* * *
Unsurprisingly, the morning brought Caspian’s return. A portal sizzled into existence, dragging my fractured awareness back to the here-and-now. The floating ball of light whizzed through, dazzling my exhausted eyes, and Caspian followed.
He did not make the gesture I’d noticed other Fae use to close the portal, but it snapped shut behind him nonetheless. I forced my sluggish mind to think back over my unpleasant association with the man in front of me, connections slipping into place.
I ran my tongue over the roof of my mouth, testing whether I had enough saliva to speak. “Where’s your torture expert this morning, Golden Boy?” I rasped.
Caspian’s eyes took in the cracked water gourd lying at the base of the wall before returning to me with a look of utter contempt. I could imagine what he was seeing—muddy clothing, bruised jaw, red eyes, cracked lips.
“He’ll be along in a few minutes to pick up where we left off yesterday,” the Fae said. His lips twisted as though addressing me directly left a bad taste in his mouth. “I came ahead to explain what awaits you if you continue to resist Reefe’s attempts to scrive your magical core.”
I stared at him, willing myself not to break eye contact. “You can’t do magic, can you?” I asked in a hoarse voice. “Not the shiny, exciting kind, anyway. That wasn’t even your portal just now, was it?”
If not for the faint tightening at the edge of his jaw, I’d have thought he was ignoring my words completely.
“Today,” he continued, “we will not waste more time beating around the bush. The source of your foul energy is clear enough. I will find out what lies beneath the demon taint, if I have to tear pieces of you out by the roots one-by-one to do so.”
“But it won’t be you doing the tearing, now will it?” I shot back. “You have to bring in someone else to help with that part. What’s the deal? Did you spend too much time playing human on Earth, or something? Though that didn’t seem to stop Albigard from being a magical badass—”
Caspian stepped forward until he was looming over me. Idly, I wished for enough strength to swing a foot up and kick him in the nuts. Did Fae have testicles? I hoped I’d have a chance to find out before I died.
“Once your broken body has given up the last of its secrets, you will be taken away and euthanized like the misbegotten beast you are. I shall take great satisfaction in watching the surprise on your face as your decapitated head hits the ground and rolls away.”
I peered up at him, my weakness making me strangely numb to fear. “What did I ever do to piss on your cornflakes, Caspian? I mean... seriously.”
Caspian drew breath—to answer, or maybe to spit on me. I wasn’t sure. Before he could do either, though, the portal opened again and Fae Two stepped through, closing it behind him with a wave. I took some slight satisfaction in the fact that he looked like shit, at least for a Fae—way less unruffled and iridescent than his boss, for instance. Instead, he looked flustered and like he was in need of a good night’s sleep.
Caspian subsided, stepping away to address his underling instead. “Don’t bother binding it to the wall today,” he said. “I think the filth on the floor will do just fine for such a creature.”
Did the second Fae look a bit troubled at that, or was I just imagining things? It didn’t matter. A moment later, a wave of magic hit me, gluing me to the damp, chilly mud as effectively as I’d been pinned to the wall yesterday.
“I really, really hate this, you know,” I told the floating ball of light hovering above the ugly tableau the three of us made.
Next came the warding coils, and then, the pain. Caspian hadn’t been lying—Fae Two—or Reefe, or whatever he was called—went straight for the place in my pelvis that still ached from the previous day’s torture. The feeling yanked fresh screams from my throat, just as it had before. But even after the pitiful amount of rainwater I’d managed to lick up, I was still most of a day further along in the process of dying of thirst.
And I have to say, trying to scream while being physically unable to do more than wheeze and choke might just be the most horrible feeling a human being is capable of experiencing. Because while Caspian and his cronies considered me nothing more than a monstrous mistake, in my head, I was still just a human girl who’d been dragged headfirst into something far, far beyond her depth.
“We can keep this up all day if necessary, demonkin,” Caspian growled.
Fuck you, I mouthed silently... right before I passed out again.
