Last Line

Last Line

Harper Fox

www.loose-id.com

Last Line

Copyright © May 2011 by Harper Fox

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eISBN 978-1-60737-971-3

Editor: Judith David

Cover Artist: April Martinez

Printed in the United States of America

Published by

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This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Chapter One

The edge of the Arctic Circle. Zemelya Province

2008

The young British agent had hung on to who he was for a long time.

Lukas Oriel looked at him. He was bolt upright in his wooden chair. No need to tie him there anymore. He was physically docile, though his dark eyes blazed defiance. Candlelight flickered on his skin.

To Oriel, he was beautiful. Naked but for a torn pair of jeans. Short black hair spiked and dirty, still catching the candle-flame glow. The fire adored him. He was stripped of his spare weight and beginning to lose muscle mass under Oriel’s regime of careful starvation, but still the red-gold light caressed him, picking out the crests of his collarbones, the traces of the formidable six-pack that lingered on his solar plexus.

The two men faced each other, each in his plain wooden chair. The cavernous room stretched out all round them. Deep underground, no sound reached it from the outside. Other chairs, rows and rows of them, extended into the shadows. Oriel and his prisoner were sitting in front of a huge makeshift altar, a missile crate veiled in a white cloth.

“Michael,” Oriel said. “Do you know who I am?”

“You’re Lukas Oriel.”

Oriel nodded, impressed. The other agents he had captured had been speechless by this time. “
Father
Lukas,” he corrected gently. “And have I hurt you?”

The strained figure jerked in his chair. He was tugging, Oriel knew, on invisible bonds. His hands were behind him, tendons in his shoulders standing stark. “Yes, you bastard. You’ve drugged me. You don’t let me sleep. You’ve tied me in this bloody chair…”

“But you’re not tied, Michael.”

Dark eyes flickered wide. For a moment they fixed on Oriel, incredulous. Then the prisoner slowly drew his hands round from behind his back. He looked at his wrists. The marks of ropes were there, but they were free. A faint, rough sound escaped him—something between a sob and a groan. The prisoner sank his face into his hands. “What the fuck have you done to me?”

“I’ve drugged you, as you say. Deprived you of sleep and daylight. Taken everything from you that might help you remember what you are, where you come from. And why have I done these things?”

Michael raised his head. He began his recitation softly. It was rote to him by now, but still his deep voice cracked on it, as if the words hurt him, finding their way free. “Because a British fighter jet brought down a Zemel warhead on a test flight. Because the warhead landed…on Dorva, your capital.”

Oriel nodded. He was rocking slightly, letting his eyes close. “Yes. Bad enough. Go on.”

“The city was destroyed, the land round it radioactive and toxic for miles. The British and US governments sent aid, but that soon stopped…”

“Yes. Why?”

“Because Zemelya wasn’t meant to have nuclear weapons. Banned by international law. The governments said it served them right. Taught them a lesson. Leave them to burn…” Michael shuddered. He jerked upright, as if trying to shake himself clear of mud. When he spoke again, his voice was his own, the rote’s dull rhythms gone. “Oh God, Oriel! A few politicians said that, not the people! Not…” He swallowed audibly, a dry scrape. “Not me.”

“Nevertheless you represent your people, Michael. You’re a loyal MI5 agent. You came here to track me down. Can you still remember why?”

Oriel watched him struggle. His conditioning was grossly flawed. The fires of the man captured six months before still flared out. He was perfect.

“You’re a menace,” he grated out. “You call yourself the angel of these people, but you’re their bloody demon. There would’ve been more aid, more help. But you…you set yourself up as a prophet, a priest, and they believed in you. You made them blame every outsider, every immigrant, for what’s happened here. You started a genocide.”

He broke off, coughing harshly. Oriel leaned toward him and, with every appearance of tenderness, pushed his hair off his brow. Michael recoiled beneath the touch. “Why?” Oriel asked him softly. “Tell me. You know well enough by now.”

“To take revenge. You’ve got military scientists, government men, working for you. You think you can set up as God in this wasteland bloody forest of yours, in these bunkers. God with an arsenal of nukes, ready to rain down hell on the West. And for some unknowable reason…” Michael hauled in a breath and sat gasping for a moment before he could go on. “You think I’m going to help you. Be your ally, your…your right-hand man.”

