Barrel of a Gun
by Shadowfox and Dr. Ruthless
Rated: A
Pairing: Vic/Mac
Series: 4th in the "Love In Itself" -- 1: Walking in my Shoes, 2: It's No Good, 3: Never Let Me Down Again, 4: Barrel Of A Gun, 5: Waiting for the Night, 6: Nothing
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~oo(O)oo~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Open An unbearable pain
A beating in my brain
That leaves the mark of Cain
Right here inside
What am I supposed to do
When everything that I've done
Is leading me to conclude
I'm not the one
Whatever I've done
I've been staring down the barrel of a gun
Is there something you need from me
Are you having your fun
I never agreed to be
Your holy one
Whatever I've done
I've been staring down the barrel of a gun
Barrel Of A Gun-Depeche Mode, ULTRA/1997.
~~~~~~~oo(O)oo~~~~~~~
The world seems to have become silent as I turn away and leave him in the alleyway on his knees.
What the hell have I been thinking? I broke the cardinal rule, didn't I? Never get involved. Never care. Never, never, never fall in love. Well, fuck! I've sure screwed things up there, haven't I?
I push my way into the club, and the warm cocoon of distant sound, distant pounding music in my head while the bodies gyrate, sweat-slick and diseased, somehow still bound to the beat in a way that I'm not and don't think I can ever be again.
It hurts! God, it hurts. I want him so much even now, but best not go there.
~~~~~~~oo(O)oo~~~~~~~
Jackie whips out her cell phone before Victor is even out of sight and hits the speed dial. "I'm sorryWe've got a situationLiAnn was taken from behind The Underground about 15 minutes ago."
She takes a deep breath as she listens to the instructions.
"We can't follow. Something happened and we missed the snatch," she winces and holds the squawking device away from her ear until it's quiet again. "I can't explain it right now, I have to get back to Mac; but Victor is on his way in."
She hesitates a moment, then takes the plunge.
"Di, you need to knowMac called it quits with VicI knowbut they're both bugged out about LiAnn. Please, be gentle with him. I think he might be more than a little freaked right now, maybe even suicidal," she shudders at the memory of the look on Victor's face as Mac walked away from him and the subsequent breakdown she's just been witness to. "Please, justthink about it before you lay into him, 'kay?"
She hangs up before the Director can answer and follows Mac back inside.
~~~~~~~oo(0)oo~~~~~~~
I shove my way to the bar, and the blond that was making faces at me before saunters over to me. I slam cash down and demand a scotch - a double. He frowns at me, pouring my drink and sliding it over the bar with a flourish. Every movement he makes screams 'pansy.'
"Is everything all right?" Well fuck. Why wouldn't it be? I nod curtly, down my drink and give him the glass. Come on. More. It's never going to be enough.
He gives me a refill, and then gets called to another part of the bar. I'm grateful for that. When the girl with the multiple piercings and the black lips comes to serve me my next shot, it means that there are no questions.
Jackie appears at my elbow somewhere down the line and tries to make me go with her. I turn to tell her to go away but the words get tangled on my tongue and they come out slurred and stupid sounding. Finally, I manage to get them spoken.
"Jus' le'me 'lone." My drink is gone again, and I look around for the bartender. I need more. It still hurts. He shakes his head.
"You've had enough, bud. Go tell Vic that I need to see him." I see red then. It feels as though there's absolutely nothing in the whole universe that's strong enough to contain my rage as it swells and swells, finally bursting out of me in a flood that has me screaming, turning over the stools at the bar, sweeping the glasses and bottles from it, and then
Sharp pain as Jackie forces my arms behind my back. Words are spoken as she hustles me out but I don't process them. I'm howling my fury to the world - incoherent and anguished as she makes me go where she wants. I wrest free momentarily and lurch away from her and the doorframe somehow seems to loom up before my bleary eyes.
No pain, just a bloom of white light and then nothing.
Nothing ever again, please, God.
~~~~~~~oo(O)oo~~~~~~~
When Victor pulls up in front of HQ, he doesn't look surprised to find me waiting for him. He looks like he doesn't care either. I know that look in his eyes. He's cold and empty inside right now, hollow and unafraid. This is the way he looked when I first met him in jail. There is nothing more I can do to him that hasn't already been done in a thousand more painful ways tonight.
He withstands my sharp scrutiny for a patient moment before speaking.
"You've heard." He waits for my nod, but cuts me off before I would have started in with any recriminations. "I need to see the files for the other victims-all of them. And I need Nathan to help me; time's running out."
With that, he walks away from me into the building without so much as a glance back; leaving me gaping unattractively at his back in shock for a moment before following him. Suicidal, indeed. I'm not sure I like this side of my most dependable and volatile agent.
When I reach the archives, I find Vic looking around expectantly, but not finding the person he seeks. Luckily, I had the files in question in my office when Jackie called. I lay them down before him and settle myself on the opposite side of the table.
"Even Nathan has to have time off, Victor. You need a research assistant, I'm it," I chuckle grimly at the slightly cocked eyebrow he shoots me. Even at a time like a time like this, it's nice to be able to keep him on his toes. "I used to be an agent once myself, Victor," is all the explanation I will give, and it seems to be enough for him.
He digs into the files with an intensity that is frightening to behold. Parker had warned me, of course, back when I first had an eye to recruiting him; however, the reality of Victor in profiling mode is a shock. He does have a gift for it, that's certain; but it's obvious that it's eating him up inside, devouring him alive with every gruesome photograph he looks at. I watch as he methodically notes every last bit of minutiae in the attempt to find a pattern: height, weight, sex, date missing, date returned, bruises, broken bones, internal and external injuries and other seemingly meaningless bits of flotsam and jetsam.
I leave him in Dobrinsky's care when Jackie finally hauls Mac's sorry butt in--bruised, battered, intoxicated, and totally wild-eyed as he skates on the edge of total breakdown. It's obvious that in his condition, Mac is too far gone to appreciate the kind of reaming I want to give him, so I have Jackie take him home to sleep it off.
Damn. What a huge fucking mess. In the beginning, I had to keep them from killing each other over LiAnn; now I have to keep them from self-destructing over each other or I'm going to be building an Alpha Team all over again. This, of course is completely out of the question. I like the one I have, thank you very much. They are exactly the way I want them. Or at least they were until now.
