Anton had been so engrossed in the dusty manuscript he’d been reading that he didn’t hear Lillith enter the room. He didn’t notice anything at all until a chair came whizzing past his head and hit the wall with a loud metallic clang.

“Watch it!” He spun in his chair and glared daggers at her. A smack on the head from that heavy chair really would’ve hurt. “What did I do to deserve that?”

“Nothing, my aim was just off.” Lillith was smouldering, muscles coiled and clearly ready for a fight. Her biceps and shoulders were tensed beneath her jacket and her fists were clenched tightly. She had a very feline air. “Been a long fucking day.”

“Well this is quite a turn around, you were full of the joys this morning,” he said. “What’s happened?”

“Nothing. Sweet fuck all.”

“So why you so pissed?”

“Because nothing’s happened.”

Anton sighed, leaning back and propping one leg over the other. His elbow was on the arm of the chair and wearily he rested his chin in his hand. He thoroughly disliked these temper tantrums of hers – thankfully they were infrequent. “I don’t follow.”

“I have thrown all manner of ingenious and pretty technically impressive magic at Timberlake and the little fucker is remaining stubbornly defiant.”

He had pulled in yet more favours in order to put Justin through some pretty elaborate day dreams, but since he had made his little promise to Charmian it was now Lillith who had to execute the plan. Yet no matter what was put to Justin nothing seemed to entice him to stray. It was hard to brain wash somebody who insisted on being an upstanding citizen even in their hallucinations. She found it inexplicable; the man had been in one of the world’s most toxic industries since puberty. How was it possible that somebody who’d had that much access to money, power and all the sex and drugs and rock n’ roll that went with it was seemingly so well behaved? They’d done their research - she knew the guy wasn’t squeaky clean by any means, far from it. Why was he proving so recalcitrant?

“Why the need for all of it?” She asked. “Why not just infect him and dispense with all this hassle?”

“Because the whole point is that he needs to stray of his own accord. Besides, infecting him that way would require him to be going about his usual business. Avengers would be waiting to cleanse him before he so much as broke a speed limit. No.”

“Okay, well…” She shrugged at him. “Don’t blame me when I get pissy then. Failure makes me crabby.”

Anton rolled his eyes at her. “I don’t see the big deal. Rome wasn’t built in a day, did you really expect him to instantly cave?”

“No, but I at least expected him to have been fucking tempted. I’ve thrown everything we got at him and thus far he’s just spat at me and called me names. Damn fucking Charmian must have trained him up or something.” She kicked at a trash can, sending that skittering across the room too. “If we had been able to follow your original plan this would have been fine but he’s resisting me too much.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake woman, will you shut your god damned cakehole? Boohoo, it’s not easy street for once! Poor baby, poor you, welcome to my fucking world! This has always been your problem; you go for the low hanging fruit because you got no shittin’ stayin’ power, so give you any actual work to do and you can’t deal. Well sorry I’m not able to do all the heavy lifting for you this time but tough shit, sis.”

It was unusual to see her brother so irritable. The reason he’d been such an effective and dangerous individual in the past was that he was more than capable of containing his anger. Instead he channelled it into much more subtle and strategic strikes. That set him apart from the many demons who were too busy enjoying themselves or letting their baser instincts rule them to step back and see the bigger picture. Anton in contrast was a consummate actor who had seemingly infinite patience. He knew when to lose a battle in order to win the war; that was why he always triumphed in the end. The tempest might be raging within but on the surface all was calm. It was disconcerting and sobering to see him this rankled after so short a time.

Then again, a lot was riding on his success here. After taking a strategic blow in order to save his skin he had spent years unwearyingly planning his resurgence and waiting for his opportunity. His opportunity was here and it had turned out to be bigger than either of them had suspected. Justin Timberlake had been enough of a potential score before he’d been discovered to be Michael. Now they had him and Charmian as a bonus prize. Screwing up at this stage was unthinkable and yet due to the oath he couldn’t even follow through himself, he had to stay hands off. She supposed she’d be crabby too.

Anton took a deep breath in and his usual visage returned. He spoke as if his previous fit hadn’t happened.

“I wouldn’t worry, sister dear.” He turned back to his desk and picked up the manuscript again. “It’s only been a few days, and we have an extra hurdle to jump since clearly she told him what’s up. It’s natural he’d resist harder in that knowledge. Keep going, you’ll find his weak spot eventually and that’s your in. They all have one.”

“You’re right.” Lillith breathed in deeply and tried to focus again. “Still, I could stand to let off some steam right now. Feel like going out tonight? Our dear friend Annabelle is out of rehab and celebrating with a huge party.”

“Why not?” Anton smiled. “As her favourite dealer it would be remiss of me to be a no show.”

**

Well, he supposed it could be worse.

Indeed, that was exactly what he was afraid of. That it could and would get worse.

