I scooted myself off the bed, not easy when your recently crushed hoopskirts are springing back to life around you, and faced him. “You are not dead. Who’s being the idiot here? There must be a way out of this mess. I know perfectly well you got into it over me, and I won’t let you just take the fall.”
“You’re wrong, Gwynn.” He ran a hand over my hair, unsmiling, but with that tinge of sad affection. “You got into all of this over me.”
“I thought we got swept into it together.”
“That may well be,” he agreed. “But none of it really matters now.”
“Probably not, but we’re certainly not going to win the game with you stuck here sucking up to the Queen Bitch instead of the whole impregnating me thing.”
“You really don’t know?”
“Know what?”
Something flashed in his eyes. He cupped my face in both hands, frustration and despair tingeing the air like burnt milk. “Don’t you get it? The game is over. We lost. I lost. This is it. The aftermath. This is what it looks like.”
I searched his face. “How can that be? We had seven years.”
“You thought you had seven years. You may recall I pushed for less. Did you think I had no reason for it?”
“I’ve never understood your reasons, Rogue. If you could explain them to me, that might make all the difference.”
“Would it?” He dropped his hands and paced to the clear wall, gazing into the abyss. “What about your list? Even if you’ve resolved points one and two, as I recall, points three and four have not changed. Even if it is all moot now.”
I struggled to recall exactly which points I’d reeled off to him. The man had an eidetic memory. Impossible for a mere mortal to keep up with. “I’m not saying I’m ready to have a baby with you—and geez, this sounds like a conversation from a Harlequin novel—but we can’t debate it when you’re locked up here. Come with us. We don’t have much time left.”
“Actually, you don’t have any time left, Sorceress.” Titania oozed into the room, bringing a wave of scorching heat with her. She pulled off the living mask and tossed it to the floor, where its mouth worked like a dying fish, shaking her head at Rogue, making a little disappointed moue. “Did you really think I wouldn’t recognize your mortal pet? You are not clever enough to defeat me, Lord Rogue. You never were. Chain her to the bed.”
In two strides he had me locked in those arms of steel, his face an impassive mass, the oily rope snapping through his mind. I screamed and fought, lashing out with spells that Titania neatly shattered, one after another before they could fully form. The cat rose up, snarling, but my flesh caged her in. I slashed at Rogue’s face, the pitiful human claws causing little damage. Then my hands were fastened to the bedposts with cuffs of silver and the magic faded to a distant chime, my hoop skirt belling up ridiculously.
Until Titania vanished my dress also, leaving me naked.
With ruthless strength, Rogue spread my legs, fastening my ankles to the bedposts, while I thrashed and fought, bowing my body in an effort to free myself, the emerald hair coming undone and spilling everywhere. The cat drove me as much as my own fear and panic, the silver cutting into my skin. She howled, desperate to be free. The ethereal entity solidified, hurling itself against the wall of my flesh.
And broke through into the real world.
Gleaming metallic claws split through my fingers, shredding the flesh, the agony piercing me. Helpless to stop it, I writhed with the pain, with the terror and hopelessness of facing my own death.
But the claws stopped there.
Leaving me panting, broken. Trapped.
Titania slid an arm around Rogue’s waist, extra-jointed fingers sliding open his tight shirt so she could toy with his chest, watching with avid interest. “She has a certain appeal, I suppose. Perhaps she’ll last a little while, entertain the guests for a time. In the meanwhile, would you like to have her again?”
I fought the rolling pain from my hands, struggling to understand. Again? And the leaking emotions from Rogue—guilt, remorse, desolation.
“Again?” I managed to grit through my teeth, begging for it not to be true.
Titania smiled, sweetly, and rounded the bed to trail burning fingers down my sternum, resting her hand over my belly. “Don’t you remember?” Then she giggled, a carefree, happy sound that pounded through my skull. “Oops. That’s right. I made you forget. Silly me.” Her eyes narrowed into cruel slits. “Let’s fix that, shall we?”