There are times, few and very far in-between, when I absolutely hate my job, and this is definitely one of them.
I corner Jackie at the first opportunity and drag the whole sordid story out of her. Of course, Jackie swears that Vic and Mac had only done what they did to try and draw the perp out; but I know better. The boys have barely been able to keep their hands off each other during work since their relationship started, and going undercover on this particular assignment was just the kind of thing that would have set them both off. I can just hear their reasoning on this one --if they could excuse it as being in the line of duty, so much the better.
I'm not particularly surprised or angry to find out that it did set them off, because I know that neither of them is truly foolish enough to blow off duty entirely; and if anybody can slack on the job and still bring in the perp, it's my boys. Besides, they know the consequences of not doing their job well enough. It was one of the reasons I'd sent them into this--a sort of test to see just how well they could work together now that the group dynamic had changed. And together, the boys are still the boys-kicking ass, taking names and creating havoc in their wake, exactly the way they're supposed to. If anything, it's LiAnn that's reacted badly to the whole situation. She threw major tantrums when she discovered that her ex-lovers were no longer playing her game by her rules.
It was a dangerous gamble I took, and one I bear the full brunt of the blame for. I hadn't wanted to send LiAnn on this mission, especially after the younger woman barged into my office demanding to know how long I'd known about the relationship between her ex's. However, with Victor and Mac being so hostile toward Jackie, it was unavoidable. I also must admit that I never expected the child to be this foolish.
What's even more surprising is the fact that Jackie is protecting the boys despite their animosity towards her. She has willingly done everything I've asked of her so far without complaint or backtalk, and for that I'm grateful. I also appreciate the irony involved. By her actions, Ms. Janczyk has shown herself to be more loyal to both of them than the cold, flighty and manipulative LiAnn and she certainly deserves better treatment from that quarter.
Curiouser and curiouser.
I know why she's doing it, of course. Jackie's gone and gotten herself a serious case of the lusts after witnessing her senior partners' consummation of their relationship. Who could blame her? I've already worn out one copy of that particular tape and am slowly working my way through a second. However, the really astonishing thing is just on whom Jackie has subtly chosen to turn all that pent-up sensuality. Not Victor or Mac, although heaven knows she wouldn't pass up the chance to bed one or both of them quite happily should the opportunity come her way. She's a woman after my own twisted heart.
No, true to form, the teen-aged mob queen seems to have chosen the hardest one upon which to bestow her attentions. She's gone for the one whom she stands the least chance of getting. She's picked LiAnn. If the other woman survives this ordeal she's stupidly thrown herself into, she won't have a chance.
I think back over what Jackie told me LiAnn said about being alone. What a fool she is; a fool that's made two of my best agents virtually useless with her petty jealousy. I can only hope that my protge lives long enough to let me render a long-overdue and well-deserved discipline session. Heaven knows I should have called her on her irrational and possessive behavior a long time ago. There is something about the way she chooses to interact with Victor and Mac that is disturbing to me, and has been niggling at my brain since the death of Michael Tang. Once this foolishness is over, I plan on finding out what that something is.
~~~~~~~oo(O)oo~~~~~~~
I don't feel good. It feels as though my mouth is full of sand, and my head God! My head. There's a light shining in my eyes, and I roll my head to try and avoid it, but the explosion of pain that results from the move is so intense that I moan.
The voice oozes oily over me, hated, feared and resented.
"Well, you're a sorry piece of work, aren't you?" I don't need to open my eyes to know that the Marquesa de Sade is here again, toying with me as though I were an unwary fledgling she's caught and with whom she wants to play.
"Go away." I don't care. Not this time. She can do what she likes, I'm done, finished. What's the point of any of it?
"Mr. Ramsey, I've been very patient with you and your partner for the past few weeks, but this time I'm afraid that you've made me angry. You've let your personal life interfere with your duties to me, and that I will not have."
I roll over onto my face. Her hands on me mean nothing. It all means nothing from here on in.
"Fuck off."
The carefully sensual delivery falters for just one moment. Then the real Director shows ugly claws.
"Get up, Ramsey. You'll report to me in one hour, or regret it for the rest of your very short life." There's the rustle of satin on fur, and then, mercifully, I'm alone.
I don't feel any better for being alone.
LiAnn. She's been taken. She could be dead right now, and it's my fault. I was too busy fucking a guy. I was fucking a guy, goddammit! I let her go out and be captured and now I don't deserve to live.
I stumble out of my bed, and groan again as the light bores its way through into my eyes, and it feels as though they're bleeding. No matter. I creep into the bathroom and turn the shower on cold. It helps in a way. I'm awake now, but I hurt. Every cell feels abused, and I want to go back to sleep and never wake up again.
I pull on the jeans that I was wearing last night. Bad idea! I'm awake enough now to feel like shit. The jeans are a reminder of the night before, and I rip them off again, heading to find myself a set of clothes that doesn't remind me of the things I've lost forever.
I can't believe I could let that happen. Never, never again will I allow something so base and bestial to occur, and I guess my life is over. If I hadn't been so desperate, so animal, LiAnn wouldn't be missing. Nothing I ever do in the future will be enough to make amends.
I dress by guess, old stuff that has past its best, and stagger to the kitchen to find a glass of water. Downing that seems to help my eyeballs reconstitute themselves, but I still need shades before I can dare to open my eyes against full daylight.
I'm just putting on my jacket when the phone rings. I freeze. Why can't she leave me alone? Three times the damned thing shrills, an eldritch shriek that makes my poor eyes rotate in their sockets, and I almost give in. The jackhammer behind my forehead is threatening to make a break for the surface.
I'm turning to leave when I hear his voice and stop short. Breathy and desperate, it brushes me, making the tears prick the backs of my eyes, and run to fill my sinuses. I stand in the middle of the hallway and squeeze my eyes shut. Oh, God, Victor, Victor!
"Mac? Mac, my baby, please pick up. Mac? I really, really need to talk to you." There's a pause, and I think that he's gone, but then his voice grinds into my heart again, calling to me and shredding me to fragments. "Come on, please pick up the phone." The sound skitters over my skin like a promise. It would be so easy to forget everything and go home to him. I can taste him still on my tongue, heady and desirable.
