Sweet Child

by Brie Tart

  The woman in the headdress moved away from Ailpien’s wound and glided to the mass of bodies. Ailpien had glanced her way when he said Morag, which meant the bigger lady was Rhona.

  The scrawny guy in the blue robe walked up—he must be Cailean. His hands glowed with lines and characters Helen couldn’t begin to read, and he wrapped them around Helen’s arms like tying a rope. A vice closed around her, pinning her elbows to her sides. He did the same to her legs, and something squeezed her knees together. The spell made her skin crawl more than her stomach, but at least she could fidget.

  “You do your master proud.” Ailpien offered Cailean a nod before focusing his full attention on Helen. He set his arms at the small of his back and gave her the smallest of bows. “So, we finally meet without any ruses or petty disguises.”

  “You want me to spit on you again?” Helen asked, her voice rasping from all the abuse his electricity and her heat had given her throat.

  “This bravado is a waste of your energy and my time.”

  “So get to your fuckin’ point.” Helen held back a cough.

  “Very well, enough banter.” Ailpien leaned over Helen. “What will it take to make you willingly cooperate?”

  “Me stabbing you ‘til you stop twitching.” Helen growled, her instinct boiling up again. “I’d settle for slicing through your twiggy neck.”

  “That isn’t an option.” Ailpien reached into the pouch at his belt and pulled out the same little mirror he had at the cafe. He tapped the shiny glass and held it close enough for Helen to see into. “But let me present you with an alternative.”

  Helen’s reflection shifted and swirled into a marble sitting room with glowing veins and elegant gold-rimmed sofas. Its centerpiece wasn’t the wide-stretched chandelier hovering from the ceiling without a chain, but a set of wide double doors with gold vines twirling over them. Out of the glowing, willowy figures seated in this chaise or that chair, one dull man in a Star Trek t-shirt stuck out. The image zoomed in on him. His gold curlicues hung in his pensive face and his fingers twisted around each other, strangling each other.

  Dylan.

  “He’s awaiting an audience with the High Queen, herself. Many of my own elite spies are in there with your sweetheart. They easily double as assassins, and could dispatch him in such a vulnerable state before he’s ever called.” Ailpien shoved the mirror closer. Helen couldn’t help but stare at Dylan hunched over like that. “All they need is an order.”

  “That shit won’t work.” Helen noticed how intently Dylan’s attention hung on that door, as if his life depended on it. “I know he works for you.”

  “It doesn’t matter that you bore his child above all others? You can overlook that the entire reason he risks his life by meeting with the highest power of the fae courts is to seek a pardon for you?”

  Helen squirmed against the magic bonds as panic bubbled under her temper. Out of her options, the unspoken third of cutting through Ailpien and his minions appealed the most. But could she break out and take down Rhona and Cailean fast enough? Would she be able to land a killing strike before Morag got to chanting? It was a narrow chance, something that could cost Dylan his life if she failed. The foundations of their relationship may be crumbling, but she wanted him alive so he could at least try to fix it. And she couldn’t bear Lucy breaking down because she lost her only dad.

  “Very well. If he won’t sway you, I’ll redirect their attention to finding your daughter.” Ailpien shrugged as he pulled the small mirror away and tucked it back into that pouch. “Once they’ve slain him, finding the girl should be an easy task.”

  Helen wriggled harder as her skin lit up. Her power had shredded through the Light Elf’s and Ailpien’s magic. She could get through the scrawny blue guy’s just the same.

  Someone jumped on her back and shoved her cheek into the dirt.

  “Whatever you’re thinking, don’t even try,” Rhona whispered by Helen’s ear. A sharp knee dug into her back.

  More layers of whatever locked down her elbows and knees piled on. The scrawny guy drew those glowing letters in the air faster than Dylan could type. Morag’s ethereal voice floated over the breeze, grating against Helen’s ear drums like the Lennan Sìth’s had.

  Helen forced the heat back down. What was running to fight another day called, a tactical retreat? Her instincts had the right idea earlier. Bide her time until the best opportunity came.

  “What do you want?” Helen wheezed out.

