Battlefield Love

by Skyler Andra

  I backed up until my back was to the wall, and I kept my eyes on the hand in his pocket.

  “Are you ready to reveal yourself yet, Miss Casey?” he asked.

  “I don’t have anything to reveal,” I said, and I hated the whine in my voice.

  Dammit. I wished that I could be brave like they were in the books and the movies, but that wasn’t me. It never had been.

  “I think you’re wrong.” He paused, tilting his head. “What, no jokes about condoms today?”

  I looked at the hand he held in his pocket, mutely obstinate, and then with his free hand, he struck me on the side of his head. It was open-palm, so it wouldn’t do any damage, but it still rocked me against the wall, enough time for him to hit me a second time with the Taser.

  I couldn’t quite tell if having gone through it the day before was better or worse. My muscles still burned and ached. Voltage flowed through my body, causing every muscle in my body to cramp at once. I dropped to the ground twitching, and before I could recover, Dartmoor stood over me with one foot at the center of my chest.

  The worst part (well, not really, the worst part was probably getting hit with a goddamn Taser), was how calm he looked. Curious even, like I was just some bug he was contemplating killing. The unfairness of it all made me furious more than anything. That he thought he could just reach out and take my life in his hand, like it belonged to him, like the whole world belonged to him, just his for the asking. I felt so angry, so angry that it almost tided over the fear.

  In that rage, just for one moment, I saw a glimpse of a cord coming from his chest. I blinked, and it was gone. My eyes went wide, tears starting up in them from the loss, but Dartmoor thought I was just crying because it hurt.

  “And of course like any thug,” he said, spittle hitting my face. “You crumble when the least amount of force is applied. Do you find yourself particularly ill-used right now, Miss Casey? Do you think this hurts, that it is unfair? If you do not give me what I want, believe me when I say that it is going to get a whole hell of a lot worse.”

  His foot pressed down harder on my chest. It was light at first, just enough to hold me in place, but then centimeter by centimeter, he pressed the sole of his fine Italian loafer straight down onto my breast bone, pressing, grinding, making my ribs feel as if they would splinter apart from the center.

  In that mad moment, I remembered something I had been taught, that correctly performed CPR would pop all the cartilage in the breastbone. Was that real? Was it a story we had passed around the class? I didn’t know, but right now, it felt as if Dartmoor could do just that.

  He didn’t stop until Dr. Victors held up a hand.

  “Sir, you could permanently damage her body by doing that,” she said.

  Dartmoor glanced over at the doctor for a moment. “How much damage?”

  The good doctor stuttered, and Dartmoor shook his head. “Next time I will find someone with the stomach for the work. Fine. Get up.”

  He lifted his foot off of my chest, and when I tried to lurch to my feet, he landed a kick on my ribs. “I don’t believe you heard me, Miss Casey. Get up.”

  When I crawled to my hands and my knees, he pushed me over again, this time with his foot to my shoulder. The pain made me yelp like a dog, and I landed awkwardly on my face. Every time I tried to get up, he hurt me. Every time I lay still, he hurt me.

  Somewhere deep in my mind, I knew what he was doing. He was trying to break down my ability to respond. In surprisingly short order, this type of behavior could make someone afraid to move and afraid not to move, a frozen lump of terror sitting and crying softly in the middle of the floor. I sure would be easier to deal with like that, and then my powers could manifest whenever they liked; I wouldn’t have the ability to protect myself at all.

  Throughout the beating, I hung on to one thought. Other people might have hung on to their own strength or their own faith. They might have hung on to a rescue or something that would get them through this ordeal. I hung on to the fact that I was keeping something from Dartmoor.

  I tried to concentrate on the cord that I saw coming from his chest, but it just wouldn’t come when I couldn’t focus enough. Every time I might have gotten close, he hit me again, distracting me even if he didn’t know it.

