At the moment, that seemed like an excellent plan, and I was temporarily on Breandan’s side.
“So Niall doesn’t want that to happen?” I said, trying to keep my voice steady.
“No, he wants to visit the likes of you. While Fintan hid the knowledge of you and your brother, Niall behaved himself, but when we removed Fintan—”
“Bit by bit!” said Two, and laughed.
“He was able to find enough information to track you down. And so did we. We found your brother’s house one day, and there was a gift outside in a truck. We decided to have some fun with it. We followed your scent to where you work, and we left your brother’s wife and the abomination outside for all to see. Now we’re going to have some fun with you. Breandan has said we can do with you what we will, short of death.”
Maybe my slow wits were speeding up a little. I understood that they were enforcers for my great-grandfather’s enemy, and that they had killed my grandfather Fintan and crucified poor Crystal.
“I wouldn’t, if I were you,” I said, quite desperately. “Hurt me, that is. Because after all, what if this Breandan doesn’t get what he wants? What if Niall wins?”
“In the first place, that’s not likely,” Thing Two said. She smiled. “We plan to win, and we plan to have alot of fun. Especially if Niall wants to see you; surely he’ll demand proof you’re alive before he surrenders. We have to leave you breathing . . . but the more terrible your plight, the faster the war will be over.” She had a mouthful of the longest, sharpest teeth I’d ever seen. Some of them were capped with gleaming silver points. It was a ghastly touch.
At the sight of those teeth, those awful shining teeth, I threw off the remnants of the magic they’d laid on me, which was a great pity.
I was completely and utterly lucid for the next hour, which was the longest of my life.
I found it bewildering—and utterly shocking—that I could feel such pain and not die of it.
I would have been glad to die.
I know a lot about humans, since I see into their minds every day, but I didn’t know a lot about fairy culture. I had to believe Thing One and Thing Two were in a league of their own. I couldn’t imagine that my great-grandfather would have laughed when I began to bleed. And I had to hope that he wouldn’t enjoy cutting a human with a knife, either, as One and Two did.
I’d read books where a person being tortured went “somewhere else” during the ordeal. I did my best to find somewhere else to go mentally, but I remained right there in the room. I focused on the strong faces of the farming family in the photograph, and I wished it wasn’t so dusty so I could see them clearly. I wished the picture was straight. I just knew that good family would have been horrifed at what they were witnessing now.
At moments when the fairy duo wasn’t hurting me, it was very hard to believe I was awake and that this was really happening. I kept hoping I was suffering through a particularly horrible dream, and I would wake from it . . . sooner, rather than later. I’d known from a very early age that there was cruelty in the world—believe me, I’d learned that—but I was still shocked that the Things wereenjoying themselves . I had no per sonhood to them—no identity. They were completely indifferent to the plans I’d had for my life, the pleasures I’d hoped to enjoy. I might have been a stray puppy or a frog they’d caught by the creek.
I myself would have thought doing these things to a puppy or a frog was horrible.
“Isn’t this the daughter of the ones we killed?” One asked Two while I was screaming.
“Yes. They tried to drive through water during a flood,” Two said in a tone of happy reminiscence. “Water! When the man had sky blood! They thought the iron can would protect them.”
“The water spirits were glad to pull them under,” One said.
My parents hadn’t died in an accident. They’d been murdered. Even through my pain, I registered that, though at the moment it was beyond me to form a feeling about the knowledge.
I tried to talk to Eric in my head in the hope he could find me through our bond. I thought of the only other adult telepath I knew, Barry, and I sent him messages—though I knew damn good and well that we were too far away from each other to transmit our thoughts. To my everlasting shame, toward the end of that hour I even considered trying to contact my little cousin Hunter. I knew, though, that not only was Hunter too young to understand, but also . . . I really couldn’t do that to a child.
I gave up hope, and I waited for death.
While they were having sex, I thought of Sam and how happy it would make me if I could see him now. I wanted to say the name of someone who loved me, but my throat was too hoarse from screaming.
