"Torture Is a Way of Life"
"Torture Is a Way of Life"
1/17/2023
I.
"I didn't hit seventy, seventy hit ME," sighed Weaver. Nothing remained on his plate of the Reuben. In the warm, dimly lit dining room of the Hofbrau House, he had felt so relaxed that he was thinking of ordering dessert just to linger a little longer even though he was full.
Across the table, Jeremy Bane smiled more openly than he usually allowed himself. "A touch of grey suits you, Steve. It makes you look dignified."
"Hah. I don't mind the salt and pepper hair, it's the big bald spot on top of my head that's killing me. That, and the pot belly I can't lose." In fact, the former Black Angel was still handsome in his way. The deep dark brown skin showed few wrinkles. Perfectly tended teeth flashed when he smiled and the thick mustache under a wide nose had stayed black. Weaver looked friendly. Most people liked him at first meeting. And he still dressed well, showing up for dinner at the restaurant in a dark blue suit with a powder blue shirt and narrow black tie, all tailored in a conservative cut.
In contrast, his captain Jeremy Bane remained a lean, tense figure all in black... slacks, turtleneck and sport jacket. The 8 Wolf had not visibly aged as much as Weaver; except for some lines around the mouth and eyes, and some scattered white flecks in the short black hair, he looked much as he always had. The grey eyes under heavy brows remained as startlingly pale and sharp as ever.
They both had enjoyed Reubens with sauerkraut. Weaver had ordered a side of cream of potato soup, Bane a plate of sweet potato fries, and they had shared a pitcher of dark German beer. Neither man usually drank, since their healing factor meant alcohol didn't affect them but the beer had seemed appropriate. Only a few pickle wedges were left and Bane was claiming one.
"So, now I have to decide where to move," Weaver said. "I finally retired from the HCE Project after all these years. Enough working on those CORBYs and relaying messages from the Trom. I'm tired of all that."
"You earned some peace. I 'm sure you know this already, but you are more than welcome to stay at the headquarters while you look for a house. We have a suite of rooms on the third floor all ready. And it goes without saying, meals and expenses are covered. You're still a KDF member."
"I might take you up on that, Jeremy. All my stuff is in storage back at the Project for now, but my suitcase and duffel bag are at that hotel on 53rd. I booked it for two nights."
Bane's voice was normally low and taut, but now he made sure no one was within hearing before asking, "Did you bring the Black Angel outfit?"
"What, the wings and flightsuit and all that? Naw. I can't remember the last time I even tried it on. My powers are gone, captain, gone and not coming back. I can't even levitate enough to reduce my weight on the bathroom scale."
"That was such a loss to our team," the Dire Wolf said. "Not just because of losing your flight ability, but because you added down to Earth common sense to our gang. I always wanted you to stay, even as just an advisor and monitor officer or something."
Weaver picked up the laminated four page menu again. "Aw, I would have felt so useless. Like a quarterback sent to sit on the bench for every game. What would you say to some lemon meringue pie? Nice and light after the heavy food."
"Fine with me. Order us some. I do have to get going soon, though. I'm supposed to meet one of my observers down in Little Italy at eleven." Bane pushed his plate to one side with satisfaction. "I'm glad we had an hour to catch up, Steve. There's not many left of our founding members."
"Just you, Cindy and Ted at this point," Black Angel said. "I joined in 1980. I was not one of the original seven who signed that Kenneth Dred Foundation character. Oh, miss? Yes. Could we have two servings of lemon meringue pie? Yeah, that'll be all. Thank you."
"So, what's your plan?" asked Bane. "I know some of the team are headquarters. Unicorn, Tim and Demrak Jin for sure. They'd be glad to see you."
"I don't know. I guess I want to go back to my hotel room for tonight and think things over. In a way, I could be happy studying at Tel Shai half the time and maybe just loafing around the rest. I mean, I got my first job at 16, then I enlisted in the Air Force and then I started working for the Trom and then I joined the KDF."
"Sounds like you want some time to yourself," Bane said. He thanked the waitress as she brought their desserts and then practically inhaled the pie in a single gulp. One price for his enhanced speed was a metabolism that left him always ravenous.
