by Linda Welch
The elf brings a hot meal and coffee for Sylar. I get nothing. There is no relief from the burning muscle ache created by being tied in this position and my hands and feet are numb.
Remaining solid this long is having its effect, as if severe dehydration dries my mouth and cracks my lips. My skin looks like an alligator’s. Sylar has food and warmth, and I think he slept, but the strain will tell on him soon.
“How long will they keep this up?” I murmur. “Until they’ve used you up?”
If rage were a weapon I could use on him, he’d be dead. Castle’s killer sits at my side and I can do nothing.
Calla, Phaedra and the elf return. “Are you ready to talk?” Calla asks as she stands at the table in the new day’s red light made hazy by the ward.
With nothing to say, I shake my head.
She nods at the elf. He kneels to remove my shoes and socks. Reaching behind, he chooses a hammer from the array of tools.
He uses the hammer to smash the big toe on my right foot.
Castle blinks back in roaring, “No!”
Pain claws up my leg and into my stomach. I scream, and then weep. They give me two minutes before the elf breaks the next toe.
I scream again and taste blood where I bite through my tongue.
Bad as it is, torture is about more than pain. It is the expectation of pain. When the elf hoists the hammer, I scream I will tell them what I know.
But he breaks the rest of my toes anyway.
“You killed Hyde and his wife and hid Derille’s body in Chumleigh Yarrow’s coffin,” I say on a sob. I can barely keep my thoughts together. “You thought we saw her when the coffin came through the floor.”
Calla smiles thinly. “Did you?”
“No!”
She leans over me, face inches from mine. If I could, I’d bite off her nose. “Who did you tell? Alain Sauvageau?”
My lower lip cracks open. Blood dapples my chin. “No one.”
“Your new friend, River?”
Horror forms a ball of ice in my stomach at the thought of River in her hands. I shake my head more violently. “How could I tell anyone? I told you, I didn’t know a thing till I looked in Chumleigh Yarrow’s coffin.”
“I don’t believe you.” Her eyes are alight, she breathes rapidly, sharp and shallow with mouth slightly open.
Calla enjoys watching me suffer.
I don’t have much experience with pain. Sure, I’ve been hurt. Cut. Burned. Bitten. But I faded out, came back and it all went away. It never lasted more than a few minutes.
Pain has been my companion for hours. My feet throb. The tears have dried on my face and my skin is taut and sore. My throat is so dry, I can’t swallow.
Next to me, Wool shifts. He’s not once looked at me, as though I don’t exist.
Castle crouches in front of me. “I’m so sorry, babe.”
“Where’ve you been?”
“Checking out this place. The ward safeguards this floor, doubtless so Blayne’s domestic staff don’t hear what’s happening, and nobody outside the house can. I expect only Blayne, the elf and the sorceress can breach the barrier - and scumbag here, I guess - and her magic discourages anyone else from coming to this floor.”
“If I - ” I move my foot, and bite down on the sound which sears up my throat. “If I could get free… .”
“Hang in there, sweet cakes. I’ll get help.”
“How?”
“You and Wool see me, I bet others can, your new boyfriend for instance.”
River? “No, you can’t bring River. He can’t go up against them.”
“I know, but he can tell Sauvageau. He’ll come charging in like a knight in shining armor. If anyone can do it, the vampire lover can.”
He fades out.
“So, you going to tell Calla about your new imaginary friend?” I ask with a sideways look. Wool is stiff as a board, still looking at the space where Castle stood.
He sinks down and pulls the duvet over his head.
I can’t scream anymore. Despite the bonds, my body tries to fade out but nothing happens, not a single, microscopic cell shifts.
*
Chapter Twenty
Angelina and her bed are River’s world. Lost in perfume and honeyed skin, he’s so weak he can barely move his limbs. Yet she touches him and he hardens, and craves her scalding tongue and the tight moist passage between her legs. She cleanses him of sweat and bodily secretions with a cool damp cloth and feeds him from her fingers.
She rolls off him. River lies supine, mind dazed, everything seen through a haze.
