Kabal - 11. Chapter 11

Diarmad heard the footsteps of at least two people. When the deadbolt rattled, he quickly closed his eyes, trying to appear unconscious. The door opened and the male voice from before said, "We’ll try McLean first, see if it works. His blood is nothing special to us, so it doesn't matter if he has more drugs in his body."

Footsteps shuffled along the floor and clothes rustled. Shortly after, Diarmad heard Ivan groaning.

"Aha. Doc said it would work fast, and he was right."

Diarmad knew he had to make a decision quickly. Should he play dead a little longer, let them inject whatever substance they had, and buy himself some more time? Apparently, they had to wait until it was out of his system before they could bleed him. Would they torture him after the anesthetic ebbed away? Why did they want his blood?

Overpowering three people would be difficult, even if he was at full strength. In his current condition, it was impossible. Reluctantly, he decided the reasonable decision was to bide his time and wait for a better opportunity.

"What? Where...." Ivan was awake.

"Come on, up with you, McLean." Diarmad heard a hard slap.

"Hey, s-stop that," Ivan protested, his speech slurred.

"Look at him, Blondie with the pretty hair doesn't like to be spanked, Jones."

"You think he's the girl? Takes it up his ass?" another man asked.

"Yup. Hey Blondie, you're the girl?" The man snickered.

"He's coming to. Let's try the other one now." That was Jones' voice; he seemed to be in charge.

Jones nudged his arm and Diarmad let it fall beside him, pretending to be unconscious. "He's still out. Give him half of the dose you gave that one, maybe it's enough. We need his blood unspoiled."

Someone shoved Diarmad's shirtsleeve up, swiped something cool over the crook of his arm, then he felt a sharp burn. Shortly after, his heartbeat increased, and he knew he should fake waking up soon.

Sho checked out the wall from the other side of the street "Don't you think they'll have cameras?"

Nico looked to Keith’s mate. “Lionel?”

The man shook his head. "No, they don't have any cameras. It would look suspicious, if between all the abandoned houses, this one has a modern security system.”

Sho still wasn't entirely convinced Nico's plan would work. "We can't just traipse through their garden, Nico. What if someone comes and sees us?"

"We have to risk it. We're running out of time." Nico pushed the curtain of ivy vines aside and motioned Sho to go through. "Come on."

They crossed the street, heading over to the mansion. Nico hesitated briefly, before he laid his hand on the doorknob and tried to turn it. Nothing happened, the door didn't budge. "Fuck! It's locked."

"Try clockwise."

"Clockwise? But—"

"Yeah, yeah normally on this side it would be counterclockwise, but I just remembered what was different when the doc turned the doorknob; it opens the other way around."

Nico tried again and this time it worked without a problem. He cautiously pushed the door open. All they saw was idyllic wilderness. Tall trees blocked most of the daylight, which made it even more difficult for the human eye to detect the small ornamented tiles that marked the way between the weeds and rubble. Good thing Nico wasn't human anymore.

They ducked under the trees and followed the path, Nico leading the way. Nothing felt good about this. The shadows cast by the trees felt menacing. Every so often, he had to stop to find the next tile hidden by dead leaves. Then the trees ended, and they had to cross a wide space, which must have once been the front lawn of the mansion and part of the circular driveway.

"Fuck!" Nico examined the nailed-up windows. He could feel the watchful eyes of the guards, presumably looking out for intruders. Taking in a deep breath, then letting it out slowly, he was looking for an alternative route to the other side, when he felt someone coming. He quickly motioned for Sho to hide behind a bush and then did the same. Luckily it was not too late. Two men holding guns in their hands came out of the mansion's main entrance by turning one of the planks aside and crouching through the gap.

"Andy said someone opened the door after doc went through."

"Andy is a moron. Did you hear an explosion? I bet the door mechanism is acting up again. Nobody can snoop around without hitting one of the traps."

"I don't know… I've heard those freaks have some weird abilities."

"Old-wives-tales. Come on, let’s take a look at the damn door so I can get my coffee."

Luckily, the two men passed without noticing them. Nico grabbed Sho's hand, and together they ran across the cracked driveway, hoping Andy-whoever-it-was didn't look out of the mansion at just that moment. When they came around the house, they immediately noticed the tool shed at the far end of the garden. Crouching through high weeds and hiding behind bushes, they found the entrance undetected. Luckily, it was on the side facing away from the mansion.

