Page 166 of The Wild Charge

Moving slowly, so as not to startle him, Ian stepped out of the circle and went to his side. Laid a hand on his shoulder, certain he was about to get a crack across the jaw for it.

But Tenny’s head turned slowly, like an animatronic’s, and Ian suppressed a shiver.

“Tennyson,” he began, something trite and meaninglessly supportive on his tongue, all he could offer in this moment.

But Tenny blinked. His expression didn’t change. “No,” he said, in a flat voice, all the usual fire snuffed out of it. “I’m not him right now.”

Oh, darling, Ian thought, and wanted to pull him into his chest and hold him tight. Stroke the back of his neck in the way that he himself had always liked until he cracked apart and returned to himself.

But, he reflected grimly, maybe Tennyson Fox wasn’t the person to retrieve Reese. Just like it would be Shaman, rather than Ian Byron, who walked into Waverly’s den of iniquity tomorrow night.

So he swallowed his platitudes and reassurances, and said, “I need you to tell me exactly what you said to Waverly, so that I’m prepared.”

Tenny nodded, still as blank-faced and dead-eyed as a shark.

He knew from personal experience that if Reese didn’t survive this, none of them would ever see Tennyson Fox again.

~*~

The hand that offered Mercy a towel was shaking violently, which meant it belonged to Maddox. “Thanks,” Mercy drawled, and began wiping the blood from his knuckles.

Footsteps retreated across the loose dirt of the old barn floor, and a moment later there came the sound of violent retching.

Walsh glanced over at the former agent with nostrils flared in disgust, then paged back through his clipboard of notes. “This is enough to go on for now.”

Mercy nodded his agreement and, the moment his hands were clean enough – he’d have to do his usual scrub under the nails later – he fished out a cigarette and lit up. He was pleasantly loose-limbed and easy now, buzzing faintly, like after an orgasm.

Beyond the half-dilapidated walls of the barn, the cattle property hummed with the late-summer sounds of crickets, and owls; the ripple of overgrown grass in the breeze; the trill of whippoorwills. Inside, it fell quiet, once Maddox was done heaving, save for Luis’s quiet whimpers and sniffles.

The screaming had stopped.

Jansen had thought it might mean something, at first, that his hollering would call worried neighbors or do-gooders down on them.

Mercy had taken special delight in proving that wasn’t true. The man was no longer a man, but a slumped heap of blood and pulp and voided bowels, held up only by the tape that affixed him to a chair. Luis sat shivering and crying quietly across from him.

Cigarette clenched between his teeth, Mercy strode over and slapped him lightly in the face.

Luis gasped, and lifted a watery-eyed, snot-nosed look of abject terror.

Mercy grinned at him, just to watch him try to shrink down into his shirt collar. “Big man. Mr.Holy Father. Is that what it was like?” He gestured over his shoulder at Jansen’s body. “When you drugged people? Staked ‘em out like stars? Did it make you cry?”

Luis dropped his face again, head shaking wildly back and forth.

Mercy crouched down, not letting him avoid eye contact. “It wasn’t, was it?” he asked, almost gentle. “It wasn’t like that at all.”

Luis shook his head again.

“Luis,” Mercy prompted, “remember when I told you that I would tell you exactly what I’d do to you?”

His head snatched up again, wet eyes goggling.

“Well,” Mercy said, still gentle, “I’m telling you now. I’m taking you with me to New York, and you’re going to help me get rid of the people you used to work for. And if you don’t? If you test me? If you try to get away? If you tip any of them off in any way? There won’t be a damn tooth left in your head for them to ID you with dental records. And that hammer?” He motioned to where it lay bloody in the dirt. “It’ll be the last thing you ever see – after your ankles and knees and elbows and ribs are powder.”

He shuddered hard. But he squeaked out, “Yes, sir.”

Mercy patted his knee and stood. “That’s what I like to hear.”

When he turned, he found Maddox pulling himself together, raking hands through his hair and wiping his mouth.

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