There were six men around the pool table when Nikolas and Ben entered.Six men around it and one on it—Samuel.His jeans were around his ankles, and the man who’d called Nikolas a faggot clearly had no justification for insulting anyone for having an interest in another man’s backside.He was preparing to examine Samuel’s with his pool cue.Four of the other five were holding Samuel down, smacking him around the head, pulling his legs wide for the invasion.The fifth was capturing the fun on his phone camera.
Nikolas hesitated for one second.Four playing darts, two at the bar.A lot could be assessed in one second, which was just as well, he reflected, as he brought his hand up, and backwards punched the guy who’d come at him from the bar.
He broke the guy’s nose, which started everything really.All the patrons would have remembered of that one second was the two big men returning and then all hell breaking loose.
Nikolas took out the guy with the pool cue first.He was literally taken out, so he didn’t get much time to enjoy his meeting with Aleksey Primakov—Nikolas picked him up by his collar and belt then threw him head first through the window to the street.Next, three of his mates went down—Ben took them out while Nikolas was returning.Slow, heavy men, fuelled on outrage and beer, they were no match for him.
One of the remaining two, the one who’d been holding Samuel’s legs wide so the guy with the camera could get a good shot, turned with a face as white as the chalk on the scoreboard.He tried to say something, but the music was so loud his shocked voice didn’t carry.When he saw he hadn’t been heard, he tried again, raising his pool cue.It could have been in defence.It could be called a swing at Nikolas’s face.Nikolas took it for the second option and broke the attack with his arm, caught the stick and pulled the man up close and personal.A head butt shattered the guy’s nose, and as he went down, a knee plastered the cartilage over his face.Whatever he’d been trying to say, he wouldn’t be repeating for some time.
The last man at the table, the one with the camera, tried to run.He too was shouting something.He tripped over one of his friends, falling heavily to the stained carpet, his phone sliding under the table.He tried to scrabble away, but Samuel, who was huddled on the floor dressing, reached out and caught his ankle.The man grabbed at the hand and snapped it viciously back, the snap was audible, even above the music, and was followed by an even louder scream.
Nikolas separated them, dragged the heavy man over to the back of the room and snapped his arm at the elbow.He wouldn’t play pool or any version of it for a long while.
Together they circled the two remaining darts players.One appeared to size up his chances and then bolted, throwing himself through the broken window to the pavement outside.The remaining man met Ben’s fist and went down in a spray of broken teeth and blood.
The last man, who’d been drinking at the bar, had tried to run for the door, but John had locked him in, sliding the bolts home.Afterwards, he claimed he hadn’t gone all Van Diesel—stopping the guy leaving so he could be beaten too—but he’d wanted to keep anyone else from entering.He was clearly quite pleased with himself either way, for not only did he trap the guy, he hit him with a chair, while Mathew kicked him in the knee.
The man with the broken nose who’d started the fight, had armed himself with a jagged glass.He was shouting something in Polish, which Nikolas spoke, but muffled by blood and snot, his words were incomprehensible.He didn’t even have time to use the makeshift weapon before Nikolas knocked his head into the bar.
Every piece of furniture in the place was broken.Nikolas heard a voice and vaulted over the bar.The barman was on the telephone.He raised a tyre iron and jabbed it ineffectually.Nikolas had had an elderly female librarian swing one of those at him with more enthusiasm.He kicked at the bartender’s head and the man dropped to the sticky linoleum without even a grunt.Nikolas picked up the phone and listened for a moment then replaced the receiver.He was puzzled.“We need to leave.Now.”
They piled out of the pub, expecting any minute to hear wailing sirens, but it was oddly silent.Nikolas swore again, then suddenly commanded Ben, “Take them to the back of the church.I’ll join you in a minute.”Ben nodded and ushered the others over.Samuel was on his knees, his shuddering breaths noisy and panicked.Ben hoisted him over his shoulder and ran, the other three following.
Five minutes later, Nikolas emerged from the side alley of the pub with a backpack.He ran over to where the men were waiting.He pulled out a key fob and clicked it.A car in the street flashed its lights and clunked as the locks opened.They piled in with difficulty and Ben drove off.He glanced at Nikolas then at Samuel.Nikolas nodded.They had no idea where to find a hospital and had to stop and ask at another pub, getting a drawn map.By the time they found it, Samuel was shivering badly and rambling, and his wrist was black, purple and yellow.
They were directed to the seating area.Nikolas explained they had a badly injured friend going into shock, but the receptionist waved uninterested at the chairs.Nikolas turned.They were full of bleeding, broken, vomiting, groaning and shocked citizens of a night out in Burnley.One man appeared to have put his hand into a meat grinder—the appendage swathed in bloody bandages until it was the size of a watermelon.Another in filthy clothing was lying across four seats and there was a pool of vomit on the floor beneath him.There were five men wearing togas for some reason, each of them bloody and battered.
