Detached and in my world. I thought of the Morrigan and her haunting sort of madness. Had it been exacerbated by a phantom soul being tormented here?
"Have you used her?" I said, although I was terrified of the answer.
"Absolutely not," he said. " She is very much like your world's Star Trek merchandise."
He laughed at his own joke.
I ran my hand a hair's breadth away from the surface of the wall, not wanting to touch it because I didn't know what would happen to her if I did. I didn't want to risk whatever was here would stream out into the space and end up enduring some horrific tortures. Instead, I traced the veins of mercury along to the outskirts where they turned from arteries into veins and then into smaller branches that looked like cobwebs throughout the wall.
I guessed that whatever essence was in her body was here. I could see the bones that made up her skeleton and they were graceful and delicate.
"She's quite something," Lucifer said from behind me. "Although I still don't know how she would let herself be led here by a vampire. The lowliest of breeds," he said with a curled lip.
He looked at me for a long time. "She should have known better."
"Because she's a fate?" I said.
A slow smile spread across his face. "The fate," he corrected, and his pride was evident in his voice. Like any collector he was eager to talk about his acquisitions.
"You said you traded her for two vampire souls," I said. "How is that even possible?"
He jerked his chin in her direction. "Like the vampires, something is missing from her. The vampires' bodies are in the ninth world while their souls are here. Her body is here but..."
"Her spirit is elsewhere," I said. I knew it was true. But he didn't know I knew.
He nodded hurriedly. "You understand," he said.
"But how do I know she's real and not just someone like me? A human body you encased in some sort of magic husk to fool your guests."
"As if I had to fool anyone. A true collector doesn't fake trophies," he said with a growl.
I shrugged. "Aren't you afraid I'll touch her like the others and release her?"
He laughed. "She's not some ethereal to be commanded by human blood at whim," he said. "The only thing besides my touch that can release her is a strong connection. Any of her other triad selves, for example." He looked over his shoulder as though checking for them. "And they aren't here, now, are they?" he asked me.
"No," I murmured. They were not. Just me.
I peered at her. She almost looked as though she could see what was happening. Despite the shell and the lack of blood and bone, she seemed aware and sentient and my throat ached to see her like that. I'd found her alright, but I was powerless to help her. Even if my time did finally run down and I returned somehow to my apartment, Colin would never return my glamor.
It was all for nothing, and now I had to worry about returning to that realm whole and unbroken, a feat that even the Celtic warrior hadn't managed.
As far as pickles went, this was wasn't just sour, it was rotten.
Even if I somehow managed to get home healthy and hale, I'd no doubt have the Morrigan's hounding me till I died because of those damn few moments Kassie had taken my blood to spell me through the Blood gate.
Hopeless.
Or was it? I stepped closer to the wall, tracing her face with my eye. She was the Morrigan's body, after all, not powerful, but the aspect of the god that connected with me strongly enough to get me through the Blood Gate, to have her shade chasing me through the city.
"What about a blood connection," I said. "Would that be enough?"
He scoffed. "What blood bond would there be after all these centuries. She renounced her powers, hid from the world and from humanity. That isn't even her true form."
He said that like he felt disdain for her and it made me angry.
"No," he said with a slightly inflated chest. "I'm the only one who can release her. But I'm not going to do that."
"Because you don't want to take her out of the package," I said, unable to keep the sarcasm from my tone.
"Exactly." He looked at me with a smug expression.
"Why, though?" I said. "Why give up all that to be alone for centuries and end up here?"
He shrugged. "Mortals," he said. "Why else?"
He heaved a sigh as he looked me up and down. His black-eyed gaze lingered on the gap between my shirt where I had the feeling my demi cup had slipped.
I tugged the shirt tails together over my chest.
"They're a weakness," he said. "Common as rats but so uniquely made. Fragile, but strong-willed. Stubborn. Passionate. Entitled."
I shifted uncomfortably beneath his gaze as he trembled visibly.
"She fell in love with a human warrior," he said. "But he rejected her. Such a pitiful story. She tried three times to make him fall in love with her. The history of your ninth world records the flavor of the story if not the true tale." He jerked his chin toward his armoury shelf.
"The spear of mortal death and pain was his to wield, which makes having her all the more special."
Now I understood why he displayed them together. The only thing that seemed to be missing was the warrior himself.
And that's when it hit me. What he was trying to tell me.
I peered up at him to see that smug look had changed to one of excited pride. The collector had impressed me, and he knew it.
Except what he thought had impressed me was that he had two of the three items in one spot, and I was remembering that he lost one.
And I knew exactly where that third piece was.
My sidhe warlord Colin was the selfsame Celtic warrior Chu Chulain.
"Now," he said abruptly. "We've wasted just enough time."
He peered down at me in a way that made me swallow convulsively.
"Time to put you in my pocket," he said with a languid smile. "You'll feel some pain, I admit," he went on. "Actually, quite a lot judging by your size, but I can make it so you enjoy the pain if you please me."
I was horrified to see that in the moments I'd been studying Kassie and putting the puzzle pieces together, he had lifted the shadows of the corner to the right.