Weaver took a good bite of his own serving, chewed and swallowed before answering. "Feh. I don't have to decide tonight. Between all my pensions and benefits and socking away dough all my life, I can travel the world in luxury if I want to."
Watching his old friend, the Dire Wolf allowed a rare wistfulness to creep into his voice. "You ever think about our first team? Mike, Khang, Larry? Leonard Slade? All gone now. This year Garrison Nebel died, too. I visit Shiro every now and then, he lives in an old restored farm house in Pennsylvania; he put on fifty pounds and spends his time writing the most awful poetry you ever saw."
"He's earned the right to waste his time. We all have." Weaver took some bills from his wallet and tucked them under his plate. "What about you yourself? You claim you retired six years ago, Jeremy, yet I hear you are still going out in the middle of the night to chase monsters and stalk killers."
"I'll never change," Bane admitted. "Always the Dire Wolf."
II.
Outside the restaurant, they shook hands and parted. Weaver watched his captain stride briskly west along Fifth Avenue, walking faster than most people could run. It made him smile. He'd bet Jeremy Bane would still be fighting the Midnight War at a hundred years old. The image of the Dire Wolf in a wheelchair, rolling after a Skinwalker and smacking at the beast with a cane caused Weaver to laugh out loud.
It had been an unusually warm Winter. Even in mid-January, daytime temps hit forty and were still above freezing at ten PM. Stephen Weaver had pulled on a long cloth topcoat over his suit and he turned up his collar and started heading East. So much to think about it. He had a half dozen options for his retirement, including doing absolute nothing but watching TV on the couch all day. Or he could stay with the KDF for a year or so, maybe helping out in a civilian capacity. There was one thing he had not told Bane.
Weaver had been feeling twinges as if his levitation ability was stirring. Nothing definite. Sometimes he felt he was on the brink of lifting up off the ground, floating effortlessly, maybe rising up to swoop through the air as he had done for years. So far, he hadn't been able to levitate. It was just a frustrating sensation of nearness, like waiting for a sneeze that didn't come.
When he reached his hotel, Weaver found himself walking on. It had been decades since he had been active in the Midnight War. All the stress and fear and wonder seemed so dim and far away, as if they had happened to someone else. He didn't realize how much his wariness had atrophied. Constantly watching for possible attacks, judging how far to keep from strangers moving past him, identifying every noise.. all these were habits he had lost.
At the corner of Fifth Avenue and 53rd Street, a gleaming black SUV swerved over to the curb two feet ahead of him to his left. The former Black Angel was lost in mental arithmetic, figuring out the expenses of any apartment in Manhattan. He kept walking at the same pace. When the front passenger window slid down, he turned his head toward it in unconscious curiosity, with none of the old alarms going off in his head.
The high pressure stream of green vapor struck Weaver full in the face. His knees buckled and he dropped, but a big man from the SUV's back seat was already out and catching him, shoving him roughly into the opening and then climbing in himself. The door slammed shut as the Black vehicle swung around the corner and into the side street without pulling into traffic.
Pinned down by strong hands, Weaver gasped and tried to remain conscious. Every breath burned horribly. He looked up and his heart sank as he saw the face smirking down at him from the front seat. Long and narrow, bone-white in both skin and long silken hair, that face had oblique green eyes gleaming with cruelty. He had been taken by the Darthim.
III.
The groggy stupor seemed to take forever to lift. Weaver didn't completely lose consciousness from the Alchemical gas but he was too dazed to have been fully aware of where he had been taken. Grudgingly, forcing himself awake, he pieced together his sensations. He was sitting on a plain wooden stool with someone propping him. He was naked, the air was cold on his skin. His wrists were bound behind him, painfully tight, with wire and his ankles were tied together with some slack so he might hobble.
Weaver's vision cleared abruptly. This was an unfurnished basement somewhere, concrete floor and rough stone walls, lit by overhead flourescent tubes. Right in front of him was an oversized porcelain bathtub and there was something in it he could not identify. What the hell? A featureless four foot cylinder, light tan, with a round knob at one end. A sack made of canvas? No. His brain refused to process it for a moment.