The six of them sat at the back of the row of seats, shell-shocked.Nikolas glanced at his watch and swore violently when he saw it was broken.He then remembered the broken nose, which had started the fight, and smiled privately.He took Ben’s wrist.It was eight o’clock.They’d been out two hours.Good date so far.
He suddenly remembered the backpack he’d liberated from the pub.With a flourish, he brought out a bag of crisps and handed it to Ben.Cheese and onion, which he knew was Ben’s favourite.Ben took it reverently then eyed the others guiltily.Nikolas huffed and tipped a pile of crisps and peanuts onto the floor.
It was seven hours before Samuel got seen.They were all asleep.Ben was lying across a row of plastic seats—possibly the most uncomfortable furniture ever invented by man, which is why they employed them in waiting areas such as A&E—his head in Nikolas’s lap.Nikolas was the only one who woke with Samuel when the nurse came up to them.He gave a brief account of what had happened and she led Samuel away.Three in the morning.It was not a good time to be awake yet still exhausted.Nikolas felt tiredness like a drug taking him down, dulling his thoughts.What the fuck?It kept repeating in his head.
What the fuck was going on?
They’d been set up…deliberately sent to that pub so something like this would happen.Did any psychologist seriously think being raped with a pool cue would count as effective therapy?
He looked down.He’d been unconsciously stroking Ben’s hair.There was glass in it, and he carefully groomed it out.Ben’s eye was blackening, and his lip swollen and split.Nikolas’s hands were torn and bleeding, and his weak wrist—the one he’d broken a while back and had pinned—was sore again.He supposed he ought to stop hitting people.
Injured people were still staggering in.The place resembled a battle zone.Nikolas wondered idly where the men from the pub would be taken.They hadn’t appeared in this hospital A&E yet.Which was good—but odd.How many hospitals were there in Burnley?This was as strange as the barman not calling the police.When Nikolas had listened in to the call there’d been a man shouting, asking what had happened.Not the police, he was fairly sure.Pondering these mysteries reminded him of what else he’d collected from the pub.He rummaged in the backpack and pulled out the wallets he’d liberated from their unresisting owners.He extracted any forms of ID they had—one had a library card, which amused him—and stashed them carefully in his pocket.He counted the money—a little over fifty pounds.He’d spent more on getting his shoes shined.He then worked his way through the phones until he found one that wasn’t password protected and called Kate.She answered very groggily, as he’d expected.
“It’s me.”
“Huh?It’s—”
“I know what time it is.I’m in Burnley.I believe we’re in the same time zone.I need for you to do some things for me.”
“Have you found Michael?”
Nikolas was tempted to say it was just as well for their errant friend he hadn’t, but just grunted in the negative.He outlined what he wanted doing and knew she was taking notes.
“How’s Ben?”
He hesitated.Did she usually ask about Ben?He concluded she always did, but he only replied, “I’ll contact you again in a few hours.”He clicked off and saw Ben was awake, watching him.
They had a moment of strange otherworldly connection.It had happened once or twice before to them, most remarkably just before the great tsunami wave had hit the boat they’d been in—he’d told Benjamin to climb an impossible jungle-clad hillside, and he had, without needing any other explanation other than complete faith in Nikolas.Once, Nikolas believed, Ben had spoken to him from inside a coffin.He’d believed him dead yet had also heard him speaking, telling him to keep hope alive.The sounds from the busy A&E department faded until all he could hear was Ben’s heartbeat, which was impossible, he knew, so only added to the great truth of the experience for him.And for one moment, it appeared to Nikolas he was seeing through Ben’s eyes.He saw himself—bloody, bruised, dishevelled—but he didn’t see the monster he should have seen, the one he saw every day in the mirror in the few moments he couldn’t avoid looking at himself, he saw something that more resembled a being of light and purity with tendrils of goodness attached that had come from a place of great beauty.He blinked, the moment passed, and he watched Ben’s eyes close again.Perhaps he’d not really woken fully and had been dreaming, a dream they’d shared for a fraction of a moment.Nikolas couldn’t say for sure.He was back in his own body and utterly exhausted, hungry, and coming down off the adrenaline kick of letting his monster out to play.
He glanced at John and Mathew, asleep sitting up, necks at impossible angles, at James, curled on the floor, using his jacket as a pillow, and then back to Ben, and realised he was feeling something he hadn’t felt before—a sense of belonging.He’d saved many people in his life—fellow soldiers of course, as his duty and inclination dictated.He’d rescued their small group in thetaiga, but not through his conscious choice.Left to his own devices, he’d have taken Ben, Emilia and her grandmother, and left the other men to care for themselves.He’d keptthousands alivein the Philippines after the tsunami, but now, for the first time, he understood he’d not done this through any great fondness for the human race.He’d done it because he could, because the inefficiency had annoyed him and the power he’d been able to flex amused him.And wasn’t it the same with ANGEL?Somewhere deep in his psyche, Nikolas knew he only did the work he did with ANGEL—giving away so much of his ill-gotten gains—so he could enjoy his extraordinary wealth.Ben, he knew, wouldn’t tolerate them living as they did unless they balanced the scales somehow.
