10.4: Many Forms of Pain

Zzzzzaaaapppp

"You know what to say."

….

Zzzzzaaaapppp

"Say it, and there will be no more pain."

….

Zzzzzaaaapppp

"Give me your oath, and there will be no more pain."

Owen didn't bother responding to his tormentor anymore. He just waited, numbly, for the next electrical shock to be administered.

Zzzzzaaaapppp

The shocks had been administered on a frequent basis for the last several hours. Shouldn't it hurt less by now? Shouldn't enough of his nerve endings have been killed off to make him less capable of feeling pain?

….

Zzzzzaaaappp

...Apparently not.

00oo00oo00oo00oo00

In the apartment that served as his control room, Thailog was not quite frowning. This was taking longer than he'd hoped for…

But not as long as he'd anticipated, when planning the operation. He'd very deliberately said nothing to Xanatos about Owen Burnett having been kidnapped; he preferred the man's status to be kept in doubt until the time came to release him, at the same time that he released Fox Xanatos. So he had seven nights to accomplish his objective, one that was even more important than extorting a hundred million dollars to start up his next corporation: breaking one of the Fey to his will, to become his personal servant.

Before their breakup, Demona had been useful to him in many ways; as a figurehead for running his corporation during the day, as a sex object for his pleasure at night… and as a source of information about magic. The programming that he'd been given while growing up had said nothing at all about magic; he hadn't believed it to be real, until that night in Paris when he'd seen a mist suddenly spring up on the Seine and a skiff come floating out of the mist, a skiff that definitely hadn't been there before the mist had coalesced.

He had tried to coax Demona to teach him magic, but she'd told him that he'd never be able to perform it himself; the capacity to wield magic was a rare talent, among both humans and gargoyles, and he simply did not have the gift. But she'd agreed that knowledge was a form of power as well, and had told him a great deal about the different types of magic, and those who wielded them.

Including the fact that Xanatos had as his servant a Fey in disguise. The trickster Puck, one of the more powerful Fey; Demona hadn't known just why a creature of such power was serving a mere human, but had assumed that Puck found it amusing somehow. "The Trickster rarely does anything that isn't for his own amusement," she'd told him. Adding darkly, "And when he's no longer amused, he's dangerous..."

With some reluctance, she'd told him the tale of how she'd tried to bind Puck to her will once, and how he'd cleverly distorted every order she'd given him, producing results that were exactly what she hadn't wanted. She'd been fortunate that he'd found the whole thing amusing, because after Goliath had freed Puck from the iron chains that bound him, he'd spirited them both away from their captors instead of instantly wreaking a hideous revenge on her for chaining him at all. But when she'd decided to just cut her losses and let him go free, and give him no more orders that he could distort for his own amusement… he'd decided to amuse himself anyway, by giving her the 'gift' of turning to human during the day.

Thailog personally thought he had a refined sense of humor, but he knew better than to attempt to persuade a Fey Trickster to ally with him for the sake of amusement. No, he preferred subordinates to partners. People who were bound to him in one way or another; by hopelessly deluded love, as Demona had been, or by obedience that had been programmed into them.

He'd taken a blood sample from Owen Burnett while he was unconscious; if the mortal guise was only skin deep and the blood was Fey, then once he had the money and means of hiring Sevarius again, he'd have a Fey cloned from the blood cells and programmed to obey him in the same way the other gargoyle clones had been programmed. But there were other ways of programming sentient beings besides starting from the moment of self-awareness. That was certainly the most effective way, but humans, being such resourceful and nasty creatures, had come up with other ways that even worked on full adults.

Surrounded by cold iron in the steel on all sides of the room and in his shackles, Puck was as helpless as any human would be. And likely had the same vulnerabilities that a human would have. A few days and nights of no food, or sleep… days and nights filled with repeated applications of pain… that was all it took to break the will of the average human. Add some skillful psychological manipulation during the breaking process, follow it up with more manipulation after they were mercifully allowed both food and sleep, and they were brainwashed as effectively as if they'd been raised by their captors since birth.

A brainwashed Fey in his hands would be a useful tool indeed. But even if the Puck could not be completely brainwashed, Demona had assured him that a Fey was bound to fulfill any oath they swore, particularly an oath sworn on 'the blood of Daanu', Daanu being reportedly the progenitor for the whole Fey species. Thailog would be satisfied with an oath to serve him and grant his wishes…an oath coupled with a iron collar to wear, of course; a good businessman always had a backup prepared. And he had already compiled a list of commands for the Puck, wishes for him to fulfill, worded so carefully that they could not be distorted in any way:

To have his crippled wing healed and restored to full gliding capability again.

To have the ability to turn—painlessly—into a human by day; a healthy adult human male, handsome by human standards, and with his voice unchanged from one form to the other so he could hold conversations by phone at any time of day or night.

To have all the cloned gargoyles back under his command, particularly his sex toy Delilah, with all their memories wiped of their few months of freedom from his control.

To have both Demona and Elisa Maza delivered to him, naked except for being bound hand and foot (and wing, in Demona's case) in unbreakable chains. Including ball-gags that he could remove or instantly replace with a single word…

And most importantly, to have Owen Burnett become his mole within Xanatos Enterprises for exactly one year; bound to say or otherwise communicate nothing to Xanatos or anyone else about the agreement, while reporting to him everything that the business does and achieves.

Thailog was sure that once he used the first hundred million dollars of ransom to start up a new corporation, it would take far less time than a year for him to use Owen's information to topple Xanatos Enterprises. Beating them in business deal after business deal until the company was hemorrhaging red ink, at which point his new company would do a hostile takeover. David Xanatos would be out on the streets, rendered penniless, and Thailog smiled again at the thought before hitting the red button on the console once more.

On the monitor screen, Owen jerked again as a few thousand volts of low-current electricity surged through the floor of his steel cell and into his body; shocks that had been carefully calculated to be extremely painful but not lethal. The electrical generator wired to the cell floor administered the calculated shocks upon command, and the commands had been sent an average of every six minutes since Owen's awakening.

Sometimes he waited a minute or two longer between shocks, and sometimes he administered the shock even sooner; the uncertainty of the timing made the anticipation of the next shock even more dreadful. But he kept to the six-minute average; a gap between shocks just long enough for the shock effects to begin to fade from the nervous system, without any real rest allowed. Even the women's brief but bothersome demands for medical attention—which Thailog had refused, since he thought it unlikely that Fox would die anytime soon as a result of her stupidity—hadn't interrupted his schedule of torture.

