Her eyes lit up with delight as she leaned close, clamping my face tight. “Oh, my poor darling,” she said, her voice tolerant. “I am much worse than the rest of them.” She laughed like a spoiled child, then looked me up and down, her eyes dancing. “I’m going to have such fun with you! So naïve and innocent. So strong and defiant. You still think you can escape, don’t you? Don’t you?” She released me and stood upright, with another laugh that sent chills up the back of my neck.
Simonet’s head came into view. He stared down at me, studying my expression, my eyes, my fidgeting starts. “No longer,” he said, “She knows she’s beaten. She’s simply frightened now.”
“Simply frightened?” DuChard pressed. “Is that all?”
“Terrified,” Simonet replied without emotion. Then he stepped away from view.
“What have you done with Claudette?” I demanded. Partly because I wanted to know. Partly because I wanted to divert their attention from me for a moment.
Madame Strineau appeared above me again, lowering her chin with a wicked smile. “Don’t worry about Claudette. She’s one of us.”
I felt my blood boiling. “No, she’s not,” I said through clenched teeth. “You’re lying.”
“She will be, eventually. For now, she’s being trained. Just like I was, when I was little.”
My throat went dry.
“Yes, Helena. I grew up in the order. Even before they were Lycanthru.” She leaned closer, her eyes shining into mine. “When she’s an adult, Claudette will be just like me.”
I tugged against the tight straps, succeeding only in straining my wrists. “Let her go! She’s just a child!”
Madame Strineau laughed and stood upright. “That’s what makes her so special, dear. The same thing that made me so special, when my father started bringing me to meetings. The more innocent the vessel, the greater power we siphon from our ceremonies.” She brushed my hair back from my forehead. Then locked her fingers around my cheeks again. “Don’t worry about yourself, either, dear. You’ll be one of us, too. Once you realize how foolish it was to resist. Once you learn that serving Lord DuChard is the only way for you to survive.” Her eyes narrowed like the slits of a cat. “Forget what you were, Helena. Your old life is gone forever. This is your home now.”
I bucked against the table, knowing I couldn’t pull myself free of my bonds or even her grip. I only wanted to put up enough of a fight to make her choose to let go, which she did with a smug grin.
She turned to the table of sharp instruments, surveying the collection. “I was eight years old when my father first brought me to his secret meetings in the order. When I turned twelve, they started applying different forms of torture in their rituals. I came to enjoy some of it, as I grew older. Some of it, I hated.” She turned toward me with the pruning scissors, a gleam in her eyes. “But now, I can share the pain I experienced with unruly young girls like you.”
She stepped forward. I tensed and pressed against the board as if I could escape through it.
She approached slowly, letting me see the scissors. Letting me see her excitement. My thighs and forearms started to buck against the table.
She gripped my face tighter than before. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t turn away from her gleaming expression behind the tiny shears opening beneath my nose. “Time for some new scars, my dear.”
I twisted and pulled, locked in her grip as she brought the scissors nearer, nearer to my nostrils.
“Stop,” DuChard said casually. “Have you forgotten what I instructed?”
Madame Strineau didn’t let go. Didn’t lower the scissors. She just locked her eyes with mine. “Just a few cuts,” she said. “To match the ones she already has.”
“Frighten her all you like, but I want her in one piece,” DuChard commanded. “For tomorrow night.”
Madame Strineau finally withdrew the shears, fuming. “Yes, my lord,” she said.
DuChard nodded as I gasped for breath. “That’s better,” he said. “I am afraid I cannot stay.”
“What?” Madame Strineau asked. “You just arrived.”
He grinned. “I have a parish to run. It would hardly seem right for a priest to be absent on a Sunday morning. I only need to put in an appearance and explain to Frayne Leóne that these recent events have convinced me that it’s time I left and allowed Father Vestille to continue meeting the community’s spiritual needs. Then I’ll return to help oversee Helena’s treatment.” He smiled down at me. “You remember Monsieur Leóne, don’t you, Helena? The easily led father of your former love?” His chin rose, as if he was struck with a sudden thought. “We should invite young Pierre here soon, so you won’t be so lonely.”
