by Leigh Evans
Now he calls me sweetheart? Now?
I lost myself for an instant. Lost myself to disbelief and the arctic air that kept coming, now harsher, more bitter. Trowbridge took advantage of my hesitation. I found myself hanging from the window, held there by his grip on my wrists, with my feet scrambling for purchase and the ground too far below.
I looked up at him, suddenly terrified that I’d never seen him again. He gazed back at me and winked.
Then he let go.
I met the copper roof of the cloister passage with a thump, rolled, once, twice, before I felt myself airborne, and thought, This will hurt, all in slow motion.
It did.
It wasn’t far to go, really. Maybe ten feet, but I landed on those uneven flagstones that I had admired, left foot first. I heard the snap before my body registered the breaking of my bone. I may have shrieked.
I went beyond my body, beyond sensation. My heart and eyes were on Trowbridge. He was bent in half, with one leg out of the window, one hand on the remaining upper frame. Someone grabbed his trailing foot. Another pair of hands took hold of his pants and started to pull him back into the room.
He’s mine.
I pointed my hands at the window and closed my eyes, visualizing the inside. Papers, a pen-littered desk, lots of heavy books. I called to my magic and hoped that it heard me past the anxious panting of my Were.
My power burst from my core, poured itself into my veins, surged past the Were, plucking parts of her rage and anxiety as it shot past her. Glee. Joy. Up it came, like a drug, past my shoulders, down my white arms, bursting through the tight channel of my wrists. My blood was Fae blood. My blood was Were blood. In that moment of desperate need, the two became one.
Hedi’s boiling blood.
There was no pause for my talent to build.
It was my birthright, it was my magic, it was my will.
“Attach.” It jetted out of the tips of my fingers, not in bursts, but in a long malicious whip of evil intent. There was no miscalculation of aim. Past my love’s head, through the glass window, straight to the long wall of books.
Learn this. Do not hurt what is mine.
I didn’t seek a contact point. I took the room. The magic streamed from me, and instead of splitting into separate strings of Fae power, it became a wet sheet that stuck to everything in my mind. Books. Fat unreadable tomes; the heavier and denser, the better.
I whipped my right hand in a vicious swipe.
“Storm.”
The books shot off the shelves, like academic projectile puke. As the first book left the oak trim, I began to rotate my wrist, fingers curled. It felt strange, moving that wet sheet of power. At first it was jarring, uncomfortable and wrong. But as I got my balance, it got easier.
Move it in a circle, watch it twist like a rag in the sink full of water. It answers my call. It is mine.
It felt good. So good. Giddy again. I shivered.
The Were let go of Bridge’s jeans. Now free to move, he twisted to kick the other guy in the face. Four kicks, it took. And during it all, I kept up my maelstrom of book retribution.
The anticipation of their pain made me forget my own, and caused my lips to twist in pleasure. I was beyond such mortal things. Now re-formed, and conscious only of my own lust for vengeance and power.
My mate didn’t lose his balance when he fell the distance between window and tin roof. He landed like a cat, twisting in midair.
Not a cat, silly, a Were.
That struck me funny, and I threw my head back to whoop at my brilliance. Wondrous to release the full promise of my Fae nature. Magnificent and glorious.
I called deeper, and knew myself to be strong as I stood and arched my back, and felt no misery except the blissful, burning rush that poured from me. The shelves were moving, tearing themselves off the wall, and they were striking the targets.
I heard yelps, and a cry.
A loud belly laugh of happiness escaped my lips.
Trowbridge leaped from the roof, and landed the right way.
Strong. Beautiful. Mine. I should share my power with him. Yes, what a good idea.
I reached my left hand for him, feeling my back arch and my buttocks clench. I’m an electric wire. Hear me sing. Even my abdomen felt tight as a drum skin. I was all bone, all skin, no fat or soft tissue. A new Hedi. A Fae-Were hybrid of blood and bone. Incendiary. Burn it all up.
I was—
Trowbridge hit me, square in the jaw. My head snapped back, and my brain screeched to a halt, and the magic line snapped, and I collapsed, suddenly empty.
