Master of None

by Sonya Bateman

  Now I knew why he hadn’t done anything in the basement. He must’ve been conserving what he could for this.

  Lenka raised his free hand and gestured with a cutting motion. The black flow ceased. He coughed once, rose to his feet, and murmured in djinn. The streaks and splashes of liquid decorating his face and clothing seemed to be absorbed back into him. His lips peeled back in a sharp-toothed smile. “Well done, rayan. A flawlessly executed soul drain. Quite futile, as you see, but you showed excellent form. However, I would suggest that you conserve your power for what is yet to come.”

  Despite looking like overworked bread dough, Ian sneered. “I am surprised that you still have a soul to drain, snake.”

  “There is no need to flatter me,” Lenka said. “Now, then. A test.”

  He drew the fake dagger and plunged it into Ian’s chest.

  I bit back a scream of my own. Whether it was some aspect of our relation or just plain empathy, I felt echoes of every blow Ian took. But he didn’t voice this one. Blood bubbled from his mouth in place of sound. Bastard must’ve punctured a lung.

  And Ian would live. Lucky him.

  Lenka wrenched the dagger free. He wiped the blood from it on Ian’s pants and inspected the gleaming blade with the care of a suspicious dealer sniffing for counterfeits. “This does not carry your mark.” He flashed a cruel smile. “We will have to do this the hard way.”

  Trevor glanced at Lenka. “The thief might know something.”

  “All right, pet. I will leave it to you to find out.”

  From the look on Trevor’s face, he’d just won the lottery. And once again, I held the losing ticket.

  TIME DOESN’T FLY WHEN YOU’RE BEING TORTURED.

  The grandfather clock near the mantle claimed only thirty minutes had passed—at least, it had the last time I could see clearly. Which might have been a few hours ago. In that time, I’d gained at least two broken bones, along with other assorted injuries, and lost two fingernails.

  Ian was ahead of me. I wasn’t sure how many bones he’d broken, but Lenka seemed to enjoy the fingernail-ripping game. He’d taken seven of Ian’s so far.

  “Maybe I’m going too fast. Should we slow down, Mr. Donatti?”

  “Why? You getting tired?” I didn’t bother turning my head to look at him. It hurt too much. “Take your time,” I muttered. “Don’t have plans for tonight.”

  “Once again, then. Where is that tether?”

  “On the moon. Third crater to the right.”

  Trevor gave a disappointed sigh. “This one’s going to be difficult. They’re always hardest to rip free. You see, they tend to stick at the cuticle.”

  He grabbed my thumb and clamped it to the arm of the chair. The pliers settled at the tip of the nail. “Are you sure you don’t want to modify your response?”

  “No, thanks, Regis. That’s my final answer.”

  Part of my mind begged me to spill, or at least force my mouth to stop making it worse. But my gears were stuck in auto-kiss-my-ass.

  “Well, then. If you insist.”

  For an instant, I thought Trevor grinned at me. Then the pain came. No other senses existed. He did this one slowly, and I felt every centimeter of torn skin. Hot blood gushed over my thumb like the world’s smallest volcano. Finally, as Trevor had promised, it stuck at the cuticle. He yanked it free and dropped the bloodied bit into my lap with the other two.

  Would’ve bit my tongue, but I needed all my strength to scream.

  I couldn’t understand why I was still conscious. Why I bothered expending the effort to stay alive. It was over. We’d been reduced to euphemisms. Entered the eleventh hour. The fat lady had sung. Time had run out.

  If only that were true. But time insisted on continuing, and pain rode the minutes like a desperate whore.

  Eventually, I realized why I hadn’t confessed the location of Ian’s tether yet. Trevor hadn’t promised to kill me if I told him. He didn’t even try to lie and say he would. As Skids had me back when the world was normal, he just wanted to hurt me. Extensively.

  He’d gotten his wish.

  Trevor’s face loomed into my blotchy vision. His lips moved. That probably meant he was saying something. I laughed at my own joke, a rusted wheeze that showered splinters through my chest.

  My amusement cost me another fingernail. On the plus side, I couldn’t scream anymore.

