by Maribel Fox
“¡Me cago en tu madre! ¡Me cago en tu boca! I’ll shit on everything—” My tirade’s cut short when they slip some kind of noose around my neck and I feel my powers being cut off. Just like that. Like they found a secret power switch.
¿Qué chingados? What the fuck?
They’re dragging me further down some hallway, and I don’t even know how we got here. One minute I was chasing the call — I’m sure it was, I know what that sounds like, I know it sounds crazy, but I think I know the fucking dragon mating call when I feel it. I am a goddamned dragon after all. One minute I was running through the woods, following the call I thought I’d never feel, and then the next, I was ambushed, tackled, and dragged away before I knew what the fuck was happening.
Why would these cabrónes be stupid enough to grab me??
“Soy dragón!” I try, but it does nothing. They’re not saying anything, they’re not revealing what they want with me, who they are, the fuck is going on… “You fuckin—” I try to summon smoke, and my magic fizzles, never catching a spark. I try to teleport — nada.
Without my powers, I’m basically just a human — and a weak one at that, all things considered. This is not good. If I’m not a dragon, what the hell am I?
The further they drag me, the weaker I feel, and with this weird noose thing around my neck, the fight’s not worth it. I need to conserve my energy.
It’s not the first time I’ve been taken prisoner/hostage. I know the drill. I go limp in their grasp, letting them literally drag me along with them. I’m not going to make this easier by walking; how they deal with that is their problem.
My head lolls, weakness seeping in, sapping away every bit of strength the deeper we go. We’re moving further and further away from where I was, I can feel the thread thinning, stretching, being tested to its limits. There’s no clue or indication about where I am though. The cave walls are indistinguishable from each other, and it seems like we’re in an endless tunnel, time dragging out forever.
Though there’s no way it was that long, I feel like it’s been ages when the surroundings change and I pick my head up up again to look around.
Prison. Or a dungeon. Some sort of holding facility. That’s what I’ve got. I’m seeing cages — no, cells — lining both sides of the hallway I’m being carried down. They’re medieval-looking, stone walls and floors, thick iron bars, the stench of sulfur clinging in the damp, warm air. Lights dance and dim as we pass by, but they’re stronger here, and don’t die out at my mere presence. The men hauling my sorry ass along behind them stop in front of a cell that looks oddly occupied compared to all the others, even though it’s currently empty. There aren’t any decorations or anything like that, but there’s a cot with rumpled bedding and the cell feels lived in. It’s the only one around here that gives that impression, and if I wasn’t feeling so shitty, I might give it more thought.
One of the men escorting me — some kind of guard judging by his uniform — slides a metal collar around my neck, clicking it into place before removing the magical noose. The collar has the same effect, though. My powers are dead. I can’t shift to smoke and escape. I can’t shift at all.
Mierda.
Just trying to use my powers takes a lot of strength I don’t have to spare.
I’m shuffled forward, and thrown into the cell next to the one that looks lived-in-yet-empty. They close the door and leave me all alone, no one bothering to tell me where I am, what’s happening to me — fucking why it’s happening. It’s really inconsiderate. Especially when I’m a dragon. We generally warrant better treatment than this. Someone’s going to answer for this. As soon as I find a way out of here.
I know I’m just going to keep getting weaker, so I start checking the cell for weak spots right away. I check the collar too. Both seem solid in construction, yanking, pulling, tugging, trying to break through does nothing. Without my dragon claws, I can’t slice through metal. I try to access my powers, try to conjure smoke, to teleport, freaking anything, but it’s not happening. The collar’s stopping me, and the effort of trying it all leaves me feeling more drained than before.
Who’s the idiota now?
I’m useless and imprisoned. Can’t wait to hear what the wolf’s got to say about that.
That’s something at least. Even though I’m in this dungeon-like cell, with stone walls and floor, bars on the door, a hard cot — you get the idea — I can still feel the faintest of connections to the outside world. It’s gotta be some extra-draconic power related to the curse or something.
Just my fucking mierda luck that this is the power still accessible of all of them.
Maybe there’s some other way. Something else I haven’t thought of yet. Maybe I should just wait and see what happens. How bad can it be?
Don’t be estúpido, I scold myself.
We’ve tried this before. We’ve got about two weeks before we’re dead. I can’t speak for the other pendejo, but I don’t really want to be dead.
I sigh, sinking down onto the cot, staring up at the rock ceiling, wracking my brain for another option.
But I know I just have to stop being a baby about it.
Reluctantly — very reluctantly — I open up the connection and send out a message.
Hey… buddy? I ask tentatively.
We are not buddies, he responds. Typical. I’ve gotta fight back a snort. It shouldn’t even be funny in a time like this, but after fifty years practically joined at the hip, he’d still never admit to liking me — even a little.
Where have you gone? he asks, erasing my smirk in an instant.
Funny you should ask… I’m not sure? Somewhere presumably in Hell… Unless it’s Underhill mimicking Hell to throw me off?
