Loss for Words - Act 2
Logan groaned a little as the barkeep shook him on the shoulder to wake him up. He rubbed his forehead a little and stood, leaving his beer unfinished. He made his way through the crowded Biter, getting to the door and hoping he hadn’t been passed out for too long.
When he got outside, he saw the sun was high in the sky and Niki was nowhere to be seen. He hailed a cab and it took him to his office in Manhattan. He hated using cabs when it wasn’t an emergency, but he didn’t know the bus routes since he usually had the car.
It didn’t concern him, though, since even after waking up from an altogether insufficient coaster-nap, he was sailing on a quiet happiness with his life and its direction. Even the sight of Niki didn’t bother him. He had no secrets anymore — at least, not any guilty secrets. Having met his future self was a secret he was sure merited being kept.
He rode the elevator up to his office in silence. When he got to his desk he found a document waiting for him. He sighed with contentment. He could handle another case. The last thing he would want right now would be to ruin his reputation with this firm by not living up to his–
Divorce. The word jumped out at him, right after his name on the dotted line. And there... that was Rachel’s signature. He blinked rapidly. Was this... no. It all looked in order... some sort of a joke? Must be.
He glanced at the logo in the corner of the page. W&H. His heart began pounding. This was... this was... he blinked rapidly as if this were an afterblur in his vision and he just needed to clear it. But the document remained. He shook his head. No effect. The document just wouldn’t leave.
Tawnie Fischer. He felt his hands growing hot. This was her doing: she was dead, but she was still punishing him for getting Niki out of jail. He slammed his palm down on the desk, drawing gazes from around the office. He ignored them, taking the pages in a hot hand. He stopped himself just short of incinerating it with his touch. Oz had taught him that much.
With smouldering eyes he stood from his desk and marched back towards the elevator. His finger stabbed the call button. It lit up but the car wasn’t waiting for him. His toes flexing to keep them from freezing, he pounded the wall next to the call button, again drawing gazes from around the office.
By the time Logan got to the street, he was exercising all sorts of self control by not bursting into flames. He hailed the nearest taxi, the damn thing passing right by him without even noticing. The first intersection it came to it blew all four tires. The next taxi Logan focused his attention on stopped by the curb.
The lawyer got in the back seat and realized he had his fist tight around the folded document. “Archer Street, Freeport,” Logan said tersely. Rachel better be home and she better have a fucking good explanation. No. Scratch that. He didn’t want a good explanation. He wanted her to tell him it was a mistake or a joke or a threat or a test or anything but what it looked like. He swallowed, his anger sublimating into worry.
Niki walked past her old apartment building with a trace of regret. She missed it, for sure, having lived there since shortly after her parents’ death, but it was very freeing having no address. Last night she had slept — or rather spent the night in one of the many back rooms of a demon bar which were dirt cheap to rent and could be paid for with any number of occult objects which she as a Slayer had no trouble getting her hands on — or prying from dead hands, as the case may be.
The demon underground was surprisingly accommodating for someone of her talents, assuming she didn’t kill her hosts and didn’t let on exactly who she was. She also had the hopes that being out of the human world would keep the Council off her back until that final battle she remembered.
She hadn’t seen the stick-shaking demon since the night it had attacked her and though the details were faded a little, the content of the memory it had given her was very alive in her mind. The memory of the Deceivers had, after all, turned out to be accurate enough, regardless of the fact that she saw it coming, so she had no reason to believe her battle with the dark, horned demon would turn out any different.
The Slayer sat down on the curb near the apartment. As insane as it sounded, even to her, it wasn’t her death that was bothering her. Maybe it was just that she wasn’t thinking about it for fear of letting it get to her... or maybe it was what the prophet under the bridge had said, but there was something wrong with the Deceivers that Niki couldn’t put her finger on.
The nasty thing about having killed them was never knowing for sure whether or not they were dead. The whole thing could have been an elaborate deception to throw her off their trail... but thinking like that led to the inevitable possibility that her entire life was an illusion; so she decided to believe that she had in fact killed two demons who were responsible for fucking with her life for the past year. But what she couldn’t decide was whether they had acted alone. Was there really someone who had summoned them? Had Jessica been a Deceiver all along when she had advised the Slayer about those matters, or was that just what the demons had wanted her to think?
“This must be the doubt they were talking about,” Niki muttered, her chin in her hands. With a rush, a bus tore past and stopped at the intersection. Niki blinked in surprise: There was one way to find out. Feeling in her pocket for the necessary loose change, the Slayer strode to the side of the bus and hopped on, just as the doors were opening. Several other people shuffled on and found various seats.
Niki took a seat which was empty, but one of the men who had boarded with her immediately changed seats and sat next to her. She rolled her eyes and slid over to the window, not used to guys actually changing seats to be near her since highschool. She avoided eye contact with him and made sure not to touch him in any way, conscious now of how much she must look like a desperate runaway or a street punk who would do anything for ten bucks. She was a street punk who could make girls out of men, she thought with a wry smile.
She rode the bus in silence to Hudson Mall to see if Jessica was still at her table, reading palms. If she was, then either at least some of what she had said might be true, or else the Deceivers couldn’t be so easily killed.
