The Tank: Chapter Fourteen, Part Two

Notes: This chapter has it all! Confrontations between old nemeses, unfortunate revelations that could tear our hero apart, and--social isolation! So pertinent ;)

Title: The Tank: Chapter Fourteen, Part Two

***

Chapter Fourteen, Part Two

Dr. Wictoryn whirled around before Anton could say anything, one hand going to her hip. There was no weapon there at the moment, but that it was an automatic reflex told Anton that she was used to carrying a pistol. He took a moment to be grateful that she was unarmed. “You! What are you doing here?” she demanded, her voice gone shrill with tension. “This is a private treatment area! Get out immediately!”

Montgomery began to laugh. “Is that what you tell other people? Private ‘treatment,’ my dear doctor, oh, what fun you must have at confession. I daresay that cardinal of yours gives you light enough penances, considering his inclinations. He wasn’t nearly so gentle with me when he tried to take my confession, but…” He shrugged. “Perhaps that’s because I have nothing to confess.”

Anton finally managed to propel himself forward. “What in heaven’s name are you doing here?” he breathed, staring at his former acquaintance and nemesis with growing discomfort. “I thought you fled for one of the Baltic states.”

“I did, and well done you for being so up to date on the politics of rebellion,” Montgomery said, his grin a bit too sharp. Apart from needing a shave and having noticeably longer hair, he looked…well. There were no signs of abuse, or starvation. He was pale, but he was healthy. “I didn’t expect to be hunted down by an imperial wolf of unusual tenacity,” he went on. “The more fool me, I suppose. I should have spelled more of my guns.”

“Mr. Seiber, I must insist that you leave at once,” the doctor hissed. “It is entirely inappropriate for you to be down here right now.”

I’ll never get this chance again if I leave. Anton wasn’t even sure what kind of chance it was that he had, but he wasn’t going to give it up now. There was too much riding on getting an answer, and with the spell from the palimpsest up for grabs, he had to get an answer. “If you want me to leave, you will have to drag me,” he said flatly. “For now, I will stay and speak with Gerald.”

“I never thought I’d hear my name again from that sweet mouth of yours,” Montgomery said, his tone mocking but his eyes oddly intense. “Aren’t you supposed to be dead?”

“You should have stayed to make sure.”

Dr. Wictoryn looked between the two of them and cursed, then rushed past Anton out the door. Anton watched her go, then looked back to find Montgomery tapping the collar around his neck. “She doesn’t have to worry about me fleeing, or attacking you,” he said. “This keeps me from acting on my more pressing desires. Any hint of aggression and my reflexes go as slow as honey running uphill. It’s a brilliant bit of spellwork.”

It was, but Anton wasn’t interested in dissecting it right now. “Of the two of us, I’m more amazed that you’re alive,” he said, not bothering to soften the delivery. He loathed Gerald Montgomery, loathed him with a passion, but he was betting that the other man was more interested in talking right now than he was at taking offense. After all, he’d been down here for…it could have been months. Nearly a year, even. “How have you wrangled a continuance?”

“Would you believe it’s the benefit of my personality, my charm, my joie de vivre?” Montgomery asked, batting his eyelashes like a coquette. “I’m always the life of every party, Seiber.”

“And right now it’s a party of one,” Anton pointed out.

“On the contrary, you’re here! And I find myself desperate for news of you, so before you attempt to lambast me into answering your questions, let me make you a deal. It shall be an eye for an eye between us, a cut for a cut. One of yours answered for every one of mine.”

“You must be truly desperate for news if you’re coming to me for it,” Anton said, his heartrate quickening despite his reservations.

“Oh, I am indeed,” Montgomery murmured. “What do you say?”

They might have only minutes. They might have less than that. “Fine. How did they find you?”

“A devilishly clever man hunted me down and refused to take a bullet for an answer. How did you survive the fall from the tower?”