* * *
I awoke alone. The sky above me was light rather than dark this time, though I couldn’t have said whether it was later on the same day or the following day. My vision was blurry, and trying to clear it somehow seemed like far too much work to be worthwhile.
For several minutes, I thought they must have left me magically bound to the floor, because my arms and legs didn’t respond when I thought about moving them. Then, I realized I really was just that battered and weak. With a concentrated effort, I lifted my head to look around the cell.
Empty. They hadn’t even left me bread and water this time.
Yeah, Zorah... wow. Way to go. You really showed them, didn’t you?
The snide inner voice was irrelevant, though. I couldn’t have moved from my position and sat up to eat or drink it anyway. The deeply buried human instinct that tells you when you’re about to die was chiming too late, too late, too late in a repetitive internal refrain.
I was done. I couldn’t fight anymore—not that fighting had gained me anything useful to this point. Idly, I wondered if Reefe had managed to succeed this time at whatever he was trying to do to me.
Then a portal opened, and a raspy groan emerged from my lips, unbidden.
No. I didn’t want to do this anymore.
Please, no more.
FOURTEEN
I FLINCHED BACKWARD WHEN a figure stepped out of the portal. When I blinked against the awful sandpapery feel of my eyelids, my vision eventually cleared enough to see that it wasn’t Caspian or his underling, and I relaxed marginally. I was still sprawled on the floor next to the rough wood of the wall, and I looked up from beneath the messy tangle of my hair with wary eyes. A second Fae joined the first—guards, I thought, although I didn’t recognize either of their faces.
“Get the thing on its feet and clean the filth off its clothes,” the first one muttered. “Mab’s garden, the stench it gives off is foul. Did we piss someone off to get these orders, or what?”
If I thought I’d have been able to manage more than a croak, I might’ve made some quip like, ‘Stench? Yeah, that tends to happen when you lock someone up inside a tree and torment them for days.’
“Her,” I rasped instead. “Not ‘it.’”
Fuck, why was I even bothering? What possible benefit did I expect to gain from the effort?
Indeed, the guards eyeballed me like I was stinking vermin that had just stood up and demanded voting rights. Neither of them responded, merely dragging me upright by the biceps.
It hurt every bit as much as I’d expected it to. How could muscles and joints throb with so much agony without tearing and shattering to pieces? I moaned, choking on the noise. Then the choking tore at my roiling stomach, making me retch. There wasn’t even enough moisture left inside me for bile to come up at this point.
“Try giving it the water,” said the second one. “See if that shuts it up.”
The other one removed one of the weird water-gourd things from a strap over his shoulder and uncorked it, thrusting the opening toward my mouth. I groaned again and clenched my eyes shut. Jesus. At what point had I gotten so thirsty that I could actually smell water when it was nearby?
I bit the inside of my cheek hard. There was some reason I shouldn’t drink this. It was important. Important enough that I’d dumped the last water they’d sent me onto the dirt floor. What was it? Why the hell had I done that instead of slaking my thirst?
Oh. Right.
Faerie food and faerie drink. Fa
erie gifts... accept them and you gave the faeries a way to control you... or something. I’d drunk Albigard’s mead, and now he could find me anywhere.
But did it really matter anymore? The Fae already controlled me. They already had me, and soon they would kill me—if I didn’t die of thirst before then. I could feel my mouth trying and failing to salivate at the prospect of drinking something. Eating something. The thought of that cool liquid sliding across my tongue and down my throat was like a siren song.
Only one thing held me back. What if Caspian had sent it? What if it was his gift? I swiped out weakly, fresh pain exploding through my body as I knocked the gourd out of the guard’s surprised grip. It hit the ground and splashed across our feet and lower legs.
“Animal!” he growled, and hit me across the face.
My head jerked sideways and the room swayed, but beyond that the impact barely registered amongst my body’s clamoring distress. Maybe I could absorb some of the water soaking my filthy jeans via osmosis. Or would that still count as consuming Fae drink?
