Follow Me When the Sun Goes Down (30 page)

“I guess not,” he shrugged, glancing once more at Rob before he squared his shoulders and focused on me again.  “The important thing is, I wanted to tell you I’ve been thinking.”

“A dangerous pastime.  I know,” I sang.  I just couldn’t help myself.  Not that I thought of him in terms of Gaston from
Beauty and the Beast,
but for some reason I was in a good mood and the lyrics slipped out.  Bishop stared at me blankly, completely missing the reference, and I remembered his exposure to children’s movies was extremely limited.  “I’m sorry, you were saying?”

“Right.  About what you did to Angel…”

Ugh, another lecture.
  “I don’t want to hear about how you think I should’ve left it to Order justice, okay?”

“No, that’s not…”

“Or how I shouldn’t have left an enemy out there either.” 

“Anja, I think you made the right call.”

“You do?” I blinked.

“I do,” he smiled softly.  “She and I had a chance to talk last night and some things she said really got to me.  About the choices we make in this life, and about starting over.”

Was he asking me for my blessing to start over with her?  I guess that was sweet in a way, although the thought of him starting anything with her made my flesh crawl, even with the personality overhaul I’d given her.  “Well, you should, if it’ll make you happy.”

Bishop broke into a wide smile, the tension draining from his stance.  “I’m glad to hear you say that.  I thought… well, I thought it might be too late.”

The smile reassured me I’d done the right thing in supporting him.  In the end all I wanted was for him to be happy, even if it wasn’t with me.  “It’s never too late to start the rest of your life… or however that bumper sticker goes.  Angel might not be my favorite person, but if you want to try again with her, I say go for it.” 

“Wait… Angel?”  His face clouded.  “No, I’m not talking about starting over with Angel.”

Now he had me confused.  “What are we talking about then?  Oh…”  It came to me after far too many minutes of stupidity.  He meant starting over with me.  Boy howdy, did his timing stink!  “Bishop, I…”

“Oh good, you’re both together,” Aubrey drawled, pushing the office door back open again.  Tucker let out a low growl and Rob instantly tensed beside him, edging slowly toward me. 

“We’re in the middle of something right now, Aubrey.  Come back later,” Bishop bit out. 

“This is my office isn’t it?” Aubrey made a show of looking around.  “Yes, I do believe I am the current Warden of Vetis, so have a care how you speak to me, brother.”

“We can go talk somewhere else,” I suggested, not wanting to be the cause of any more bad blood between them, but Aubrey held up a hand.

“What a good suggestion,” he smiled.  “Let’s all go talk somewhere nice and private-like.”  His hand fell to his side, and in the same instant, six members of the Order filed in
.  Fisher was among them, only he wouldn’t look me in the eye. 

“What’s this about?” Bishop’s eyes narrowed, pushing me behind him protectively.

“I thought you wanted privacy.”

“I want to know what you’re up to.”

“Come along then, all will be revealed in due time,” Aubrey smiled, clearly enjoying himself.

“We’re not going anywhere with you,” Bishop held his ground, but I side stepped him
.  We weren’t getting anywhere.

“What’s this all about, Aubrey?” I asked.

“About your false claims to our bloodline, sweets, and your lover’s part in your shenanigans.”

Frak! 
I did not see that one coming at all.  Clearly, neither did Bishop or Rob and we all stared back at him stupidly.  “What are you talking about?” I tried for a laugh, but it came out more like a nervous titter.

“Don’t
play coy, it demeans you.” 

“This is low, even for you, Aubrey,” Bishop glowered, tensed and ready to spring into action.  I wasn’t sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing to try and calm him down.  If things really were as dark as they seemed, it might be better to try and fight our way out of there. 

“Aubrey, I know you’re upset,” I said gently.

“Not at all.  It seems I might have occasion to sample your charms even sooner than I’d thought.”  Aubrey’s smile turned ugly, an open leer and his meaning crystal clear. 

Bishop’s muscles coiled to strike but it was Rob who launched himself at Aubrey first.  “You won’t touch her, you sodding bastard!”

The room exploded into action around us at that cry.  Rob connected with Aubrey’s shirt, but before he could follow up with a pounding, the flimsy material tore as the Warden danced away.  Bishop leapt into the fray as the Order brought out their arms, half attempting to subdue Bishop by hand and half shooting at his exposed back. 

“No!” I screamed, worried they might be loaded with ACBT, and that would be the end of him or all of us.  “Stop it, stop fighting!  Stop…” A dart hit me in the neck, and before I could so much as shriek, my limbs grew heavy, as though they were weighed down with sand.  I tried to shout a warning, but my lungs wouldn’t expand enough to draw in a breath after I was shot with two more darts. 

