He hit her with precise, scientific blows on nerves and muscles, using a sadistic sense of what hurt worst for a woman. He's an expert, her mind stuttered through the pain, a fucking virtuoso. Bastard must have trained under the Nazis or the KGB.
Everything seemed calculated just short of permanent injury. Most of it wouldn't even leave bruises on the surface. Just deep, like on her kidneys, her liver, and her ovaries. She screamed, hoping there was somebody within hearing that wasn't part of the conspiracy.
Thoughts vanished into the roar of pain.
* * *
She woke cold and naked and wet. Her underclothes lay in a stinking puddle, soiled. So that was what they meant, about getting the shit beaten out of you. She never knew it was literal. She hurt all over, not just the beating but raw skin that told her Padric had scrubbed her while she was unconscious. The idea of sleep pulled her so hard she closed her eyes again and ignored the pain, ignored the thoughts of what else he might have done. They weren't important enough.
Sleep. Sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep, the innocent sleep, sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care, the death of each day's life, sore labor's bath, balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, chief nourisher in life's feast . . . . She drowsed with memories of Drama Club and the sense that if she didn't move, nothing would hurt. Where was good old Macduff when you really needed him, someone to kill this fake Scots Thane of Cawdor?
"Wake up, you filthy bitch!"
Ice-water slapped her again and soaked at her until she realized the cold flowed up from the puddle beneath her. She lay on the stone paving, and some of the pain was bruised skin caught between protruding bones and the floor. She'd never had much padding, and here she was losing weight. That was a hell of an idea for a diet. Next bestseller, The Torquemada Diet, guaranteed to slim you down or the Inquisition would know the reason why.
"Get up and get dressed. The Master wants to see you."
Maureen peeled one eye open and sorted out the blurry shadows into Padric leaning over her with a towel. "Go 'way. Le' me sleep."
The towel cracked like a whip, and her ass caught fire. She rolled, groggily, and another snap lit pain in her right breast. She kept rolling until she cowered under the iron bunk, whimpering and shivering and curled into a ball with her butt pressed against the cold stone wall.
"Get up and get dressed, I said! The Master invites you to dinner."
"Fuck you," she muttered, but her mouth betrayed her by watering at the thought of food.
"Eat with him or starve. Your choice."
"Gimme back my clothes."
Something green landed above her, and she focused on it. He'd pulled the thin mattress off the bunk to see her through the metal springs and strapping. Velvet. It was a velvet dress, green with golden trim. Damn thing would go well with her hair and skin.
Not too good with bruises, though. Levi's and her white blouse would set those off better. She reached around the edge, tugged the dress down, and threw it into the filthy puddle in the corner. The cold gnawed at her: velvet was warm.
She glared out at Padric from her hole, baring her teeth. Something warmed, deep in her belly, at the sight of a ragged scab and bruise across his left cheek. At least she'd given him that much back.
"Then you go to him naked," he growled. "Save time when he beds you."
He reached under the bunk and grabbed her wrist, jerking until she banged her head on the iron frame. By the time the stars cleared, her butt was dragging across the stone flooring of the corridor outside. The rough edges and surface sandpapered skin off her ass.
Something roared and then formed words. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"
Maureen shook pain out of her eyes and found Dougal looming over her. Something cracked like a rifle shot, and her arms dropped to the floor. Another crack and she saw the short whip flash across Padric's face. A savage joy boiled up in her belly as the whip sounded again and again, driving Padric down into a cowering huddle.
"How dare you treat my lady like this?"
"She refused to come, Master," Padric whimpered.
"Of course she refused to come, you idiot! Are you too stupid to see she's naked?"
Padric kept his head covered and muttered to the floor. Dougal hit him again, the whip drawing a line of blood across the protecting forearms.
"Speak up, fool!"
"She refused the dress you sent her," Padric spat. "She threw it in her own filth."
"Then . . . get . . . her . . . the . . . clothes . . . she . . . wants!" Dougal punctuated each word with a blow of the whip.
