The Dragons of Men (The Sons of Liberty Book 2) (22 page)

Sigmund stepped away from the window and approached the center of the room again—grinning at the other man as he did so. Mahiri Onyango had been called Africa’s
Shetani
, or evil spirit. Even with the UN’s help, he had been forced to rely on his own prowess to defend his jungle camps from internal and external enemies. Though Sigmund knew him to be a devote atheist, Mahiri had utilized the animalistic beliefs of his ancestors to cultivate a wicked hate in the hearts of those who fought for him.

For years Mahiri had defended himself from the dangers that sought him out by subjugating the primal fears of his men. Despite the world’s belief that Mahiri was a simple bloodthirsty warlord, Sigmund knew he was one of the best tacticians alive. There was no reserve or political correctness with the
Shetani
; he was willing to shake hands with the devil himself if it meant escorting his foes to hell. Mahiri Onyango could analyze the facts of a military campaign and quickly decide who was likely to win and how. If he said they couldn’t succeed on two fronts, it wasn’t speculation.

It was fact.

Of course, Mahiri didn’t have all the facts to analyze and Sigmund was eager to reveal now that the Brazilian had finally finished his work.

“And what could you do with a nearly limitless supply of men to wage your battles?” Sigmund asked.

Mahiri laughed, his scratchy voice full with his thick accent. “I don’t like to indulge in hypothetical fantasies when reality can kill you on the battlefield.”

“What if it is not a fantasy?” Sigmund replied. “What if I possessed a method of control that could give you a few hundred thousand loyal warriors willing to do whatever I asked of them? What if I could grow their numbers every time we took a city? What could you do with such a force?”

Mahiri paused before chuckling again. “I could bring you Lukas’ head within a matter of months.”

“Well then,” Sigmund began as he nodded to Silvia, grinning like a child with a new bike, “let us take a walk.”

Another wave of fire caressed Victor Castle’s face, filling his nostrils and mouth with a slow and suffocating torrent of heat. He opened his mouth wide, partially to make room for the jagged branch of fire and partially to scream as he fought a fresh wave of despair that had filled him for what had to have been the better part of a decade.

He tried to convince himself that the blaze did not actually exist, just as he knew the cloud of acidic vapor and rush of teeth cracking ice struck him. He had spent the first few weeks of his living hell attempting to force his mind to realize it was all an illusion—some nightmarish dream born from whatever it was the drone had shot him with all those years ago. As the weeks of torture became months, he realized his mind would never win out. For him, the fabricated nightmare was breathing and real. Still, he hung on desperately to the hope that maybe, just maybe, his younger brother Manny had been able to flee New Orleans.

His focus shifted and he began to howl with pain. Even the act of thinking conjured agony. Thoughts formed all too sluggishly, like a drunken man with vertigo who moves his hand and only sees it obey minutes later. It was hell, a pure and undeniable hell, and Victor Castle wondered daily when it would end.

A slight ripple passed through him, though he tried to avoid thinking about it due to the torture that followed thought. However, the ripple grew into something completely unfamiliar—something from an age long past. His mind naturally went to the best-case scenario. That is, he hoped his living body was finally giving up. He had wished a thousand times before for his sanity to give out, leaving him a shell that only existed in the fire, and he wondered if that time had finally come. However, the ripple that passed through him became a wave of nausea expanding from his stomach almost as though he had been flung forward. The roar of the fire and the glow of the heat quickly dissipated and he found himself gasping for air—real air in a real room—as the world lurched back to its normal pace.

The first thing Victor did was vomit and scream at the same time. He had spent years in that fire and as bad as it was, it had become familiar. The sudden change back to reality had been more of a shock than the shift into the burning ever after had been in the beginning. His thoughts raced. Not just the slow, painful drawl of fingernails across the chalkboard that they had become, but congruent thoughts that formed at the rate they should have all along. As soon as the final wave of bile hit the floor, he paused his screaming to catch his breath. It was only then that he realized he hadn’t been the only one shrieking.

He looked to his left and watched as his younger brother screamed—his head lolling around as though he were in a trance. He dangled from two chains, his arms outstretched at a forty-five degree angle toward the ceiling. A few seconds passed before his younger brother suddenly threw his head forward and began to heave and scream at once.

“Manny!” Victor shouted. “Are you okay?”

He tried to reach for his brother, but his hand tugged at something sharp to his right. He looked over as he shook and saw that a chain that had been wrapped around his bloody wrist. He tugged again, confused as to where he was, and quickly looked around. A glass mirror filled one entire wall and a low hanging light swung from the center of the small concrete room.

Not a room,
Victor thought.
A cell. Why? After all this time…why?
As if to answer his silent question, a dark and ominous voice spoke from behind him.

“The first time I heard about you,” the voice whispered as it circled Victor, ducking underneath his outstretched arm, “you had just been subdued by my drones. A part of me wants to say that I can’t imagine what you’ve been through, but I believe I can, being that I am one of those who created the hell you’ve come to know.”

Victor’s eyes widened at the sight of an older man. Despite the heat, the older man wore a black button up shirt, light jeans, and a white scarf while six small drones circled above him, a glowing light on each. A Latino woman dressed in tight black pants and a loose gray shirt stood next to the older man, staring back at Victor emotionlessly. The older man looked over to the girl and nodded. She nodded back and drew a small silver cylinder that had been sheathed at her waist almost as though it were a knife.

“Who…are you?” Victor asked, stumbling over his words.

The man paused as he smiled back, a devilish grin that made Victor shiver.

“First,” the older man began, “tell me how long you
think
you’ve been under.”

“What?” Victor asked, confused.

“How long did you soak in the fire?”

“I don’t know,” Victor said as he swallowed a lump in his throat. “Years. Maybe decades.”