The only comfort was that I didn’t feel the same way I had when I’d drunk from Evan at all
, so I didn’t think they were shooting us with ACBT.  I felt foggy and sluggish, and it dimly occurred to me that they were shooting with plain old tranquilizer darts.  After Aubrey’s ugly threat, I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing, or a bad thing.  Bishop crashed to the ground next to me, Aubrey’s boot pinning him easily as the drugs weakened him too. 

Faust burst into the room
. I couldn’t see anyone else, but there were multiple feet behind him.  “What the hell is going on?” he demanded. 

I reached my hand out to him.  Well, I wanted to, but in reality all that happened was my fingers twitched in his direction.  Where was Rob?  I couldn’t see him anywhere.  I could hear Tucker growling, and a howl of pain at the snap of his jaws. 

“Just cleaning house,” Aubrey replied, his boot shoving savagely into Bishop’s neck.

“Anja is not one of your subjects.  You can’t treat the Elder of the West like a common criminal.”

“Ah, but is she truly the Elder?  I agree, she’s not one of my subjects, but I submit that she gained her post under false pretenses.” 

“Such as what?”

“Lineage for one.  I can guarantee, she never met Carys a day in her life.”  My heart sank as he declared it openly and I could only lay there and wonder – had he always known, or did he somehow figure it out after I rejected him? 

“This isn’t for you to decide,” Faust insisted. 

“I agree,” a voice I didn’t recognize chimed in.  “That is my domain.”  Polished, black shoes threaded their way through the broken furniture, coming to a stop before me, only I couldn’t turn my head to look at him.  All I could do was stare at Bishop’s profile, his eyes bulging with impotent rage mingled with pain.  “Bring them all down below for questioning.” 

“No…”  I managed to make a sound with the last of my breath, but it came out frustratingly weak. 

The man squatted down beside me, peering into my face as though I was an interesting specimen stuck to his shoe.  He wore a black suit instead of the usual Order garb, but that made him no less threatening to me.  “Leave this one to me, personally.”  Without warning, he plucked a pistol out of a nearby hand and shot me once more for good measure.  Not with a tranquilizer dart this time, but with a regular bullet, and the drugs did nothing to muffle the searing pain that spread through my knee. 

There was a crash of glass and a distinctively wolfish yelp of pain before everything went dark. 

I have no idea how much time went by before I woke up, cuffed to a chair with thick manacles at my wrists and ankles in a dank, darkened cell.  It figured, I had to get busted in the one place that had an actual prison built into it.  Moisture clung to the stone walls and the light that filtered in through the heavy barred door looked about as far removed from the sun as possible. 

The only thing that separated it from every fantasy dungeon I’d ever seen in the movies was the smell.  It wasn’t filled with the stench of rotting flesh and human filth because it wasn’t a human jail at all.  The air smelled vaguely of disinfectant and moss, but there were no other scary scents to anticipate.  Somewhere in the distance I could detect traces of a smoky flame, but it felt remote.

Besides the chair I sat on, there was another chair, smaller, more modern, tucked away in the corner of the room, and a low cot suspended from the rear wall. 

My wrists strained at the cuffs.  How strong was I?  Could I break free?  All I had to do was break the chains, not the manacles themselves.  Still, they were heavy links, and all I ended up with for my trouble were raw wrists.  My knee throbbed something fierce too.  The pretty pink skirt was matted and stiff, stuck to my leg with dried blood.  It didn’t feel like it was still bleeding and I didn’t scent fresh blood in the air, but trying to break my ankle free brought a sharp jab of pain.

The door opened with a clang of metal, the mysterious shooter stepping in casually, without an escort.  “Oh good, you’re awake,” he smiled, not bothering to close the door behind him.  I wondered if that was designed to make me try something rash, or if it was meant to demonstrate how confident he was that I couldn’t escape, even with the door open. 

Grabbing the other chair, he set it before me, taking great pains to settle himself comfortably.  “Whom do I have the pleasure of addressing?” he asked agreeably.

“Anja Gudrun,” I replied, sticking to my cover story.  “I thought you might’ve known that before you threw me in the pokey.”

“I’ve heard that one, but I’m asking for your true name.”

“I already gave it to you,” I said with as much sincerity as I could muster.  “Who are you?”

“My name is Volkov.”  He paused for a reaction, but I didn’t have one for him.  It sounded vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place where I might’ve heard it before.  “This means nothing to you?”

“I’m sorry, no.  Are you supposed to be famous or something?”

“I’m the head of the Order, that’s a position with some degree of infamy.”