Padric scuttled away down the corridor like a frightened crab. "She demands those man-things she wore when she came here."
"Then bring them before I take every inch of skin off your miserable carcass!"
Dougal reached down as if to soothe her, and Maureen twisted away from him, huddling against the wall. She didn't even try to cover her breasts and crotch: modesty was the least of her problems, right now. Besides, she had the perverse idea that if he raped her, she'd win at least a moral victory. She wouldn't have surrendered.
Padric scuttled back, cringing, blood oozing from whip-cuts across his face and arms. He carried her jeans, her shirt, and clean underwear draped over one arm. His other hand held a dry towel.
Dougal flicked his whip again, pointing. "And get those stupid chains off her, you idiot! All we need is the iron rings, to control her Power until she learns how to do that for herself. She's the Lady of this castle now! Act like it!"
Locks clicked and the chains rattled to the floor. Maureen snatched up her clothing and turned her back to the men, mopping herself dry and regaining some poise along with her pants. It was amazing how helpless nakedness made her feel. She'd always wondered why people thought it was sexy.
Padric followed like a humbled ghost as Dougal led her down the hall. He opened the door and waved her into a large room, dark like a cavern and lit with candles. It felt warm and smelled like heaven: a bakery with charbroiled steaks and flowers. She lost the petty details when her eyes locked on a long table.
Standing roast of beef. Potatoes. Steaming rolls. Sweet peas. Her stomach wrenched, and she nearly drooled down her shirt at the thought of food, hot food, good food, endless quantities of food. Wine, red wine sparkled in crystal goblets.
She grabbed the wine and gulped it, eyes closed in bliss. God, she'd needed a drink. She didn't even care if they'd drugged it. The fire of the wine sent golden warmth through her body and splashed a rosy glow over the room. It ironed the kinks out of her bones and made the bruises seem less urgent. It even made Dougal look good for an instant.
He smiled and refilled her glass. Wine. Would booze, by any other name, smell half as sweet?
A plate materialized in front of her, a slab of roast and potatoes swimming with butter, and her hunger took control of her body. She didn't eat, she inhaled. In mere seconds, her plate gleamed as if she'd licked it clean of every scrap and drop of red meat-juice. Maybe she had. She couldn't remember. All she knew was that she'd only stopped when her stomach couldn't take another swallow without puking.
She had a knife in her hand, a sharp knife only slightly greasy from the roast as if she'd even licked that in her frenzy. Where was Padric? He was out of range in the shadows. She turned to Dougal, across the table, and her head swam for an instant. Wine. Several glasses of wine, starting on an empty stomach.
He smiled at her, politely, and nodded as if he often dined with starving tigresses. She measured the distance across the table and put down her knife. Whatever happened next, she'd at least had one decent meal, and she had her own clothes back. Now, if they'd just let her sleep . . . .
"Maureen, you must become my wife."
"Why don't you just rape me, you bastard? Don't you have the balls?"
He studied her quietly, as if he was measuring her hatred and weighing how much to let her know. "You must become truly the Lady of this castle. I want you to be
ar my children. Unless you come to my bed willingly, you could cast out any seed I plant in you. This is the Summer Country. You wouldn't need a doctor or an abortion. A woman of your blood has such power and more."
Abortion.
The word sent shivers down her spine, waking memories of the grisly pictures Father Donovan used to carry when he led his parishioners on the picket line down at Planned Parenthood. Mom had always dragged her daughters along, forcing them to study the horrors while they knelt on the gritty pavement and prayed for the souls of dead babies. Those were such lovely images for a child of five to worship.
Amazing how deep the programming went. Maureen hadn't been to Mass in years, but the word "abortion" and the memories still made her sick. What did that bearded patriarch on the Sistine Chapel ceiling have to say about the child of rape? Don't punish the child for the sin of its father? Bullshit!
"What makes you think I wouldn't lie to you, spread my legs, and then strangle you in your bed?"
