FoM02 Trammel

by Anah Crow

  The black was a void in which he was suspended, but he knew time was passing. It was like he was awake in a dark room, staring into the lightlessness. They were doing things to his body, things he didn’t want done, but he couldn’t wake up. He heard howling and wondered if it was his own voice. The blackness faded into sleep and he dreamed of being in his own bed.

  “Time to wake up.” A baton rang off the cage bars, jerking Dane back into consciousness. Waking made him suck in air, and he regretted it immediately. He stank. Jonas stank. Being doused in chemical cleaner hadn’t done much for either of them.

  “Am I late for school, Mom?” Moving made his muscles shriek with resentment. His eyes were open, but everything was dim. He hoped it was the lighting and not his brain.

  “You have visitors today.” It was the cheerleader again. Women had always been trouble, in Dane’s experience. They had different priorities than men, and their hate lasted for generations as they sculpted their children into weapons. They were dangerous. This one tapped her baton on the bars and smiled sweetly at Dane. “Hungry?”

  Starving. The word was enough to make Dane’s stomach rumble, and she laughed, shaking her head so that her hair flicked across her shoulders.

  “It’s breakfast time in two minutes.” She slipped the baton between the bars and tapped his cheek with it. “I’ll make sure you have your share.”

  As she turned and walked away, the room grew brighter like a sunrise, but the light was watery and artificial. Dane could see better by the moment, and he knelt up, his shoulders against the top of his cage, looking around for the first time. His cage and Jonas’s were the only ones in the immediate vicinity, at one end of the room with technical equipment that he couldn’t identify and rows of desks with computer screens suspended in front of them. That made it harder to see, but if he pressed his face to the bars and looked out on an angle with his one good eye, he could get a sense of the room.

  It was immense, like a warehouse. Fans hung from the high ceiling and turned slowly to stir the cold air. There were more cages, row on row, back to back, stacked three high. Dane watched a pair of technicians driving a mobile scaffolding cart into place so that they could see into each level of cages.

  Above the hum of the circulating system and the voices of Moore’s people getting to work, he could hear soft sounds, animal sounds. There was the rumble of large doors opening and the hum of a small vehicle coming through, just before it was drowned out in a chorus of howling. None of the people Dane could see turned to look for the source of the noise, but it made the hair on the back of Dane’s neck stand up.

  The echo in the room and Dane’s broken senses made it hard for him to understand. Awareness dawned slowly as a large clock over the lab ticked to read six o’clock. Breakfast. Feeding time. The howls—half-human, half-animal—came from the rows of cages. The flatbed cart brought bins of feed, and the technicians got to the business of feeding the animals, directed by the scientists.

  “Here we are.” That was his scientist. His. Dane pushed the concept away as hard as he could. She carried two steel trays that seemed heavy, and she looked quite pleased. “You need to start eating well.

  None of that kibble for you.”

  “McDonalds?” It was hard to stay flippant in the face of the horror that was sinking in.

  “I wouldn’t feed my dog that crap,” she said, opening a narrow door at the bottom of Dane’s cage.

  “Well, I mean my other dog.”

  The opening was too small for Dane to get anything but a hand through. She slid a tray in, forcing him to shuffle back, and locked it in place, then did the same with the second. Raw chicken on one, sprinkled with some sort of blue gritty substance, fruits and vegetables on the other.

  “I can’t eat this,” he said. “Not with these teeth.” It was true, and he didn’t want to eat it, either.

  “Start on your veggies.” She climbed up a step stool beside him and he could read her nametag. Dr.

  Greer Fallon, DVM. A veterinarian. “Dr. Moore will come by to sort you out. She’s been away, or I wouldn’t have left you like this.” She pulled a steel hose down and locked it into place in the side of the cage. Water ran out of it in a steady trickle, disappearing into a drain in the bottom of the cage.

  “Here’s that mash, Greer.” A technician came over, lugging a bucket of what looked like oatmeal and raw meat. “How can you stand the smell?”

  “That smells yummy.” Greer hopped off the stool. “I stand it because I don’t have human prejudices.