  For an instant, gray haze obscured my vision. Then something harsh stabbed my nostrils. It felt like a urine-coated fork. My breath quickened, and my eyes flew open. I hadn’t realized they’d closed in the first place.

  Trevor held a small glass bottle under my nose. Industrial-strength smelling salts, with extra ammonia.

  “Wake up, Mr. Donatti.”

  I blinked at him. “What’s up? Time for breakfast?”

  He slapped me. Constellations exploded behind my eyes. “Your attitude isn’t doing you any favors.”

  “Very osser . . . obber . . . smart of you.” I shook my head. Some of the stars went out. “This is pretty stupid, Trevor. I’m not telling you. Don’t you have better things to do? Terrorize businesses, scare little kids . . .”

  Renewed screams drifted across the room from Ian’s side. I managed not to vomit, but it was close.

  Trevor pushed the bloodied point of the pliers into the hollow of my throat. He didn’t break skin, but air refused to pass in or out. “If I don’t get anywhere with you, I’ll just have to keep you alive until I can find your son.”

  He pulled back. A coughing fit scalded my lungs and prevented my reply. I almost went for the taunt, almost said he’d never find Cyrus. Instead, I decided to bluff. “Tell you where he is,” I said. “Won’t matter. He’s already dead. Jazz, too,” I added as an afterthought. Might as well bluff big.

  “You lie.” He slammed the pliers down on the table he’d dragged over to hold his toys and my body parts and picked up the Taser. Juiced me forever and a few extra seconds.

  “Dead,” I gasped when my teeth stopped chattering. “We tried to hide ’em. The digie . . . genies, they don’ like human visitors. They k-killed both. Of them. Second they crossed.” I didn’t have to manufacture the misery in my voice. No matter what happened, Jazz and Cyrus were dead to me. I’d never see them again.

  Incredibly, Trevor bought it. Or seemed to.

  “Well, Mr. Donatti.” He replaced the Taser and crouched to eye level with me. “I suppose you’re right. There’s no point in continuing when you have nothing to lose.”

  I didn’t dare agree out loud.

  “So it comes to this. Tell me where his tether is, and I’ll kill you right now.”

  My lips stretched without my permission. “Liar.”

  Trevor laughed. “Right again. But you might as well tell me anyway.”

  “Why?” I croaked. “Why do you hate me so much? It’s not like I kicked your dogs, raped your wife. If you had one. I only lost a lousy knife.”

  His eyes glittered. “And I paid for it. You have no idea.” Trevor darted a glance across the room, as if he expected Lenka was listening. “He’s in my head,” he hissed. “Constantly. Inside me. It’s agonizing. He won’t leave until he gets this lousy knife.”

  A nauseating stench invaded my nostrils. At first, I thought he’d shoved the smelling salts up my nose, but the thick, bittersweet odor didn’t slice like ammonia. It reminded me of an outdoor barbecue. I finally realized it came from Trevor. Everywhere the snake markings had been, his flesh had warped, cracked, or outright melted. His torso glimmered with a mixture of fluids. Some of it was blood. I couldn’t tell what the greenish-yellow gunk was, but it probably shouldn’t have been seeping from his wounds like that.

  I’d lay odds he didn’t sign on for that when he took up with Lenka.

  Trevor grabbed me by the throat. “I want my payment, and I want him gone. You’re the key. You will tell me where it is!”

  It was hard to feel sorry for a guy who was treating my windpipe like a tube of toothpaste. I almo
st did. But not enough to confess.

  Someone pounded on the door of the sitting room. Trevor released me abruptly. I dropped forward so hard I damn near toppled the chair. My head refused to rise again, and my eyes forgot the meaning of focus, but my hearing still worked.

  “What?” Trevor snarled through the door.

  Leonard replied from the other side. “Found somebody tryin’ to crash the party, boss.”

  I felt as if I’d been stuffed in a freezer. Please don’t be Jazz.

  The door opened. And Trevor loosed the most chilling laugh I’d ever heard. “Welcome back, dear lady. How was the afterlife?”

  I was beginning to hate being right all the time.

  Scuffling sounds. The door slammed. Silence. My name carried on a broken whisper, in the last voice I wanted to hear right now. She should’ve been with Tory and Lark. Should’ve been safe and long gone from here. Fate could not be this cruel.