He smiled again. It wasn't a friendly smile this time. "I'd know. This is my magic, if you will, the magic by which I train hawks and hounds and dragons. If you said 'yes' today, you'd be lying. I wouldn't trust you. The day will come when you'll mean it. I'll know."
She stared into her wine. The alcohol and lack of sleep combined to tangle her brain. Dangerous. Good-cop, bad-cop. He'd whipped Padric after ordering him to beat her. When she gave in to Dougal, he'd probably kill Padric just to make her happy. Torture her jailer to death, gouge out those leering eyes that had feasted on every inch and opening of her body and rip the nails from his filthy brutal probing fingers, and she'd be watching every minute to cheer him on. Padric was nothing more than a tool to Dougal.
The wine, the dinner, they were nothing more than tools to him. He'd starved her to set it up. He knew she needed the booze. He knew she was an alcoholic, a binge drinker. The whole scene gave new meaning to AA's "hitting bottom," didn't it?
When she gave in to him. Not if.
A growl formed, deep in her throat. "God damn you straight to Hell!"
The wine flew across the table, glass and all, splashing his face and chest and arms. He only smiled as Padric pinned her arms and lifted her bodily from her chair. The grip on her arms was an iron clamp as hard and fiery as the bracelets that shorted out her rage.
Words took too much energy. She spat catfight noises and kicked the empty air. Padric just carried her back and dumped her in her cell.
* * *
Something shook her shoulder again, and she burrowed deeper under the pillow. The luxury of smooth clean sheets and a warm comforter were nothing compared to the simple joy of sleep. She'd just gotten to sleep. Deprive a person of sleep long enough and she goes crazy, she muttered to herself. Even just interrupting dreams will do it. And you weren't sane to start with.
The rude hand shook her again and pulled the pillow off her head. Bright light flooded through her eyelids.
"Fuck off," she muttered.
"Maureen, wake up. You've got to help me."
It was a man's voice. There was a man in her bedroom, and she remembered she was sleeping in her underwear--some frilly transparent stuff more suited for a honeymoon or a whorehouse than for comfort. She clutched the bedclothes around her and forced one eye open.
She faced a stone wall. She was still in that damned nightmare dungeon cell. Her head pounded with the revenge of the wine, her gut boiled in an uproar over her rampage through the dinner table, and that goddamn hand on her bare shoulder had to be Padric or Dougal.
She spun around with her hand in a claw, trying to rake his eyes out or at least smack him with the iron bracelet. Dougal caught her wrist, effortlessly. His face was inches from hers, and for an instant she thought he was going to kiss her. She bared her teeth, ready to bite.
"Maureen, you've got to help me."
"Why don't you just go off in a corner and fuck yourself?"
He shook his head. "This isn't for me. Your sister followed you here, and she's in terrible danger."
"Fucking liar! How the hell would she get here? Did that slimy shithead kidnap her, too?"
"I don't know how she did it, but she's out in my forest. I didn't bring her here. You've got to help me find her before something eats her."
Padric stood behind him, looking worried through the bruised welts of the whipping. Hide and seek. Find-the-sister. She tossed the comforter to one side and swung her legs out of her bunk, sneering at the fact that she gave both men a full-beaver shot of her crotch through those stupid panties. Dream on, you rapist bastards.
Her jeans slipped on over her vanishing hips, much too easily. She ignored the urgency of her bladder and tugged at the zipper. The damned thing jammed, just like usual. Did anybody here sell Calvin Kleins?
"There's just one thing," Dougal said, blocking her reach for her blouse. "I can't let you leave the keep without agreeing to be my wife."
Maureen screamed and threw herself at him, teeth and claws and toenails. One flailing hand connected, first the iron wristlet and then her fingers raking across his cheek. She felt his skin ball up under her fingernails, and she growled like an enraged jaguar tasting blood.
An arm clamped around her neck, lifting her off her feet to kick helplessly. Her vision blurred and turned into a dark tunnel. Her body went limp. She dove into darkness until the arm relaxed and let just enough blood through to her brain to keep a thread of consciousness.