Justin was remarkably unscathed, all things considered. He had no idea where he was, the walls were bare and there wasn’t a window to be seen. It had a slight industrial look to the place but that didn’t tell him much. Without any clocks or daylight there was no sense of time passing or how long it had been (damn it, why hadn’t he worn his watch?) but there was at least a mattress and a toilet cubicle. He could sleep and he didn’t have to soil himself, for what small relief that was.

What worried him was what Anton and Lillith planned to do with him. They had quickly separated him from Charmian. He couldn’t think too hard about what they might be doing to her or he’d probably have a breakdown, so instead he wondered what their scheme was. They hadn’t done anything physical to him and so long as they wanted him to come around to their side he guessed they probably wouldn’t except as a last resort. Still you never knew. So what was the end game?

What they had done to him that day was put him through a series of hallucinations. It had left him with a serious headache. As hard as he tried to remember that they weren’t real, they were so vivid that he frequently found himself falling into the rouse. How that worked he wasn’t sure but it was screwing with his mind. It had put every last nerve ending on edge and he could feel himself grinding his teeth. As far as he could gather the idea was to make him do something bad, though to what end he didn’t know. They’d tried tempting him with women and with success. They had tried putting his life and career on the line to see how desperate he’d get.

Thus far, with a colossal effort, he hadn’t caved. He was not confident in his ability to keep that up and entirely unsure of where his own personal line was. As much as he’d like to believe that he was a good person Justin knew that he couldn’t be incorruptible. He was a human being. He had his flaws and foibles like anybody else and it could only be a matter of time until they found the Achilles heel he didn’t have enough control over. All it would take would be for him to lose sight of reality and have a single weak moment.

His hands tapped restlessly against his sides, and his brain would not let him rest. Impotent rage was building but pacing the room was about the only thing he could do. At least it helped use up the anxious energy building in his muscles.

Constantly running through his mind were the faces of all the people he cared about. People he’d be letting down and even possibly endangering if he surrendered. He saw his mother’s curly hair in his mind’s eye, and guiltily imagined how afraid she must be thinking that he’d had a terrorist threat against him. Trace would have told her the story he’d spun. Trace was also there, as were Rachel and his other friends. He had hoped to be able to call Trace again but had got too distracted to ask Charmian about it. More than anything he wished he was back sitting around a table with his friends, sharing some beers and some laughs.

Even though she’d never met them, in his little fantasy Charmian was there too. If he felt guilty about his mother he felt positively traitorous about Charmian. There were a lot of thoughts going through his head about what he should have done to prevent her capture, some contradictory. He shouldn’t have run. He should have run faster. He shouldn’t have dropped the keys. He should have fought back and broken free of Anton. The scene played in his head over and over again and at every moment of it he saw some juncture where he could have done something differently, a squandered opportunity.

A little voice in the back of Justin’s head told him he was being unfair on himself but he didn’t listen to it. Miserably the prior few nights replayed themselves on repeat, each memory making him feel worse than the last. It seemed ridiculously late in the day to realise that his feelings for her had changed considerably in that time and he was kicking himself for it all. He felt dumb for not having treated her better when he found out she was an avenger.  He felt dumber for worrying about the whole fate issue when he could have been communicating with her. Being so casual the morning after they’d slept together seemed like a hopeless waste and he felt like an irredeemable cretin for allowing her to bargain herself away on his behalf. She would be suffering God only knew what on his behalf. Resisting Lillith’s tricks was the least of what he owed her yet he wasn’t even sure he could.

All in all his current opinion of himself was pretty low. That really wasn’t going to help with the whole ‘resisting the dark side’ task.

**

“Ahh!”

Pain shot through her hip as she landed unceremoniously on the concrete floor. The impact sent shock waves through her and knocked the air from her lungs. It also made her accidentally bite her tongue, so even as she was gasping for air the sour taste of copper filled her mouth. She had to spit blood.

Her captors slammed the door behind her without so much as a word, and the sound of the lock rang out in the darkness. Charmian had no idea whether or not they were actually in Hell but it certainly felt like it. Once her eyes adjusted to the lack of light she could make out a few bare shapes though not much more. The scene was industrial, like something out of the Freddy Krueger film Justin had forced her to watch back at the cabin during his 80s’ classics tutorial. It was grimy, rusty, and the pipes everywhere made constant whirring and grinding noises which rendered sleep next to impossible even with her exhaustion.

Of course it didn’t help that she was in considerable amounts of pain. She supposed she had to be grateful that no serious torture had begun, but being repeatedly pounded on was more than enough. Her torso was like a tenderised slab of meat, and though she’d seen no mirrors she imagined her face had to be black and blue. How her nose remained unbroken was a mystery but her lip was well and truly split.

The demons loved it. Anton clearly didn’t trust the news of her capture to many people but he’d invited a select few of his more reliable allies to come and take a swing at her. They’d all delighted in telling her how eager Bob was to see her, and assuring her that Justin was being corrupted even as they spoke.

“Hello?” A weak voice sounded in the darkness. It was all too familiar. “Who’s there?”