  Raising my head seemed harder than cutting concrete with a spoon. I had to inch my eyeballs in the direction of the door. Absolute terror kept me from focusing clearly on her face, but I didn’t need visual confirmation.

  The sight of Jazz—handcuffed, under Trevor’s gun, and pissed enough to chew iron and spit out nails—hurt a hundred times more than everything he’d done to me. And it was about to get worse.

  CHAPTER 34

  Trevor shoved hard against her cuffed hands. Jazz stumbled a few steps and righted herself. “You look like shit,” she said. “And you’re torturing him? Idiot. You know that never works.”

  Although she spoke steadily enough, she avoided looking directly at me. It was enough to tell me she cared more than she’d let Trevor find out.

  Trevor ignored her admonishment and held up one of the dupes. I assumed it was the one she’d carried. “Are they giving these away at the grocery store?” He tossed it to Lenka. “Considering what happened with the other one, I doubt this is real. But you might as well find out anyway.”

  “With pleasure.”

  Lenka’s voice came from far away. I knew what came next, so I fixed my blurred gaze in the general direction of Jazz. She stared open-mouthed across the room. Through my pounding head, I realized this was her first eyeful of Lenka. A nasty sight. Almost as bad as Trevor.

  Ian’s harsh cry when Lenka tested the dagger made her look away fast.

  “You are correct, pet. This one is false as well. Such clever humans.”

  “The hell they are.” Trevor moved toward me, dragging a chair with one hand, Jazz with the other. He forced her into it, facing me. “Move, and he dies. Understand?”

  Jazz gave a bitter laugh. “I don’t know, Trevor. I might not be clever enough to get it. But I’m smart enough to finish the job I started on your roadster. The rest of your pretty collection, too.” She stared up at him. “Nice wheels you used to have. Oh, and you’re running out of goons, too. I took out three.”

  Trevor flushed maroon. He raised a hand but stopped just short of striking her. “Just so you know, bitch, I’ll be taking payment for my cars out of Donatti’s hide.”

  Jazz’s lips thinned. She didn’t respond, but I caught the apology in her eyes. And I couldn’t help noticing that Trevor didn’t give a shit about his thugs. Nobody would ever nominate him for a humanitarian award.

  “Who is this?” Lenka appeared next to Trevor.

  “A good friend of Mr. Donatti’s.” Trevor smiled. “A very good friend.”

  It hurt to look at her. I turned away—and spotted something even more painful. Ian.

  How could there be that much blood? It looked as if he’d bathed in the stuff. Blood soaked the carpet under his feet and splattered the wall beside him. Something white stood out in all the red on his left shoulder. Took me a while to realize it was his collarbone.

  I closed my eyes and swallowed bile. No wonder he’d wanted me to kill him.

  “. . . stimulate his memory.” Lenka’s voice faded in as if someone had just turned up his volume knob. He and Trevor must have been talking strategy, but I had no idea what they’d said. Jazz’s horrified expression suggested she did.

  Trevor picked up the pliers.

  “Don’t tell them anything.” Jazz glared at Trevor. “I was going to trim my nails anyway.”

  “In that case, maybe we should start with your teeth.” Trevor motioned to Lenka. “Could you hold her down for me, please? Molars tend to be stubborn.”

  “No.” My mouth finally caught up with my brain. “Keep your hands off her.”

  Lenka pointed at me. Words flew from his mouth and set me on fire.

  Someone screamed. Must have been me, because no one else moved. I saw flames engulf my legs and lick at my torso. Saw my flesh blister and blacken. Smelled smoke and cooked meat. Trevor’s Place, now serving well-done Donatti with a side of death.

  The back of my head smacked against something solid. The flames vanished, and I found myself staring at the ceiling. Unburned legs stuck out from the chair I’d managed to knock over. An illusion. Only the pain had been real.

  “The only thing we want to hear from you, thief, is how to find Gahiji-an’s tether.” Lenka sounded fairly pissed. At least he’d stopped slicing Ian for a few minutes.

