“You—it was you? In my head?”
“Of course.” She narrowed her eyes. “Are you always this stupid?”
Fear, frustration, and pain collided in my chest, splashing out through my mouth in an insulted rush.
“You’ve had your pet vampire chew holes in me, you’ve sucked out half my brain, I’m tied to a fucking table, and you’re draining my blood out through a straw!” I shrieked. “I think I have an excuse to be stupid!”
Rather than punish me for yelling, the girl laughed, hopping around and clapping her hands together like an excited audience member at a taping of The Price is Right. She gave a happy wiggle of her shoulders as she watched me thrash my head, struggling once again against futility.
When I exhausted myself and met her gaze again, she lifted a knee, dropped it, and then did a complicated dance move that reminded me of Fred Astaire. Soft-shoeing her way over to me, she stopped with a flourish, one hand held up as if asking me to join her. I just stared down, wishing I could at least punch her in the face or something.
Being paralyzed really blows.
I didn’t know why she looked like she expected something from me. We both knew I couldn’t move and, while I was now aware enough to really consider my situation, I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
I could have sworn about it, yowled and complained until I was blue in the face, but I didn’t think it would get her to let me down. In fact, I would have bet my—er, something definitely less significant than my life that my complaining would just make her laugh at me some more.
Shifting out of her stance, she half turned to make a show of surveying the darkness of the room. The part of her wriggling in my brain seemed to nudge me toward something and I got the feeling I was supposed to follow her lead.
Craning my neck, I searched what little I could see, curious despite myself about what it was she wanted to show me. I couldn’t see much past the bright light of the bare bulb, but the place smelled like dust and old cardboard. Dilapidated wooden shelves along the right wall held dented banker boxes and the curve of a rusting water heater peeked out of the darkness at the edge of my view.
Recognition dawned and for a moment I wasn’t sure how to feel about my predicament. Was this nightmare taking place in a plain old dirty garage?
“There you go,” she said, pleased with me even though I hadn’t said anything. “You’re coming around. There may be hope for you yet, though it took you awhile to really figure out the obvious.”
I rolled my gaze to her, wondering what she was talking about. What was obvious? That I was in a garage? That the water heater was leaking and probably needed to be replaced?
“Maybe your soul isn’t worth taking after all,” she said, narrowing her eyes at me.
“You want my soul?”
“Just the important part,” she clarified. “I don’t need as much as your buddy once did. I’ve been at this a long time and I know how to take what I need without leaving a corpse.” I’d barely begun to relax at the idea of not being murdered before she met my eyes. “That doesn’t mean I won’t kill you eventually.”
“Kill—but you shouldn’t—you can’t—”
“I can, but I’m not going to yet.” She interrupted my panicked blubbering, raising her voice above mine until I’d quieted. “I wouldn’t have bothered waking you up just to cut you in half.”
“Really?” I squeaked, relief washing through me. She didn’t assure me again, simply watching me with a knowing smile on her face. I took a few moments to calm my breathing, to back away from the fear and force myself to take stock of the situation. I wasn’t about to die, so that was something.
Although, as somethings go, it wasn’t much. I was still trapped in a garage with a psycho who looked like she should be fighting with teenagers on Tumblr over Benedict Cumberbatch being hotter than Chris Evans. I was still bound and paralyzed, slightly light-headed from blood loss.
I was still going to die, just not right at that moment.
The realization made me sad and angry all at the same time. What had my life come to that I was patting myself on the back for not being dead yet?
Something must have shown in my face because the girl started laughing.
“That’s better! Now we can chat. You’ve got spirit, at least when you’re not whining or freaking out.” She rolled her eyes and it reminded me of the looks I’d gotten from my big sister when she’d been at that “too cool” age. “The vampire’s been holed up alone in a house for fifteen years and he’s so boring. He doesn’t know how to listen and he gets distracted, like, really easily. But, since you’re here for awhile, you might as well entertain me.”
