Susan clutches her answers, those precious papers, to her chest with her left hand; at her side, her right is clenched tightly enough that her trimmed nails dig painfully into her palm.
The Huntsmaster is watching and reading into every tremor, every fleeting expression, and all she knows is that however much he's seeing, it's too much.
It's been too long since she's played a game like this; he is surely more practiced.
As it is, she values the answers she holds within these papers and those she may yet win more than she does answers to questions she can simply ask when she isn't sure if she'll ask the right questions. So far, she's only spent one question on context: how did you know?
She knows it was arguably foolish. She'd known it even at the time, yet she'd asked it anyway. It is a question which could refer to many things, and without specificity, the Huntsmaster could have taken it any way he'd wished, even if he had still deigned to answer her truthfully in the spirit of their little game.
Yet instead of forcing her to use more questions to get the information she'd sought, he'd answered the question she'd meant to ask in all its unspoken detail.
It's disquieting.
Knowing that he hadn't tried to sidestep her tells her almost as much as his answer itself.
It isn't simply that she and Jake realized they are family, a realization that did not go unnoticed by the Huntsclan, given her continued meetings with Jake; nor is it that the Huntsmaster knows her to be connected to the magical world, even if the Huntsmaster's explanation of such comes across as a sickening taunt. There are a thousand different ways she could try to salvage the situation if that were all, if he thought her little different from him and believed her to be nothing more than a human with knowledge of the magical world.
Instead, he faces her with a conviction that cannot be shaken by a few whispered words to sow doubt.
He knows that she—and therefore her children—are magical creatures.
More to the point, he knows what they are, and no silver-tongued answer of hers will have him thinking differently.
Whatever the Huntsclan had managed to confirm about her family in the past had surely stopped short of revealing their carefully guarded secret, but now….
Now, that's not the case.
Now, the Huntsmaster is certain, as the evidence is too explicit to be believably explained away.
42's drones had had cameras.
In hindsight, it's obvious. She knows they must have had them; 42 had been using those drones to look for Jake. They'd gotten distracted once they'd been caught and 42 had shown up in the flesh, but Jake—
That's when the Huntsmaster had learned about Jake. Whatever the Huntsmaster's earlier suspicions about the situation had been, Jake had exposed his secret to free them. A single transformed hand might not have been enough for an initiate to be positive about Jake's true nature, but the Huntsmaster…. He'd know a dragon's talon when he saw one. He wouldn't have needed the confirmation of Jake's transformed arms to be confident of what sort of magic ran in Jake's blood. He'd have started making plans before the footage had ever reached that point.
It's one reason why she's not surprised that he wanted her to know what he knew.
She tries to take comfort in the fact that the information had come late, after 42 had arrived at headquarters, turned in his equipment to surveillance, and filed a report that had included faults of that equipment which had been uncovered in the field—a report that is false because it wasn't the equipment that had been faulty but 42's knowledge and therefore his account of the events. She doubts a human could have freed themselves in the time she and Jake had fled the scene, and 42 had thought himself hunting down a former comrade, not his usual prey.
He hadn't been prepared.
From what she's gleaned from Jake, if 42 hasn't already been punished for his foolhardiness and lack of preparation, he'll be desperately trying to make up for it.
Still.
The Huntsmaster might not be lying when he claims he'd taken the footage for a personal examination after hearing 42's report. After all, if he'd already had his suspicions about Jake, about her, about all of them, then he'd have had more than enough reason to look into anything suspicious. As far as the rest of the Huntsclan goes, though…. She doubts 42 had been in any shape to review the footage himself—or that he'd seen much of it, even if he had made an attempt to do so. Right now, the Huntsmaster may very well be the only one loyal to the Huntsclan who knows Jake's secret.
Of course, he also claims he made copies of the footage, which means Susan has to hope those copies—if they truly exist—are ones Arthur (or Spud, rather) could have erased.
Susan glances away from the burning eyes of the Huntsmaster to look at the Huntstaff, still securely held between them, still faintly lit with a dying green glow from the last magical burst that had set paper aflame.
It feels like there's more ash between them than there is paper in her hands, though she knows that's not true.
She'd agreed to answer the Huntsmaster's questions truthfully, and she has, even though she isn't bound by her oath to him as Jake had been in his pact to her. Lying is a risk she isn't sure she can take, though lies by omission are a loophole she's still trying to exploit. She's not sure how much more he knows that he hasn't told her, but it's clearly enough for him to suspect her of doing so, even when he isn't certain.