He put an arm under my back, and as he did, my spine screamed. It felt broken, stretched beyond possible. I pushed away from him with my hands, and that hurt more.
Trowbridge didn’t stop. He put his other hand under my legs and lifted me, and I thought I was going to pass out. He spun on his heel, and then we were moving Trowbridge-speed. Past a student cowering in one of the hobbit doorways, past the line of silver, circle-topped bike posts that made me think of Celtic crosses jammed into the ground, past the woman—oh, Cordelia, what have they done to you?—lying bloody and splay-legged in the passageway.
Past columns, too fast and too many to count. Toward the alley.
I could hear them coming.
They were coming, they were coming, but where were we going?
Not the alleyway. Something was wrong with that dark passageway. What? I couldn’t remember. It was from before I had become what I was.
But what am I now?
My temperature began plunging. No longer fevered. Cooling, cooling.
There were decorative gates between the two buildings, stretched across the alley. Medallions of something bright suspended between brackets of dark wrought iron.
My teeth began to chatter as icy fear slid along my spine.
He put a hand to the gate and shook it, and grabbed the steel padlock fastened through the lock and yanked it hard. It bent but didn’t break.
My chest felt heavy.
The Weres were close. I could smell the wrongness of them. Were and something else. I rolled my head away from the specter of all that black wrought iron.
Had he forgotten the Fae of me?
There was no time left for the lock. No time left to pull open those hideous gates. The Weres were here.
“Shit.” Trowbridge cursed.
He let me go, and let me slide to the ground, and then, oh Goddess, oh Goddess no, he rested my back against the wintry-cool, sickening iron and turned to face the Weres at the mouth of the alley.
I didn’t cry out. That would have taken too much air. From my throat came a rattle—a strangled exhalation of lungs squeezed tight by fear and poison. He turned. “Hedi?” Then he was on his knees again, saying, “Shit, shit, shit.” Pulling me away from the hideous metal gate, curling his arms around me protectively. Over his shoulder, I saw Stuart Scawens smile and take aim. What did it take to finish that bastard?
Stuart-the-unkillable threw something at my love’s unprotected back. It was pointed at the tip, this thing that meant to torment my mate. Like falling from the roof, I knew it would hurt.
Lou’s silver spike whistled through the air, and then Bridge’s head flung back with its impact. I felt the echo. The unity. His anguish muted but real, right between my shoulder blades. Pulsing. His thoughts with mine.
Get it out, get it out.
My mate didn’t let go of me. Didn’t let me fall back against the decorative gate. He held me tighter and said, “Shit,” one more time. He didn’t tremble so much as shake, and with each tremor I could feel it: the strain, the poison.
Stuart was beside us, looking happy. With his gloved hands, he pulled Lou’s silver spike out of my mate’s back. I almost thought for a second, I forgive you. Perhaps he saw the entreaty in my eyes; he bared his teeth and plunged it back in deeper. Lower this time. In the lungs.
And we both screamed. We both shook, and clutched each other, and then our limbs weren’t our ow
n. They were something else, jumping like attached to electrodes, jerking like they were overstretched.
Agony.
“Stop.” It was an old man’s voice. Thick. Furious.
Stuart’s gloved hand was still on the handle, I could see that. Saw him turn his head.
The old Were snarled. “Can’t you ever follow my orders?”
I heard footsteps, and knew my enemy came closer. I would not look into Mannus’s eyes. Not as the poison sucked the Fae from me. He’d see the hate in my gaze. He’d know that I lusted for his blood, that I craved to make him writhe and suffer. He’d boiled me down. Down to pain, and hate, and fierce retribution. He’d caused the end of my first life, molded the second, and now was there at the melting point of my third.
There would be no kindness, no hesitation when his time came.
“Take the spike out of his back, but keep it close. Put it in his pocket. We want him weak, not dead.” I could feel his gaze on us. “Be careful with the girl. She’s not one of us.”
The wrong-Were smell got closer. I didn’t want to gag. Show no weakness, I told myself.
“What about the fag?”
“Bring it too.”
They pulled us apart. The wrong arms cradled my broken back, and let my broken foot brush against the iron gate. That was the last I remembered.