Her immaturity was bordering on offensive and it was driving away my panic, filling me with me a bitchy bravado. My rational mind knew it was a bad idea to mouth off, that she could probably kill me in an instant, but it was still smarting from the hit it had taken before and that made it easy for me to ignore its advice to stay quiet.
“I’m not really in a position to juggle for you, but you could untie me and give me some flaming knives and we’ll see what happens.”
“See! Spirit.” Something seemed to occur to her then and she snorted out a laugh as she clapped her hands once. “Spirit.”
I just watched her, lost and frustrated that I wasn’t in on the joke. I didn’t feel like giggling along with her like two friends splitting a bottle of wine, but she seemed to be laughing at me rather than with me and that’s never a good feeling.
“Spirit!” she repeated, really hitting the word as if that would make me get it. “Like soul? You’re—I give up. Let’s talk about me instead, what I’ve been up to. I’ve already told the vampire and he so wasn’t impressed once he started to feel better. Now all he wants to do is run around the city sucking on virgins and terrorizing his old high school teachers. He never wants to talk about me.”
“How sad for you,” I deadpanned. She took it as if I was serious.
“I know! So how much do you know about me? It doesn’t seem like much from what I can tell.” The thing in my mind shifted again, getting comfortable in the folds of my brain. I cringed, shaking my head as if I could knock it out through my ears. The sensation wasn’t much different from the fizzy feeling of getting soda backed up in my sinuses.
“You’re a demon,” I offered, hoping she’d back off whatever mojo was bubbling through my skull.
“Excellent!” She clapped again. “Do you know what demons do?”
“Are you going to make me guess?” I asked, irritated by how excited she seemed. I’d never faced a maniacal villain before; I wasn’t sure if I wanted to hear her blather out a monologue about how great she was. I don’t have James Bond’s skills. Time would not reveal an escape for me.
“You’re right. I’m giving you too much credit. Your powers are weak enough that no one’s ever bothered to school you. You were, what, four when the scouts showed up?” I didn't answer, but the question was probably rhetorical, anyway. “When you’re judged useless, they let you be. It's only when you're of interest to them, when you could be used against them in some way, that they would bother to pluck you out of obscurity. I wasn’t useless.”
Despite myself, I found I was curious. Hardy had mentioned something similar when we’d met, but I’d been so distracted by their sudden appearance and by the raucous feeling of standing too close to Laurel that I hadn’t taken much of it in. Sensing I was now interested in participating in her one-demon show, she paused to watch me expectantly. I considered that she’d known before I had what I was about to ask, but I went ahead anyway.
“Are demons and fairies... like, buddies?”
Once again pleased with me, she pointed her finger like a weapon, jabbing it forward as if she’d spear my chest. I flinched.
“Not a bad question for a nitwit. We are not friends, no. They would have wanted me bad for what I could do, but they never got the chance. Someone else got to me first, much like I got to little…
” She waved her hand. “What’s the kid’s name, Andy? With the fire starting?”
“Ashley?” I asked. Rage boiled inside me at her attitude, at the fact that she couldn’t even be bothered to learn the names of the children she’d kidnapped and held hostage.
“Sure, like that one. Like how I got to them before the scouts could. It’s like that, but I’m not wasting their time with deals and lies. I’m just gonna take what I want.”
“You stupid—” I didn’t get far with my tirade before she held up a hand, her expression hard.
“This isn’t about you,” she said, squeezing her hand into a fist as if she was crushing my heart. I struggled for a millisecond, but whatever power she held over me coursed through my body, slowing my pulse to the point where I started to drift off. Consciousness ebbed away for a moment before the pressure in my chest let up slightly and I opened my heavy eyes to find her considering me. “You’re gonna listen this time. No more insults, you got it?”
“Sure,” I slurred, blinking against the desire to pass out.