I want him, and he's something I can't have any more, don't deserve to have. Too dear for my possessing? Yeah, right. I can feel him against me. I can feel the ghost of his lips touching mine, softer than you can possibly imagine. Slick, wet silk on my mouth, tearing at my senses until I'm lost, gasping out my need for him.
No more. Never again. I'll have to get used to it. There's no way on earth that I can ever forgive myself for what I've done and so, in the end, all that there was is over, gone forever. I turn my back and walk away from his husky voice, while the tears fall, and my future echoes around me, cutting me off from my past forever.
~~~~~~~oo(O)oo~~~~~~~
The street's bright - far too bright. I feel my eyeballs start to shrivel and fumble for my sunglasses as I shamble along the sidewalk - a sorry figure, searching for some reason to carry on living.
I've got to get over Victor. I need him the way a junkie needs horse. My body shakes, craving the injection that only he can give me. I know that I look a spectacle as I stagger on, my heart clenched in misery as the tears flow freely. My breath catches in my chest, and I fall against the wall, pressing my hands against my eyes.
"Excuse me, are you all right?" A small, middle-aged woman is peering anxiously at me. I summon up a tremulous smile as she stands, waiting for me to do something.
"Uh, yeah, just got dirt on my contact lens. I'm okay." I scrub angrily at my eyes and stagger away.
When I get to the back of Yonge Street, a drink seems to be the most necessary thing in the world. I make my way to a bar I've been in once or twice before. I was here with Victor, I remember, long before he and I became lovers. I order a shot of Jim Beam and gulp it down, then order a pint with another whisky for a chaser, and move away from the bar to watch a couple of guys playing pool.
The drinks are going down well. The alcohol gives me a glow that forces the pain in my heart to recede to a place deep inside, where it merely aches instead of stabbing at me. After a while I find myself becoming someone else - someone who can cope with the loss and not give a flying fuck.
The bar begins to fill up slowly. People drift in as the afternoon wears by. I get into a conversation with an intense-eyed young man wearing black leather and chains. I like the leather. There's something about it that makes me feel nostalgic, as though there ought to be a memory associated with it, although by this time I can't recall quite what it might be. To be perfectly frank, I can't actually string two thoughts together sensibly.
I admit that I'm weaving a little when the man in leather asks me if I want to go home with him. I can't see any reason at all why not. I'm not really capable of coherence though, so I just grin at him and together we leave the bar.
It's almost dark as we head for the parking lot. He doesn't say anything; he just supports me as I stumble over dimly seen potholes and bumps on the path. He drives a Lexus, and it takes me a few minutes to fold myself into the seat beside him. He gives me a smile that makes me feel vaguely uneasy without being sure why, and then we're away, heading out towards Etobicoke. I think I must have dozed. When he shakes me awake I have no real idea where I am or what I'm doing, only that my head's aching fiercely and my mouth tastes as though something has died inside it.
I moan pitifully, and the man in leather gives a low laugh and holds something to my nostrils, telling me to smell it. I sniff, and suddenly I'm flying. Dark flashes explode behind my eyes as my heartbeat accelerates. Suddenly I feel great.
Everything happens in strobed tableaux after that. There's music. Music exhorts me to bow down to my master and I dance wildly. Hands are on me, and in a little while, I'm naked. They pass me a drink and I down it without bothering to check what it is. It's good stuff. My head swells and my senses swim. Suddenly I'm looking down on my sorry, naked carcass as it gyrates crazily. There's a circle of dimly seen figures around me, and first hands, then mouths move over my skin, releasing fire as they slide.
Later I know I'll look back and cringe, but at this moment I'm lost, brain spinning wildly as the booze and whatever they've fed into my system sends me into a wild, spiraling ride towards destruction. The ones around me poke and prod, stroke and suck and I can't get it up for any of them. My leather friend and his mates all use me through the course of the evening, not caring whether I consent or not. I remain numb, wrapped in anguish that lies in layers around me, cushioning me from the things that they're doing to my body.
At last they leave me, limp and hopeless. I'm covered in piss and semen, sobbing helplessly into someone's black leather jacket, and not even knowing why.
Sleep takes me. When I wake it's a dazzling bright morning that scours my eyeballs clean and flays any remaining brain tissue from the inside of my skull. My head feels as though it's going to explode.
It's snowed overnight; the first snow of the year, and now the sun spins glittering skeins of light over the trees while the wind dances and ruffles the few clouds that remain. I wasn't wearing a coat when I came, and I can't find more than a few threads of my T-shirt. A lone, vivid memory of the night before reminds me that the shirt is shredded, and gone forever. I struggle into the black leather jacket I've been clutching to me, and stagger out into the cold.
I walk aimlessly. I don't know, and don't really care where I'm going. I'm numb inside. After a while I'm no longer cold. The world is fading in and out as I stumble onwards. I have no idea where I am, and there's no goal in my head. All I want to do is run and run.
When the van pulls in alongside me, disgorging a horde of angry men, I find myself fighting for my life. I've always been able to hold my own in a fight until now, but I'm so hung over that I soon collapse, a victim of alcohol abuse and apathy. My co-ordination is shot, and although I do manage to land a couple of telling punches, pretty soon they overwhelm me. There's a sudden burst of black light that flowers inside my skull, and then the world goes dark.
~~~~~~~oo(O)oo~~~~~~~
When I wake up once more, I'm in a jail cell. My lower lip feels enormous, as though it's been inflated, and every bone in my body aches like a bitch. There's a distant drumming in the back of my head, as though an army is approaching from a long way off. I moan faintly and attempt to bury my face into a mattress that doesn't want to yield. The barrage of sensations causes my skin to prickle and my eyes to water. I cower, feeling simultaneously too hot and too cold. My hair hurts and my skin feels as though it's two sizes too small for my body.
The lumpy, hard ticking on which I'm lying seems like my last refuge. My shirt and jacket is gone, and my skin is clammy as gooseflesh covers me. I try to sink into the mattress, striving to recapture the comparative peace of oblivion.
"You're beginning to make me very angry." I groan, throwing my arm over my head in denial, hoping against hope that she was a product of my diseased imagination, and that I'm going to be left alone to pursue my hopeless slide into damnation. My head is ringing, and there are still strange flashes and distortions from whatever they gave me last night. I lie still, feeling somewhat akin to a rabbit that's been caught in headlights. I'm certainly not ready for the sharp, stinging pain as her riding crop slaps against my back.