Becoming solid for her pleasure is harder each time. The flesh is willing, but weak. Yesterday he feared he wouldn’t be able to please her and she’d tell him to go; today, he knows he’ll soon be unable to.
As Angelina’s lust depletes his body, his mind discovers a thread of sanity. If he could speak, he’d say she’s killing him. If he could get out one word, any word.
“Hey, jackass, wake up.”
The fog in his head clears. Is that a voice?
“Shake it off, pea brain.”
He opens his eyes a crack; lashes fracture his vision. A man stands near the bed; tall, bulky, pale skin and black hair, he wears a tan trench coat and is agitatedly waving his arms as if to draw River’s attention to him.
“Yeah, I’m talking to you. The bitch is gonna suck you dry. You gotta snap out of it while you still can. Rain is in big trouble. She needs you.”
He’s talking to me. River’s head lolls to one side. Angelina’s face is near, she looks past him, across the room but doesn’t react to the man.
Does she see him? He doesn’t believe so. To River he’s more a shadow than a solid person.
“Listen to me! Rain needs you!”
Rain needs me? Rain?
He blinks, squeezes his lids together, blinks again. The big guy becomes clearer. Why doesn’t Angelina see him?
“She’s gonna die if you don’t help her.”
Die? Something moves in River’s chest, at first cold and sluggish, picking up pace until it pounds. It is his heartbeat. Acid burns in his gut. Rain will die? He fights for words, trying to pull them up his throat by force of will. One word.
The big man rakes his fingers through his hair. “Gods dammit! He’s too far gone.”
He fades to a mere, man-shaped discoloration. River struggles with a sound. Wait! Don’t go.
It whispers out, a rough exhalation like sand in the wind. “Wait.”
Too late.
“Did you say something, darling?” Propped on one elbow, Angelina leans over River, index finger tracing his pecs. “You’re a strong one.” Her nails scratch his chest, her breath plays over his ear. And he wants her, her body made for his hands, his lips.
He sees Rain’s smile. Rain needs you.
“Beloved,” Angelina whispers.
Rain’s laughter, like water tinkling on copper.
River surprises himself by rolling to the bed’s edge. So surprised, in fact, he falls off. Angelina’s laughter echoes in his ears. His body loses substance. A pain … no, a sensation, as though his guts are being pulled out. His muscles tighten in rebellion, but he knows this is it, and deliberately, consciously lets go.
For a second, a mere second, darkness engulfs him.
He finds himself crouched on the floor in Angelina’s bedroom. He pushes to his feet and almost topples. Head swimming, incredibly weary, he staggers toward the bedroom door. And an amazing thing happens - his energy and physical strength returns.
Angelina kneels on the bed, hands fisting the sheets. Her head whips in his direction. She snarls, for an instant she is ugly, but her features realign and she smiles. “Come back, my love. Come back to me.”
A sneer curls his lip. “Good-bye, Angie.” If he doesn’t leave, he’ll do something he’ll later regret.
He stoops to gather up his clothes and the first, clear, achingly lovely note threatens to stop him in his tracks. Hot rage boils throu
gh River; he swears inside his head, plows through her song to the bed and wraps his long fingers around her neck.
He squeezes, and the siren song chokes off along with her breath. As his fingers gouge into her flesh, he whispers into her face, “You’re a monster, Angie, and you know what happens to monsters.”
Her eyes are wide and terrified. His fingers dig deeper, seeking her trachea.
He jerks his hands away. “Remember that, Angelina. Try it again, I’ll kill you.”
*
I understand why people say what interrogators want to hear to make the pain stop. I know why they admit to crimes they never committed and knowledge they don’t have.
But I have nothing for Calla Blayne.
They leave me for a few hours, suspended in the chair, a red and white rag doll. Pain makes my body spasm. I moan with helplessness and fading hope.
“Didn’t work. He’s too far gone. I couldn’t get through to him.”
I hear Castle but can’t open my eyes. My words come out as lisps through split, swollen lips. “What are you babbling about, Castle?” I probe at my gums with my tongue, at the spaces several teeth happily filled yesterday.