  I couldn’t do what I wanted to do, if it would even work, so I just hung on to the fact that eventually he’d stop when he realized I was useless to him. Also, I kept something away from the big man with all the control, and it kept a small portion of my mind safe. Even as the rest of me was gibbering about trying to do what he said while he wouldn’t let me, I felt a strange vindictive spite that I could keep something from him.

  Finally, with a final hard kick to my thigh that made me cry out with a raw throat, Dartmoor stepped back.

  “Now tell me what else you can do,” he barked.

  “I can’t do anything!” I cried out. It sounded piteous enough that Dr. Victors winced, but Dartmoor shrugged and stepped back. I won a brief reprieve as he typed something into his phone.

  “All right,” he said viciously. “If you are being so very stubborn that you will not respond to simple requests, I suppose we will have to move on to something else. Have a seat.”

  He thrust me into a chair, and at that point, I was happy to go. My legs didn’t feel as if they were entirely up to holding me, and at least if I was sitting down, I wasn’t falling down.

  Dartmoor stood behind me with his hands on my shoulders, light for now, but I already knew to be afraid of those hands. He hummed a little, and then the door opened.

  Three large men came in carrying a slanted board about the size of a door. On uneven legs, one end was lower than the other. It was big enough to hold a large man, and with some trepidation, I noticed cuffs on the edges and a large band as well.

  When they were done setting it up, Dartmoor left my side to inspect it. I saw him tug on the bonds and bounce his weight off the board as well. It was sturdy, sturdy enough that a man of his size wouldn’t be able to budge it, and sturdy enough that I certainly would not be able to do so either.

  “Well, that is a fine job,” he said to the men.

  I wanted to tell him to get the theatrics over with, but I knew he wouldn’t. Theatrics drew this out, let the pit in my stomach get deeper, and made me feel sicker. I knew what he was doing, but it didn’t matter. These techniques worked to bring someone to the point of gibbering fear and nerves. They did not work to get real information out of anyone at all, but it looked as if Dartmoor had missed the memo.

  After a few moments, he came back to me. I braced myself to be thrown on the panel (Was it a rack? Was it meant to hold me in place while they did something worse to me?), but he only addressed me genially. “Do you know what waterboarding is, Miss Casey?”

  “What?” I said, my head aching still.

  “Obviously not,” Dartmoor said. “While the techniques differ from place to place and interrogation to interrogation, the point is the same. A person is strapped down and then a wet cloth applied over their face. When water is poured over, even from a thin stream, the effect or drowning is ably produced.”

  I looked horrified, and Dr. Victors tried to speak up.

  Dartmoor barely glanced at her.

  “You may go if you wish, doctor,” he said. “But remember that you are here for a reason. If there is a death because you were too cowardly to do your job, it will be noted for the record.”

  Dr. Victors made a choked sound, but she stayed, and I had to fight off a moment of gratitude. I didn’t want to feel grateful for anything that happened in this room. If I wanted to stay sane, I couldn’t.

  I braced myself for Dartmoor to shove me towards the table. I could almost feel myself laid on the table, my head down, the wet rag thrust over my face… But then the door opened and I felt everything in me go cold.

  It was Byron, outwardly calm, but I could still see the confusion and the fear in him. There was a kind of strange lassitude to his limbs, a
nd I realized that he had been drugged. He wasn’t struggling at all, he was calm, but when I saw his eyes, I realized that what they had given him was far more insidious than that. He was physically biddable, but his eyes told the truth. He was terrified and infuriated, but he couldn’t fight them at all.

  The two men with him wrestled him onto the board and cuffed him in place.

  “No,” I said, and then louder again, “No!”

  “I must assume that you have something to share with us,” Dartmoor said. “But I think it will keep for just ten seconds, shall we say?”

  “No, no,” I said, “don’t do that, please!”

  Ten seconds. It was like time drew out, stretched endlessly into just ten seconds. I saw them slap a wet cloth over Byron’s face, and on Dartmoor’s count, they started to pour water on him from a goddamn watering can of all things.