Nico listened intently at the door. When he couldn't hear anything inside, he pushed it open, and for a moment, he stared at rusted gardening tools and broken furniture.

After turning around twice, he asked Sho, "Doesn’t it look smaller from the inside than from the outside?"

Sho stepped outside and then came back. "You're right; this wall over there should be at least two feet further in the back." After examining it more closely, he pressed his hand against a strangely clean spot on the planks, and the wall gave way, revealing a stairway leading down into the dark, presumably to the dungeon.

With their hands cuffed behind their backs, Ivan and Diarmad were led through narrow, dimly lit passages and under low doors. It was like a labyrinth, and Diarmad knew he would never find his way back, at least not without his powers. Seeing the men sometimes stop and glance at the walls, he wondered if there was some kind of signage they were following. If there was, he couldn't make it out.

Jones had one hand firmly around Ivan's biceps as he dragged him along. He was still weak and stumbled more than he walked on the badly cobbled ground. His head lolled from one side to the other, and his empty eyes didn’t seem to recognize Diarmad.

After what felt like hours, but in reality must have been only minutes, they reached a set of strangely ornate double-doors. One of the men knocked in a complicated rhythm. They waited until a voice from the inside answered before opening the door. The room behind was large and luxuriously furnished.

Nico’s foot hadn’t touched the first step yet, when a voice called up to them, "Saul? Frank?"

After a brief glance at him, Sho called down, "Andy said the door was opened a second time after doc came in!"

"Only the doc came down here. Peters is getting him to Jones as we speak."

While they were talking to the sentinel, they crept down several slippery steps, until they reached the last one.

"Who—"

Using his telekinetic force, Nico slammed the owner of the voice into the wall behind him, and he slumped down on the floor. "Quick, tie him up and don't forget to gag him before he wakes up and alerts the others." Feeling dizzy after using his power, Nico shook his head, irritated. "This Peters guy might be back any minute. We have to take him out too before we can go any further."

The secretary of Elders looked up from his papers when he heard them enter. "Ahh, your highness. And so we meet again." Then he looked at Ivan. "And your seer as well, good, good," he said as his lips curled in a nasty grin. "Or should we say your could-have-been seer, now he'll never have the chance to mate?"

Diarmad stood as upright as he could with his hands bound behind his back and his biceps firmly held by one of the guards. He perused his opponent with cold, silvery eyes. "So the Order was behind this."

The secretary chuckled. "Still so defiant. Admirable, but stupid." He pushed the papers in front of him into a neat stack and then leaned back in his chair. "I believe you have many questions, and as I am in a very good mood today, I feel inclined to answer a few of them." He nodded at Diarmad mockingly. "Go ahead."

"I have no interest in your plans, or in your bragging," Diarmad answered in a disparaging tone.

"I see." The secretary stood up and walked around his desk until he stood directly in front of him, their chests almost touching. Diarmad could smell his sweetish cologne.

"Not even a little bit curious? Hmm... I would think the most urgent question you must have is why you can't use your powers anymore, am I right? I can't answer that, not because I don't want to, but because we don't know. It has something to do with the special soil that’s found around here. That’s as much I do know. We detected it by accident and found it very convenient." Then he nodded to his men, who promptly grabbed Ivan and Diarmad by their shoulders and pressed them down until they kneeled before the secretary.

"Much better. On your knees is where you belong. Being parted of your unnatural powers, everyone can see what you truly are: weak. A mere worm. We, the Order, will prevent humankind from becoming enslaved by invaders from space. We will eliminate you and take back what you have stolen from us.

"You will give us access to everything you stole. You will show us the way you came here, so we can close that door. You will hand over your money and any other material possessions. Additionally, you will reveal all your documentation, so we know where you vermin infested our world, and can we can eliminate every one of you."

"Oh?"

“Once your energy is depleted, and as it does not regenerate here, your healing will not work either. Watch." He nodded at one of his goons, who stepped forward, a gleaming knife in his hand. He grabbed Ivan's chin, turned him around, and slowly drew the blade from the left corner of his eye in a light arch to his ear. Ivan groaned. The wound immediately began to close, but sluggishly. As soon as it was closed, the man ran his knife along the same pink line and reopened the wound. This time it took longer to heal, and the remaining scar was more prominent. To make a point, he did it a third time, and this time he left an ugly, ragged scar on Ivan’s face.