I curse loudly, pushing my head deeper into the unforgiving mattress. I feel nauseous. I really don't want to acknowledge her, as though to do so will grant her power over me. Somehow it feels as though if only I could ignore her, she will become impotent.
Of course, there's no way that one can ignore her. The sting from the next blow brings the tears to my eyes despite my attempts to remain aloof.
"Get up, Mr. Ramsey, or believe me I will have no compunction about having your sorry carcass shipped back to Hong Kong." She strikes me again, a vicious blow that sucks the breath from my lungs. I grunt and roll over, permitting the daylight to drive its wicked, red-hot fingers through my eyeballs.
Through the watery mist I can see her silhouetted against harsh light. It seems as though she's surrounded by a corona of brilliant color, a black core that burns fiercely enough to convince me that I'm beset by a devil.
"Go away and leave me alone." Even as I'm whining, I know that she won't, and that I deserve anything that she might choose to inflict on me. Maybe if I deny her obedience I can make my punishment harsher.
"Oh, dear me, no, little man! Because of you, I am missing a very competent agent, and my team has disintegrated. You are going to put things right for me, or you will wish for the rest of your short, stupid life that you'd never been born." She reaches with the riding crop, running it over my naked chest as she speaks, circling each nipple, and then punctuating her last remark with a vicious cut across my belly. I gasp, half sitting up as the pain flashes, red as rage.
"Leave me alone," I whimper again, she laughs in a peculiarly unpleasant manner, and then calls out to someone beyond my field of vision. I wince. The gang's all here. My heart sinks as I hear the hated voice of Dobrinsky. It comes home to me right then that no matter what I do, there's no way out for me.
"Hello, Ace," says the grinning man, and the next thing I know, rough hands have hoisted me, slinging me over Dobrinsky's shoulder to dangle ignominiously as they stalk out of my safe, warm prison cell and bear me back to hell.
~~~~~~~oo(O)oo~~~~~~~
Damn and double damn! As if it wasn't bad enough that the child had to go out and deliberately defy me! I'm now in the unenviable position of having to bail one of my agents out of jail at the worst possible time.
I am not happy at this moment-not one little bit. The only thing that's stopping me from kicking his ass all the way back to Headquarters is the fact that he's obviously spent the last 24 hours getting into all kinds of nasty trouble. He's battered and bruised, with all kinds of scratches and bite marks over the whole of his skin. A couple of them are deep and will require at least tetanus and rabies series. Not to mention all the testing for social diseases he's going to have to undergo. Damn, damn, and damn.
After settling the local constabulary's ruffled feathers, I call HQ and order up the necessary medical work. Jackie informs me that Victor is still there, pouring over the case files; trying to find the clue that will get him on LiAnn's trail. Knowing Victor, he has neither eaten nor slept in the past 36 hours; and Jackie confirms my suspicions when I ask. I tell her to take him home and make him get a hot shower, a decent meal, and at least eight hours of sleep in that order.
My reasoning for this is two-fold. One, I need Victor to take care of himself. He's the senior agent on this right now, and still halfway capable of doing his job at the moment. Two, and more importantly, if we bring Mac into Headquarters in this condition and he happens to see us, he's going to want to know what happened and I can't bluff him if the physical evidence is staring him in the face. Say what you like about me, I refuse to allow my agents to needlessly endanger themselves if I can help it; and if Victor were to see what his lover's been getting up to without him, I could kiss both of their lives goodbye-and LiAnn's as well.
When we get back, I turn the putrid Mac over to the tender mercies of the medical staff and gather up Victor's research to go over it. He has an amazing mind hidden behind those wide guileless eyes and that boyish face, and I can see that he would have been a great profiler had he chosen to go that route. Still, I can honestly say that I'm glad he didn't. The small bit of his talent I've been witness to is more than enough to convince me that the price he would have paid for it would have been far too high. I like to think that one of my biggest strengths is helping good agents become great ones, and that can't happen if they needlessly self-destruct. Great agents are a rare enough commodity, and as a director, it's my job to nurture and care for them to the best of my ability.
It isn't an easy one at a time like this, especially with agents like Victor Mansfield and Malcolm Ramsey.
Case in point: I can even now hear Victor's dulcet tones raised in anger as he is refused access to his lover. I check my watch even though I have no real need. Three hours. Damn. Predictable as ever is my Vic. With a sigh, I push myself to my feet and prepare to square off with him.
"Mr. Mansfield. I thought you were under strict orders to get eight hours of sleep." I'm very proud of that tone, and the cold look that I know accompanies it. It's brought more than its fair share of kings and heads of state to their knees, gibbering in terror.
Victor, however, is a different story. "I can sleep when I'm dead." If the circumstances weren't so dire, I could better appreciate his defiance.
"True, but I refuse to forfeit LiAnn's life on a mistake you make because you missed something- something that you wouldn't have missed if you were fresh and alert. Go home and rest, Victor. We still have a bit of time." How much, I'm uncertain. Even as I insist on this, I'm loath to do so. There is no easy way out of this, something Victor knows all too well.
"We need every second we can get. Pleaselet me do my job. It's the only thing I've got right now."
It's the look that gets me-all puppy-dog earnestness and pain that twists the space inside from which my heart has long since fled. Damn.
"Very well." I acquiesce somewhat gracelessly; a testimony to the toll this crisis is taking on me. "I would like to go over your notes with you anyway," I turn away, toward the conference room, when the sound of Victor clearing his throat stops me.
"Uhm, what about Mac?"
What about Mac indeed! If I bring him in on this in his present state, I have no idea how Vic will react; plus, he's a mental wreck and of little or no use to us in his condition. On the other hand, Victor needs to see himneeds to know that he's alive and relatively safe. What to do, what to do?
"He's sleeping it off right now, Mansfield. I'll bring him around in a little while," thank you, Agent Dobrinsky! You will be getting a very nice bonus this Christmas.
Victor reluctantly follows me into the conference room after looking longingly down the hallway towards Mac's hidey hole one last time. Soon, my dear Victor. You'll be able to see him sooner than you think.