I stiffened.
“You would like that, wouldn’t you, child? We’ll let Pierre share your room with you.” He leaned so close I could smell the stench of his breath. “Then you can watch us torture him.”
Simonet now over me, narrowing his eyes. “Now that does frighten her.”
“Leave Pierre alone,” I said, my chest tight. “He has nothing to do with this.”
“Of course not,” DuChard said in a soothing voice. “But torturing him will torture you. So we must bring him. I’ll arrange it as soon as things settle down in La Rue Sauvage. Then, over time, we can bring in your other friends, one by one. Father Vestille, Gerard Touraine, Pierre’s parents. Anyone who might help teach you to behave. For now, I’ll leave that to Madame Strineau.” He stepped to the door with Simonet close behind. He turned back to Madame Strineau once more before leaving. “I greatly look forward to watching Helena tomorrow night.”
“I’ll see that she’s rested by then,” Madame Strineau said, moving close to me as the door shut with a resounding ring. She held up a pair of giant iron forceps. They looked large enough to crack a bull’s skull open.
“Very well,” she said. “I’ll leave no marks. Yet. You already have enough, don’t you?”
She stroked the scars on my face. I tensed but didn’t pull away this time, conserving my strength. She straightened, taking the giant forceps in both hands. “But there are many ways to punish you without breaking any bones or skin.”
She nestled the pads of the forceps on either side of my thigh.
And squeezed.
I grit my teeth as the steel tightened on my flesh. As the pressure increased, I began to shake, struggling to wrench my leg free. I beat my head against the board, clenching my fists as I groaned.
Still, she pressed harder, until I screamed.
When she finally released me, I felt as though my leg was on fire.
“How does that feel, dear?”
I hung my head, exhausted from the pain and pressure.
She turned back to the dinner plate on her instrument table and seized the leg with a sudden savageness. Biting into it, her teeth ripped the meat from the bone as if she was a rabid dog. She grinned. “I do love a good lamb.”
She wiped her mouth with a small clean rag from the table, then returned to me. “I’ll be sad when our lessons come to an end. When your suffering is complete and you finally surrender to your fate. Fortunately, you are a stubborn student. You won’t be broken for many years to come.” She lifted the forceps to my eyes, clicking them open and shut. Open and shut. “Many delicious years.”
I steadied my nerves, clenching my teeth. “Unless I decide to leave early.”
She stared at me a moment, looking dumbfounded. Then she threw her head back with laughter. “I love all the ways you amuse me, Helena. Now, you’ll find there are many soft spots on your flesh that don’t like intense pressure. Let’s spend tonight finding out what you like least.”
She closed the forceps around my other thigh.
37.
Madame Strineau spent an hour or more working on me. Tightening the forceps around my thighs and my calves, then on my forearms, shoulders, breasts, belly, and ribcage. She even closed it on my face, applying just enough pressure to make me groan, without taking the chance of break
ing my jaw.
“You’re so lucky, Helena,” she said , fastening the forceps around my waist. “I really want to start cutting you tonight. To watch you try to be brave with the razor as it comes closer to your cheeks. Or wherever I feel like cutting you. To watch you squirm and writhe as the blade cuts into your skin, deeper and deeper.”
She tightened the clamps, cinching my waist until I started to gasp.
“But I can wait,” she said, continuing to apply steadily mounting pressure. “If Lord DuChard wants you intact for tomorrow night, I can’t argue with that.”
The iron forceps squeezed tighter, tighter. Madame Strineau seemed determined to pinch my stomach tight enough to surround my entire waist with the clamps.
“But after tomorrow, you’re mine,” she threatened. She turned to the torture instruments strewn across the oak table, picking up a tray filled with various small knives and scalpels. She set her instruments on my stomach, making me her work bench. I shook them off, letting them clatter to the stone floor.