The first paper had burned when she'd mildly said she would answer him and that she simply didn't intend to do so right now.
The second paper had burned when she'd answered in Cantonese.
The third had burned when the Huntsmaster had decided he hadn't liked the truth of her answer, and he'd laughed at her outcry.
She isn't hiding her emotions nearly as well as she'd like, since too many partial truths have resulted in information lost to her forever.
"Well?" prompts the Huntsmaster, and she meets his gaze again as he shifts his Huntstaff and threatens to let another paper be devoured by green flame.
The question this time is a simple one, but it's a damning one all the same.
What is the name of the American Dragon?
He knows that she knows it. He'd already used one of his questions to confirm as much, though they both know it wasn't truly necessary. He's asking a question to which he already suspects the answer, even if dragons have kept their secrets well enough that he cannot understand the truth of that answer.
If Marty hadn't cut out Haley's dragon chi, the Huntsmaster wouldn't have had any doubt about the American Dragon's identity. That single reckless act has spared Haley this long, but now….
The Huntstaff glows anew, brightening until magical fire flares into existence at its tip.
Susan shakes her head, and the Huntsmaster lets the paper catch and holds it as it burns between them. There's hardly a breath of wind now, but it catches and spins a few glowing embers away before they die. The rest of the paper is devoured by the flame, blackening to ash and crumbling to fall between them, a stark reminder of the secrets sacrificed by her silence.
The Huntsmaster reaches into his satchel again, but instead of pulling out another sheet of paper, another piece of the puzzle, he withdraws one entire folder. They look identical on the outside, and he's been drawing from both intermittently, so she's not even sure whose information is contained inside.
It hardly matters.
"Answer," demands the Huntsmaster, "or lose the rest."
She can't answer.
She can't afford not to answer.
Can she?
If she doesn't answer, she won't know the true value of what she loses. Its loss may never be felt, the importance of what they do know filling in the gaps, or it might haunt her for the rest of her life. She—Jake, Rose, all of them—might be left seeking answers where there are none. Her relationship with her son is tenuous enough as it is, for all that he was willing to risk everything to help Haley. If he decides to blame Susan, to never forgive her, to abandon their family because of her choice—
She doesn't want to think he would, but she doesn't know her son half as well as she'd like.
Of course, it may not even matter if she lets the Huntsmaster burn that folder and then the next one.
Her continued silence might be answer enough, confirmation even if it's not spoken aloud.
If she does answer….
Even if she does answer, wiping away any last trace of doubt, there will still be a chance.
She'll only have one chance, and if she misses it, if she fails, she'll have torn down every careful defense her father has ever built to protect both her family and the magical world.
She tightens the fist of her right hand further still, unable to relax and hide behind a blank mask, but the pain does nothing to ground her. It's a wonder she isn't shaking as she stretches out her left arm to allow him to place the folder on top of the other papers. It's a wonder she's standing, making the choice she is. "Haley Long."
It's a surprise, a bitter relief, that he surrenders the folder to her possession and lets her cradle it against her chest.
That's when she knows that he doesn't care how much she learns. He won't risk her finding freedom unless he's already secured a greater prize.
Something inside her twists.
It feels like she's traded her daughter for her son.
She closes her eyes to wait for the Huntsmaster's next question, but the chime of an arriving elevator comes first.
Fear fills her anew as she looks over to see Haley and Jonathan bursting onto the rooftop.
Jonathan carries a duffel bag over one shoulder, and Susan doesn't need to ask what it contains.
Neither, it seems, does the Huntsmaster.
Not when he was right about them coming here.
The sharpened blades of his Huntstaff hover a hairsbreadth from her throat, and Haley stops halfway across the rooftop, her cry of "Mom!" dying away.
"Let her go," Jonathan says, his voice steadier than she'd have thought it could be in this situation, "and we'll give you what you really want."
"Show me," commands the Huntsmaster. Jonathan opens the bag wide enough to pull out a skull—a real crystal skull; Susan can tell that even from this distance—and the Huntsmaster growls, "All of them."
"Release her first."
"Set them into the mouths of the gargoyles," he counters, "and I'll stand down."
Haley looks to Susan with panicked eyes before turning back to her father and nodding.
They must have a plan.
