Chapter 8
The wind was cold in the gardens, and Ororo wished she wore a bit more than just the thin material that made up her evening gown. She had been waiting now for what felt like hours.
“Damn good thing I don’t have to depend on him to save my life.”
“You wound me, Rose.”
Ororo turned around, and atop the garden walls stood her thief. He still wore the long brown coat and hood she had seen him in the last time, and in his hand he clutched a long quarterstaff.
“Remy’s heart may be torn by your words, but the warmth of your beauty heals him down to the core.” He hopped down and kissed her hand.
She did her best to hide the smile forming on her lips but failed horribly. “Took you long enough, Lebeau.”
Remy only grinned. “A king has his duties, my lady; I’ll have you know I put off several pressing matters to answer your call.”
“Barmaid?” she asked, quirking an eyebrow.
The grin on his face turned wicked. “And two of her sisters.”
Ororo rolled her eyes and picked up the vial she had broken. “An odd device, but clearly effective; is it magic?”
Remy took the shattered vial. “As I am sure you know, my lady, there are many people of this world who have had the misfortune of being born with the taint of Daemons, and those that have cannot live the way normal people can.”
He looked at the vial with almost sad eyes. “Many of us can only feed our bellies by thievery, so there are many like me among the Thieves guild. These vials are filled with brimstone extract that surround the various portals that some of my brothers can step through. Whenever brimstone is brought into the air, those touched by Daemon can sense it. We use them as alarms and summoning calls.”
Ororo nodded her head. “So can you step through these portals?”
“I cannot, I am only touched by the taint. Others, though, have had the corruption sink deeper into their blood,” he answered.
Tossing the shattered vial over his shoulder, he let the somberness of his mood ebb away. “Now, my Rose, I see that you have need of Remy. What can I do for you, and please tell me it involves you and me with a couple of bottles of brandy in a bathing tub filled with rose petals.”
“I have need of your expertise, thief,” she said, stiffening her nervous laugh. “But not in the field that you would hope.”
Remy eyed her closely. “Life is so full of sad disappointments, but we must all manage, I suppose.” He walked around her and leaned in close. “What manner of expertise can I give you, my lady?”
There was only so much she really wanted to divulge. “Locks.”
Remy nodded slowly. “Locks.” He rubbed at the hair on his chin. “Does my Rose plan on locking someone up?” That wicked smile overtook his face. “I would not think that would be necessary.”
The blush deepened a bit more. “Actually, their opening is what my interest is primed upon.”
“And what sort of locks are you interested in?”
Ororo raised her brow. “Does it matter?”
Remy chuckled, “Not that I would not lay my life down for you, my Lady, but if it is something such as a vault or tome or such, then when it is discovered missing, the first place that blame is going to be set is on the Guild of Thieves. So please believe me Rose, I do not need such worry.”
“You have no need to worry, King of Thieves, no such troubles will come to your door,” she assured him.
Remy studied her a moment and slowly nodded his head. “Very well, my lady, but I will expect a kiss on my way to the gallows if such a fate befalls me.”
Ororo smirked. “You shall have it.”
Remy smiled brightly. “Ah, I would commit the crime, and turn my own self in and walk proudly to the Hangman’s noose if it meant a kiss from you, my lady.” He pulled a small silver key from his coat pocket and handed it over to Ororo. “This should make do for what you need.”
Ororo studied it for a moment. It was a plain silver key with a wide head and several small and engraved teeth on the end.
“Magical?” she asked.
Remy leaned in closely. “Everything I give and everything I do is magic, Rose.”
The blush on her face intensified just then. “And this can open any locked door or object?”
He nodded. ”Apart from other enchanted devices, no lock will keep you out.”
She smiled at him. “Thank you, your Majesty.”
He bowed low before her. “Now, my lady, as much as it pains me to be apart from the glowing brilliance that is your beauty, I must be off before a guard were to see me and want to make Remy a head shorter.”
“Wait,” she said, as he was about to leap up to the garden wall. “I have something else to ask of you.”
“And what would that be?”
She tossed him the bag of gold coins, and he caught it in one smooth motion.
“I wish to buy another of those vials from you and a bit more of your time,” she said.