  Trevor loomed over me. He grabbed my hair and pulled me back up, chair and all. “Don’t bother protesting, Mr. Donatti. You know this game. And you decide when it ends.”

  He moved away. I tried to focus on Jazz. She sat as still as a stone, every trace of resolve vanished. Tears slipped from her eyes, one by one, like mourners paying last respects.

  “Don’t cry,” I mumbled. “Won’t let him. You need teeth.”

  “I’ll get dentures.” Her voice shook hard enough to rattle windows. “You just keep your mouth shut. Please.”

  “No. Gonna tell him. Kill me, not you. That’s the deal.”

  Jazz opened her mouth, but Trevor’s voice cut in. “I’ll agree to those terms.”

  “Please don’t,” Jazz whispered. “You don’t understand—”

  “Shut up!” Trevor screamed, lunging between us. Somehow, he’d acquired more rope. “One more word from you, and I will gag you. He’s going to tell me.” He looped a length around her waist and the chair.

  “Let her go first,” I said. “She goes, I talk. Way it works.”

  Trevor ignored me and finished tying her down. “She goes when I have that tether in my hands and not a minute sooner. I don’t trust you.”

  “And I’m supposed to trust you? You’ll just kill us all when you get it.”

  “Ah, Mr. Donatti.” Trevor shook his head. “This is a difficult impasse. She won’t be any use to me now, and I have no need to kill her. But you’ll never believe that . . . will you?”

  I wanted to. Desperately. “No,” I said weakly. “I can’t believe you.”

  He held something in front of my face. Pliers. “Then I suppose we’ll have to revert to the original plan.”

  Jazz made a horrible, desolate sound. Everything inside me withered and drained away. I forced myself to look at her—and caught a tiny smile on her lips.

  “Cavalry’s here,” she whispered.

  A hoarse sob reached my ears. Female. Not Jazz. She hadn’t made the first sound, either. I moved my pounding head in the direction of the cry, the open entrance from the basement hallway. And promptly forgot to breathe.

  Akila in person was a thousand times more stunning than her reflection. A goddess. Tory stood beside her and kept her from collapsing at the sight of her brutalized husband. A hawk, bedraggled but alert, perched on Tory’s shoulder. They must have helped Shamil transform. And Jazz had taken on the distraction role for them.

  I wanted to cry myself—but not for joy. We were deader than ever.

  “Gahiji-an . . .”

  Half cry, half moan. Pure pain. Akila’s voice could have melted all of the ice at the North Pole. But I doubted it would sway Trevor or Lenka.

  The sound must’ve pierced whatever shell Ian had wrapped himself in. His
body heaved against his bonds, and a grating breath exploded from him. “No. Gods . . . why . . .”

  Trevor grabbed the Luger and thrust it against Jazz’s temple. “She’s first. Then him.” He jerked his head at me. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

  “Stop.” Akila wavered, then seemed to pull herself together. “Lay down your weapon, human. We are here to bargain.”

  “Bullshit,” Trevor snapped.

  “Do as she says, pet.” Lenka sounded as smug as a gambler holding four aces. “They are powerless. Bahari are weak to begin with, and they have expended themselves healing the sharmoot. Let her speak.”

  Trevor lowered the gun. With extreme reluctance.

  “Akila, no. He will not—”

  Ian’s breathless protest ended in a scream when Lenka flung another curse at him.

  “Enough!” Akila cried. “If you hurt him again, there will be no bargain.”

  Lenka gestured. Ian slumped. “Very well, rayani. Let us hear your proposal.”

  “Yes. My proposal.” Akila closed her eyes briefly. “Spare Gahiji-an’s life, and I will join with you. My father will have no choice but to allow your clan back into the realm.”

  “I am nearly tempted. However, there is the small matter of your bond for life.”

  “There is a way to break it,” Akila whispered.

  Lenka laughed. “You would mutilate yourself for him?”

  “I would.”

  A broken string of djinn fell from Ian’s lips. The translation lurked just beyond my grasp, but I understood the general sentiment. He was begging her to stop, to leave this place before it was too late.

  My gut told me it was half past too late already.

  Lenka ignored Ian. “Interesting. Give me a moment to consider.” He turned, and a look passed between him and Trevor.