There must be some plan beyond giving the Huntsmaster exactly what he wants.
The Huntsmaster shifts her to keep Jonathan and Haley in their sight as the two of them walk slowly to each of the gargoyles, placing a skull into every gaping maw.
Susan lets out a breath as they stop after the eleventh one.
"Let her go," Jonathan repeats as he turns back to face them.
"You haven't finished yet."
There's a brief flash of dismay on Haley's face and guilt on Jonathan's, but it's too clear to hope that the Huntsmaster will have missed it.
Haley takes the twelfth skull from the bag. "I'll put it into the gargoyle's mouth at the same time as you let her go," she says. "Is that fair?"
The Huntsmaster laughs. "Fairness has nothing to do with this, 98. Do as you've been ordered."
Haley's mouth twists. "I'm not part of the Huntsclan anymore. I've renounced them."
"Good," growls the Huntsmaster. "Then there will be no lingering confusion when I slay you."
Haley's wide-eyed and frozen in place—Susan's not sure if the Huntsmaster's words are shocking enough to still her or if she's trying to reach for power she no longer has and hasn't developed the instinct she needs to react when it doesn't rise within her—but the Huntsmaster is already moving, leaving Susan with a shove that sends her sprawling in a flurry of papers as he charges directly at Haley.
Directly for the final skull.
Susan hasn't gotten back to her feet and Jonathan and Haley have barely managed to move a step before a bolt of green knocks the Huntsmaster to the side. He recovers before fully falling, pivoting with the force of his momentum and turning back with a snarl. He spins his Huntstaff around to fire his own bolt of energy at the newcomer, but it's deflected off a shield made of the same sort of magic. As the spinning staff stops and the shield dissipates, Susan sees Jake.
She hadn't heard the elevator chime again; he hadn't come that way.
Of course, if the Huntsclan had planned to use the Aztec Skulls with the Pantheon Gargoyles, they'd have undoubtedly scouted out multiple paths to this very rooftop. The initiates might not have been told why, the senior agents might have believed it to be in preparation for an operation to which they were not yet privy, but if they'd learned as part of their training regardless….
"Stand down, 99." The Huntsmaster's staff is pointed at Haley now, though Susan knows it would spin in her direction the moment she tried to do more than stand. Frankly, she's lucky he didn't throw any knives her way as an incentive to keep down. Then again, chances are good he doesn't want to give her any weapons she could turn against him. "If you do not, your little family reunion won't be a happy one."
"I'm no longer 99," Jake says, and before Susan can fully comprehend the words and accept what it means, he's running, sprinting towards the Huntsmaster—
The Huntsmaster fires a blast of energy that sends the skull from Haley's hands. Jonathan rushes to help her as she tumbles back with a sharp cry, and Susan leaves behind the papers—their answers—before the opportunity to play her final card vanishes entirely. The Huntsmaster's next bolt of energy flies towards Jake, but Jake—
Jake's motions are fast. Fluid. He doesn't miss a step even as he ducks and changes direction, and when he dives for the skull—
The Huntsmaster gets there first.
Susan's running, but she knows she won't make it to that final gargoyle before he does.
The moment the Huntsmaster places the skull in the gargoyle's mouth, the skull begins to glow. A beam of light—of magic—shoots sideways to the next skull, and the same continues all around until every skull is connected and magic hums in the air with an intensity Susan's rarely ever felt, even on the Isle of Draco.
Susan leaps, hoping she'll be able to knock the Huntsmaster off balance before he can pull out the thirteenth skull.
She sees the Huntsmaster's free arm move in a throwing motion before she can register what, exactly, he threw.
She barrels into him, knocking him down and sending that horrifying dragon skull flying off his head to shatter against the parapet by one of the gargoyle's feet, but he's turned the tables on her in seconds. Breath explodes out of her as she hits the roof hard. It feels like she's done a belly flop onto water, and not by mere inches. She wants to curl up and wheeze until she can catch her breath, but there's a knee digging into her back, and all she can do is gasp for breath and stare at the fine shower of brown hair that settles around her.
Sphinx hair.
It's sphinx hair.
She knows it on sight. It's never affected her, but her family….
The weight from her back disappears, and Susan rolls onto her side to see Jake and the Huntsmaster circling each other, Huntstaves at the ready. The Huntsmaster is saying something to Jake, and he's saying something back, but Susan can't bring herself to focus on their words. She uncurls her scraped right hand instead, needing to know what damage—if any—has been done.