That was scarcely an answer from Gerald, but Anton would circle back. “I never fell in the first place. Did you work out the spell on the palimpsest?”

“I wouldn’t be alive if I hadn’t. How did you not fall?”

“I was rescued by a friend,” Anton replied, gathering his nerve. “Why can’t the thaumaturges of the Institute use the spell?”

Montgomery grinned. “Because it comes with a rather fiendish failsafe. How did you come to be here?”

“I came with Doctor Grable.”

“Ah, so the old man has returned.” Montgomery stroked his chin thoughtfully. “I thought they might bring him here to take his try. These fellows are brilliant at managing their spells, but they lack the cruel edge you really want in an interrogator. Grable might manage things better.”

“What is he meant to manage?” Anton shook his head. “I mean, what is the failsafe?”

Montgomery laughed. “Two questions, and I should answer neither of them since you’re breaking the rules, but this is the first fun I’ve had in ages, Seiber, so I’ll give you both of them. He’s meant to manage me, of course. I’ve been sabotaged, and not even I can tell exactly how, but damned if my keepers will believe that. And the failsafe? It’s brilliant, absolutely brilliant.” He bared his teeth again, but it wasn’t a grin this time. He was furious, it was written in every line of his body. “That targeting spell should have made my fortune. Instead, it ruined me. Casting the spell creates more than just a bullet that never misses its target, Seiber. It stitches a geas into the caster themselves. I could perform it a thousand times and never feel the effects, but to pass the spell itself on? It won’t allow it. Trying to do so damaged my mind.” He clenched his hands into fists. “I can’t cast a single spell anymore, I can’t even read them without becoming nauseous. I’ve lost my ability to be a thaumaturge, do you understand? It stripped me of everything.”

Oh God. No wonder Hrym couldn’t look at the whole spell—even if they had all the components, it would be too risky to his genius. They must have tried to get Montgomery to give it up, gotten the bit Anton had seen on Hrym’s wall, and then…it was gone.

“Gone,” Montgomery murmured, as though he’d read Anton’s mind. “All of it, gone. I’m useless now, a simpleton, normal like all the rest of those fools. Did you know this would happen to me, Seiber?” He stood up, taller than Anton by a good margin. “Did you know what that palimpsest would do to me? Because the only thing that’s given me a lick of decent sleep ever since I was captured was the thought of your pretty face smashed to bits against the cobblestones of the university, and yet here you are…whole.” His glare was so intense, Anton practically felt the flames it yearned to conjure on him.

“Do you know it?” he continued. “The spell? I hope so, Seiber, I dearly hope so. I would like nothing more than for them to try and pry it out of your head next, and for you to end up down here with me. Just the two of us, alone.” His hands clenched again. “I can’t leap at you, I can’t even walk up to you, but I bet I could crawl. Slow as honey, but I could do it, and one night when you’re asleep, I’ll crawl up beside you and bury your face in a pillow and hold it down with all my might until—”

“That’s enough from you,” a familiar voice said. Anton exhaled unsteadily—he hadn’t even realized he was holding his breath until Camille broke the spell that Montgomery’s voice wove around him.

“Ah!” Montgomery’s face brightened with murderous mischief again. “And here is my oh-so-clever wolf! Fresh from hunting new prey, I suppose?”

Anton turned slowly to face Camille, but the lumière wasn’t looking at him. “Still alive, I see,” he said calmly.

“Despite your admonishments, I’ve no doubt.” Montgomery leered. “Is little Seiber yours, then? A fine choice—he’s so soft, yet so staunch. Did you save him from the end I tried to give him?”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to wonder a while longer.” He finally met Anton’s eyes. “We need to go. Immediately.” Doctor Wictoryn and two guards stood back by the door, the doctor staring daggers at Anton.

“No,” Anton said, surprising himself. “No, I want you to explain this, him.”

“Not right now.” Anton opened his mouth to protest, but Camille cut him off. “Your friend, Lady Cuthbert, has just been caught stealing privileged information from Lord Atwood’s laboratory. She’s under arrest.”

