Midnight Blue-Light Special i-2

by Seanan McGuire

  “You are charged with consorting with demons, conspiracy to betray the human race, and corruption of the innocent.”

  “That’s a whole lot of ‘C,’” I said, through lips that felt suddenly numb. I’d been expecting two of her trumped-up charges. The third . . .

  “Consorting with demons” meant “working with cryptids, rather than shooting them on sight.” “Conspiracy to betray the human race” meant basically the same thing, with a side order of not shooting any cryptid who looked like they might someday accidentally be a danger to humanity. Like Istas, who had never hurt anyone who didn’t hurt her first—that I was aware of, anyway, and I try to judge people by what I see, not what I suspect—but had been perfectly happy to slaughter snake cultists with extreme prejudice. By the standards of the Covenant, I was a traitor just for letting her kill the people who’d been intending to kill us. But “corruption of the innocent . . .”

  Dominic had been on my side all along. I was an idiot.

  Margaret pressed her lips into a thin line, glaring at me. “That’s right, you succubus, we know. We know you led Dominic De Luca from the paths of righteousness, just as your ancestress led Thomas Price into sin. He may still be forgiven, but you are beyond saving.”

  “You know, if you’re comparing me to Grandma, the one thing we have in common is that we’re both descended from the Healys,” I said, trying to push aside the cold, sick feeling in my stomach. “What does that say about your family, huh? Have you seduced and betrayed anyone recently?”

  She didn’t punch me this time. Instead, she slapped me, her palm landing hard and stinging against my cheek. I rocked back in my chair. The manacles dug into my wrists, and I barely managed to bite my lip hard enough to keep from crying out.

  “You’re a selfish little bitch, just like everyone else in your tainted bloodline,” spat Margaret. She sounded like she was about to cry. I blinked at her, not saying anything, and she continued, really getting her rant on now: “Do you have any idea what it’s like to grow up knowing you’re descended from traitors? That once you would have had this amazing family legacy, this endless parade of heroes and saviors and saints, but some self-absorbed idiots had to take all of that away from you? You’re an aberration, a monster-loving plague upon the human race! Your parents are no better than you, and we’re going to find them, and we’re going to make them pay until my family name is clean! Do you understand me?”

  “I understand that you’re upset,” I said carefully. Also a little obsessive, I thought. “But I’m not your redemption. I’m just a woman who happens to be distantly related to you, and whatever hell the Covenant may have put you through for being a Healy, it’s not my fault. Okay? It wasn’t me who chose to leave, or my parents, or my grandparents. Hell, it wasn’t even my great-grandparents. Isn’t there a statute of limitations on the sins of the father?”

  “Yes,” said Margaret coldly. “Even to the seventh generation. You are still responsible for the things they did to our family, and as they can’t pay for them, you will.”

  This time, when she slapped me, she was a lot less gentle about it—and she hadn’t been pulling her punches the first time. A thin trickle of blood ran down from my nose, pooling along the top of my lip. I couldn’t wipe it away, and so I simply sat there, glaring helplessly.

  “You’re going to tell us everything,” she spat. “How many of you there are, where we can find you, what your defenses are like—everything. And then, when your blasted family is safely in our custody, we can discuss whether or not you should be held accountable for what our ancestors have done.”

  “You need a hug,” I said. “Or maybe therapy. Or maybe—I know—you need to be kicked in the throat. How about you unchain me, and I’ll hug you before I kick you in the throat?”

  “You’re a violent little thing, aren’t you?” she asked. “Peter told me how shamefully you treated him. I honestly expected more ladylike behavior from you.” As she spoke, I realized that even when she was slapping me, she’d been careful to keep most of her body at an angle that would be virtually impossible for me to kick. She was smart. She learned from the mistakes of others. That just meant that I couldn’t give her time to take notes when the time came for her to make her own mistakes.

  “What can I say?” I asked. “Some of us grow up in the care of global terrorist organizations. Others aren’t so lucky.”

