Archive of Our Own ^beta

Ordinarily it wasn't unusual for Lamont to go rogue for a few days. Margo was used to it, which was why she made a habit of keeping up her own small hobbies. That was how she had first heard of nebon--the commissioner's wife had all the latest gossip and spent the better part of two games of Russian whist describing the drug and the horrible effect it was having on the sons of wealthy individuals in the city. She'd learned what she could, put out some discreet inquiries of her own, and handed the matter over to Lamont. After all, who better than The Shadow to put a stop to such an epidemic?

He thought so as well. That night at the Club Calif he promised her he would look into it, but it could wait until after their date.

"I like being myself for an evening," he told her. And when she pointed out that being himself meant he had the evening to watch the Indian dancer performing at the club, he laughed and admitted, "That helps too."

It had been quite a show. The dancer, a young woman by the name of Sadi bel Adda, was lithe and graceful and carried over her shoulders a live cobra, just to add to the danger of the thing. Some kind of mesmerism, Lamont said, but the dark-eyed woman was so beautiful that neither of them was really paying attention to the snake. The highlight of the evening was the young woman dancing over to their table and producing a single rose, seemingly from nowhere, which she offered to Margo.

"For the lovely lady," she said. It was a lovely rose, and a lovely woman as well, and Margo might have contemplated spending her evening with Sadi bel Adda were it not for the snake around her neck.

"You don't like snakes?" Lamont asked her. "I guess that puts a damper on my birthday trip to the reptile house at the zoo."

She jabbed her elbow into his ribs and he said something to Sadi bel Adda in Hindi.

"Ah," the dancer said. "You know my mother tongue."

"Enough to get by. A couple of small prayers I picked up abroad."

"Very important things to know, Mr. Cranston," the dancer told him, and she returned to her adoring audience at large.

This had all been a week ago and she hadn't seen Lamont since. Not an unusual occurrence, but when he missed their weekly dinner on the town she began to feel uneasy. If he were going to miss a date he always sent word through Burbank. This time she heard nothing, not even the faint static of their mental connection. Was he hurt? Was he dead?

No, she tried to tell herself, if Lamont were dead she would have felt it. There would have been something.

Then Dr. Chen from the university got back with her. In his expert linguistic opinion, the name of the drug was Hindi in origin. He'd done a bit of digging on his own and couldn't find a definition for the word, but he had turned up one thing: a temple of an identical name, located in Nepal... just beyond the Indian border.

Flashforward to now, as she and a hired speedboat bounced across the waves toward a departing steamship, she was beginning to feel annoyed as well as worried.

"Why are the cute ones always evil?" she complained to the woman at the boat's helm.

Joe shrugged as best she was able in the dark and at sea. "Your experiences are not universal. What do you want from me?"

"I want you to sit tight and shoot anybody who jumps ship. Can you do that?"

Joe gave her a patronizing smile that glinted in the moonlight. "Oh, love. Do you think I carry this for show?" She opened a compartment deep in the cockpit and pulled a sawed-off shotgun from somewhere inside. "It wouldn't be a speedboat if it didn't come with firearms."

Thus it was in Joe's very capable hands that Margo left the boat, hitched to the aft of the steamship, and slipped into the darkened innards of the ship. She moved carefully, sticking to the darkest shadows, and listened ahead for any sign of Sadi bel Adda, any potential minions, and, more importantly, Lamont. One thing stood out: the faint tolling of bells.

As she drew nearer the sound she began to make out a repeating theme, five, no, six long, deep notes, playing on a loop. There was a scratchy quality to the sound that she couldn't immediately identify. It wasn't until she found the source that she realized there were no bells at all. She came upon a lighted room and paused to gather up her wits, but before she could enter there was a scratch and a skip to the sound, and suddenly an overwhelming burst of static.

Lamont.

It lasted for only a moment before the bells began again. A record player, she thought, dazedly leaning against the wall. The static that meant Lamont fell silent but that she'd heard it at all was a good sign. He was still alive. He was trying to fight, even momentarily. She reached into the pocket of her coat and pulled the snub-nosed revolver free. For a second she closed her eyes and pulled in a deep, deep breath.

Would be nice if you'd given me some idea what to expect, she thought in his general direction, and slipped through the door.

The heat was the first thing she noticed. They were within spitting distance of the boiler room, she thought, and then she noticed the second thing--the record player on the floor, still spinning--and the third--Sadi bel Adda sitting cross-legged beside it, cobra looped around her neck, carefully winding the record player back up. The fourth thing she noticed was what she was actually looking for.

Lamont lay in the far corner of the room, stripped down to his underclothes and bound up in the most complicated rope setup Margo had ever seen. Overkill, she thought at first, taking in what had to be six yards or more of rope looped around him, but it was all so precise in the way it was laid out. The way the ropes braided in and out of each other down the front of his undershirt, dipping down between his legs, the tight knots at his upper arms, the way it all wove back to his throat so that struggling would pull it tighter and cut into his pale, bruised throat... He was beautiful. Sabi bel Adda was a woman after her own heart.

