Pleasure: The Shadowdwellers

by Jacquelyn Frank

  As Guin fought on, he was aware that there could be a limitless supply of these minions that attacked them. But after he hamstrung the second attacker, he saw Magnus reach for the power of the ’scape around them, slamming the room with a hard impact of force.

  “Now the room is sealed off. Nothing new can generate,” the priest called as he turned to gut another foe.

  “Can’t you just dissolve all of this?” Guin demanded. “Just free her and—”

  “If it were that easy, would I need you?” the other man barked.

  Guin didn’t hold it against him. He’d be more than a little testy if their roles were reversed.

  Within a few minutes they were fairly certain they’d found the last of the invisible fighters. Now they were twice as cautious as they advanced to Dae. When they reached her without any further fighting, Guin wasn’t so sure he could be relieved. Magnus hurried to touch her, his hand reaching to make contact with her face. Pinned as tightly as she was, Guin still saw the minute shake of her head. He shot out a hand to stop Magnus from touching her, winning himself a backlash of temper as the priest angrily jerked free of his grasp.

  “What?” Magnus demanded.

  “Don’t touch her. She’s a trap and she knows it. Not just the room but Dae herself.”

  “This isn’t right! Dae is asleep. Dreamscape can’t really hurt her unless she is in Fade. Any pain she suffers here will disappear once she wakes up! To her it’s all a damn dream!”

  “But it isn’t a dream to us, and you know as well as I do that she can be hurt here. Maybe not her physical body, but in her mind she can carry pain into her waking world. Aren’t you the one who recently hunted that dream rapist, the one who attacked women here in the ’scape so brutally that it left them nearly comatose with shock in Realscape after they awoke?”

  “Yes,” Magnus affirmed hoarsely.

  Guin knew it was fear for Daenaira that made Magnus careless. So did Magnus, for that matter. The bodyguard could see the frustration written all over the priest because they both realized that he knew better and they both knew that Guin’s knowledge of Dreamscape was rudimentary to a man like Magnus.

  Together the men closely examined Dae’s rigging without touching it or her. It was Magnus who recognized the hurish technology in the cuffs binding her wrists and the collar at her throat. The hurish was a method for controlling animals. It gave off an electrical charge that normally just warned a creature away from what it was doing. Both men realized that these would not give off gentle shocks. And if the shock were fierce enough or gave off light of any kind, Daenaira could be permanently gutted of her dreaming self as she burned away and her body in Realscape would be forever in the state it was now in. Not dead, but definitely damaged beyond healing as her mind was destroyed.

  “How do we get these off her?”

  “They’re real, not dream created. Acadian must have brought them over into Fade. They will do her real harm. We need to figure out how to cut the charge without hurting her. Hey,” Magnus said softly as he tipped his head back to see Daenaira’s wide and furious eyes. “I’m here now, baby. We’ll get you out of this.”

  Dae was gagged, but Magnus did not need to hear her voice to know her desires. Their minds could speak to each other in Realscape, but here they were limited by being in two different physical and spiritual states. Still, just seeing the look in her eyes made him smile up at her. He knew she was incredibly pissed off and that Acadian was asking for a beat-down once this was all over and Daenaira got her hands on her. But outside of that he could see the fear in her eyes, and it choked his heart to see it. Dae was one of the most fearless women he knew, and to see her so terrified for their safety tore him apart.

  “Maybe if we ground her?” Guin suggested.

  “I’ve tried cutting these off her before. It’s how they control slaves sometimes and…Acadian probably took the idea from Daenaira’s dream imagery. Dae was kept in hurish for years. When I cut them off her, the feedback shot through us both. I can’t think of another way to do this.”

  “And we’re running out of time. You should have said something to Malaya. She would have stretched out the Senate session as long as she could.”

  “I’m sorry,” Magnus said softly, speaking up to his wife. “I wasn’t thinking.”

  Dae’s eyes changed, gentling in expression as they gleamed with unshed tears. She shook her head in that slight negation again, trying to absolve him of any blame.

