Tempest’s Legacy (32 page)

Then the hands raised to my neck, the sharp claws grazing my jugular, as the hood was pulled from my head and discarded.

I stood there, blinking and willing my eyes to adjust. Finally, the black shape in front of me focused, revealing the identity of my captor.

The Healer
, I realized, for the being in front of me could only be that infamous goblin-halfling.

We were standing in the bright sunshine on a low stoop in front of a grand old house. There was absolutely nothing else around that I could see, although my freedom to look around was hampered by both my stiff neck and the fact I was being held so close to my captor.

As for the Healer, human eyes stared at me from a neat, bland human face. Except the human flesh ended right along his jaw, up in front of his ears, and at his hairline. From there on he was all goblin: green scales, pointy ears, and so on. Except that his scales started tapering off again right along his forearms, which became pale, slightly freckled human flesh. On the tip of each otherwise human finger gleamed thick, black, wickedly sharp claws.

“Jane True. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance,” the Healer murmured in an incongruously lovely Scottish accent.

I nodded my head, trying to appear unfazed.

“So many people wanting to get their hands on such a wee lass. Makes me wonder what all the fuss is about. Still, we must take precautions… Avery?”

With that, another goblin stepped close, only this one
was a pureblood. And unlike the Healer, who was wearing a button-up dress shirt and slacks under a lab coat, Avery was wearing medical scrubs.

“Dr. Avery here is going to give you a little shot. I’m afraid it does sting a bit.”

The Healer’s hands pulled down on my forearms, holding them against my sides even as he held me still. I realized, then, what was about to happen…

They’re going to give me that shot that takes away magic.

For a second I nearly panicked. The thought of being powerless, stripped of my only weapon, horrified me.

Easy, girl
, I reminded myself.
You’ve had magic for about eight minutes of your life. And it’s
not
your only weapon. You survived a hell of a lot before you learned about your powers; don’t underestimate yourself.

So again I stilled my body, calling on every calming technique I’d learned during my stay in the mental hospital. I stared into the Healer’s average brown eyes as the goblin, Avery, raised a needle to my neck. After a moment, I felt a sharp pain right near my collarbone.

When Avery pressed down on the plunger, it felt like he was shooting fire into me. The pain was so sharp that I did cry out then, jerking away even as the goblin withdrew the syringe, causing my skin to tear around the exit wound. Blood ran down my neck and into my shirt as the Healer
tsked
. Pulling a pristine white handkerchief out of his pocket, he pressed it against my neck.

“Such delicate skin… We don’t want to mar it, Miss True. Not yet, anyway.”

The Healer smirked, and his otherwise normal brown eyes met mine. What I saw buried in them was so evil that,
finally, I lost control and struggled. He laughed, clamping his arms about me along with his magic. Reflexively, I tried to raise my own shields and do what I’d thought about doing to Anyan in the park: use my defenses as a wall to force the goblin-halfling away. But nothing happened; it was like reaching into an abyss.

My magic is gone
, I realized. With that final defeat I stopped struggling.

“Aye, that’s it. Good lass,” the Healer said, running the back side of his claws down my cheek. “You’re ours now, hen. No point in fighting it. Now, come inside, where it’s warm.”

Is he going to offer me a cup of tea?
I wondered, marveling at how such a monster could be so very… British.

When we walked inside the beautiful, sprawling mansion, it was like walking through a door to another dimension. One minute everything was all manicured lawns, lovely ornamental trim, and clean white wood. The next minute we were in some medical lab from Auschwitz.

The windows had been covered in heavy black material, and what had no doubt once been chandeliers had been replaced with caged fluorescent track lighting so that everything was cast in an overly bright, eerie glow. The room to our left, which might once have been a formal dining room, now contained a blood-spattered gurney to which was strapped the remains of… something. Whatever had been lying there was now just a flagellated bundle of limbs. That sight was bad enough, but when the limbs moved and I realized that whatever was lying there was still alive, my gorge rose and I nearly vomited.

To the right of the once grand entryway was another large room, now serving as some sort of break room.
Various supes in medical gear sat or stood about, chatting as if they were in a hospital cafeteria rather than a factory of death.

I was hustled through another series of stately rooms, all stocked with instruments of torture posing as medical devices. Here and there I saw victims in various states of disrepair. In one room, tied to a chair, sat a naked woman whose gaping eye sockets stared blindly at me, crying wordlessly from a mouth that no longer held a tongue. Two young boys—both apparently human, although it was hard to tell—whose hands had been amputated and their limbs sewn together at the wrist, stared at me with exhausted eyes from the doorway of one of the rooms we walked through. As we passed I could smell the rot in their wounds so strongly I again nearly vomited. In what had been a huge kitchen, a stack of heads sat next to a stockpot bubbling on an expensive stove, and the opened refrigerator held arms packed into it like cordwood—their fingers sticking out like obscene sticks. The freezer contained a similar stack of amputated legs.

Through the kitchen was a door, next to which sat a table. On the table lay a woman’s body, spread-eagled and naked from the waist down. Her throat had been cut.

The kitchen is what did, finally, make me puke. Pulling away from where the Healer held me on my right, I leaned over to my left and heaved my guts out. At the same time, the Healer pulled up on my arms so that pain whizzed through me, causing tears to form in my eyes as I retched.

“It’s hardly good form to vomit on the floor of your host,” the goblin-halfling said with a sigh, as if I had disappointed him deeply.

He held me there, my arms singing with pain, until I was done throwing up, then turned me around to face him. Pulling out another clean handkerchief from his other pocket, he wiped my mouth fussily.

“Really thought you’d be fiercer than that, hen,” he said. “After all the trouble you’ve caused, I find out you’re just another weak female…” He frowned at me, as if assessing me. “But you are a pretty little thing. When we get the go-ahead to begin your treatment, my boys will enjoy you. And it is part of my job to keep my boys’ morale boosted.”