No. Focus.

His face was tipped toward the floor, eyes hazy. From the heat, from wounds--he was battered all over, it was too hard to tell at a distance. He didn't seem to see her, or anything else, for that matter. Fortunately, neither did Sadi. Margo moved in closer and closer. She didn't want to get so close that a hand-to-hand scuffle broke out, especially not with that snake so handy, and she was positive that there was no way she could match a dancer. By the same token she didn't dare stay so far as to risk missing should she need to take the shot.

"Alright," she said, cocking the gun. "Why don't you stand up nice and slow and we'll have a little chat?"

Sabi glanced over her shoulder at her, an irritable gleam in her eye. "Margo Lane. I suppose I should have expected you."

"Obviously. You come after Cranston, you get Lane."

"There's the problem." Sadi climbed carefully to her feet and held out her hands. "I did not intend to come after Cranston. Only Ying Ko." She turned a bitter smirk in Lamont's direction. "Or The Shadow. Or whatever it is he's calling himself these days."

"Step back." Margo gestured with the gun and as Sadi stepped back she stepped forward. Other than the hiss of a distant boiler and the sound of their footsteps all that could be heard was those same six tones, tolling over and over, but a well-placed kick to the record player silenced that.

But the instant that silence fell the static emerged. A wild, overwhelming burst of what she had come to know as Lamont crashed over her, and for a moment she had to close her eyes. He was feeling things. She was acknowledging that he was feeling things. She wasn't letting them control her. It was only a moment, and it was all Sadi bel Adda needed. She whipped the snake over her head in in one fluid motion and held it out as it struck. All Margo could see was fangs, needle-sharp and coming towards her. She fired. The snake fell. So did Sadi bel Adda.

Oh, god.

She was shaking on her feet, the gun still pointed at the dancer, but she wasn't sure she could stay there.

Margo.

It was Lamont she heard. The very sound of him was filled with such relief and awe and love that it brought the tears pouring down. I think I killed her. She's dead. I killed a woman.

It's okay.

It's not okay, Lamont! I didn't want to... He kept looking at her, eyes wide, breathing too hard. No. She couldn't fall apart here. She breathed in. She breathed out. What do I do first?

The door. He shifted slightly onto his back and winced as the rope on his throat tightened. They'll have heard the shots.

Right. She stuffed the gun back into her pocket and shoved the door to the hall closed. A quick glance around turned up a coal shovel, which she jammed into the wheel of the door. Are you hurt?

No. When she came to him and touched his shoulder he winced. Maybe. Doesn't matter. Can you get these ropes undone? And then, before she could respond, unless you really are that sold on the aesthetic.

Damn him and his ability to weasel into her own private thoughts. We can come back to it later. She pulled at the knot on his throat. How long?

Long enough to get sick of that damned music box. He glared wearily over at the record player and she caught enough of his thoughts to piece together a little of what happened. The bells were the temple bells of Nebon, an ancient melody specially tuned to disrupt the power to cloud men's minds. Sadi had caught him unaware, and suddenly there was nowhere to hide. Then there was a massive tangle of thoughts--drug runners, a little girl at the temple, watching him train, regret, confusion, anger... In her distraction she tugged the wrong end of the rope and felt a sharp jolt of fear course through him. Careful.

Wish I had my nail scissors, she thought bitterly.

He gave a weak smile. You didn't bring your toiletries to an impromptu rescue mission?

I'll know better next time. She pulled the end of one rope free. Helpful, except that there were at least three more, all of them so tangled around his body that loosening the knot didn't free him. Speaking of which, we don't have time for this.

You have a better idea?

Outside there was shouting. Shouting, and running, and then the double-barreled blast of a shotgun. Actually...

It was a fluke of luck that Joe found them before Sadi's companions did--a fluke helped along by Margo firing a single bullet into the wall that separated them from the boiler room, causing an explosion that would have killed them if she hadn't already dragged Lamont behind a shelving unit, but a fluke nonetheless. The boat racer took one look at Margo and her tiny gun and one look at Lamont, still trussed like a turkey and beginning to shiver, and made her decision.

"All this for a man?" she said, passing her shotgun off to Margo and hauling Lamont up into her arms. "I woulda let them keep him. This way."

"I'll keep that in mind next time." The shotgun was weighing her down but the adrenaline kept Margo stuck to Joe's side like a bur to a dog. It would be another small miracle if she didn't have to fire the thing, because she suspected it would break both arms, most of her ribs, and possibly her eardrums as well. But what else could she do? She couldn't carry the shotgun and wield her own revolver simultaneously.

Your friend seems nice. Lamont sounded half-gone.

If we get out of this you have to ask her about her good-luck doll. Seems like you could use a token or two.

