I gasped and spluttered, trying to spit out the stuff that’d gone in my mouth. It took a few seconds for the shock of the cold to wear off, so I could really feel the salt water sizzling through every scratch, scrape, raw patch, and massive burn sore on my body.
And the filth was definitely bothering me. I could sense vomiting in my near future. My spark couldn’t heal dirty.
The Fae in me wanted to kill her for that. Worse, I realized that I actually could if I wanted to. Just break her neck as easily as I could’ve broken these ropes tying me down. It was damned hard not to act on that impulse.
Frost stood there a moment, watching me. “It’s a start,” she said, gesturing at three more buckets lined up on the floor, near where she’d gotten the first one. All of them were filled to the brim with dark, nasty-looking glop. “One of these is pureed rat entrails. I forget which one, though.”
My already churning stomach lurched. Damn, she was more creative than I thought.
“Wow,” she said. “Did you run out of smartass already? I thought for sure you’d have some crack about that.”
I pulled a lopsided smirk. “No, thanks. I’m full.”
“There you go. I knew you had it in you.” She went back to the tool bench and grabbed a length of stained cloth, a handful of thin metal wedges that tapered to a blunt point at one end, and a small hammer.
“Arts and crafts?” I said as she approached me again. “I’ll pass, thanks.”
She stuck the wedges and hammer in a pocket, and stepped up with the cloth. “Much as I appreciate your wit, I’m going to gag you for this,” she said. “There’s a lot of screaming involved.”
“Oh. Kinky.”
Shaking her head, she folded the rag a few times and slapped it across my mouth, tying the ends tightly at the base of my skull. Then she pushed the material until it was bunched between my lips. “Now you can bite down on that,” she said. “You’ll probably want to.”
For what? I wouldn’t have asked it out loud, even if I could. But I was going to find out anyway.
Frost took out the hammer and one of the wedges. “See this part?” she said, tapping the blunt point. “It goes just beneath your nails. Fingers and toes — I’ve got enough for all of them. A couple of taps to the thick end, and … well. You get the idea.” She flashed a tainted smile. “You’re not going to believe how much this hurts.”
This time, she was wrong. I was definitely going to believe it.
CHAPTER 17
On the plus side, I’d successfully convinced Frost that I was tortured beyond endurance. The downside being I’d actually had to take a shitload of pain to do it. I was really at almost beyond endurance. Being filthy, stinking, and incredibly pissed off didn’t help.
At least she hadn’t gotten to the Judas chair yet.
She stood in front of me, arms folded, breathing hard. She’d put a lot of effort into hurting me — hell, she probably needed a break more than I did. “You’re still not going to agree, are you?” she said.
“No.” I sounded like a car muffler scraping on pavement. Didn’t have to fake that. “Not happening.”
“You’re a goddamned idiot, then.”
I coughed out a laugh. “Haven’t heard that before.”
“I mean, look at you.” She spoke under her breath, like it was more for her benefit than mine. Louder, she said, “You’re really going to take this as far as you can. But you have to know you won’t die. He won’t let you. Just give up.” She turned and walked a few paces away. “Please give up,” she whispered.
I couldn’t tell if she felt sorry for me, or she was bored with the whole torture thing.
And I didn’t care as much as I probably should.
There was very little active human in me now. Just enough to remind me that I couldn’t go into full-on death and destruction mode — but not because I didn’t want to. I wanted that badly. Kill Frost, kill the guards, kill anyone who got in my way between me and that mirror, so I could annihilate the demon bastard who’d stolen my everything. Not with magic, which I couldn’t use thanks to the hex charm, but with sheer brute force.
No, that small human voice was cold and practical. I had to conserve my spark. There was no way to tell how much I could do, how many human bugs I could crush before it was exhausted. And no moon to recharge it.
It’d be a different story on the other side.
“He knows everything I know,” Frost said, dragging me from my thoughts.
Maybe I was supposed to feel sorry for her. But I didn’t. “Yeah, I bet he did horrible shit to you,” I said. “Did you get to try the Judas chair?”
She ignored the crack. “He knows me, and he knows you. Inside and out. What I’m doing here, it’s a goddamned massage session compared to—” She broke off and hunched her shoulders. “I don’t want to do this, Gideon. I’m sure you don’t believe that.”
“Hey, what do you know? You’re right,” I said. “I don’t believe it.”
“I’ll have to go back and talk to him. Find out what he wants to do next.” Frost turned back with a set, unhappy expression. “He’ll know exactly how to … ” She trailed off, blanched and took a step back. “Jesus Christ,” she rasped.
Damn. I was still thinking angry thoughts.
I had to work hard to school the rage from my features and look a little more beaten than I felt. “How to what?” I said. “Hurt me? I think you’ve got that down.”
She pulled herself together all at once. “Tell you what,” she said, strictly business again. “I’m going to throw you in a cell, give you a little time to think. And when I get back, you can have a seat. In the Judas chair.”
The shudder that moved through me was genuine. No part of me wanted that.
So I’d just have to make sure it didn’t happen.