In about 45 minutes, I get up and have Dobie bring him in. Victor's attention is flagging and there's nothing more I can get out of him as long as he's worrying about his Mac. However, as soon as he rises to check the younger man out more closely, I come back in and play Diva to the hilt. It wouldn't do to have Victor getting a good close look at Mac too soon.
So, I distract them with sarcasm, accusations, and ultimatums in order to get them on the path I need them to be. And yes, I did relish the way Victor's eyes widened in fear when I mentioned sending Mac back to the Tangs, but Mac's rather lackadaisical attitude was very disappointing. I expected him to be galvanized into some kind of rebellion. I must be losing my touch.
~~~~~~~oo(O)oo~~~~~~~
My experiences of the night before pale to insignificance compared to the indignities that I'm subjected to once we arrive back at ground zero, and the lair of the spider woman.
I'm injected with long, huge wickedly sharp needles, examined, probed and exclaimed over. I'm made to drink a thick liquid that tastes unspeakable, and then thrown into a bathtub to be scrubbed by the jeering Dobrinsky, who's here fresh from leading the class in Sadism 101. Finally he leaves me to towel myself dry and insert myself into a set of coveralls that I find hanging on the back of the door.
At one point I hear Victor's voice in the distance raised in argument with someone, and a chill clamps around my heart. The last thing on earth I need at this moment is to see Vic. I whimper and curl up in a corner as I wait for this final indignity, but after a while he appears to depart again, and I allow myself to breathe again, relief warming my limbs.
Dressed once more, I sit on the slatted, wooden bench and wait, aimless and uncaring. After a while Dobrinsky materializes, a vicious smile plastered over his ugly mug. I know that I've run out of time.
"Come on then, Ace." I sit, unmoving, and the bastard grabs me by the scruff of the neck, yanks me to my feet and hauls me off to the conference room.
He's there ahead of me, of course. Dobrinsky drops me into a chair and leaves me to sit there, miserably aware of the empty middle seat. I can feel Vic's eyes burning my skin as I droop, unwilling to look up and meet his gaze.
"Mac?" His voice is soft and anguished, and ruffles over my flesh, flaying me. I know that if I look at him I'll be lost. The power of those eyes of his will prove too much for me. I ignore him and remain still. My skin prickles as I hear him move, knowing that he's standing, coming towards me. If he touches me, I'm lost. I shrink into my seat and shiver.
"Well, well, my wandering boy returns." Vic's groan is plain to hear as the sarcastic tones of the Director announce her presence. I risk an upward glance, catching his movement as he subsides back into his chair, and then take in Messalina in all her glory. She's leather clad, with thigh-high boots and transparent shirt. Her hollow eyes are kohl-blackened and glow fury from her pale face. I swallow nervously and I can sense Vic as he shifts uneasily in his seat at her approach. I wish I were anywhere else but here.
"Leave him alone. Can't you see that he's been through enough?" Victor's voice rises, uncompromising and my stomach flutters to hear him attempting to protect me.
"You amuse me, Victor. After all the pain he's caused you, you're still trying to defend him How sweet." I hear him hiss, for all the world like a cat, as her words hit home.
"Why don't you get to the point? What do you want from us? You can't make us feel any worse than we already do, so just get on with it and forget the histrionics." I want to turn my head around and grin at him, see the anger on his face as he faces off with her, but all I can do is lean my head back and close my eyes. The sound of that damned riding crop as it slaps down against the polished oak of the table makes me jump.
"Very well." Her voice has lost any false joviality it contained previously. "The two of you neglected your duties with the end result that LiAnn was taken by a predator who is probably even now torturing the life out of her." She turns to me. "Mr. Ramsey, you have 24 hours in which to find the man and return whatever is left of LiAnn to us, or you will be sent back to the Tang Family along with a note detailing what happened to her. Victor will, I know, be pleased to offer whatever assistance he can." She tosses her head, throws a thin sheaf of papers down onto the table, and stalks out of the room, graceful and predatory, leaving Vic and I sitting, gaping in her wake.
Vic is the first to break the silence.
"Mac, baby, forgive me, please?" At last I turn to face him. I'm trying to ignore the pain that I hear in his voice, knowing that it just isn't enough and won't ever be enough.
"There's nothing to forgive, Vic. It was my fault. If I hadn't pushed you it would all have been fine." It's true. I'm the one that deserves the punishment. I'm the one for whom the pain will go on forever.
I hear his intake of breath. Fuzzily, I see him stand and begin to move towards me. I can feel the surge of many legged creatures shifting in my gut as he comes around to stand behind me.
"I love you, Mac." There's need in his voice. I hear it. It's a cry that sounds all the louder for remaining unvocalized.
"I love you too, Vic." I mumble, hunching down in my seat. I know that I'm hurting him as much as myself, but that I'm never going to stop because I deserve the pain, deserve to lose everything because of what I've done.
I feel his hand on my face, pushing my chin up and around to face him, and can't take it any more. I spring from my seat, putting the table between us with a shriek of "No!"
He looks desolate. I whisper, "I'm sorry, I can't." and back away.
He stands for a few more minutes, unmoving, his head drooping and his posture defeated. Then he nods sadly, and moves to the folder that the Director has left behind. I swallow and move to join him, close enough to smell him, and feel his warmth, but never touching him. Between us we go through the file, adding its contents to the information that we've already gleaned. We gradually begin to formulate a profile of this killer, an idea of where he lurks and what his modus operandi is.
"He keeps his victims for a week before he kills them, Mac. She's not dead yet." Vic speaks to me as though the information will somehow comfort me. I nod. He keeps them for sure, but he cuts them up in increasingly savage ways before he finally slits their throats and drains their lives away.
By this time the hour's late, and I'm exhausted. I've had little useable sleep over the past couple of days, and I find myself drooping. I look at Vic, so pale and miserable as he tries to get a plan of action together, and I know that whatever we're going to do will have to happen in the morning. I can't do anything more tonight.
"I'm going home," I say. "I'll see you in the morning. Goodnight."
He looks up at me, and his face is compassionate, beautiful. The eyes are dark with sorrow that paints his sweet face grey. "
Okay, baby," he whispers, and then he tears his gaze away. I see the effort that it entails. It's almost too much for me. I head for the doorway, and Dobrinsky steps out of the shadows.
