After an hour of magic and elbow grease, the chair was complete, and Cooper had returned with a couple of vials of holy water and some other items that he had apparently gotten from the dead priest’s room.
“You ready for this?” he asked.
“Sure.” I sat down in the Warlock’s creation. The apparatus held my arms out at my sides at chest level, my left arm fitting into a steel overgauntlet that the Warlock had forged from the trash can and part of a folding chair. He’d fashioned an upper back and head support from the second wooden chair. When they got me strapped in, I couldn’t move more than to breathe, but the position I was in was actually fairly comfortable.
Cooper held up the football mouthpiece he’d sanitized and adjusted. “Open wide.”
He slipped the mouthpiece in, popping it into place around my upper teeth and gums. It tasted unpleasantly of plastic and felt like I’d just bitten into a huge piece of stale taffy. “You shouldn’t be able to seriously damage yourself with this in, but just to be safe, we’ll strap your jaw closed so the devil can’t make you bite off your own tongue.”
“Or cast any diabolic spells to counter the exorcism,” the Warlock added.
The first prickles of claustrophobic anxiety danced up my spine as Cooper tightened a leather belt around my head to close my lower jaw around the mouthpiece. I wondered if this was what it felt like to get strapped into an electric chair.
Please stay close, I thought to Pal.
“Of course,” my familiar replied. “I wouldn’t think of leaving you at a time like this.”
Cooper sat cross-legged on the floor in front of me, head bowed, staring down at the vial of holy water in his hand. We weren’t Catholics, of course, and I didn’t expect Cooper to invoke Jehovah’s help, but the blessed water holds spiritual purification powers most Talents can tap if they know how.
Cooper looked at his brother. “The doors locked?”
The Warlock nodded, nervously flipping one of the holy water vials through his fingers.
“Okay, then.” Cooper knelt before me, closed his eyes, and began chanting old, old words.
My heart jumped in my chest, and I felt a sudden pain in my head, my guts. I could feel the incendiary ectoplasm jetting from my hand, spilling over the edge of the glove, turning the enchanted steel gauntlet red, smoking like an overheated skillet, but the metal was holding.
Cooper chanted louder, rose to his feet, and poured holy water onto my face. It burned so badly I thought my skin was peeling off. I screamed against the mouthpiece, my muscles jerking spasmodically against the restraints. My vision started to fade, going black at the edges, and I felt myself falling backward—
—I was standing in my old bedroom in the hellement, the floorboards rattling beneath me as if there was an earthquake—
—I was back in the chair, screaming louder, throat aching, but it didn’t even sound like my own voice, it sounded like a couple of cats. My vision cleared. Cooper was standing over me, and past him I could see that the kittens were clawing at the hallway door, howling loud as twin klaxons, fluffed-out black Tesla fur showering blue sparks onto the carpet.
“Keep going, Coop, you’ve almost got it by the balls!” The Warlock tried to pick up the kittens but jerked his hands away as if he’d been burned or shocked or both.
The door boomed as if somebody in the hall had slammed it with a battering ram. The kittens dashed away under the closest bed, and the Warlock stepped back. Another boom, and the cheap steel lock gave, the door slamming inward, the doorknob denting against the cinder-block wall.
Sara stood there in the doorway, Redhawk pistol raised and pointed at the Warlock’s head. “Stop. Right. Now.”
Cooper didn’t stop.
“We can’t—” the Warlock began.
Without another word, Sara stepped forward into the room and fired her pistol at Cooper. I jumped in my restraints. The bullet ripped through his calf muscle. He swore and collapsed backward onto the hard carpeted floor, clutching his profusely bleeding leg.
Oh my God, get me free, get me free! I thought to Pal. I was torn between wanting to help Cooper and wanting to burn Sara right down to her bones.
As Pal moved toward me, the kittens raced from beneath the bed past Sara into the hallway, and my fire went out. Shit. Wait.
