Thea worked at the restraints that were holding her down, but there was no budging them. She switched her focus to taking in her surroundings. One window, high up, and it didn’t look like it opened. The room was bright with artificial light, but Thea was pretty sure that was ground she was glimpsing through the glass. She was in a basement, then. Two doors, but one looked like it only led into some sort of metal closet in the corner. Lots of machines that made no sense.
It was awkward trying to look down at herself while flat on her back, but she seemed to be wearing her own clothes. The weight of her amulet on her neck was gone, as were her shoes. An IV in her arm appeared to be giving her blood. Purple blood.
There was a noise at the door: a key turning in a lock. Instead of a sandy-haired lawyer, it was a woman who came in, but she had the same grim, slightly embarrassed expression.
“Thea. I thought I might find you awake,” she said. “I’m Dr. Forrester. How are you feeling?”
“Like I just got beaten up and taken prisoner. You’re human.”
“Yes.” Dr. Forrester felt Thea’s pulse. “Most of our staff is.” She pulled over a machine on wheels, and fastened something around Thea’s neck. Thea struggled, but she could only move so much.
“No need for that,” Dr. Forrester said. “I’m not going to hurt you. You might experience some minor discomfort while you’re here, but that’s it. As long as we have your full cooperation, of course.”
Thea glared at her. “Minor discomfort?” She nodded at the drip in her arm. “How much of my blood did you take, exactly, that you’re having to replace it now?”
Dr. Forrester smiled. “Such an imagination. I’m glad your thought processes are working so sharply, anyway. We took two pints of blood from you. We’re not replacing it because you’re injured. We’re replacing it with blood from a non-hex resistant fury as part of the experiment.”
“Just to see what happens? And what if what happens is that it kills me?”
“That imagination again. I assure you, Thea, nobody wants to see you dead. We’ve been lucky enough to find a few hex resistant subjects, but you’re the only hex resistant fury we have. And that makes you very important.”
“Which I guess is why Graves was so desperate to turn me into a fury.”
Dr. Forrester didn’t react to Graves’s name, or to Thea’s accusation. She just said, “If we can isolate some of your more unusual properties, it will be of great help to Hexing House.”
“What do you care about Hexing House?” Thea asked. “You aren’t a fury.”
Dr. Forrester shrugged. “It’s my place of employment, same as yours. I count on it to put food in my children’s mouths. I’m afraid it really is as mundane as that, despite your apparent need to attach drama to everything. The population of furies in the colony is fairly small. Not many can be spared to work in this little… satellite office.” She seemed satisfied with whatever readings the machine had given her, and took the band off Thea’s neck. “Okay, one more test, and then I’ll have some tea and dry toast sent in for you. If you keep that down, you can have the regular dinner.”
She pulled another machine across the room, larger, with several knobs and buttons and blinking lights. It looked like something from a science fiction movie. Dr. Forrester connected it to Thea by means of wired disks attached to her head, neck, and wrists.
“Now, try to relax.”
Thea couldn’t help but laugh. “You’re kidding, right?”
“You’re in controlled conditions,” Dr. Forrester said. “You’ll be perfectly safe.”
Such safe conditions, it seemed, that Dr. Forrester had to close herself inside the metal closet. Thea could only see half her head through the narrow window in the door. There was a buzzing noise, then a click.
And then Thea felt it: a hex. This human was using that machine to do what only a fury should be able to do. Thea could sense it trying to settle over her mind. Sulfur and smoke. Just like that night in the forest.
The bees were after her again. Thea ran and ran, as the clown riding the lion chased her. The headless girl rode in front of the clown, laughing with a mouth that wasn’t there. And then something new: a pack of dogs. No, they weren’t dogs. Were they wolves? Thea stopped abruptly and nearly fell as the mass of fur moved toward her like a single entity. The sound coming from the animals was horrible.
Hyenas. They were hyenas.
Thea turned to run away, but the clown and the little girl blocked her way. In another direction, the swarm of yellow-jackets paused, floating in the air, not chasing her, but prepared to, if she did the wrong thing.
