Chapter 25 #3
Ansel had the monocled cultist by the collar, and the man was fighting hard. We stood in front of a machine shop that was locked up for the night—one of only a handful of businesses in the city that seemed to keep normal hours. Ansel was wrenching on the door handle—seemingly trying to break in.
“You okay?” I asked Sorcha, checking her over as we hurried toward Ansel.
“I think so?” Her voice was quiet, uncertain.
“We’ll check properly when we get back to the hotel,” I promised, cursing myself internally for letting Ansel drag us out here.
We weren’t on this trip to investigate the portals.
We weren’t on this trip to disband the cults.
We were trying to get away to somewhere safe where we could research and shore up resources and handle this like sane, civilized people.
We were trying to avoid Iksura succeeding in her psychotic coup.
We were trying to preserve the Outer Court and the well-being of humanity’s relationship to the supernatural.
At least that was the theory.
Ansel clearly had other plans.
I heaved a sigh and squeezed Sorcha’s hand in reassurance.
“Hurry up,” Ansel said, voice loud, commanding. He wasn’t quite snapping at us, but he wasn’t friendly either.
I pulled out my knife when we reached the locked machine shop door and used the thick, foot-long blade to pry it off its hinges.
“You have a plan?” I asked Ansel. Sorcha leaned against the building’s grimy facade, arms crossed, watching.
“This is my specialty,” Ansel said, dragging his hostage through the shop into the back room and dumping him in a rusted metal chair. Ansel produced a length of rough hemp cord seemingly from nowhere and tied the man’s arms behind him. We followed behind, keeping distance, watching, listening.
The room was dark, the surfaces damp with steam from the machinery.
The shop wasn’t in good repair, with many of the belt drives fraying and the ironwork rusted.
It smelled like sweat and grease—a marginal improvement from the club.
Ansel picked up a wrench from one of the worktables and just looked at the cultist. His expression wasn’t angry.
He didn’t even look impatient. He simply stared.
Not pushing.
Not threatening.
Not yet.
“So how long have you been involved with the sacrifices?” Ansel asked casually, as though he was talking about the weather.
“I just do the paperwork,” our prisoner said with a sneer.
“I’m sure you do. But you didn’t answer my question.” Ansel tapped the wrench in his palm, not with any real force. The hostage didn’t reply.
“You understand there’s only one way this is going to end?” Ansel asked, nodding toward the door. “You’re not walking out of here. So you might as well make my job easy. Unless the portal magic is going to protect you?”
“You won’t hurt me. Not with them here.” The cultist nodded to me and Sorcha.
“You can play big scary guard dog all you want,” the cultist continued, “but we all know you won’t start torturing me in mixed company.”
“If you’d like to test that theory,” Ansel said, “I’ll be happy to oblige.”
A long moment passed in silence, the only sound the vague creaking of machinery in the nighttime drafts and the slow drip of water from a gap in the ceiling.
“So what exactly does this paperwork entail?” Ansel asked, voice steady and quiet.
“You’re barking up the wrong tree,” the hostage replied.
“See I don’t think you get to decide that,” Ansel said, “because you were found in a club full of drugged-out occultists. Where, best I can tell, someone had just sacrificed a cow and started distributing its blood.”
Sorcha pressed her face into my shoulder, shuddering on the exhales. I couldn’t tell if she was scared, angry, or about to vomit. A glance at her face, schooled into impassivity, didn’t help.
“We aren’t hurting anybody,” the man said, tone placating now.
“Are you entirely certain about that?” Ansel asked.
The prisoner didn’t reply. Sorcha shuddered, and I flexed my hand on her lower back, hoping regardless of what she was feeling that’d offer some degree of comfort.
“You know I wouldn’t have to use this to hurt you,” Ansel said casually, tapping the wrench in his palm again. “Little pressure in the right spot and I could dislocate a finger easy. No heat. No tools. Man to man. Shall we try?”
The threat hung in the air for a long moment. Somewhere outside people were laughing, even though it was barely dawn. Far away the sound of a portal opening and closing split the air. A wagon rumbled by.
And then the monocled man chuckled. He threw his head back, laughter building until it was nearly hysterical.
“You think you’re so scary?” he said, tears coming into his eyes as his cheeks grew red from mocking us.
And that was it. Clearly, Sorcha had had enough.
Because she punched him, square in the nose. His monocle shattered under her fist, glass scattering on the floor. His head snapped back, blood pouring onto the front of his starched white shirt.
For half a second the room was entirely still. And then Ansel turned, grabbed Sorcha by the front of her dress and stormed out, dragging her behind him until he slammed her back into the dividing wall as I hurried after, hand already twitching toward my revolver.
“What the hell was that?” Ansel hissed.
The composure was gone. The facade he’d put up to interrogate our prisoner?
Vanished. He was angry now—burning, terrifying, furious.
And he had my tiny, pregnant wife—who also happened to be our damn sovereign—backed against a wall with a death grip on the front of her dress.
I’d known Ansel for close to two dozen years now, almost as long as Sorcha had been alive.
And he was good. He was loyal. But he was also disturbingly single-minded on the job—legendarily so.
I’d never considered how that might be a detriment.
And I really didn’t want to have to shoot him.
“You couldn’t just let me do my job?” Ansel demanded, glaring at her like a cat sizing up a mouse, eyes wide, focused, dangerous. “You know what? I think Iksura might be onto something.”
Ansel agreeing with Iksura. I never thought I’d hear those words. But he kept going. “You clearly aren’t ready to take on the Court yourself. Obviously too young. Obviously too inexperienced. Should’ve just let her find you a husband to run it for you.”
“Ansel, that’s enough,” I finally snapped. Sorcha’s face was going pale, the rise and fall of her chest ragged. She choked back a sob. Ansel still gripped the front of her dress, glaring like he wanted her dead. My hand closed around my pistol.
“Because that temper? That inexperience?” Ansel kept going, ignoring me, pushing her back into the wall. “That could have just cost us our asset!”
He was shouting now.
“Ansel, let go of her,” I said.
Ansel stopped talking. Froze. Then startled like he was being brought out of a trance. He slowly turned to look at me.
“I said let go of her,” I repeated. “You’ve forgotten your place. And I really don’t want to ask you again.”
Ansel dropped her, and Sorcha stumbled before regaining her balance.
“You teach her how to punch like that?” Ansel asked.
“It seemed like a reasonable idea at the time.”
Ansel stalked back to our prisoner and slammed the door behind him.