She snarled, bending to the floor and rising in an instant, a gleaming scalpel in her fist. Gripping my cheeks, she brought its sharp edge against the bridge of my nose, right between my eyes. “Clumsy of you, Helena,” she said in a violent whisper.
I froze as the blade scraped delicately across my skin, tracing the line of my center scar, over my nose and down my right cheek, pausing where it ended.
She bore her teeth. “Now hold still, my sweet. Don’t distract your new mistress while she’s working.”
I inhaled slowly through my nose. This time, I kept still as she bent down to retrieve her instruments. Why anger her further when nothing would come of it? I needed a better way to resist, a smarter way. There had to be a way. Help me, Lord!
Madame Strineau set the tray back on my stomach, and I resisted the urge to shake if off me again. The glint left her eyes as she studied her display. “Of course, Lord DuChard may choose to wait longer to make you mine.” Her voice grew distant, as though she were now talking to herself. She shrugged off her concerns and smiled cruelly at me. “No matter. If he makes me wait too long for you – well, I’ll have to persuade him to give you up.” She cupped my cheek. I tried to pull away but she held me firmly in place, grinning like a savage cat. “You see, Helena, men hold all the power in this world. All of it. Until a clever woman seduces them and takes it all away. All I need is a week of private encounters with Lord DuChard to convince him to release you to me. Then we can play.”
I tugged again at the leather straps fastened around my wrists and ankles. I knew it was pointless, but I couldn’t help the attempt to pry myself from the table as a reflex. The same sort of involuntary reaction that now made me shrink away from Madame Strineau as she bent closer to my face and grinned like a mischievous cat.
She stroked my cheek. I flinched, trying to edge away from her touch. “Ready to begin, my little dolly?” she asked in a saccharine voice. She stepped to the side of the table and bent below it, adjusting something I couldn’t see. “Let’s have you upright for your first treatment.”
The table tilted, angling my feet down. The rest of the room came into view as my head and hands rose upward, almost to a standing position. I saw the thick door where DuChard and Simonet had exited, where their steps echoed down the asylum’s outer corridor.
“I’ve been longing for this time with you, Helena. For many reasons.” Madame Strineau’s voice adopted a harder edge, behind the singsong quality. “Do you remember those men I was speaking with in the alley, when you thought you were rescuing me? The ones you killed? They were actually lovers of mine.”
I felt my body tense, hanging from the straps.
“The one who spoke to you? His name was Gustav. A lover I was especially fond of.”
I heard her slam something into place, like an iron lock, and my wrists were pulled tight. I gasped.
I was on a rack.
“I thought Monsieur Strineau was your husband,” I said, trying not to panic.
“He is. At times. And in name and property,” Madame Strineau said, striding in front of me. “But being one of the only women in the order, I have many lovers.”
I clenched my jaw. “Not so many anymore.”
Her eyes popped. She slapped me hard. Stars spiraled before my eyes, pain ringing through my skull.
“You’re going to learn your place, Helena, starting tonight.” She seized my cheeks again, forcing me to meet her wild eyes. “Are you frightened, my dear? Do you want your mother here, to comfort you? Oh, that’s right. You don’t have a mother anymore. Do you, Helena?”
I shook in her grip, desperate to free myself. Not only to escape, but also to slap her back with all my strength.
“Don’t worry,” she cooed, leaning close. “I’ll be your Mama, from now on. You’ll learn to come to me for comfort. For relief from the pain. And I’ll take care of all your needs. And when you’re bad – like you have been – I’ll see that you’re punished.”
I struggled to pull away, but she held my face tight to show me how helpless I was. Her other hand caressed my face, her fingers tracing the lines of my triple scars. “I think we can widen these a little, don’t you?”
My biceps quivered as I struggled to move.
She finally released me and moved to a window that I hadn’t noticed before. She opened its shutter, letting in some moonlight, then crossed back to the other table. She stared at the assortment of sharp metal tools spread across it. “So many choices,” she said. “But sometimes, it’s better to do things by hand, don’t you think?” She selected one of several vials from a container and uncorked it, releasing its sulfurous odor, and drank it. She set the vial aside and turned back to me, untying the sash around her waist. She unfastened the collar of her flowing dress and it split down the front. She cast it off her shoulders to fall to the floor, revealing her naked body. “You don’t mind if I change in front of you, do you?”
