Prison of Horrors (The DeathSpeaker Codex Book 6)

by Sonya Bateman

  Nova stepped in front of me. She had something that looked like a stick, and she pointed at me and gestured.

  My body jerked stiffly upright without any effort on my part. The motion drew a scream that caught in my throat, and when the girl flicked the stick down, I dropped to my knees.

  Magic. She was using magic. How was she doing that?

  I opened my mouth, intending to cough out the spell for throwing people like footballs. Before I could spit a word out, Nova dropped something over my head. A round, flat, heavy medallion on a chain. I couldn’t see it too well, but it looked like there was a bunch of stuff carved into the metal.

  Whatever it was, I was sure I didn’t want it on me.

  “Thrucíar,” I rasped in the general direction of the medallion.

  The spell should’ve snapped the chain and dropped the damned thing. But nothing happened. I could feel my spark trying to respond, but the magic wouldn’t go anywhere. It was sealed inside me.

  Nova shook her head sadly. “That’s a hex charm,” she said. “Anti-magic. And I’m sorry, but I have to make sure it stays put…”

  She waved the stick at me again. The medallion glowed red hot, until it burned through my shirt and seared my skin.

  This time the scream escaped my mouth.

  At some point the thing stopped burning. By then it was practically fused with me, embedded in my chest. Getting it off was going to hurt even worse — if I could get it off at all. I had no idea how the magic she’d used to do this worked.

  I blinked back scalding tears and tried to focus on the new blur in front of me. Frost, crouching to eye level with a sickly grin. “Oh, didn’t I mention?” she said. “Nova is a witch, too.”

  “You don’t say,” I ground out.

  “Well, I—” She cut off with a quick intake of breath. I thought she was frowning, but I couldn’t be sure. “You look different,” she said slowly. “What is that? Some kind of trick?”

  Okay, now I was really worried. Hadn’t tried to look different. More blinking cleared my vision somewhat, enough to realize that my skin had gone necrotic blue. I ran my tongue gingerly across my teeth. They were slightly pointed.

  Oh, good. I’d lost my glamour. I couldn’t generate any magic at all.

  This wasn’t something I was interested in explaining. Frost had never seen me without glamour — and she looked halfway to terrified of me. I’d take the small victory. “Yeah,” I said. “It’s a trick.”

  She stared at me, and finally said, “No, it’s not. You’re only half Fae, but … you must’ve had a glamour. And it’s gone now.” Her grin returned. “You’ve got nothing.”

  Damn. Of course she’d know that — she was Milus Dei. I wanted to jam that smile down her throat, but the best I could manage was a dull, flat stare. “I’m going to kill you.”

  “Really? I thought you didn’t like killing people.”

  “You just went on my exceptions list.”

  “Aww. Does this mean we’re not partners anymore?”

  “Fuck you.” I couldn’t seem to stop saying that. “And just so you know, you’re not getting your hands on my friends, either. They won’t fall for it.”

  “Your friends?” she said. “I don’t want them. I just want you.”

  “Bullshit. Think I don’t know how you people operate?”

  Her brow furrowed. “Which people?”

  “Milus Dei.”

  The answering laugh twisted my guts inside out. “Milus Dei,” she repeated in disgust. “You really don’t know anything, do you?”

  I thought I did. Right up until that very second.

  But now I figured I was probably a dead man.

  CHAPTER 12

  Constable Garber and Pastor Lennox dragged me to the platform and sat me on the edge, then stood guard on either side. Apparently, Frost wanted me to have a good view while she went to work on Winifred Davenport.

  After Nova forced the woman to her knees, the same way she’d done to me, Frost loomed over her. “All right,” she said with a sneer. “Where is it?”

  Winifred declined to answer. So Frost backhanded her.

  “Goddamn it, where?”

  No response.

  Frost bared her teeth and raised a hand, but then she lowered it and paced a few steps away. “That freak nor’easter was you, wasn’t it?” she said. “You were trying to stop me.”

  So I’d been right about the storm. I wasn’t too thrilled about being right.