“Jesus fuck!” the Warlock bellowed, raising his hand, whether to strike her or to try to cast a spell, I couldn’t tell.
Sara pointed the pistol at his forehead. “Don’t.”
“We could kill you with a word, lady, don’t you get that?” The Warlock looked angrier than I had ever seen him. “One word, and your crazy ass is nothing but red mist!”
“Go ahead.” Her voice shook, but she looked strangely elated. “Kill me. If you can. But do you think that any of my kitties will have anything to do with you after that? You … you people think you’re hot stuff, but you are nothing special if you can’t work your magic. You’ll die here.”
The Warlock knelt, grabbed one of the unused belts lying on the floor, and cinched it below Cooper’s knee to stanch the bleeding. “And my brother could die, thanks to you.”
“He won’t die.” Sara holstered her pistol. “Dr. Ottaway can take care of him.”
“I’m not letting any goddamn mundane doctor touch me,” Cooper growled through gritted teeth. “Why the fuck did you shoot me?”
“I can’t have you hurting the kitties.”
“We weren’t hurting them, we were trying to ex—” the Warlock began.
“I don’t care what you were trying to do; what you were doing was hurting my kitties, and I will not have that. Period, end of discussion. And if this happens again, I will shoot to kill. I’m not in the mood to give third chances today.”
Sara turned and left.
“Goddamn it.” Cooper slapped the floor, pain and anger distorting his face.
Pal moved behind my chair and began to undo my straps.
The Warlock got out my Leatherman tool and began to cut away Cooper’s pants leg. “The bullet went clean through; looks like it’s stuck down in the carpet pad over here. We’re lucky it didn’t ricochet and hit anybody else. But I think it pulled some fabric into the wound. Gonna be a bitch to get that out with the pliers on this thing.”
There was a knock at the doorway. Standing there was a young ginger-haired guy in an airman’s battle uniform with a medic’s Red Cross armband. He carried an olive-drab medical kit.
“Y’all need some help?” the medic asked, staring uncertainly at Pal, then at me strapped into the chair, then down at Cooper bleeding on the carpet. “I … I got a radio from Sara saying there had been an, uh, incident.”
“Got a pair of surgical tweezers?” Cooper took the Leatherman tool away from his brother and finished sawing through the seam on his pants leg.
The young man nodded.
“Then come help me get this thing cleaned out.” Cooper picked a fragment off his wound.
“I don’t have no lidocaine or nothin’—”
“Kid, I don’t care, I just want the wound clear so I can get this healed up! Warlock, go find us a damn cat so I can cast a spell.”
Pal freed me from the last of the straps as the Warlock went into the hallway. I stood up, and immediately my head swam and my knees buckled and I collapsed back in the chair.
“You should rest for now,” Pal told me. “Even an interrupted exorcism is quite hard on the system.”
By now, the medic was crouching over Cooper’s gunshot leg, holding a penlight in his mouth like a cigar as he pulled slick bits of dark cloth from the wound. Cooper winced and growled obscenities under his breath.
“I think that’s all of it,” the medic finally said.
The Warlock popped back into the room carrying one of the black kittens in the crook of his arm. “Found this one hiding under the sofa in the common room by the elevators.”
“Groo. Vee.” Cooper gripped his injured calf, closed his eyes, and began a healing chant. The ang
ry red bullet wound shrank, fresh pink tissue growing in concentric rings from the outside in.
He stopped his chant and frowned mightily at his healed leg. “I guess that’s good enough. Thanks for your help, kid.”
The medic stood up, looking awed and a bit nervous. “I have to take y’all to see Doc Ottaway.”
Cooper scowled at the young man. “What the hell for? I’m fine now.”
“It’s a standing order from Major Rodriguez. Anybody who gets any kind of serious wound has to be examined by the camp doc. We had some people who got attacked by dogs … well, they said they was dogs. And they said they was okay and didn’t need medical treatment. But then they … they turned into these things …” The medic trailed off, looking like he was remembering something horrible. “Anyways, it’s a standing order. I gotta take you to see the doc, or the major will kick my ass.”