Thailog had been hoping that Owen would be as weak as some humans were reported to be, and break down to submit to him after just a few hours of such treatment. But he'd already rigged the panel to go on automatic after dawn if necessary; to keep administering electrical shocks on a periodic basis during the day. No rest for Owen at any time, until he broke and swore that the Puck would become Thailog's personal servant, for a minimum of one full year.

"One year of service," he said into the microphone to Owen Burnett's cell, as his hand hovered over the red button again. "That's actually quite reasonable, isn't it? After all, what's one year in the life of an immortal? Just one year, to someone who's already lived thousands of years and may live thousands more?"

Of course, the 'may' in that last sentence was about as likely a chance as those statements of "You may have already won!" that were seen so often in junk mail advertisements. Thailog had no intention of letting the Puck survive that year of service. In Demona's stories and in the fairy tales he'd read as research, Fey tricksters were notorious for taking revenge on anyone who got the better of them; making the mortals regret ever meeting with them. While Thailog could appreciate the sentiment of revenge, he would certainly not give anyone the opportunity to have revenge on him if it could be prevented.

Before the year was up, after all his wishes were fulfilled and once Xanatos Enterprises' downfall was guaranteed, Thailog would pitch his servant back into the steel cell, then try out some of the ideas he had for killing an immortal Fey, based on what Demona had told him about their weaknesses. At least two of them should be effective, and he would try them all in succession, until nothing was left of the Fey at all; not even ashes.

The cell had already been rigged for the two most likely ways of killing a Fey—methods that would kill a human as well—before Owen Burnett had been put inside it. As a backup plan, in case his base of operations was discovered and Thailog had to end the entire operation in a hurry. But he really hoped he wouldn't be forced to use those backups; he was looking forward to that year of personal service…

00oo00oo00oo00oo00

Oliver Grimm dismissed his manservant with an irritated wave of his hand. Servants in America just didn't have the innate talent of the servants he was used to; able to gauge at a glance what the master's needs were and fulfill them before even being asked. This one, after taking entirely too long to roust out of bed, had to be told that a snifter of the best brandy was desired. And then, after bringing the brandy, he hovered close at hand like an anxious child instead of sensing his master's mood and discreetly vanishing into the background. Grimm would just fire the idiot, if it weren't for the sorry fact that he was actually slightly above par for the last four servants he'd hired and dismissed.

After the idiot servant finally retreated, Grimm sat in his study and sipped his brandy, while brooding over the events of the last several hours. He'd never been fond of flying, and having to fly long distances at a moment's notice grated on his nerves. Knowing that he was doing so on someone else's orders had made it even more irksome.

And all for a conversation with the Grandmaster that hadn't taken more than ten minutes! A conversation that could have just as easily taken place over the phone, instead of face-to-face. But no, the Grandmaster had insisted he'd come, and provided the transportation for him; asking him in such a way that he'd not been able to refuse. Even knowing that the command appearance wasn't just another reminder of the Grandmaster's higher stature and his power over the organization; that it likely heralded the asking of questions that Oliver Grimm had been avoiding for a very long time.

When he'd joined the ranks of the Illuminati many years ago—perhaps too many years ago, now; that was a thought to ponder as well—Oliver Grimm had been quietly advised that if he ever found himself in a face-to-face meeting with the Grandmaster, he should not attempt to tell a falsehood, not even the palest of white lies. Because when face-to-face, the Grandmaster could not be lied to. Of course, being who he was, Grimm had decided to challenge that assertion at the first opportunity… and learned the hard way that he should have taken the other member's advice.

Since then, Grimm had given the Grandmaster a wide berth whenever possible. And while still being an Illuminati member in good standing, he'd successfully avoided the Grandmaster for many years… until this fall, when he'd learned of the clan of gargoyles that lived in Manhattan and started working to eradicate them.

Barely six weeks after Grimm had given Jon Canmore a new identity and two million dollars for a start-up fund, and Jon Castaway had founded the Quarrymen, the Grandmaster had come to New York for a face-to-face meeting with him. Right after a similar meeting with David Xanatos, and knowing that the other billionaire had surely also been sweating bullets had been small comfort at the time.

But the questions that Grimm dreaded most had not been asked on that occasion. Nor had they been asked tonight, when he'd been flown out to meet the Grandmaster in his own home. Instead, the Grandmaster had only wanted his assurance that he'd had nothing at all to do with the kidnapping of David Xanatos' family, which had just taken place. And once he'd sworn that he had no knowledge of who had done the kidnapping or how it had been accomplished, the Grandmaster had also required that he swear that he would do nothing to aid the kidnapper or kidnappers in any way, now that he was aware of the occurrence.

That oath had rankled at him, but he'd sworn it, knowing that terrible consequences would befall if he broke it. But once he'd been returned to his home a few minutes ago, he'd seen nothing wrong in rousing Jon Castaway to warn him that the gargoyle were apt to go on the offensive tonight, in an attack on the Quarrymen.

After all, no matter what he might suspect, he did not know that Castaway had decided to take the initiative and organized the kidnapping, with the help of a trusted lieutenant or two. But after so many years of studying the species, he was quite certain that if the gargoyles considered the kidnapped humans to be part of their clan, particularly the helpless infant, they'd rip the entire city apart in their efforts to get them back. And that they'd be apt to begin their search by focusing on known enemies of the clan, such as the Quarrymen.

Working on the assumption that Castaway and the Quarrymen were innocent in this affair, it had not been giving aid to the kidnapper at all to pass on his alert. And if his assumption happened to be wrong, well, they were surely prepared for a retaliatory attack already. So his oath to the Grandmaster hadn't been broken or bent even slightly; he could rest easy.

But he still spent a long time brooding over his brandy, and over the answers to questions that had not been asked.

00oo00oo00oo00oo00

Jon cursed himself in blistering terms for being so impetuous. He'd fired too soon! He should have waited until they'd flown closer, to be sure of his kills!

He'd been woken up by Oliver Grimm's call less than ten minutes ago; a call warning that David Xanatos' family had been kidnapped, and that if the gargoyles learned of it, they would involve themselves in the search and rescue efforts. Even if the gargoyles were no longer living in Xanatos's castle, they were apt to consider the missing people part of their clan, and begin frantically searching for them… and that they would almost certainly start their search by going on an offensive against the Quarrymen.