  “You were trying to stop him,” Frost went on when Winifred remained silent. “Do you really think you’re going to get away with this? Your power is nothing compared to his. All he wanted was your loyalty, and you betrayed him.” She folded her arms. “Just give me the Eye, and maybe he’ll be lenient.”

  The short speech made my head spin. Who the hell was she talking about, and what — or whose — eye did she think the woman took? None of this made sense, but it was definitely not good news.

  I had a sudden, sinking feeling that death might be the easy way out of this, compared to whatever was going on here.

  And still, nothing from Winifred.

  I winced in sympathy as Frost snarled and drove a fist into the woman’s jaw. “Where is it, you smug bitch?” she practically screamed. “Start talking, or I’ll beat the answers out of your sniveling, weak-ass son!”

  The mayor. Nicholas. I glanced at him and decided that he was neither sniveling, nor weak. In fact, the look on his face said he’d cheerfully, brutally strangle Frost on the spot if the rest of these crazy assholes weren’t obviously on her side.

  Apparently Winifred agreed. She spat a mouthful of blood on the floor, and continued to say nothing.

  Frost drew a deep breath and released it, slow and controlled. “Fine,” she said. “I get it. You’re not going to tell me.” A smile appeared on her face, and she drew her gun and pressed it to the woman’s forehead. “I don’t have time to play Guantanamo with you. So I’ll just kill you, and Gideon will ask you where it is.”

  “The hell I will,” I said roughly, trying to mask my panic. “I’m telling you, Frost. Whatever you’re looking for, you’re gonna need her alive to find it. Because I’m not doing shit for you.”

  She looked back at me and grinned. “Yes. You are,” she said as her finger twitched on the trigger.

  “Wait!”

  The breathless shout came from Nova. The girl stepped forward, pale but determined, and met Frost’s glower with a steady stare. “I can get the Eye for you,” she said softly.

  Frost narrowed her eyes. “How?”

  “She’s my grandmother.” The girl shrugged. “I’ve known her my whole life. And I’m pretty sure I know where she put it.”

  “Sweetheart … please. Don’t.” Winifred spoke for the first time in a horrible, broken tone. “You have no idea what’s at stake here.”

  A visible shudder moved through Nova — and for some reason, she looked directly at me. There was a silent question in her eyes that I couldn’t answer. Mostly because I had no idea what she was asking.

  Finally, she said, “I’m so sorry, Nana. I have to.”

  Frost gave a withering laugh. “All right,” she said. “Go get it, then. But if you’re not back in half an hour, your dear grandma’s a dead woman.”

  “I don’t have to go anywhere.” Nova squared her shoulders and walked toward the kneeling Winifred. “She has it with her.”

  The old woman closed her eyes in defeat.

  Frost must’ve realized that she’d won, because she stepped back to give the girl some room. Nova produced her stick again, and it finally dawned on me that it was an honest-to-God magic wand.

  She pointed the wand at Winifred. A few tears slipped from her eyes as she started chanting something I couldn’t make out.

  After a minute, the woman’s black dress rustled and snapped, as if it was being blown around by an unseen wind. Part of the dress appeared to detach from the rest, becoming a small, black cloth drawstring bag hanging
from her waist. The string untied itself, and the bag dropped on the floor with a faint thud.

  Nova bent forward, reached out with a shaking hand and retrieved the bag. She nearly flinched as she handed it to Frost. “Please,” she whispered. “Don’t kill her.”

  “I won’t.” Frost gave a twisted smile. “But he probably will.”

  I decided I didn’t want to know who he was.

  Unfortunately, I suspected I was about to find out.

  CHAPTER 13

  At least the all-important Eye that was worth beating old ladies over wasn’t an actual eyeball. But it was still disturbing. About the size of a child’s fist, carved from gleaming black stone, the damned thing seemed to be looking straight at me.

  I was effectively shut down. Poisoned, badly injured, my senses throttled so high that even thinking hurt. Unable to heal — or to die. The ugly burn on my chest radiated pain through my torso, and if I moved or tensed my arms at all, I came damn near blacking out. Just standing and breathing took all of my focus.