The older man paused again, his face unreadable for a moment, before a slight chuckle rose from his throat. That chuckle became a cackle of laughter that filled the tiny room with thunder as deep as a midnight burial.

“It simply never gets old,” the older man said as he wiped a tear away from his eye. “My name is Sigmund Dietrich. I am the leader of the Patriarchs and the man who submersed you in your pain. You are in New Orleans where you killed three of my soldiers before being subdued. Though we have used this particular drug before, we have also altered its effects on the perception of time and you two were the first test subjects. My men have examined you both and said the perceived time deceleration has increased as time itself has passed us by. Needless to say, years to you have not been years to us. So, would you care to guess again?”

“I don’t know,” Victor said, glancing over at his brother. Manny cried as he dangled helplessly, staring back at Victor with painful eyes. “It was endless.”

Sigmund moved in close, raising his wrist and clicking the side of a watch before gazing into Victor’s eyes as he all but spewed his next words.

“One hour and nine minutes.”

“No,” Victor said as the tears began to form. “You’re lying.”

“Men like me do not waste lies on chained captives.”

Victor shrieked from the depths of his soul. He took a deep breath and screamed louder, his cry intermixing with Manny’s howl and filling the tiny room with the melodies of a primeval anguish. Sigmund ordered Victor and his brother to quiet themselves, but Victor ignored the man. He could feel blood vessels on the verge of bursting as he screamed—not just louder, but harder. He thought that he might be able to burst every vein in his body and bleed himself out from the inside if he shrieked loudly enough. Sigmund nodded to the woman and she approached Victor, grabbing him by his hair and pulling him up to meet the older man’s gaze.

“Don’t make us use this,” Sigmund said as the woman held up a small silver cylinder in one hand. “One click of the button and you are back in a sea of pain.”

“No!” Victor shouted with an audible click of his teeth as his brother did the same. He fought the sobs that racked his body, trying to calm himself.

“I know how unpleasant that hell is you just departed from,” Sigmund said. “I know you want an escape and therefore I am here to make you a deal.” Sigmund turned to the glass window on one end of the wall. “Mahiri, if you would be so kind as to come in here with the keys and…something blunt and heavy that you can hold in one hand. Like a rock.”

A few moments passed with Sigmund standing there, surveying both Victor and his brother with a sickening grin. Victor looked from Sigmund to his brother, who was crying softly.

“It’s okay, Manny,” Victor said. “It’ll be alright.”

“Oh, I can promise you that it will not be alright,” Sigmund said as the door opened behind him. “Silvia, would you please undo their chains?”

The Latino woman next to Sigmund approached and unfastened Victor’s wrists, causing him to slump to the floor as he fought back his tears. The woman paused to frown at Victor before walking over to Manny, releasing him as well.

“Now,” Sigmund began. “We are going to do a little experiment. I have an empire to grow, but not enough men to grow it. Victor, I hear you were military before. Special Forces, if I’m not mistaken.”

Victor narrowed his eyes before nodding his head.

“And your brother, was he military?”

“No,” Victor said. “He’s only sixteen.”

“Really?” Sigmund said, grinning as he glanced over to Mahiri. “Though I would love to use both of you, as fierce as I had heard you were slaying my soldiers, I need a demonstration of your loyalty to prove my idea worthy to my friend here. You see, you took three men from me but I will be fine taking only one man as recompense. Mahiri, the blunt object if you would.”

Mahiri paused—his face contorted with an inquisitive grin—before tossing a guard’s baton to the ground. Sigmund chortled as the woman next to him raised the silver cylinder.

“Victor, kill your brother,” Sigmund said. “Or Manny, kill Victor. I care not who lives and who dies, so long as one breathes at the end and the other does not.”

“What?” Victor said, “I’m not going to—”

Victor began to fall to the ground, trying to halt his scream as soon as he recognized what was happening, but it was already too late. The wind slowly moved up his airwaves, pushing against his throat and cutting his oxygen off in a drawn out manner before traveling through his open mouth. The bass of his wail reverberated in his mind, ringing like an earthquake. Molten rock spewed from his eyes as liquid nitrogen filled his lungs. He fell back into the pure agony, writhing around slowly for what felt like ten minutes before lurching back to reality.

His head hit the floor as his scream finally left his lungs.

“Two seconds!” Sigmund bellowed. “Now I said kill him!”

“Manny! Don’t—”

Another wave of tortured passed; even the tears that filled Victor’s eyes felt aflame. He fell back toward the cold floor, crying out for Sigmund to stop.

“Please! Just let me—”

Another shift, another moment of unhindered pain.

“Just stop!”

Shift.

“I can’t—”

Shift.

“I’m sorry!”

With a roar, Victor lunged for the baton, surprised as he realized he would need to wrestle it away from his younger brother’s grip. Manny looked up with grief-stricken murder glowing in his eyes, a frightening gaze directed at Victor. Victor paused, looking over toward Sigmund.

“Please—”

As the shift began, Victor ripped the baton free and began to swing it down. He was barely aware of his surroundings when he returned from the fire. To him, there was no cell. There was no Sigmund. There was no Manny. There was only the ocean of anguish waiting for him should he stop.

Eventually, Victor’s muscles gave out and he slumped to the blood-soaked floor, weeping as Sigmund approached.

“Very good, my son,” Sigmund said as Mahiri helped Victor up. “You did well. Now I want to show you something. You see that?” Sigmund pointed to a new drone that hovered above. It was smaller—the size of a volleyball—and hovered motionlessly via six rotating blades. “That little guy is called an IRD. That’s short for Injection and Regulation Drone. It will follow you day or night and should you ever wish to take your own life or the life of anyone in this room, the drone’s artificial intelligence will recognize it and activate your fiery netherworld. Do you understand?”