Castaway had almost laughed at the notion. Gargoyles, caring about human children? The Demon that his family had hunted for a thousand years had certainly never cared about the safety of humans of any age. When he was much younger, Jon had thought that perhaps the Demon was an exception, the gargoyle equivalent to a psychopathic murderer, and that the rest of her species were like timber wolves; dangerous only when threatened, or when extremely hungry and no other food was available. But his encounters with the clan in New York had taught him the truth; that they were all monsters, eager to prey upon the innocent and to kill for no other reason than for their twisted pleasure. And that the world would be a better place once their kind was eradicated from it.

But Grimm had been certain that the gargoyles would be angry about the kidnapping and violently searching the city for the missing people, and Jon had conceded that it was possible they'd grown fond of a few humans; those who were so perverse and traitorous to their own species as to give aid and comfort to the gargoyles, like that black-haired bitch who'd been seen with Goliath.

It was possible that the gargoyles might be fond of David Xanatos's family, since they'd stayed at his castle for a few months before departing for somewhere else in the city (right after his man Ed Johnson had been given the assignment of smashing them during the day, when he had an opportunity to sneak into the castle. What had really happened that day? Johnson had told him that he'd been caught and summarily fired before getting close enough to the gargoyles to do any damage, and at the time Jon had been too busy dealing with the loss of eleven men in a firefight with gargoyles elsewhere in the city to question him any further. But right after that, the gargoyles had left the castle; had more gone on than Ed had told him about? The whole Johnson family had moved out of state immediately afterwards, leaving with no forwarding address…)

So, conceding that Grimm might possibly be right about the gargoyles taking the kidnapping of David Xanatos' family personally, Castaway had called the Quarryman headquarters. He'd planned to advise Martinez, the lieutenant on duty tonight, to double the number of net-mortars issued to the patrollers, increase patrol check-in times to every fifteen minutes, and double the number of people on watch at the warehouse, arming them with net-mortars as well. Extra precautions, to be on the safe side.

And the phone had rung… and kept ringing… No one had answered, and even the answering machine hadn't turned on to take his call. By the seventh ring, a chill had settled into Jon's guts. He knew that the warning had come too late, and something very bad had happened at the Quarrymen's headquarters…

He'd dropped the phone and quickly gotten both dressed and armed. Turning the hotel room's lights back off, he'd donned his night-vision goggles, drew the window curtains open, and waited.

And sure enough, not two minutes after he'd drawn the curtains aside, he'd seen a pair of winged silhouettes against the night sky, settling onto the roof of the building opposite his window. After wreaking havoc at Quarrymen headquarters, they'd come for him! But he wouldn't go down without a fight! And he'd drawn a bead on them with his .45 and fired.

The glass in his hotel window had shattered as the first bullet flew out, followed in quick succession by two more as he'd fired on the pair. He didn't care about the glass shattering; it would have been a casualty soon enough anyway, when the gargoyles came in to attack him, and better it shattered outwards than inwards. All he cared about was killing the gargoyles before they could kill him.

All the firearms training he'd been given while growing up had done him well; he'd compensated for the distance and for the resistance of breaking through the glass, and by the way the two gargoyles had suddenly jerked and fallen back, he'd gotten both of them. But had they been killing shots? If he'd waited until they were closer, gliding through the air to attack him, then he'd have had a better chance of hitting vital areas. And even if he still just wounded them, a gargoyle who fell out of the sky from several stories up was just as apt to splatter on the pavement as any human falling the same distance. But he'd been too eager, and now he might have wounded gargoyles on his hands; wounded beasts were the most dangerous…

Crying. A child was crying. Through the thin hotel walls he could hear a child sobbing about bad men coming to kill them; she had probably been woken by the sound of gunfire and glass shattering. And now he could hear a woman's voice, speaking in comforting yet tense tones as she tried to shush her daughter. An older boy, grumbling about being woken up and blaming the younger child. And a man, speaking in low and urgent tones, perhaps into the phone…

All the blood drained from Jon's face in horror as he realized what he'd forgotten in the heat of the moment; that he was in a hotel filled with other people, families of innocents. There were innocent children not even ten feet away from him, and when the monsters came for him, filled with bloodthirsty vengeance, they'd probably attack anyone nearby as well!

He had to draw the monsters away from the hotel, or otherwise convince them not to come into the hotel after him. If he had a hovercycle handy he'd use it to fly right up past the monsters, taunting them to follow him… but he didn't have a hovercycle, so it was time to start thinking about options he did have. There were probably other gargoyles converging on his position right that moment; how could he convince them not to attack the hotel?

By raising such a ruckus that they'd be warned off, he thought as he abruptly dashed out into the hall. Gargoyles were sensitive to bright lights and loud noises, they liked it dark and quiet… and a hotel fire alert system wasn't dark and quiet at all. There was a fire alarm not ten feet away from his door; he smashed the glass with the butt of his gun and yanked the handle down hard.

Instantly, alarm claxons began going off. And the lights in the hallway went abruptly from nighttime-dim to full brightness, and the dark shadows under all the doors nearby suddenly brightened; room lights were being turned on as well. So much light and sound, so abruptly; it should at least make the gargoyles pause a bit before attacking. At least that's what he hoped, as he ran back into his room only long enough to grab the two bags he always kept packed, then dashed for the stairs.

Even burdened with his luggage, he made it down four floors in less than fifteen seconds, sheer adrenaline spurring him into leaping down from landing to landing in the stairwell. He knew his knees would make him pay for the stunt later on, but speed was essential; he had to get outside and draw the gargoyles away from the innocent children!

He kicked open the door at the base of the stairs, dashing through the hotel lobby and outside. Once he was outside and running away from the entrance, he took two more quick shots up at the spot where the gargoyles had been seen, screaming, "Die, monsters!" as loudly as he could. If they heard him, they'd know he had left the building, and would follow him away from it!

Of course, that was assuming the monsters heard him over the fire alarms shrieking on every floor of the hotel, and the increasing babble of voices as more and more people were roused by the alarm. But he'd done all he could to help them; now it was time to escape, and to find another safe place to rest his head. And of far more urgency, to find out what had happened at Quarrymen headquarters…

00oo00oo00oo00oo00

"Dammi, dammit, dammit!" Brooklyn cursed, staring down at the street in front of the hotel while struggling to his feet, clutching his bleeding shoulder. "That sonofamonkey, bred-out-of-season bastard got the drop on us—and now he's getting away!" as he lurched to the edge and prepared to launch, to glide down after Castaway.

"Brooklyn, no!" Isabel had been clutching at her own injured wing, but now she grabbed at his good arm. "There are too many people down there; we'll be seen!"