  “Your cooperation,” Ailpien said with a satisfied smile. Helen pictured how she would gut him and wear that same smile as she did it.

  “You won’t get it ‘til you swear.”

  “That’s fair.” Ailpien raised his right hand while putting his left over his heart. “If you, Helen Carver, cooperate with my orders, I, Ailpien of Far Seeing Owls, will not order any of my agents to kill or hunt down Dylan Morgan or Lucy Morgan-Carver. So long as the requirements of this agreement are met, I also vow not to personally hunt down or kill Dylan Morgan or Lucy Morgan-Carver. This agreement will expire when I have learned what I need from studying you.”

  “Don’t give me that vague shit.” Helen grunted as Rhona’s knee dug deeper. “Say what you want.”

  “This agreement will expire when I have learned how to manufacture a fae out of a human from studying you,” Ailpien amended. That excited glint came back his eye. He turned away while blathering on. “If I don’t have an Unseelie Queen to show me how, then reverse engineering the process should serve me well enough. And you’re so crucial because you aren’t of Nicnevin’s lot, so the treaty does not include you. I’m free to do whatever I please.”

  Helen thought through every possible loophole in Ailpein’s promise. The bastard was thorough enough that her family would be safe as long as she stayed useful. After he was done with her, all bets were off. But it did buy her some time to figure out something else. “Fine.”

  Rhona dragged Helen to her feet. With a wave of Cailean’s bony hand, Helen’s knees came loose, and she could walk on her own.

  Ailpien stretched the mirror from his pouch into a long oval like he’d done at the cafe. He swiped the glass, and the reflection shifted. It showed a wide open workspace surrounded by shelves and shelves of books and potion jars. The glowing equipment on the couple tables resembled a mad scientist’s lab. An old fashioned gurney sat there with new leather straps.

  Ailpien walked through it like a wide open door.

  Rhona dragged Helen in after him.

  CHAPTER 20

  Those were the longest three days of Helen’s life.

  She wasn’t sure what kind of logic went behind Ailpien’s “studying” when him and the scrawny guy, Cailean, strapped her to the gurney. Ailpien led the show, wielding a scalpel and taking notes on a legal pad between his procedures. Cailean fed a steady stream of itchy energy into Helen like an IV drip, keeping her immobile and conscious. Neither bothered with numbing her or putting her to sleep. Cailean asked about that, why they were leaving Helen awake instead of making her more pliable. Ailpien said he needed her reactions to discover how certain aspects of her power worked alongside her physiology.

  Then he made the first cut into her chest. She almost bit through the balled leather strap they’d shoved in her mouth. The rest she remembered in flashes. Stabbing pains shot through her and pulsed long after that scalpel came close. Her tense muscles loosened when he disconnected a sinew or ligament. The open air intimately scraped against the lining of her stomach, lungs, and uterus. At some point, she caught a glimpse of Ailpien holding her unraveled small intestine like a parasitic worm.

  A few times her Unseelie instinct kicked in. Her bare skin got hot and red. It numbed every sensation to distant pressure, and she could breathe for a few seconds without crying. She’d never loved her abilities so much, clung to them to keep her alive and sane. In those moments, she made herself think beyond the gurney and the world that existed away from Ailpien’s scalpel. She could watch and wai
t. The time would come to strike. She would slice into them—Cailean, Morag, Rhona, Ailpien—and make each scream like she had. Then she would get out and find her daughter.

  After those first days, Morag sealed the incisions Ailpien made like new, and Rhona brought her down a hall full of doors with barred windows. Cobwebs and graffiti coated the walls. Many of the rooms hung open, showing beds bolted into the floor. An abandoned asylum?

  They crammed her into one of those rooms. The walls buzzed with Seelie energy. Her stomach didn’t act up like before. Her constant exposure to Cailean’s magic must have desensitized her to anything less. She could almost feel the protective intent behind the spell if she concentrated. When Helen tested the doorknob to see if it was locked, it turned easy. The room’s Seelie energy spasmed. The door itself stayed in place. Sheer force wouldn’t free her. She made do watching the hallway through the barred window.