  For a moment, Margaret actually looked sorry for me. I itched to slap that expression right off her smug little face. “We’re not terrorists. We’re the good guys. And now it’s time for you to start earning that redemption.” She stepped away from me. “Gentlemen, she’s ready. We can begin the interrogation.”

  * * *

  The Covenant’s definition of “interrogation” wasn’t nice. It wasn’t gentle. It also wasn’t going to leave any scars, so I suppose I ought to thank them for that—although it’s hard to thank anyone who thinks that, say, beating the bottoms of my feet with a wooden baton is a sociable thing to do. They weren’t interested in my long-term dance career. They weren’t even interested in my being able to walk normally the next day. What they wanted was information, and they were more than happy to hurt me if it would help them get it.

  As I had suspected, Robert was the most efficient of the three. Margaret was happy to help Peter hold me down, and Peter grinned disturbingly the whole time, but it was Robert who kept producing common household tools from his little box. He looked disappointed every time he had to get a new one, like I was letting them down by refusing to break.

  “You could end this now, you know,” he said, pulling what looked like a blood pressure cuff out of the box. “All you need to do is tell us your name. That’s all I’m looking for today, is your name. We know your surname is ‘Price.’ Why not buy yourself a bit of a rest, and tell us what your first name is?”

  “Go to hell,” I said.

  “I’m afraid you’re going to beat me there,” he said. Margaret took the blood pressure cuff, fastening it tight around my upper arm. I tried to squirm away. Robert raised a finger. “This will hurt less if you hold still.”

  “Why the hell would I start believing that now?” I demanded.

  “Because I might be telling the truth, and wouldn’t it be wonderful if I were?”

  I didn’t say anything. I just glared mutely, willing him to fall down dead. Maybe that would have worked, if I’d been Sarah and he hadn’t been wearing an anti-telepathy charm and oh, right. If we lived in a comic book universe where the rules said that the bad people would be punished, and the good people would always come out on top. Too bad we didn’t live in that kind of world. Too bad we never had.

  And then the cuff around my arm began to expand, and the needles I hadn’t previously been able to feel began piercing my skin. After that, I forgot about everything but screaming for a little while.

  “What’s your name, love?” asked Peter.

  I screamed.

  “Just tell us your name and this can all be over for now. What’s your name, love?”

  I screamed. The more they inflated the cuff, the more the needles dug into my arm. The fact that it was designed to let air slowly out again meant that I never achieved equilibrium; the cuff would inflate, the needles would dig in, the cuff would deflate, the needles would shift positions, and then it would all start again. It was a new, exciting way of hurting someone, and I wanted nothing to do with it.

  “What’s your name, love?” asked Peter.

  I screamed, and kept screaming, until the sound ran out and I slumped, practically boneless, in the chair. Robert stopped inflating the cuff, letting it collapse with a soft hissing sound. Then he leaned in, wrapped his hand around the now-deflated cuff, and squeezed.

  Somehow I found it in myself to scream one last time, wailing like someone’s family beán sidhe. Robert kept squeezing, grinding his hand against the cuff so that the needles danced inside my flesh. His expression was sad, almost disappointed, like he hadn’t wanted any o
f this to happen.

  “What’s your name?” he asked, almost in a whisper.

  “V-Verity,” I replied. “Verity Price.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Verity Price,” he said, and took his hand away. The needles were still there, but the sudden reduction in pressure was such a blessing that I started to sob. “Take it off. We have what we need for right now.”

  “How is that what we need?” Margaret asked.

  Robert smiled. “Verity’s seen the light. She’ll be willing to help us, now, won’t you?”

  I couldn’t say anything. I could only sob, and keep sobbing as they gathered their things and left my tiny artificial prison. This time, they remembered to turn off the lights on their way out, and I was left alone again. Well, almost alone; the pain was still there, and was more than happy to be my companion in the dark.

  * * *

  Professional dancers learn to work through pain. It’s a part of the job. We dance on sprained ankles, we dance with broken ribs, we dance on blisters and bunions and broken toes. We are expected to be beautiful machines, capable of holding our form no matter what injuries we’re hiding. All my training told me that I should be able to compartmentalize the pain, and so as soon as I was alone—and as soon as I stopped crying—I began to do exactly that.

