He stepped toward Theda and extended a manicured hand. "I understand you met my Henrik."
Theda chewed the bottom of her lip, reaching for the extended fingers and feeling the grip, ever so genteel, on the knuckles of her own as he pulled her to stand. She nodded at him, unable to speak for the thought she might not have to endure any of these tortures. The Beast: could it be as easy as naming a Chihuahua Killer? Could she be that fortunate?
"You're difficult to locate," he said. "But as you can imagine, I have plenty of resources." He looked back over his shoulder at the soldiers. "Once my men realized you were in the apartment building, it was a small matter to canvass every apartment until we found someone willing to offer information in return for the swift death of a loved one."
She was still processing the information, piecing together the tatters of her hope when the Beast nodded at Ezekiel.
"Please," he said to the battered man. "If you would do the honors; I do owe young Julio a debt."
With a visible sigh, Ezekiel stumbled forward, pulling the monstrous knife from his boot and stepping toward Eddie.
"He's best with a knife," the Beast said to Theda. "A thing of beauty, really."
"No," Theda heard herself squeak out but it was too late. The knife pressed itself into Eddie's throat, streaking across so quickly that Eddie's eyes didn't even widen in surprise. He stood for five seconds, grappling for his wound with his fingers before he fell to his knees and then lurched sideways, the blood pooling around his head. Theda's chest, the lungs inside, turned to stone. She couldn't pull in air to save her soul, and that strangely religious idiom made her stuff her fist into her mouth in an effort to smother the last bit of breath that wanted to come out in a choking laugh.
"You're upset," the Beast said. "I understand that. But it's only because you don't know how important it is for me to keep my word."
"You could have re-educated him," Theda said, casting about for something she could use to stall what she now knew was inevitable.
He chuckled. "You heard about my rehabilitation sanitoriums?" He readjusted his cuffs. "Perhaps you heard about them from Julio."
She nodded stupidly, trying to keep her gaze from Ezekiel, at his betrayal of Eddie, but her eyes seem to have minds of their own. They kept trailing to the place where the Pale Rider stood, his hands clutching at his sides, the knife rising in one hand and falling again as he squeezed and let go the handle. The swelling of his face, the redness and bruising, made the murderous look in his eyes even brighter. It could've lit the room. Changed. Not bloody likely.
The Beast sidestepped Theda, giving her full view of his entourage and Eddie's body as it lay still bleeding, the pool growing ever bigger on the tiles. "In the interest of working together," he said. "I'd like to introduce you to my team."
"Please," she said, lurching forward, clutching at her stomach. "I'm g... g... going to be sick."
It was the very businesslike way he was going about it that made her stomach recoil. Each time she thought about poor Eddie as part of a team, of the trusting look on his face as Ezekiel had approached him, of the way he had quietly done his part in some sort of demented goal setting session, bile washed into her mouth. She gagged on it, trying to keep it from incapacitating her. She wouldn't throw up in front of this man. She would keep her shit together.
"Better?"
She glared at him, trying to wipe spittle from the corner of her mouth with the coarse spun material of her tunic. He smiled at her, showing perfectly straight and beautifully white teeth.
When she wouldn't speak, he continued as though she had actually answered. He pointed to Ezekiel first. "General Ezekiel," he said then waited for Ezekiel to tap his heels together and give a subtle bow before he moved on to the next man. She thought the bounty hunter winked at her but it must have been a movement of light, that, or he was mocking her. She dug her fingers into her belly, telling herself not to think of him.
The Beast pointed out another man. "General Daniel." His finger led to a sandy haired man in his early 30s then moved on to the next and the next. "General Gabriel. General Michael." He gave a curt nod toward Bridget. "Just in case you're wondering, she will be rehabilitated along with General Ezekiel."
He cast a reproachful look in Ezekiel's direction. "Although I do believe you're well on your way already, General," he said, then turned his attention back to Theda.
"Now." He hooked his fingers around her elbow and guided her to a stool he pulled from beneath the rack next to the wall. "A more accommodating seat than the Judas chair, I believe." He chuckled humorlessly and when he saw he got no reaction from her, he crossed his arms and planted his feet hips width apart, disappointed.
"My Henrik. You know what happened to him?"
"Yes."
"Gone." He snapped his fingers as though he'd made something disappear. "Just like that. A fresh-faced, very handsome boy. Like any indulgent father, I gave him everything he wanted." He looked over his shoulder at Eddie and then at Bridget. "No matter how deviant his interests seemed."
"I wouldn't exactly call bisexuality deviant behavior," she found her voice in protest.
He lifted a brow in interest. "Bisexuality? That's what you think?"
She was confused. "Eddie and Bridget."
"Indeed," the Beast agreed. "I understand your confusion. Bridget? Do be a good... um... girl, would you?"
The gorgeous black haired goddess sidestepped Ezekiel, letting her hand trail down his arm as she came forward. Her head hung forward, the hair hiding her face.
"Show her."