“Oh, shit, Rain.”
“That about describes it, Castle.”
One eye is closed, I manage to crank the other open to a slit. My face throbs constantly and the split skin over my cheekbones stings. My feet are so swollen, the skin is tight and shiny and each looks like one big toe. One big, broken toe. I got hippo feet.
Castle stares. I’d snap my fingers to jerk him out of it if I could.
He kneels in front of me. At my side, Wool’s eyes are huge and his trembling transmits to my skin and shivering body.
“No one’s coming, sugar.” Castle lets his head hang.
“River?”
“He’s with Angelina. I tried. Couldn’t get through to him. He’s a zombie, babe.”
A pained chuff boils up my throat and out of my mouth. “Well, everything else is Downside; I always wondered if zombies are tucked away someplace, you know, like a zombie reservation.”
His head lifts and swivels to Wool. He speaks through his teeth, looking at Wool with a glare which could melt steel. “Set her free, you bastard or I’ll make your life miserable. I’ll be with you twenty-four-seven.”
“I - ” Wool begins, but the door opens.
My audience troops in: Calla Blayne, Phaedra, the elf following. He bends and comes up with a knife. My muscles lock as he walks to me. Castle disappears. I don’t blame him, he can’t help and seeing what comes next will send him over the edge.
Calla watches, gaze intense, lips parted. Her chest lifts and falls rhythmically and her eyes shine like blue opals.
I know the knife is sharp when the elf wraps one hand in my shirt, pulls it away from my body and cuts from hem to neck. The blade slides through the material without snagging, as if cutting through water. The sides fall apart. He looks into my eyes, his glinting, as he slices through my bra and it also separates in two pieces.
He pinches my left nipple with his hard fingers and tugs. So keen, the blade, it will no more than sting.
He laughs sour breath over my face and releases my nipple. “Next time, half-life.”
He carves a line from between my breasts down to my belly.
*
Naked, carrying his clothes and the backpack, River jogs up the steps. Why dress when he’ll lose it going through Rain’s wall?
Fading to nothing is easier this time, a tiny twinge inside which he can ignore. Inside the apartment, he opens the door and reaches back to the passage for his clothes and bag.
Rain needs help.
Does she? Did he imagine the voice, the spectral outline of a tall broad man? Was the vision a side effect of Angelina-induced delirium?
River doesn’t believe so. The man’s words, tone, his sheer desperation resonated in River’s skull and had the impact to release him from Angelina’s hold.
He dresses and surveys the apartment. The calendar tells him Angelina had him for nearly two days.
The room is stuffy and warm. It felt like this when Rain first brought him here. Apart from that, it seems the same as he remembers.
His hackles rise. It is the same, exactly the same. Rain’s pile of dirty clothes hasn’t grown. The same dishes are in the sink. As much as he can remember, nothing inside the refrigerator has been touched, neither eaten nor drank since he last looked in there. Milk in the glass bottle is on the verge of turning. In the bathroom, shower and sink are bone-dry, as are the towels. Towels take quite some time to dry in the damp Downside atmosphere so she didn’t shower this morning.
He pries up the floorboard - yes, he saw her hiding place – the cash is still here.
Sitting on the bed, he scratches behind one ear and sniffs. The place had this stale air after Rain had been away Upside for a few days.
River takes the pistol from its square box and loads the chambers, but how to carry it? The weapon is too heavy for his waistband and he doesn’t have a belt. His coat pockets are big and deep; the gun weighs down the side of his coat but is hidden. A handful of spare ammo goes in the other pocket. Leaving the backpack, he quits the apartment and crosses the street to ask Noddy if he’s seen Rain in the past two days.
Noddy hasn’t seen her.
Few people are abroad. He stops a human couple and asks after Rain. He understands wraiths are uncommon, so they must draw the eye; surely someone noticed Rain out and about in the past two days. From their expressions, they don’t like being waylaid by a wraith and say no, they haven’t seen another half-life.
