by Elena Lawson
Without being able to scream.
I was wrong. This isn’t the same as what Ford did to me. This is something entirely different. A new form of torture I’ll be forced to live through.
Unless…
Unless Carver doesn’t mean for me to survive it.
I didn’t come this far just to die here in a cold, dank cell that smells of rotting flesh with a demon plucking at my bones.
“Let’s have a look inside, shall we?” Carver says with glee before returning to his strange tune, humming and hissing words in a language that’s grating to my ears.
The first cut is made to my abdomen. A jagged tearing of flesh that makes my eyes sting and wet croaking sounds burble up my throat in place of a scream. Hot wetness slides over my belly and pools around my wrists.
I’m powerless to stop it when he cuts again, deeper. And deeper still until his blade taps bone, sending a white-hot bolt of searing agony through me.
Inside, I am a symphony of thumping drumbeats and bloodcurdling screams. I am pain incarnate, and I’m not certain I’m still on earth or even still in Elisium.
Because this must be Hell.
It can’t possibly be anything else.
“You know,” Carver hums, and I roll my head to the side to find him staring into space, his chin propped up on his arms where he rests against my wooden table. His arms covered to the elbow with my blood. “I think you might be one of my best specimens yet.”
“Fuck you,” I mutter, my mouth still sloppy from his sedative.
My wounds are healing for the third time and the pull and knit of my skin finding its way back together is getting more sluggish each time. As if the pain weren’t bad enough, it itches like nothing else I’ve ever felt in my life. Even poison ivy from that time I tried to run away at five years old wasn’t this bad.
I grit my teeth against the maddening sensation, trying to will it away while my body finishes healing.
It’s impossible to tell how much time is passing, but he’s left twice for long stretches of time to allow me to heal before returning so I assume at least two days.
He grins widely, showing sharp teeth beneath this pale flesh. He’s an atrocity. The vilest thing I’ve ever seen. I hope Kincaid rips out his creepy eyeballs and shoves them down his throat.
Carver leans back and lifts his blood-coated fingers to his lips, licking them with his forked tongue. “Do you know what your blood tastes like?”
I sigh, letting my head roll back, preferring to stare at the ceiling than look at this monster for another second. I don’t give him the satisfaction of an answer. I’ve found that annoys him, and it’s the only thing I can do to not be cooperative. I think he just likes the sound of his own voice.
When he isn’t singing, he tells me things. Awful things. About other’s he’s carved. About how he let them squirm and scream, but that he learned to sedate them so that he could work on them longer. Too much movement and he was bound to hit something important. They died too quickly that way.
“It’s sweet,” he tells me. “Angel’s blood is like that, you know, but you know what’s even sweeter?”
I try to picture myself anywhere else, closing my eyes and imagining Kincaid’s bed. The soft feel of the sheets. The warmth of his body next to me.
Carver’s fist drives down on the table, startling my eyes back open.
“I thought Nephilim at first,” he says, exultant. “But I can see now that I was wrong.”
He rises to pace the floor, his long nails scratching at his chin.
“The blood of a demon runs in your veins, too. Both lines pure.”
He grunts, stopping to swipe the tools from his cart, letting them fall to clatter on the stone floor, cutting himself in the process. The wound oozes with a sickly black ichor instead of blood.
The Carver bellows, swiping the ichor away and bashing the metal cart into the wall. His bulging eyes are crazed when he looks at me next, and despite my attempts to show him none of the fear I feel within, I squirm at the look he gives me.
“It’s not possible,” he spits, his hunched back heaving with rapid breaths. He pounds on the sides of his head. “Think!”
My chest goes cold and a layer of sweat beads on the rounded tops of my breasts. I’m not naked, but I might as well be, with only my panties and socks on, and I’m guessing I only have those still because Carver was too lazy to take them off.
“Unless…”
His voice trails off in a hiss, and I gulp when he slides back to the table, leveling himself next to my face with incredulous eyes.