"This is Manhattan; they already know we exist!" Brooklyn reminded her harshly, reaching to pry her concerned hand off—and then stopping and grinding his beak against the pain as his vision filled with starbursts, because he'd inadvertently tried to use the shoulder he'd just been shot in. And by the time his vision had cleared and he could look down at the street again, Castaway was no longer in sight. "Dammit! Where'd he go?!" Down that alley? Or had Castaway hopped into that cab that was now speeding down the street?

Brooklyn finally had to conclude that their mission had failed. The failure burned at him, almost as bad as the bullet in his shoulder. …No, actually, not even half as bad; getting shot hurt like hell!The failure just made him even more miserable as they radioed to alert the other teams of what had happened; as they assured the others that their wounds weren't fatal and that Cecelia should not abandon her mission to render first aid for them; as Isabel helped him rig a bandage and sling for his arm from his belt and loincloth, and as he and Isabel limped back to the castle.

A bullet had ripped through her left wing, missing the bones and the vital pinfeathers but still leaving a bloody hole that made using the wing agonizing. They had to fly tandem, Brooklyn helping keep her aloft, while she did her best to hang onto him from the side without actually touching his right arm.

Gliding when they were both wounded took most of their concentration, so they were silent most of the way to the castle. They talked only twice, the first time when Isabel grumbled that the clan really needed to establish a few safe houses elsewhere in the city. To which Brooklyn had to agree; a wounded gargoyle with no one else along to assist in gliding, would need some other safe place that could be reached with minimal to no gliding involved. Now that they knew the Quarrymen were aware of all their old perches, they'd need to come up with new ones. The second time Isabel spoke up, she said harshly, "Stop biting yourself in the tail."

"What?"

"You heard me…and I heard you! You were muttering something about Goliath under your breath, and 'failure'. Comparing yourself to him, and thinking that if he'd been in charge for this, he wouldn't have gotten shot, right?"

"And he wouldn't have gotten his mate shot, either," Brooklyn said through gritted teeth.

"Bullshit! Your plan was good, or Adam wouldn't have gone along with it! If he'd had a better idea, believe me, he would have said so. How do you think Goliath would have handled this any better? Go on; name one thing he'd have done differently."

"He wouldn't have assumed that we'd be able to surprise Castaway, that's what!" Brooklyn said angrily, angry more at himself than at her. "And he wouldn't have stopped to perch in plain sight of the enemy's hideout; just asking for him to shoot at us!"

"A hideout that's a hotel room; a room that he hadn't moved into that long ago, according to what Lexington found in the computer. Do you think the hotel would let a guest start mounting trip-wires and other defenses in their building? And it's nearly three in the morning now; most humans are sound asleep! I don't know how he knew we were coming, but he had to have been not just awake but expecting us already, to have shot us when we hadn't been perched there for more than a minute. Goliath would have been just as surprised by the gunfire as you, and he's a bigger target, so he probably would have taken a couple more bullets—look out!"

Brooklyn looked up, cursed, and steered them away from the building they'd been heading towards; they'd been so caught up in their conversation and the pain they were both in, they hadn't noticed the wind current shifting direction, until it was almost too late. They cleared the building by several feet, but that put an end to conversation for a while.

When they were almost to the castle, Brooklyn concluded aloud, "At least we know our people weren't being held in that hotel room. Castaway wouldn't have abandoned it so fast if they were. Especially knowing that either hotel security or the fire department is going to come investigate why that alarm was set off, and check out the closest rooms in the process."

That was something, at least. But it still burned at him that Castaway had gotten away, with whatever he knew about the kidnap victims. Because Isabel was right, they wouldn't have been shot like that if Castaway hadn't been expecting trouble from them—and the most likely reason for expecting trouble was because he'd been involved in the kidnapping; that it had been done on Castaway's orders, if he hadn't done it himself!

Whether it was Brooklyn's fault or not, they'd failed in their mission. All he could now was hope that one of the other six teams succeeded in finding their missing people…

00oo00oo00oo00oo00

Inside the steel cell, the children had finally woken up. They were still sluggish and miserable from the effects of the drug, but they were awake and apparently all right, much to their mothers' relief.

Over the past several hours, the two women had kept to innocuous conversation in their talking, while discussing their options and strategies in sign language. It was slow going, because the version of sign language Fox had learned during her mercenary years was a different 'dialect' than the version Anne had been taught in the Labyrinth, and both of them frequently had to backtrack in response to puzzled looks and hand-spell out words and phrases that had been misinterpreted. Also, saying one thing while signing another is carrying on two conversations in two different languages at once, and Anne occasionally slipped up in her signing. But they'd kept at it, since there hadn't been much else to do besides cuddle and keep their children warm.

Though Fox had tried to do something else, once; roughly two hours after they had woken up, she had handed still-unconscious Alexander to Anne and gotten up, saying casually that she had gotten stiff from sitting for so long, and needed to stretch and walk out the stiffness. She'd made a slow circuit of the cell while stretching and moving this way and that… moves that happened to be a martial arts kata that she had learned years ago. And when she was ready and as far on the opposite side of the cell as she could get, she'd abruptly turned around and bolted for the featureless door, aiming straight for the seam where door met wall in a hard flying kick.

She'd hoped that the force of the blow would shatter the lock on the door, which had to open outwards since there were no hinges on their side. She'd done it before in years past, to wooden doors and even doors made of aluminum or sheet steel. Over the last few hours she'd remembered and counted back, and as far as she could recall, she had previously kicked in eleven doors…

But not this one. She'd hit it plenty hard, but the thick steel door had withstood the blow with barely the slightest dent at point of impact. Instead, she'd fallen to the floor cursing in pain, from the waves of agony radiating up from her right foot. Her low-heeled shoe had been completely shattered by the impact, falling away in pieces. And that wasn't all that had been shattered…

Anne had been trained in giving first aid as part of her childcare training, and after a brief examination she thought that Fox had broken at least two bones in her foot, probably more. She'd shouted aloud for their captor to bring in some bandages, ice packs and splinting materials.

After a short pause their unseen captor had responded, with a trace of nasty amusement in his voice. He'd informed them that Fox's injury likely wasn't fatal, and he saw no reason to supply anything for treating her foot, since she could just stay off it and sit there like a good girl until the ransom was paid. Over the hours Fox had thought up some new obscenities for their captor, and she would have shouted them just then, but she'd been too busy gritting her teeth and trying to keep from crying.

