Chapter 6 The Hedge Maze #2
Bev’s breath caught. For a heartbeat, Archer almost pitied her. Then he remembered Adam bleeding, Zane’s voice cracking, and that sympathy burned itself clean away.
“Yes!” she cried, nodding like a dashboard bobblehead Jesus. “But I forgave her. I understood that she did it to help me, to make me better.”
“That must have been very hard for you, luv,” he said, voice dripping with an easy, honey-thick insincerity that anyone who knew him would recognize in an instant, but Bev grasped at like a lifeline all the same.
She nodded. “It was. It really was. I lo-love my son,” she said, stumbling on her words with the same carelessness she stumbled toward him, lurching for his hand.
Her fingers shook, reaching out with all the fragile desperation of a drowning woman.
Archer stepped back but gave her enough rope to hang herself.
He waved a lazy hand, spinning in a circle. “Yet you run to the tabloids with your ugly lies and spurious accusations. How is that love?”
Archer glanced at his husband, then Shep, both wearing similar expressions, though for entirely different reasons. Mac smirked because he adored this ruthless side of Archer; Shep smirked because, at his core, he was another predator who liked to play with his prey, and game recognized game.
“I just wanted his attention,” she cried. “He cut me off. He wouldn’t speak to me. I already lost one son…” Tears filled her eyes. “Now I’ve lost them both.”
“Not a villain but a victim?” Mac asked, his voice dripping with disdain.
“What would you know?” she said, spinning on him. “I’m an old woman. I’ve been tormented for most of my life. Nobody understands me, nobody understands what my life has been like. Yes, I’m the villain now, but you don’t know what I’ve been through.”
“There’s a popular saying…” Archer said cheerfully, reclaiming her attention like a cat batting a mouse back into reach.
“Something along the lines of ‘a villain is a victim whose story’s never been told.’” His grin widened, teeth bright in the lanternlight.
“But what they fail to tell you is, there’s a line.
And once crossed, nothing before it matters.
There’s not a man on death row who doesn’t have a sob story, luv.
Not a one. They’re still going to pay for their sins with their lives. ”
The knife trembled in her grip again, her knuckles white, eyes darting from shadow to shadow like she might find an escape between them. The garden hummed—crickets, wind, the soft buzz of a distant light—life carrying on despite her small apocalypse.
She advanced a half step, the knife describing a jittery arc in the air as she steeled her shoulders. “Get out of my way.”
“Not how the maze works, sweetheart,” Archer told her, voice smooth as silk and twice as cruel. “You don’t get out. You only go deeper.”
He walked his fingers through the air, then gestured grandly toward the heart of the hedge maze. Somewhere behind her, the wind moved through the labyrinth, the night closing in.
Her eyes cut right, toward Shep. “You. Move.”
“You’re pointing that knife the wrong direction,” Shep said, his smile chilling. “If you’re looking for danger.”
Bev faltered; the blade dipped. She shot her glare over her shoulder at Mac and found not even a flinch to work with.
For a woman who had built a whole personality out of being the loudest thing in the room, the silent refusal was gasoline on an old fire.
Her breath came faster, shallow and broken, every inhale stoking the panic that was finally starting to seep through her cracks.
From Archer’s ear came a dry whisper. “Children’s wing secure,” Lola said. “Ever’s on his third storybook. Thomas is monologuing in the hall about the Good Old Days.”
Archer kept his eyes on Bev, but the corner of his mouth tugged. “How is our storyteller?”
“It’s like the boys are having some kind of religious experience,” Calliope muttered. “Even Wyatt and Day are cross-legged like six-year-olds at storytime.”
Another voice popped into his ear, one he was certain wasn’t meant for him: Elijah. “Sam, you’re clear outside. Blow off the old lady and come snuggle me. I’m bored.”
“Copy,” Shep said, and the little don’t make me wait testiness in Elijah’s tone put a brighter gleam in his smile.
Bev’s breathing had found a new rhythm: small, fast sips. Archer watched her try to steady the hand holding the knife and fail. He could feel Mac waiting. He let himself have a little fun.
“Tell me,” Archer said, tipping forward like a confessor. “From one monster to another, do you practice your cruelty or do you just go off the cuff?”
Bev’s mouth worked. “Monster? Me?” she asked, aghast. “What did he tell you? What lies has he been spreading?”
“Lies? You’re the liar, Bev. You’re the one running to the tabloids every chance you get. My father keeps paying you to fuck off, but you can’t help yourself, your hatred and narcissism drag you back. Your malignant need to torment your son is a drug and you’re the worst kind of junkie.”