Mesmerized, Theda watched as the full-bodied beauty opened her shirt and unbuttoned her jeans. She wiggled them down to her ankles and unclipped the front closure on her bra.
"All the way," the Beast said.
The underwear, too, slipped from the woman's hips, catching at her knees.
Even soft, the penis was large and heavy looking, the sac beneath round and wrinkled. Bridget's neat fingers pulled aside the package to reveal a fully formed cleft. She waited long enough for Theda to twist her gaze away, embarrassed for the woman, before she pulled her jeans back over her hips.
"My son had a peculiar penchant for hermaphrodites."
Theda found the courage to glare at him. "You're not just a beast, you're a bigot."
"Duly noted," he said, unaffected by the accusation. "Now, as to the business at hand."
"I have nothing to say."
"You did a reading for my Henrik."
"You can't prove that."
"Proof? What makes you think I require it?"
Something in the way he said it made Theda's spine snick up straight. All of those accusations she had laid in Trier, all of those 15th-century men, women, and yes, even children, whom she had put to torture and eventual death. By the end of it all there were less than a dozen people in the Township left alive. Each one of them first harangued with questions they couldn't possibly answer in any way that could lead to gratification. If they pled innocence, even quoting sections of the Bible, she'd charge them with letting the devil steal their tongues for even the devil himself knew the holy word. There was no answer any arrested person could make that could possibly end in the person being set free. Most of them had admitted to horrendous acts that they'd completely made up under the duress of pain. She knew the line of questioning too intimately to let this one man cow her.
"I'm innocent," she said, chortling at the irony and saw she'd piqued the Beast's interest. His brow arched questioningly.
"Innocent or not isn't the question."
She imagined Cathrin of Trier, pulled her face to mind, then laid Ezekiel's over it. Maybe he hadn't changed in this life, but Theda had. She wasn't that person anymore. She would exorcise that demon good and hard.
She fleeted a harried glance around the room, noting the monstrous equipment, the brazen bull snarling his displeasure at the wall, and she realized that this room should be providing her with courage, not with fear.
"I have the feeling it doesn't matter what you ask me, we'll be coming to the same resolution," she said to him.
"Smart girl," he said, stepping closer and leaning toward her so that she could see the beginnings of crow's feet around his eyes. "But the path to the resolution doesn't have to be quite so painful."
"Go fuck yourself," she said.
He straightened up and turned toward his soldiers. She saw Ezekiel take a hasty step forward, his throat convulse as he clenched at the handle of his knife.
"Daniel," Ezekiel said. "Teach the bitch some manners."
The sandy haired general waited for the Beast to nod his assent and then he strode forward and yanked Theda from her stool. He forced her toward the rack and shoved her so that she fell on it, driving a splinter beneath the pad of her thumb. That was nothing. Nothing.
"Tell me what vision you gave him," the Beast said and waited as Daniel rolled her flat on the bed of the rack.
"I didn't give him any vision."
"Shut up," Daniel hissed at her. He grabbed for her hands stretched them out above her head.
She snorted. "You think it's going to be easier for me if I'm compliant?"
He glared at her but wouldn't answer. "She's ready," he said to the Beast, fixing his gaze on hers.
"Ready or not, here I come," she said, laughing, and twisted her head so that she could keep Ezekiel in her sights. She needed to see his reaction as she was tortured. Would the woman Cathrin come forth and take glee in the suffering? Find some vengeance? Her mind reeled back to the apartment and her protests at being put in danger again. The hero saves the girl, not watches her be tormented. But books are fiction, he'd said. They weren't real. The sting in her eyes stole his face from her, blurring out the details. She ended up squeezing them shut against the sting.
It didn't matter in the end. Changed or not, she owed him. She owed all those poor souls.
"My Henrik. What vision did you send him?"
Theda felt a sting across her cheek, and her eyes flew open to see Daniel leaning in. His eyes were pleading with her, flicking past the beast, toward Ezekiel. She blinked to rid her eyes of residual tears, studied the bounty hunter anew, passively. She noted his face wasn't as swollen as when she'd seen him in Sasha's boutique. He was improving. Even the panicked look in his eye had shifted.
"I didn't send him a vision," Theda admitted to the Beast. "I walked him through his own life. A magic beyond any, that's what I offered him. A ride like no other."
Daniel tested the chains at her ankles then moved on to her wrists. The irons rattled noisily.
"Would you like a ride?" she asked the Beast. "I swear it's like no other magic you ever seen. Henrik enjoyed it. His was a wild, wild ride."
The Beast's eyes went hard as chunks of blue glass. "Watch it all, Bridget," he said without taking his eyes off Theda's. "Take this image and all the ones that will follow to your rehabilitation. Feel free to share them with your partners. I think you'll find them a useful mnemonic in your re-education."
He nodded at Daniel who patted Theda's cheek in command. She opened her mouth, thinking to spit at him in response and when she did, his finger slid inside and laid something on her tongue. He met her gaze and locked on it. She remembered Ezekiel telling her that Daniel would have a smear. That she should use it. She wanted to sob in relief.