I gagged when she slid into my mind, that oily rope of her presence so palpable. I hid myself behind silent walls, but she pursued me, an anaconda gorging itself on all my thoughts until she reached that knot she’d left behind.
And undid it.
The memories of that night spilled out and all those dangling threads of unease rearranged to form images, full color and fleshed in despair.
We were back in the high-ceilinged bedroom at Castle Brightness, in that bed of spiraling gold vines, drunk on lovemaking and liquor. Rogue lay beneath me, tied with the green ribbons he’d promised not to undo until dawn, letting me have my way with him. Putting himself at my mercy.
And Titania is there. Standing by the bed, watching me milk Rogue with my mouth, raking his body with my nails. He’s calling my name, but I don’t listen. She has a hand in my hair and I’m her willing puppet. He thrashes beneath me, but I mount him easily, riding him though he tries to buck me off. Titania and I laugh at his protests. It’s me, taunting him, stealing his seed.
She passes a hand over my forehead and I fall asleep, giggling to myself, as she unties him and takes him away.
Rogue watched me with anguished eyes staring out of the cruel set to his face, seeing me live it again. I groaned, shaking away the agony of the memory. I almost wished I didn’t remember now.
Almost.
I clenched my fists, digging the sharp claws into my palms, clinging to the pain as an anchor of the here and now. In some ways, I hated her most for planting that false memory of lying in Rogue’s arms, feeling sweetly safe and cared for. When I had raped and destroyed him.
“Rogue,” I choked out. Asking for something. Forgiveness. Understanding. Solace.
Titania looked between the two of us, yellow eyes glittering. “So charming. There’s nothing so sweet as a dog’s love for her master and his sense of responsibility for her. Of course he knows her life is a brief flicker compared to his. That’s why he breeds her.” Titania traced the shape of my womb. “Too bad this puppy won’t survive the night.”
Something cool tapped against my thigh, penetrating the roiling haze. Before I formed the thought to wonder what it was, I knew. The vial of dragon’s blood. Immune to magic and not vanished. My only weapon. And as out of my reach as my home world.
What had Rogue said? This is the aftermath. Somehow I’d lost without ever fighting.
Fuck that.
I took all the agony, emotional and physical, and hurled it behind the walls of my mind. The cold silence left behind calmed me. I took a deep mental breath.
“You won’t kill me. You want this baby.” I threw the words at her. A challenge. Rogue flinched but I had nothing left to lose at this point. I intended to fight as the cornered animal I was.
It caught her a little by surprise. Then her eyes narrowed, burning magic rising in tangible threat. “Why would you think that?”
“I saw what you did to Fafnir and Cecily’s baby. What made it inadequate? What are you searching for?”
Titania’s eyes blazed like noonday suns. She grabbed one of my nipples and twisted hard.
I screamed.
She leaned down and placed her mouth over mine, drinking it in, all my trapped magic and life force pouring into her.
I bit down.
Now she shrieked, releasing me and stumbling back, pink blood pouring out of her mouth, the same sticky sweet stuff choking me. I spit it out as best I could. Rogue stood still at the foot of the bed, a statue of himself.
; “Rogue, help me!” I screamed at him.
He didn’t move, his mind thick with ropy blackness. But Titania came back at me, power boiling out of her.
And a fluffy white cat leaped on her back, raking her with Herculean claws. The sight tore through me—exhilaration that Darling Hercules had come to my rescue, and utter terror that I’d suffer through his death on top of everything else. My heart froze waiting for Titania to shatter him.
But she wailed, fighting him off with her hands, never quite connecting as he moved in a blur of speed and feline flexibility, never quite there by the time she reached him, snarling in her long hair and scratching like a dervish. Why she didn’t use magic on him immediately, I didn’t know, but I yanked in desperation on the silver cuffs, hoping against hope that I might wrench myself free.