  I was frozen in horror. It seemed like such a simple thing. Surely, it couldn’t be that terrible. Surely it can’t be that awful. It was. I would far rather have gotten hit with the Taser again or get kicked or slapped or beaten or punched, and at the bottom of it was a terrible shameful part of me that wondered if I was grateful it wasn’t me.

  Byron choked and coughed, struggled and was helpless, and something in me broke. It broke terribly and in a way that I wasn’t sure would ever be repairable. I could feel it go, as if Dartmoor had broken something in my chest after all, not my heart, but something bony and old and strange, some carapace that I had to crawl out of to be something else.

  I didn’t yell. I didn’t scream. Instead, I took in a deep breath and looked around. This wasn’t a trance. This was only me looking with eyes that had always been mine. I had never needed to trance at all, I realized. Not really. Why had I been hiding this from myself?

  I tried to stand up, but Dartmoor pushed me down.

  “Just a few more seconds,” he said, as if he were comforting me.

  A man threw the door open. He looked terrified, his face sweaty and shiny. The man holding the watering can paused, and that was all I needed.

  The room was lit up with cords. There was Dartmoor’s, more belonging to the three men who had brought in the board, the two that had dragged in Byron, the one at the door and Dr. Victors. Lastly there was mine and Byron’s. There were so many cords all around me, so many, and when I reached out with my right hand, they came crowding to me as if they knew that they belonged to me. Of course they did. They were mine, mine to play with, mine to manipulate. Mine to break.

  Chapter 23

  Someone had peeled the fabric back from Byron’s face. His chest heaved with each gasped breath. Eyes filled with terror landed on me.

  If my heart weren’t busy doing other things, it would have broken for him. If I had asked him if it was all worth it, if it was still better that it was him than me, I knew somehow that he would still say yes. Yes.

  Something inside me snapped. Pity at all these poor people for their desperation to fill their lives with shallow greed and power for control. When had these survival instincts superseded the basics of humanity like compassion and the common good to care for one another? Disgusting. What had become of the world? Magic stirred beneath my chest. Humankind needed the gods more than ever.

  My attention drifted to the cords, where time stood still. They rippled like beautiful lengths of silk in the wind. Brilliant reds represented love, passion, and intimacy. Shades of blue depicted ideas and creativity. Yellow symbolized all things family—children, relatives and groups of people coming together. Dark tones characterized the polar emotions of love: obsession, jealousy, greed, domination, and submission.

  A mass of power at my fingertips to command.

  From one crimson cord, I read the man it belonged to, and it told me he’d been in love with his sweetheart since they’d been young. If only she knew about the “security” work he performed to put food on the table. To buy her the expensive jewelry she so craved. Might she leave him if she discovered the pain it cost people?

  Another cord revealed to me a man in love with his wife of ten years, but they were traveling through a period of difficulty with an ill child, and that stained his cherry cord with dark spots. He only did this job to pay for his child’s medicine.

  A third, the blue cord, loved nothing but the idea of pleasure. Indulgence in fine cars, delicacies, the latest high technology devices, travel to exotic destinations, and even women. Food for thought, I supposed.

  Through tapping into my cupid powers, I learned that love is only special when it’s the love that you have. For someone who is looking inward, especially someone who has absolutely no reason to be kind or sympathetic to you, it all looks dull and very boring and very expendable. To know that love symbolized so many different things was both terrifying and formidable.

  Now I understood why Dartmoor had sought me. Why he had tormented me to the point of awakening these great powers. Everyone was susceptible to love and both the joy and pain it brought. No one was safe. To clasp the powers of love in one’s hands was equivalent to holding the power of the universe. It was like a drug flowing through me.

  Desire to teach these fools a lesson pulsed through me like lava. Prompted by the magic flowing through me, I reached out with both hands and grabbed those cords. I pulled with everything I had, bringing them toward me. They felt almost velvety between my fingers, lighter than air, but indisputably there. Emotions coursed through me. Love, compassion, desire, passion, and the lingering darker side of the sentiment blended with my pity and disgust, leaving me trapped in a space where my own endearment, anger, and integrity clashed. Hands wrapped tightly around the cords, I pulled hard, baring my teeth. The bonds tore, twisted, knotted, some even shattering like they were made of glass.