All at once it clicked for me, Bishop had mentioned something about calling a Volkov when Angel was discovered as a traitor.  And the head of the Order was probably someone an Elder should be familiar with in any case.  I cobbled together a smile, trying to salvage the
faux pas
.  “Oh, Volkov… I thought you said
Birkhoff
.  You don’t look anything like a computer hacker to me.  So…”  I had to stop babbling.  “Look, there’s been a terrible misunderstanding here.  Aubrey’s angry with me for turning him down and that’s all there is to it.  Surely you can understand that.”

Volkov didn’t reply, didn’t so much as move a muscle. 

“His accusations are ridiculous.  I have plenty of people to vouch for me.  Bishop… he’s a trusted member of your Order, right?  Did you talk to him?”

Nothing but silence. 

“Or, um… Felix, my Warden.”  As soon as I said his name I wished I could snatch it back.  The last thing I wanted to do was implicate any of my friends in this mess.  And where was Rob?  Had they all been interrogated already?  It was impossible to tell how long I’d been unconscious.  “Is he, ah… do you have him down here in one of these cells too?”

Volkov finally stirred himself, but all he said was, “Tell me your name and perhaps I’ll answer you.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say.  My name is Anja.”

“Perhaps it is at that, but who are you?”

“The Elder of the West.”

“And yet, your Sire cannot be
Carys.” 

“Why not?  Just because Aubrey says so?  Why should you take his word over mine?”

“Because I do not know you, madam.  If you are who you say you are, I find it hard to believe we haven’t crossed paths in all these years.”

This was bad.  Really bad.  I reached out for him with my will, trying my best to compel him, but it was no use, I couldn’t catch hold of him.  Volkov had to be far older than I pretended to be.   “So I have to go to jail because I like my privacy?  This is ridiculous.”

“Ridiculous is the notion that you won’t give me what I want.”  His hand closed over my knee, squeezing sharply.  White hot pain lanced up my leg, and I gasped from the shock of it.  What the hell was wrong with my knee?  “I see you’ve become acquainted with the gift I left you.” 

“Gift, what gift?” I sucked in a greedy breath when he let go of me.

“The bullet.  The wound has healed around it, but the bullet remains, pressing along the nerves.  A most effective tool, I’ve found.”  He laid his hand atop my knee again, his touch light.  “Now then, who are you?”

“I’m the person who’s starting to get seriously ticked off about this, that’s who I am.  You have no right to treat me this way.”  That was a mistake, because the moment I refused him, Volkov clamped down on my knee like a vice, sending my entire leg twitching in agony.

“I have every right.  Your papers have been called into question, that is the express domain of the Order.  No other government supersedes me in this.  Now, it’s in your best interest to cooperate with me, but understand I will have the truth at any cost.  At this moment we’re questioning your entire party, I’m confident one of them will crack.”

All of a sudden I could care less about the throbbing at my knee.  “Please let them go, they have nothing to do with this, none of them do.”

“Do you really expect me to believe that?”

“It’s the truth.”

“Who are you?” 

We went around and around, so that I started to lose count how many times he tortured me with the stupid bullet in my knee.  It hurt like a motherfrakker, but I could bear it.  On the plus side, I couldn’t feel the side of my leg or most of my foot anymore, so I had that going for me. 

“It’s clear we’ll have to try more direct methods,” he said finally, rising to rap sharply on the metal door.  An Order member I didn’t recognize appeared after a few minutes, pushing along a wheeled cart, similar to the ones you get from room service at a schmancy hotel.  There were various knives and clamps laid out on the tray, but what caught my eye the most was the can of Sterno on the bottom shelf, the end of a long fireplace poker glowing balefully from within the blue flames. 

Volkov didn’t go for the moneymaker right from the start though.  He picked up a delicate looking set of steel tongs first.  “Now then, let’s start again, shall we?” he smiled engagingly, catching hold of my hand.  No amount of squirming gave me the ability to pull my hand out of his grasp with the manacles slicing into my skin, and I felt the tongs bite deep into the tender flesh under my pinky nail. 

It’ll heal.
  I kept repeating it to myself over and over again as his sharp tug on the nail made me see stars.  All I needed was a spot of blood and it’d heal.  But that didn’t take away one ounce of the pain as Volkov continued his slow exploration of my nail beds.  After the tongs came a pizza cutter looking thing with jagged spikes on it that savaged the sensitive skin on the insides of my arms.  And the next device after that, and the next… implements I had no idea how to name.  

It got so that I wanted to tell him everything, anything to make it stop, but I couldn’t.  If I implicated myself that was as good as signing not only my own death warrant, but Bishop’s at the very least, and everybody in my party at the worst. 
It’ll heal… it’ll heal… it’ll heal…
I kept repeating, a mantra that took on its own rhythm inside my mind.  

Until he reached for the hot poker. 