“Unless what?” I can’t help myself. The pain in my ribcage where Carver notched out a section of bone hours ago is healed enough now that I feel I can speak.
“We’ll have to look inside to be sure,” he says without answering me, rising once more to continue the conversation with himself, as though I am not even here. “Inside the womb, yes. And inside the mind, but we’ll save that for last, little flower.”
He rubs his tacky hands together and begins to gather up his things from the floor, dumping them back onto the workbench before he rights the cart.
“My lord will be so pleased,” he proclaims to himself in a whisper, and it’s those six words that force my sluggish mind back to working.
I crane my neck to see him, wincing when the movement sends a ricochet of slicing pain up through my spine. “Who?” I ask, but he’s still muttering to himself and my voice is weak. Inaudible against the rattle of his tools as he arranges them in a neat row to wash.
“Which lord do you work for?”
I cough, tasting new blood on my tongue as my body convulses with each racking spasm and my breaths begin to sound strained. Wheezing.
I’d already relegated myself to the knowledge that eventually, my body wouldn’t be able to come back from what Carver did to it, but now, if he planned to mess with my brain, I knew that was the endgame.
Not even a being with the blood of both a demon and angel running through their veins would survive that. And that was assuming this psychopath was right.
When he turns back to me with a sharp scalpel pinched between his fingers, I flinch. He should be done. He usually leaves after a few hours of his morbid work. He can’t start again.
I can’t take it.
“Please,” I beg. “No more.”
He smiles down at me with the sort of smile you might give a very cute, but very daft child. A piteous thing of strained eyes and a wicked lifting of the lips. “Oh, my little flower, we’ve only just begun.”
He drags a chair to the side of the table and sets down his trusty mortar next to my head. I press my lips firmly shut, breathing like a cornered bull from only my nose. But he doesn’t shove the awful mixture down my throat.
Carver lifts a piece of my grimy hair from the wooden table and slices through it, tossing the strands into the mortar. To that he adds a few drops of shimmery white liquid from a vial and begins to mash and scrape.
I know better than to think this means I’m safe. He does this sometimes. Taking a piece of skin or hair or bone to see how it reacts with other substances. It means a reprieve only. And usually not for very long.
“With your eyes, I’ll make a spyglass,” he tells me with a cheery tone as his tongue slips out between his lips and he bites down on it with the effort of grinding up the mixture in his gray mortar. “A spyglass to see the realm of spirits.”
He blinks at me and then frowns. I wonder if he is expecting praise for the announcement. He certainly isn’t going to get that from me.
“You wouldn’t know any of my work, would you?” he sneers, rolling the pestle around before lifting the mortar to his lips for a taste. I cringe.
He cuts off some more of my hair and adds it to the bowl, resuming his grinding work. “A pity, for then you would understand just how important you are. You see, little flower, I make fantastic things with my carvings. A mirror that can show a fondest memory. A fine powder of gargoyle bone th
at can turn the skin to stone. Even a key that once opened the gates to Hell.”
“A Scepter?” I ask, my voice cracking.
He goes still, tipping his head until his eyes are trained on me, calculating. “So, you do know my work. Tell me, flower, where is my Spirit Scepter? I should like to see it again.”
I close my mouth. Not a fucking chance I’m leading you straight to Art, Devereaux, and Tori, you piece of shit.
“Very well, keep that secret. My Lord Lucifer has its twin. Though I should think that what I can make him out of your carving will render its predecessors obsolete.”
“Lucifer,” I breathe, a new kind of fear taking root in what he’s implying. What it would mean for Kincaid if Carver was working for the devil. If he was the one ripping the souls from the celestial bodies of The Seven.
If that were true, then I needn’t worry about Kincaid and the others killing each other over my absence. He was as good as dead. We all were.
“Imagine the possibilities,” Carver whispers reverently, pausing to stare into the distance. “I could craft him a staff that would not only aid in the removal of souls, but could also cause their immortal destruction. One that would not require the sway of the twin moons to magnify its power.”