  “Wait…” Guin moved around so he could see Dae’s face. “K’yan,” he addressed her formally, “close your eyes for yes and leave them open for no, okay?”

  She purposefully closed her eyes.

  “If we touch you it will set off the hurish, correct?”

  Yes.

  “But you don’t feel it now?”

  No.

  Guin turned to Magnus. “How does technology know the difference between her and us? She moves, has weight and warmth, and the tech isn’t very smart. I mean, it’s not complicated. It needs a…a mechanism to set it off.” He struggled to think for a moment, studying her rigging carefully. “Us. Damn it, we’re the mechanism. As long as we are standing on the floor, we’ll create a closed circuit between the hurish and its trigger if we connect to the rigging. We have to get off the floor in order to free her.”

  “How are we supposed to do that?” Magnus asked with a dark frown.

  “How secure do these chains look to you?”

  “Secure enough to make this take too long!” Magnus was losing control of his patience, fear winning him over slowly.

  “Enough to hold my weight?”

  “But we can’t—”

  Guin wasn’t going to argue with Magnus about it. There was a significant chance he would hurt Dae, but a few moments of pain were better than the alternative. Guin reached to drop off his weapons belt, the sword sheath promising to get in his way. As it fell away from him he kicked off the floor in a strong standing leap, his feet leaving the ground as his hands caught hard onto the chain binding her left wrist. Dae immediately began to scream behind her gag as his added weight pulled her hard in a swing to one side.

  “Drenna, Guin, you’re hurting her!”

  “But we’re not being shocked,” he noted as he drew his legs up to cling to the chain and stopped moving for a moment to settle some of the swinging pull on Dae. But not for long, because he was aware that a lot of his weight was pulling on her shoulder joint and it wouldn’t take much to rip her arm out. He quickly shinnied up the chain until he reached the ring it was fed through. There was a small outcropping on the wall and he balanced on it as he examined the ring. If he unlocked each chain, they would fall to the floor and complete the circuit to the hurish. Guin was now convinced that such a shock was likely designed to be strong enough to kill Dae. It would suit Acadian’s twisted sense of torture to make Magnus realize that he had been the mechanism for killing his love.

  He looked at Dae and suddenly had an idea. Hooking back on to the chain, he slid down it in the opposite direction, heading directly for the strung-up handmaiden and wincing as his slowly increasing weight was taken off the wall connection and transferred to her wrist and shoulder joints.

  “Hang on, Dae. I know it hurts, but I can get you out of here.”

  When he finally reached her, he quickly moved to climb her bare body. She was in a sweat from pain and strain, making her a bit slippery to hold on to, but eventually he was standing against her, his boots braced in her underarms and the weight of his torso against her leg as he reached and pulled the note bound around her waist off with a single tug. He wanted to ignore the damned thing, but if it held a riddle that warned him of the caution he should take, it would be imprudent to disregard it cavalierly when it could cost Dae her life. Pulling the ribbon free with his teeth, he quickly flipped open the card and read it with haste.

  Oh, do come save her, this maiden in such perilous distress;

  But ask yourself this, steady savior, who
now watches over your mistress?

  When Senate ends so close I’ll be, and you without any but this clue;

  So waste your time setting this one free, whilst my dagger runs Malaya through.

  Guin didn’t have the luxury to react to the obvious meaning in the notice, but his thoughts were reeling in search of grounding as he reached for the chain around Daenaira’s ankle. It was clear Acadian had known exactly who Magnus would turn to for help. Who else was there, really? The aged penance priest? Or maybe the newly trained whelp? No. And Magnus would never risk Trace or Tristan against this fiend. He would not take Killian when Guin was there to be had. If faced between Xenia and Guin for choices, Magnus would naturally choose the warrior he was most familiar with and had fought with in the past. Acadian knew them well enough to know all of this, and so had designed a punishment for Dae and Magnus while working in a way to torment Guin as well.