The old familiar tingle swept into her cheeks, making her mouth flood with water. She had just enough time to see Daniel's hands move for the crank before the bliss started to fill her veins with hot oil, just enough time to see Ezekiel step behind the Beast, that monstrous knife in his hand coming to the front and resting against his master's Adam's apple.
And she had just enough time, a fraction of a second before the sound of the crank creaking in a revolution strong enough to pull her joints from their sockets, to think about the redemptive power of love. Just enough time to thank any god that would listen before the euphoria descended on her.
And then there was no pain, no regret, just mind-numbing, soul-crunching ecstasy.
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BOOK 2
Chapter 1
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CHRYSALIS
THEDA blinked herself awake. Her eyelashes stuck together with sleep grit, making what little vision she could manage blurry and prism-ish. She never came to from a godspit fix in any kind of decent shape, but for some reason, this time seemed even harder to get grounded. Her jaw ached. Her mouth tasted like Kitty Kitty, from her old grotto, had been buried in it. Her shoulders felt like they had been stretched out on a medieval rack.
She tried to roll from her back to her side, thinking she might see more than the hazy bit of haloed light that seeped onto her retinas. Something kept her from accomplishing the small feat. Her hands were in the wrong position; her fingers pressed into the wrong ribs, wrapped around her midriff too tightly. She usually slept with her hands beside her, unless she was cold. She wasn't cold. She was hot. Too hot.
She tried to make her fingers sweep away the blanket. They refused to obey her.
At that moment, every cell in her muscle tissues shrieked messages to her brain. They knew something was wrong before Theda could register what it was, and reacted without aid from her consciousness. Without reasoning it out, she gave in to the flight they screamed for: her legs kicked, her shoulders worked in a frenzy to move her torso upright, her hips bucked her up and down, and when she finally understood she was pinned somehow, every muscle joined the struggle until she was thrashing about so fiercely that her mind went empty of everything except the notion of escape. She went mad with it.
It was the hand pressing against her chest, pinning her firmly back down that sent her entirely over the edge. What little color she could make out, what few shapes, evaporated into a twisted mess. Sweet fuck, she needed to get up, get out, get away. There was no more rational thought than that. Not even when she heard herself shrieking obscenities, demanding to be let the fuck up.
"Theda."
A familiar voice, but certainly not one she expected to hear ever again. It had to be some trick to give her a false sense of security. Maybe she'd fainted from pain and was dreaming that voice. She knew the real speaker was entirely different than the voice she heard, with smooth tones, cultured in a way that put a girl in mind of a fine manicure. The flash of a navy suit came to her mind's eye, the sound of dark laughter. She whimpered as a splinter of memory sliced through, bringing with it the smell of decay, the feel of cold hard flesh next to hers. She shuddered convulsively, dislodging the memory, pushing it to the recesses of her psyche. That image was not for the Beast. That image was a secret. That memory was the reason for the torture. She had to keep it to herself, or they'd take it from her. They'd beat it out of her. She had to go deep inside, black it out. They... He--couldn't learn of it. She twisted away from the hand, strained backwards, away from touch, away from harm.
"
Theda. Minou."
Minou. She knew that term. Knew the only person who would use it. Again, her body reacted before she could process what it all meant. This time, without hesitation, the struggling halted. She lay back, dragging in a long breath, willing herself to understand what was happening, to feel the relief.
"Ezekiel," she said when she caught her breath.
"I'm here," he said, his tone filled with an unusual anxiety. He must have been waiting for her to wake up. Still, he shouldn't be so close to her. It should be the Beast speaking to her. The last she'd seen him... the last she'd seen was...
"Something's not right," she said, trying again to bolt up.
"You're safe," he said, squeezing her shoulder.
"Safe?" She relaxed.
"Yes."
She took stock then, swallowing hard because she had the sense that she knew exactly what was wrong. Her eyes were open, but she couldn't see. She was awake but couldn't truly move.
"Did they blind me?" Her chest hurt just asking the question because she remembered everything now and she was deathly afraid at being able to speak, at being so unharmed and in no pain. Because there should be pain. Lots of pain.
"No, Minou," he said. "They didn't blind you."
She choked back the relief, but it lasted for a fraction of a second before the other issue needed addressing. "Why am I in a strait jacket?" She knew that's what was pinioning her arms against her sides, what was making her overheated. It was part of the torture, she figured, but to what end. She dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "Are they here?"
It took a while for him to answer. "No."
"We're alone?"
"Yes." Something peculiar in his tone.
"How long?" She asked.
"How long before what?"
"Before it starts again."
"Oh, Minou," he said and she felt his touch on her again, this time brushing her cheek. "It's over."
"Did I... Did I break?"
This time a chuckle. "Who could ever break you?"
Theta Waves Box Set: The Complete Trilogy (Books 1-3) (Theta Waves Trilogy) Page 19