"Not you, Ace. You stay here tonight. Wouldn't want to have you getting yourself lost again, would we?" I shrug. There's nothing that I can do to fight him in my present state. He's got that taser, and I'm all used up. Vic comes up behind me and stands at my shoulder.
"Let him go home. Can't you see that he's exhausted?" Dobrinsky laughs and starts to tug me to one of the side rooms, where there is a bed and a washbasin.
"You can sleep across the threshold if you like, Mansfield, but he stays here tonight." As he speaks, Dobrinsky is fastening a shackle around my ankle, and then fixing the other end of it to the bed. Too tired to protest, I fall onto the bed, and within a few minutes more I'm asleep. A couple of times in the night I believe that I hear Vic's sweet, husky voice speaking to me, but I'm tired, so tired, that the night rolls over me like plush velvet, carrying with it my heart, my soul and my pain.
~~~~~~~oo(O)oo~~~~~~~
Hearing Dobrinsky's callous suggestion makes me wince, but then so does the quiet resignation with which Victor Mansfield accepts the words. He's at the end of his rope; I can see that. When Ramsey is sleeping, that is to say about two minutes after he lies down, Victor stretches out on the floor at his bedside, and appears to be ready to sleep. Enough, I think to myself, and sighing, I summon the perquisites for a comfortable night's rest and take them in with me to where Victor the dragon is guarding his lover's sleep.
He has the grace to blush deep and red when he sees me. He's so tired that I can see he's ready to drop, and I hurry to make him comfortable. We've had our disagreements, he and I, and I don't expect the shy thanks he murmurs as I'm leaving. My sarcasm deserts me temporarily. Oh, well. Another day will see it restored to full, virulent strength.
In the early hours of the morning, when Mac cries out, Victor is there, soothing him as though he were a small child, his gentle, rough voice an instrument that seems to pacify the night horrors that have gripped his lover. Believing himself to be alone the look on his face is unguarded, and I feel very tender towards him despite my loathing of weakness.
After all of these years, who would think that a pair of pretty, brawling, silly male children would cause me to feel so so maternal? If I don't shape up and start to fly right, I can see the day coming when sentiment will interfere with duty, and it will be time to find another whose soul has been mortgaged to whom I can hand over my reins.
Forgive me for wondering if LiAnn might be such a one.
The morning comes as I doze. Victor wakes and dresses. Dobrinsky comes to the door and tenders him a cup of coffee, and Victor leaves to return to the library. Dobrinsky stands for a minute, surveying the mess that is Malcolm Ramsey, and then unlocks the leg iron that holds him to the bed. Crisis has been averted for another little while. I can rely on Dobrinsky.
He gathers up the mattress and bedding that Victor has done with, and leaves Ramsey to sleep on.
Sighing, I repair the depredations time has made to my make-up, and go down to ride herd on my reluctant heroes.
~~~~~~~oo(O)oo~~~~~~~
I wake in the morning to find that I'm no longer wearing leg irons, and stagger out to find the bathroom. Dobrinsky falls into step with me as I emerge from the shower, and I find myself coerced into the conference room once more. Vic's there, and he's looking somewhat more cheerful today than he did last night.
"Hey, Mac. You know that set of stolen cars you tried to tie into the kidnappings last night? Well, I think I've got something. I was waiting to see you before I went any further, but now I see that you're okay, I need to go find Nathan and check something out. We might have him." I frown, recalling the line we were following last night. It makes sense to pursue it, though I can't quite fathom how he thinks that we're so close. The cars have all been stolen within a block or two of the kidnappings, and have all subsequently been discovered abandoned around Toronto. Last night I'd been looking for some kind of pattern in the locations where they'd been dumped. The vehicle that had vanished at the time of LiAnn's disappearance was a fancy Range Rover, and as yet it hasn't reappeared. That tells its own tale. I'd intended to go out today and see if any of the folks in that neighborhood have seen a Land Rover. They aren't too common in Toronto.
He approaches me as I'm thinking, and before I know it, he's glued his mouth to mine, hands at the back of my head pressing me in close against him as he covers my lips. He tastes of honey and cloves, and his mouth is hot, damp silk that threatens to demolish my will power. I freeze, desperate not to yield to the sweet suction and gentle stroking of his tongue. For a brief moment he clouds my senses, the heady scent of him making my knees weak and scooping the insides out of me to fill the place with butterflies. Almost, I return the kiss.
Almost.
Then, I fight, and he releases me, looks into my eyes longingly and is gone with a murmur of 'later.' I follow him with my eyes as he goes out of the door. His jeans fit him snugly, and his loose, open hipped walk zaps straight to my dick. He's walking stiffly too, and my cheeks flame as I realize why that might be. Shivering slightly, I apply myself to the files, and await his return from the library.
Nathan is a strange being. He's convinced that Vic is some kind of princely icon and that the world is ruled by a hierarchy of secret beings who take their orders from Alex Trebek. He told me once that the Director was an alien, sent here to invade the Earth. There are a number of things about that theory that make me believe he's absolutely right. Vic has a way of handling this Looney-Tune that is both delicate and desperate. When I need a laugh, I go down to the library and watch Vic try to get information from Nathan in a manner that leaves both of them with their dignity intact. Say what you like, Vic is a very kind man. There are times that he can subsume all the irritation and annoyance he feels in order to keep an odd little being feeling halfway good about himself.
The result is of course that Nathan would do anything for Vic. I expect him back quickly with whatever information he was seeking, but he doesn't come. Time passes, and I go in search of food. The Director be damned. I need fuel. Up in the canteen I inhale rather than eat a plateful of cholesterol, and as I feel my arteries begin to harden, I feel a little better.
Back downstairs again in the office, there's still no sign of Vic, and in truth I'm glad. It's so much easier to keep away from him when he's nowhere in sight. I'm just about to take myself down to the library to see what he's found out when the phone rings.
It's the Director. The Range Rover has been found, and LiAnn is inside it, trussed like a turkey, bearing several nasty cuts, but nothing that will ultimately be disfiguring. I take down the location of the hospital to which they've taken her and tell the Director that I'll be right along.
