Cage relents and releases her, but steps closer and bends over.
“Tell me,” he says, as though coaxing some private trust between them. Some secret confidence. “Tell me all.”
“Where is Rapley? Bring Rapley.”
Cage sneers. “I see your hold on him. I sent him to check his traps at the summit of the mountain again. He left before your trickery began.”
Roan hunches into herself, willing his awful, awful voice to stop. She cannot speak; if she were to open her mouth, she would spill forth a vile string of curses in his deformed face.
“No matter,” he says, straightening up. “I will have all from you. In time.”
Jenny hurries into the room. “I have the… rope.” She swallows at the sight of Roan in a heap on the floor. “Sir.”
Cage takes it and offers a rare half smile. “Good girl. Now go to the kitchen and make us all some tea. I will be down shortly.”
Jenny curtsies awkwardly, then hurries away. Emma, who sways in the doorway, no doubt seeing very little, collapses to the side, but Andrew is quick and holds her up.
“She isn’t well,” he says to Cage.
“Take her to the Yellow Room. Let her rest awhile. It is not easy learning your friend is working with Satan and has stolen your brother away.” He says all of this without glancing at Emma, nor at Andrew, only staring down at Roan.
She can feel his gaze like the touch of an unwanted courter, and yearns to protect herself, but she must not—will not—Conjure again.
Tricks. It had been tricks.
No doubt whatever was working against her had pushed for just such a conclusion.
Cage unravels what is cooking string, rather than rope, discolored in places, the product, no doubt, of inventive sauces and the blood of carcasses that adorned dinner tables long ago.
Roan allows Cage to tie her wrists to the posts at the bottom of the bed that was meant to be hers, because the longing is coming back. The itch, the yearning, the desire—and she has to stop before she can no longer make that choice.
Emma’s words haunt her.
How could you? You were my friend! You did it. Seamus is gone because of your witchery!
She was so unlike Emma when she said it, her face contorted by rage, fear—and the pallor of the dying. Her eyes were little more than black bruises, her skin more blue than white. Yet… was that real? What can Roan trust in her own senses? And a treacherous thought that sticks like lichen:
Maybe… maybe I have caused this?
Maybe I have caused this?
I have caused this?
I have caused this.
Did Roan not Conjure on the mountain on the very first night she arrived? Did she not feel the rush of something responding? Was it not she who Conjured up the thing pressing in?
But this image is replaced with the memory of the beast, hooves stomping slowly, echoing as they drew near; she cowered in her bed. His breath as he snorted, his eyes, also red. The same shocking red.
Stop.
It won’t stop.
Stop!
Roan opens her eyes, instinctively twisting to rub her face, but the string, twice-wrapped, tugs into her wrists. Cage is watching. How long has he been staring? What has he seen?
His lips open torturously slow. “Your tricks will not work on me.”
She looks away. She is too tired for this.
“I vowed, long ago, to find abominations like you. I am well protected.”
That gets her weary attention and she notes, through the fog of her mind, that he clasps a hand to his chest.
“Half-breed, vile—unnatural!” He takes a breath, nostrils curling. “You revolt me.”
A pause. “And yet, how can I fully blame you? You did not ask to be made. Yet here you are. Wicked, blasphemous creature!” The last, spat with such venom!
“Why do you hate me?” she manages, though she wants to hold up her hand, to block his words from her ears. The string pulls tight when she tries.
Stop.
Please, stop.
He walks to the window and considers the boards nailed in place.
“You are hateful,” he mutters, but Roan can see there is more. Much more.
Then, with surprising speed, he wrenches each board from the walls until the broken window is exposed, and the rising storm beyond it.
“I want you bathed in the water of the Lord,” he murmurs. “I want you to be cleansed of your filth and vile baseness. I will extract answers from you yet.”
He turns back to her, retrieving a book from the inside pocket of his jacket, and begins to read. “‘The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit.’”
Roan’s muscles relax.
“‘Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the Lord delivereth him out of them all.’”
Cage pauses, and when he speaks, his words are soft. “Would I could save that half of you that is innocent.” Then his face changes again, the skin turning rigid. “Alas, evil runneth over. You are corrupted through and through. And so, I must exorcise you… or destroy you.”
The light slices at her retinas as Cage pulls off her makeshift blindfold. He is rough, and she winces. As her vision adjusts to the sudden light, she can see black spiderwebs hanging from between his fingers. Her hair.
He kneels before her, and she smells him—he is potent and unpleasant and she wrinkles her nose, turning her face away. He yanks it back.
“Tell me the secrets of your dark magick,” he whispers, his voice tender yet pinched, as though he restrains some great emotion. His hand lingers on her cheek, hot and moist. “Confess.”
Ah. There it is. He is holding back rage. And disgust. She recognizes it like the scent of home.
She smiles.
And he hits her.
The blow is not sharp, as would be an open-palmed slap. She knows that pain well. No. This is a punch—the kind he would use on a man. Something within her shrieks a laugh, followed by the high squeal of metal. Inside, somewhere deep, a bolt that had been slid shut through years of suppression, releasing mere smoke around the edges, has moved toward opening.