Oriel stirred. The thick black cloth of his cassock, its long skirts, impeded his movement. Standing, he reached to place his hands on his prisoner’s shoulders. Broad shoulders, generous. Oriel’s thin fingers moved over them like claws. “Don’t you feel it in your
self
yet, Michael?” he hissed. “The power, the love of fire? Cold plutonium fire, the fire that comes from the earth—my earth?”

He slid one hand coldly down Michael’s damp-skinned chest. Down farther—over the taut belly, down and between the strong thighs. Oriel fastened a grasp on his prisoner’s cock. “Don’t you feel it?”

Michael stared up at him. The bondage conditioning was strong; he had put his hands behind the back of the chair again, as if his wrists were tied. But his eyes were clear. They gleamed with deep, ineradicable amusement as Oriel stood over him. “No, you fucking nutcase,” he said distinctly. “I do not.”

Oriel let him go. He took one step back, far enough to get range. Then he raised his right fist, swung it to his left shoulder, and drove it down into Michael’s face, a terrible slicing backhand arc that knocked him from his chair to the floor. He was helpless to save himself. His muscles were under Oriel’s will, even if his mind was still free.

His mind was the only part of him Oriel wanted. He delivered a kick to his prisoner’s gut. Michael took it in silence, trying to curl up against his invisible bonds. Oriel aimed the next blow at his testicles. The next and the next, and finally Michael wrenched over onto his stomach, loosing a harsh cry of pain.

It was enough. Oriel fell back, breathing hard. He ran his hands over his hair, collecting himself. After a moment, he was ice again, his passion spent.

He looked into the shadows that danced in the eastern quarter of his makeshift church. He smoothed the front of his cassock. “Anzhel,” he said quietly. “Come here.”

The figure that detached itself from the uneasy light would have been striking anywhere. In Oriel’s underground kingdom, where no daylight came, he was like a morning breeze. His grace colluded with his fine, proud build to make a music of his motions. His fair hair framed a face of easy perfection; his sweet smile kindled in eyes of summer-sky blue. He looked…ordinary, if ordinary could be the absolute daily-bread goodness of the world. He looked like someone’s well-loved son.

He crouched beside Michael. The prisoner had vomited from the pain and the blows to his gut. Carefully Anzhel raised him out of the mess. He drew him into his lap. He produced a spotless white handkerchief with the gesture of unfolding a wing, and cleaned his mouth with tender care. “Poor Mikhaili,” he said. Then he looked up at Oriel and smiled. “You want me to break him for you.”

Oriel nodded. “The physical conditioning is there. But I can’t reach inside him. And I need him, Anzhel.”

“Can I do as I wish with him?”

“Oh, I understand your type of genius needs free rein.” Oriel crouched too, tipping his head thoughtfully. Michael was fighting for consciousness, but Anzhel’s embrace could soothe away a world of pain. “If you succeed, he’s yours, once he’s done his work for us. Would you like that?”

Anzhel gave him a look of melting pleasure. “I’d love it, Lukas. I’ve been watching this one. I almost hoped you’d fail, that you’d need me. He’s so strong. The other MI5 men snapped like brittle twigs.”

“Well, he’s one of us, in a way. His mother was a Zemel refugee who fled to England before he was born. It’s part of why he was chosen for this mission, his knowledge of our language and our ways.” Oriel paused, considering. “Yes. His mother. You might use that.”

“I will.” Anzhel leaned over the struggling man in his arms. “They’ve been keeping you awake, haven’t they?” he whispered, cradling him. “It’s all right now, Mikhaili. You can sleep a little now.”

Oriel sat back on his heels. “You’re a ruthless bastard, aren’t you, Anzhel?” He waited until the cornflower eyes came up to meet his, full of their own soft light. Then he nodded in satisfaction. “Yes. My left-hand man.”

* * *

Michael ran through the forest. He couldn’t remember beginning to, but now that he was out here, he found it hard to care. The night air was sweet in his lungs. Rain drifted down in sheets, silvered by a cloud-hidden moon.

Anzhel was running ahead of him. His skin was smudged by charcoal, and he had a black wool hat pulled down over shining hair that would otherwise capture the moonlight and glow like a beacon. He and Michael were wearing night-camouflage fatigues. They were nearly there.

Where? Michael tried to give it thought. They’d been on the run for about an hour now, he reckoned, and—yes, it was coming back—in military Jeeps for an hour before that. They’d left the vehicles hidden among the trees. Oriel’s HQ must be miles behind them. But where the hell were they going?