It takes me 20 minutes to get to the hospital, during which time I fret and fume with impotence, and once there I leave my car in a no parking zone and race through the ER in search of her. When I find her, The Director is with her, and so is Jackie. She's very pale, and her arms are swathed in bandages. She's bruised too. My heart thumps painfully as I look at her, wan against the pillow, parchment skin and bloodless lips, but safe, impossible though it seems. I drop to my knees and lay my forehead against the delicate bones of her wrist.
It takes a minute to hear the words that the Director is saying, but as she speaks I feel the cold sweat of terror trickle down my spine.
"Victor gave himself in exchange for LiAnn. I expect that he had some kind of plan worked out with you, and that we can go momentarily to fetch him back, Mr. Ramsey." The voice is placid, and I realize that she really thinks that this is true. Oh, God.
"I er " I rise to my feet and race precipitously from the room. I arrive at my car just as the tow truck makes an appearance, and scream off leaving a black and smoking layer of rubber behind me on the road. I'm driving madly, and I have no idea where I'm going, except that I have to find out where he's been taken. I have to save him. I imagine Vic, my Vic with his throat slit, cut to ribbons by this sadistic maniac, and I can't breathe.
Arriving back at the headquarters of the shadowy government agency, I race to the library.
Nathan is sweating quietly at the top of a ladder as he pores over a tome that is almost as big as he is. I call for him to come down, and he gives me a look from wild eyes in which I can see the pupils surrounded by white, like a pair of poached eggs floating on a sea of olive oil.
"Nathan, I need to talk to you. Come on down." I'm trying to be gentle, when what I want to do is pick the bonehead up by his ears and shake the shit out of him.
"That's what Bob Barker said to me, and look what happened to him," says Nathan, the words tumbling over themselves in their rush to be free from the strange place that is his mind.
"Bob Barker?" I say, temporarily diverted. "I haven't seen him for a while. What did happen to him?"
"Gone," says Nathan in sepulchral tones. "They took him back to the hive. He's underground now, servicing the queen."
I shake my head, as much to dislodge his words as anything. Then I try again, taking a new tack this time.
"Nathan, Victor's in trouble. He needs you to help him." That gets his attention and he climbs down the ladder at last, coming to face me at its foot.
"He left you a message," he says, lugubriously. I resist the urge to seize him by the throat and content myself with dancing impatiently. After a minute or two, he still hasn't produced anything that looks like a message.
"Where is it? Where's the message?" The words are forced out of me despite my inner belief that the man is totally nuts and unlikely to have any information worth sharing. Not for the first time, I wonder where the Director found him. He shudders and takes a hit from his asthma spray.
"I ate it." He moves to duck around the ladder, and I reach to grab his collar, hauling back to me. The Ventolin spray gets another workout.
"What do you mean, you ate it? What the hell did you do that for?" He's sweating profusely now. His bony face is radiating horror and defiance in equal quantities, and in another world, with time to spare and compassion to give I would be reminded of Don Quixote. As it is, I'm merely pissed off.
"Victor is a Prince of the Illuminati," he says, looking both ways and then dropping his voice until I have to strain to hear it. "If she were to find out what he's planning, the whole world could be in peril. I memorized it."
"She?" My voice is unnaturally squeaky as I'm sidetracked for a minute. "What do you mean, 'she'?"
He gestures me closer still. His lips now tickle my ear and I'm about two seconds from beating him senseless.
"The Alien Queen. She was here with Victor, snooping around what he was doing. He didn't seem to realize, but I did." His face takes on an air of triumph. "She'll never drag the truth from me."
"Nathan, just give me the message. Don't keep me in suspense." I dredge my brain for something suitably loony to say. "The future of the world depends on Victor, and he's put all his faith in you, my brave librarian." It's obviously the right thing to say, because he perks up, and a timid, almost smile skitters over his face. My hopes are dashed again with his next utterance.
"How am I to know that you're really Mac Ramsey? They can change their shape, you know." He leans close to me again, inviting me to take the book from his grasp and smash out his brains with it. I count to ten.
"Who can?" I ask, knowing as I do so that Nathan Muckle is doomed, and that I will be the one that kills him.
"The bug creatures," he says. "LiAnn went home, and since then, she's been amassing a huge force. You can tell by the buzzing sound they make."
"Nathan, do I buzz?" I ask, gripping tightly to the shreds of sense that remain to me. Just at that moment, my wristwatch beeps the hour, and we both jump. When I recover my scattered wits, he seems to have vanished. As I'm looking around for him, his voice drifts up to me from beneath the book-laden desk.
"Mac, baby, I don't have a lot of time. Jason from the bar called me, and that Range Rover was seen being driven by a guy he knows. The name we're looking for is Ashwin Marken. He's a holy roller of some sort, and Jase has seen him around from time to time, trying to save souls. I've been in touch with Marken, and he didn't deny having LiAnn. He said that she needed to pay for her sins. He also said that if I came and arrested him, we'd never find LiAnn, so I'm going to try for an exchange. That way, you can be easy. LiAnn will be safe, and I'll take my chances. I love you so much, Mac. Vic." By the time he stops speaking, I'm there, under the table with him, and I have him by the shoulders, ready to shake the living daylights out of him.
"Do we have anything on Ashwin Marken?" I say from between gritted teeth.
He indicates a slim file.
"Address, social security number, past affiliations, that kind of thing. I was studying the bills of lading for a company of which he's part owner. They import and export things, mostly religious icons and relics. There's a warehouse that's owned by the company." I grab the folder, kiss the astonished librarian on the forehead, and take off.
On my way out to my car, I pass Dobrinsky. He seems inclined to stop me, so I knock him cold with a roundhouse kick without even stopping. No religious nut is going to have Victor. He may no longer be my lover, but he's
Fuck it! He's mine, He'll always be mine. It's just that I can't have him any more.
~~~~~~~oo(O)oo~~~~~~~
The warehouse is in a seedy part of Toronto, and as I pull up I see no signs at all that there's anyone inside. I ghost around the building, and finally find a door that is held closed by a rusty padlock. It really doesn't look as though anyone has been in here for years, but I have to check it out.
I make short work of the padlock, and soon I'm inside the building, sneaking easily through a decaying corridor that leads towards the main body of the warehouse. The whole place is damp and stinks of old things, imperfectly preserved. I can hear the skitter and scrabble of rats in the walls as I pick my way through the trash that covers the floor, and hope that, if Vic is here, he's in better accommodations than this.