The Tower: Chapter Nine, Part One

Notes: Yep, I'm getting this up early! Tomorrow is a busy day, and my baby is being beautifully cooperative, so everybody wins!

Everybody except Anton, he doesn't win. He loses. He loses so hard.

Title: The Tower: Chapter Nine, Part One

***

The Tower, Chapter Nine, Part One

It was a strange feeling, being followed up the stairs of the tower toward his lab. Anton didn’t think it was arrogance to believe that his research was fascinating, but he also didn’t think it would appeal to many people beyond himself and other forensic thaumaturges. Compounded by the fact that he really didn’t know what Montgomery studied here at school, not to mention that he was keeping the palimpsest hidden in there, and his discomfort grew with every step.

However, he had made the commitment, and he would keep it. Camille likely wouldn’t be long at any rate, or Doctor Grable would succeed in uncovering Harry’s mouth and getting some answers out of him. They would both be needed then.

The sun had almost vanished over the mountains, but there was still a bit of natural light filtering through the highest windows in the tower as they reached the top floor. Anton pulled out his silver wand and murmured the spell to cast light with it anyway. “Sorry for the gloom,” he apologized awkwardly as he led the way down the hall. “The staff don’t bother to light the sconces up here, since there are only a few of us with workspace and most of the others have the sense not to work too late.”

“It doesn’t bother me,” Montgomery said easily. “I don’t mind a bit of darkness every now and then. All the better to get up to mischief in, eh?” He nudged Anton’s side companionably.

“I’m not really much for mischief, I’m afraid.”

“So I’ve noticed about you, Seiber. So I’ve noticed.” He stood back and gave Anton a little space as he worked his magic on the door to his lab. It took a concerted effort to open it, peeling back his protections and modifying them to allow Montgomery to follow him in, but Anton managed it. He smiled a bit as he pushed the door open. He was getting better at thaumaturgy on the fly, thanks in no small part to his adventures with Camille. He wanted to be ready for anything, after all.

“This is it,” he said, setting his wand to the nearest light and passing the incantation along. The room slowly illuminated with a silvery glow, and he tucked his wand back into his pocket. “Not much to look at, I’m afraid.”

“On the contrary, it tells me all sorts of interesting things,” Montgomery replied, heading over to the table and inspecting the experiment that Anton had set up there. He didn’t touch it, thankfully—at least he had that much sense. “This is for what now?”

“It’s—it has to do with finding the right ingredients to strengthen an individual’s death miasma, possibly to preserve it beyond what is currently achievable.” Anton felt himself falling into lecturer mode. “It’s just energy, after all, so if the proper link between the death miasma’s natural energy and another type, some sort of—of battery, if you know the term, it’s rather new—”

“I’m familiar with it.”

“Ah, good. My thought is that, if you can feed the miasma, strengthen it enough, then you might be able to expand it. Make it more visible, make it last longer, possibly even intensify the feeling of it, although why you’d want to share the feeling of death I haven’t worked out yet, but I’ve got to be thorough about this.”

“Of course you do!” Montgomery clapped him on the back again. “And is this your only current project?”

“There are several other small ones going, naturally. And then there’s my translation effort, but that’s—” Anton forcibly jerked his mouth to a halt. “Wait.”

“Translation?” Montgomery didn’t appear to hear the last part of his sentence. “What are you translating?”

“It’s a…” Anton shook his head. “Wait, no. I don’t—I can’t—”

“Of course you can.” Montgomery’s hand tightened around the back of his neck, going from companionable to painful in seconds. “What is it you’re translating, Seiber?”

“A pa-pal, a palllll,” the word stuttered on his tongue, but something forced him to spit it out eventually. “A palimpsest. Good God, what’s happening to me?” He could still speak of other things, but he wasn’t able to not speak about the palimpsest. And his body…it felt like he’d been encased in wax or resin. He could move, but not fast, and not out of the reach of Montgomery’s brutal grasp. “What are you doing?”