“Enough,” said the other guard. “Let’s just deliver it before the Court like we’re supposed to. I can’t get away from it fast enough, honestly.”
Feeling’s mutual, asshole.
The guard holding me grunted. “Yeah. Filthy creature. Can you even imagine letting a demon fuck you? Much less carrying demon-spawn around for months and actually birthing it. Humans are so disgusting.”
God, I wanted to spit at them. I wanted to lift my chin and deliver a cutting verbal smackdown that would leave them smarting for days. I wanted to be a badass faerie-killing assassin and overpower them... take their weapons... leap through the open portal and fuck up every Fae standing between me and wherever they were keeping my father now.
Instead, I stood on shaky legs, my body trembling so hard it threatened to send me straight back down to the ground, feeling the burn behind my eyeballs that meant I’d be crying like a little bitch if I wasn’t too dehydrated to make tears.
“Go to hell,” I managed, more the shape of the words than an actual sound.
The second guard only made a sound of disgust. One of them muttered a new spell, and my damp, muddy clothing instantly dried, the dirt flaking away. Between them, the pair hauled me through the portal to whatever lay on the other side. And what lay on the other side was one of those big, official-looking buildings with plants and flowers choking the interior, like the place we’d met with the Recorder. It might’ve been the same building or a different one. With all the vines and leaves everywhere, it was impossible to tell.
I was dragged inside. A pair of double doors loomed in front of us, flanked by more stony faced guards. Their eyes flicked over me and the one on the right said, “You’re expected. Take the thing inside. They’re ready to begin.”
What few functioning brain cells I possessed were starting to fire intermittently. Maybe this was it. This looked like the kind of building in which you might sentence someone to be executed. Maybe I’d be out of Caspian’s reach soon.
Sudden worry pricked at me. I still didn’t know what had become of my father. He needed care. Medical care, psychological care. He needed to be on Earth, not this terrible and astonishing place inhabited by beautiful monsters. I had to pull myself together enough that I could at least speak. I needed to be able to ask what had happened to him... to beg for his freedom in exchange for my life, if the chance arose.
The doors swung open, but I still couldn’t do more than croak. My throat was as dry as the Sahara no matter how many times I tried to swallow.
The chamber beyond made me certain that I was right about where we were. Like so many things on Dhuinne, it was different in subtle ways from anything I was familiar with on Earth, while still clearly announcing its purpose. This was a courtroom. Or perhaps more accurately, a Court-room. If I was right, I had finally come face to face with the Fae Court.
The place was spectacular. As with so much of Dhuinne, it, too, was choked with living things, the invading plants almost appearing to move as they battled and strained to grow longer, lusher, more colorful than their neighbors. The room was delineated clearly into three zones. The far end was raised on a platform a couple of feet above the area inside the double doors. But the raised area was also divided down the middle, separating the left and right sides of the dais. Each side held a long wooden seating area like a judge’s bench.
An open area lay in front of the split dais. The guards hauled me toward it, passing pew-like seats on either side of the aisle we were traversing. The seats were mostly full from what I could see through all the leaves. The pews held a mix of people, while the raised sections at the front appeared segregated by sex—females on the right and males on the left.
My shoes fell soundlessly on more of the weird Fae moss—the blue-green of the natural carpet broken here and there by tiny white flowers poking through. I’d heard the low murmur of people talking amongst themselves when the doors first opened to admit my guards, but the chamber became very quiet the moment the Fae inside noticed my arrival.
The guards dumped me in the empty area at the base of the platform, and without their support, my knees crumpled immediately. At least the moss made for a soft landing, though I felt strangely bad about having crushed some of the little white flowers.
“The prisoner, as requested, Honored Ones,” said the guard on my left, as both bowed low.
One of the male Fae on the raised platform stood, looking down his nose at me. My heart stuttered and sped up as I recognized Caspian, dressed now in fine robes rather than the utilitarian clothing I’d grown used to seeing over the past couple of days.