Anger is exhilaration. A long-lost friend.
The bolt slides some more.
Open up, wake up, rebirth.
Why should men be allowed to express their rage, and not she? Has she not three times—ten times the violence of any man? Has not Emma? She yearns to bite his hand like a wolf, for wolf she is.
So she does.
His howl of surprise and pain invigorates her, and she bites harder, feeling the skin crack and break, the sudden taste of blood.
It’s the taste that makes her let go, and she spits it from her mouth, baring her teeth at him.
I dare you, she thinks, willing him to challenge her.
But he shuffles back on his buttocks and scrambles away from her, clutching his hand to his chest, eyes two white orbs in the darkening room.
She grins. How men like to show their power. Well, let him see hers.
She laughs as he flees the room.
It is late when he returns.
She has gotten used to the thing in the corner of the room, the rotted ghost. It lingers like a bad smell. She stares at it instead of at Cage, who yanks at her chin so that her neck cricks and aches. Still, he does not move. Seamus.
Cage’s shoes hammer the floor; his confidence could not be so easily shaken. He places something heavy on the table beside the ghost.
“I have been in prayer,” he says, as though he owes her an explanation.
“Water,” she croaks.
“Be you devil or victim,” he continues, “it is in your interest to resist me.” She is bothered by his back to her, a thick black wall, hiding his face. She needs to see his face.
“Water…”
“Resistance is natural. The body will fight the process, the demon will fight the banishing. And if you are, as I suspect, a witch—a creature of eternal night—then you wi
ll lead me well.”
His words tumble one over the other and Roan shakes her head trying to straighten them out. He is weaving a tapestry, a pattern, with his words and actions. If she could have some water, then she could make sense of it. Could use it to free herself.
When he turns, he is wearing a minister’s collar. He fades in and out of focus, but the thing behind him, in the corner, is in sharp focus.
She squints. “Go away.”
Cage smiles, and opens a book. Was he holding a book before? It’s a Bible. She knows it well. She studied for hours at her father’s behest when she was small, right after Adam left her. She thought it was his way of giving her comfort, of distracting her, but she soon realized it was to try to contain her. He had given up when it made no difference, and the episodes still came, but she kept studying. She enjoyed it. The words, the parables, the thin, crisp pages crinkling as they turned.
Cage’s Bible crinkles too, and she smiles.
“‘Be not overcome of evil—’”
“‘—but overcome evil with good,’” Roan finishes. “Romans 12:21.”
“‘Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil—’”
“‘—that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!’ Isaiah 5:20.”
“And so,” Cage says, closing the book and smiling slowly, “the devil shows himself.”
Roan frowns. “What?”
“And the devil shall have knowledge of scripture…” He turns briskly. “Jenny!”
The door opens slowly and Jenny hurries in carrying a bucket.
“Shall I wash her?” Her voice is small.
Roan licks her lips. “Jenny…”
She flinches. “Shall I, Mr. Cage? She doesn’t look well. I could bring some broth. Please—”
“No. Leave.”
Jenny hesitates, eyes dashing to Roan and away. Her worry has thinned her face some, and Roan cannot stand to see it. So she smiles, and the smile says so many things.
Don’t worry.
I’m all right.
Please smile.
Be happy.
Jenny’s face contorts and she is sobbing before she leaves the room.
“How you beguile the innocent,” Cage says, bringing the bucket closer.
The water inside sloshes over the edge and Roan’s relief is so profound that she leans forward, straining against her bonds, head lolling toward it.
“Thank you,” she whispers.
Cage is gentle as he releases her arm. It falls to the floor with a dead thump. When did the terrible pain go away? She can’t move it. How long has she been here, like this?
She leans closer to the bucket, she can almost smell the water, when a hand clamps around her neck and forces her face downward.
She gasps, but there is no air, and water cuts like glass as it enters her. She has taken it in. The choke is profound, her body fighting to get it out, to gasp in air, but all she takes in is more water.
She fights. She thinks she does.
But the black at the edge of her vision is closing in and the pain has become pleasant—it is so warm—and she drifts.
Life is painful.
A rib snaps as the water purges from her lungs.
He is kneeling over her—his knee is on her chest.
There is no thought, only breath.
And then his breath, hot in her face. “You didn’t die.” His face floats into focus. “Witch.”
You deserve this
Is it not what you sought by coming here?
Your father knew what would happen
It was a trap
To contain you
To cleanse you
To save you
To destroy you
She drifts.
It gets cold, then colder. Dark, then light.
Dark again.
Cage comes, reads, hits her, leaves.
Seamus watches her and cries. Roan tells him it’s all right.
This is what she wants. Purity. Innocence.
He leaves. Lost.
Her jaw has stopped opening, she has clenched so hard that her teeth have grown together, intertwining like roots.
Sometimes she fancies she has wings on her back. Black wings—like a rook. Or a raven.
