A puzzle.
And probably dangerous, of course. Most things in this land were dangerous, in one way or another. He drew his hand back, wincing as the pain returned.
He sat back on his heels and glared at the damaged menhir. It offended him. To understand stone as deeply as that unknown lout must have, and then use that understanding in such an ugly way . . .
His arm throbbed, hot and aching. Greenish pus stained the bandage into blotches edged with thin red and yellow fringes. Rot twisted his nose, and he grimaced as he unwrapped the linen strips he'd stolen from an unused bed. Fiona's experiment, indeed. The twin arcs of the bite glared at him, high on his biceps where that damned snake had twisted in his hands and clamped down like a vise, livid red ringing black dead flesh.
Dead and rotting. And it was his right arm, and him right-handed. He couldn't work out a way to cut it off. Not one that would leave him alive afterwards.
But the red rings around each tooth-mark seemed narrower than before, and the stink less violent, and the throbbing less intense. Maybe the power of the labyrinth had helped.
Or maybe he was wishing that it had. It was worth trying, anyway. He leaned forward and laid his hand on the quartz star again, letting the hot ice flow up his nerves and veins, soothing the throb and cooling the burn.
Then his eyes turned toward the door, and his legs straightened, and his feet moved without orders from his brain. Fiona was back. She had something she wanted to find out, up in the keep where that deadly witch stalked with her hand always resting on the pommel of her knife.
* * *
Fiona gazed at the whiteboard in her lab, seeing other things through other eyes. No, she was not about to let little Fergus find magic healing for his wounds. That would destroy all her data, ruin the experiment. As it was, she needed to find a human subject to provide the baseline of a different species' physiology. Maybe one of those refugees cowering in Maureen's kitchen would do.
And maybe Cáitlin, as well. One subject, or two, or even ten -- not enough for a statistical sample, that was certain. Fiona wouldn't be able to publish her results in the New England Journal of Medicine with such a small base of experimental data. "Bacterial Ectoenzyme Reactions and Soft Tissue Necrosis in Mythical Reptilian Bite Trauma." Well, the title had enough syllables for a research paper, even if it never would see print.
Cáitlin could wait in her tree, puzzling over a leopard that refused to kill her. Fiona never destroyed a tool before it had lost all usefulness. If Cáit survived Maureen's forest long enough, she too would meet that nasty little lizard.
Fiona brought her eyes and mind back to her lab and the question of the lizard. Lab equipment hummed around her, gleaming with stainless steel and gray hammer-tone enamel, displays glowing green or red with numbers and graphs. She glanced over the readings on the mass spectrometer, ticking off compounds in her head. Nothing new. Her projection microscope displayed a tissue culture at 300X, blackened disintegration marching out from the lower left corner as one cluster of cells after another dissolved into slime.
Nasty stuff. She touched her mask with a gloved hand, then covered the filters and tested for an airtight seal. The suit ballooned around her, hissing slightly as the positive pressure air supply found its way to relief valves. No reason to take chances, even though she'd spoken nose to snout with both the dragons and lived to tell the tale.
She caressed the cold rounded enamel of the centrifuge beside her on the table. She'd used it only once since setting it up -- like her neat green pastures, the lab served mostly as a stage setting for performance art, the Mad Scientist at work, Dr. Frankenstein surrounded by the crackle and ozone of high voltage electricity.
But the equipment she did use gave her such solid, satisfying facts. Just because the humans had invented science didn't mean that it was useless. They'd invented these machines as well, and then politely donated them to Fiona's lab.
Well, maybe not donated, or at least not consciously. They were still carried on the inventory at Jackson Labs, or listed as destroyed in a bad fire they'd had a few years back. But none of the instruments had ever been signed out to the visiting post-doctoral research geneticist Fiona Fálta, PhD, or to her microbiologist colleague and brother Dr. Sean Fálta. None of the machines had ever been logged to a lab where she had worked. She might want to go back there again sometime.