Then the object stirred. Weaver's heart almost stopped from the deepest horror he had ever felt. This was a person or at least it had been. Stitches and pads showed where the arms and legs had been removed. The head had no external ears, no nose, only empty sockets where the eyes had been and the gaping mouth had been denuded of both tongue and teeth. And yet, this was a human being, still alive, still suffering beyond anything he had ever imagined.
He couldn't even pray. Keeping back vomit took all his strength. Weaver realized he was hyperventilating and concentrated on breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth. He had seen atrocities before, both in conventional battlefields and in the Midnight War. Keep a distance, stay cool and get a grip. Telling himself all that didn't help.
Then the Dartha stepped into view. Tall and slim in his dark green silk robe with bell sleeves and a high collar, the nonhuman sorcerer was white as any albino. But his narrow eyes did not have pink irises.. they were jade green. His ears rose to distinct points. The Dartha clasped long-fingered hands in front of him and smiled more cruelly than any cat.
"Tel Shai dupe, you face Yaslinor of Maroch. No, I am not a Kje yet. Hugo, I am done with our previous plaything."
A big Human male wearing rough work clothes leaned over into the tub and casually flung the pitiful form over one shoulder. He went around behind Weaver and the sound of feet treading up stairs could be heard.
The Darthan was studying Weaver gleefully. "Hugo and the driver will dispose of the leftovers. That gives us some time to become acquainted, my child. Over the next year, we will be spending some time together." There were two folding tables near at hand, and he went to the one which held Weaver's clothing neatly stacked, coming up with the wallet.
"I can read your rather crude attempt at written language, English it is called. This card bears your repulsive likeness. You are indeed the Human called Black Angel. You were with the Tel Shai team which led those Melgar brutes to invade sacred Maroch."
"That was forty years ago..." Weaver said but his attention was on the table which held his gear. His communication Link was there, almost within reach but that wasn't a good thing. If the Trom device was more than thirty feet away, unless he changed the setting, it would shut down. A signal would be sent and either Bane or whoever was on monitor duty would come to investigate. But now that hope had been taken away.
"My people have become too passive," Yaslinor said. "We lounge about in luxury, dreaming of past glories rather than striving for future greatness. I will change all that. One by one, I will claim you Tel Shai peasants and pare you down until you resemble a fowl ready for roasting."
Weaver could not speak. The situation had fully sunk in by then. Here he was, naked and tied up on a stool, while a Dartha was gloating over how much he would suffer. Offers of money meant nothing to the pale sorcerer's Race, threats would not deter and they enjoyed laughing at pleas for mercy.
"Torture Is a Way of Life for my people," Yaslinor purred as he stared down at his prisoner. "We have made it an art. My specialty is called the Year of Loss. I will remove a toe tonight, then another tomorrow. When they are gone, we will start on the fingers. You will not be allowed to bleed out or go into shock, no no. That would be too quick an escape for you."
The Dartha stepped over to run his hands over the implements on the second table. Many long thin blades, curved wires, pliers and other esoteric tools no Human had seen and lived to describe. "You may heard that we Darthim hold tournaments of pain, we have grandmasters of suffering. Darthim live on average to be eight hundred years old, and few are the pastimes which do not grow stale in time."
Still, Weaver could collect himself enough to speak. Early in his career when he was young and brash, he threw wisecracks when he had been captured by enemies. None of that came to mind now. Terror numbed his brain.
Yaslinor continued to speak, but the Black Angel was not listening. Cutting through his despair was a sensation long unfelt but not forgotten. Like quicksilver running hot through his veins, gralic force returned to his body. When he had given up all hope, hope had come to him.
IV.
Weaver leaned forward and fell face down on the concrete. With his hands bound behind him, he could not catch himself in any way. The Dartha hesitated. For the first time, his smug self-assurance faltered. "What is this?" he asked, "surely a Tel Shai knight does not faint."