Cooper blew out his breath and got to his feet, favoring his newly-healed leg. “Fine. Whatever.”
He looked at me, and then at the Warlock. “You guys coming with me, or you staying here?”
“I’m not really feeling up to a walk in the heat right now,” I replied, “but Warlock, please go with him if you want to. I’ll be fine here with Pal. We need to track down the other kitten anyhow.”
“Sounds good.” Cooper stepped toward me and gave me a quick, perfunctory kiss on the forehead. “Don’t get into any trouble while we’re gone.”
He limped out the door with the medic and the Warlock close behind.
Pal blinked his eyes at me. “What’s going on between you and Cooper? His pheromones smell all wrong.”
“I don’t really know. Miko messed with his head. Made him really angry, and he’s staying that way.”
I chewed my thumbnail, pondering our situation. Made my decision. “Strap me back into the chair. I need to talk to my father.”
chapter
twenty
Magus Shimmer
I slipped easily into my hellement, went to my vanity, and used a pair of cuticle scissors to cut my thumb so I’d have some blood for the mirror magic.
“Are you there?” I called as the mirror cleared, showing the inside of Shimmer’s workshop. “It’s Jessie, are you there?”
“Oh! Hang on a moment, if you please.” I heard him flip-flop across the floor and soon he came into the frame.
He sat down in the wooden chair before his mirror, gazing at me with an intent look of concern. “How are you? Is everything all right?”
“Well … no, not really. We haven’t found my brother yet, but … well, it’s worse than that.” I licked my lips, trying to figure out a quick way of telling him everything that happened. And then did my very best, leaving out the parts where Miko turned me into her sex puppet and I’d been miserably horned up ever since.
“Well, that is quite a press of problems,” he said when I finished.
My father leaned back in his chair and rubbed his chin thoughtfully through his beard. “Not being able to exorcise the Goad in you, well, that’s most serious. But it sounds as if you are taking all the proper precautions. The blood disease, it is serious, also, but I believe you can be cured. The sisters of the local convent are quite skilled in healing spells, although of course they believe them to be miracles granted by the saints after prayerful rituals. We humor them. It does not matter where they source their powers as long as they freely share them with our family.”
He gave a shrug and leaned forward. “The soul harvester is a far greater threat than the devil or your disease. You must not lose yourself to her. Remember that above all else, she wants your souls, and she finds them most delicious when they’re given in despair rather than taken by force.”
“What about Cooper?” I asked. And almost said, Do you think Miko’s made him hate me?
Based on what he said to me next, the unspoken question had been clear on my face: “Miko can sense a person’s weaknesses. And your man is weakened by anger. It distracts him, clouds his intellect, makes him forget the people he loves. But he does love you, loves you very much in fact, make no mistake. And he will remember when his mind is clear again. Until then, you must be watchful and patient with him. You’re all in danger, and the baser impulses that Miko inflames make your risks all the greater. So please, try to be careful. Find your brother and do whatever you must to get out of there.”
“I’ll do my best,” I replied.
“I shall do another set of divinations to try to get you some helpful information; it’s difficult to see past the Virtus Regnum’s magical barriers, but I think I can manage something.” He paused. “But promise me you will focus on getting out of there. I know that you have a charitable, good nature and you want to help the surviving townsfolk … but those people are not your blood. Family must always come first. Please do not gamble your or your brother’s safety for the welfare of mundane strangers. Please promise me this.”
He looked so sad and worried I found myself saying, “I promise.”
And then immediately wondered if it had been the right thing to do.
chapter
twenty-one
Doppelganger
Once I said good-bye to my father and closed the mirror, I sat down on my bed to think. He was right; clearly Miko meant to drive us all to so much angst and misery that we’d surrender ourselves to her. The meat puppets hadn’t been serious adversaries because they weren’t supposed to be. Their attacks were intended to exhaust our bodies, fill our minds with horrible memories of carnage, and burden our souls with the guilt of having had to slaughter people’s grandmothers. Attrition through demoralization, as the major had put it.