Neither of them did ask in the end. By the time she'd hopped aboard the speedboat and helped Joe haul him down, Lamont was completely unresponsive.

You're alright, she thought, pressing the two of them down flat against the cockpit wall as the speedboat's engine roared and they took off toward shore. Just a little heatsickness, that's all.

She kept telling herself that even after she ran her hand down his arm and felt the swollen wound of a snakebite. Just a little heatsickness. That was the ticket.

Margo Lane, who hadn't slept in thirty-six hours, who had never shot a woman dead before, who was tired and scared and hungry and so many other things she couldn't list them all, cried.

It was silly to cry, she told herself. Dr. Sayre had assured her that the worst of the danger was past, that while Lamont was not totally out of the woods yet he stood a very good chance. He wasn't dead, and he likely wasn't dying. But she cried anyway, curled up beside him in the master bed as Lamont slept and trembled and mumbled to himself.

Moe Shrevnitz had met them at the beach with the doctor and let her use his pocketknife to finish cutting the ropes from Lamont's body. He hadn't come around at that, but he made a small, strangled noise in his throat as she rubbed the circulation back into his limbs, and that was a little encouraging.

's okay, he tried to tell her when he finally surfaced, still sweating and shivering in his bed. You did beautifully. Nothing to be sad over.

She thought of a thousand and one responses to that--the metaphorical blood on her hands, the prospect of losing him, the stress, the nerves, the damned snake--but she settled instead on thinking, Lamont Cranston, you are an idiot.

He gave her a tired smile and tried to shift onto his side, wincing as the covers brushed over his bruised arm and side. She could feel how badly he wanted to hold her in his arms and she could also feel the screaming nerves in his arms, hands, and wrists that made it all but impossible to move them, so she gingerly settled in beside him, holding him gently instead. He still felt over-warm and tacky with sweat, but somehow he managed to get a kiss on her jawline. He didn't think the words but she could feel the love radiating out of him.

She eased him back down onto his back. You, sir, are supposed to be resting.

I can rest and look at you. When she stroked the backs of her fingers down his cheek he leaned into her touch. I can rest and kiss you.

You really, really can't.

What if I rest and you kiss me instead?

She didn't have to be looking at him to feel the boyish smirk on his face. I suppose that could be arranged.

So she kissed him. She kissed him long and deep, and when she pulled back there were tears in his eyes. Lamont? What's happening?

I don't know. I'm just... I'm... You came for me.

She brushed his damp hair back from his forehead. Don't I always?

I don't deserve you.

Margo Lane, who was tired and scared and so many, many other things, sighed. Lamont? Shut up.

And she kissed him so hard that he did. She kissed the bruises under his eye and cheekbone and down to his throat, pressed one tender kiss after another to the bruised, broken skin where the rope had cut into him. He started to move, started to speak, and she pinned his arms at his sides.

You have to promise, she told him. You have to promise me that you'll lie still.

Beneath her his chest rose and fell in shuddering sobs. He nodded.

Alright. I believe you. But if you don't... She paused to think of an appropriate punishment. ...if you don't we can always go back to the ropes. He chuckled a little at that, and her chest felt tight with affection. I'm serious.

I know you are. It's just...

They'd come back to it. They would so assuredly come back to it. In the meantime she moved lower, kissing every bruise and scrape and cut she could find. Even old ones--she found the crossbow scar in his right shoulder and lingered there for a moment, thinking how tired he'd looked as he stitched up that wound. Tired, and afraid. She'd nearly killed him that night. It was a difficult memory, and she moved toward his chest.

He sobbed.

At that she held out a moment to see what was happening, but the instant her lips left his skin his breath hitched and she heard him, thinking no no please stay i can't...

I'm still here. I'm not leaving. Another bruise caught her eye, this one just above his collarbone, and she moved on. Peeling the sweat-soaked blanket back made him shiver harder. She kissed down his chest and reached up to stroke his cheek. Trust me?

Slowly, carefully, visibly trying to stay still, he nodded.

Thank you. He tried to smile at her in return and it brought a matching smile to her face. You can be good for me, can't you?

I-I can try.

I know you can. Lie still for me, Lamont.

He did.

Tell me what you want me to do.

He shuddered with another sob. Stay with me?

I can do that. She let herself rest for a moment, her cheek against his chest, and traced along the curve of his jaw. I'm going to ask you to do one more thing for me.

He would do anything for her. She didn't need telepathy to know that.

I want you to tell me that you deserve more. Tell me you deserve somebody who will come for you, and you deserve to get a little pleasure out of life.

His thoughts were everywhere at once, scrambled and fractured. It was a lot to ask of him. She understood that.

Lamont?

I don't... I can't...

She raised herself up on her elbows and traced down his arm to the snake's fangs had struck. She pressed more kisses around the wound, so lightly she could feel him shiver. You can.

He could, and he would do anything for her. So he did.