Fiona turned back to the cage, her belly swinging awkwardly until she felt like she was waddling along with the entire earth tucked under the front of her moon suit. Her back ached, and her ankles throbbed with the swelling. This pregnancy bit walked perilously close to bad design. She could see some powerful advantages to dumping her endoparasite in a nest and incubating it, like those dragons. For one thing, she wouldn't have to keep running to the loo.
She studied the black lizard imprisoned behind a grid of stainless steel bars. "Are mammals an evolutionary mistake?"
{Shen hungry.}
"You're always hungry, love. And so am I. But I'll be rid of this thing in another day or so. The stars and planets will come to their convergence and foretell the spectacular deaths of Brian and Maureen. More to the point, your father will have lunch, and I'll pick up the scraps left over."
{Shen hungry!}
Fiona started to bend down to the refrigerator under her lab counter, discovered for the thousandth time that her middle no longer bent, and squatted with an irritated grunt. She pulled out a chunk of beef summoned from a butcher's cold-room, grabbed the counter with her free hand, and heaved her bulk back up to standing. That grunt came from pain and effort.
She remembered her ongoing experiment with Fergus and checked the latch on the cage entry's inner door before releasing the outer. That midget dinosaur was fast. And alert, and cunning -- it watched every move, and Fiona could almost see it memorizing the way she released the outer door. Time to put a padlock on the latch, she thought. Key lock or combination?
Certainly something that requires fine manipulation, she decided. Something that requires thumbs.
Meat in the entry chamber, outer door closed and latched, double check, release the inner door. The lizard pounced, sank its deadly needle-teeth into the meat, and dragged it back into a corner of the cage where it would be safe. Then the little beast glared at her before it started chewing.
"You don't like me, love. You don't like me even a little bit. First chance you get, you'll bite the hand that feeds you, just like in that human adage. We'll just make sure you never get that chance. Mammals are smarter than dinosaurs."
Or were they crocodilians? No, the hip and shoulder joints looked wrong for that group of reptiles. She'd have to run some DNA comparisons to sort out the cladistics and taxonomy, but the skeletal articulation seemed much closer to a dinosaur's. Had dinosaurs been true reptiles in the first place? The jury was still out on that one. Little Shen was due for dissection and mounting, anyway, once Fiona had finished the live experiments.
Dissection with full biohazard precautions, she reminded herself. She glanced up at the microscope's image projected on one wall. Death and digestion had oozed across the entire view, and again she panned the 'scope to the advancing edge of her culture.
One cell, one single cell of the bacteria that slimed the little beast's mottled yellow teeth. That was all Fiona had injected into the tissue. Let one cell past the guarding walls of your epidermis and your best bet was immediate surgery. Amputation or tissue excision, well away from the wound, followed by a massive course of broad-spectrum antibiotics.
It was such a lovely little microbe. Once she had grown a sample large enough, she'd start to teach it about penicillin -- culture the survivors and go on from there. She flipped a switch and the single projected image split into four. Three of the tissue samples showed no active growth -- reptile, fish, and insect. So the bacteria seemed to need warm-blooded flesh to prosper. She'd have to find out why.
Of course, she'd need a vector, too -- and then she laughed, mocking herself. This was a
game, no more, a way to kill time before her powers reached their peak. The most she'd get from this research would be a new poison for the thorns that barbed her hedge.
And the antidote.
But her whim with Cáitlin and Fergus was bearing fruit, her ghosts spooking Maureen back to the bottle. Drink would weaken the red witch and further drive the wedge between her and the others.
The baby kicked her bladder with uncanny aim, and she winced. Enough! Time to evict this squatter and find a wet-nurse among the slaves. But first she had to draw on its powers to crush Maureen and Brian beneath her heel.
Chapter Sixteen
"Take it, stud. Prove that having a set of balls makes you tougher than me."
Dierdre held the long black cylinder out to him, grip first. Brian shook tears out of his eyes and tried to focus. Cattle prod. Shock stick. Phallic symbol for a dominatrix.
She poked his hand with it, forcing it into his grip. His fingers twitched and shook as commands tried to force their way past the drained synapses and connect to muscles.