  Get me the feeding tube for Jonas and stop whining. I want to be done with this and have him cleaned up before Dr. Moore arrives. Eat up, Dane.” She smacked the front of Dane’s cage with the flat of her hand on the way past.

  Dane backed up into a corner, but he realized by the slant and shape of it that he was probably sitting in what was supposed to be his toilet. He’d been in prison and it had never been this bad. He couldn’t stand up, could barely lie down. By the looks of things, they planned to keep him for a very long time.

  His stomach growled again. He picked up a piece of apple and sniffed it. He couldn’t tell shit like this.

  There wasn’t anything to do, so he started eating. Beside him, he could hear the soft rise and fall of the

  veterinarian’s voice as she stuck a tube down Jonas’s throat and started force-feeding him. She sounded like a worried nanny. This was hell.

  “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.” Speak of the devil. Dane dropped the apple and got ready to be as uncooperative as possible.

  Moore came into his line of sight from the far side of the lab, followed by an entourage of white-coated minions. She looked sleek and lovely, her ruddy hair and tall black boots gleaming under the white lights. Queen of the damned. She wore her lab coat like royal robes. Behind her, the girl drifted like a ghost, looking drained. In contrast, the weather mage who’d bested Cyrus at Wildwood radiated a light all her own, like the sun was under her skin. It would make her easier to find when he hunted her down.

  “Dr. Moore. Thank you for coming.” That was Greer, stepping away from forcing breakfast down Jonas and hurrying to meet her. “Have you received the latest numbers?”

  “I have, Dr. Fallon.” Moore gave her a tight smile. “Progress seems to be getting away from us.”

  “We’ve reduced the transplant ratios, yes. The manifestation mortalities were rising too quickly.”

  Greer clasped her hands behind her back and joined Moore on her slow parade across the room. “The new cell batches are far superior, thanks to our friends here.”

  “It’s good to see them both looking well. But you wanted some adjustments?” Moore’s smile was nothing less than demonic as she caught Dane watching her.

  “For this one, at least.” Greer stopped at Dane’s cage and patted the bars fondly. “He’s been running a fever. I’m afraid we collared him too early. Also, I’d like to see his teeth returned to a more feral state.

  He’ll thrive if I can put him on a raw diet.”

  “And the other?” Moore glanced over at Jonas’s limp form.

  “He’s in good health, for his condition,” Greer said, frowning. “We’re keeping him sedated, and it’s safer if we tube-feed him. You were correct about his contributions. We should cultivate a hybrid of these two to maintain for long-term supplies. It’s a pity the cell cultures don’t maintain efficiency in a production matrix.”

  “Magic can’t be nurtured that way.” Lourdes was barely audible. She moved past Moore, like she was sleepwalking, and stopped in front of Jonas’s cage.

  “Yet.” The weather mage looked contemptuous. “It’ll come.”

  Moore took a clipboard from Greer and signed several places on a form. “Sedate him, and we’ll take care of that healing.”

  “Of course.”

  Dane caught movement off to the side. He already knew where “the stick” was. It was a rod that held a hypodermic needle in the end and allowed them to inject him
without reaching into the cage. He shifted into the back corner next to Jonas, where there was too little room between the cages for them to reach him.

  “You know what you need to do,” Greer said, coming over to the cage with the stick in her hand. The needle on it was a good two inches long and thick as hell. “You need to get better and you need those nice teeth so you can eat your dinner. When you’re asleep, Dr. Moore will let you heal. Okay?” She gave him a bright smile as she slid the stick through the bars.

  Dane watched the needle close in, watched her tense in anticipation of ramming it into him. He grabbed it out of her hands, snapped it, and lunged at her with what was left. He would have had her too, except that Moore snatched her back and away from him.

  “You can’t treat them like they’re human,” Moore said icily. “And you can’t treat them like they’re animals. They’re born rabid. Get me another injector.”

  “You need to stop that,” Greer said to him, looking wounded. He could see her pulse fluttering in her neck, and he wanted to bite it out and swallow it while it was still twitching. “I’m trying to make you feel better.”