Her grin widened, along with her jaw. Her limbs grew longer, her hands and feet extending to bizarre proportions. Her eyes enlarged, turning yellow, as auburn hair covered her body. I fought against the straps as her transformation continued, until she became the same looming wolf that knocked me unconscious outside the Lycanthru cave.
She lifted her canine head in an image of rapture, then focused on me once more. “That feels better,” she said in a growl.
She examined her claws and regarded me. “Don’t worry, dear. I won’t do any serious damage for your first night. I can’t have you limping into the Arena, dripping blood. So I’ll be very gentle for your initiation to your new home.”
She caressed my cheek once more as I tried to angle my head away.
Then she slapped me again, twice, with her heavy paw. She punched my stomach, my thighs, my arms and chest. She tugged on my hair as her jaws closed around my neck. I nearly screamed, expecting her to bite me. She nipped at me, closing her fangs enough for me to feel them before she backed away, giggling. Only to nip again at my arms and legs and ribs. To scrape me with her claws, just enough to feel their sting without leaving any mark. To give me a taste of what would come after tonight, and every night afterward.
I shook in the straps, struggling to break free, to fight back, as she continued to beat and bite and scratch at me. My mind raced as my vision blurred. I saw fleeting images of Madame Strineau, the wolf, taunting and tormenting me, mixed with flashes of other wolves charging at me in the forest, eager to devour me. Flashes of the wolves that surrounded me in the barn a few months ago, while I stood tied between two pillars for their amusement. Flashes of Jacque Denue and his friends throwing endless punches at me when I was a child, unable to defend myself, unable to stop them. Flashes of my hero, Francois Revelier, teaching me to fight, urging me to stand up against them. But now my hands were tied. I was helpless to stop them. Helpless!
“Stop!” I cried from somewhere deep inside, my voice sounding small and faraway. “Please, stop!”
The blows en
ded, leaving only the lingering echo of pain as I hung from my wrists like a limp doll.
“Well, well,” Madame Strineau said. “Not so fearsome anymore, are we?”
My head hung over my aching chest as I struggled for breath. I couldn’t even raise it.
She lifted my chin for me. I squinted at her, tears streaming down my cheeks.
“Such a disappointment,” she said. “This must be such a shock for you, Helena. You always imagined you could defeat us, instead of becoming my little toy. Didn’t you?”
I swallowed, working to keep the bile from rising in my throat.
“No matter. You have a busy day tomorrow, and we have the rest of our lives to play. Why don’t you get some sleep?”
There must be a way out of here, I thought. Lord, you have to rescue me somehow. To stop DuChard. To save Pierre and Father Vestille and everyone in La Rue Sauvage. Even if I die here, help someone figure this out and stop DuChard. Show someone the Lycanthru are coming! Show them I didn’t go mad!
“Don’t fret, Helena,” Madame Strineau said. “You’ll get your strength back. After that, you’ll be my favorite inmate.” She kissed my forehead with her wolf jaws, then moved to the side of the table and adjusted it, angling me back to a prone position. I stared at the stone ceiling, breathless. Madame Strineau came back into view, grinning. “Until tomorrow, then. Pleasant dreams, Helena.”
Her paw struck hard on my gut once more, wrenching my body as I tugged against the straps. Then she clubbed the side of my face and I fell into blackness.
38.
“Wake up, dear.” Someone was shaking my arms, pushing against my ribs. I couldn’t open my eyes.
“I said, ‘Wake up!’”
Something yanked my hair and my eyes popped wide. I saw the stone ceiling in broad daylight, saw Madame Strineau, no longer a wolf, with her occasional husband, Monsieur Strineau, looming over me. Every nerve in my body seized up as I remembered where I was. Strapped to a table in a secret room within Asile de DeSarte.
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