Please, Goddess, don’t ever let me remember more.
Chapter Nineteen
But I do remember.
Some part of yourself allows you to forget the details—the little stuff that niggles you afterward—because the weight of the absolute horror would flatten everything else into unrecognizable roadkill. And so, there’s much I have forgotten: blurred scent memories and warm-up details to the horror, but there’s one thing I’ll always remember.
The first of the worst.
I gave up Merry when they held the knife over the last remaining finger on Bridge’s mutilated hand.
* * *
I woke to a room that smelled of blood, Weres, hamburger, and dope, feeling iron-sick and battered. Hands, face, ankle, ribs, heart. They all hurt.
“Biggs, tell the witches to hurry with the wards. I want this place sealed tight in under an hour.”
I fought to place the man’s voice as I struggled up from the swampy pool of not-here, not-there semiconsciousness.
Mannus’s goons had propped me on a chair. I tried to move, and discovered my body had been played with. My arms felt constricted. My legs awkwardly splayed. Worse, there was something tight tied around my neck, securing it to the high back of my seat. My chin could move a few inches up, a few inches down, and another few left and right. I blinked to clear my eyes, and started with down. Silver duct tape had been wrapped around my torso, binding my arms to my ribs. My shirt was open and bunched up under the tape, exposing my left nipple, in all its beaded worry. I rolled my bare feet and felt the pressure of bindings around my ankles.
I was in the living room of a house I didn’t know. There was a set of long windows to my left flanked by dark blue curtains that hung perfectly straight in the stale, airless room. A brass lamp sat on a spindly side table and cast a golden circle around Mannus’s easy chair.
The girl from the Laundromat cocked her head. “Her eyes are open,” she said to her Alpha. Mannus nodded. Beside her, Stuart leaned against the fireplace, still wearing gloves, drumming his leather-clad fingers against his thigh.
My mate’s scent called to me, but its rich copper smell had been altered. I rolled my eyes to the source and found devastation.
Goddess, what have they done to him?
Trowbridges’s head was slumped down on his naked chest. Dried blood had glued a few strands of his black hair to the side of his face. He’d been secured to his kitchen chair with lengths of chain wrapped around his chest, thighs, and ankles. More of the same bound his arms behind his back. Scawens had made sure his chair wouldn’t move by driving nails through each chair leg straight into the plank floor. Someone had cut Bridge in several places: just above the chain on his chest, below it on his belly, and across his thighs. Straight lines, no hesitation, just pragmatic prep work for more chains—these thin and filigreed, the blood-glazed silver set like a natural seam of the precious metal running along the crevasses of these wounds. The Weres had used padlocks to secure his ankles to the chair legs. His foot was naked again.
I worked some saliva into my mouth. “Trowbridge?”
Don’t be dead.
I tested my bonds. At the slightest movement of my hands, pain came in nauseating waves, so unexpectedly savage that my shoulders hunched against it. I counted to eight real fast—just enough to hold back the panic—then peered down. My left hand resembled raw meat. The right hand was worse. A piece of skin hung from the thumb.
I was crispy again.
And misfiring. Where was my magic? It should have surged up from my center like venom, but it hadn’t. I probed inside. It was usually right there. Almost tangible to feel. A little ball low in my gut that sparked if probed. There was no ball. No sense of being. Empty.
My Were shivered near the bottom of my spine. Don’t panic. Keep breathing. Count to yourself … one thousand, two thousand, three … Impossible. Panic stampeded through the thin barrier of my self-control and took with it every shred of common sense. I flailed. I wriggled. I tried to run, but that was useless, because I was bound to a kitchen chair, and four wooden legs never work as well as two human ones when terror tells you to flee. My frantic thrashing sent my chair crashing to the floor, and once there, it seemed to poltergeist on its own across the oak floor to my mate.
“Where do you think you’re going, you ugly, little half-breed?” Scawens’s heavy foot came down to pin my chair in place, two feet from Bridge. The young Were smelled worse to me. More musk, more dope, more anger. What happened to the silver spike that Lou had melted into his core? How come Scawens was hale and hearty, and strong enough to pin me to the floor with his stinking boot?