  “Here, Dr. Moore.” That was the grumbling assistant who had brought Jonas’s slop. He had a second stick that he was fitting with another syringe.

  “I’ll do it.” Lourdes’s voice was faint, but her eyes—fixed on Dane—were brighter than he had ever seen. She dropped her gaze as she turned, her body language soft and submissive. “Please?” She held her hand out for the stick.

  “Go ahead, dear.” Moore looked positively proud. “You’ve handled him before.”

  “He and I have an understanding,” Lourdes said to Greer. “Whether he likes it or not.”

  “We do, don’t we?” she added so only Dane could hear.

  “Touch me with that thing and we’ll both understand what your blood tastes like,” Dane snarled. Her mind on his made him want to claw at his head.

  “Be my guest.” Greer stepped well back, irritation coming off her in waves.

  “We’ve been through this before.” Lourdes stepped closer to him. “If you let me do this,” Dane felt as much as heard, “I promise you will be glad of it. But pain will follow, and you cannot let them see that you are not sleeping.” She slid the stick between the bars.

  Dane knew what it was to have her separate him from his will, and it wasn’t happening. His thoughts were clear and his muscles answered his commands to flex. “What do you want for this?”

  “Only what you do.”

  Lourdes was slight, but she had the reflexes of a cat. The needle came at him like a snake, yet not so fast that Dane didn’t feel a splash of anesthetic on his skin before the point bit in. The pain was half what it had been last time, and he twisted, feigning the agony he’d felt before.

  “You have to make them respect you,” Lourdes said, walking away.

  The world swam and went gray. Dane slumped down with his head against the cage bars. Beyond the blurred clumps of his lashes, he could see that Moore held something in the palm of her hand. An artifact

  with a blue light shining from it like an eye. She turned it toward him and murmured a saying. It made no sense to Dane, but he tried to remember it.

  His magic crept back in like the rush of blood to a sleeping limb, and it took everything he had not to scream. Still, he brought his will down with all the experience of centuries, forcing himself to heal from the inside out. Nerves, senses, flesh. His blood turned toxic with dying bacteria, his heart faltered, his sight went dark; finally, his pain and the drugs were swept away as though by a single motion of a hand.

  Dane’s back ached with the pressure of his wings yearning to spread. Fur crawled under his skin and his spine twisted as it grew too long for his body. The beast in him had to wait. It had waited for decades to be free until Ezqel had removed the curse and fixed his magic, it could wait again.

  The pleasure of being whole made it impossible for him to hear what Moore said next. It felt like she had executed him with the word. The sense of ending was worse than the death he’d died at Jonas’s hands, because his body was still breathing and he was still trapped in this cage. Still failing. He was empty and limp, his heart struggling once more to keep his body alive without magic.

  They were talking outside his cage, and Dane tried to make himself focus through the fear brought on by losing his magic. He wasn’t used to being afraid.

  “I’d like to preserve a hybrid instead of keeping this one.” That was Greer. She didn’t like Jonas. She was his kind of girl. “We were afraid his offspring would be erratic this time, and we were right. They don’t have his malleability.”

  “His ability to recover is unparalleled,” Moore said. “I’m loath to lose that. The others can keep them in line.”

  “Perhaps the problem is with his marrow, the way he is now.” Lourdes’s voice was almost pained.

  “I’m sure there must be severe errors when he is in the midst of mass regeneration.”

  “You think it would improve if we healed him completely?” Greer seemed interested.

  “She’s simply being sentimental.” Moore laughed at the girl. “I’m surprised that you’re so fond of the dog, Lourdes.”

  “I don’t want him back,” Lourdes snapped. “If I did, I’d be pushing for you to replace him, or telling you he’s useless. I’m telling you to keep him. But stop making fodder for the incinerator just because you like seeing him in pieces.”

  “Your notes suggest that his progenitors were excessively obedient,” Greer said. “Now we can’t keep them in line. She has a point. We don’t fully understand the alterations in the body during regeneration. His DNA may carry large defects or it may be susceptible to the influences of the host body.”

