"I will serve you," she whimpered.
"Good," Bron said. "Tell me what you've planned...."
"I only followed orders. We were told to bring you in alive...."
"Did you look inside my head?"
"No, we were told not to touch you."
"Then how did you know I was a dream assassin?"
"We were warned before we were deployed. Somebody said something over the phone. Even I am not allowed to hear all of the details."
She holstered her gun, went behind him, and stood for a moment, panting, trying to work up the energy to loosen the tape. Instead, she pulled a knife from a hidden sheath at her hip, then sliced his bonds as easily as if she'd used a straight razor.
Did Monique tell my mother that I was a dream assassin? he wondered. It made sense. That kind of information would have made his mother more prone to seek him out.
As Bron pulled his hands free, his captor crumpled to the floor and just laid there. "Please...." she begged.
Near the door, Bron's guard went into convulsions, as if his heart were about to stop beating. He gasped for breath, but barely stirred, sucking air like a drowning man. He could not even crawl.
Bron felt invigorated. In fact, he'd never felt so much ... energy. He almost felt as if he should be shining, and some inner light ought to be illuminating the room.
If I stretch my arms wide enough, he thought, I might take flight.
Instead, he pulled the tape off of his legs and ankles, where he was bound to the chair, and then looked down at the dying woman. He picked up her revolver, took her dagger, and then taped her hands behind her back.
She opened her eyes as he did so, staring at him sullenly, full of hate and resignation. Her eyes had been bright and lustrous a few hours ago. Now they were dull, lifeless. She didn't have the energy to move, or to fight him. She struggled simply to draw her next breath, then exhale, and draw another.
Olivia crouched in the darkness. It had been hours since she'd last heard the noise of stealthy movement.
She shivered in her wet clothes.
She crawled, but got only a few feet before her hands sank into the mud, and realized that it was too soft to sustain her weight. She was on the edge of a patch of quicksand.
She backed up a pace or two, but heard a little splash at the edge of the water behind her. It could have been nothing, a catfish jumping, or a frog.
Her heart pounded at the sound. It seemed to have been caused by something quite large.
Behind her, an alligator gave a low growl. It climbed from the water not fifty feet away. With each step, its feet splashed, and she heard scraping as it lowered its belly into the mud.
It was massive.
Olivia could not see it, and she didn't dare move, for fear that she would attract its attention. She wasn't sure if it had come after her, or if it had merely come here to rest. For all she knew, it could have been a mother, protecting her nest.
Yet Olivia had to worry. Alligators have a keen sense of smell, from what she had heard, and their eyes, which were adapted to seeing in murky swamp water, were especially good at night.
She didn't dare move.
She found herself feeling sick, nauseous with fear. Her whole body shook from cold and terror.
She waited, heart hammering, for nearly half an hour.
Suddenly, not far ahead, she heard a branch crack.
"Put your hands on top of your head!" someone ordered dangerously. A bright red dot blossomed on the ground in front of her, moved up to her eye.
She saw a pinpoint of red at eye level, just a dozen yards away.
Olivia silently put her hands on top of her head, laced her fingers.
The Draghoul was focused on her entirely. He halted for an instant, and then marched forward, stepping into some shallow water.
Suddenly he yelped, and there was a larger splash as he plunged into quicksand.
She heard violent thrashing as he gasped and fought to escape. The red laser on his rifle swung about wildly.
Olivia heard the lowest of growls behind her, like distant thunder, and then the alligator lunged past in the darkness. It slammed into the back of her leg. Olivia twisted and fell.
But the Draghoul had the reptile's full attention as it went rushing in for the kill.
Olivia pulled herself to her feet and raced away. Behind her, the Draghoul assassin screamed in terror.
As Bron finished taping, he leaned close to the Draghoul huntress. She peered up at him, with eyes fall of rage. He whispered into her ear, "I'm not afraid of you anymore. There is nothing that you can do to me. You can't hurt me. You can't even touch me. So you'll live."
The woman was struggling for every breath, and now she surprised him by speaking. "If you knew me," she gasped, "you would be afraid."
Bron grinned. He went to the next guard, and wondered if he should cut the man's throat. It seemed like the wisest course. These people were killers after all, but Bron had never knowingly taken the life of anything larger than a mosquito.
Only days ago he'd spoken callously of letting Galadriel die, but now he found that wishing someone would die wasn't the same as executing them.
He didn't have the heart for it.
So he disarmed the dying man, taped his hands behind his back, and went into the other room.
He found three more Draghouls, lying in disarray on the floor, as if they were human debris. They were all decked out in S.W.A.T. gear. They had no lantern in here, and so wore their night-vision goggles.
Bron taped them all up, found his mother strapped to a chair. She too was fighting for air. He put his hands on her head, brushed back her hair, and shoved the will to live back into her. Electricity crackled, and purple flames seemed to fly from his fingertips, bathing her.
The effect was instantaneous. Her eyes widened, and she inhaled deeply, as if coming to life under his touch.
Sommer looked up at him weakly. Compared to the rest of the people in the room, she now seemed to be in excellent health. Bron pulled the duct tape from her mouth, quickly unbound her hands.
"They must have followed you!" she worried. "You led them right to me."
It didn't make any sense. "It's me that they were after, not you." Bron said. "And if they'd known where I was, they could have come for me anytime—yesterday, a year ago. No, I don't think that I led them to you. I think they were watching you all along."
Sommer didn't argue. Her face was a study in wonder.
She stared around in shock as realization dawned on her. There was a smear of blood where the old man had fallen, and one of his shoes still lay in the middle of the floor, but the body had been dragged out and dumped into the swamp.
"Oh, Pappy!" she moaned. Sommer just sat there, weeping, and swiping her face.
I had a grandfather? Bron wondered. He felt sad. The only memory Bron would ever have of the old fellow was of him training a gun on Bron as he drove the truck and boat and marched through the swamp for hours.
Mosquitoes buzzed around Bron's face but didn't land. He felt exposed. He worried that a Draghoul might be out in the swamp, under the trees, still hunting. They could come back at any moment.
He took the night-vision goggles from one of the Draghouls, snapped them over his face, and peered about.
The room looked as if it was daylight inside, everything in shades of green. He checked one of the Draghoul's cell phones. It was 2:14 a.m. Bron found himself worrying.
I can't afford to waste a moment; he thought. I need to find Olivia. But what chance did he have of finding her? The Draghouls all had night-vision goggles. If she was out in the swamp, they'd have seen her, unless she'd run as fast and as far as she could.