My eyes widened in fear, but my body was just grateful for the respite as he tugged on a pair of thin leather gloves.  True to the mantra, most of the cuts and gouges had already started to knit together.  The pain receded as my body healed itself, and I tried to take courage in that.  But the thirst was starting to build as my body consumed its stores to heal the damage. 

“Very impressive,” Volkov said thoughtfully, picking up the end of the poker.  You must be very old to have such recuperative powers.  Who are you?”

“Drop dead, you lousy purplebelly,” I croaked at him, my mouth unbearably dry.  “You have no right to keep me here.”

“I have every right until your lineage can be established.”

“I have papers.”

“Forgeries, we’ve already established that.”

Frak
.  He had to be bluffing.  Bishop had fixed it in the computer, he was confident of it, and I had to trust him.  “Based on what?  Aubrey’s accusation?  He’s just mad I wouldn’t sleep with him.  Talk to Bishop, he knows me.  We’re of the same bloodline, I swear.”

“Oh I have, it was very… illuminating.”

Something about the way he said that chilled me to the bone.  “What did he tell you?”

“Who are you to him?  Is Bishop your Sire?” he countered.

“What?  No, of course not.”

“Then why would he defend you to the death?”

“To the…”  Bishop couldn’t be dead.  I’d feel it, wouldn’t I?  The irrationality of that statement hit me like a pile of bricks, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was still alive.  “You didn’t…”

“No, not yet.  He’s still of use to me.  But it’s interesting to me to see how you both cling to each other in times of
distress.  I wonder what he’d say if he was here now?”  Volkov loomed close, the hot poker held intimately to my face so that I could feel the heat pouring off of it through the icy air.  I couldn’t hold back the whimper as he edged it closer to my eye, too scared to move an inch.  But it wasn’t my eye socket he plunged the burning metal into. 

Volkov looped a fat hank of my hair around the burning metal, watching as it went up in a soft puff of acrid smoke.  “Such lovely hair,” he murmured, picking up another
tendril.  So delicate, and yet so strong.”  He tugged sharply, jolting me close enough that my skin touched the searing tip for just an instant.  No worse than a burn from a hot tray of cookies coming out of the oven, only I felt it across the top of my cheek. 

“Won’t you please tell me who you are?” he asked in a sing song voice, singeing the strands of hair until there was nothing left in his fingers but the charred ends, curled up on themselves.

I lost it. 

Does that make me shallow?  Volkov burning my hair sent me into more of a panic than when the hot poker touched my flesh.  I wept, horrible blubbering sobs as I anticipated the sting of the poker at any second.  I’d held it together though the pain of torture for God knew how long, but the smell of my hair burning made it all real in a way it hadn’t been before.  Somehow I’d convinced myself that all of it was fleeting. 
Someone
would burst in at any moment and save the day. 
Someone
would rescue me and it’d all be okay.  But it didn’t happen.  They were going to torture and kill me, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.  

Instead of pressing his advantage, Volkov retreated, his expression smug at witnessing my tears.  “I think it’s time to hit you where it really hurts.”

I caught my breath as he backed off, my sobs fading as I tried to prepare myself for whatever Volkov had up his sleeve.  Most of the pain had faded to a series of dull aches, though my leg was still partially numb.  Hopefully I wouldn’t have permanent nerve damage there.  Then again, it might be worth living with if it meant I survived the ordeal.  Mostly I was just exhausted, drained physically and emotionally, but I took advantage of the break to take heart that he seemed bent on getting me to confess.  Maybe if I stuck to my guns he couldn’t actually kill me?

I looked up when the sound of boots echoed through the hallway outside, both relieved and dismayed to see Bishop marched in, his hands secured with solid bar handcuffs.  He rushed forward, earning him a belt across the back of his legs with a baton.  Bishop crashed against the stone floor, rising to his knees with a wince. 

“Are you alright?”

“I’m tougher than I look, remember?”  Despite my bravado, the tears started all over again at seeing my condition through the filter of his expression.  From the
alarm on his face, I must’ve looked terrible.  I had to turn away, unable to take the pity I saw there. 

Bishop rose to his feet with quiet dignity.  “Look, I already told you Aubrey is lying, she is absolutely Anja Gudrun, daughter of
Carys, and you have no right to treat her like this.”  He shot me a pointed look and I got his meaning.  No matter what, we had to stick to our story.  If one of us broke, we’d both be dead. 

Volkov shook his head.  “Bishop, you know as well as any, our mandate is clear.  We have the right to use any method at our discretion to uphold the law.  And I intend to as long as you cling to this farce.”  He set the iron poker back into the flame, choosing his next instrument with care.  “I’ll ask again… who are you?”  He looked directly at me even as he tortured Bishop’s flesh.