So Anne had improvised a soft splint, with three water bottles and the long-sleeved blouse she took off before putting her coat back on. The blouse was ripped to strips, and two water bottles were tied around Fox's foot and the third to her ankle, keeping it immobile. They had no ice packs, but the cool water in the bottles helped to draw away body heat and reduce the swelling. And with sheer pain overcoming any sense of embarrassment, Fox had opened her mouth wide and let Anne squeeze in a full twenty drops of liquid aspirin for infants, from the bottle in the diaper bag.

The diaper bag had long since been searched for anything else that could be helpful in escaping, as had their pockets and Anne's purse, but there was nothing. The cell phone Fox had bought for the nanny's use was missing from her purse, as were the cell phone and the Swiss Army knife Fox had been carrying before their kidnapping. So after doing what they could for Fox's foot, they'd gone back to just sitting with their children and waiting for them to wake up. And the soft pained whimpering as they'd finally begun stirring from the drug induced semi-comas, first Bethany and then Alexander, had been music to the mothers' ears.

After being given a bottle of formula and a diaper change, sung to and held while rocking for nearly an hour, Alexander finally stopped crying. After soothing him for a few minutes more, Fox whispered in her son's ear, "Alexander… call for Puck."

Soon after the night of Alexander's birth, Puck had established what he'd called a low-level telepathic bond with the newborn; done for the purpose of protecting and teaching the baby, as Oberon had charged him to do. Owen had assured the anxious parents that the bond would do the infant no harm, but it would allow the two of them to 'talk' to each other after a fashion when the infant was far too young for normal human speech, and it would let Puck know whenever his charge was in danger or in need of his help.

As it happened, the bond hadn't harmed Alexander, but it had changed him; telepathically 'talking' with Puck had boosted the development of his brain's speech center to the point that though only a few months old, Alexander could understand nearly everything said to him. (He didn't yet have the fine motor control for speaking intelligibly yet, but Fox was sure that when he did, he'd skip right past the usual one-word attempts and speak in full and grammatically correct sentences.) So Fox knew he understood what she wanted him to do; to telepathically call out for his guardian and teacher. The question was, could he actually do it through the steel walls of their cell? And was Owen/Puck even still alive to receive the message? The only way to find out, was to try.

Alexander stared at her solemnly, then closed his eyes. A faint glimmer of green glowed from beneath the closed lids… and then Alexander scrunched up his face and screamed.

00oo00oo00oo00oo00

Anne had been keeping Bethany occupied with singing nursery rhymes, coaching her on the second verse of "Four and Twenty Blackbirds," when both of them were jolted by Alexander suddenly screaming. The sort of scream that Anne knew from her years of working in day care centers, one not heard often but unmistakable; the scream of a child in really bad pain.

Anne instinctively hugged Bethany even closer to her, while spinning around to find out what had hurt Alexander. Had Fox dropped the baby? Or worse… oh, please let it not be deliberate child abuse, from a parent taking out their frustrations on the nearest soft target; she'd seen enough of that particular nightmare to last a lifetime…

But whatever had happened to Alexander, Fox hadn't done it deliberately; she was frantically rocking and shushing the baby, begging him to stop crying and swearing it would be all right, whatever 'it' was. And looking over at Anne with desperation in her eyes, silently but plainly begging for help with the baby.

Anne had plenty of experience with calming children, and knew Alexander wouldn't calm down until his mother did. So she set down Bethany while putting on her best 'friendly professional' face, took Alexander in her arms and rocked him, humming and speaking soothingly to him… and watching out of the corner of her eye as Fox visibly relaxed, assured her son was in good hands. In short order both mother and child were calm again.

Once everyone had calmed down, Anne leaned close enough to Fox for them to speak in whispers. And she asked carefully, "What happened earlier?"

Fox looked miserable as she whispered back, "I asked Alexander to try to contact Puck."

Anne knew about the telepathic bond between the Fey Trickster and the infant boy; she'd witnessed its use more than once, in the way the baby had seemed to brighten with delight just before Owen Burnett would spin around and bring Puck out to play, and when Puck had 'heard' Alexander's questions while giving the children lessons in magic. The bond had never hurt either teacher or student before; why had trying to contact Puck been so painful now?

She could think of only two reasons, both of them awful. Either Owen/Puck was in incredible pain at that moment, and in trying to contact him, Alexander had felt his teacher's pain… or the cold iron in the steel walls all around them were doing more than inhibiting the use of magic. That so much cold iron made using magic not only much harder, but painful to even attempt.

She swallowed hard, knowing that they had to put one of those theories to the test. Any minute now, Fox would suggest it… so she might as well suggest it herself. Bethany had no telepathic bond with Puck, but after only two months of lessons her daughter was as skilled as Alexander at simple magic such as levitation, and basic telekinesis.

After handing Alexander back to Fox, Anne took Bethany and cuddled her little girl on her lap again. And after a few moments of hugging she whispered quietly, "Bethany, do you remember my showing you how a doorknob works? With the little piece that pokes out of the door and sticks into the little hole in the doorjamb, and if someone makes the little piece stay in place, the door won't open?"

"Uh-huh," Bethany whispered back, her eyes wide and solemn; sensing this was important.

"Well, do you see that part of the wall that looks like a door?" as she quickly gestured at the door, hoping the brief gesture would seem innocuous to their captor if he was watching. "It really is a door, but there's no doorknob on this side; they forgot to put one in on this side. But I'm sure there's a knob on the other side, and the little piece that goes right in the middle… I want you to think about the little piece of the doorknob that goes inside the door, the little piece that's stuck inside the wall right now. If you can get it to move back inside the door, then we can open it and go home!"

That was all the incentive Bethany needed to try. Fox was looking alertly at them, sensing something was up, as Bethany snuggled into her mother's arms but turned to stare at the door.

And after a moment, Bethany's body went rigid. Another few moments more, and she began whimpering. After ten more seconds of staring at the door, she burst into tears. "It hurts, Mommy! An' the more I try, the more it hurts," she sobbed in Anne's arms.

"Ssshhh, sshhhh… There, there, it'll be all right… you tried your best, darling; now just leave it be. It'll be all right," Anne spoke soothingly past the massive lump in her throat and the tears that threatened to spill from her own eyes. Then she turned towards Fox and mouthed silently, she tried her best. And Bethany's best efforts had been not only defeated but punished by cold iron.

Fox nodded in bleak acknowledgement, and went back to rocking Alexander. There was nothing more to say, or do.

00oo00oo00oo00oo00

Jon Castaway hadn't been surprised by breaking-n-entering gargoyles, but six Quarrymen lieutenants were sure surprised. With minor variations, the same scene played out all across the city:

Breaking glass as two gargoyles burst in through the bedroom window.