Remy looked from her to the coins. “So, what you are saying is that you would like to see Remy again, yes?
Ororo blushed once more. “What I am saying is that I may require your services again.”
Remy smiled at her as he dug into his coat pocket again. “I like you, my lady, Remy finds you to be very interesting.” He tossed her another one of the brimstone-filled vials. “Remy could never take the gold from a lady such as you.”
He dropped the coins to the ground. “Perhaps a kiss?”
Ororo scoffed. “You already stole one of those, LeBeau, and I do not see you on the march to the gallows or the chopping block just yet, so I am afraid you must wait.”
Remy only grinned. “Things like your kiss, Rose, are worth facing the block a thousand times over.”
He leapt to the top of the wall and waved at her. “And I can wait a bit longer for you to realize you love me. Until then Remy can dream.”
And in a rustle of his coat he was gone.
Ororo giggled and turned away, clutching her two gifts to her heart.
She had taken four paces when she realized she forgot the bag of coins on the ground. When she turned around to fetch them, she saw Remy back atop of the wall using his quarterstaff to fish the coin purse off the ground.
Placing her hands on her hips in mock anger, she cleared her throat loudly.
Remy looked up and bore an innocent grin. “Uh, Remy has children to feed?”
Her eyebrows went further up her forehead.
“Fine, Remy just has a whole lot of drinking to do.” He hooked the purse, blew a kiss to her and was gone once again.
Dungeon
The smell of blood flooded Logan’s nose as he huddled in the corner of the tiny cell. He could still taste it on his lips; the coppery flavor burned his throat like a poison. There was also the stench of decay that mingled with the blood.
Logan knew the smell all too well.
It was death.
Regardless of how hard he willed the images away, he could still see the entire macabre spectacle, even behind his tightly shut eyes.
The bodies of friends and family still littered the ground. They were piled so high that they reached his thighs, hheir faces in horrible masks of agony and pain from the fate that was dealt them.
The sky was black and the rain fell in a crimson pour. It was raining the blood that he had spilt. It matted his flesh and made his hair stick to his back in clumps. He could hear the voices whisper to him now. Curses and slurs being poured down on him from the dead lips of his own people.
He whirled around to see his tribesman and friend Drake standing before him. The young man was slashed from shoulder to hip, his organs bulging beneath the rotting skin.
“You killed me, Logan,” he said in a voice that was barely human any longer. “You brought death to us all.”
Logan’s mouth hung open as another figure rose by Drake’s side. What was once an attractive woman was now not much more than mutilated flesh hanging from broken bones. She was once called Betsai, a fellow warrior and a trusted friend; now, she was just one more splash of blood on Logan’s hands.
“You doomed us, Logan, the Elders should have cast you out the day your Father found you.”
Logan turned his eyes away from them only to see the faces of his father and sister.
Katherena’s body had been broken in such a way that he could taste the bile in his throat rise up and gag him. Her once youthful face now bore a large gash down one side that ran over and destroyed one of her eyes. The left arm ended in a horrible stump, and she bore the marks of being ravaged.
“You killed me, Logan” she spat out, “and then you took me as an animal. You are not my brother; you are a monster, a beast and nothing more.” Her still blue eye burned into him like a brand. ‘Father was wrong.”
Logan felt the tears ebb away from his eyes as his adoptive father stood before him now. Lentrok was clothed in the skins of Elder and Shaman, and in his hand he carried his staff.
“You failed me, Logan,” he said as he pulled the skins away to revel the disemboweled area of his stomach. “Our people are gone now, and it is your hand that bears our blood.”
“This is not me,” Logan grounded out. “I am not this person, I am a man.”
“You fought the Haze, Logan, and failed.” Lentrok placed his hand under his chin and raised his son’s eyes to his own. “I should have left you where I found you.
“I am not an animal!” Logan screamed out.
“You are something much worse now, my son,” Lentrok continued. “You are the Avatar of the Haze, just as the other elders feared that you would be one day. The Father has cursed us for trying to make one who is lost his Chosen.”
Logan grabbed at his head to cover his ears. “The Haze does not rule me.”
