Healer's Touch (34 page)

“Run.” The word rasped from his throat and, suddenly free of whatever had been keeping her tethered, Llew was able to follow the command she’d been trying to give herself for days.

Her mind swirled with conflicting thoughts as she turned back to the front door. Her father was there, a captive. Shouldn’t she be rescuing him? Hugging him? Slapping him? Her body now moved despite her brain, but she made it only a few steps before running into a woman coming from another room off the hallway. She shoved the woman aside.

Her hand reached for the door handle but just before she touched it Braph grabbed her and, with an arm looped about her waist, dragged her back down the hall. She kicked out and things crashed from walls. She struggled, but his grip was too strong, and she cried out hopelessly.

Braph pulled her through a doorway into a room filled with gadgetry, in the centre of which were two chairs, plain, wooden, like school room chairs, with leather restraints for wrists and ankles. The room was even colder than the rest of the house, with its floor covered in a thin layer of interlocking grey schist rock.

She screamed. She kicked. Braph half sat on her and strapped her arm to the chair, and all the while she lashed at him with her free arm.

“Like it?” he asked, unaffected by her efforts, his leather coat absorbing all impacts. “Your mother helped me design it.”

Not for one second would she believe that her mother had actually worked
with
this man. No, but she had once sat in this very chair. Nilv tied her father into a smaller chair just inside the door. The old man looked so tired, so . . . ancient. But he wasn’t that old and it had only been five, maybe six, years since she had seen him as a strong, healthy man operating a smith’s forge. Llew couldn’t comprehend what could have happened in that time to have such an effect. He was Aenuk. Surely he could heal from whatever had attacked him?

“What have they done to you?” she asked, as Nilv came to help Braph secure her firmly in her chair.

“I have been near death almost every day since I left you,” he said, sorrow curving his back and deepening each wrinkle. “I’m sorry.”

Sorry? He was sorry for what they’d done to him? Sorry for abandoning her. Sorry to see her there now.

Braph and Nilv moved behind Llew and the room filled with a grating metallic
tick, tick, tick
. The chilling sound was accompanied by a scratchy tapping noise, explained by the appearance of a spider-like creature . . . No, it was a device, a machine like Braph’s bracelet. It moved on eight spindly metal legs that terminated in sharp toes. Tiny gears and pistons turned and pumped as each leg moved, scurrying to Llew’s foot. She tried to shift away, but her ankle was firmly strapped to the chair. The critter ran up her leg and she shook her thigh to dislodge it, but it just continued up her torso to her shoulder then down her arm, where it settled by the crook of her elbow. Her skin crawled. Where a spider’s mouth parts might have been a needle projected and plunged through her skin. Blood shot up the tube and began filling the glass globe that made up the creature’s abdomen. Seeing her own blood sloshing around brought bile to the back of Llew’s throat, and she turned her head away.

Another spider climbed her other leg. She squeezed her thighs together, feeling violated. The spider clattered up her body so swiftly it remained unaffected by all her efforts to dislodge it on its way up and then down her other arm.
Chink
. Plunge. Another climbed to her shoulder and probed a vein in her neck. The first two had stung briefly, but this one really hurt, and moving her head only made it worse.

Her flight response kicked in and her heart pounded faster. Blood shot into the glass baubles. Everywhere she looked, her own blood washed around her. She closed her eyes.

“I’m so sorry, Llewella. I never wanted this.”

Llew opened her eyes to look at her father. He seemed so pitiful. Her heart ached to see him like that, and years of thinking he’d cold-heartedly abandoned her fell away.

“You’re a pathetic old man, aren’t you? Running away from your own daughter,” said Braph, stepping up beside Llew’s chair.

“I ran to protect her. To keep you from finding her.”

“Much good it did her.”

“Six years. She got six more years.” Llew’s father coughed, a hacking, dry cough.

“The smithy. They took it from me, Pa.” She sucked air through her teeth as her skin pulled around the needle in her neck. “Said a girl couldn’t run a smithy on her own.” She tried not to open her jaw too far.

Her father deflated. “I’m so sorry. I never wanted this for you.” He wept.

“It’s faster if you wear a dress.” Braph rested a hand casually on the back of the chair, oblivious to their distress. “There are some good veins in the thighs. Perhaps next time. Your mother did love it when I brought her a new dress.” His hand squeezed her shoulder.

She tugged at the straps across her wrists, to no effect. The leather was simply too strong, and too well secured.

“I’m afraid we’re a little short on captives at the moment,” said Braph. “You’ll have to recover on your own. But I do have a room made up for you. I think you’ll like it.” He smiled.

“I’ll replenish her,” said her father.

“You think I’m going to risk killing you yet? No, I still have need of you. And she’s too powerful. She’d drain you dry in a moment. Another time, perhaps.”

The glass vials were filled and the creatures retracted their needles and scuttled away behind Llew, only to be replaced by more. Llew felt herself becoming light-headed and tired. Her skin grew pale. Just as her heart began to falter, the last critter scurried down her leg and from her sight.

Braph and Nilv unfastened her and helped her from the room, one supporting her under each arm. Foggy vision prevented Llew gaining any real sense of the layout of the house, but she felt them carry her up stairs where they lay her on a soft bed.

Nilv left immediately.

Braph stood beside her, eyes gentle and cold. Llew held his gaze, projecting all of her hate into that fatigued glare. He ran a leather knuckle down one cheek, then left the room, locking the door behind him.

* * *

Cassidy shook the man’s hand again. The shake went on longer than necessary, again.

Jonas figured it must get lonely on a farm in the middle of nowhere, especially for a couple getting on in years with no children. Still, the boys needed to get moving. They were wasting time. As nice as it had been to join the couple for a hearty lunch of stew and boiled potatoes, the couple hadn’t seen Llew and so had been of no other help to Jonas’ posse.