There was only one path open to her. They were herding her. Herding her toward what? Thea didn’t want to find out.
She tried to run the other way, past the clown, back the way she’d come. The clown didn’t follow her, but the bees did. She screamed as they stung her, the old familiar mistake, and several flew into her throat. It was closing, she couldn’t breathe.
Thea gasped, then stuffed her hand into her mouth, gagging around it, digging for the bees, desperately trying to get them out. She could still feel them, they’d multiplied into what felt like dozens, now, stinging her hand as well as her throat. How were they still alive? Why couldn’t she swallow them?
She retched as something tugged at her hand. A hyena had it between its teeth.
All at once, Thea stopped struggling. It would be easier to die.
“Cowardice. Interesting. The vice you’re most susceptible to was the first to rise to the top.”
At the sound of Dr. Forrester’s voice, Thea’s eyes snapped open, and she took in a great gulping breath, desperate for air.
“I think you need to work on your definition of discomfort,” she croaked. “Aren’t doctors supposed to be smart?”
Dr. Forrester ignored the feeble insult and started pulling off the disks.
“What was that hex?”
“We’re calling it Hex Nine for now. It’s still in the early stages.”
“What did you mean about cowardice rising to the top? A hex contains one specific virtue or sin.”
“Sometimes,” Dr. Forrester agreed. “This one doesn’t. Instead it ferrets out your vices, and brings them to the surface.”
Momentarily forgetting about the restraints, Thea tried to point at the metal closet, found she couldn’t, and gestured with her chin instead. “Why did you have to go in there?”
“Hex Nine is not target-specific,” Dr. Forrester said.
“So it hasn’t been finished yet, but it still couldn’t affect more—” Thea stopped, remembering the forest. The other fury who had, what? Disappeared? Died? Both of them had gone mad at once. “You’ve got hexes that can hit more than one person.”
“It’s a blanket hex with a specific radius, yes.”
Even more alarming than the actual answers to Thea’s questions was the fact that Dr. Forrester hadn’t hesitated to give them. Thea assumed that meant the doctor wasn’t expecting her to be in a position to give away any secrets.
Pushing that worry away for the time being, Thea said, “Since you’re being so forthcoming, how about you tell me what this is all about? Why am I here? Is my cousin here too? Flannery?”
But Dr. Forrester only shook her head. “None of that is my area. Now get some rest. I’ll have some food sent down shortly.” And with that, she left Thea alone again.
Over a period of several days, Thea was tested over and over again with different iterations of Hex Nine. She had hallucinations every time, but always managed to throw them off at the moment a vice bubbled to the surface and began to manifest. Usually this was cowardice. Sometimes, like when she’d lost control in the forest, it was wrath.
After the second day, they took off her restraints in favor of one hand cuffed to the bed. The chain was long enough for Thea to sit up, feed herself, flip through a magazine.
Or swing an arm, should the opportunity arise.
She was allowed up a few times a day,
once for a shower and the rest for bathroom breaks. But there were always security guards around, waiting outside the bathroom door while Dr. Forrester or a nurse waited inside for Thea to finish her business. There were no obvious chances for escape, but Thea did her best, through the rigors of the experiments, to stay alert.
She had no doubt that her theory about them—whoever they were—developing a weapon was correct. Anything that would bring forth an intensified, almost undiluted version of a sin couldn’t have any good outcome. The target might turn on his friends, or give up without a fight, or change sides, or just start killing indiscriminately.
Target or targets. This was a blanket hex, and worse, it seemed to be self-inflicting.
Thea understood why this research into hex resistance was so important. Nobody would unleash such a thing without some kind of protection—armor, an antidote, something—for the person or people controlling it. And for whoever was on their side.
But once they had that, they could just sit back and watch any war win itself. An entire enemy population manifesting sins at once, turning on and eventually consuming itself. Violence. Murder. Lies and betrayals, people saving themselves at the expense of everybody else. Complete chaos.