  I did not anticipate the reaction, and I stepped back at the commotion it had sparked.

  All around me, the men screamed. The one who had strapped Byron to the table pounded his head into the wall over and over again. Plaster on the wall broke, and it crumbled to the floor at his feet. Two men lunged at each other, the cords of their love and their desires so wound together that they could not understand a single thing any longer. The last man sat facing the corner, tearing out what little remained of his hair, babbling one word over and over again. It was a name, but I was the only one who knew that it was. He would never see her again. He wouldn’t want to. Love had turned into something else, something he didn’t even have a word for, and nothing made sense anymore.

  An unexpected boom went off outside the window below, startling me, and I flinched. Urgent voices shouted and boots stomped into the garden and on the crushed rock. Gunfire quickly followed, pinging and hissing as it tore into metal and clipped at the manicured gardens. Explosions erupted and what sounded like a golf cart thudded on the ground. Judging by the shrieks of pain, something terrible was happening. Not cries stemming from what I’d done, because I hadn’t extended my power that far, only keeping it within the bounds of this room and the hallway outside. Someone else had sparked the outburst, earning the gunfire in retaliation.

  I approached the window closest to Byron to inspect the raucous, but it smashed and a ball of fire flew through it. Water in the carpet left over from Byron’s torture put it out.

  “Jesus,” I cried, letting go of the cords to rush to Byron’s side.

  He blinked like crazy, his eyes darting to the window, his legs kicking to get free.

  My godly senses picked up an intense anger radiating from outside. A desire to crush all that threatened him hammered at me, and the room blazed with a heat threatening to turn everything in it to ash. I didn’t need to look out the window to know who it belonged to.

  Rane…Ares…how had he found me? Was he here to rescue me like he’d promised? I was doing fine by myself now that I had unleashed my full potential.

  I turned to Dartmoor. Mouth agape, he stared around him, watching the carnage. He didn’t bother to try to threaten me or to try to contain me. Immediately, he started to ru
n like the pathetic coward I’d always knew he was deep down.

  Fire inside of me leapt up like a raging snake ready to strike. I let him get as far as the door, where he might have been fooled into thinking he stood a chance of getting away from the chaos he’d created. I wrapped my fist around his blue cord and yanked even harder than before. Like a puppet, he jerked backward. Step by step, I drew him back to me, and his wild eyes darted around the room as if he didn’t understand it. I might have been shorter than him with muscles like pudding, but right now, I was wielding the power of a god, and he was just a man. A man who had hurt the one I loved. Pushed me to my limits. Asked for more than an ass whooping.

  Dartmoor’s hands groped at the clothing of one of his men. But the hired muscle shrugged him off in a fit of madness. Slowly, the head creep turned to face me. There was nothing satisfying in his fear. It didn’t salve what he had done to me. What he had ordered done to Byron. There would never be enough to pay for what Dartmoor had done to Byron.

  Byron was mine. No one else’s. And I would never let anyone hurt him again if I could help it.

  “Miss Casey, please.” Dartmoor’s pathetic pleas fell on deaf ears. “Listen. You must understand I was doing you a favor.”

  For all I cared, he might as well have been a gnat buzzing away in my ear.

  Throbbing with disgust, I examined his dark blue cord and saw with some grim satisfaction what I should have known. It didn’t represent a lover at all like the red cords…even though I detected he was into even more twisted shit than what he had pulled today. When I examined his cord, a closed loop that led back to himself, I felt hollow inside. Pathetic. Terrible. Lonely.

  I paused for a moment, and then I shrugged. In my fingers, the blue turned to red. Love of a different kind. I turned it up a thousandfold, knowing what it might do but not caring. Dartmoor fell to the ground as if he were having some kind of heart attack, his hands clawing at himself, scratching at his chest, his face, his eyes.