“Excellent! Where was I? Well, so, demons, of course, have existed for ages. We were all like you, once upon a time. We were all human, all special.” Her eyes did a quick pass, taking all of me in. “Some more so than others. We were all approached by the same man, though some of us undoubtedly realized quickly he wasn’t a man at all.”
“He was an elephant!” I interjected, the slowness of my brain making me feel silly. I giggled but the demon was too wrapped up in her performance to notice my stupid joke. When she spoke again, her voice boomed through the garage like she was on stage, speaking to thousands.
“He was a liar, one of the most well-known, in fact. To those of us whom he found useful, he offered help, love, riches, whatever we desired. All we needed to do was promise to come to him after a period of time and agree to give him one thing. He would tell us what that one thing was to be, but not before we promised to give it.”
She sighed, shook her head, a bitter smile on her lips. “My deal was different. My deal was special. Not many get my deal. I didn’t have to give him anything of my own. I got all the riches, all the goodies, and I didn’t have to promise him my soul. The souls of others, sure, but I got to keep my own. Until he got stingy.” She caught my eye, her jaw tight like she’d suddenly decided her miserly boss was my fault. “I didn’t like the deal anymore, so I told him I was out, I was done with him and his contracts.”
“Did you at least give your two weeks’ notice?”
Her eyes narrowed to slits and, despite my fuzzy mind, I winced.
“It probably goes without saying, but he didn’t want to let me go. I mean, would you?”
“I think you should definitely go,” I agreed, still trying to rouse my sluggish thoughts. I’d been high a few times in college, but this was nothing like sucking at a bong and eating so much candy I couldn’t move. I hadn’t done this to myself; it had been impressed upon me by something alien inside my own mind.
My head lolled back and I felt my eyes roll around in my head, out of control in their sockets, and I squeezed them shut. I wanted to fight against her control, but my thoughts were as paralyzed as my limbs. I needed help.
“You’re not funny,” she said. After a moment, she sighed and reached out to grab my chin. “But I liked you better when you were asking better questions.” Life rushed into me, making me yelp as the nerves in my neck, face, and scalp sparked to action. I swore, shook her hand off, and looked back at her, my brain buzzed from her touch.
“I’m not sure if you’re better or worse than an energy drink.”
“Are you ready to listen now, or are you too busy thinking stupid thoughts about your glory days getting stoned in your boyfriend’s dirty apartment?”
I jolted, trying to sort through the rapid stream of thoughts zipping through my head. Most of them concentrated on my predicament, trying to figure out if escape was possible, demanding I test my bonds again to see if my arms or legs would work. The most logical thoughts, though, concentrated on the fact that she was in my head, that she knew what I was thinking at any moment, and that, if she really wanted to ruin my day, she might bring up everything about those supposed glory days.
They had been anything but glorious. I had a lot of bad memories from that period in my life and I didn’t want her pulling them out of my head one by one and rubbing them in my face like steel wool.
“I’m ready to listen!” I insisted. “Go on, keep talking. You’re great and your boss was a dick. Start from there.”
She eyed me for a moment, a smile tugging at her lips before she stood straight and slipped back into her performance.
“He was a dick! He thought he had it all figured out, that he could control us if he just plied us with riches and pretty clothes. But it wasn’t enough for me. I caught on to what was really going on behind the scenes, why he really wanted all those contracts. I figured out that souls are more than just wiggling little lines of energy. They’re power. If you get souls, you have power. I just need souls and I can boot him out and take over! It took me some time to figure out how to do it, but I’m on it now. I’ve got it all planned out. With the right assistant—say, a desperate vampire who’s sick of being confined to a sterile room—I can gather more than enough souls to rock right up to the boss himself and punch him in his dick face.”
She lifted her arms to box the air in front of me, breathing out delicate puffs of onomatopoeia to match each jab of her fists. I watched her shuffle her feet like Mohammed Ali as she mimed punching me and it just made me frustrated at her freedom.