Beyond Jake and the Huntsmaster, Jonathan is helping Haley to her feet and looking her over, and Susan knows he'll take care of her and try to keep her out of this.
Because she's as human as he is right now.
Neither of their children are affected by the sphinx hair, Susan realizes as she forces herself to sit up, because neither of them have their dragon chi.
It's a blessing, really, if only because Jonathan would have had a lot more trouble keeping Haley from the fight if she'd had it, and she'd have been an easy target for the Huntsmaster once he'd scattered the sphinx hair. She'd have been far better leverage than Susan has ever been, too.
The Huntsmaster's satchel is mere feet from Susan again, taunting her, but even as Susan reaches for it, Rose is there.
Susan has no idea when she'd arrived, either.
Rose pulls the skull free of the satchel and stares down at it, holding it tightly as it shakes in her hands. If she lifts it just a little bit higher so the magic can connect through it—
Susan doesn't know how much Rose knows about the skulls.
The Huntsmaster takes a vicious swipe at Jake before calling out, "Huntsgirl, give me the skull."
Jake, who'd dodged the strike with a roll, stays in a crouch and looks to Rose. Susan's on her feet herself by the time Rose lifts her eyes to the Huntsmaster. "I'm not Huntsgirl anymore."
"If you wish to be reinstated, give me the skull." The words are accompanied by another blast of energy in Jake's direction that sends him from his feet again, but he's quick enough that he isn't hit.
Well, he's quick enough the first time.
He isn't the second time, the force of it sending him nearly to the other side of the roof. His Huntstaff clatters down not far from where he'd been hit, too far for any of them to snatch it up before the Huntsmaster could attack.
Susan has only taken two steps towards the Huntsmaster before his weapon is pointed at her. Their proximity means it's once again uncomfortably close. "Stay down," he calls out to Jake, "or I'll send her over the side." His eyes flick to Rose. "Huntsgirl?"
Rose bites her lip and glances at Jake, at Haley and Jonathan, and then back towards Susan and the Huntsmaster. "Forgive me for questioning, Master, but what about 18's challenge? Her blood is on my hands. The others won't accept me as Huntsgirl."
"They will if I decree it."
"But 18—"
"18 knew the potential consequences of disobeying orders to issue that challenge. The others know our rules as well as you do. The position will remain yours, undisputed, if you give me that skull."
Rose takes a step forward.
Towards the Huntsmaster.
Susan really hopes she has a plan.
"93," Jake calls out, but Rose doesn't stop. "Rose!" His voice sounds broken. Defeated.
Rose keeps walking.
She doesn't look back at Jake.
She won't meet Susan's eye, either.
The Huntsmaster's attention seems to be more on Rose and Jake—and, more peripherally, on Haley and Jonathan—than on Susan, for all that he's aware enough of her movements to keep his weapon on her, so she decides it's time to play her last move in this little game of theirs.
Susan drops to a roll, missing the Huntsmaster's first strike as he reacts, and surges up on his other side as he turns to deal with her. One hand goes for his mask, and the fabric must have been weakened and worn because she doesn't merely pull it down; she succeeds in tearing it open. She's too close for him to blast her without catching it himself, too close for him to wield his Huntstaff in more mundane ways, and—
Pain lances through her arm from a cut made by a knife she doesn't see until it's too late, and her hand opens of its own accord and drops what she'd so carefully guarded. He might not have known what she'd held, but he'd clearly noticed she'd been guarding something or he might have decided to strike her in the heart instead. He's using her to temper Jake's actions—likely Haley's, too—but if he decides she's more trouble than she's worth….
Susan hits the rooftop hard and finds the blade of the Huntstaff once more at her throat. "Try that again," growls the Huntsmaster, "and you'll find you've already seen your last sunrise."
Susan watches with wide eyes and says nothing, not even as she sees Rose pick up the vial she'd dropped while the Huntsmaster's back is still turned.
Somehow, it hasn't broken.
"Master," Rose says once she's straightened again, the vial carefully hidden within one hand. The Huntsmaster steps to the side at her words so that he doesn't have his back turned on either of them. With one hand still on his weapon, he holds the other out for the skull. Rose ducks her head as if in deference before finishing quietly, "Is not a name I'll ever call you again."