I don’t understand any of the actual words that come at me in a string of anger, but I get the general feeling. I’m an idiot, I’m ruining his life, I’m the worst thing that’s ever happened to him, yadda, yadda, yadda.
Also should mention that I’m imprisoned and my powers are disabled, I add, mentally wincing, ready for the barrage.
The answering silence is deafening.
…Buddy?
I swear the only thing I get back is a growl, and the connection is silent after that. No answer, no acknowledgment, no nothing.
Shit, maybe he’s finally ready to let us both die.
That would suck.
I lay back on the cot and sigh, muscles heavy, mind heavier. This is not what I was expecting when I went running off in the forest. I was expecting a sexy lady. There have been no sexy ladies to my knowledge and I’m feeling pretty cheated about it.
Also, this taking my powers away thing is a dick move. Do not appreciate. I’m gonna have to have some words with my host when he finally makes himself known. This isn’t how you treat guests, illegally abducted against their will or no.
But right now, I’m tired. Being ambushed and kidnapped is quite the adrenaline rush, and having the curse kick in, having my powers drained… Well, there’s not much left in me at the moment. Some sleep will fix it a bit, but it’s going to keep getting worse. I yawn and close my eyes, focusing on the memory of that feeling in the woods, the call I felt that pulled me away and led me straight into an ambush by the look of things.
That feeling though… It was something else. Something different. Something new.
What was that?
Sleep slips in, pulling me under mid-thought. Then lightning. Agony. White hot pain flashes through me and I bolt upright and awake, the pain persisting.
It’s been happening more and more in my sleep, pain and nightmares, vision of a gorgeous woman, tormented and screaming. It only happens when my guard’s down and I’m not protecting myself from whatever that outside influence is.
At a time like this, I should have known better than to let it in — a guy’s gotta sleep though, right? — and now it’s not leaving. I don’t have the power to push it back out, and the intensity fades, but it’s staying. The pain is firmly rooted in my brain, s
naking tendrils of it traveling down my spine, branching out to every nerve ending.
It’s never been this bad before. I never realized how much my powers were shielding me. But now I’ve got to face this onslaught alone, and it’s all I can do to not lie there and weep.
Today has been a really shitty day.
6
Lili
Mustering the strength I’ve been honing for centuries, drawing on the discipline taught by countless hours of grueling training, I manage to divest myself from reality.
I am the master of my own mind, and I will not allow anyone to take that away from me.
There is a place that no amount of torture, torment, probing, twisting — the horrors are endless, believe me — can reach me. A place where I am safe, where not even the worst of my tormentors can penetrate.
I call it my happy place. It’s a mental construct I’ve created to distract myself while imprisoned the last century.
If it were only imprisonment, I might not need a happy place, but with the experiments…
I couldn’t let them break me. I could let them think they had, but never would I let them actually shatter my mind. It’s changed over the years, going from a quiet, peaceful place, to something more concrete, a place with constant breezes and the smell of flowers and salt in the air. The past few months especially, I’ve come to have a very clear picture of my happy place, the huge trees, lush grass under a weather-worn picnic table. The sky above — I love looking at that most of all; there’s no sky in Hell, and looking up just isn’t done — is bright blue, the color so intense it makes my eyes water if I stare at it too long.
It’s warm — pleasantly so, at first — then it’s getting hotter, the trees bursting into flames, spontaneously erupting one-by-one until I’m surrounded by fire, pain, hugging myself, curling into a little ball to avoid the hungry fire.
When will it stop?
Will it ever?
Stop feeling sorry for yourself, I scold myself. I try to shove away the fire, but my heart isn’t in it. It lashes out, latches around my wrist singeing me, branding my arm.
“Fuck you!” I scream, snatching my hand back. Ash and soot rush into my lungs, burning air blistering my airways even though none of this is real — the pain is, but it’s not physical, it’s magic — and I cough violently, wheezing and gasping, struggling for air, my head spinning as I drop down to my knees. It’s so hot, the fire’s everywhere, and I can’t push it away long enough to focus.
“I hate you!” I know they’ll never hear me, the assholes in the lab coats, but screaming reminds me they haven’t killed me yet. I still have a voice. I’m down, not out.
“And I’m not going to let you win,” I growl, clenching my jaw and my fists, squeezing my eyes shut tight, doing everything I possibly can to convince myself this fire’s not here, that I’m back in that forest clearing with birds singing and the ocean crashing in the distance.
When I focus on it enough, when I separate myself from the reality of my torture again, the fire’s gone. The happy place it back, and I let out a sigh, sinking down onto the picnic table.
It’s a lovely spot. A great place to relax — if only I could relax. If only I could let my guard down enough for that. I’m a patient demon, but even I’m starting to wonder when they’re going to give up on these tests they’re running. They either need to let me go or kill me, right? What good is keeping me indefinitely?
I know they’re trying to learn something about my dragon heritage — something I didn’t even know I had, thanks, adoption — but what that is? Fuck if I know. They’re not getting it though. I’m pretty sure of that.
They’re also facing… difficulties because of me. I’m not only a dragon. Before that little detail of my lineage came out during a fairly routine physical, I thought I was nothing more that your garden variety succubus.