"Stupid woman," a snake's voice hissed in her ear. "People you care about are in great danger. Your sister is lost and hunted by my animals. Fiona has captured Brian and holds his soul in her deadly little hands. The land is eating David, plants rooting in his flesh and sucking his life out through his sightless eyes. Only you can save them."
"You put them in danger." She could barely whisper, couldn't find enough breath to rain curses down on his head. "Only cowards take hostages."
"You can command this castle. You can be mother to mages and witches powerful beyond your dreams. You can be powerful beyond your dreams. What is so bad about sleeping with a man, about bearing children? Motherhood is the true birth of a woman."
The arm relaxed a shade further, and she could see again. She spat at the face in front of her and ground her teeth when she missed. Too far. At least she could see blood trickling from three parallel scratches across his cheek.
"I'd sooner fuck a warthog."
Dougal shook his head in disbelief. "What kind of a woman won't even help save her own sister? Padric, take all these silly luxuries away. The bitch doesn't deserve them."
This time they chained her to the wall, standing, so she couldn't sleep. They wouldn't even let her use the hole first, so she had to soak her pants and hang there, stinking, wet and shivering again, with her arms tearing out of her shoulder sockets.
Jo. Brian. David. Some sixth sense about lies said that Dougal had been telling the truth. That bastard had drawn them into this cesspool and dangled them like swords over her head. He gave her such lovely choices: "Fuck me or Jo dies. Bear my children or David will be eaten alive by some damned plant. Bury your own mind in the darkness of my will or lock Brian away from light forever."
Maureen wept. She wasn't sure whether they were tears of rage or grief or pain, or just her eyes rubbed raw by lack of sleep, but she wept until her cheeks burned from the salt.
Chapter Nineteen
"Follow water and you'll find Man. Great advice, sister mine," muttered Jo. "Great advice when you've got reliable Maine granite under your feet. No damn good in limestone country."
She stared up at blue sky, bright beyond the dark overhanging walls of the sinkhole, and at the shadows of trees. Her sinkhole--the Cynthia Josephine Pierce Memorial Sinkhole, she called it, about thirty feet across and thirty or forty deep. Say it was thirty feet to freedom. That was the width of her apartment. It might as well be a mile.
Viewed objectively, it was just about the prettiest place she'd ever seen. A Japanese garden's plunge pool sat un
der the waterfall, lapping at moss-covered rocks. Ferns and delicate bushes draped the walls and framed the outflow where the clear stream dove underground.
Even the rocks were beautiful, if she forgot that they had damn near busted her head when she fell in. She'd thought they'd busted her left arm, but it had healed too fast for that. Must have been sprained, instead.
The only thing the scene lacked was an elevator. There was no way out.
How long had she been down here? Three days? Five? They were all running together, as if somebody had photocopied yesterday and handed it back to her this morning, claiming it was a new assignment.
Back into the endless loop. She traced out another possible climbing route zigzagging up the sinkhole, from split stone to lump to gnarled root. Every try so far had ended with her stretched across the wall like a splattered spider, groping hopelessly for another hold while her leg muscles imitated a sewing-machine from exhausted tension. Then she'd fall and try to turn it into a jump out into empty air, to miss the rocks and splash into the dubious cold cushion of the pool below.
Speaking of work. "Bet you're unemployed by now, girl. Rob may believe in flextime, but he likes people to call in if they aren't going to show up. Especially with a deadline coming up this week."
She was talking to herself now, just to hear something besides the whisper of wind and the hissing water endlessly falling over the lip of her world and flowing away into darkness. Talking to herself, just like a bag-woman wandering the streets.
Staring at the sky made her eyes water, so she shifted her gaze lower in case something new and interesting had appeared in her gloomy realm. Like maybe a ladder.
Rob was the least of her problems. He wasn't even her worst problem back in the real world. David would have the cops out dragging the river by now. She shook her head. She'd spent all night worrying about that. Not a damn thing she could do about it, so she saved her energy for important things. Like food.
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