  The next day, Helen sneaked in a few winks of sleep without her brain making her relive flashes of Ailpien’s surgery torture. A crowd of shouts and whimpers stirred her out of it. She ducked out of the bed and peeked through the door.

  Rhona grunted as she dragged something through the hall. It was a woven net, humming with more Seelie magic and trapping four or five strangers. Cameras with heat vision lenses and padded mic booms were crowded in there with them. Helen’s best guess was they were either amateur ghost hunters or they explored abandoned buildings. Rhona took them toward the door Helen knew led to the basement, the lab. She kicked them and their equipment down the stairs and slammed the exit shut behind them.

  Helen couldn’t get back to sleep through the wails. Part of her hoped they died quick. Every other part felt the grisly relief that she wasn’t in their place. The screams and moans carried on through the entire next day. Helen tuned them out when her eyes burned too much to stay open. Exhaustion sent her to sleep faster than her best bender. Her dreams put her face to face with an imagined ghost of her mother. Did he put you through this too? Helen asked. Was this what made you give up your humanity and try to take mine?

  Footsteps echoing down the hall from the basement stirred Helen. She scrambled to her feet and clutched one of the steel bars on the bed frame. If she yanked it off, it might be enough of a weapon to fight them.

  “We’re making progress m’lord,” Cailean said. “That last one lived through the procedure.”

  “Yes, but she didn’t transform completely and she was rabid,” Ailpien replied with a frustrated edge to his words.

  “It seems better that their mortality stays in tact,” Cailean remarked. “Being able to handle iron weapons could give them enough advantage against Nicnevin’s forces to make up for the difference in power.”

  “That would be a boon if the partial transition didn’t reduce them to primal animals.” Ailpien sighed. “No, it should be a finished transformation. I need enough of their intelligence intact to make an army of obedient soldiers, not a hoard of monsters that will turn against me.”

  “Hmm. The only one that survived had the most assertive spirit.” As Cailean paused, the footsteps stopped. “Perhaps if the next subject willingly submits to the transformation, we’ll find better success preserving their mind.”

  “If only her majesty hadn’t done away with the single subject who managed to turn herself into an Unseelie Queen. If only that blasted changeling hadn’t ruined the entire operation. We were so close.” Ailpien groaned. One of them stepped toward Helen’s door. “We’ll fetch the Fae Hunter after I look at the Hellhound again, and use him to test your theory.”

  More experiments. Helen pulled the pole out of the bedframe and dashed on one side of the door so it would open with her hidden behind it. Her skin tingled like sinking into a warm bath after a hard workout. The Unseelie power comforted her, bolstered her. Her and her instincts synced, familiar and friendly.

  The door swung wide. Helen kept watch through the window.

  Cailean entered first. Good. She darted out and brought the bar down on the back of his head.

  He cried out and fell over, a steaming goose egg where the bar hit. Helen brought it down again, but his forearm caught the blow instead. Bones crunched under the rod.

  “One more strike and I sic my assassins on your sweetheart,” Ailpien said from behind her. “This is not cooperation. Remember our deal.”

  Was that really a threat? Helen had seen Dylan in action, leaping from roof to roof. He was more capable than he let on, and he wouldn’t want her to keep letting Ailpien dissect her alive. He could handle himself.

  Helen aimed for Cailean’s head again and cracked clean through his forearm.

  “Thomas Carver is alive.”

  Helen froze, the rod stopping in mid swing. She checked over her shoulder at Ailpien, eyeing him through her greasy hair. He had to be lying. But he couldn’t, could he? He was a fae, and he couldn’t say something that blunt if it was a lie.

  Cailean moaned under her.

  “It’s true.” Ailpien kept his gaze locked on hers like a snake charmer following a cobra. “You may be thinking that killing your sweetheart and capturing your daughter are empty threats. But we already have Thomas Carver. He raised you after the Seelie Court took Elaine Carver, correct? He’s like a father to you?”

  Helen boiled hot enough enough for the metal rod in her hand to glow orange. Had Dylan lied? Or did Ailpien trick Dylan and Tommy into a trap? Or something of both? She was past the point of deals. She wanted out, wanted her little girl, wanted to make them pay.