Jonas felt eyes on him and looked to the farmhouse door. The woman peered around the frame, not hiding, just keeping in her place. She didn’t look away when his eyes locked with hers. Jonas lifted his chin. What did the woman think she saw? Even that slight intimidation didn’t make her look away. What did she think she knew?

Come on, Cassidy
.

The rest of them were already mounted and even the horses were impatient; Chino pawed the ground and shuffled the bit in his mouth.

Finally Cassidy gave the man a hearty pat on the shoulder, disengaged his hand from their shared clasp and mounted. With a nod to the rest of them, he nudged his horse on and they moved off, Cassidy affording the couple one more wave.

They’d been nice enough, but Jonas couldn’t help feeling the stop had been a waste of time.

* * *

Llew didn’t see her father again. She was allowed out of her room to eat with Braph and to bathe under the supervision of the brusque woman Braph kept to run the household. The man had little time for anyone except Llew, and even then only at meal times. For the most part he remained in the room of contraptions.

Llew spent most of her time locked in her room, reading: it was all she had to do. The room was sparse but for a well-stocked bookcase, although most of the books were dry tales of historic kings and kingdoms and of little interest to Llew. Aghacia barely had a leadership at all and kings, emperors, or presidents had so far not impinged on Llew’s life. Although, when she got to thinking, she realised she would be spending the rest of her life in places governed by a higher power of some sort, and very likely one that would take great interest in her. Perhaps it was time to learn about how these people worked.

Not that she could retain anything. Her brain felt like mush, as if she hadn’t had a proper meal in days, though Braph fed her well enough. Her mind only cleared for truly coherent thoughts late in the evening, and then they kept her awake late into the night. Locked in that room, in the dark, in a house she didn’t know, in a city she didn’t know, in a country she didn’t know, she formulated and rejected many plans of escape. But when morning returned her mind rolled over under its fluffy blankets and refused to construct much in the way of a fully-formed thought until night returned.

The villa filled with an almost constant cacophony of deep rumbles, high whirring sounds, and pops, and bangs. Once she’d narrowed the source to Braph’s room, it didn’t take long for Llew to tune it out.

What she couldn’t tune out was the wailing that filled the house several times a day. It sounded like cats – no, children. But she’d not seen one and couldn’t imagine Braph keeping any. Perhaps even more chilling than the crying was the occasional laughter that echoed down the halls, disembodied and ghostly.

Over meals, Braph told Llew how he was trying out new ideas for his device, striving to extract every last ounce of magic from Aenuk blood, so that non-Kara could achieve the same power he already had. Of course, he bemoaned, no matter how much more power he isolated, it would never be enough for the Turhmosians: not while he was still more powerful, which he could do nothing about. Someone, one day, would appreciate his efforts.

“I suppose I should feel proud of what I have achieved already. But is it so bad to want recognition? I have created a device that will put the power of the Immortals into the hands of ordinary men and women. How does no one see value in that?”

He spoke across the dinner table as though they were a long-time married couple, comfortable with each other in every way. He gazed at her, his elbow beside his dinner plate, waving his fork with his other hand as he spoke, emphasising his points.

“Maybe they’re scared. My friend told me the Immortals were cruel.” Llew spoke to her own plate, but then lifted her chin in defiance. “Maybe, despite all these years of fighting, even Turhmos wants to live in peace.”

“But they can!” Braph pulled himself straighter in his chair, glowing with a childlike eagerness to share what he’d learnt. “With my device, we can defeat our enemies and feed our people. With my device, we can turn the destructive power of Aenuks to good. The magic I create can be used to heal, or grow food, or, or . . . I haven’t even had the chance to explore its limits yet. And with more like you, Turhmos could be a beacon for good. Other countries will beg for such power. And if we had enough power to go around, there would be no need for wars any more. Hunger, slavery, it could all be a thing of the past.”

But Llew’s ears had latched onto only one part of his speech.

“And just where do you plan to find more like
me?
” In different circumstances she might have found it laughable to hear someone talk of breeding people, of farming people for their blood, and with the very next breath speak of ending slavery. But nothing about Braph brought laughter.

“Well, you see, when a man and a woman love each other, or at least find each other attractive . . . ” he began. Then all humour dropped from his features and his voice lowered. “Or the woman has something a man wants and needs . . . ”

Llew glowered at him.
Touch me and I will kill you
, she sent silently through the look alone.
You may be Kara, but I will kill you.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Braph gave Llew a couple of days to recover before he and Nilv entered her room to take her to the blood-letting chamber again. With the two of them to escort her, they didn’t bother tying her limbs.

“I just realised.” Llew smiled when they reached the bottom of the stairs. “You wear gloves so you can touch me. What protects your face?”

“How fast do you think you can move?”

Without warning Llew swung an arm up and Braph had her wrist in a fierce grip by the time she reached his shoulder. She’d been aiming for his jaw. The briefest hint of surprise flickered across Braph’s face before he smiled as if he thought it a game. Llew glared at him and his smile broadened as he pushed her through the door.

Llew squirmed and tugged against his grip.

“How can you possibly need more? Have you used the one from the other day already?” How had he managed to keep the one from her mother so long? Just what did he need all that power for, anyway? She had yet to see him use any since they’d arrived at the house.

“No. And
ones
.” Braph maintained his grip and Nilv helped direct her to the chair. “I got two out of you, and I’d like two more.”

The men strapped her arms to the chair. On reflex, Llew lifted a wrist against its restraint. The leather strained under little effort. She pulled harder and the band snapped so that she nearly punched herself with her suddenly free fist. Surprised, she looked up at Braph, her mouth half open and her eyes wide. His eyes too grew wide and shifted between her free wrist and the broken strap, finally locking his gaze with hers.