“Nate?” She managed to cough out.

“Charmian? Please no…”

“Sorry old man.” With a lot of pain and difficulty she managed to crawl the short distance over to the wall so that she could sit up against it. She had a vague idea of where Nate’s voice was coming from but she’d never make it over to him in this state. “But it’s me. I really fucked up this time.”

“Are you alright?”

“I’m their new punching bag. You?”

“Bob decided he wanted to let me heal before commencing the next round. Apparently guides don’t regenerate as fast as avengers.”

“I’m sorry, I had no idea.” Her tongue was now throbbing and speaking was not comfortable. “I’d noticed you weren’t around but never thought you might have been taken. I would have told Alex to come find you.”

“Alexander?”

“He was helping me,” she explained. “Keeping me informed and helping me hide. I temporarily skipped out of town with Justin and we were doing well, but apparently at some point between us leaving and trying to come back Anton started near constant locator spells. We weren’t even out of range of the symbols for five minutes while we packed the car and they managed to find us. I tried to bargain with Anton, give myself up in exchange for Justin’s safety, but I screwed up and he took us both. What about you, what happened?”

“I was sloppy. I was very close to an antidote but needed some more of the poison for the testing - managed to obtain it but must have been noticed. It was enough to make Anton question what I was doing and he had me snatched. Bob has been trying to make me talk.”

That she knew – she had been agonising over what Anton had said about it. Nathaniel was one more person getting hurt because of her incompetence. The mention of it suddenly reminded her of another jibe that he’d added in, one that was confusing now she thought about it.

“I don’t know why this didn’t occur to me before…” Forming certain words was hard on her split lip, tugged at the cut. “But why would it take finding out about you to make them realise the poison works? They have avengers down here, ones Bob managed to snatch. Why not test it on them first?”

“Bob delighted in telling me.” Nathaniel’s voice sounded very heavy. “Apparently none of them were strong enough to withstand it.”

“What do you mean? It’s not like they could die.”

“No, but they could fall.”

It was like she could feel the blood drain away from her face, gravity pulling it down to pool around her heart and constrict it in her chest. Of course she’d known that was a possibility, but she’d believed in her soldiers. Maybe she’d envisaged a few giving way, but never had she imagined that every last individual would fall. Surely at least one of them would have stayed resolute? “They were corrupted? All of them?”

“Some took longer than others to accept the offer but eventually yes, they all bargained themselves away to end the torture. At least that’s what Bob told me - he is a demon so he could always be lying, I suppose, but I’m afraid I believe him.”

So that was what Anton had meant when he said that Nathaniel was holding out longer than some of her avengers. Oh God – was that the fate that awaited them both? She’d be tortured until she either died or agreed to sell her soul, Nate until he fell? What about Justin? She had no idea what they might be doing to him to bring him around to their way of thinking.

“Don’t worry Charmian. I’ve told them nothing.”

“You wouldn’t.” Despite herself, a small smile came to her lips. It stung but she let it remain. “If you could die before giving it up you would. I know that.”

“Still, I’m sure if they haven’t found a new opportunity to test the poison again they’ll be on the hunt to do so. I fear for the rest of the team.”

“What about the cure? How close were you?”

She couldn’t see him in the darkness but Nathaniel was smiling too. It was like she couldn’t help herself. She’d been captured, from the noises she’d been making was clearly in agony, and yet still she was collating information and arming herself with knowledge of the situation. He doubted she even realised what she was doing - it was ingrained behaviour. She was a leader to the last, though it probably wasn’t going to avail her much at this stage. Yet they did say knowledge was power…

“I’m almost certain I had it. The poison was well disguised as an ordinary chemical but turned out to be mystical – which means the right protective rune should render it useless, but I needed more to test it. I’d planned to ask Zac to be my guinea pig.”

“He’d have done it too.” A wistful expression passed over her face. “Kid’s scared of nothing.”

“He learned from the best. You taught him well.”

“You fucking kidding me?” Tears sprang to her eyes. “He can’t have got that from me , I’ve never been more scared in my life. I’ve lost Justin, Nate. To worse than death this time. I have a pretty good idea what they’re going to do to me and I’m not immortal any more, I’m not going to heal like you are. And all because for the ninth time in a row I got so distracted by loving him that I underestimated my opponents. You’d think I’d damn well learn.”

There was a long pause as Nathaniel wondered what to say. All those years of taking confession should have made it easy to hand out comforting platitudes, but he’d known Charmian too long for that.

“You were chosen for a reason, Charmian,” he finally said. “You and that love you’re convinced is your downfall. We serve the light and in the darkness, we have to remember that we are the light. Trust in that.”

“Given that my light’s pretty dim right now that is not comforting. Still, it could be worse. You were taking so long to drum up a response there that I thought you were preparing a Bible story.”

Nathaniel wished she wouldn’t make him laugh. He had too many healing cuts around his rib cage.