If I could just keep my head on straight, I knew I could blaze through everything and get us home, somehow. But my lust made that damned difficult, and Cooper’s anger wedging us apart made it thornier still. It wasn’t just that I felt as if I would go insane if I couldn’t get laid; I missed him. I missed hugging him, missed the comfort of his touch, missed laughing with him. Our stolen moments together in the tent in Mother Karen’s backyard seemed like a lifetime ago.
I looked at the bedroom around me. This was my dimension now. I created all this, purely from memory and will. What else could I create in here?
I held my hands out in front of me and closed my eyes. Thought of Cooper, his powerful legs, his lean body, his muscular arms, his runic tattoos, his curly black hair, the sound of his voice, the warmth of his touch …
Strong, familiar hands took mine.
I opened my eyes.
Cooper was standing before me, smiling down at me. He was naked, his long handsome cock half hard. Glad to see me, clearly.
“I missed you,” he said. A moment later, I realized it was what I’d wanted him to say. And decided that right then, I didn’t really care.
“I missed you, too.” I stood up; with a thought, my clothes were gone. We kissed; his mouth tasted like Nutella, as if we’d just come in from making a mid-morning snack in the kitchen. His skin smelled like fresh gingerbread and clean healthy man.
When we broke from our embrace, Cooper cupped my breasts in his warm hands, leaned down, and began to suck on my right nipple, sending an electric thrill through my chest and belly down to my vulva. The sudden spark blossomed into a sharp, insistent ache in my loins that made me moan. Smiling, Cooper straightened up and gently pushed me down so I was sitting on the edge of the bed. I lay back, my legs hanging over.
He knelt on the carpet between my legs and spread my lips with his thumbs. My flesh ignited at his touch; the anticipation was killing me. He began to run the tip of his tongue around the opening of my vagina in light, teasing circles. And then slowly up, up my juice-slick groove to my clit, which he circled, tapping gently just beyond my pleasure’s reach, tormenting me.
“Fuck me,” I whispered. “Please fuck me.”
He wet his fingers against my pussy and began to rub my flesh in gentle circles, still just barely touching my clit. I sucked in my breath. He slowly sto
od up, gently brushing his hard cock along the length of my inner thigh to my vagina. He pressed the tip against my waiting flesh and began to slowly push into me as he rubbed my clit directly—
—I moaned again as the dam of my pleasure swelled, ready to burst—
He drove his cock in deeply and I came, my flesh shuddering around his shaft. I threw my head back against the mattress and wrapped my legs around his waist, trying to pull him in as deep as possible.
When the surge of my orgasm had passed, he worked his flesh in mine more slowly, gently, giving my tension time to build, and then he thrust faster and faster, pinning me to the bed, my body at his mercy. I felt his cock shudder inside me as he came, and the feel of his seed spurting inside me sent me over the edge and I was coming again, gasping for air, my nerves singing with so much carnal joy I nearly passed out.
We collapsed, spent, after that. I fell asleep in the slow afternoon light filtering through the silent windows.
chapter
twenty-two
Fever
I awoke with a start in the hellement; Cooper’s doppelganger was gone. How long had I been in there? There was no way to tell. I rolled out of bed and opened the red portal door.
When I came to in the restraint chair, I immediately knew something was wrong. My vision was blurry. My head was throbbing. Fever chills were washing through me. I tasted bile in the back of my throat, and my guts were in an uproar.
Pal? I thought. Pal, are you here?
“Oh, thank goodness you’re back. You had me worried sick,” he replied. “You were gone all night.”
I feel like crap. Can you untie me, please? I blinked my eyes to try to clear my vision; Pal came into focus, hovering beside me.
“Certainly.” Pal undid the straps binding my head and jaws, then released my arms and freed my legs.
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