Shouts and screams of alarm as the Quarryman lieutenant, and anyone else in bed with him, was roughly hauled out of bed and pinned to the floor with a taloned foot on the back.

One gargoyle held down the Quarryman and other adult if one was present, while the other quickly searched the home, wrecking or confiscating any weapons found in the process. In three homes, the searching was accompanied by screams and sobs from the people being held down, outright begging them not to harm the children.

Any children in nearby bedrooms, woken by the noise, saw gargoyle heads poking into their rooms just long enough to growl at them, "Stay in bed! Stay put until your parents come for you!" before their doors were slammed shut again and locked.

And after the homes were searched, the Quarryman lieutenants were flipped over onto their backs, to face eyes blazing white or red and voices growling with menace as they were interrogated about the kidnapped humans.

In all six cases, the gargoyles eventually satisfied themselves that those Quarrymen knew nothing about the kidnapping. Then the phones were smashed, and the gargoyles left the way they came… to the great surprise of the human residents, every time.

"Th-that's it? You're not going to kill and eat us?" Quarryman Lieutenant Harrison Worley asked, rubbing his bruised shoulder as he stared at the dark red, bald male gargoyle and the blue-green, black-maned female gargoyle stepping out through the shattered bedroom window onto the fire escape.

The male smiled as he picked up the Quarryhammer that had been tossed onto the fire escape earlier, and turned it on with a twist of the handle. "Well, if you really want us to…"

"N-no! Please don't!" Harrison's wife Debby begged, her eyes wide as saucers as she turned back from the bedroom door; she'd been about to go check on the children, not trusting the gargoyles' assurances that they were unharmed.

The gargoyles shrugged at each other and left, taking the Quarryhammer with them. Harrison stared disbelievingly out the window after them, while Debby went to check on the kids. When she came back in with a face grim as death, Harrison asked anxiously, "Are they okay?"

Debby said flatly, "Toby wet the bed."

Harrison breathed a sigh of relief. "That's all? Hell, tonight that's…" and his voice trailed off as he finally noticed the fury blazing in his wife's face as she advanced on him.

"I am going to change the sheets on Toby's bed and put him into clean pajamas," Debby announced as she backed Harrison up against the wall with one manicured finger jabbing at his chest. "You are going to find something to board up that window before we freeze to death. In the morning, I will buy a new phone and call a repairman to get that window replaced, and you will turn in your damn Quarryman uniform! Or better yet, burn it out in public, where everyone can see you do it! This wouldn't have happened to us if you hadn't joined them! And if it turns out they really did kidnap two women and their children…!"

00oo00oo00oo00oo00

After the six lieutenants were visited and knew nothing, the gargoyles had a conference via radios to compare notes, and to reorganize their teams. Cecelia and Lexington returned to castle; Cecelia to treat Brooklyn and Isabel's injuries, and Lexington with the confiscated hovercycle and other things taken from the Quarrymen, to do a more thorough search of their computer. Martin paired up with Robert, and the remaining five teams set out to find and question as many of the twenty squad leaders as they could before dawn.

In mid-winter, the graveyard shift ended before the night did. Matt and Elisa came to the castle as soon as their shift ended, to take the box of materials that had come from the Quarrymen's office and sift through it, looking for possible clues.

The gargoyle search parties returned to the castle at roughly the same time, after finding and questioning fifteen of the twenty Quarrymen squad leaders. Adam had called a halt to the searching at six a.m.; too many people were waking up all across the city, and the search parties were losing the element of surprise. "And not one of the people we questioned knew anything at all about the kidnapping," Adam told Brooklyn.

"Which could just mean Castaway went outside his organization to arrange it," Brooklyn growled as he rubbed at his bandaged shoulder; Cecelia had extracted the bullet, stitched him up and given him some gargoyles-safe painkillers, but they only reduced the pain to a dull throbbing. "The most likely reason for him to be expecting us tonight is that he's involved in the kidnapping!"

"If he went outside the Quarrymen, then he probably went to known criminals to arrange it, and those criminals might well be part of or connected to that Tony Dracon's gang that Elisa suspects. Humans have that saying, 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend'," Adam pointed out.

Brooklyn agreed he might be right, and he called Elisa in from her and Matt's work on the Quarrymen's materials, to help him and Adam plan their activities for the next night.

00oo00oo00oo00oo00

"Lexington?" Rebecca and Robert had been looking for their mate since they'd returned to the castle. They finally found Lexington in the nursery, sitting on the rug and hugging Alexander's winged teddy bear, trying not to cry.

"I tried everything I could think of," he told them in a small, broken voice. "I searched every file on that computer, reconstructed everything that had been deleted since the last defrag; stripped that thing down to the zeroes and ones! I retraced every website that had been visited and every email sent and received; hacked into every site I could… and I couldn't find anything about the kids, about where our people might be held captive or which of them did it. But they've got to be behind this; the Quarrymen are the only ones who are fanatical enough to do this to a little baby boy who only just learned how to crawl…"

"We'll find them, honey," Rebecca said comfortingly as she and Robert crouched together on the rug to wrap their wings around him. "We'll find them…"

"We'll find them," Robert echoed, before adding, "Lex, from what you told us about life up here and the gangs you've fought, I think you're really underestimating what that Tony Dracon and his gang would be willing to do, for no other reason than 'lots of money'. And there are those other people, the Pack that Fox used to be a member of. After Fox dumped them, after what Xanatos's scientists did to them, and after all the times you've thwarted them… They're sure to hold a grudge against everyone in the castle!"

"The FBI already thought of the Pack," Lexington said, sadly shaking his head. "Not because of us, but because they're known criminals, and Fox used to be one of them. And some gangs have a policy of not letting anyone leave their organization and live to tell about it. Martha showed me the notes she took, from listening in on the FBI's investigation. Hyena and Jackal are still in jail and in pieces; they were rebuilt only enough to live and to feed themselves, not to hurt anyone or break out of prison. Dingo's confirmed to be in Australia; the news feeds down there showed he was busy helping some park rangers take down a poaching ring, at the same time the kidnapping took place here. The only one the FBI agents haven't accounted for yet is Wolf. About three weeks ago, right after Thanksgiving, Wolf was transferred from Riker's Island to some other prison upstate, but the other prison says he never arrived there."

"Well, then; that's another definite suspect! Are they looking into what happened to the prison transport truck?" Rebecca asked.