He follows his memory to streets lined with stores and restaurants, hotels and financial institutions, searching for a small figure with night-black hair. Eventually, he asks for directions to Alain Sauvageau’s house. Rain said the guy has fingers in everything; hopefully he’ll stretch them to finding her.
People are emerging in the dawn streets. A florist uses a long pole to hitch floral baskets which bloom like colored stars to hangers above his windows. A vendor, trying to make early sales, calls out prices for his belts and buckles. Two women lean from the windows of their adjacent apartments and natter. A copper-haired prostitute calls to River from a dark doorway. A butcher scrapes offal into a bin in the alley alongside his shop.
The hulking gothic house towers behind an equally gothic wall. Tall, loose-limbed, a vampire in a charcoal-gray business suit stands outside the gates.
River speaks with determination. “I’m River, here to see Alain Sauvageau.”
The vampire looks him up and down with a sneer. “Give me a reason he’d want to see you.”
“He’ll want to know about Rain.”
The vampire’s expression doesn’t change, but he opens a small door in one of the gates and steps through. Head down, River kicks at a piece of broken pavement as he waits.
The vampire returns quickly and holds the small door open. “The main entrance is on the right. Someone will meet you there. Don’t annoy the gargoyles.”
River goes through the gate and turns right. The great gray house and other stone buildings hunch inside the walls. Looking up and around at the bleak facades, he crosses the flagstone courtyard and understands the reference to gargoyles when several of them hop along the crenellate molding up near the roof.
A tall, blond lady vampire waits for him, her dark eyes smoldering. Without a word, she spins and goes inside and River hurries to follow. As she leads him along passageways, it occurs to him that when Rain said Sauvageau is not a vampire, he assumed the man is human. He jumped to that conclusion when she told him they were meeting a man with a problem in his attic, but came face to face with a goblin. River braces to meet another uncanny Downside creature.
They pass through a great hall and into a small room full of shadows which threaten to obscure the glass-fronted bookshelves on two walls.
Sauvageau fingers his chin below a full bottom lip, ankles crossed and heels up on the edge of
a large oak desk illuminated by a lamp with fringed amber shade. He regards River coolly.
River lingers not far from the door. “I’m - ” he begins.
“The new one. River,” Sauvageau interrupts. “What about Rain?”
Sauvageau’s icy tone should send a shiver rippling up River’s spine; instead it makes him mad. He bites the inside of his mouth in an effort to quench the emotion. Giving in to illogical anger will get him nowhere.
“I think she’s missing.”
A slight frown puckers Sauvageau’s brow. “Think?”
“This is going to sound crazy, but I had a vision.”
“This is Downside. Nothing is crazy. Have a seat.” Sauvageau indicates the chair facing his desk. “Tell me about it.” He tents his hands and taps the fingers on his chin as he studies River.
How Sauvageau watches him makes the hairs on River’s neck prickle as he moves into the room. He warily eases into a chair, then wishes he’d remained standing. Sauvageau’s unblinking contemplation makes him feel like prey.
“Please continue,” Sauvageau prompts.
River swallows. “I saw a man. He looked kind of like me. I mean, a wraith. Except he wasn’t quite … there. He told me Rain needs my help, she’s in danger. He looked like … a ghost.” He omits he was with Angelina at the time.
Sauvageau’s feet slip off the desk and settle on the floor. “Describe this apparition.”
“Big, muscular, black hair and dark eyes. Wore a brown trench coat, it looked like canvas. Though he was hazy, more of an impression on the air.”
“Your description is of Rain’s former partner, Castle.”
River hunches his shoulders and leans over his knees. “I’ve never seen Castle. He died before I came. You don’t sound surprised.”
The man spreads his hands. “This is Downside.”
The phrase - which Rain is fond of using when she can’t explain the inexplicable - irritates River. “And ghosts aren’t unusual Downside?”
“They are rare. They usually materialize when they have a mission, an irrepressible compulsion which drags them from the nether world.”
“He said she’ll die if I don’t help her.”