  First up was an assessment of my injuries. The puncture marks in my right arm were probably the worst; they were still bleeding, and I couldn’t move my arm enough to tell whether there were tears in the muscle. For the moment, I had to assume that they were all superficial, and that I’d be able to climb if I needed to. Anything else was unthinkable.

  My feet were in worse shape. I didn’t think any bones were broken, but both soles were badly swollen and probably just as badly bruised. I wasn’t going to be running anywhere any time soon. I’d just need to find another way.

  Apart from that, all I had was a split lip, a bloody nose, some abrasions on my scalp where the hair pulling had gotten overly enthusiastic, and some extremely sore fingernails. They hadn’t pulled any of my nails off, which was a small mercy, given how enthusiastic they’d been about driving slivers of bamboo underneath them. My whole life, I’d been hearing about how torture doesn’t work; torture is never the answer. Well, apparently, our cousins at the Covenant never got that particular lesson. They thought torture worked just fine.

  I took a breath, held it until my lungs ached, and breathed slowly out. I could function. I was hurt, but not too badly, and I could function. That was a good thing, because I needed to get away the second I had the opportunity to do so. These people were willing and eager to hurt me in the name of their cause, and when they started asking for information more sensitive than my name, they’d probably be more than happy to move on to more advanced methods of extracting answers. I liked my fingers, and my toes. I wanted them all to stay attached to my body.

  And I could no longer be sure I wouldn’t give them what they asked for when the cutting started.

  I don’t know how long I sat there in the dark, just breathing, waiting for the throbbing in my feet and arm to die down. When the door finally opened, I didn’t twitch, even though the light burned my eyes. I just stayed in the same position, chin down, slumped as far over as the chains allowed.

  “Not so mouthy now, are you?” asked a voice. Peter Brandt.

  I allowed myself a brief moment of satisfaction. Of the three, he was the one I’d been hoping would come to check on me. Margaret had a holy crusade. Robert had a job to do. And Peter? Peter had a grudge.

  “Please,” I whispered.

  “Please? Please what, love? Please mercy? You didn’t show much mercy when you thought you had me. Why should we show any mercy to you now?” Peter crossed the room to my chair. My leg twitched with the urge to be reintroduced to his balls, at speed. I forced myself to keep still. “There’s not any mercy here for the likes of you. We’re going to beat the devil right out of you.”

  “Please,” I whispered again. “I need to use the bathroom. I don’t . . . I mean, I don’t want to . . .” I started crying again. It wasn’t hard. All I had to do was press my feet a little harder against the floor and the tears came practically on their own.

  Claiming to need the bathroom was an old trick, which meant it had a pretty high chance of failure. But you never succeed if you don’t try, as my dad always says, and it became an old trick because it worked so often. Most people don’t want to deal with prisoners who come pre-soiled. Tears always helped with that sort of thing. Being tiny and blonde means that most people are looking for excuses to underestimate me, and Peter was from the Covenant. He had to consider me inferior, or he’d be admitting that the Covenant might not have the best training program out there.

  “What’s to stop you pulling a fast one and trying to get away from me, hmm?”

  He was smarter than I’d expected; damn. I sniffled, and said, “My feet hurt so bad I’m not even sure I can walk. How am I supposed to pull a fast one when I can’t even walk?”

  “What’s in it for me?”

  I almost dropped my subservient posture in favor of taking another shot at his groin. I managed to suppress the rage—barely—and whispered, “Anything you want.” Hopefully, if I couldn’t escape, his “anything” wouldn’t be anything that forced me to kill him any more than I was already planning to.

  Peter hesitated. Then, finally, he made up his mind. “Stay there,” he said, and laughed as he walked out of the room.