“Why is the creature not restrained?” he demanded, contempt dripping from his words.
The female Fae in the centermost seat on that side of the dais spoke in a dry voice. “Perhaps because she is clearly too weakened to do anything, including stand up.”
I wasn’t sure if the undercurrent of amusement beneath the words irritated me or relieved me, but at least she hadn’t referred to me as an ‘it.’ I focused on her as best I could, hoping that the distraction would stop me from panicking over Caspian’s presence. She was as beautiful as Albigard and Caspian were handsome, with pale skin and threads of golden chain shaping her fiery red hair into an artful tumble of curls.
My nerves were just about at their breaking point after the last couple of days, but oddly, I didn’t seem to have the same instinctive aversion to the female Fae gathered on the right side of the platform as I did to the males I’d met.
A distant buzzing noise was overtaking my hearing again as my brief burst of adrenaline faded, rendering the conversation between Caspian and the woman a meaningless jumble of sounds. I craned around, trying to get a better read on the people seated in the lower part of the room.
The audience, I thought bitterly, picturing a bunch of seventeenth century peasants gathering to watch the casual entertainment of a witch trial. They weren’t all peasants, though—my eyes fell on Albigard sitting on one of the benches in the front row. His gaze flicked over me as though I was only of the barest interest to him.
I was way too far gone to try and figure out if there was any danger in letting the people here see us interacting, or if he just didn’t give a shit now that he’d delivered me into the Court’s hands. I stared at him fixedly for the space of several heartbeats, but his face was a smooth mask, mirror-like in its cool perfection.
I looked away when movement from the front pew on the other side of the aisle caught in my peripheral vision—a small, dark form. Distant surprise prickled at me as I recognized—of all things—the cat from the cottage where Dad was being kept. Or, at the very least, a nearly identical cat—black with a diamond-shaped patch of white on its chest, and slanted green eyes.
Of course, the presence of a cat in a courtroom might just be proof that I was finally losing it. Not really a stretch at this point, I supposed. Christ. Could this just be over soon, please?
Light flared behind me. I turned to face the dais again with a choked gasp of fear, as the glow of magic lit one of the red-haired woman’s hands. She flicked it toward me carelessly, but I was too weak to even attempt to scuttle out of its way like some pathetic insect.
The ball of light sank into my chest before I could do more than draw breath. The familiar itchiness crawled across me, but no pain followed. Instead, energy suffused my limbs. I swallowed, finally able to work up a bit of saliva—my throat clicking audibly as the buzzing, ringing noise in my ears subsided.
“—that better, demonkin?” the woman asked, raising a swept eyebrow at me.
“W-what did you do?” I rasped, climbing unsteadily to my feet.
The magic conveyed the same sense of artificial wellbeing that you sometimes got from heavy-duty painkillers—not the cheap over-the-counter stuff. The sense of your body being on borrowed time, feeling all right but not really all right.
“Nothing of import,” said the woman. “This would be a sad excuse for a Court if the subject were unable to speak and answer questions.”
“Thank you,” I said cautiously. “I think.”
Caspian narrowed his eyes. “I protest this waste of resources on a creature that should not exist in the first place.”
“Yes,” the woman replied. “You’ve made that quite clear, Caspian. However, while the Unseelie may run the overkeeps on Earth, the Seelie still have the final say on Dhuinne.”
Oh, good, I thought. Politics. Exactly what I needed today.
“So, is this like a trial, then?” I asked, trying to draw the woman out since it seemed like she was way less of a bigot than most of the other Fae I’d dealt with so far.
“No, demonkin,” she said. “What reason would we have to place you on trial? This is the meeting to determine our response to the treaty violation perpetrated by our enemies.”
“And what about me?” I tried. “I’m just as much a victim of this treaty violation as anyone else. More so, even.”
The Last Vampire- Complete series Box Set Page 29