes. "Borrowing from your book I'm afraid," he said with a maliciously crooked smirk as he hooked his finger around a cord and pulled. A glass vial appeared, iridescent green liquid boiling within it. "Yes, it's yours," he confirmed with a nod. "I had the sneaking suspicion I should keep it close in this situation. And I was right."

Ivan was knocked out on the floor with the pulverized wall crumbling down to partially conceal him. Morgan's chair had toppled and she lay on her side still tied to it and completely motionless. And Amon stood in a tower of uncontrollable rage before the old Inquisitor, the power of his newly reawakened Craft whipping his very soul into shredded shards. The old man reached slowly into his pocket and a pistol emerged, Amon's orbo pistol which was now trained on its owner.

"Hypocrite," Amon spat at the priest, scarcely hearing his own words through the howling wind of his internalized Craft.

Koushon smiled. "When battling evil, one must sometimes employ the weapon of the enemy." His eyes swept over the destruction and back to Amon. "As well you know. After all, Solomon was founded on it."

"The only evil here," Amon hissed, "is you."

"But you are the enemy," was Koushon's simple reply, and his wizened finger squeezed the trigger.

And then several things happened at once.

Amon shielded himself with his Craft, deflecting the orbo bullet before it could hit his chest.

The door exploded from its hinges, revealing the towering silhouette of Father Juliano in the gaping hole, Father Adrian at his shoulder.

The ground rocked alarmingly.

The world went black.

And then all Amon could see was a wall of flame.

Author's Note: So as promised, all Amon, and our boy is kicking ass! However, you'll just have to wait until next chapter to see how everyone else fared. Hee hee! Hope you enjoyed it, please read and review! Thanks!