She let go and the stick stayed in his hand, warm and damp from her own grip, intimate. Interrogation is an intimate affair, his memories played back in her voice, humming through the strange detachment of pain and delirium. You'll get as close to your subject as to any lover. You'll develop many of the same feelings. You'll know him as deeply and as passionately. Don't try to fight this feeling. You'll succeed by becoming one with your subject, knowing his needs and fears as deeply as he does, finding out what matters to him and what does not. When he tells you what you want to know, he'll be talking to himself.
Dierdre fogged in and out on him, a figure tall and rawhide thin and dressed in form-fitting black now rather than the purple uniform, showing off the muscles that always came as a surprise. She'd sucker-punched him to take him out, but a straight match in a ring would have been a tossup. He'd have weight and muscle and the ability to soak up damage and keep on coming, she'd have speed and decades more experience. Tossup. Luck. Now she faced him alone with his hands free, behind locked doors, and sneered at him.
The cattle prod hung from his hand. She invited him to fight back. The tip wavered as his arm shook. Alone and free and already beat to shit. Familiar with the old Chinese expression, "fat chance?" She also liked switching loaded dice into a game of craps. She didn't step back out of range, or even watch his hand. She stared straight into his eyes and dared him.
"Come on, hombre. Do it!"
And she'd stand there and take the shock and laugh in his face. Extremely high pain-tolerance. She'd done that in class. A class she'd taught.
As she'd taught hand-to-hand. Toughest bitch on the planet, Dierdre. Symptom of a problem. People here knew every trick he did. Fighting, intrigue, using the Power, he'd learned all of it from Them. Never taught him as much as They knew, never taught him Us would become Them, would be the enemy.
The tip of the cattle prod wavered as he brought it up. She smiled at him, waiting. He turned the stick, groping for his own head, and a crescent kick flickered past his nose and sent the tube flying to clatter into a corner of the cell. His hand stung, but she'd been careful to only hit the stick.
She could kick over his head, flat-footed. Could have taken his nose off, could have killed him. Dierdre was always precise and in control.
"Naughty, naughty." She stood still in front of him as if she'd never moved. "Mother Church doesn't approve of suicide, you know. Not even under questioning."
"Told . . . you . . . truth."
She shook her head. "I taught you better than that."
She had, too. Even if it doesn't matter, never tell them the truth first time off. They'll only respect it if they have to dig for it. If you want to sell a lie, bury it six or seven layers deep. Give it up in bits and pieces, always backing away from it. Lose a tooth for each word of it, make each sentence worth a pint of blood.
And he'd told them the truth. Or most of it. After all, they were his friends and allies.
Bad mistake. Never think you're safe, even in your own bedroom, even in the bloody loo. Tried to teach Maureen that, made her carry that damned kukri everywhere even though it made her remember what she did to Dougal. Forgot the rule yourself.
Pain exploded under his ribs, and he fought for breath. More blows followed -- slow, calculated, with the precision of decades of practice. Fire in his head, electric nerves flowing lava down his right arm, a late afterthought to the balls that made the rest seem like love-taps. He curled around his pain, helpless on the stone floor. The blows stopped, but the pain went on and on. The slate floor stank of old vomit and urine, as if it had been through this a hundred times before. He wondered who the others had been.
Her face hung inches from his own, blurred through sweat and tears. "Don't lie to me. 'Desperation.' 'Weak spot between the worlds.' Tell me true, tell mother how you got here."
"Take . . . poly . . . graph."
She sat back on her haunches and looked for a moment as if she was considering his offer. "Now there's a thought, my lovey. It's a bleedin' shame I'm the one who taught you how to beat the machine."
She grabbed his shirt and heaved him up, aiming for the chair. Careless. He went with the flow and then overbalanced, flopping down and then adding a roll and kick that flung her hard against one wall. She bounced to her feet before he could follow up, retreating to the farthest corner and shaking dazzle out of her head.
"Good on you, ducks. Guess I didn't waste all that training time."