The pale sorcerer stepped closer and leaned over to grasp Weaver by one bare shoulder, intending to turn his prisoner over. The instant Weaver knew the Dartha was bent over him, he drew on his full power. Black Angel shot straight up to crash into the rough beams, at eighty miles an hour. Yaslinor was crushed between Weaver and the ceiling, all the air forced out of his lungs with a gush. Weaver spun on his own axis, throwing the stunned Dartha down off him. As Yaslinor hit the floor with a thump, Weaver was already upon him. Using his levitation in reverse, the Black Angels pressed down with his knees on the sorcerer's chest. Ribs cracked and the sternum caved in. Yaslinor's struggles only lasted a second before he went entirely limp.
Gasping and shaking, Weaver rolled off the body and sprawled out on his back. He could feel his heart pounding. It seemed to take forever before his breathing slowed to normal. Eventually, he managed to sit up even with his hands still tied behind him. I used to do stunts like that without thinking twice, he remembered. I used to fight Skinwalkers and maniacs and all the creatures of the night on equal terms.
With an effort, he cleared his mind and started thinking clearly. This wasn't over yet. Where was he? Were there other Darthim in the vicinity? The two Human servants had gone to dispose of that poor victim, but how long would that take? When we they come back?
When he was young and confident, he would have tried to get hold of those pliers and unwrap the wire around his wrists. But now he had to be realistic. Weaver backed up against the table which held his gear and levered himself up until he was standing. A few minutes fumbling got his Link in his hands. He pressed the contact on one side to activate the device.
"Hello? Hello. Base? Anyone on duty?"
"Heyyyy, Stevie Weaver!" came a familiar insolent voice. "Unicorn here, long time no see,"
"Ashley, listen. I've been captured by a Dartha. He's dead now but I don't know who is else is nearby... "
"Say no more," the suddenly sober voice answered. "Tim and Galvan are already running downstairs to get the cruiser. Looks like your signal is coming from West 18th Street. The way Tim drives, they'll be there in a wink. Are you hurt?"
It took a moment for Weaver to decide how to answer. He felt he shouldn't reveal his levitation had returned. Not yet anyway. "No, I'm fine," he said at last. "I guess I just got lucky."
2/11/2023
1/17/2023
I.
"I didn't hit seventy, seventy hit ME," sighed Weaver. Nothing remained on his plate of the Reuben. In the warm, dimly lit dining room of the Hofbrau House, he had felt so relaxed that he was thinking of ordering dessert just to linger a little longer even though he was full.
Across the table, Jeremy Bane smiled more openly than he usually allowed himself. "A touch of grey suits you, Steve. It makes you look dignified."
"Hah. I don't mind the salt and pepper hair, it's the big bald spot on top of my head that's killing me. That, and the pot belly I can't lose." In fact, the former Black Angel was still handsome in his way. The deep dark brown skin showed few wrinkles. Perfectly tended teeth flashed when he smiled and the thick mustache under a wide nose had stayed black. Weaver looked friendly. Most people liked him at first meeting. And he still dressed well, showing up for dinner at the restaurant in a dark blue suit with a powder blue shirt and narrow black tie, all tailored in a conservative cut.
In contrast, his captain Jeremy Bane remained a lean, tense figure all in black... slacks, turtleneck and sport jacket. The 8 Wolf had not visibly aged as much as Weaver; except for some lines around the mouth and eyes, and some scattered white flecks in the short black hair, he looked much as he always had. The grey eyes under heavy brows remained as startlingly pale and sharp as ever.
They both had enjoyed Reubens with sauerkraut. Weaver had ordered a side of cream of potato soup, Bane a plate of sweet potato fries, and they had shared a pitcher of dark German beer. Neither man usually drank, since their healing factor meant alcohol didn't affect them but the beer had seemed appropriate. Only a few pickle wedges were left and Bane was claiming one.
"So, now I have to decide where to move," Weaver said. "I finally retired from the HCE Project after all these years. Enough working on those CORBYs and relaying messages from the Trom. I'm tired of all that."
"You earned some peace. I 'm sure you know this already, but you are more than welcome to stay at the headquarters while you look for a house. We have a suite of rooms on the third floor all ready. And it goes without saying, meals and expenses are covered. You're still a KDF member."