As the days went by, Thea got better at resisting the hex, and the waking nightmares got shorter as she improved her control over it. Time was on her side; unlike a regular hex that stayed intact until the target brought themselves into balance, the blanket hex had a finite period of infliction. She only had to keep it at bay for a minute or two, at most, before it dissipated on its own.
But however brief, the times when the hex engulfed her took their toll. The panic attacks came back. Thea’s limbs felt weak, and she became so exhausted she sometimes had trouble distinguishing between the hallucinations and reality.
“I expected you to be carrying a balloon,” she said to Dr. Forrester one day.
“I beg your pardon? Is that something you see under the influence of the hex?”
“It was Flannery’s nightmare, but I guess it’s mine now.”
“Interesting.” Dr. Forrester picked up her tablet and typed a note.
“If you wear a pinafore, your head will come off,” Thea said.
“Yes,” Dr. Forrester said in a soothing tone. “I’m sure you’re right.”
Thea narrowed her eyes at the doctor. “Don’t you feel guilty?”
Dr. Forrester set the tablet down and said, “For what?”
“You know for what. Look at me. What’s my blood pressure like these days, doc?”
“Thea, you’re performing an important—and necessary—service. We’re learning how to protect people from something very dangerous.”
“Something dangerous that you created!” Thea welcomed the anger. It wasn’t like the wrath she sometimes felt thanks to the hex. This was real. It gave her focus.
“Hiding from research is never the answer,” Dr. Forrester said. “If we Americans hadn’t developed nuclear weapons, one of our enemies would have gotten them first.”
“Hexing House has no enemies. There is nobody else who invents hexes.” Thea wondered, as she said this, whether it was true. She’d never heard of another colony of furies. But it would be strange if they were the only one. As far as she knew, they didn’t do international jobs. Surely someone was hexing the sinners of Europe and Asia?
But by then Dr. Forrester had hooked her up to a machine, and was going into the metal chamber. So much for focus.
Thea lost count of how many days she’d been at the lab after six, but she thought she must have been there at least twice that, maybe more. Dr. Forrester seemed frustrated. Whatever she was hoping would come out of these experiments, she didn’t seem any closer to getting it. The trials became more frequent, and the iterations of Hex Nine nastier.
If it went on much longer, Thea was afraid her mind would snap completely. She needed to break out of there before she got too weak, physically and mentally, to go anywhere.
She decided that learning to resist Hex Nine wasn’t enough. She needed to figure out how to reflect it.
And so she focused on that, each time Dr. Forrester inflicted it. Thea could sense the hex, sulfur and smoke, clinging to her. What she needed to do was take it off and find a way to store it. If she could somehow keep it in her sights, hold it without it evaporating, she would be able to bounce it back when someone else got within range.
Each time the hex came at her, Thea mentally conjured up one of the hex boxes. Not just how it looked, but how it felt, opening it, sensing the hex within, controlled, contained.
An enchanted box, Elon had told her. We only have an enchanter in the colony once every couple of generations or so.
Okay, Thea thought, so it’s rare. But it’s possible. If they can make something that will hold a hex, then a hex is holdable. And I have powers. I can learn to hold it.
Thea knew that wasn’t necessarily true, that her powers probably didn’t run deep enough. But it was her best hope of escaping, short of finding a way to murder Dr. Forrester without the security guards noticing.
Not that she hadn’t considered doing just that. Once when the doctor was leaning over her, attaching something, Thea found herself looking directly at the other woman’s throat. She could open it up with her claws before Dr. Forrester even had a chance to scream.
Only half-lucid that day, Thea reached up without thinking and touched the pulse in Dr. Forrester’s neck. It felt dry and hot, like the doctor had a fever. And then everything shifted.
Thea was in a different hospital room, this time in a chair. She was holding the hand of a small boy with no hair, singing to him. His eyes were sunken and ringed in dark smudges, his face so thin that his teeth stuck out. Thea was afraid the delicate hand she held would break if she put any pressure on it at all. The sight of him hurt her chest.