And if he had killed her, he would have had to sit and wake the corpse and wait for her replacement. Door locked from the outside. Surveillance camera in the corner, watching every move. And he couldn't walk between the worlds to escape. She'd let him try, right at the start of their dance, just to add to his despair. He didn't even know what world this was.
But killing her would have felt good, nonetheless.
His vision blurred. Her feet scalloped closer, always balanced, always ready. "Let's try another round. Let's dance the night away." He couldn't raise his eyes above her knees.
"Not up for that? Too bad. This could have been the start of a beautiful relationship." Pain flashed from his kneecap.
Dierdre touched the prod to her own forearm and triggered it, watching with a detached air as her muscles jerked. "Still works." She jammed it into his aching crotch and then pulled it back without discharging the capacitor through his balls. He almost pissed himself with relief.
She jabbed him again, still not triggering the shock. "Why'd you kill Liam, dearie?"
The question came out of the fog like a ten-ton lorry with no lights. She'd been on about his access to the bleeding Circle, whatever the bloody hell that was, and about Maureen. The Pendragons discouraged relationships that stepped outside the ranks. He'd never realized how far that "discouraging" could go.
"Attacked . . . girl."
"Did he, now?" She rocked back on her heels. "Count number one on the indictment: No proof of attack, no weapon and no threat ever demonstrated. Last seen, he was talking politely to the subject. Count number two: Subject of alleged attack was herself an Old One, capable of defending herself with high-level Powers since demonstrated to the satisfaction of the jury. Count number three: Defendant had received specific orders to stay away from Liam. Verdict: Defendant stands guilty on all counts. Take him down."
They'd been watching him watching the bastard. "Liam . . . murderer. Tortured . . . Mulvaney."
"None of your business, ducks. Policy. Policy is set by the home office, not by field ops. Tell me, what's the penalty for direct disobedience of a lawful order, under time of war?"
Shit. Dierdre was talking death.
He felt the prongs of the cattle prod jamming into the inside of his thigh. She glanced up at the camera again, and nodded. "Now tell me true, Arthur Brian Albion Pendragon: How did you get here? Don't expect me to believe you 'felt' a rabbit-hole and jumped down it to escape your sister. If that fairy tale were true, we'd ha
ve been up to our bums in leprechauns for the past thousand years. You're the first, which gives me cause to doubt."
He'd managed to keep the real secret in their training session, proving it by the sealed envelope he'd deposited before they took him from his room at 3:00 AM. He'd managed to sell the cover, sell the lie. But he'd told the truth here, first time off. Except for Claire. So Dierdre would never believe it.
His leg jerked as she triggered the prod, and fire chased ice up and down his nerve channels. He fuzzed out and back and out and back again. His eyes blurred.
The twitching stopped, and he could focus. Dierdre was up and at the door, talking to a shadow against the hall lights.
"Nope, just getting started. You can't rush an artist. Not if you want the truth."
The shadow shook his head. His or hers. Couldn't tell. "Bring him anyway. Captain-General's orders."
Male voice, sounded like Duncan. Why were they rushing things? Reprieve? Good-cop, bad-cop?
They hauled him up, with a third pair of hands that materialized from the shadows. Duncan tucked himself under Brian's arm, comradely, supporting, whispering. "You're for it, lad. First Liam and now showing up in Circle territory without an engraved invitation to the ball. I think I can winkle you out, but just keep your mouth shut and let me do the talking."
His bloody legs wouldn't work right, pins and needles jostling through the veins. Stumbling down corridors and up stairs, Brian tried to memorize the turns and doors and carvings in case he ever got a chance to move. Dierdre skittered forward and back beside them like an impatient mongoose blocked from attacking a particularly juicy cobra. The unknown guard kept several paces off, fingering what looked like a Beretta SMG with suppressor screwed onto the muzzle. So that would work here? Brian filed the note away for future reference.
They passed a silver crucifix on a carved door, seemed Italian. Chapel? Work looked like Cellini, Baroque, not Brian's taste at all. He blinked and tried to shake the cobwebs out of his head.
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