Shadowstorm (The Shadow World Book 6) (24 page)

For a long minute Miranda held her breath, sure nothing was happening. But then she saw something move in her peripheral vision, and looked over; the image of the sensor grid was moving, spinning out and then in, as if trying to reorient itself—or as if Stella was reorienting herself.

Miranda glanced at the Witch. Sweat had broken out on Stella’s forehead, and she was biting her lip, but the grid continued to move, zooming in closer and closer on Austin, passing by street after street.

The image moved away from downtown, headed north, past the old airport and over to Lamar Boulevard, deeper into an older and more run-down part of the city. There were a lot of government buildings there, including the sprawling Department of Public Safety complex, and a bit farther than that, a number of half-empty or abandoned strip malls and office buildings whose inhabitants hadn’t weathered the last recession.

Stella homed in on a single building. The grid fixed on what, based on the name, was once an Indian grocery store.

“There,” Stella said weakly. “That’s it. It’s underground…the whole building is shielded really strongly, but I could feel…God, Miranda…they’re hurting him. I don’t know what they’re doing but they’re hurting him.”

Miranda memorized the address. “On my way,” she said. “David?”

The Prime shook his head. “You’re going to have to do it,” he said. “It took all the energy I had just to walk here. I’d be a liability.”

“All right — stay on the grid, back me up. Stella — stay here, but sit down and try to rest. I might need both of you.” She squeezed David’s shoulder, kissed his forehead. “I’ll bring him home,” she said. She looked from him to Stella. “I promise.”

Then she hit the door at a run, calling Harlan and summoning all available Elite to the coordinates. She didn’t want to hit the building with all her resources—if they were underground they probably had surveillance, and a herd of vampires converging on the spot would definitely tip them off. But if she was going in alone, she’d want them available.

She texted the coordinates to Harlan before she was even in the car, and he floored it the second the door shut.

“Hang on, Nico,” she murmured. “I’m coming.”

*****

“You really are a fascinating creature…I apologize for the discomfort, but it was important you were awake for our work. I need to know how much pain you creatures can feel, and how much you can tolerate. Also, sorry for the gag—the noise was distracting my associates here. Let’s move on, shall we? Dr. Porter, let’s go ahead and pump the blood back in so I can have a look at the circulatory system. I’ll need a Y-incision…”

*****

Even through a barrier strong enough to almost totally block a Signet bond, he could feel shades of what was happening. He could feel pain, almost enough to make his knees weak, and once in a while he heard the faint, distant echo of a scream.

Deven sat with his elbows on knees, face in his hands, wanting to scream himself but paralyzed with too many emotions at once.

The sounds in his head. The familiarity of that pain even centuries away. The look of disgust in Miranda’s eyes. All the nightmares of the last year and a half, digging through rubble, searching in vain for what he had lost or worse, finding it bleeding out in his arms.

“It’s time.”

He lifted his head. “Kai…you’re awake.”

The Bard didn’t acknowledge his words, but held onto the doorframe much as Miranda had, only so much paler, so weary. Deven had seen less worn-looking corpses, particularly given how Kai’s black hair emphasized his pallor. But his violet eyes were alight as he said, “It’s time to make a choice, my Lord.”

He didn’t have to ask what Kai meant. Live or die? Warrior or coward? Prime or dust?

Kai held his eyes. When he spoke again, it was softly, shakily. “Save my brother,” he said. “Please.”

Then, he left.

Deven wanted to hide. To wait until it was over, then embrace whatever fate awaited him. Whatever rescue mission the Pair had planned, they might be too late. He could just wait, and see.

He turned his gaze to the mantel, fixed his eyes upon Ghostlight.

It’s time to make a choice.

Accept the worst of yourself or reclaim the best.

Fear or love? Which is it?

Which would it always, always be?

Slowly, Deven stood, not looking away from the mantel for fear he’d lose what nerve he had. He took a deep breath and walked over to the fireplace.