Hell of a mix, huh?
But they’ve got these collars that kill the powers of their prisoners — can’t exactly do that with me, since one of my powers is how I manage to not starve to death. Not only is the collar less effective than they’d like, there’s the matter of actually… feeding me. And the number of times I’ve attempted to escape. The willingness I’ve shown to actually starve myself if they don’t give into the few demands I insist on — those damned seals some of the meals came with, for instance.
The memory of that’s enough to welcome the flames back, smoke rolling in like thick fog as the blaze encroaches.
“No!” I protest, focusing on the sky, that blue, blue sky.
But it’s no use. The fire returns, the blistering torment making me want to beg for the end of it all.
“I said no,” I grit through clenched teeth, willing my happy place back into being. I grip the edge of the picnic table with both hands, clinging to it like that’ll somehow anchor me even though I know it won’t.
I’m heaving, trying to focus, to do the actual anchoring I know I need to do, when I feel something… amiss. That’s the only way I can describe the feeling until I look up and realize that something is a someone. He’s tall, broad-shouldered, dressed like an old-school scholar or professor, except for the wild mass of curls he’s trying to pass off as a ponytail.
He looks yummy, but my first thought is more concern about what he’s doing here, in my psychic safe space. Slowly, I pry my fingers from the edge of the picnic table and start to walk toward him. His back is to me, and I approach quietly, wanting to keep the element of surprise.
Whatever he’s doing here, he’s got to be the result of some kind of fissure in my armor, because I’ve never felt pain in my happy place without warning, but suddenly it’s like my back is being branded, and I gasp, enough to make the mystery man turn.
I don’t see him before I’m yanked back in the burning room — faster than I ever have been before. My hold is slipping, I’m getting tired, hungry, weak.
The next time I get back to my happy place, he’s gone.
Why does it disappoint me? I don’t know what he was doing here, and his appearance can’t be good news for the stability of my mental fortress. Is he real? Some kind of concoction of my fracturing mind?
I’m laying on the table, wondering, hoping he’ll come back even though I’m sure that’s a terrible thing to hope for.
Having some company would be nice. The only people I’ve had to talk to for the last century are my guards, and they never let them get too close before they’re dispatched. Even if he’s a figment of my imagination, I think conversation might help keep me sane.
That sounds like the kind of thing an insane person would say, Lil.
While I’m laying there, I sense a change. Not only that, I smell it. Ozone in the air, fog rolling in through the forest. It’s almost like a storm’s coming in.
Since when has there been anything other than pleasant weather in my happy place?!
This is not good.
I sit up, but it’s not fog or storm clouds rolling in that I see.
It’s a guy.
A different guy.
This guy’s smaller, slighter, his black hair sleek and straight rather than wild and curly. And his eyes are yellow, stuck on me.
“You’re not the same guy,” I mutter, stating the obvious. “How’d you get here? Who are you?” He says nothing, mutely walking toward me, this look of awe on his face as he steps toward me, hand outstretched to touch my face. He looks dazed, confused — really adorable in other circumstances if I’m being honest — but before he touches me, he disappears.
Just like that.
Gone.
“The fuck,” I mutter, throat tight as I look at the empty spot he just was.
I want some answers, damn it!
It seems my streak of not getting what I want is going to continue, though. No matter what I do, what I try, I can’t seem to get either of my visitors to return, and soon — or not, time has no meaning in the happy place — I’m being pulled back to actual reality. To the sterile experiment roo
m with the frowning lab rats in white coats.
“Take her back to her cell,” one of them says to a guard I recognize from doing the rounds. He’s not one of my guards. Not like that.
I don’t fight him as he takes me by the arm, cuffs me, and pulls me along after him. I’ve long since stopped fighting. Not because I’ve given up on getting out of here — not a fucking chance — but because I’ve explored all the options currently available to me, seen the futility in trying any of them again, and until I sort out my next plan, I figure it’s best to lull them into a false sense of security.
Let them think they’ve broken me.
They have no idea what they’re really dealing with, after all. They have no idea how deep the well of my patience runs. How vast my capacity for vengeance can be.
They don’t know what they’ve gotten themselves into with me, and even after a century, they’ve hardly scratched the surface. They’ll never be able to weaken me enough to make me completely harmless, and I hope that’s keeping one of these assholes awake at night.
One in particular.
The guard leaves me in my cell, locking up before taking my cuffs off. I stretch and move my body, the aches and soreness ever-present, but moving a bit before collapsing helps.
Something’s different, though, and it puts me on alert. Is it something in my cell? Something added? Removed?
I hear movement from the cell next to mine and freeze.
There’s never been anyone in any of the cells around me. I figured the isolation is part of whatever sick experiments they’re conducting.
But… that sounded like someone.
“Encantado querida. What’re you in for?” The voice is like smoke and shadows, dark, husky, practically sinful in its own right.
But it’s not real. It can’t be. In a hundred years there’s never been another inmate, and with the mystery men in my happy place…