  Acadian knew it simply wasn’t in him to ignore any threat to Malaya, no matter how likely or unlikely its apparent success. Guin took a breath and pushed aside the fear for her that threatened to do to him what seeing Dae like this was doing to Magnus. Once he was settled in his mind, he moved as carefully as he could, trying not to swing Daenaira or put his significant weight anywhere that would break a bone or tear her apart. Regardless of his care, he knew well enough how much he weighed. Dae was crying out in pain behind her gag, but there was no other choice. It was the only way.

  Guin reached into his back pocket, the black leather packet he always kept there exactly what was needed. He hadn’t been an assassin for many decades, but he’d never stopped carrying the tools of the trade. Even his blades were still dusted black as night to hide their presence in the shadows. But these tools were crucial, despite not being deadly. The lock picks had gotten him into every lock that had ever stood in his way, and the locks on the chains would be no different. It was a trick getting to them like this, but a trick he could easily pull off if he took his time and concentrated. It was like riding a bike. He never forgot.

  The cuffs on her ankles were not hurish, so he wasn’t afraid to disconnect them. Just before he felt that final click against the pick, he shifted his weight and grabbed hold of her opposite leg. Just the same, when the chain released, her whole body twisted with the freedom and he could see blood start to run up her leg from the stress of their weight on the point of the ankle cuff. She had stopped screaming out, and he wasn’t certain if she was still conscious. Her hair and neck pinned to the wall had to be strangling her. He wasted no time grabbing the remaining ankle chain and using it to bear his weight as he reached for her left wrist. It was awkward and difficult, but he would make it work whatever it took. The order that he did this in was crucial. Releasing both feet would break her neck as she was hung from her hair and throat. Both wrists would give him no foothold for reaching her ankles. After this wrist she would be supported by her right wrist, her left ankle, and her neck. He would then unfasten her neck collar and cut her hair free. Releasing the last wrist would send them both swinging hard and fast into the far wall, but she would still be off the floor. It would give him the time he needed to examine the hurish and disengage them.

  He was relieved to see the hurish were independent of the chains that bound her. He had suspected as much when he’d seen them from his position below her earlier. He carefully went through the order of locks, pulling his dagger and slicing off her long braid. Luckily her hair would be intact when she awoke. Had she been in Fade instead of dreaming, it would have been another matter.

  When they went flying toward the wall, Guin did his best to turn his body to bear the brunt of the impact. Physics said it was unfeasible to protect her completely, though. He kept a handhold on the chain, letting it take all his weight as he reached for her hand and pulled her up from her inverted position. She grabbed the chain and held on, in spite of cruelly damaged wrists that made him feel guilty even though he knew she wouldn’t be hurt by anything but the memory of this in Realscape. He held her against him, his strength a good support as he examined the collar that bound her.

  “Just hold on to me, K’yan,” he said softly to her, laying her shorn head against his chest so he could see the back of her neck and the lock on the collar. He was actually glad for her cut-away hair. This whole episode had been a cruel form of acrobatics, and though she was built strong and sturdy as all their women were, he knew his weight had punished her fiercely. Now that she could rest her weight on him, he was glad to take it and didn’t want anything to make it any harder on either of them.

  Unfortunately, he had been stabbed in his off side. That meant holding them to the chain by his injured side as he worked the collar with his dominant hand. He could feel blood saturating his clothing as the wound was torn open more and more by their situated weight.

  “Magnus, you need to catch these in something as I drop them or I’m betting they will conduct through the floor. They should be made inert by disconnecting them, but I’m not willing to take the chance.”

  Magnus nodded and wasted no time in stripping off his tunic, making a sack out of it quickly.

  “Okay, Dae,” Guin muttered softly, “I think I see it. Just hang on to me and cross your fingers.”

  She met his eyes and nodded once firmly. He realized she was letting him know that she was prepared for either outcome. She knew that if they were shocked, it was very likely he would drop her and once she hit the floor she would be completely fried, along with Magnus…and Guin himself, if he didn’t hold on.