When the bus stopped at the terminal, she had to slide over the bulky man in the cheap suit to get out, only to find that he stood and followed her. Grinding her teeth, she swore she would break at least one of his fingers at the first opportunity.
She stepped off the bus and felt him close behind. Rolling her shoulders and getting ready to take him down, Niki froze when she felt the barrel of a gun in the small of her back.
“Walk,” the smooth voice said as the gun was pressed harder into the leather of Niki’s jacket.
Despite training to avoid bullet wounds, and knowing how to disarm someone with a gun, there was little she could do in this instance which didn’t risk someone else getting shot or the Slayer revealing her extraordinary abilities. So with a grim face, Niki did as she was told, stepping into the mall and walking straight into a crowd.
With the gun still in her back, Niki waited for what this man wanted next. If it was her he wanted, he would take her somewhere private, then she would beat the shit out of him and maybe stuff the gun up his ass. But something about the cold tone in his voice made her question this logic. Why would he have forced her into the crowded mall?
“Turn around,” the voice suggested, completely free of the stress she expected from someone wielding a gun. Turning to face him, she could tell from his eyes that he didn’t want sex, he wanted Niki Valtaine.
“Do I know you?” she asked skeptically, trying not to sound as annoyed as she really felt. Her destiny was screwed up enough without stalkers trying to kill her too.
“I doubt it,” he said with an ice cold tone. The gun, Niki could see, was deep in the sleeve of his brown suit and he held it to her stomach as if he was just caressing her. “But I know you,” he said icily. “And I know that I could never get this bullet into you—” he tapped the weight in his sleeve against her side, “—but you know that you couldn’t stop me from getting at least one of these people...” he glanced around at the milling crowd. He wasn’t whispering, but no one was paying attention.
Niki looked around at the random people walking by. She was sure she could get the gun from him, but with his finger on the trigger, he could certainly get off one shot. She swallowed. “Who the hell are you?” she asked calmly, absorbing the force of someone bumping into her from behind. The gun jabbed into her stomach.
“My name is Richard Forster,” he said simply, as if they had just met at some conference. “You might recognize me from your trial... I was one of the prosecuting attorneys. One of the ones that lived, anyway.”
Niki shrugged and shook her head. “Sorry, wasn’t paying that much attention.” She saw that this cut him, but that he was working to keep his cool.
Forster smiled as if it didn’t bother him. “It doesn’t matter,” he said amicably. “The point is that today you may have killed the demons—” he nodded towards the end of the promenade where Jessica’s vacant table was, “—but the Deceiver lives.”
The Slayer’s head was spinning. Applauding the compactness of destiny: all the bad guys had shown themselves in forty eight hours and she hadn’t done an ounce of work to find them, still she was kicking herself for not having seen it before. Maybe it was because... Yes, that was it: above everything else was a terrible disappointment.
“You?” she said with a sound of disgust. “You’re the Deceiver? The one who fucking ruined my life? The one who’s turned the Council against me... made me kill that innocent girl? You...” she was at a loss for words, “you fucking turd!” She stepped towards him, threateningly, the gun jabbing into her stomach. “You’re nothing!” She couldn’t believe the chunky, balding little man before her was her great enemy — causing her more grief than the Creep and his entire army. “You’re fucking nobody!”
Forster bared his teeth. He gripped the gun tightly; his fingers hurting from holding it so tight. He used all his self restraint not to shoot her in the gut. It wasn’t time yet. He bit his lip and glared. “Not me,” he said hotly, losing the cool he had been hanging onto. “I’m not the one living a lie to the world, thriving in the deceit that surrounds me — you are.”
Niki scoffed. “Yeah, right. I’m the Deceiver. Very clever.” She snatched the gun from his hand the instant she felt his finger leave the trigger. She dropped it to the floor between their feet and took his wrist in an iron grip. “I’m not fucking responsible for killing the Brandon girl and you know it.”
Forster ignored his lost gun and the iron grip on his wrist. “You’re not responsible, but that doesn’t mean you didn’t lie to cover it up. Why didn’t you tell the truth at your trial? Why didn’t you get up on the stand and tell the world you’re a vampire slayer?”
Niki glared, exercising her slayer strength and nearly crushing the little man’s wrist in her fist. The thought pounded through her mind, this is him? This is the one responsible for the fear and the doubt? It made her more angry than anything else. “You fucking know why!” she hissed, letting up on her grip just for a moment.
“Right,” he said angrily, pulling his wrist free of her grip. “We couldn’t have people knowing the truth, that would be inconvenient for you, wouldn’t it?” He slipped his other hand deeper into the sleeve and took hold. “But your harmless little world of lies ruined my life!”
Niki took another step closer and brought her shaking hand to his throat. She shook her head and spoke very slowly. “I don’t know who the hell you are and I don’t give two flying fucks about your life. You killed Megan Brandon and only you and I know how. Give me one reason why I shouldn’t break your neck right now...”