Like a magician whose lighting engineer specialized in sleight of light instead of sleight of hand, the corner revealed aspects that were as viscerally terrifying as they were disturbing.
Costumes of leather hung from pegs and each of them looked meant to restrain its wearer. Complete vinyl suits designed to encase a person from foot to ear hung next to ropes and leashes. Various equipment, swings, and tables squatted in nooks and crannies like toads. A shelf of whips and cuffs and masks.
I broke him, he'd said of Chu Chulain.
Chu Chulain. Colin. The sidhe warlord who announced his arrival with the taste of blood. A god bound to me by blood.
My stomach knotted and my legs went weak.
I had one chance and I couldn't waste it.
I bit down into the palm he'd broken earlier, and the taste of blood filled my mouth. Copper and zinc and salt puckered my cheeks as I drew hard on the skin, pulling out whatever I could, wincing beneath the pain.
"You enjoy pain?" he said with a tinge of wonder in his voice. He sounded as though he'd hit the jackpot.
"Hell no," I said.
I pressed my palm down over the tissue of the wall, stretching my fingers to meet Kassie's as it lay on the other side.
For one long agonizing moment nothing happened. I'd been wrong. I'd failed, and now I was stuck here until the talisman ran out its time and sent me home.
I prepared myself to swing around and face Lucifer. But then just when he reached out for me to pull me away from the wall, a jolt of energy went through me, throwing him backwards. The tingling against my palm buzzed.
Then it burned.
And then the tissue of the wall contracted and with a horrific sound, wrapped around the empty and transparent shell of bones on her side of the wall.
CHAPTER
33
Lucifer let out a tremendous howl from behind me as he crashed into his collector's shelf and dozens of artifacts crashed down onto the floor. His was a howl of fury and despair and I imagined he grieved all the hours he'd spent arranging those awful relics of humanity.
And then Kassie stood in front of me.
"The talisman," she said. "Where is it?"
The sounds of wailing reverberated around us.
"I don't know," I said. "The tub maybe,"
"You have to think," she said. "Time is running out."
"I know," I said. "I've been doing my best to stall him."
"He's lying," Kassie said. "You think you're running down the clock, stalling him until you can be brought home again," she said reaching for and clutching my hand. "But it's him who stalling. He's running down your clock until the talisman runs out of the power to send you home."
I should have seen it before. He'd already told me that he'd given Colin the talisman. Why would it benefit anyone other than Lucifer? I'd been foolish and stupid to not see through the ruse.
"It's in the tub," I said. "It has to be."
"Take us there," she said.
I didn't understand what she meant. The tub was right there, just a hundred yards away. Surely she saw it.
Howling reverberated around the room. I could hear Lucifer climbing to his feet amid the clutter.
I could hear his breathing, a heavy, chugging, locomotive kind of sound coming from behind me.
"Hurry, Isabella," Kassie said. "If you can't take us there, bring it here."
Bring it here. Lucifer had said earlier that his fire suicide kept performing the same act over and over even though he could do what he wanted with this torment. He'd said hell was the torments people made.
I imagined the tub, what it felt like to be drowning in that hot soapy water, feeling Lucifer's thighs around me.
Seconds passed. A single heartbeat pumped within my chest and then suspended there, as though it couldn't finish its movement. I couldn't catch my breath. Kassie's hand clenched in mine, squeezing the fingers together.
"There," she said. "There it is."
And there it was. For a second, I felt the joy of victory.
It was short-lived as I felt Lucifer's hands tangle in my hair. He tugged me backwards and I stumbled, letting go Kassie's hand.
"I've got you," he said.
She looked terrified, small and waiflike. The tub was right there. I didn't have to see it to know that the talisman sat at the bottom of its copper base.
"Go," I said. "Just go."
She gave me one long look, sad and resigned at the same time, and then she spun on her heel and leapt for the tub. She climbed over the copper side and dropped into the water with barely a splash. All sound was gone into a vacuum for several long moments as Lucifer tightened his grip in my hair and let loose an awful howl. He shook me in his fury.
"Now you've done it," he said. "You lost my treasure."
He hoisted me by the hair to dangle in front of his face. My scalp screamed with pain and I felt several clumps of it come free. Before I dropped from his grip, he wrapped his fingers of his other hand around my throat and held me there. The face that had been handsome turned to something feral.
"She left you here," he said, and a smile twisted his mouth. "Selfish bitch if you ask me," he said. "But at least it means you're mine now. Really mine. For all eternity I will make you suffer for it."
He pinned me with a hateful gaze. "You gave your timepiece away." He laughed, and the sound was nothing like it had been before. Cinders and ash must have clogged up his throat because his laughter was black and ugly.
"You relieved me of that infuriating need to drag out your time. Now I don't need to suffer those niceties to keep you talk talk talking and yap yap yapping insufferable things and questions that mean nothing." He threw me to the floor and loomed over me. "Just pain," he said. "Lots and lots of pain."
The shadows were fully lifted now. The room was washed in painful light, almost gleeful in its clarity. The relics and artifacts were still strewn about the chamber but beyond were things past the human imagining.