CHAPTER 18
The cell blocks were basically three sections of adjoined cages along the left, right, and back wall of a cave. I tried to pay attention to as much of the surroundings as possible on the way in, but it wasn’t easy with Frost and one of the guards dragging me on my back along the rough stone floor.
I’d figured it would work to my advantage if they thought I couldn’t even stand up. I was beginning to regret that decision.
Every cell had four manacled chains, long enough for prisoners to have their choice of positions. Stand, sit, or lay on the floor. For the moment I picked that last one — on my side, since my chest was still a scorched horror show and my back was pretty much one solid bruise, or would be soon. I allowed myself a little bit of healing while I looked around.
The bars of the cells were thick, black and corroded. Same with the chains and cuffs. Probably iron, but not cold iron. If it was, this much of it would’ve made me instantly sick. I could hear water dripping irregularly somewhere, and people moaning. Smell heavy salt in the dry air. And I could feel the despair, the hopelessness of this place.
“You’re not from town. Are you one of them?”
I recognized the ragged voice that came from somewhere close, but not enough to place it. At least until I hauled myself up and looked at the man slumped against the bars in the cell to my right. It was the constable. “No,” I said. “I’m not one of them.”
He raised his head with effort and stared at me. The man was a wreck — he’d obviously been here a while. “You frostbit or something?” he said.
“Something.” It wasn’t worth explaining the Fae.
“Well, damn. They worked you over hard, for a … wait.” His eyes flickered to life. “You’re him, only blue,” he said. “The man he took.”
My jaw clenched. I still had some lingering irritation issues with humans, but I was trying not to murder every one of them. “No, I’m me,” I said. “What he took was a copy, like yours. I met that asshole already. You’re Constable Garber, right? The real one.”
“Call me Quentin.” Some of the wariness eased out of him, but he was still on edge. “And you are?”
“Gideon.”
“He’s the DeathSpeaker. The one they were waiting for.”
That voice, I could place. “Winifred?” I said, straining to look in the direction she’d spoken from.
“That’s me, dear.” It was a cheerful tone, almost manic. Far from the way she’d sounded back at the church. “Are they done torturing you now? I’m just waiting for my turn, you know. I do like to be prepared.”
I finally spotted her in the middle cage along the left wall, with that spiked collar still around her neck. And then a third voice spoke up, flat and disgusted. “So you already know the witch. I can’t say I’m surprised.”
“Pastor Lennox,” I said when I made him out. Also on the left wall, two cages down from Winifred. Not very nice, for a man of God. And I caught sight of a heaped figure on the floor of the cell between them. “Who’s next to you?”
“My wife. She’s dead.”
He delivered the words in the same flat tone. I decided to forgive him for the dig at Winifred. Even with the heightened Fae content, my heart wrenched for him.
“I’m sorry,” I said softly.
“It doesn’t matter now.”
If I were him, I’d probably feel the same way. But I couldn’t worry about that now. With no idea how long until Frost came back, I had to find a way out of here and figure out what the deal was, so I could put an end to all this.
“All right,” I said. “Is there anyone else in here?”
Quentin leaned his head back and closed his eyes. “Just the four of us,” he said. “I don’t know what they did to my wife, or my children.”
“They’re still in town, but they’re not safe,” Winifred said.
I shook my head. “Pretty sure no one’s safe.”
I turned my attention to the chains. First thing was to get them off, and I thought I could channel my spark into enough strength to break them. The links were pitted and misshapen with age and exposure, so that helped. I wrapped one of the leg chains around my hand a few times, near the point where it joined to the manacle, and pulled.
The last link in the chain shattered and released from the cuff.
“Holy mother of God,” Quentin blurted. “How did you do that?”
“Magic.”
“Beg pardon?”
“Never mind,” I muttered, preparing to repeat the process with the other leg chain. “Sorry. I’m a little busy right now.”
The others couldn’t really see what I was doing, but they could hear it. And I felt Quentin staring at me as I broke the next one. “Can you … get us out of here?” he said.
Christ. That was one of the reasons I’d submitted to all that torture in the first place — so I could find the innocent people and save them. But my Fae nature didn’t want that now. It wanted to smash and fight, and leave the weak here to fend for themselves.
So now I had to try fighting that part of myself, too. I refused to let anyone use me. Not even my own dark half.
Just now, though, it was winning.
Winifred must’ve sensed my reluctance to agree, because she spoke up. “If you get out of that cell, you’ll never make it past the prison doors,” she said.
I grunted as I shattered an arm chain. “Yes, I will. I can handle two guards.”
“Can you handle twenty? Because that’s how many came with me, and they’re waiting just outside the main doors.”
Damn. There was a chance I could do it, with all the power surging through me right now. But even the cold sliver of humanity I could still feel didn’t want to, and it would definitely drain the rest of my spark. “Probably not,” I said.
Chains clanked as Winifred shifted her position. “I know another way out. A back way,” she said. “Gideon, I know what’s happening. I can help you stop him.”
“Fine.” I broke the last chain. No need to ask who him was. “I’ll bring you with me.”
“You’ll have to bring all of us, or I won’t show you.”
I held back a groan and told myself I wanted to save them. Even if I didn’t feel it right this second. So I’d do what she said.