"We can do this to him for a long time. His healing will get slower and slower, and of course, he will be in great pain. We have some other nice things prepared, if this isn't enough to convince you to cooperate with us."

He opened a small, metal box on his desk and took out a little plastic bottle.

"This is another wicked thing our doctor came up with. Eye drops, once applied, induce enormous pain; at first without lasting damage. However, if we apply it several times, say four or five times, it impairs eyesight. At the end, the delinquent will be blind. Nice, isn't it?

"So, this is what we will do: I will ask you questions, and every time you don't answer, he will suffer, either from Jones' knife or doc's eye drops. You will both die. Every one of your wretched people will die, but you can ease the way for him. He is your friend, right? If you answer all of my questions to my satisfaction, he will die a swift death, if not...." He nodded, and the man who still held Ivan's chin took the small bottle, pried Ivan's lids open and dropped some of the fluid into the open eye.

Ivan's screams were terrible.

When he had recovered enough to be able to speak again, he croaked with a hoarse voice, "Don't tell them anything, my king." After that, he didn't speak anymore.

Landyn hadn’t been this furious since Diarmad kicked out Nico. How could the boy be so irresponsible? He knew what he was risking, and still he endangered himself and the king.

Throwing his phone into the open duffle bag at his feet, he muttered, "If I ever find out who helped them, they'll wish they were never born."

Wearing helmets equipped with an intercom, everybody in the cabin of their helicopter heard him, including Seamus at the helm.

Simon laid his hand on Landyn's thigh, rubbing it soothingly. "He's the king's mate, love. If he wants help, he gets it. Nobody would deny him, not even the king."

"Well, somebody should when he acts unreasonable." Landyn didn't push his mate's hand away, but put his own on top, entwining their fingers, seeking his mate's calmness. "You would think he's old enough."

"It's going to be okay, you'll see." Ronan turned around in his seat. "We'll get to them in twenty minutes, tops, and thanks to him we know of the traps, and he confirmed the king is being held at that house."

"You really think he'll be there, waiting for us?" Landyn scoffed. "Well, think again."

With Sho holding his feet and Nico his shoulders, they carried the unconscious guard into a small side-room filled with garbage. They had to shove their way through trash bags before they could lay the body down behind a pile of empty cardboard boxes.

"Do you think this is some kind of uniform?" Nico eyed the unconscious guard pensively.

"Could be. The men who attacked the house had similar clothes on: black military fatigues, combat boots, probably a black sweater like this under the Kevlar vest."

"Okay, strip him. Take the sweater and the utility belt; put your own things in the backpack. I don't think anybody will notice the difference in the pants or boots."

After doing what Nico suggested, Sho scrunched his nose when he pulled the guard's sweater over his head. "The guy stinks of beer and sweat. Eww."

Nico rolled his eyes at his disgusted friend while he tied the guard to a pipe on the wall. "We don't want him wandering about and alerting the others when he wakes up."

When he looked up, he saw Sho staring at one of the empty boxes. "Look at all those medical supplies." He read the label aloud, "Blood transfusion bags? Do you think they have some kind of emergency clinic somewhere down here?"

Nico scanned the room. "There's more: stretchers, infusion stands, transfusion pumps, Ringer solution, and sterile saline solution. What the hell?" He was about to explore some more boxes in the back when he heard footsteps. "Shit, someone is coming. Probably the other guard, Peters. Quick, hide behind the door." He took one of his swords in hand and pressed his back against the wall, trying to calm down his breathing, and then grinned. "Here comes our second set of uniforms."

"Frank?! Are you napping in the back room again?" The doorknob turned and Nico tightened his fingers around the wakizashi.

"Frank? Are you in here?"

When the door opened, Nico pulled Peters forward by his throat and tightened his hand until the man was choking. He then slammed the hilt of his sword against his temple, and Peters sank down to the floor with only a small grunt.

"Well, that went easier than I thought."

Afterwards, Sho stripped him, passed the sweater and utility belt to Nico, and then they dragged the man to the other side of the room, where they bound his hands and feet, gagged him, and tied him to an eyelet coming out of the wall. "Convenient, huh?"