“I’m just guiding you a bit, Seiber,” Montgomery murmured in his ear. “Just giving you a little push. I should have tried this ages ago, but I didn’t really think you were the man I was looking for. Harry and Percy were enough help for a while, but everyone I had them deal with turned out to be a bust. And to think, all this time, you were right under my nose.” He leaned in and pressed a kiss to the side of Anton’s neck. “You know, this compulsion would have gone on a lot easier on you if you’d come out with us and tumbled into my bed. I don’t even need to touch the boys any more to get them to follow my directives, but you and I, we have to do this the old-fashioned way.”

“No.” Anton’s mind seemed frozen, locked down by the horror of what was happening to him—and what was going to happen to him. “No. No.”

“Yes, pet.” Montgomery kissed him again, and the last of his will to speak drained away. “You should have looked into me a bit more, hmm? So easy to take a vapid playboy for granted, until you realize I’m one of the few thaumartuges in the world who can cast spells of mental compulsion. Now.” He stepped back a bit, but kept his hand on Anton’s neck. “Where have you hidden that little gem?”

Anton, to his rising terror, pointed toward the window.

“Let’s fetch it then, shall we?” Montgomery walked Anton over to the window, then frowned. “There’s nothing here. What, do you have some sort of hiding spot in the wall?”

“N-not the w-wa-wall,” Anton stuttered.

“Well then, let’s see it! Fetch me the palimpsest, Seiber, and fast.”

“I nee-need my wa-wa-wand.”

Montgomery’s grip tightened. “No, no more using your wand. Too much chance for mischief. Chalk if you need it, otherwise—well, you’ll have to work a little harder to concentrate, won’t you?”

Damn it. If Montgomery had let him use his wand, Anton could have activated another one of his defensive spells. It was a shock, literally, for whoever was holding onto him, and would have dislodged Montgomery’s hand. If Anton could only get free…

The compulsion pushed at his mind like a knife in his brain, wrenching a pained cry from his lips. “Now, Seiber. We don’t have all evening for this. Retrieve the palimpsest before I crack your skull in two.”

Anton gritted his teeth and put his bare hand to the closest windowpane. He shut his eyes in concentration…it was so much harder to pull the little book out of its transformed state without a wand, but he had no choice. The pane of glass wavered under his hand like a mirage, flickering in and out of existence until eventually, it spit the leather-bound booklet onto the floor, leaving the window intact but several millimeters thinner than it had been before.

Montgomery laughed and picked up the booklet with his free hand. Anton screamed inside his head, desperately pushing against the compulsion, but all that emerged from his lips was a pained whimper.

 “Clever! So very clever, my goodness. Hiding it in plain sight, but that was a neat bit of transparency. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the like. You’re quite a little genius, Seiber. It’s a shame I didn’t get to you sooner, I could have used you.” Montgomery sighed philosophically. “But then, no one can predict the future. I wouldn’t have pushed so fast at the end here if my hand hadn’t been forced. Harry will spill his guts soon enough, but Percy is out of the way, and by the time they find your body, I’ll be long gone.”

“My body?” This time he had no difficulty expressing his shock. “What do you mean?”

“Well, I can’t leave you alive at this junction, can I? You know a bit too much, and your knowledge of the palimpsest makes you dangerous. It’s bad enough Grable didn’t kill Harry—that’s a loose end I didn’t need.” Montgomery sounded slightly put out. “But Percy should have drowned himself by now, and you, Seiber? You’re going for a very short walk, and a very long drop.”

He pressed the length of his body flush to Anton’s back. “It’s a shame we don’t have more time. I would’ve enjoyed having my way with you, but I can’t linger, not with that damned soulless freak running around,” he added disgustedly. “Trust you to fall in with one of the only people in the world that my compulsions won’t work on. Ah well. No matter.” He kissed the nape of Anton’s neck, and the urge to move wrapped Anton up like a noose. “Open the window.”