“Hold still!” Starling hissed, brandishing a set of keys. With smooth efficiency, she tried them one by one, as if she had all the time in the world while Titania struggled with Darling.
“Hurry,” I urged her.
“Not helpful,” she snapped back, crawling over me to unlock my ankles.
The final cuff clicked open just as Titania hurled Darling across the room, rage contorting her features. She spun to me.
Starling dove off the bed. I seized the vial at my side, the stab of pain from my ruined hands barely registering, and sliced off the seal with one of my new claws.
Titania hurled herself at me, power boiling out of her in a supernova and I dashed the dragon’s blood distillate in her beautiful face.
Oh. My. God.
It ate at her like a living thing, gnawing into her face with acid speed, growing and proliferating like the worst flesh-eating bacteria. The smell of hot plastic filled the room. Her howls turned into demonic roars, then contorted as the concentrated anti-magic corroded her vocal chords. At the same time, her own immense immortal magic battled it, reforming her bones, skin and muscles in a convulsing amalgamation of meat. She fell to the floor, writhing.
Rogue pulled me off the bed, breaking my trance of horror. A drop of the distillate fell on my calf and I hissed at the burn, dropping the empty vial.
“Run.” He clothed me with a thought—oddly in my old Ann Taylor dress, the one I’d worn into this world—and pushed me toward the door, where Starling stood, poised to flee with a limp Darling in her arms.
“No.” I dug in. “Not without you.”
Confusion broke across his face, leaving fragments of tortured dread and splinted hope behind. The ropiness in his mind had receded. “How can you—”
“Is Darling Hercules all right?” I called to Starling, cutting him off.
“I think so—just unconscious.”
“Where’s Athena?”
“Guarding the door.”
“I love you guys so much. Give me Darling Hercules. Rogue, push Titania onto the bed with your magic—don’t touch her.”
I cupped Darling against my chest, pinning him with my forearms, making the curved platinum-silver claws of my ruined fingers stand up so the blood ran down my hands, soaking into Darling’s fur. Hopefully he wouldn’t be too angry about it.
“Starling—be my hands. See if you can lock her into at least one of the cuffs. Don’t get any of that shit on you, if you can help it. But I think your human blood will protect you.”
She set her mouth in a determined line and managed to grab a foot from the flailing body Rogue floated onto the bed, locking it down.
“That’s good enough,” I told her.
“No, it’s not,” Starling snarled. “I want her where she had you. And I want free of her.” She fought the other foot into place and reached for one of the hands Titania had clapped to her melting face.
“No! It’s too dangerous.”
“Then protect me.” She gave me an even look. “I’m going in either way.”
Wishing I’d thought of it before—which was the kind of wish that never came true—I created nitrile gloves right on her hands. She jumped a little then grinned at me, a maniacal baring of teeth, and wrestled Titania into the wrist cuffs. The Queen Bitch’s melting and reforming hands turned into cold lumps of gristle when the silver touched them, creating a kind of stasis.
No time to find it interesting. I turned to Rogue.
“You’re on. Get us out of here.”
He wrenched his gaze from Titania’s shuddering form. “I can’t. She holds my leash, Gwynn. Even now. I can’t escape her.”
“The Black Dog can.”
His stunned expression gave way almost instantly to a shout of inhuman victory. Seizing my head in his hands, he kissed me with bruising force—but arching his body not to touch my broken hands. “I love you, brilliant Gwynn.”
As abruptly as he’d grabbed me, he released me, throwing straining arms up to the ceiling and unleashing the wild animal within.
My cat shrieked to join him and I clamped down, hoping she wouldn’t tear me apart now.
Rogue’s transformation went better than the last time I saw it—perhaps the difference between him yielding utterly instead of battling the beast.
The Black Dog shook himself, fastened me with gleaming amber eyes and flashed white fangs. Starling muffled a little shriek.
“It’s okay,” I told her, “he listens to me.”
I hoped.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Midnight
If the loss of memory feels like a wormhole, then its return feels like having an amputated limb sewn on in the wrong place.