Until I could get myself back, Winifred would have to be my Jiminy Cricket.
CHAPTER 19
The lock on the cell door proved stronger than the chains. I had to burn through more of my spark than I wanted to bash it open.
And the tremendous crash of the door slamming against the bars brought instant running feet.
“Not a word,” I whispered harshly as I crossed the space, pressing against the wall to one side against the cell block entrance. “I’ve got this.”
I took the silence from the rest of them as assent.
The guards rushed in, one after the other, and stopped short to stare at the ruined door, the empty cell. “Where is he?” the one in front sputtered as he stalked toward Quentin’s cell. “Who did that? Was it you, witch?”
I moved silently to block the entrance, their only way out, and took a quick assessment. Both were in uniforms almost like the constable’s. Armed with one gun and one club each. Even if they shot me, I’d survive.
The one in back silently scanned the room. He must’ve spotted me from the corner of his eye, because he did a double-take and whirled around. “There!” he called.
I grinned coldly. “One of you two assholes better have the keys.”
At first I thought they were well trained. Instead of trading barbs with me, they broke apart and rushed me from two directions, going for their weapons.
Except they pulled the clubs instead of the guns. They must’ve gotten the memo about not killing me.
That was a fatally stupid mistake.
I faced the one who’d seen me first. Went toward him. When he swung, I moved aside, grabbed his head and twisted.
The sharp crack of his neck breaking coincided with the second one’s baton crashing down between my shoulders. I dropped, sprang back up and turned on him.
He barely had time to register that his partner was already dead before he met the same fate.
“Keys,” I muttered, bending to search the still-warm bodies. “Where the fuck are they?”
A tuneless, strangled sound drifted in the silence. “You killed my deputies,” Quentin said. “Like a couple of kittens.”
“Well, your deputies should’ve used their heads. And their guns.” I rolled contestant number one over and heard something jingle. There. A ring of old-fashioned keys threaded through a belt loop. One hard tug freed them.
“He didn’t, Quentin,” Winifred called in a soothing tone. “Those weren’t your deputies. They weren’t even humans, really.”
I cringed inwardly and straightened with the keys. “Yes they were,” I said. “Just not the humans you thought.”
She stared at me. “Gideon, the copies aren’t human.”
For some reason, Winifred’s insistence pissed me off. “Well, they’re not goddamned androids,” I spat. “They feel. They bleed. They’re—”
“Soulless.”
I frowned and stared back. “What?”
“They have no souls,” she said. “Malphas created them as extensions of himself. In a way, they’re all Malphas. But demons don’t have souls, so their creations don’t either.”
Holy shit. That must’ve been why I got nothing from the dead woman at the cottage. She really didn’t have a soul for me to speak to.
“I told you I know what’s going on.” Winifred smiled. “Now, if you could move a little faster with those keys, before someone outside decides to come in here and check on things?”
“Oh. Right.”
I headed for Quentin’s cell and tried keys in the door until one of them worked. “Here,” I said, opening the door to toss him the key ring. “Get those chains off, and then let the other two out. I have to check on something before we go.”
I’d almost reached the corridor when Winifred said, “You can’t go out that way.”
“I’m not,” I said. “There’s another cell block. I need to—”
“Don�
�t.”
Something in her tone made me stop. Something I really didn’t want to recognize. “I’m looking for a woman,” I said carefully. “Her copy brought me here. It had to be her copy.”
“Calla Frost.”
The sound of her name shivered down my spine. “Yes. The real her,” I said. “She’s not in here, so she must be in the other cell block.”
Winifred let out a shuddering breath. “Gideon…”
“No.” I closed my eyes. Deep down, I knew — but I wasn’t going to accept it. Not now.
I turned back into the block and took a few unsteady steps. “I’ll come back for her,” I said. “We’ll stop this bastard, and I’ll come back. She’s tough. She’ll be fine.”
Even as I spoke, my heart knew the lie.
CHAPTER 20
Winifred’s back way out was through a stone wall.
Maybe not literally, but it looked that way. It was a natural tunnel eroded into the cliffs. The entrance was actually in the cell block. But because of its jagged shape, the black stone, and the general darkness in the prison cave, it was impossible to find unless you already knew it was there.
Or unless you happened to wedge yourself in the corner between the right-hand and the back rows of cages for some reason, and then you happened to lean on the wall at just the right spot and fall through it.
I’d used more of my spark to break the witch collar, and I was feeling slightly more human. Not quite enough for outright panic. But I knew, with an analytical sense of dread, that the odds were not in our favor. Even if we somehow got back to church and through the mirror gate, there were a lot of enemies waiting on the other side. And at least one demon.
Wasn’t sure about the rest of these people, but personally, I had no idea how to kill a demon.
We made a glum procession in the tunnel. Winifred and Quentin carried torches, with her leading the way and him bringing up the back. I was just behind Winifred, followed by Pastor Lennox, who’d had to be threatened out of his cell. He’d wanted nothing to do with this. I couldn’t blame him, really.
Prison of Horrors (The DeathSpeaker Codex Book 6) Page 7