"I might take you up on that, Jeremy. All my stuff is in storage back at the Project for now, but my suitcase and duffel bag are at that hotel on 53rd. I booked it for two nights."
Bane's voice was normally low and taut, but now he made sure no one was within hearing before asking, "Did you bring the Black Angel outfit?"
"What, the wings and flightsuit and all that? Naw. I can't remember the last time I even tried it on. My powers are gone, captain, gone and not coming back. I can't even levitate enough to reduce my weight on the bathroom scale."
"That was such a loss to our team," the Dire Wolf said. "Not just because of losing your flight ability, but because you added down to Earth common sense to our gang. I always wanted you to stay, even as just an advisor and monitor officer or something."
Weaver picked up the laminated four page menu again. "Aw, I would have felt so useless. Like a quarterback sent to sit on the bench for every game. What would you say to some lemon meringue pie? Nice and light after the heavy food."
"Fine with me. Order us some. I do have to get going soon, though. I'm supposed to meet one of my observers down in Little Italy at eleven." Bane pushed his plate to one side with satisfaction. "I'm glad we had an hour to catch up, Steve. There's not many left of our founding members."
"Just you, Cindy and Ted at this point," Black Angel said. "I joined in 1980. I was not one of the original seven who signed that Kenneth Dred Foundation character. Oh, miss? Yes. Could we have two servings of lemon meringue pie? Yeah, that'll be all. Thank you."
"So, what's your plan?" asked Bane. "I know some of the team are headquarters. Unicorn, Tim and Demrak Jin for sure. They'd be glad to see you."
"I don't know. I guess I want to go back to my hotel room for tonight and think things over. In a way, I could be happy studying at Tel Shai half the time and maybe just loafing around the rest. I mean, I got my first job at 16, then I enlisted in the Air Force and then I started working for the Trom and then I joined the KDF."
"Sounds like you want some time to yourself," Bane said. He thanked the waitress as she brought their desserts and then practically inhaled the pie in a single gulp. One price for his enhanced speed was a metabolism that left him always ravenous.
Weaver took a good bite of his own serving, chewed and swallowed before answering. "Feh. I don't have to decide tonight. Between all my pensions and benefits and socking away dough all my life, I can travel the world in luxury if I want to."
Watching his old friend, the Dire Wolf allowed a rare wistfulness to creep into his voice. "You ever think about our first team? Mike, Khang, Larry? Leonard Slade? All gone now. This year Garrison Nebel died, too. I visit Shiro every now and then, he lives in an old restored farm house in Pennsylvania; he put on fifty pounds and spends his time writing the most awful poetry you ever saw."
"He's earned the right to waste his time. We all have." Weaver took some bills from his wallet and tucked them under his plate. "What about you yourself? You claim you retired six years ago, Jeremy, yet I hear you are still going out in the middle of the night to chase monsters and stalk killers."
"I'll never change," Bane admitted. "Always the Dire Wolf."
II.
Outside the restaurant, they shook hands and parted. Weaver watched his captain stride briskly west along Fifth Avenue, walking faster than most people could run. It made him smile. He'd bet Jeremy Bane would still be fighting the Midnight War at a hundred years old. The image of the Dire Wolf in a wheelchair, rolling after a Skinwalker and smacking at the beast with a cane caused Weaver to laugh out loud.
It had been an unusually warm Winter. Even in mid-January, daytime temps hit forty and were still above freezing at ten PM. Stephen Weaver had pulled on a long cloth topcoat over his suit and he turned up his collar and started heading East. So much to think about it. He had a half dozen options for his retirement, including doing absolute nothing but watching TV on the couch all day. Or he could stay with the KDF for a year or so, maybe helping out in a civilian capacity. There was one thing he had not told Bane.
Weaver had been feeling twinges as if his levitation ability was stirring. Nothing definite. Sometimes he felt he was on the brink of lifting up off the ground, floating effortlessly, maybe rising up to swoop through the air as he had done for years. So far, he hadn't been able to levitate. It was just a frustrating sensation of nearness, like waiting for a sneeze that didn't come.