Nodding to himself, he opened the door in front of me then pulled me down the stairs. If I thought I’d been horrified walking through the house, I should have known it could only get worse the farther one descended. Hell is under the earth for a reason, after all.

The first thing that hit me, going down those stairs, was the stench. Vomit, piss, shit, blood, sweat, and fear all battled with one another for supremacy within my nostrils. Layoutwise, it was a typical old-house basement, times about a thousand: with the same low ceilings as my basement in Maine, but this one sprawled out like a rabbit warren in every possible direction. Meanwhile, all I could see around me were cells. Many were empty, but they were so numerous that room was left for dozens of prisoners. Mostly the cells contained females, although I saw a few males here and there. Dirty faces with anguished eyes stared up at me as we passed individual cells, and I realized just how big the operation was here. And how crazy.

They’re suffering a population crisis, yet they’re destroying their own kind like children stepping on anthills. It’s nuts… Which is the point, I guess. Jarl and his
cronies
are
nuts. And if they’ve convinced themselves that they can end the fertility crisis, they must also be able to convince themselves that a few sacrifices now are worth being able to breed freely later.

Plus, I realized, the victims were people like my mother, and Iris, who had given birth to halflings.

The enemy, according to Jarl.

I was led farther and farther back, until we came to another set of low doors. Before pushing through them, we acquired another guard, who followed us with curiosity etched all over his face. He had the same weird bendiness of the dryad maid Elspeth who’d served me at the Compound, and I assumed he was of her faction. When all four of us entered the white-tiled space behind the new doors, we were standing in a much smaller room full of cells. These cells were also much cleaner, with real cots instead of shabby blankets on the floor, and proper toilets and sinks.

Taking me to the first of the cells, the Healer opened the door with a large set of keys and pushed me through. I backed to the far corner as the guard who’d followed tried to enter the cell, as well, his hands at the crotch of his pants. But the goblin-halfling stopped him.

“No, son. Not her; at least not yet. We’ve got plans for that one.”

The guard backed up, casting one last feverish glance over my body before turning to leave the little room. The Healer shook his head as Avery stepped forward.

“Avery, you’re in charge of her for the now. Don’t touch; as I said, she’s not yet for use. Most likely this little one will be bait. She has some powerful friends who have been a burr in our sides these many months. Apparently
she’s very valuable to the other side, for some reason, and the chief thinks they’ll do just about anything to get her back. After they’re dead, she can take her place in our experiments.” The healer smiled at me, then Avery. “Let her rest, but don’t forget to give her a follow-up shot this evening. Oh, and remember to organize our other little surprise.”

With that, the Healer clapped Avery on the shoulder, very much like a father sending his favorite son off to play in the homecoming game, before he turned to leave.

“Oh, where are my manners,” he said, pausing mid-stride. “Ta, Miss True. Enjoy your stay here at our humble abode. We’ll take very good care of you, I can assure you.” And with that he smiled at me so pleasantly that I was nearly sick again. This time, when he turned to walk away, he didn’t stop.

Avery stood at my cell door, studying me. His yolk-yellow goblin eyes were impossible to read, and his face was impassive. Not knowing what he was thinking, but assuming it was something foul, I put all my hatred and my pride in the look I sent back at him.

He just kept staring until he, too, walked out of the white-tiled room. Leaving me to sit, shaky-legged, on my cot, wondering what the hell we’d been thinking when Julian and I cooked up our little scheme.

The next hours were hell. I don’t know how long I lay there, staring at the ceiling, but it was a long time. When there was finally a clattering at the main door, I leaped off my cot, ready to face whoever came at me.

It was Avery, his tall, slender goblin frame holding a syringe in one hand and a small plate with a sandwich and an apple in the other. Placing the plate on a small table
near the door to the room, he used his now empty hand to retrieve a single-serving bottle of water from his pocket which he also set down on the table. He came toward my cell, syringe in hand, when the door clattered open to reveal the overly eager guard from that afternoon.

“Need help?” the dryad asked Avery, and I saw the goblin frown before he blanked his expression and turned toward his cohort.

“Now, Derek, why would I need help with a little halfling-female?”

The guard blinked.

“Why don’t you go play with someone else. Or better yet, clean out some of the other cages. It’s fucking disgusting out there.”

Derek grunted, looking at the ground.

“Well?” Avery intoned, sounding increasingly miffed.

“Well,
he
says I’m supposed to watch. Make sure she gets her second dose.”

The goblin before me blinked at the dryad, his face speaking volumes in its coldness.

“Fine. Just… stay out of my way.”

“Yes, sir,” Derek said, shuffling his feet awkwardly.

Avery unlocked the door to my cell, then stepped through, carefully pocketing his syringe as he did so. I knew I had no chance in hell of escaping that place; not with all the guards milling about. But the thought of him giving me that second shot, which was obviously important, terrified me so much that I reacted reflexively. Striking out at Avery, I tried to make a break for it, only to be caught in the viselike grip of the goblin doctor.

“Stay there, Derek,” Avery barked as he used his goblin’s terrific strength to manhandle me to my cot and sit
me down. Then he positioned himself so that his back was to the door, turning me so that I had one butt cheek teetering on the cot with my own back to the walled-corner of my cell.

What he did next was entirely unexpected. Leaning down, he placed his scaley green lips against my ear.

“Yell for me,” he whispered. “As you know, it’s supposed to hurt.”

And then he raised the needle to my neck, only to go right past it to squirt the contents of the syringe under my shirt and down my spine. Partly because he’d commanded, and partly because the fluid was cold, I groaned, then added another whimper for safety’s sake.