Anton fumbled with the latch but eventually managed to unlock the large double-window and push it open.

“Good. Step out onto the ledge, Seiber.”

Anton’s legs folded jerkily, propelling him up onto the windowsill.

“Even better. You’re doing so well. My associates and I thank you.” He stepped away, but before Anton could muster the will to truly break the compulsion, Mongtomery said, “Now fall forward, Seiber. And goodbye, pet.”

Before his mind registered what his body was doing, Anton tilted forward. The cobblestones so far below him were completely enshrouded in shadow now, the sky gone from the color of sunset to a sultry, velvety blue. Gravity turned his tilt into a fall, and a moment later, Anton tumbled from the top of the tower toward the ground.

The only sound to follow him was the quiet click of his window closing.

The Tower: Chapter Eight, Part Two

Notes: In which things happen, but mostly just to set up OTHER things happening. In other words, THINGS ARE GOING TO HAPPEN! Enjoy :)

Title: The Tower: Cjapter Eight, Part Two

***

Chapter Nine, Part One

“It makes no sense.” Mongtomery started the shake his head, then stopped with a wince and laid a careful hand on the bruising around his neck. “Harry and I have been friends for years, we knew each other before we came here. There’s no good reason for him to have done this.”

“Are you that confident in your understanding of Mr. Beaufort’s business?” Camille asked, sitting across from Montgomery in Dr. Grable’s office. The doctor himself was off beginning the slow process of freeing Beaufort from the stone—like Anton’s spell, it was one that could be cast rapidly, but required a lot more time to undo. It would probably be another five or six hours before Beaufort was free and able to be interrogated, so Camille had opted to begin here. Anton stood off to the side, hoping to go mostly unnoticed, but there was no such luck where Montgomery was concerned.

“Did I know everything about the man, obviously not, but before this I would have said I knew everything important! We’re mates! He’s never—he’s never been like this before, right Seiber?”

“I—I wouldn’t really know,” Anton stammered, taken aback to be asked. Fortunately, Montgomery didn’t seem to care.

“Do you think Percy knew? No, Percy would have told me, I’m sure of it. He’s too much of a choir boy not to.”

“Is that how you’d categorize him?” Camille asked.

“Percy?” Montgomery forced a grin. “Oh, absolutely. It was almost as hard to get him to go out for a night on the town as it was Seiber here. If Harry and I weren’t around to drag him out of the lab or away from the church…” His smiled faded. “Hell, where is Percy? He should know about this.”

“I’ll go and get him,” Anton interjected, ready for something to do that got him out of the eye of Montgomery’s strange, entreating looks. “Although the way word is flying around here, I’m fairly sure he already knows.”

“Then he would be here, with me,” Montgomery said staunchly.

“I’ll be back in a moment.” With a nod from Camille, Anton slipped out of the office and toward the lab he knew Percival had space in. Montgomery was right about one thing—Percival would want to be there for him if he knew that Harry was a killer who had almost done his friend in. Anton knocked, then entered. “Percival?”

There was no reply. The lab was empty. Anton frowned, then headed for the rooms. It was lucky he’d seen Percival stumble drunkenly into his not long ago, or he’d have no idea where the man lived. It was on the second floor, in the middle of the hall. The door was closed. “Percival? I need to speak to you about Harry and Gerry.” Anton winced at the awkward rhyme. “May I come in?” No response.

“Percival?” Now Anton was beginning to worry. What if—what if Harry had started with Percival, and moved on to Gerald? What if he was lying in there, dead? “Percival!” Anton pushed his way into the room and breathed a reflexive sigh of relief at finding it empty. Then he saw what was lying on the floor, and his relief vanished.