I thought about vengeance. I wanted One and Two to die with a craving that burned through my gut. I hoped someone, any one of my supe friends—Claude and Claudine, Niall, Alcide, Bill, Quinn, Tray, Pam, Eric, Calvin, Jason—would tear these two limb from limb. Perhaps the other fairies could take the same length of time with them that they were taking with me.
One and Two had said that Breandan wanted them to spare me, but it didn’t take a telepath to realize they weren’t going to be capable of holding off. They were going to get carried away with their fun, as they had with Fintan and Crystal, and there would be no repairing me.
I became sure I was going to die.
I began to hallucinate. I thought I saw Bill, which made no sense at all. He was in my backyard probably, wondering where I was. He was back in the world thatmade sense . But I could swear I saw him creeping up behind the creatures, who were enjoying working with a pair of razor blades. He had his finger over his mouth as if he were telling me to keep silent. Since he wasn’t there, and my throat was too raw to speak anyway (I couldn’t even produce a decent scream anymore), that was easy. There was a black shadow following him, a shadow topped with a pale flame.
Two jabbed me with a sharp knife she’d just pulled from her boot, a knife that shone like her teeth. They both leaned close to me to drink in my reaction. I could only make a raspy noise. My face was crusted with tears and blood.
“Little froggy croaking,” One said.
“Listen to her. Croak, froggy. Croak for us.”
I opened my eyes and looked into hers, meeting them squarely for the first time in many long minutes. I swallowed and summoned up all my remaining strength.
“You’re going to die,” I said with absolute certainty. But I’d said it before, and they didn’t pay any more attention now than they had the first time.
I made my lips move up in a smile.
The male had just enough time to look startled before something gleaming flashed between his head and his shoulders. Then, to my intense pleasure, he was in two pieces and I was covered in a wash of fresh red blood. It ran over me, drenching the blood already dried on my skin. But my eyes were clear, so I could see a white hand gripped Two’s neck, lifting her, spinning her around, and her shock was intensely gratifying as teeth almost as sharp as her own ripped into her long neck.
Chapter 18
I wasn’t in a hospital.
But I was in a bed, not my own. And I was a little cleaner than I had been, and bandaged, and in a lot of pain; in fact, a dreadful amount of pain. The part where I was cleaner and bandaged—oh, a wholly desirable state. The other part, the pain—well, that was expected, understandable, and finite. At least no one was trying to hurt me any worse than I’d already been hurt. So I decided I was excellent.
I had a few holes in my memory. I couldn’t remember what had happened between being in the decrepit shack and being here; I could recall flashes of action, the sound of voices, but I had no coherent narrative to connect them. I remembered One’s head becoming detached, and I knew someone had bitten Two. I hoped she was as dead as One. But I wasn’t sure. Had I really seen Bill? What about the shadow behind him?
I heard aclick, click, click . I turned my head very slightly. Claudine, my fairy godmother, was sitting by the bed, knitting.
The si
ght of Claudine knitting was just as surrealistic as the sight of Bill appearing in the cave. I decided to go back to sleep—a cowardly retreat, but I thought I was entitled.
“She’s going to be all right,” Dr. Ludwig said. Her head came up past the side of my bed, which told me for sure that I wasn’t in a modern hospital bed.
Dr. Ludwig takes care of the cases who can’t go to the regular human hospital because the staff would flee screaming at the sight of them or the lab wouldn’t be able to analyze their blood. I could see Dr. Ludwig’s coarse brown hair as she walked around the bed to the door. Dr. Ludwig had a deep voice. I suspected she was a hobbit—not really, but she sure did look like one. Though she wore shoes, right? I spent some moments trying to remember if I’d ever caught a glimpse of Dr. Ludwig’s feet.
“Sookie,” she said, her eyes appearing at my elbow. “Is the medicine working?”
I didn’t know if this was a second visit of hers, or if I’d blanked out for a few moments. “I’m not hurting as much,” I said, and my voice was very rough and whispery. “I’m starting to feel a little numb. That’s just . . . excellent.”