I gasp, the sound choking off into a sob at his admission.
I can’t let that happen. I can’t let him take from me what he needs to create such a weapon.
“My lord would forgive me, I think, even if he did find out where the carving came from.”
I need to warn Kincaid. I have to get out. I have to get free.
The Carver tips the mortar to his lips again and rolls the liquid around on his tongue before spitting it onto the floor and swiping the back of his hand over his lips.
Then, seeming to get a new idea, he abandons the mortar in favor of a very familiar device. The baton is long, ribbed, and black. He hasn’t turned it on yet, but when he does, thin blue wires of pure electricity will jump from one copper prong to the other at its tip.
It will burn and sting when he jabs it into my flesh.
My vision will go black while it wreaks havoc on my nerve endings.
I seal my eyes shut and hold my breath, waiting, but he forces them back open and I shout, screeching as he fixes bits of silver metal to my eyes, some sort of device that keeps them open no matter how hard I try to force them closed.
Carver positions himself above me, and I feel my skin flay open at my wrists and ankles when I pull too hard against the binds, making the whole wooden table beneath me wobble with the force of my struggle.
He looks emotionlessly into my eyes as he jabs me. The prod switches on with a crackle, and he punches me in the stomach with it. Every inch of my body tightens and burns as a froth churns in my mouth, spilling over my lips while my vision blackens.
I don’t realize I’ve pissed myself until the prod is removed and I twist my head to vomit down the side of the table.
“Hmm.”
I haven’t even regained my breath, my eyes burning like they’re about to burst into flame before he moves in for round two.
24
We’re back at The Freakshow.
Or at least, it’s where The Freakshow used to be. Now, it’s a burning wasteland. Smoke burns my eyes and permeates the air, getting clogged in my throat. That doesn’t matter, though.
Kincaid has his arms around me and I can’t think of any place I’d rather be than standing amid the wreckage at his side. His hands stroke my hair and curl tightly around my middle, keeping me close.
Keeping me safe.
“Can we go home?” I ask him, my voice an echo of sound, like we’re in a vacuum chamber instead of on solid ground. A sob grows in my chest, and I tremble as it passes my lips, knowing and wishing I didn’t, that this is a dream.
Instead, I pretend. I inhale his hickory and musk scent and clench my fists into his jacket. Maybe if I just hold tight enough, I’ll be able to stay here, in this dream, as Carver removes my brain from my skull.
“There is no home for us, Na’vazēm,” he replies in a gruff rumble. “Not anymore.”
But he’s wrong. I try to tell him so, but he just squeezes me tighter. Constricting until I can barely breathe. Kin…Kincaid,” I eek out through the crushing force around my middle. But he only uses more force. “Kincaid!”
My ribs creak, on the verge of breaking.
And then we’re gone.
No, we’re here.
At the top of a tower on a terrace of stone bricks, looking out into an abyss of misery and coiling flame.
It’s HighTower.
Kincaid’s kingdom in Hell.
The blistering heat scorches my cheeks as he releases me, his face a sorrowful thing that it hurts me to bear witness to.
“Don’t give up,” I urge him, grabbing his face between my palms. “We can save you,” I promise him. “Just take us home!”
“Save me?” he asks, shaking his head slowly. I hate the lack of emotion in his voice. I hate the flat tone of it. The helpless plea buried beneath its surface. “No, Na’vazēm, I cannot be saved. I do not want to be saved.”
I slap him, and his head jars to one side, but he doesn’t even flinch at the strike. “Don’t say that.”
“I couldn’t even save you. I couldn’t even find you.”
Rage pools like acid in his eyes, turning them electric in the hazy gray space between us. His demon form presses against the sheath of his clothes, making them tear as the inky blackness spreads and his horns grow.
My lips part as he lifts himself up, towering above me like the monster he is. Except, he isn’t that. Not really.