  They’d dragged me in front of the frame without a mirror, so I was looking through it at the pews and the strangely stoned people sitting in them. Frost had fixed the black eye into the pointed panel at the top. Apparently, this was supposed to do something.

  It hadn’t so far.

  “Why isn’t it working?” Frost paced a tight back-and-forth path behind me, her footsteps echoing in the cavernous space of the church. Eventually she stopped and looked at the researchers. “Seth,” she said. “How much did your dupe know about the gate?”

  Okay, there was a lot wrong with that sentence. What the hell was a dupe, and why did she call this thing a gate?

  Gates led to places. And I doubted this one led to the other side of the church.

  The taller of the two men frowned. “Not much,” he said. “They opened it by accident.”

  “For Christ’s sake, do I have to do all the thinking?” Frost spat. “What kind of accident? Just tell me what happened.”

  “I don’t know. Jimmy’s went through first.”

  “Well, then. Maybe Jimmy can tell me what happened.”

  I really didn’t like the sound of this.

  “He put the Eye back, and he touched it,” the other one, Jimmy, said slowly.

  Frost snorted. “That was all,” she said. “He touched it, and it woke up. Is that what you’re telling me?”

  “Well … no. He cut his hand on the frame.”

  With an impatient sound, Frost stuck an arm in front of me and raked her palm across one of the slim metal thorns jutting inward from the twisted wreath. The point glistened darkly with her blood when she pulled back. “You mean like that?”

  “Yeah,” Jimmy said. “Like that.”

  “You’re just as stone dumb as the other you,” she muttered.

  I barely paid attention to their conversation. Something was happening in the mirror. There’d been a sickly green flash of light when Frost cut her hand, and now the frame wasn’t empty anymore. A dull film blocked the view of the sanctuary. The murkiness cleared slowly, and I was looking at my reflection — but it wasn’t a mirror. The surface rippled with slight distortions, like a lake on a calm day.

  “Ah. There you are.”

  Frost spoke from directly behind me. But even though I could see the background in the mirror, her reflection wasn’t there.

  “The hell’s going on?” I muttered.

  “Nice trick, isn’t it?” Frost leaned around me and held a hand between me and the mirror. The reflection remained unchanged. Just me, with no glamour and a massive chest wound that seeped unspeakable stuff. Shivering and bleeding and slack-jawed. “Well, Gideon,” she said. “I’d apologize for everything, but I’m just … you know. Not sorry.”

  With that, she shoved me forward.

  My shoulder hit the surface of the non-mirror. And what it collided with felt like another shoulder.

  That was when my reflection grinned.

  My face definitely wasn’t forming that expression. I had a few seconds to think about how impossible this was before my reflection reached out with arms that weren’t handcuffed and yanked me through the mirror.

  Then I was on the floor, surrounded by strangers who pulled me to my feet as a man who looked exactly like me stepped into the frame, where Frost waited on the other side.

  “Wha…” I couldn’t even get the whole word out. Through my pounding head, I realized the people manhandling me toward the mirror were the stoned crowd from the pews. They were a hell of a lot more lively over here. I managed a brief glimpse behind me, just long enough to realize there was something very wrong with the sanctuary, before the jostling group pushed me against the surface of the mirror.

  Through it, I saw myself standing next to Frost. Without glamour, like my reflection had been — but unrestrained, not bleeding, and grinning like a kid who’d just won a lifetime supply of candy.

  “Finally.” The fake me spoke in my voice. He looked down at himself, turned a corpse-blue hand over slowly and inspected it. “Interesting, but I think I like the other form better.”

  As he spoke, his appearance changed to my normal self. He nodded once and turned to Frost with a hand out. “Give me your gun.”

  She did. He made a half-turn, lifted the piece, and shot Jimmy in the head.

  I couldn’t even breathe.

  Not-Me walked calmly to the body and gave it a kick. “What’s your name?” he said.

  Jesus. Did this guy think he was the DeathSpeaker now?