“So where did we land on you going?” I asked when one of her hits barely missed my already bruised kidney. Her eyes darted to my face before lowering back to her imaginary opponent. She danced minutely forward, close enough that I worried for my stomach with every move of her fists. “You know, far away from here?”
Rolling her upper body like a snake, she weaved, hooking her left fist toward my face in an arc. When I yelped and tried to flinch away, she shifted tactics and slapped me hard with her other hand. I tasted blood inside my cheek and my ear hurt from being smashed between my skull and the wood.
“Dammit,” I hissed.
“Damn what? Damn you? All done! You’re with us until we’re done with you. I wasn’t going to go after an empath, especially not a level three who doesn’t even know what the hell she’s doing, but I can make an exception. With a little finesse, your empathy could be so much more than a sponge.”
I wiggled my jaw, wanting to make sure the pain radiating down from my ear didn’t mean she’d broken my pretty face. My silence seemed to annoy her and she shook her head.
“There’s a ritual involved with this, one I didn’t used to need to tug out souls, but Bossman knows his stuff, unfortunately. So, I’m stuck doing things the hard way. It’s going to take some time and a whole lot more sad little kids but—what’s that they say? New year, new you? Come January first, my new me will be part you!”
That broke the camel’s back. A bevy of emotions exploded inside me: fear, anger, despair, and a tiny thread of hope that suggested I try to escape just one more time. I shot into another round of struggling, fighting against the paralysis.
The demon just watched me, her shoulders sagging as if her interest in me was waning. She let me thrash my head a few times before she leaned close to catch my eye.
“I think you need some time to yourself. You’re clearly having issues right now.” Straightening, she lifted her hand to give me a cutesy little wave from next to her cheek, then stepped past me and out of view. A door opened and almost immediately slammed. It made me jump, which amounted to my head jerking to the side in shock.
And there I was. Strapped to a table, bitten everywhere, with a gigantic needle sticking out of my arm. I did my best to concentrate, to try to figure out my chances for survival. Chloe had been shot, probably killed. I had no idea if Mel had made it out of the hotel room at all.
If he
was alive, what had he awoken to find? What had the demon done to him that allowed Dirk to knock him out with one punch? If he’d survived, had he woken in time to get Chloe to a hospital? And where were the children? Had the demon gathered them up and brought them to remain captive alongside me? My empathy was still no help and I still had no idea why.
The demon had said that my powers weren’t enough to make me important and so no one had taken much notice of me. Maybe there were tons of special humans out there, meeting to change the world for the greater good. Maybe I was just a few shades away from being in some real-world version of the X-Men. Was there a chance they’d find out I’d been smacked around and abducted and come rescue me?
“Shut up,” I told myself, trying to think through the blood loss and psychic abuse. Mulling over what-ifs wasn’t getting me anywhere. I made the conscious effort not to struggle anymore, not to waste my energy, but I did let myself swear like it was my job. Anger generally makes my vocabulary more limited, though, and my cuss concoctions came out nonsensical, physically impossible and, at one point, heavily reliant on dessert foods.
Judging by the pit in my stomach, I figured that I’d been out for probably five or six hours. That gave me a starting point for doing something useful.
“Okay. So you’ve been kidnapped by a demon,” I said to myself, trying not to dwell on the fact that I sounded like the worst educational video ever. “You’re strapped to a table, unable to even struggle properly. This bitch is aiming to snatch your soul and a vampire is bleeding you dry. Chloe and Mel might be dead and there’s a chance no one even knows you’re missing. Your pet bird is home alone, for god’s sake, with no one around to feed him. He may starve—no. Stop that. Let’s look at the upsides, Gwen. Come on.” I blinked into the darkness, my mind a blank. “Any upsides. Come on. You can do it.”
I couldn’t.
Chapter Eighteen
“I brought you a present.”
The pain in my neck was excruciating.
Mixed Feelings (Empathy in the PPNW Book 1) Page 19