If it had ended with bondage equipment, I might have understood what was about to happen, but when I caught sight of an archaic looking rack, I realized this was going to go so far past violent assault and move into the realm of torture that I knew sanity wasn't going to be an option.
"Mine," he said again. "For all eternity." He eyed me greedily. "No talisman to take you home. No need to worry about breaking you." He giggled. Actually giggled. "Mine. A living mortal to do with as I please. For all eternity. No need to return you or find a way to fix you. Just service whenever I please."
I quailed.
"Oh," he murmured. "Did you think that because you're mortal you can die here?"
He shook his head. "There is no real death when you're not of my world. You were on borrowed time before and so I could have broken you far too easily. Now that you're mine and you can't die here, I can use you over and over in ever so many delicious ways and you will return to pristine state when I'm done, ready to be serviced again."
The feeling of panic came back full force. What had I done? I got a flash of a torture chamber with myriad horrendous equipment and even more deviant sexual escapades. I imagined myself brought to the limits of death, pained and agonized but without being able to feel the release of expiration. I realized exactly how horrific hell was now.
The ethereals relived moments of torture and torment for his pleasure, but I imagined that it was mental and psychic torture, not the feeling of physical pain. I began to understand why he was so excited to have a living mortal in his realm.
I backed away. Foolishly, I had bartered away my one opportunity to escape. Kassie could have stayed here for an eternity and felt nothing. Safely behind the partition, untouched because she was special.
What made me special was exactly the opposite. He would want to use me. For every step backward, he took one toward me. He advanced on me purposefully. The equipment behind him loomed out of the shadows.
My jeans tore from my legs with a ripping sound and fell away, leaving me naked. I clutched at my breasts and hips, vainly trying to cover myself. I expected to feel cold, but my skin flushed with heat. The touch of leather whispered against my skin and I looked down to see it appearing from nowhere, like the man from the trenches.
"We'll start with something simple," he said. "Full restraints, I think. Face mask."
He laid a fleshy finger against his mouth when I couldn't stop a whimper. "There is no safe word."
The bastard was loving my fear. Getting off on it. And I could do was stand there, chest heaving, throat thick with a scream that wouldn't erupt.
It was no surprise my legs gave way. I collapsed in a heap and something in my knee shrieked out in pain as I landed awkwardly.
"You can't run," he said.
I stared at the mermaid's tail that used to be my legs but were now a sheath of wide leather encasing both limbs. No wonder my knee hurt; the leather was so tight they couldn't move of their own in any natural manner. I couldn't run, he was right. If I managed to stand again, walking would be no more than a penguin's waddle.
And the leather kept coming.
All I could do was crawl along by my forearms as the garments wove themselves around me. My throat felt tight and I realized a studded collar was clutching itself around my throat.
But his toys were everywhere. Each of his collectors' items lay strewn about the floor from the crash. My hands landed on a voodoo doll and I heaved it in his direction.
He let it smack him flat in the shins.
Aim higher next time, the look on his face said. I sobbed and bit down on it as it hiccupped out of me. I couldn't lose it. Not yet. Not while I could still fight.
My hand fell on a book. It felt rough and leathery. The witch's grimoire. I plucked it from the floor with two hands and flung myself into a yoga sit up. I used the th
rust to heave it toward him. Because he was already crouching down to grab me, it slapped him in the face.
"That's right," he said. "Fight. I should like that."
He extended his arm sideways and from thin air pulled a cat o' nine tails whip.
At the same moment, I heard the teeth of a zipper biting together and I realized that the hood was pulling itself around the back of my head, stretching toward my face. Soon I wouldn't be able to see. Breathe.
Sweet Jesus. He'd waited to pull the hood up last. He wanted me to see that whip. He wanted me to give into my fear.
I groaned deep in my throat, terrified.
Not going to happen, I told myself. It just wasn't going to happen. I had to find a solution.
My ears felt stuffed with cotton, magnifying the rapid sound of my heartbeat. Soon I'd be encased in leather and vinyl and I'd have no way to see what was coming at me.
I scrabbled about, searching for something else to throw at him before the mask could cover my face. My hand wrapped around something cold. Something long and hefty.
I heaved myself over onto my back, holding it in front of me. The ascent of the material stopped.
I blinked in surprise. He was squatting in front of me, the whip over his shoulder. My stomach strained to hold me upright, the spear of mortal pain and death balanced precariously against the soles of my feet and shoulder. It was heavy. Far too heavy for one person to wield let alone throw.
"Drop it," he said. "Drop it."
I wanted to drop it, that was for sure. It burned my hands and feet, and it sizzled as though it wanted to taste the air.
I had no idea how hard a throw I would need to make. I just prayed.
My fingers searched for a trigger in the vain hope I wouldn't have to chuck it. It started to slip out of balance. My whole body trembled with effort. Sweat dripped down my temple and leaked beneath a fold of hot leather.
I wrapped my toes around the other end to balance it.
"Don't come any further," I said. "I swear I'll use it."
He laughed. "You think you're Chu Chulain," he said. "He was a warrior. You are a plaything."
Then he lunged at me.
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