She nodded. “Yes,” she said. “Considering you’re human, you’re very lucky.”
Funny. I felt better than when I’d been in the shack, but I couldn’t say I felt lucky. I tried to scrape together some appreciation of my good fortune. There wasn’t any there to gather up. I was all out. My emotions were as crippled as my body.
“No,” I said. I tried to shake my head, but even the pain-killers couldn’t disguise the fact that my neck was too sore to twist. They’d choked me repeatedly.
“You’re not dead,” Dr. Ludwig pointed out.
But I’d come pretty damn close; I’d sort of stepped over the line. There’d been an optimum rescue time. If I’d been liberated before that time, I would have laughed all the way to the secret supernatural clinic, or wherever I was. But I’d looked at death too closely—close enough to see all the pores in Death’s face—and I’d suffered too much. I wouldn’t bounce back this time.
My emotional and physical state had been sliced and gouged and pinched and bitten to a rough, raw surface. I didn’t know if I could spackle myself back into my pre-kidnap smoothness. I said this, in much simpler words, to Dr. Ludwig.
“They’re dead, if that helps,” she said.
Yes indeedy, that helped quite a bit. I’d been hoping I hadn’t imagined that part; I’d been a little afraid their deaths had been a delightful fantasy.
“Your great-grandfather beheaded Lochlan,” she said. So he’d been One. “And the vampire Bill Compton tore the throat out of Lochlan’s sister, Neave.” She’d been Two.
“Where’s Niall now?” I said.
“Waging war,” she said grimly. “There’s no more negotiation, no more jockeying for advantage. There’s only killing now.”
“Bill?”
“He was badly hurt,” the little doctor said. “She got him with her blade before she bled to death. And she bit him back. There was silver in her knife and silver caps on her teeth. It’s in his system.”
“He’ll get better,” I said.
She shrugged.
I thought my heart was going to plunge down out of my chest, through the bed. I could not look this misery in the face.
I struggled to think of something besides Bill. “And Tray? He’s here?”
She regarded me silently for a moment. “Yes,” she said finally.
“I need to see him. And Bill.”
“No. You can’t move. Bill’s in his daytime sleep for now. Eric is coming tonight, actually in a couple of hours, and he’ll bring at least one other vampire with him. That’ll help. The Were is too badly wounded for you to disturb.”
I didn’t absorb that. My mind was racing ahead. It was a mighty slow race, but I was thinking a little more clearly. “Has someone told Sam, do you know?” How long had I been out? How much work had I missed?
Dr. Ludwig shrugged. “I don’t know. I imagine so. He seems to hear everything.”
“Good.” I tried to shift positions, gasped. “I’m going to have to get up to use the bathroom,” I warned her.
“Claudine,” Dr. Ludwig said, and my cousin put away her knitting and rose from the rocking chair. For the first time, I registered that my beautiful fairy godmother looked like someone had tried to push her through a wood chipper. Her arms were bare and covered with scratches, scrapes, and cuts. Her face was a mess. She smiled at me, but it was painful.
When she lifted me in her arms, I could feel her effort. Normally Claudine could heft a large calf without any trouble if she chose to.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I can walk. I’m sure.”
“Don’t think of it,” Claudine said. “See, we’re already there.”
When our mission was accomplished, she scooped me up and took me back to bed.
“What happened to you?” I asked her. Dr. Ludwig had departed without another word.
“I got ambushed,” she said in her sweet voice. “Some stupid brownies and one fairy. Lee, his name was.”
“I guess they were allied with this Breandan?”
She nodded, fished out her bundle of knitting. The item she was working on appeared to be a tiny sweater. I wondered if it was for an elf. “They were,” she said. “They are bits of bone and flesh now.” She sounded quite pleased.
Claudine would never become an angel at this rate. I wasn’t quite sure how the progression worked, but reducing other beings to their component parts was probably not the route of choice. “Good,” I said. The more of Breandan’s followers who met their match, the better. “Have you seen Bill?”