The girl beside him said, “She looks like a rabbit on a spit.”
Scawens stared down the length of his nose and smiled as I fought for my breath. And for a bit, that’s close to all we heard in that room. Me rasping away on the floor like a fat girl at a cycle spin class, and crickets doing the mating call somewhere outside.
“Pick her up,” ordered Mannus. The tape bit into my flesh as Scawens righted my chair and positioned me to face the Alpha. In real life, without the gauzy filter of Lou’s dream recollection, my enemy’s jowls were longer, and his nose a little more bulbous. For an Alpha, he wasn’t even that big. I’d have called him rawboned, except for his waist, where he had the obligatory middle-age paunch. The flare in his eyes was low and weak, like a blue flicker around a gas element just before it goes out. The handsome peacock of Lou’s dreams had aged into an unremarkable man, except for the intermittent glint in his eyes.
“Robson is alive for the moment.” Wrinkles hung in crepe folds over Mannus’s eyelashes. He tested me with a little flare, a feeble flash of turquoise blue, translucent, almost spent. Returning his gaze, I felt a light tug, a little over-here, a soupçon of down-on-your-knees. I’d spent the last twelve hours flare-sparring with a natural-born Alpha. Mannus was no Trowbridge.
I shifted my gaze to the bookcase behind him.
“Well, that would be the Fae in her, I guess,” he murmured to Stuart. “Her mother never knew her place either. Look at me when I speak, Helen.”
One shelf on the bookcase was devoted to books about music. Theory books, music books—Stuart’s hand lashed out before I could steel myself for the blow. Pain bloomed on my mouth; hot and savage. I stuck the tip of my tongue out, and tasted blood.
“Slow down,” Mannus said. “She hasn’t got the stamina of a full Were.”
Chains chimed as my mate stirred. Trowbridge lifted his head, and then shook it, slow like a stumbling boxer who’d gone one round too many. He worked his jaw, then spat out some blood, but his lip was fat, and the spit didn’t clea
r. It ran down my mate’s lip to his chin, and then hung for a moment, a glistening tear of red, before slipping to join the other splatters on his chest.
“Hedi, don’t talk.” Trowbridge tipped his head back, and I swallowed a gasp as I took in the full horror of his misshapen profile. His straight nose wasn’t aristocratically straight anymore, and the eye closest to me was bruised and swollen. He cleared his throat. Spat some flux out again. “Don’t say anything to him,” he said in a stronger voice. Then my Trowbridge turned his chin in the general direction of Mannus and said relatively clearly, considering the state of his lips, “Fuck you and fuck the entire pack.”
Scawens coiled a fist.
“Stuart,” said Mannus.“When will you learn that you can’t squeeze anything out of a corpse?” The Alpha pointed a finger at me. “Yesterday, you offered a trade: an amulet for your aunt. Stuart claims he saw you take the Royal Amulet off Robson’s neck. Which was interesting, as we’ve checked you over very carefully, and we can’t find it.” He crossed his leg. “What have you done with it?”
“I don’t make trades when I’m tied to a chair.”
“Does it appear that we’re negotiating?” asked Mannus.
“What do you want from us?” I cried. “Can’t you see Lou’s dying? Whatever you think she can do for you, she can’t.”
“Louise is not dying.” He held up a hand. “Yes, she is weak, but that will soon be fixed. And you’re partly to blame for that. You’ve let her get into a terrible state. You should have come to me the moment she started to fade.”
“Excuse me for not dialing 911-Were, but I had reasons. Like maybe we’ve spent ten years hiding from Weres. Or how about this? Lou hates Weres. And here’s the kicker—I had this crazy idea that Weres were bloodthirsty and prone to violence. Reality sucks, eh?”
“Lou hates Weres,” he repeated. “Why don’t I send someone to fetch her, and she’ll tell you how she really feels about our kind?” He said to the girl from the Laundromat, “Dawn, go tell my mate that her niece is awake.” As Dawn turned for the stairs, he added, “And this time, find something for her to wear before she comes downstairs.”