Forster slipped his hand from his sleeve to reveal what he was holding. Niki frowned for a moment, not sure what it was. A handle of some kind with a wire running from its bottom up his sleeve and out of sight. A button under his thumb. A dangerous look in his eyes.
“One reason? Because I don’t think you want to kill all these people.” With a calm hand, he pulled Niki’s hand from his throat and unbuttoned the top of his suit jacket. Niki could now see that the man was not at all chunky but was in fact carrying several foil packages taped to his chest rigged with wires and a detonator.
Niki swallowed. Son of a bitch. Very carefully, Forster squatted down and took the gun in his free hand, holding it now as a redundancy rather than a threat.
“You’re going to get up on that table,” he nodded towards Jessica’s now empty spot, “and announce to everyone here that you did kill Megan Brandon and you also killed everyone who went missing two years ago at the battle on Atlantic Avenue.”
Niki looked the man up and down anew. “How do you know about that? Who the fuck are you?”
Forster raised an eyebrow at first, as if this were a perfectly legitimate question, but instead of answering, he slapped his sleeve across her face, striking her jaw with the gun. No one walking by seemed to notice. “No more questions. You’re going to rot in jail like you deserve, or all these people...” he looked around at the crowded mall, “are going to join your casualty list.”
“You don’t want to kill them,” Niki said carefully, touching three fingers to the bruise on her jaw. “I don’t know who you are, or how I ruined you life by being a Slayer, but it’s not what I wanted, so can we just calm down and talk about—”
“You don’t get to tell me to calm down!” Richard Forster said angrily, jabbing the gun in his sleeve into her ribs. He did take a moment, however, to cool down a little. When he had taken a breath, his voice was calmer, if still icy cold. “Maybe the others don’t remember: Maybe you were able to convince them it was a hostage situation gone wrong or that we’d all been exposed to some... military drug, but I remember. I’ve spent the last two years remembering. Surely you remember.” He cocked his head. “The hundreds of us recruited to fight in some demon army — an army you destroyed.”
Niki frowned very slightly. “I remember.”
Forster nodded spitefully. “You remember? You remember killing those soldiers — hundreds of humans as if we were nothing but animals?”
“You weren’t human,” Niki said distantly, “you were under the control of the Nosphorus.”
In a motion which made Niki jump a little, Forster shoved the gun into his pocket and pulled the collar of his shirt open to reveal a thick scar where his shoulder met his neck. “A sword,” he explained, his tone harsh and unforgiving. “A fucking sword nearly cut my head off. We weren’t demons... we were human beings and it was your job as Slayer to protect us from harm. There was a cure, wasn’t there? For the plague?” Niki opened her mouth to argue, but he pulled his shirt back up. “But you didn’t try that, did you? No, just slaughter us all, that was your brilliant plan.” He pulled the gun out of his pocket and drew the hammer back. “Well congratulations, you did it. You’re a fucking hero.”
Niki brought her hands up as he leveled the gun at her. “I never said I was a—”
“Shut up,” Forster ordered. “I’ll tell you what you are. You’re a failure. You failed to stop all those people from getting infected — you failed to save them from bullets and swords. You’re a waste of material, Niki Valtaine,” he said, his voice acid. “You’re going to get up on that table and tell everyone here just how much of a failure you are.” He unbuttoned the rest of his jacket and glowing red numbers appeared on a small timer. “And you’ve got... five minutes and thirty two seconds to get your point across.”
“They won’t believe me,” Niki protested as he raised the gun threateningly. Three and two make five, her mind screamed at her.
“Then you’d better be damn convincing,” Forster replied.
“If they see your bomb—”
Forster calmly buttoned up his jacket. “If you say a word about the bomb, I guarantee that not one of them will get far enough away to live.”
“What if they see the gun?” Niki said, thinking quickly.
“Of course they’ll see the gun,” Forster said evenly. “You’ll be holding it.” He slapped the gun into her hand and closed her fingers around it. “Fire one shot into the air to get their attention, then toss it on the ground or you’ll be shot.”
Niki looked at him as if he only just now had lost his mind. “You’re fucking insane,” she said as he delved into his pocket and pulled out another firearm.
“And don’t try anything stupid,” he said with a snarl. “I’ve got a spare.” He leveled the second pistol at her stomach and prodded her in the ribs. “You might want to hurry: you’ve got less than five minutes now.”
“And if I do?” Niki prompted at last, her heart pounding. “If I tell everyone... what’re you going to do?”
Forster slowly reached up and took Niki by the collar of her black leather jacket. He pulled her close and stared deep into her, his throat tightening. “I’m going to go visit the grave of my wife,” he said, holding back the sorrow, “the grave you sent her to, two years ago.”
He let her go with a rough shove and the Slayer backed away into the crowd, having no choice but to head for Jessica’s table.
Jessica Burkov, the seer of Hudson Mall, sat curled up in the women’s bathroom, her hands over her head. She had been having difficulty reading people this week and up until ten minutes ago had thought she’d need to close for the day. Then she had received a simultaneous image from each and every person in the mall. And had nearly vomited.
She sat by the toiled, rocking back and forth, her face pale. “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, they’re all going to die...”
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