“No,” Claudine said, clearly not interested.
“Where is Claude?” I asked. “Is he safe?”
“He’s with Grandfather,” she said, and for the first time, she looked worried. “They’re trying to find Breandan. Grandfather figures that if he takes out the source, Breandan’s followers will have no choice but to stop the war and pledge an oath to him.”
“Oh,” I said. “And you didn’t go, because . . . ?”
“I’m guarding you,” she said simply. “And lest you think I chose the path of least danger, I’m sure Breandan is trying to find this place. He must be very angry. He’s had to enter the human world, which he hates so much, now that his pet killers are dead. He loved Neave and Lochlan. They were with him for centuries, and both his lovers.”
“Yuck,” I said from the heart, or maybe from the pit of my stomach. “Oh,yuck .” I couldn’t even think about what kind of “love” they would make. What I’d seen hadn’t looked like love. “And I would never accuse you of taking the path of least danger,” I said after I’d gotten over being nauseated. “This whole world is dangerous.” Claudine gave me a sharp look. “What kind of name is Breandan?” I asked after a moment of watching her knitting needles flash with great speed and panache. I wasn’t sure how the fuzzy green sweater would turn out, but the effect was good.
“Irish,” she said. “All the oldest ones in this part of the world are Irish. Claude and I used to have Irish names. It seemed stupid to me. Why shouldn’t we please ourselves? No one can spell those names or pronounce them correctly. My former name sounds like a cat coughing up a fur ball.”
We sat in silence for a few minutes.
“Who’s the little sweater for? Are you going to have a bundle of joy?” I asked in my wheezy, whispery new voice. I was trying to sound teasing, but instead, I just sounded creepy.
“Yes,” she said, raising her head to look at me. Her eyes were glowing. “I’m going to have a baby. A pure fairy child.”
I was startled, but I tried to cover that with the biggest smile I could paste on my face. “Oh. That’s great!” I said. I wondered if it would be tacky to inquire as to the identity of the father. Probably.
“Yes,” she said seriously. “It’s wonderful. We’re not really a very fertile race, and the huge amount of iron in the world has reduced our birthrate.
Our numbers decline every century. I am very lucky. It’s one of the reasons I never take humans to bed, though from time to time I would love to; they are so delicious, some of them. But I’d hate to waste a fertile cycle on a human.”
I’d always assumed it was her desired ascension to angel status that had kept Claudine from bedding any of her numerous admirers. “So, the dad’s a fairy,” I said, kind of pussyfooting around the topic of the paternal identity. “Did you date for a while?”
Claudine laughed. “I knew it was my fertile time. I knew he was a fertile male; we were not too closely related. We found each other desirable.”
“Will he help you raise the baby?”
“Oh, yes, he’ll be there to guard her during her early years.”
“Can I meet him?” I asked. I was really delighted at Claudine’s happiness, in an oddly remote way.
“Of course—if we win this war and passage between the worlds is still possible. He stays mostly in Faery,” Claudine said. “He is not much for human companionship.” She said this in much the same way she would say he was allergic to cats. “If Breandan has his way, Faery will be sealed off, and all we have built in this world will be gone. The wonderful things that humans have invented that we can use, the money we made to fund those inventions . . . that’ll all be gone. It’s so intoxicating being with humans. They give off so much energy, so much delicious emotion. They’re simply . . . fun.”
This new topic was a fine distraction, but my throat hurt, and when I couldn’t respond, Claudine lost interest in talking. Though she returned to her knitting, I was alarmed to notice that after a few minutes she became increasingly tense and alert. I heard noises in the hall, as if people were moving around the building in a hurry. Claudine got up and went over to the room’s narrow door to look out. After the third time she did this, she shut the door and she locked it. I asked her what she was expecting.
“Trouble,” she said. “And Eric.”
One and the same, I thought. “Are there other patients here? Is this, like, a hospital?”
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