“Yes, you are righ,t Logan.” Lentrok leaned down and whispered into his ear. “You are its Master and the right hand of its madness.”
“NOOOOOO!” Logan grabbed for his father but found that his hand passed through the ruined flesh.
‘We go to the Father’s table now, my son, but you will now forever be cursed from His presence, the Mark is upon you, and you will wander for all time as the monster you have become all the while the curses of your people will forever resound in your ears.”
Lentrok and Kitty both began to rise above the gore-soaked ground and ascend to the sky, and with them went the bodies of all those that had died by Logan’s hands. Their curses echoed in the eerie quiet and pierced the deepest recesses of Logan’s mind.
Raising his head to the heavens, he screamed out his pain and rage, draining his body and his soul of all of their power. Logan collapsed into a heap, and for the first time since he could remember, he wept.
A noise caused his head to snap up and the tears stopped. He would die before he let these people see his will break. Expecting it to be either Creed or his lackeys, he was stunned to see the almost ethereal form of the Moon Elf that he had seen earlier.
She stood a few feet from the cell doors, out of the sight of the guard still in booze-induced slumber. She was looking at him with curious and intent eyes. A white evening dress draped her body and she clutched a small object in her hand.
Logan rose from his spot on the floor and took a few cautious steps forward. She did not flinch or step away further. Logan figured she was only confident in the strength of the bars, but the look in her eyes spoke of a courage that he thought few here could ever possess.
He placed his hands on the bars and studied her a second more. Her breathing was even, albeit a bit deep, but Logan thought that it was not from fear. Her hair was worn low and it cascaded down her shoulders as water breaks from a fall. The subtle points of her ears peeked from above the snowy mane of her hair, adding a beautiful contrast to her colors.
She was almost too much to bear at such a close range; her beauty was almost painful.
Ororo was doing a hell of a job, she thought, of keeping her emotions in check. She had been more worried of getting into the dungeon than of her actual goal. However, as she stood before the barbarian now, she realized that the easy part was over and the hard now lay ahead.
Though both were of almost the same height, the barbarian’s presence seemed to cast a tall shadow across the floor, making him appear as a giant would before a mouse. His wild hair still hung down his back, and the shallow beard he bore had grown considerably since she had seen him last. He was clad only in a pair of leather pants, and a pair of iron bracers still remained on his wrists. Ororo found herself drawn to the hardened chest behind the bars, which made her almost not hear the deep voice that spoke to her.
“Who are you?”
Ororo shook her head to clear her vision. “No one of any consequence.”
Logan chuckled a bit for the first time in days. “What are you doing here?” He leaned a bit closer into the bars. “Coming to take in the sights?”
“There is not much to take in,” she fired back, if only just a bit frazzled that he had caught her looking at his chest.
Logan scoffed. “You know, you could get into a lot of trouble being down here. I can’t think of any good reason other than you just can’t take your eyes off of me.”
Ororo was outraged. “How dare you!! As if a barbarian could ever…”
Logan reached out through the bars and grabbed her by the hand, not overly painful but still enough to make her wince. Ororo tried to scream but found that her breath had left her as she pressed against the iron bars and into the equally hard body on the other side. Her limbs went loose and her eyes wide.
Logan wrapped one arm around her and even through the bars it encompassed her waist. “I think you like the fact that I’m some kind of savage, a dirty Northmen that could as easily break you in half right now as kiss you, real different from the usual kind of boys that come after you, huh?” He pulled her closer. “I bet that prince of yours couldn’t make you feel this way.”
Despite all of his bravado, Logan was taking the only chance he felt he would ever get to wrap his arms around this woman. It was the only chance he felt that he could prove to his senses that she was of flesh and blood. The scent of her hair chased away the lingering stench of blood; the feel of her warm body eclipsed the cold dead hands that had touched him earlier; the sound of her breathing drowned out the horrid curses still echoing faintly in his ears; and the look of her eyes gave him a sense of peace and almost made him forget the accusing stares that had burned into his mind.
In spite of his brutish behavior, Ororo could not recall a time when her heart pounded so fast and her blood thundered through her veins like a heard of wild horses. She should have been afraid, should have been struggling and screaming and fighting to get loose of the North men’s hold. The way his hands felt against her, though, promised no violence, and the look in his eyes spoke of disbelief other than lust or malice.