When he reached his hotel, Weaver found himself walking on. It had been decades since he had been active in the Midnight War. All the stress and fear and wonder seemed so dim and far away, as if they had happened to someone else. He didn't realize how much his wariness had atrophied. Constantly watching for possible attacks, judging how far to keep from strangers moving past him, identifying every noise.. all these were habits he had lost.
At the corner of Fifth Avenue and 53rd Street, a gleaming black SUV swerved over to the curb two feet ahead of him to his left. The former Black Angel was lost in mental arithmetic, figuring out the expenses of any apartment in Manhattan. He kept walking at the same pace. When the front passenger window slid down, he turned his head toward it in unconscious curiosity, with none of the old alarms going off in his head.
The high pressure stream of green vapor struck Weaver full in the face. His knees buckled and he dropped, but a big man from the SUV's back seat was already out and catching him, shoving him roughly into the opening and then climbing in himself. The door slammed shut as the Black vehicle swung around the corner and into the side street without pulling into traffic.
Pinned down by strong hands, Weaver gasped and tried to remain conscious. Every breath burned horribly. He looked up and his heart sank as he saw the face smirking down at him from the front seat. Long and narrow, bone-white in both skin and long silken hair, that face had oblique green eyes gleaming with cruelty. He had been taken by the Darthim.
III.
The groggy stupor seemed to take forever to lift. Weaver didn't completely lose consciousness from the Alchemical gas but he was too dazed to have been fully aware of where he had been taken. Grudgingly, forcing himself awake, he pieced together his sensations. He was sitting on a plain wooden stool with someone propping him. He was naked, the air was cold on his skin. His wrists were bound behind him, painfully tight, with wire and his ankles were tied together with some slack so he might hobble.
Weaver's vision cleared abruptly. This was an unfurnished basement somewhere, concrete floor and rough stone walls, lit by overhead flourescent tubes. Right in front of him was an oversized porcelain bathtub and there was something in it he could not identify. What the hell? A featureless four foot cylinder, light tan, with a round knob at one end. A sack made of canvas? No. His brain refused to process it for a moment.
Then the object stirred. Weaver's heart almost stopped from the deepest horror he had ever felt. This was a person or at least it had been. Stitches and pads showed where the arms and legs had been removed. The head had no external ears, no nose, only empty sockets where the eyes had been and the gaping mouth had been denuded of both tongue and teeth. And yet, this was a human being, still alive, still suffering beyond anything he had ever imagined.
He couldn't even pray. Keeping back vomit took all his strength. Weaver realized he was hyperventilating and concentrated on breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth. He had seen atrocities before, both in conventional battlefields and in the Midnight War. Keep a distance, stay cool and get a grip. Telling himself all that didn't help.
Then the Dartha stepped into view. Tall and slim in his dark green silk robe with bell sleeves and a high collar, the nonhuman sorcerer was white as any albino. But his narrow eyes did not have pink irises.. they were jade green. His ears rose to distinct points. The Dartha clasped long-fingered hands in front of him and smiled more cruelly than any cat.
"Tel Shai dupe, you face Yaslinor of Maroch. No, I am not a Kje yet. Hugo, I am done with our previous plaything."
A big Human male wearing rough work clothes leaned over into the tub and casually flung the pitiful form over one shoulder. He went around behind Weaver and the sound of feet treading up stairs could be heard.
The Darthan was studying Weaver gleefully. "Hugo and the driver will dispose of the leftovers. That gives us some time to become acquainted, my child. Over the next year, we will be spending some time together." There were two folding tables near at hand, and he went to the one which held Weaver's clothing neatly stacked, coming up with the wallet.
"I can read your rather crude attempt at written language, English it is called. This card bears your repulsive likeness. You are indeed the Human called Black Angel. You were with the Tel Shai team which led those Melgar brutes to invade sacred Maroch."
"That was forty years ago..." Weaver said but his attention was on the table which held his gear. His communication Link was there, almost within reach but that wasn't a good thing. If the Trom device was more than thirty feet away, unless he changed the setting, it would shut down. A signal would be sent and either Bane or whoever was on monitor duty would come to investigate. But now that hope had been taken away.