~Big Book of Fairyland, “Memory Inconsistency”
“Get us out of here, please.”
The Dog flashed white fangs in his canine grin and ran to the door, looking back at us to follow. Starling, bless her, mastered herself and edged around him to lift the latch. Athena spun around, her face blanching, little dagger thrust out. “Thrice damned Titania!”
“A friend. Let’s go.”
The Dog dashed down the hall and I ran after, each jarring step amplifying the throbbing in my hands. The cat inside me relished it, using that opening to push at me, to escape the cage of my body.
“He’s headed for the ballroom!” Athena shouted behind us. “Don’t follow him there!”
“He’s our way out. We have to trust him.” I called back.
She snarled some kind of obscenity in reply.
We burst into the ballroom like a cannonball rocketing through a flock of parrots. Brightly dressed fae flew in all directions, scattering before the Dog with cries of excited terror. Except the partygoers already fastened to various sadistic machines in various states of undress and bloodiness. Apparently the festivities had been well underway.
I tried not to look as the Dog gleefully plunged through the crowd, seizing and tossing aside bodies. Athena touched my arm gently, gaze fastened on my grotesque hands. “Gwynn...”
“Later.”
The Dog had cleared a path and we ran after him, climbing the grand staircase and hurling ourselves outside to the wide glassy courtyard.
Something shifted in the air, an abrupt change in barometric pressure. The ground moved under my feet, a minor seismic shift. The Dog scented the air, giving an excited yip. Starling gasped and Athena whispered, “Midnight.”
With the screeching sound of claws on glass, magnified through the mountain range, the Wild Hunt arrived.
Giant bearded men and vicious blonde Valkyrie creatures pounded through the air on horses made of night and bloodthirst. Hounds poured between their hooves, living ink. The guards scattered and we cringed back, ready to join them, to run from this fire back into the frying pan.
But the Black Dog leaped forward, baying a challenge. The hounds, now visible, now a thread of fang in the dark, circled him. I must have cried out and started forward, because Starling and Athena now held me between them.
The Dog and the Hounds engaged in a snarling fight, shimmering in and out of sight. The Veil had thinned and they moved between worlds. Now in this one, now in another.
; A massive hunter shining with ancient power waded into the fray, swinging a broad-bladed sword and bellowing. Kicking the Hounds aside, he lifted the sword, bringing it down in a merciless arc toward the Dog.
“I challenge you!” A voice rang out. A man, bold in shining armor, stepped out of the shadows. The hunter answered on a shout, turning to face the new foe with relish.
“Is that...Fergus?”
“I got him out with the chatelaine’s keys while Athena watched to see what happened with you.” Starling’s fingers dug into my arm. Fergus had flung back his helm and engaged the mighty hunter with surprising ferocity, shimmering with heroic magic.
Amazing.
The Black Dog barked with urgency, now standing king among a pack of cowering Hounds. The other hunters galloped through the night, wheeling in circles.
“They’ll hold off until the challenge is complete,” Athena tugged me forward. Starling dropped my other arm and ran beside us.
“But Fergus!”
“No.” Starling was shaking her head, blond strands flying in the wind. “This is what he wants. He made me promise.”
The Dog was already rocketing down the glassy path. I stumbled some, trying to keep up, and Athena took Darling from me. The cold numbed my feet until I thought to wish up my cross-trainers. Stumbling through the dark, I felt the adrenergic response pumping through my system begin to ebb and then crash.
The horror of it all leaked through the edges of the silence I’d created in my mind, worming through the edges with whispers of insanity. I wanted to flee from the images, what I’d seen and done. What I had done to Rogue.
That I was pregnant.
The tiredness, the constant drain on my energy, that feeling of being attenuated—I had denied what they all knew.
I fought the red-black edging in around my vision, knowing my blood pressure must be dropping, shock setting in.
Rogue’s Possession Page 31