  After a few seconds, his complacent expression shifted to anger, and he turned on Frost. “It’s not working,” he spat. “If you lied to me—”

  “I’d never lie to you,” she said quickly.

  He glared at her for a long moment, then stepped aside and gestured at the other researcher. “Mahrú à dionadth.”

  Seth flew back, out of my line of sight. But I heard the wet crunch as the shield Not-Me had thrown crushed him to death.

  “Well. At least that works.” The man who wasn’t me shook his head and paced back toward the mirror to stand in front of me. “You are the DeathSpeaker, aren’t you?” he said.

  The sound of my voice coming from someone else’s mouth turned my stomach. I decided to take a page from Winifred’s book and not answer.

  “He is.” Frost approached reluctantly, with a wary glance at the gun still in his hand. “I’ve seen him speak to the dead, more than once.”

  Not-Me frowned. “So it’s true. There can be only one.”

  “Who the hell are you?” I blurted without thinking. So much for keeping my mouth shut. But if I didn’t figure out what all this was, soon, I’d lose what was left of my mind. That probably meant he wouldn’t tell me anything.

  He gave me an indulgent smile. I wasn’t expecting that, or the words that left his mouth. “My name is Malphas,” he said. “What you see and hear of me is you, but I’m only using this body. Which is, unfortunately, an inferior copy.”

  I had to process that for a minute. “You copied my body?”

  “Not well enough, apparently. This one doesn’t have the DeathSpeaker ability.” He looked down and sighed, then met my horrified stare again. “I don’t suppose you’ll make this easy, and just let me possess you?”

  “Possess me,” I said. “So, what … you’re a demon or something?”

  “Yes.”

  Okay. Not what I wanted to hear, especially since I was being mostly sarcastic. “You’re an actual demon,” I said. “Like, from hell. That kind of demon.”

  “Yes! Am I not speaking English?” Malphas gave an irritated snort. “Look. Gideon. You are the DeathSpeaker, and I want that power. Your copy doesn’t have it. That means I have to possess you, but I can’t unless you agree to it. Those are the rules. So how about we skip all the torture and mutilation that’s in your very near future, and you just let me?”

  My blood ran cold. “No. Absolutely not.”

  “Fine. As if I didn’t know that’s wh
at you’d say, you stubborn, self-righteous pain in the ass.” He tapped a temple. “I’ve got everything you are, right here. Except the DeathSpeaker ability,” he added bitterly. “And I can break you. Unfortunately, I also know it’s going to take a lot of time, and a lot of pain.”

  “I won’t let you,” I said. “Not now. Not in a million years.”

  “You will.” He flashed a frigid, empty smile. “You’ll beg for it. Not right away, of course … but what the hell? I’ve got time.”

  “It’s not happening. Ever.”

  Malphas ignored me and spoke to Frost. “Get over there and take him to the prison,” he said. “Convince him to agree. But don’t kill him — because if he dies, you’ll die a thousand times before I’m through with you. Understand?”

  “Yes,” she said in shaken tones. “I’ll do it, gladly. But I thought we couldn’t go through without…”

  “Oh, that’s right. No worries, though. I can fix it from this side.” He raised a hand and snapped his fingers. “Now the gate will stay open,” he said.

  Frost grinned. “Perfect.”

  That grin told me I was about to wish I was dead.

  CHAPTER 14

  Frost came through the mirror-gate with a collar for me. Just what I always wanted.

  At least it wasn’t like the one they’d made Winifred wear. This was basically a dog collar on steroids — studded leather, oversized buckle, thick chain lead. And like an oversized dog, I tried my best to bite her while she was strapping it on. It was about the only move I had left.

  She backhanded me for that.

  The bunch of town people who’d been holding me down had broken up and wandered away. Some of them went through the gate, a few were still in the sanctuary, and others had walked out the door of the church.

  Well, this church. I still didn’t know what the hell was going on, but I knew this place wasn’t the church I’d been in a few minutes ago. It was a copy — a dark, twisted, rotting copy. Even the air was wrong here. It was dusty and stale, like the inside of a used vacuum bag, and sounds that should’ve echoed in the space fell flat.