"My people have become too passive," Yaslinor said. "We lounge about in luxury, dreaming of past glories rather than striving for future greatness. I will change all that. One by one, I will claim you Tel Shai peasants and pare you down until you resemble a fowl ready for roasting."
Weaver could not speak. The situation had fully sunk in by then. Here he was, naked and tied up on a stool, while a Dartha was gloating over how much he would suffer. Offers of money meant nothing to the pale sorcerer's Race, threats would not deter and they enjoyed laughing at pleas for mercy.
"Torture Is a Way of Life for my people," Yaslinor purred as he stared down at his prisoner. "We have made it an art. My specialty is called the Year of Loss. I will remove a toe tonight, then another tomorrow. When they are gone, we will start on the fingers. You will not be allowed to bleed out or go into shock, no no. That would be too quick an escape for you."
The Dartha stepped over to run his hands over the implements on the second table. Many long thin blades, curved wires, pliers and other esoteric tools no Human had seen and lived to describe. "You may heard that we Darthim hold tournaments of pain, we have grandmasters of suffering. Darthim live on average to be eight hundred years old, and few are the pastimes which do not grow stale in time."
Still, Weaver could collect himself enough to speak. Early in his career when he was young and brash, he threw wisecracks when he had been captured by enemies. None of that came to mind now. Terror numbed his brain.
Yaslinor continued to speak, but the Black Angel was not listening. Cutting through his despair was a sensation long unfelt but not forgotten. Like quicksilver running hot through his veins, gralic force returned to his body. When he had given up all hope, hope had come to him.
IV.
Weaver leaned forward and fell face down on the concrete. With his hands bound behind him, he could not catch himself in any way. The Dartha hesitated. For the first time, his smug self-assurance faltered. "What is this?" he asked, "surely a Tel Shai knight does not faint."
The pale sorcerer stepped closer and leaned over to grasp Weaver by one bare shoulder, intending to turn his prisoner over. The instant Weaver knew the Dartha was bent over him, he drew on his full power. Black Angel shot straight up to crash into the rough beams, at eighty miles an hour. Yaslinor was crushed between Weaver and the ceiling, all the air forced out of his lungs with a gush. Weaver spun on his own axis, throwing the stunned Dartha down off him. As Yaslinor hit the floor with a thump, Weaver was already upon him. Using his levitation in reverse, the Black Angels pressed down with his knees on the sorcerer's chest. Ribs cracked and the sternum caved in. Yaslinor's struggles only lasted a second before he went entirely limp.
Gasping and shaking, Weaver rolled off the body and sprawled out on his back. He could feel his heart pounding. It seemed to take forever before his breathing slowed to normal. Eventually, he managed to sit up even with his hands still tied behind him. I used to do stunts like that without thinking twice, he remembered. I used to fight Skinwalkers and maniacs and all the creatures of the night on equal terms.
With an effort, he cleared his mind and started thinking clearly. This wasn't over yet. Where was he? Were there other Darthim in the vicinity? The two Human servants had gone to dispose of that poor victim, but how long would that take? When we they come back?
When he was young and confident, he would have tried to get hold of those pliers and unwrap the wire around his wrists. But now he had to be realistic. Weaver backed up against the table which held his gear and levered himself up until he was standing. A few minutes fumbling got his Link in his hands. He pressed the contact on one side to activate the device.
"Hello? Hello. Base? Anyone on duty?"
"Heyyyy, Stevie Weaver!" came a familiar insolent voice. "Unicorn here, long time no see,"
"Ashley, listen. I've been captured by a Dartha. He's dead now but I don't know who is else is nearby... "
"Say no more," the suddenly sober voice answered. "Tim and Galvan are already running downstairs to get the cruiser. Looks like your signal is coming from West 18th Street. The way Tim drives, they'll be there in a wink. Are you hurt?"
It took a moment for Weaver to decide how to answer. He felt he shouldn't reveal his levitation had returned. Not yet anyway. "No, I'm fine," he said at last. "I guess I just got lucky."
2/11/2023