“They’re really going to make me better, Mommy?” the boy asked.
“They will, sweetheart,” Thea promised with Dr. Forrester’s voice. “You just need to hang in there a little bit longer. As soon as Mommy promises to help them with something, they’re going to help us back.”
Thea came back to herself, breathing heavily, heart beating wildly. Dr. Forrester was a few feet away now, looking at her with a mix of outrage and terror.
“I’ll have you put back in the restraints,” she warned.
Thea held up her hand, showing her smooth fingertips. “No claws,” she said. “They promised to cure your son. That’s why you’re working here.”
Dr. Forrester’s face closed. “That’s not your business.”
“They won’t do it,” Thea said. “They lie to get what they want. You should know that.”
For a second, Dr. Forrester’s professional mask fell away again, and she gave Thea a sad, tired smile. “They’ve already done it,” she said. “And I won’t let him get sick again. No matter the cost.”
It was selfish of the doctor, and short-sighted. But Thea had seen that frail little boy. Could she say for sure that she wouldn’t do the same, if she was offered hope long after she’d already given it up? She didn’t know, but she didn’t like the idea of killing Dr. Forrester quite so much after that, either.
So Thea kept concentrating on her imagined box. As soon as she sensed the hex, she would try to pull it inside. Sometimes she thought she almost had it, but the hex would always win, breaking free of her grip and settling over her, calling down the wasps and the headless girl and the hyenas.
Until one day, practice made perfect.
Dr. Forrester attached the disks to Thea’s forehead and hooked her up to all the machines, then went into the metal chamber. As usual, Thea could see the doctor’s head through the window. And the box in her mind.
When the hex came at her, Thea inhaled deeply. She sensed it, felt it.
She held it.
There were no hallucinations. There wasn’t even a struggle. Somehow, finally, Thea had mastered Hex Nine.
When Dr. Forrester ca
me back out of the chamber, Thea waited. She had to be close. The whole thing was useless, otherwise. She waited until Dr. Forrester was bent over her, removing the disks.
And then she sent the hex back at her.
Dr. Forrester didn’t rant and rave. This version of the hex was strong, maybe the strongest yet. Dr. Forrester, a human, couldn’t handle it even long enough for it to have its desired effect. She simply collapsed.
Thea snatched at her as she fell, getting a firm hold on the doctor’s elbow and yanking her down onto the bed. They were piled on top of one another, and the angles were awkward, but eventually Thea managed to get the key.
Dr. Forrester groaned a little when Thea pushed her to the floor. So she was alive, at least. Thea got herself out of the cuffs quickly. She grabbed Dr. Forrester’s lab coat, clawed slits into the back for her wings, and yanked it on. It wouldn’t fool anyone for long, but it might, from a distance or if a security guard caught her walking down a hall out of the corner of his eye, look normal enough for him not to give her a second glance.
Thea couldn’t believe her luck had held out as long as it had, and didn’t count on it holding out any longer. She hurried from the room before Dr. Forrester could wake up.
She crept as quietly as she could through one hall, then another. The building she was in didn’t seem very big—at least, not hospital big—and she didn’t hear anybody else in the basement. There were thumps of footsteps and voices above her.
Thea found a staircase and hesitated. The smart move would be to get the hell out of there, preferably quietly and before Dr. Forrester regained consciousness. And if that couldn’t be done, to fight her way out. She had claws and talons, after all, and Dr. Forrester had said most of the staff was human.
But if Thea had been experimented on here, then Flannery probably had been, too. She couldn’t leave without looking around for some sign of her.
There were two storage closets and four other rooms in the basement. Of those, one was locked, and another was a patient room like Thea’s, but empty. Thea was back in the hallway, on her way to the third room, when she heard Dr. Forrester’s voice, loud and close. On the staircase, Thea thought. She couldn’t make out the words but she noted, with no small amount of satisfaction, that the good doctor sounded awfully pissed off.
Rising Fury (Hexing House Book 1) Page 13