Nico shrugged. "Well, it's the garbage room, so they must have something in here to secure their trash."

After closing the door, they jammed it shut with a piece of wood. "That's that, now we go find our mates." Nico lifted his head, closed his eyes, and let his senses go out to Diarmad. His body stiffened. "We have to hurry; Diarmad is in great distress, and not for himself!" Never before had he felt Diarmad's emotions so strongly.

Sho looked up from securing the utility belt around his waist. "What do you mean not for himself?" Then he understood and paled. "Ivan!"

Nico gave a short nod and pointed to the passageway that went out from the guardroom. "We better hurry." He squeezed Sho's arm briefly. "Although we should wait for Lan—"

A faint scream interrupted him mid-sentence. "Fuck!" Without waiting for Sho, Nico ran out of the room and had already disappeared around the next corner before Sho came to his senses.

The first part of the passageway was only sparsely lit with small strips of light on the upper side of the walls, casting ominous shadows from the floor to the vaulted ceiling. When their tunnel met another, this one with bright ceiling lamps, they slowed down, knowing they had to have hit a main passage.

While they walked through the empty corridor, Nico wondered why they didn't encounter a single person, and Sho seemed to have the same idea.

"Where is everybody?" he whispered. He had to jog in order to keep up with Nico's longer legs.

"I don't know, and I don't care," Nico hissed, while keeping a watchful eye on his surroundings. When he detected two open doors on the right, he stopped. They could hear the distinct clacking of a keyboard. Now they were paying more attention.

Sho mouthed silently, "Office?"

Nico shrugged his shoulders. "We’ll pass the doors and see what happens."

Nobody called after them, and only when they were a few feet away, they breathed in relief.

At the next junction, three ways led to different tunnels. To their right, they could make out a passage with each side lined with three small doors locked with deadbolts and padlocks.

"What do you think? Holding cells?" Nico asked in a low voice.

Sho nodded. "Yeah." He was already on the way, when Nico stopped him.

"Nobody is in there," he said confidently. When Sho looked questioningly, he explained, "I would hear their thoughts." Then his lips tightened, and he looked grim. "I can feel Diarmad farther down there."

They met another junction, and Nico almost gagged when the putrid scent of rotten flesh wafted from a passageway to their right.

He looked at Sho, who seemed strangely oblivious. "Don't you smell that?"

"Do I smell what?" Sho asked, irritated, eager to continue their search.

Nico held him back. "It smells like something rotten, like decaying bodies... and there are two people standing just around the corner on the right. They're guarding a door."

Sho froze. "Shit! What now?"

After a short hesitation, Nico nodded ahead. "We walk in that direction as if it were perfectly normal, like we did when we passed the office. Hide the swords at the side facing away from them, but prepare for a fight."

They did as Nico suggested and even nodded at the two men guarding a double door with guns at the ready. One of them nodded back, then they heard another scream, which made goosebumps run up and down Nico's spine. Sho tensed beside him. "Almost there! Just around the next corner."

Diarmad closed his blazing, silver eyes. He couldn't answer any of the secretary's questions, he just couldn't, but every time they dropped more fluid into Ivan's eyes, his friend's screams sliced through him like laser beams. He wanted nothing more than to choke the secretary to death, squash him with an energy burst, deplete him and his goons of their life force, until their sorry carcasses crumpled on the floor. If he only had his powers back.

The secretary knew exactly what was going on inside of him. He could see it in his triumphant grin; the man practically reveled in Diarmad's powerlessness and despair.

"Look at McLean's eyes. Do you see the change in their color?" the secretary asked him almost clinically, a sinister glee gleaming in his eyes. "That is your fault. The bright color tells us that he is blind now. He can’t heal the damage; the same with his face. He'll be a disfigured, mutilated corpse when we're finished with him, and everybody will see what you let happen to him. He trusted you, and you failed him." Then he nodded, and the man holding him dropped more fluid into Ivan's eyes.

Never in his life had Diarmad felt so completely and utterly helpless as when he heard his friend crying out in agony, his voice already broken from the abuse of his vocal cords. He knew soon he would be forced to see his friend die a horrible death. His shoulders almost slumped, but he caught himself at the last moment, refusing to let the secretary have the victory of seeing him defeated.