"Yeah, as well as who actually gave the orders to have him transferred upstate, since he hadn't gone to trial yet. But…" Lexington shook his head again. "Wolf is stupid. He wasn't all that smart back when he was fully human; he may have been the leader but Fox was the brains of the Pack. After he got turned into a wolf-man, he was more brutish every time we ran into him. From what Hudson and Goliath told us about the last time they dealt with him, that Viking-haunted battleaxe had to do most of the thinking for him, to come up with an even halfway-effective plan of attack! There's no way he could have organized and pulled off the kidnapping, especially not with Owen there. Puck would have laughed at him and turned him into a yappy little Chihuahua if he'd tried to do it by brute force."

"Then perhaps it was done by whoever pulled strings to get Wolf out of Rikers," Robert suggested. "And when the FBI finds out who did it, and Martha tells us what they've found, the clan can pay them a visit in force. Or maybe we'll find our people tomorrow night, when we go after Dracon's gang. But in the meantime, Lex, come join us at the table, okay? Martha and Broadway are making breakfast for everyone; come and eat. Things always look better on a full stomach than an empty one…"

00oo00oo00oo00oo00

Matt and Elisa ate with the clan, but conversation at the table was subdued and minimal. Dawn came shortly after the meal was over.

The gargoyles posed for the day's sleep in the middle of the great hall instead of on the battlements; Brooklyn's decision, to reinforce Xanatos' pretence that the gargoyles had abandoned the castle for good. "After we find our people, we can decide again where we'll sleep, but for now we stay out of sight of any helicopters during the day. The only thing anyone will see on the battlements today, is the fake Hudson head on a platter."

Xanatos promised the gargoyles that he would have the hall doors locked after they went to sleep, so they wouldn't be found by the FBI or anyone else. Elisa and Matt wheeled two large sunlamps out from the castle's recently created clinic to the great hall; the sunlamps had been used to help Broadway heal after his wing had been shattered, and now they were set up in front of Brooklyn and Isabel's chosen spots to sleep. Elisa's reasoning was that since they were staying indoors instead of out in the sunlight, another source of solar energy should be brought in to help heal Brooklyn and Isabel's injuries.

Elisa stayed with the clan as they waited for dawn, talking quietly with Brooklyn, but Matt couldn't just stand around waiting for sunrise; he was still too agitated from everything that had happened. He and Elisa had searched through everything the gargoyles had brought from the Quarrymen's base of operations, and found nothing that could possibly be a clue about the kidnapping. With all the rosters, rolodexes and other things that had been in that box, even the phone's answering machine in case any messages had been left on it, it was likely that the Quarrymen had been hurt in more ways than one last night. But everything the clan had done to cripple the Quarrymen, hadn't helped one bit in getting their people back.

He looked up with a start, realizing that his wandering feet had brought him to the doorway of the nursery. This was where he usually saw Anne, in there minding the children, except for when they were asleep or when Lexington was cheerfully minding them instead. Then they'd spend time in the great hall, or some other public area. Old Hudson, who was about as subtle as a chainsaw, had hinted while watching television with them that they could find some privacy "for talking and such" in Anne's bedroom. But Matt had never set foot in that bedroom; he and Anne hadn't progressed beyond holding hands in their relationship. And now… would they ever do more than hold hands?

He walked inside the nursery, looking around. It was so painfully empty and silent… He was about to walk back out again, when something on the low table by the window caught his eye.

A child's drawing, three stick figures. Bethany's work; Alexander was still too young to wield a crayon. The drawing was of a child and two adults, all of them holding hands, smiling and happy. And the tallest adult had a scribbling of bright red hair…

00oo00oo00oo00oo00

After seeing the gargoyles to their daily rest, Elisa went looking for her partner. While looking, she passed Xanatos on the way to the roof, his face grim as he carried the stone head on a platter. "You really think some news helicopters will see the head all the way up there, and report it?" she asked skeptically.

"If not, then tomorrow at noon I'll set the damn thing down in the middle of Times Square. But the kidnapper's expecting me to try to keep everything quiet, not even telling the police about the kidnapping. A discreet sign of compliance is best for a start."

Elisa had to agree with that, so she left Xanatos to his somewhat grisly task while she continued searching. She soon found Matt in the nursery, clutching a crayon drawing in his hands; his face contorted with grief and the tears he was stubbornly refusing to shed.

"We'll find them," she said fiercely as she hugged Matt hard. "I swear to you, partner, one way or another we will find them!"

00oo00oo00oo00oo00

Dawn must have come at least an hour ago. Owen's watch had stopped working soon after he'd awakened; the electrical shocks had obviously damaged it, probably beyond repair. But Owen was reasonably sure it was long past dawn, because he hadn't heard from his captor and torturer for at least the last ten electrical zaps.

It was the only thing he could do to maintain his sanity; count everything that could be counted. He'd counted the number of steel plates in his cell. The number of lights, speakers and cameras embedded in the walls high out of his reach, and the number of portals that concealed other devices. And he had counted one hundred and fourteen jolts of electricity so far, with an average time of three hundred and sixty seconds between jolts. Variance in times between jolts was up to one hundred seconds in either direction, but that was the average.

The last twelve zaps had been exactly three hundred and sixty seconds, six minutes, apart. Such regular timing and the utter silence from the speakers surely meant that Thailog had set the controls to continue shocking him automatically, while the gargoyle slept. Xanatos had really taught him far too much about the benefits of planning ahead.

Zzzzzaaaapppp

…One hundred fifteen.

Owen hoped that Xanatos and the gargoyles would put a stop to Thailog soon. He had no doubt that Xanatos had summoned the gargoyles back from New Orleans and set them to searching the entire city, for the sake of the children if not Owen's own sake. Because Owen also had no doubt that Thailog was holding the children for ransom. He was quite sure...

Sure that Alexander was still alive and being held for ransom, at the very least. He could only hope and pray to Daanu that Bethany was still alive, too. If only he could ask… But he didn't dare. Not when his kidnapper held all the advantage. After awakening, he'd asked only once about what had happened to the children and women who had been in the limousine with him. Thailog had asked sweetly, "Do you truly care about their safety?"

"Only in that their safety matters a great deal to Xanatos, who is my employer," he'd said flatly. "Xanatos would no doubt pay dearly for their return." And after that he'd said nothing at all about the children. He dared not give any indication that their safety mattered the world to him, because that would give Thailog one more weapon to use to full advantage. If Thailog started broadcasting the children's tortured screams into the cell, while saying that their pain would stop when the Puck swore service to Thailog…

An oath that he couldn't swear. He'd already sworn an oath of a human lifetime of service to David Xanatos as Owen Burnett, and Puck had been bound by Oberon to use his powers only to protect and teach Alexander. The two bindings together would not let him serve anyone else.