The sword was exactly where he’d left her, only still clean because the servants gave her a quick dusting when they came through. Memories of all the heads he’d severed with her, the battles…taking down nearly a dozen Morningstar in Sacramento, fighting alongside Miranda and David in the barn…he’d carried dozens of blades over the centuries but none had ever been such a part of him. She’d been the sword he put David down with the first moment they’d met; she’d been the model on which he’d based the designs for The Oncoming Storm and Shadowflame. The world might fall apart but there was one thing on which he could completely rely.

The sight of his own hand shaking as he extended it toward the mantel brought a flash of anger to his heart.
This is what we are, now? A hundred fights and thousands of enemies left in their own blood, and now this? They’ve taken one Consort from you. They took your home. Will you let them have your soul?

Practically snarling, he steeled himself and reached out again. No tremor this time. Better.

His fingers closed around Ghostlight’s hilt.

Chapter Ten

There was no light, no warmth, no solace—after the first four hours, it wasn’t even pain, because that word had lost all meaning. Everything lost all meaning.

“It’s said that Rene Descartes used to vivisect dogs in a public display to show that their shrieks weren’t real pain, but a mere reflex, response to stimuli. Documented evidence of this is slight, of course, but it is a strong indicator of attitudes of the time. I wouldn’t go that far, myself—this is the modern world, and we know anything with a nervous system can feel pain.”

The voice droned on and on, destroying any hope of silence—it was its own form of water torture, a constant flow of words.

Different parts of his body went in and out of focus as the endless hours crawled by. The itchy trickle of blood on the side of his head when they took a scalpel and sliced off his ear—only to reattach it, letting the healing process do its work as they did with every incision, every broken bone. The dull crunch of those bones…one rib, then another, cracked and removed, then put back in.

And through it all, the Prophet never seemed to stop talking. His diatribe was at turns pedagogical and disgustingly intimate—he would lean close and describe in loving detail what they were doing, what would happen next, how it would probably feel. He would praise Nico’s pain tolerance one minute and then call him a halfbreed demon the next.

His strangely hot hands would lie on an unbloodied patch of skin and knead the muscle, or caress the skin, murmuring appreciation.

Then one of the “doctors” would send an electric shock through Nico’s body, and Nico would lash out with magic, throwing them to the ground with a feline hiss while the Prophet laughed quietly in the corner.

That wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was the feeling of human hands inside his body, digging around, touching where no hand should ever touch. They discussed his body as if he were a particularly interesting insect pinned to a board. One made notes while the other cut, or scalded, or carefully peeled back patches of skin. Pain, he had felt before, the night he was turned. He didn’t understand this kind of humiliation. Over and over he asked himself,
Why?
Even though there was no why, even though the pretense of scientific inquiry eventually gave way to flat out sadism, it simply wasn’t in his nature to comprehend causing pain just to cause pain.

At least, it shouldn’t be.

At some point he heard the Prophet say, “…yes, it’s in the way—go ahead and cut it, and get the bone saw ready…what is it, Barnes? …Fine. I shall return in a moment.”

He heard the “doctors” muttering to each other, then felt the cold shadow of one fall on his face. The human reached down and took hold of the Elf’s hair, and with rough sawing motions, chopped it off. The comparatively mild but sudden pain of the human pulling on it sent Nico’s senses into sharp focus.

That was it.

He had been abandoned by everything he’d ever believed in. All this time he had fought against the darkness, running from it in fear.

In the end, it was all he had left.

He was weakened from repeated mutilation and healing, mutilation and healing…but there were resources he could call upon that even these filthy humans and their knives and saws couldn’t touch. The image of the men scrabbling on the ground in their own blood, begging for their lives…he drank it in greedily, letting the satisfaction add fuel to the fire.

Then he reached to the closest source of power he could access, and
pulled.

“All right,” one doctor said to the other. “While we’re waiting let’s get some more samples. Get the opaque vials for the blood, and I’ll—”

He never finished the sentence.

Nico’s vision went red.