  Oh, I was definitely going to kill that man when I got the opportunity, or at least hurt him a lot. I stayed in my half-hunched position, listening intently to the noises coming from outside my little room. First came the clinking of metal, and then the soft sound of a hasp being turned. He was undoing my chains. My wrists and ankle were still cuffed, but the chains themselves were no longer attached to whatever was outside the walls.

  Peter stepped back into the room a moment later. “All right, love. Let’s get you out of here.”

  “But how?” I whispered, raising my head. “I can’t . . . I mean, I’m still . . .”

  “I’m the man with the solution to your problem.” Peter held up a key, grinning.

  I grinned back. “Awesome.”

  “What?” His grin faltered, replaced by confusion. “Don’t you get any ideas, now. You’re still—”

  “Chained? Yeah, I know,” I said, and lunged.

  The chains had approximately a foot of give when they were attached to their anchor. If the false room was at floor level—which it was, because none of my captors had stepped up to enter—that meant that the anchor had to be a minimum of a foot from the opening. I had at least two feet to play with, and I was going to play.

  To my surprise, my estimates had been off, a lot, and in the direction that worked for me, rather than against me: I had four feet of slack to play with. The chain was still unspooling when my elbow hit Peter in the chin, followed less than a second later by my knee slamming into his stomach. I wasn’t kidding about how difficult it would be for me to walk on my bruised-up soles, but what I hadn’t mentioned was that they’d been focusing on my instep, not the balls of my feet. As a dancer, the balls of my feet are where I live.

  Peter went down like a sack of arrogant Irish potatoes, and I finished the job by slamming my balled-up, manacle-weighted fists into the back of his head. There was a risk I could kill him—that’s always a risk with blows to the head—and somehow I couldn’t find it in me to care very much. He’d been willing to do a lot worse than killing me.

  The key was on the floor only inches from his hand. I grabbed it, unlocking the manacles on my wrists and ankle, and shoved it into the pocket of my bathrobe. Then I grabbed his belt, feeling frantically around until I found what I was looking for: the hilt of a knife.

  “Thank God,” I muttered.

  I took the knife and his shoelaces. Then I turned, and I was out the door.

  * * *

  The false room where I’d been held was set squarel
y in the middle of a large warehouse that had clearly been used for storage before it was converted into a temporary Covenant base. Old boxes still lined the walls, and there were hooks hanging from the ceiling. They looked disturbingly like giant meat hooks. I paused only long enough to be sure that neither of the remaining Covenant members were coming for me. Then I ran for the nearest wall, moving as fast as my aching body and battered feet allowed.

  It’s amazing what a little adrenaline can do. I beat my own personal record for the twenty-yard dash, reaching one of the stacks of boxes and ducking behind it a split second before I heard voices coming from the far end of the warehouse.

  “—talk,” said Margaret, her irritation clear even at a distance. “She simply won’t. We don’t work that way.”

  “You must stop regarding this woman as a member of your family,” said Robert. “Her limits are not the same as yours.”

  “She’s held up fairly well so far,” said Margaret sourly. “Who’s to say she won’t hold out until we get her back to England?”

  “If she does that, she’s not our problem anymore. I know you want to be the one who breaks her, but what matters is that she’s broken, not who does it.”

  “Don’t talk to me like I’m a child. I know what’s at stake here.” They were getting closer. I pressed deeper into the shadows behind my concealing wall of boxes, trying to assess my options in the rapidly decreasing time I had available. The bathrobe was white, or mostly; the front was more bloodstained than it had been when they first put it on me. It would show up against the gloom like a beacon. Grimly, I untied the belt and slipped the terrycloth off my shoulders. Naked may not provide much protection from the elements, but a bathrobe never stopped a bullet. I needed to disappear more than I needed to preserve my feeble sense of modesty.

  “Do you really?”

  I tied Peter’s shoelaces hastily around the hilt of his knife, creating a makeshift cord that would hopefully keep me from going unarmed. I needed both my hands free. I also needed the knife. This was the best compromise I could come up with on short notice. Once I was reasonably sure the knots would hold, I wrapped the cord around my right arm, using it to secure the knife to my bicep. The knots held.