And Owen dared not explain that to Thailog, because he knew that the gargoyle would find the loopholes in those oaths and exploit them to full advantage. After all, a lifetime of service to David Xanatos would end as soon as the man was murdered, by a sniper rifle or other means. And Thailog could threaten to kill Alexander as well, unless the Puck protected the baby from Thailog's wrath by doing whatever the gargoyle wanted.

All Owen could do was say nothing, keep his mouth shut, and wait for rescue. Wait, and count.

Three hundred fifty-five seconds. Three hundred fifty-six seconds. Three hundred fifty-seven seconds. Three hundred fifty-eight seconds. Three hundred fifty-nine seconds…

Zzzzzaaaapppp

…One hundred sixteen shocks…

00oo00oo00oo00oo00

Inside their steel cell, the women and children weren't lolling about in defeated despair and resignation to their fate… at least not yet. But after their failed attempts at escape and at summoning help, despair was seeping into the room, leaving an ugly, metallic taste in their mouths as it weighed down their souls. They had each of them dozed off at one time or another, but sleep brought only nightmares.

Fox muttered as she stroked Alexander's fine soft hair, "There must be something we haven't tried yet…"

Anne didn't bother to reply to that, instead attempting to once more soothe her daughter, who was sniffling back tears from her latest nightmare while curled up on her mother's lap. "We'll be okay, Bethany," she whispered into honey-blonde hair over and over, trying to convince herself as well. "The gargoyles will come back to New York; they probably came running last night, as soon as this happened. They'll find us and free us, you just wait…" But her eyes met Fox's over that small head of hair with worry in their depths. They had been kidnapped over 16 hours ago, according to Anne's watch; a full night and most of the morning had passed without their being found yet. And with every passing hour whatever trail their kidnapper might have left grew colder, and the likelihood of their being found decreased even more.

Their situation was getting steadily worse in other regards as well. They had the diaper bag, the bottles of water and the pile of packaged beef jerky strips that their captor had left in the corner for food and drink, and a covered plastic bucket that had been left in another corner for use as a toilet, but nothing else. Anne always stocked the diaper bag with enough diapers and sealed bottles of formula for a day-long outing, and Fox had used only two diapers and one bottle of formula while at her father's home. But since their awakening those baby supplies had been steadily decreasing, and they doubted that their unseen and uncaring captor was going to come in any time soon to provide more.

They could live with the inevitable stench from overfull diapers and deal with the equally inevitable diaper rash, but once they ran out of food for Alex… Fox now wanted to kick herself for opting to let her milk dry up and feed Alex formula instead of nursing him. Anne looked forlornly at the last bottle of formula as they rationed it out to the baby, and wondered aloud if she could do as their primitive ancestors had done; feed Alex with bits of beef jerky that she'd pre-chewed to break up and soften with saliva. The thought made Fox grimace, but she'd seen worse while fighting as a mercenary in Africa.

But even that could only last for so long. There had to be something they could do to get out, or at least communicate with the world outside… but what?! They didn't have a gargoyle's strength or claws, for ripping through the steel; they had no tools to assist in a breakout; the children couldn't use their magic…

But the kids weren't the only ones with magic.

Alex had inherited his magical abilities from Fox herself, the daughter of Queen Titania of Avalon. But Fox had never been trained in her abilities; she hadn't even known she had them until the night of Alexander's birth. She'd watched one of Alex's lessons with Puck on the day Anne and Bethany had arrived at the castle, but something in her had recoiled from actually learning magic; she'd kept finding excuses to do something else whenever the time for magic lessons loomed.

Fox knew she could take a lot more pain than two tender young children; could probably withstand it long enough to work an effective spell. And she angrily asked herself why she'd been so cowardly about using her heritage for so long; if they got out of this—no, WHEN they got out! WHEN! She'd by God sit in on every lesson Puck taught until she could sling spells with the best of them! So what if it meant she couldn't handle the touch or sound of iron anymore; she'd learn to live with that. She'd trade in her favorite Glock 9mm for one of those fancy new composite-material handguns that airport security stations were so paranoid about.

But first, they had to get out of here… and she knew no magic spells. She still didn't know how she'd managed to conjure up a bolt of pure magical force hard enough to knock Oberon off his feet, the night they'd all defied his attempt to take Alex away. But still, she'd done it once, when she'd absolutely had to… and now, they absolutely had to get out of here.

Fox abruptly handed her fretful son over to Anne again. "Here, take him for a minute, and try to keep them both quiet. I need to concentrate," she said tersely.

"Concentrate on what?" Anne asked, even as she gathered Alex into his arms and tried to still his whimpers.

"On getting us the hell out of here. The kids aren't the only ones with power…" she whispered in Anne's ear before she turned towards the door. She awkwardly scooted herself across the floor until she was only four feet away from the sealed entrance, with her broken foot stuck out in front of her, and glared at the door as she concentrated with all her might. If she was capable of knocking Oberon flat on his ass, she should be able to blow that damn door clean off its hinges. Ignoring the throbbing pain still radiating her foot, she focused on the door while chanting internally, Break it down. My baby's in danger. Hit it hard. My baby's in danger. Hit it HARD

After interminable seconds of steadily rising tension, with Fox glaring unrelentingly at the door and Anne and the children staring at her in mixed worry and hope, the hair on all their heads began to frizz, while the hair on their arms stood up as if they had encountered a massive charge of static electricity. And Fox began to glow ever so slightly, with a pale green light…

And suddenly brilliant verdant energy vomited out of her mouth and eyes, a beam of pure magical force, the very essence of power aimed directly at the door.

But never reaching it… just inches away from impact with the cold steel, the magical force suddenly imploded, recoiling on itself as if someone had suddenly blocked a stream of green water with a cupped hand. The cloud of force grew in all directions for a split-second, before bursting like a popped bubble… If soap bubbles could emit screeches loud enough to shatter eardrums as they died.

The magical backlash knocked Fox halfway across the room, to impact against the rear wall hard enough that it hurt almost as much as the explosion going off behind her eyes.

When she finally returned fully to her senses, she found herself lying down with Anne's jacket bundled up for a pillow under her aching head, and the nanny and children huddled around her, tearfully begging her to be all right.

"I'm okay," she muttered, as she waved them off. She was lying, and they all knew it, but they allowed her to keep what was left of her pride. She started to sit up, but the way the room spun around her when she tried, convinced her to stay horizontal for a little while longer. She settled back down, thinking sourly, Iron 3, Magic 0...