“I think it would be wise for you to release me,” she stated finally, albeit reluctantly. Ororo could feel herself becoming almost drunk with the way those arms felt.
“Been called a lot of things, Darlin’. Wise ain’t in the top spots,” Logan said, breathing just a bit harder now.
“Unless you want to be beheaded, above and below, I think you should.” A wicked smile crossed her face and she raised a snowy eyebrow at him.
Logan felt a laugh bubble in his throat again; this one sure had a fire inside of her. The voice of survival in his mind was screaming that she could be a way out for him. A moon elf princess would make a fine hostage, but despite the urging, Logan felt his hands loosen, and his arms slowly left their place around her body.
For both of them it felt wrong, the lack of warmth and the cold hollow distance felt like a ravine in between them. Logan seriously doubted those bars could stand up to what he would do to them just to get his body closer to hers.
“So how did you manage this, and just what are you wanting?’ he asked with genuine curiosity.
Ororo breathed out slowly, adjusting herself to the sudden cold that filled the darkness of the prison. “I wanted to see if the Monster had the teeth that everyone said he did.”
Logan laughed out loud. “And does he?”
Ororo turned her head to the side slightly and frowned, “I haven’t made my mind up yet.” She slowly began pacing the cell door. “You are far from civilized.”
“Got that right,” Logan said with a smile.
“Your manners are certainly a horror.”
“You should see me at the dinner table.”
“Your gruff and surly.”
“Get that from my mother’s side.”
“You have no regards for station.”
“And probably never will.”
Ororo was getting frustrated with his smirk and his sarcasm. “You murder people.”
The smirk left Logan’s face in a flash. “I don’t murder. I kill.”
Ororo scoffed. “Same thing.”
“You don’t murder the enemy, you kill them.” Logan sat back down on the floor and looked at her with dark and cold eyes. “I do what I must to keep my people, my family and my lands safe.”
“Does sewing the skins of dead children into your bed sheets justify this end?”
Logan leapt from his spot on the floor and a fury like nothing Ororo had ever seen burned in his eyes. “I have killed a lot of people, Elf: Some enemies, some friends; some tribesmen, some outsiders; some young, some old. I have killed wounded and I have killed fresh. If it walked, crawled or ran, I probably have at one time killed something like it, but I have never harmed a child in my life.”
The growing itch burned in Logan’s mind. The Haze knew all too well what Logan was capable of doing. He felt the red-hot claws beginning to cut into his mind and struggled to hold it at bay.
“You should leave now,” Logan said through gritted teeth.
Ororo was a bit shaken from his display, but she held steadfast. “I only wish to know about this great enemy that hovers over our heads, and to see if you are the beast they said you to be.”
She left out the part that she just wanted to see him up close and alone.
“I don’t give a damn what you people believe,” Logan informed her, resting his back against the wall and clenching his fists tight. “You are going to think of me and my kind as animals no matter what.”
Ororo leaned in close to the bars and looked him straight in the eye. “You are a hard man, and I have no doubts that you have committed your fair share of the misery that plagues our lands, but I also do not judge men by the way they look or the reputations they have. What matters is what lies in the heart, and through your eyes I can see that you care deeply for the lives of your people, and that you are doing only what is right for them.”
Logan had not been expecting this.
Ororo stood straight from the bars. “You are no animal, Logan, son of Lentrok, only someone who has done what he must, but I must tell you that rivers of blood are never the way to peace.”
She turned and began walking away.
“Wait.”
She turned and looked at him and caught a hint of softness in his face. It was enough to melt her heart.
“What’s your name?“ he asked softly.
She cast him a brilliant smile that made his heart clench in wonder.
“Ororo.”
Logan tasted that name on his tongue and returned the smile to the goddess of a woman in front of him. “Maybe I’ll see you again, Ororo.”
She nodded. “Maybe.”
And quietly she was gone.
Logan sat down against the wall and said the name of the Elven woman aloud and he felt the claws of the Haze fade away into the back of his mind.
He fell asleep that night with a smile and the serenade of the still passed-out guard’s snoring.
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