She thrusts the skull towards Susan as if she were passing a medicine ball before launching herself at the Huntsmaster.
He isn't able to swing his weapon around before she hits him in the chest, sending them both to the rooftop, and then—
He stops fighting, and Susan stands—skull clutched to her chest—in time to see the last few drops of the grass green memory potion dripping into his mouth from the vial as Rose pulls it from between his lips.
"Thank you," she says to Rose as the girl pockets the empty vial.
"Better him than anyone else," Rose mutters as she climbs off his chest and gets to her feet with stilting movements that suggest she's pushed herself farther than she should have. The Huntsmaster looks dazed but shifts as if to rise as well before Rose commands, "Stay down. We'll help you up when it's time to go." Looking at Susan, she asks more softly, "Any other suggestions?"
With such a fresh potion, they won't have a long period to influence what the Huntsmaster remembers. If they intend to plant any other suggestions, it will need to be sooner rather than later.
More to the point, any course of action they take will need to be sooner rather than later, but at least if they run out of time, they'll have warning when the Huntsmaster rises by himself.
Susan glances down at the skull but pitches her voice so that the others will hear it. "This could take care of it, should we choose to use it."
"Is that a good idea?" Jonathan asks as the others cross the rooftop to join her and Rose on this side. "Do we want to use something the Huntsclan wanted? Shouldn't we just destroy them?"
"They can make things better," Haley counters. "We could wish for anything. We could wish that Jake was never taken by the Huntsclan." She glances at Rose and amends, "That neither of you were ever taken by the Huntsclan, I mean."
"Wouldn't that mean we wouldn't have met?" Jake asks, sounding about as happy with that idea as Rose looks.
"Likely," Susan answers quietly.
"You'd have to destroy the future of the Huntsclan to preserve that, but not its past," Rose says. "Jake, Haley, and I have renounced it, but you'd need to break everyone's ties to it—now and in the future. Otherwise, it would only reform."
"It could still reform with that sort of wish," counters Jake. "Too many people in the Huntsclan want to be tied to it not to create it again, even if it were under another name. You'd have to destroy it."
"You can't," Haley says, shifting on her feet as everyone turns to her. "I mean, you can destroy it, but you—we—can't destroy all the people within it. Even if you make sure Jake and Rose aren't affected by your wish, even if you can exempt them somehow, they aren't the only good ones who are—were—part of the Huntsclan. We can't just destroy everyone."
Jonathan says nothing, merely looking at Susan with an expression that tells her he trusts her judgement in this.
She takes a slow, steadying breath, and hopes that she's worthy of that trust. They're nearly out of time; the Huntsmaster will only be disoriented for so long, and if they don't choose to use the skulls, she doesn't want to deal with him and one or more of the guardians of the skulls come to protect their charges at the same time. Depending on how close the guardians are, one might show up even if all that is left is crystal shards; the ties the guardians have to the skulls might break with them, but the pull of magic this strong will take more than a few seconds to dissipate.
"As I understand it, we need to preserve some aspects of the Huntsclan and not others." Susan meets each of their eyes before asking, "Do you trust me?"
Haley and Jonathan nod immediately, but Rose and Jake look at each other instead.
"I could get this wrong," admits Susan. "Even when being specific, I might miss something. We'd all have to live with the consequences if I do."
"Try it," Rose says at length. "I doubt your attempt to improve things will make it much worse for us than it already is." Susan nods to her but looks to Jake.
"If this affects us anyway," he says slowly, "you'll help us find each other?"
"I'll do everything I can," she promises, and Jake nods.
Before she can lose her nerve, Susan lifts the skull above her head.
Immediately, magic streams from each of the surrounding twelve skulls into the one she holds, and Susan hopes this isn't a mistake.
It's not the choice her father would make. He'd never make a wish for personal gain. But this wouldn't be for personal gain, not entirely. It would be on behalf of the magical world, on behalf of all those living in fear…. She could even make sure that those who have found better lives within the Huntsclan aren't abandoned. If the Huntsclan pretends to be a prestigious academy, it can still be that—as long as it isn't fashioning weapons out of its students to turn them on the magical world.
Her father isn't always right.
He wasn't right about Jonathan, and he wasn't right about Jake.
He might have been wrong about this, too.
Susan takes a breath to steady herself, smiles at them all in a show of confidence she doesn't truly feel, and makes her wish.