  But it didn’t surprise him when the collar clicked open without so much as a spark. He’d gotten through much tougher secured objects than this. He pulled the open collar off and dropped it to Magnus. The wristlets followed quickly after, and as soon as his tools were away he stripped off Daenaira’s gag and held on to her tightly as he measured the distance to the floor with a critical eye.

  “She came to me as Helene,” Dae rasped softly in his ear, “then Angelique…and then Malaya. I don’t know who she really is. I couldn’t see what was real!”

  “I know,” he soothed her, his mind racing as he fast-forwarded Malaya’s schedule to after the Senate session closed. Gods, Malaya had a meeting with Helene and the kids’ committee right after session. Wasn’t Angelique on that committee? Or no? How many female Senators would there be there, and which of them bore the dagger of threat? Would Killian be alert enough? Would he protect Malaya?

  This was a trick to punish Magnus and Dae, but also to keep both men busy while Acadian was finding ways to meet in private with the Chancellor and get close enough to do her harm.

  “She knew Magnus would choose me to help him,” he uttered. “Bituth amec, I’ll kill the bitch ten times over if she touches Malaya.”

  Now he had to hurry.

  Ignoring the damage it would do to his hand, he released his grip on the chain and slid them rapidly to the end of it, as close to the floor as he could manage. It tore up and blistered his hand to do it, but he didn’t care. He dropped Daenaira into Magnus’s waiting arms, then hit the floor himself. Grabbing his weapons, he hurried to the vortex with the others.

  “Give me that,” Guin demanded of Magnus. As they stepped through the vortex, Guin threw the hurish behind them onto the floor. If the connection activated them, then maybe Acadian would step into her own trap. But he knew she wouldn’t really be coming there after the session. She would be on her way to toy with Malaya. If she had lied about that, and he hoped it was a lie, perhaps when they returned they would find she had lied about other things as well.

  Magnus took his emptied tunic and dropped it over Dae. She clung to him in a way that was unfamiliar to her personality, the ordeal she’d suffered leaving her badly injured and weak. Magnus knew it was just her dream self, and now that she was freed she would be able to awaken, but they were both afraid of the same thing as he clasped Daenaira tightly.

  What would they find when they returned to Realscape?

  Magnus relucta
ntly let her go and he and Guin Unfaded into Shadowscape, then next into Realscape. They ended up in Temple in Sanctuary, their sudden appearance and dishevelment causing a stir among those who were there in prayer. They ignored the questions and attention and ran for Magnus’s rooms.

  The priest rushed into his room and he could tell instantly that something was very wrong. Healers and servants were everywhere, twice as many as when he had left.

  “What? What has happened?” he burst out, his fear and dread heavy and tangible as he pushed his way to his mate’s side.

  There was no describing the painful horror that diced into him when he saw Dae lying, eyes closed and body limp, in a bloodied bed. The vital fluid drenched the sheets between her legs, the clarity of its meaning making his head hum with nausea and grief. Ignoring servants who were trying to strip the bed and healers looking for access to her, Magnus climbed in next to Daenaira and gathered her close and tight to his chest. His grip stirred her, and she reached for him in silence.

  “I’m so sorry,” he rasped against her ear, his voice choked with obvious tears. “I had to choose you. I had to.”

  “It was the only choice,” she said. “There was no choice. Acadian said either way she would take the baby. I prayed she was lying to frighten me. I’m sorry I let her get to me so easily.” Dae choked on a sob. “I should have fought. I’m supposed to be able to fight! What good is my power if I can’t use it to save our baby?”

  Guin turned and walked away from the tableau of anguish Acadian had painted. As he strode out of Sanctuary he went faster and faster until he was running through the city.

  Chapter Nine

  Malaya hugged Senator Helene in greeting. The Senator was so sweet, her temperament so well suited to the pretty and youthful innocence of her round and pert features.

  “Helene, how good to see you.”