He comes with the water again, unsure, and once again she does not die. She feels as if she has, though.
Chapter 28
A HISS, A SCREAM…
He’s here again.
She has learned his scent, the sound of his footfalls, the way he stands so silent as if not breathing, only to take a deep breath and sigh. She has learned the way he considers her, perhaps wondering how such a young, pretty girl could be the witch he knows she is.
But today is different, because he doesn’t stand long. Instead, he sits in the blue chair in the corner.
Something catches at her senses, like an alluring scent, and her head snaps in his direction. Though blindfolded, she knows that something is different… and wrong. Very, very wrong.
“What is that?” she croaks.
He does not answer right away, and she leans forward as though she might sniff out the thing.
“Nothing but a book, my dear,” he says at last.
The sound of the cover opening drifts across the room and she jerks back, for the scent—or, the feeling—is so strong.
“Close it,” she whispers, the familiar tingle of desire—hopeless desire—and need rising within her core. “Close it!”
Instead, he turns another leaf, and the paper sounds old and thick.
She can hear everything with the clarity of crystal now.
Cage licks his lips.
His fingers tremble on the page.
He takes a breath.
And begins to read. The language is guttural, belly deep and harsh as a dryad’s cry.
“‘Ta Gerott limba, verogk…’” he murmurs, clumsy with words that should be used with such care—or not at all. In Divine darkness, begin. Roan shuts her eyes beneath the blindfold, but her ears are wide open. She struggles against her bonds, the string biting in.
“‘Arok sho glimbok.’” Open your mind. “‘Arok shi…’” Reveal yourself. She tries to scream in her mind, to drown out the words, but they are like fleas seeking warmth. Like rats, fleeing fire. They scratch and scratch at her skull, burrowing deeper and deeper until she can feel them intimately, beating to the rhythm of her heart.
On and on he reads, and she can feel the sweat gathering upon his brow, running down his face and neck.
When Roan’s mouth opens, her voice is changed, utterly.
“Foolish child,” she says, the language fully formed and fluid in her mouth. “How disgraceful your pronunciation.”
“And so,” he says, in the same language—a language no mortal speaks without cost. “The Devil’s Tongue is natural upon your accursed lips.”
“And yet you speak it also.” She laughs. “Tempt a girl to evil using evil. How quaint your faith must seem to you. To bend it so.”
She knows his face blazes scarlet with indignation and she laughs again.
Silence follows, and he closes the book. The moment he does so, she slumps against her bonds, breathing hard.
He looks down on her for a long, eerie moment, and then he is gone, storming from the room with purpose and drive. Roan shrinks into herself, terrified of what will happen when he returns.
The words form, and then choke themselves free. “Please… don’t.”
He is holding a branding iron in his hand, the symbol of the cross burning a brilliant red, smoking comfortably. It puts her in mind of the ram. The ram. Its—his—burning red eyes, the smoky breath fogging the night until she could no longer make out his form, only those eyes. Those red, knowing eyes.
The book is in the room somewhere. She can feel it, whispering—
Come to me…
…open my ivory pages…
…feel the flesh of my bonds…
Cage advances.
“Don’t…”
He smiles and she knows that nothing she says can, nor will, make him stop. This is no longer about saving her, or cleansing her.
He is enjoying it.
Cursed words upon his tongue have spread like poison to his veins.
He releases her bonds and drags her off the bed by her hair. She lands hard, and sharp pain cracks in her elbow and hip.
Where are her friends? How can they allow this?
She tries to scream; this has gone too far. But her voice has died, a mere croak of a thing. A frog. A bat, lost in the night.
“Emma… Rapley… Andrew…”
He is on her then, ripping the shift off her shoulder. She curls up to protect herself lest he expose her completely. She is almost too cold to move. Days of exposure have rendered her weak, hard as rock, fragile as a newborn sparrow.
And then
her skin screams,
it hissssssssses,
burns and
m
e
l
t
s
And she does have her voice after all, for the room is filled with it. No man has ever rent the air with such a cry, such pain, sorrow, and humiliation. Roan sees it all in one defining moment—her eyes blinded by white-hot agony, but her mind suddenly open, seeing far, far back, long, long ago.
…A sorrowful woman on a dark mountain, tied to a post atop a pile of wood. Her eyes fixed solidly and brightly upon another woman, held back by savage men who jeer and spit. A woman screaming, begging the men to stop, to hold, to have mercy. Two women, both restrained, one held by ropes, the other by hands. Men light the wood beneath the pyre; the sticks catch quickly—too quickly. Flames lick at her skirt, her skin, her hair.
And who screamed louder? Which woman?
A man hisses, “Witch woman!”
Something inside Roan, something that she secured away long ago with an iron lock crested in complex inhuman symbols—a lock she closed when she was but a child—now slides fully open.
The ropes that hold her feet begin to smoke—and then melt as she speaks the Cursèd words, throwing them back at the man who tempted her with the very same.
Teeth in the Mist Page 18