I wish I’d seen it before like I can see it now. He’s…beautiful.
A breathtaking composition of strength and ferocity. Every hill and valley of ash-black skin is without flaw. His dark horns are shot through with bits of silver, as though they contain the night sky within their beveled edges. His eyes are purest gold in a face that would bring even an angel to their knees.
His pain is almost too much for me to bear.
I set an unsteady hand on his chest, feeling the hard beating of his demon heart pump against the ridges of my palm. “You did find me,” I whisper. “I’m here.”
He softens under my touch, and when he drops his head, I press my mouth to his. His enlarged arms wrap around me, lifting so that he can kiss me more easily. When my hands trail over his horns, he shudders, moaning against my lips, forcing them open, so that he can delve in with his tongue.
He steals all rational thought away, and I revel in his kiss. In the nearness of him. In how real it feels to be here. He only pulls away when the saltiness of my tears reaches our joined lips.
“Na’vazēm,” he murmurs, swiping a dark thumb beneath my eye. “What is it?”
“I,” I start but choke off on a sob. “I wish this was real.”
He pulls back as though shocked, holding me at arm’s length. His eyes are wide and wild. “Paige?”
An earth-shattering agony rips through my core, and I tip my head back in a scream, clutching my hands to my chest to try to stop it.
“Paige!” Kincaid roars, shaking me.
The last thing I see before I’m ripped from his arms is a curl of black smoke where Kincaid had been standing.
“Fascinating,” Carver raves. “Where did you go just now?”
I stare down in horror at the metal tools keeping my chest cavity open to the stinging air. I squeeze my eyes shut when they catch sight of my beating heart, exposed to the air. I can move this time, and Carver must have needed me to remain asleep while he worked on me because other than a vague tingle and the sting of the air, I feel only a displaced sort of feeling.
A pressure. The pressure of his tools keeping my body from healing itself while he watches my internal organs function.
Even though I can move, just barely, I do not try. Afraid that if I do, my heart could be punctured.
“Your heart,” he points, and I
open my eyes but do not dare look. “The rhythm changed, and your eyes turned black all the way to the edges.”
What?
I’m trying to hear what he’s saying but I can’t focus, my mind reeling and whirling on the fact that my body is broken. My organs are exposed. My heart is right there. All it would take is one little poke and he could stop its erratic pulsing for good.
Oh god.
“You traveled, didn’t you?” he asks. “Did you visit another dreamer? Asmodeus? Is he still alive, then?”
I…traveled? “Wh-what?”
“Did you give him any clue of where we are?”
Carver’s tongue slides over his dry lips as he taps a blood-coated tool against his chin. “Suppose we’ll have to speed up the process. Just to be safe.”
He turns and walks away, shucking off long plastic gloves and discarding them into a trash bin next to his work bench. “I hadn’t expected you to be able to slip free of your mind this far underground. My mistake.”
The gravity of what he’s saying hits me like a speeding truck.
It was some sort of out of body experience. I’d jumped into Kincaid’s mind. Into his dream. I was really there. Really with him. And instead of using that, I squandered it.
Those were the last moments I’d ever spend with him and I wasted them.
I want to pull at the binds and scream bloody murder and thrash until my skin tears and my bones snap. I want to slam my body around until one of Carver’s tools does puncture my heart, purely on the hope that he can’t do anything with my corpse. Maybe then Kincaid would be safer?
I don’t do any of that though. I sit in prone silence while hot tears steam down the sides of my face, a gaping emptiness consuming me from the inside out.
I had a chance…
A chance to tell him who has me. What my cell looks like.
A chance to tell him I’m sorry.
To say goodbye.
And I just stood there like an idiot, happy to be lost to a dream of my demon. Naive. Useless.
I am all of the things Ford said I was and more.
“Tomorrow,” Carver hisses from somewhere behind me, but I haven’t the energy or the care to even bother looking. “Tomorrow I’ll open up your skull and begin the carving. Yes. Tomorrow.”