It was a rosary, Percival’s rosary, its jet-black beads scattered across the floor. The silver cross from the center of it was missing. The mirror on the far wall was cracked, and there was a bloody hand print pressed to the shards still in the frame. “Oh, no.”

On his way back down to the office Anton made sure to check the classrooms and lecture halls, even the dining area, just in case Percival was there. He saw many students, plenty of whom peppered him with questions, but no Percival, and no one could seem to remember seeing him either, except—

“He left over an hour ago, I think,” one of the sophomores said. “I tried to ask him a question about the lecture he gave yesterday, and it was like he didn’t even hear me. He looked rather distraught.”

“Did he get some sort of bad news?”

The student shrugged.

“Which way was he heading?”

“He took the south exit, like he was going toward the Limmat.”

Heading for the river… It made no sense, but then, none of this did to Anton. He wasn’t the one piecing the puzzle together, Camille was, and right now he had information that needed to be shared. He made his way back to the office and knocked.

“Come in, Anton.”

“How did you know it was me?” he asked Camille as he walked in.

“The only other person who would even think to interrupt at a time like this is Doctor Grable, and as this is his office, I doubt he would ask permission first. No, don’t apologize,” he added when Anton made a face. “We’re partners in this. What did you learn? Where is Mr. MacPherson?”

“He left the university over an hour ago, apparently,” Anton said. He relayed what he’d been told and the scene he found in Percival’s room. “I think something bad must have happened to him. He wouldn’t damage his rosary like that unless he was truly unsettled.”

“It does seem like a bad sign,” Camille agreed. “I’ll have to track him down.”

“I can come with you,” Anton said.

“So can I! He’s my friend, I ought to be the one to find him, tell him what’s going on.” Montgomery shook his head wearily. “He might be in a hell of a state if Harry got to him first. Maybe he cast a spell on him.”

“I didn’t think those sorts of spells were within Mr. Beaufort’s wheelhouse,” Camille said. “He’s less about compulsions and more about direct force, isn’t he?”

Montgomery pressed his lips together so tight they went pale. “If there’s one thing only I’m sure of now, it’s that I didn’t know Harry as well as I thought,” he gritted out.

“Nevertheless, we can’t be too cautious. You said you were barely even aware of him approaching you in your room, much less trying to kill you.” Camille stood and straightened his jacket. “Who knows how the aftereffects of what he did to you might linger?” He turned to Anton. “Do you mind staying with him until I get back?”

Anton squared his shoulders a bit. “Not at all.”

“Thank you.” He nodded to both of them, then left.

The ensuing silence was almost deafening, until Montgomery forcefully broke it by chuckling. “It seems there’s far more I likely don’t know about you than about Harry, Seiber. When did you start working with a lumière? More to the point, when did you start working with one who could serve as one of Percy’s pet projects?”

“We met a few months back,” Anton said. “He helped me get here on time when I ran into…” A murder. Actually, several murders. “Some trouble,” he finished uncomfortably.

“Rather an intimidating sort, isn’t he?” Montgomery chaffed at his arms, every move reminiscent of a twitch. “Must we wait here in tenterhooks for him? Can’t we do something else in the meantime?”

“I’m sure he won’t be long.”

Montgomery shrugged. “Who knows how long he’ll be? I’d just rather not—I mean—I need to do something, Seiber. I can’t just sit here like a snared rabbit waiting to be found. And I know that I’m being unreasonable, all right, I know Harry has been caught, but—it just—”

Anton knew exactly where he was coming from. “I suppose we could take a short trip. Where would you like to go?”

Montgomery’s face brightened. “How about your lab? I’ve always wanted to get a look in there, we all of us did, especially—well.” He coughed. “You know. Anyway. How about it?”

Gerald Montgomery was just about the last person Anton wanted in his lab, but he had made the offer. “Very well.”

“Great.” Montgomery stood up, shook out his hands, and clapped Anton on the back. His fingers lingered for a moment on the skin just above Anton’s collar. “Lead the way.”