  “We’ll discuss your manners later, Lourdes,” Moore said icily. “In the meantime, yes, Dr. Fallon, I will restore Jonas as well.”

  “Thank you kindly. I’m going to give Dane a little more sedative to keep him under and do some work on him—I don’t want him to wake up while I have a bore in his bone.”

  Another needle sank into him and the burn came on full force. He needed to hear. He couldn’t fall asleep. Strangle pole wires caught him around the neck and leg, and he was dragged over to the far side of the cage. There were several technicians as well as Greer there now, and they wrapped metal straps around his chest, hips and thighs, and locked him up against the bars.

  As he started to fade, he saw one of them with a blowtorch, bringing it to bear on him, and he was helpless. Fire swept up and down his leg, a fan of blue that burned away his hair there and made his skin tingle painfully. But the flame moved too quickly to burn him and then it was gone. The wire around his neck made his breath whistle in his throat until he heard Greer’s voice rise. The wire loosened.

  Something jabbed him in the lower back; the pain was shocking for such a tiny point of entry. Real pain. Something else, something smaller, sank into his flesh until it hit bone and began to grind through.

  Sweat ran down his face and he could smell his own fear. The point of pain punctured the bone, and he heard them murmuring about extractions. They were sucking out his marrow.

  Marrow. The soul, said the fae, was anchored in the bones. There was something humans did, where they put marrow from one into another. Dane’s newly healed body was slowly succumbing to the injection; he couldn’t remember what was happening to him or why it mattered. His focus faded. From where he lay, he could only see his uneaten breakfast.

  Don’t take it away. I’m hungry . He remembered starving. Things became confused and he thought that time was now. My food. Don’t take it. Something was eating him. He was down to survival instinct, awake only because he was sure he would die if he didn’t protect his food.

  “Don’t worry, Dane.” A woman’s voice soothed him. “We’ll be done soon.”

  Done with what? Done with me? The dark didn’t answer any of his questions.

  When Noah woke, it was light in the room. He’d
slept the rest of the night, and the aches and pains he felt were only from good things. For the first time in months, morning finally felt like something new.

  Lindsay was gone but Noah knew he couldn’t be far, and the empty bed meant he could stretch luxuriously.

  Rolling over, Noah discovered that Lindsay hadn’t gone far at all. He was curled up in the chair across the room, smiling at Noah’s antics. Everything dreadful about last night came back in a wash of awareness, but Noah tried to put it in its place so he could keep the mood positive.

  “Want me to do that again?” He sat up and grinned at Lindsay.

  Lindsay laughed and looked Noah over, toes to head. “Only if you push the covers off the rest of the way.”

  Noah sat up and the covers moving triggered an agonizing itch on his right shin. Getting naked was supposed to be for Lindsay’s benefit, but he ended up shoving the covers off to scratch. The minute he did, he was itchy everywhere.

  “This is wrong.” He scratched at his elbow next and gave Lindsay a narrow look. “Are you giving me a hard time?” None of his siblings would have hesitated, that was certain.

  Lindsay’s eyes went wide. “Me?” There was a grin twitching at the corner of his mouth, but then he laughed. “No. Rajan said your skin would need oiling on a regular basis. Here, let me.”

  Lindsay stood and crossed the room to pick up the blue bottle on the table near the bed.

  “Oh, I’m sure you have no reason at all to make me itchy.” Noah stuck his tongue out.

  “Careful, you’ll make me think you don’t want me getting my hands all over you.” For all his teasing, Lindsay managed to rub the oil in quickly and efficiently, starting at Noah’s feet and working his way up.

  “Feel free not to think that.” Noah tried to pretend it didn’t feel good, but it did, it was almost like sex the way it quelled the itch and made his freshly healed nerves sing. It would have felt good on any day, to have Lindsay’s hands on him. His body was very happy about it, and Noah gave up on telling his dick to shut up about it by the time Lindsay was at his knees. He was outnumbered.