“You know nothing about me,” she screeched. “I didn’t even want him. He was an accident. A parasite. I already had my one perfect son.”
“Don’t listen to this Zane,” Thomas said quietly. “You don’t have to listen to this. You’re none of those things. She’s the parasite and she realizes that she’s about to be excised from her host.”
“I’m fine,” Zane said, clearly choking on his tears. “I’m fine.”
“Killing Zane’s comms,” Calliope said.
“No,” Noah said. “Don’t. Nobody knows better than me what happens when you start to forget what they did to you.”
Lucas’s voice cut through Zane’s soft sobs. “It should be Zane’s call.”
Bev couldn’t hear the effect she was having behind the scenes.
She was too busy unburdening her delusions.
“His father refused to let me get rid of him. Then when he was born, Zane was so needy, so clingy, always crying, always begging for my attention. Tried to steal me from my Gage. And then he died! That-That…boy destroyed my body, my life, my everything. Don’t I have the right to do the same? ”
“What did he ever do to you other than ask his mother to love him?” Mac spat. “I’m with Zane. I don’t know how much more of this shit I can tolerate before we put this bitch down.”
Archer blinked at the venom in Mac’s voice. He wasn’t a sociopath like his brother but he also wasn’t one to be overwrought with emotion.
“Leave her to me,” a voice said from the shadows.
Bev gasped, whirling in a frantic circle just as Batman stepped out of the darkness, cape trailing like a living shadow.
The sudden shape of him, massive and silent, stole what little air remained in the garden.
It might’ve been comical, if not for the sound of Zane’s muffled sobs echoing through every comm.
“It’s your call, Zane,” Thomas said softly, voice cutting through the chaos like velvet over steel. “Do we call it off or keep going? We can end this right now.”
Zane’s answer came strained but sure. “Let August play with her for a while.”
“Then send that bitch to us,” Asa growled.
“To me,” Avi countered. “Asa’s heading back to the war room. I’ll be fine on my own.”
“Me?” Asa said. “I’m sure he wants Felix.”
“He wants you, dumbass,” Felix said dryly. “Come get your husband and I’ll go get mine.”
“August, be advised, reinforcements are on the way. Atticus and Jericho are en route,” Calliope reported, her tone clipped and professional.
August tore his mask off and tossed it to the grass. “I don’t need help torturing one pathetic old lady.”
At his words, Bev let out a guttural sound, something caught between a sob and a snarl. She wasn’t wrong to be afraid. August might’ve cut an imposing figure as Batman, but he was far more terrifying when he dropped that mask, the one that tricked the world into thinking he was human.
“Leave me alone,” she rasped, shaking the knife at him, her hand trembling so violently it sent moonlight flashing off the blade.
“We’re not coming to help you kill her,” Jericho said, emerging from the hedges still in his Winter Soldier gear, eyes gleaming through the half-dark.
Beverly’s head jerked, wild-eyed, as Captain America entered next, Freckles stepping into the garden light with clinical precision. He studied her like she was a lab specimen, not a person. “We’re here to make sure she stays alive until the finale in…about thirty minutes.”
Under the phosphorescent glow of the security lights, Bev looked less like a person and more like something dug up.
Her makeup had melted into streaks of gray and red, her gown torn and spattered.
“You’ve got this all wrong,” she babbled, voice breaking apart.
“I’m not who you think I am. He’s lying. ”
When August tilted his head—slow, deliberate—even Archer felt a chill.
Bev saw it too and seemed to realize she’d just cornered herself.
“Okay, no-no-not lying,” she backpedaled, “but—but embellishing. I-I could’ve been a better mother to him, but it wasn’t as bad as he said. You know how funny memories are.”
“Okay, then,” August said softly. “How about we play a little game?”
“Umnishka,” he murmured, eyes flicking up toward the nearest security cam. “May I borrow you for a moment?”
There was a crackle of static before Lucas’s calm voice filtered through. “Already on the way. Give me five.”
The garden stilled. Even the wind seemed to pause, listening. Bev’s breath came ragged and loud in the quiet, the knife trembling so hard it knocked against the pearl buttons on her bodice with a metallic tick-tick-tick.
Then Shep’s voice cut through the night.
“Well,” he said, “this has been…fascinating, but I think I’ll go retrieve my rabbit before he grows fangs and starts biting.”
“Good call, Sam,” Elijah purred into the channel.
“Those bunny bites are lethal,” Nico quipped from somewhere deep in the mansion.
Mal’s giggle followed, light and feral.