Coming to the open doorway at the end of the passage, I listen, but other than a faint dripping, all I hear are the rustles that signify rodents. I step into the main area of the warehouse itself.
It's nothing special as warehouses go. It's about a third full, I suppose. Boxes and crates are stacked up at one end of the facility, and the roof has skylights set into it, dirty and bird-spattered as they are. There is enough light from the dregs of the day for me to see that there's nowhere on this side of the boxes where Vic could be concealed.
I draw my gun and steal towards the stacks of containers, trying to remain silent as I step over sodden lumps of packing. As I move, keeping to the edge of the room, the sky darkens, and there is the low rumble of distant thunder. Suddenly the sound of rain hammering against the building masks any sound that I might make, and in very short order I realize why the floor is so damp, as water begins to drip through from the roof, making a different sound, as though there were a hundred woodpeckers at work.
As I freeze, listening for any signs that I might have been spotted, a cold wet onslaught invades the back of my neck, and I bite back a curse as a leak dribbles down inside my shirt. Moving quickly, as much to escape the wetness as to reach my goal, I hurry to the boxes, and as I squeeze my way past them, I see a glimmer of light beneath a door set into the opposite wall from the one by which I entered.
Vic! I'm coming for you. Nobody had better hurt you, lover. Guess that I believe I'm the only one who can do that.
I can hear a man's voice now, and I look carefully at the door. If this joker thinks he's going to cut my Victor's throat, I'd better not alarm him into doing it prematurely. I try the handle, and yeah, it's locked. As if that would ever keep me out if I wanted to get in.
~~~~~~~oo(O)oo~~~~~~~
It's always the women who end up waiting. History is full of women who waited for their conquering heroes. I have no wish to emulate them, so I stack the deck a little. LiAnn is still in the hospital, and will likely remain so for the next day or two, but I summon up Murphy and Camier as soon as I manage to prize out from Nathan the whereabouts of my wandering boys.
I must do something about Nathan. What, I'm really not sure, but there must be something. The boy is useful, very useful, but he tires me out.
Maybe I'll allocate Victor to work with him for a week or two. Victor seems to calm him sometimes. What it will do to Victor I'm not sure, but it will be a fitting punishment for his recent transgressions I have no doubt.
I'm about to dispatch the Cleaners to assist in dealing with the situation that Mac is in, when suddenly I have second thoughts, and join them.
We're halfway to the site when the call comes.
~~~~~~~oo(O)oo~~~~~~~
I do want to get in, and so I pick the lock. There's a bolt on the inside from the feel of it, and the door doesn't open. I can still hear the voice within, by now raised in a hymn of some kind, and I guess that I've been quiet enough, or just plain lucky. I step back, and put my entire soul into a kung-fu kick that takes the door off its hinges and leaves it hanging crazily. Gun held out before me, I enter the room.
There are candles, an altar, and strapped to the cross behind it, my Vic.
He's naked, save for a loin cloth, and his hands and feet are tied to the cross in a savage, obscene mimicry of the crucifixion. Around his neck is a tight leather thong that has cut deep into his neck. His face is blue. I can see that he still lives, because his chest is heaving with the effort of finding breath, but the fucker standing before him, swinging a censer of some kind of incense is twisting the ends of the thong in his hand as he sings, and Vic's dying. I can see that he is. Two steps bring me to his side, and I pluck the ends of the garrote from his hands, spin him around to face me and let my mind go blank as I beat him to a pulp.
It's the first satisfying thing I've managed to do all day. Looking down on the bastard that's ruined my life, I feel the anger heating my face, and haul him up towards me as though he were merely a bundle of rags. He hiccups, and there's a bubbling sound from him as he tries to speak. I shake him to and fro as though he were a rat.
"What the hell were you doing to him?" I scream, and the dead meat in my hands dares to reply to me.
"He's committed sins of the flesh. He deserves to die. By God's holy commandment, he has come here to allow me to render the final judgment and cast out the demon that resides within him." I shake him again.
"What sin? What did he ever do to you?" I hiss.
"He's homosexual. He's done things that are unnatural. He has to expiate his sin before God will look at him." I've heard enough. My beautiful Vic is at death's door, and I don't have time for this piece of shit. I dash him to the ground, and use my foot to snap his neck. I hope that God's watching out for him - only thing is, I hope it's my God, not his that gets him.
I turn to Vic, hanging above me. His limbs are white marble, with traces of blue at the crook of his elbows. With the loosening of the noose around his neck, his head has sagged forward, and he's not aware of my presence. I remove the thing, and then I wonder how to cut him loose without causing him any further injury.
I drag the altar - which proves to be a table beneath the cloth that covers it - closer to him, and step up onto it, using my body to hold him upright while I cut his wrists free. His hands are blue and swollen. I pray that I was in time to save his fingers, and lower him down onto the altar table, cutting his feet free while I do so.
Another table, and another time rise up in my memory as I cut him loose. Poor Vic, and poor me. Quick as thought, I drop a kiss onto his unknowing mouth, and then chafe his hands, attempting to get the circulation flowing through them again.
A call to Headquarters gets me Dobrinsky, who assures me that there will be assistance with me very soon. I demand an ambulance for Vic, and then I turn back to him, wrapping him in the cloth that covered the altar and hugging him to my body in an attempt to warm him, and to lose that bluish tinge that frightens me so much. I can't see any vestige of his clothing, so I stay, covering him, my jacket wrapped around him and his head pillowed against my chest.
When the Director finds us, she raises one eyebrow in wry amusement, but says nothing. I'm grateful for that. I hand Vic over to the paramedics, who wrap him in a foil blanket and take him away. I don't follow. I make no excuse for the battered corpse of Ashwin Marken, and nobody asks me for any. Alone, I turn and leave.
The warehouse is glowing as I drive away, and soon, I know, there will be flames rising to the heaven that Marken was so sure existed. Maybe he'll even find his way there, though I doubt it.
For me, I have a date with a bottle of Jim Beam, and the knowledge that hell is here on earth with me now.
~~~~~~~oo(O)oo~~~~~~~
On to part 5: Waiting for the Night
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