The power he had drawn streamed into him, healing his wounds and filling every last cell with renewed strength. He didn’t care where it had come from or who it might be draining. That was irrelevant. Only one thing mattered now.

Blood.

The restraints snapped as if made of paper. Nico hauled himself up, and by the time the humans realized he was free, one of them had already flown across the room and into the wall so hard there was the sound of snapping vertebrae. The man did not get up.

The other was staring with huge, petrified eyes, backing toward the door.

“Y-you can’t,” the man stammered. He was groping for the door handle. “He said Elves don’t hurt people—”

“Didn’t you hear?” Nico snarled, his teeth digging into his bottom lip hard enough to bleed, holding out a hand and closing it into a fist, crushing the doctor’s larynx. “I’m not an Elf anymore.”

The other man was still alive, just paralyzed. Nico stood over him for a long moment, impassive, watching him struggle to get away without using his legs, pathetic. It was like looking at an insect pinned to a board.

Slowly, he reached down and took hold of the man’s shirt collar, lifting him up off the floor.

The doctor tried striking out with his hands, but Nico held him farther away, letting him flail uselessly in the air.

Nico looked around the room. There were lines of containers full of his bodily fluids on the counter, his blood all over the floor drying in some places and still fresh in others. He saw a shred of his own skin on the floor. The second doctor’s corpse was in a crumpled heap against the door. There was, he noticed, one thing conspicuously absent.

“What happened to your Prophet?” Nico asked, tilting his head to one side and holding the man’s gaze. “He doesn’t seem to be returning to save you, does he. It’s almost as if he knew this would happen.”

“His…will…be done,” the human choked out.

“Not this time, mortal. This time it’s my will.”

He tried to say more, but Nico held a finger to his lips. The finger only just had a nail growing back.

The man managed to get one more half-syllable out before Nico’s teeth ripped open his throat.

His blood was full of violence, hatred. He was a man who had killed before, just like this, slowly carving apart his victim. When offered the chance to do so to someone who wouldn’t die from it—at least not immediately—he’d been ecstatic. His blood, hot and coppery, was bitter, but it filled Nico’s veins with an almost explosive charge, and when he dropped the body on the floor, the doctor’s face was contorted with fear.

It felt good. No, not just good:
Righteous.
Nico smiled.

Something—perhaps one of the men hitting an alarm—had summoned more guards, and he could hear the clamor of booted feet down the hall. The familiar pace and footfall of the Prophet, however, was not among them.

Yes, the bastard had known this would happen. Perhaps he had even planned on it. He might still be observing, collecting data on his prize. Clapping his hands like a delighted child over the deaths of his minions.

Calmly, Nico gathered both the ruins of his own clothes and what articles he could salvage from the men that weren’t completely blood-soaked, and dressed, listening to the guards’ approach.

His eyes fell on a glass jar that held an amulet with a green stone. He didn’t remember them taking his Signet off, but it must have happened early, as it wasn’t bloody.

He turned away from it, toward the door, which was hit hard with something and shuddered on its hinges.

No reason to stymie their efforts, he supposed, and pushed the corpse away from the door with his foot. He stepped back, leaning against the operating table with crossed arms, and waited.

The door slammed open and five, ten guards swarmed in, with more in the hallway. They had crossbows, for the most part—not the most graceful thing in close quarters but effective enough.

Whatever they’d been expecting, this obviously was not it; they were all staring, a few sweating. Perhaps they were soldiers, brainwashed to do the Prophet’s bidding even if it meant murder, but most of them were young and clearly not accustomed to bloodshed.

They would get used to it. He was coming around pretty quickly himself.

Teeth, magic, or both? Tricky.

“Fire!” one of the soldiers bellowed.

Half a dozen clicks and whistles, and wooden bolts sailed at him.

Nico stood up and held up a hand.

Every one of the bolts burst into flame.

A second later, so did their associated weapons…and then the men themselves.

The screams were deafening. The remainder of the men bottlenecked the door trying to fight their way back into the hallway before the smoke—or worse, their prey—could reach them. They were trying to regroup outside.