  Emotion drove her more than sense as she launched herself at Ailpien. How dare he make threats on her family, cut her up and put her back together over and over again for no good reason! That animal rage rose inside her. She couldn’t redirect the aggression, didn’t want to.

  Helen stopped short. Her feet didn’t budge, stuck to the floor like they were cased in cement. Cailean muttered behind her.

  Ailpien had meant to stall her until his pet wizard recovered enough to work his mojo. Helen twisted around and went to throw the rod at Cailean. But her wrist stopped short, like something invisible had whipped around it and held her arm back. It threw her momentum and the rod clattered to the ground, rolling away.

  Cailean raised his functioning hand and drew shining circles in the air. Glowing bands strapped Helen’s arms to her waist and droned louder than any other Seelie magic she’d faced so far. More piled on from a different kind of magic that vibrated like Ailpien’s innate glow. That was his power. She was starting to tell the difference between different spells, between different signatures as Cailean called them. Learning.

  “I just had a marvelous idea for how to make the Fae Hunter accept the transformation,” Ailpien said, his eyes sparking with the same devastating excitement that came whenever he wielded his scalpel. “And it will help me relieve my frustration.”

  The two grabbed Helen, and their combined magic made her go limp. Then they dragged her to the basement.

  * * *

  “Hellion?”

  That voice broke Helen out of her stupor. Ailpien and Cailean had strapped her down on their favorite gurney and plugged her mouth with their usual gag. The leather tasted wet and rotten. Leftover blood from the last “patient” stuck to her shoulder blades through the tears in her shirt.

  She turned toward the familiar sound.

  Rhona held up a man by his underarms, a skeleton of Helen’s uncle. Underfed, a thick salt and pepper beard in the works, and his disheveled hair slicked to his forehead. His pants were torn on one leg with stains on both knees. His yellowed undershirt had a rusty-brown stain blossoming around a tear in his chest. That stab wound came from something bigger than a scalpel and smaller than Rhona’s claymore. The silver sword in Dylan’s background file would fit it.

  “Not you too,” Tommy moaned as Rhona carried him down the stairs and deeper into the lab.

  Helen growled into her gag and strained against the arm restraints holding her wrists. The leather was spelled, of cour
se. Impossible to break through unless she caught Cailean off guard again.

  “See? I had Morag save him after your sweetheart left him for dead,” Ailpien said from Helen’s other side. “When you don’t cooperate, Rhona breaks something of his. He won’t die. Morag is a gifted healer. As soon as Rhona runs out of parts, Morag can repair them, then the process can start over, much like when we examine you. You wouldn’t want to put your dear uncle through that sort of pain over and over, would you? Look at the man. He’s been through enough.”

  Helen said exactly what she thought of Ailpien’s ultimatum, but it came out as muffled noises through the leather strap.

  “What was that? Protest?” Ailpien waved toward Rhona. “Start with his thumbs.”

  Rhona got a wicked grin as she grabbed Tommy’s hand and bent his thumb back to his wrist. The joint cracked. He screamed a string of expletives like when he caught his finger in a door.

  That cussing stabbed into Helen deeper than Ailpien’s scalpel ever could. She squeezed her eyes shut and forced her face away.

  Ailpien grabbed her jaw and set two of his fingers just above her eyes. The same power that had held her immobile in her cell forced her eyelids open. The whites of them turned dry as she watched.

  Rhona took Tommy’s other wrist. She started slow with the other thumb, the bone grinding louder than it should in Helen’s ears. Tommy clenched his jaw, his entire face scrunching. He whimpered the sharper Rhona turned. She tore. He howled.

  Helen’s tear ducts welled up. She went limp and pliant.

  “Good girl,” Ailpien said as he patted Helen’s cheek. He let Helen’s head return to its natural resting position and picked up his scalpel from another table. The blade had browning smears on the edge. “Morag, wherever you’re lurking, fix those fingers and prep our subject. Cailean, fetch my notes. Thomas, you’ll be sitting in with us for these sessions so you can see how our process works.”

  “I’m not doing anything for you. Don’t care what it is,” Tommy hissed through his teeth. “Been saying that since day one.”