Intimidator (21 page)

“No! No! You can’t.” Though fear scrabbled at her, she thrust out her hands, fingers spread, imploring. “Take me. Take one of mine.”
Oh god.
Her imagination was vivid and she heard the crunch, saw the jaws closing and severing her finger.

“Gag her.” He waved the men forward.

“No!” She tried to back away as they seized her. “Please! Mine! Take my finger! Please, don’t touch Ally. Please.” She choked out a sob.

Two them held her while a third stuffed cloth in her mouth then placed a strip of tape across her lips.

He’d waited, pitiless. “She is right. Take a toe. Witches are known to use their hands. We don’t want to hinder her.”

She screamed through the gag when the bolt cutters were applied to Ally’s little toe, at the snick and Ally wrenching herself upright, flailing and screeching. Tears ran down Willow’s face. Snot came from her nose and she coughed as she struggled to breathe. At the blood dribbling from Ally’s foot, she collapsed to her knees. White flooded a cold silence through her mind. The room blurred, spun.

When they ungagged her and neither she nor Ally said anything Kasper seemed to find worthwhile, despite her babbling any rubbish she could think of, he lost interest and ordered them both returned to their rooms.

For hours she sat, hugging her knees, listening to Ally whimpering. When she called out to comfort her, a man came in and slapped her until she stopped.

She licked the blood from her mouth.

These men, all of them deserved to die.

As night fell and shadows thickened, she noticed the red spiral on her arm, touched it with her fingertip. Still the same. Swallowing got difficult. Her mark hadn’t changed since the day he died.

Hope kindled. Her thoughts grew, and circled the possibility that had just arrived – a bright pinpoint hope smack in the middle of the blackness. Did that mean anything? Stom’s mark on his arm had become a denser, darker red after they had mated. The marks seemed to reflect the state of their relationship.

She buried her face in her hands, massaging her scalp with her clawed-in fingers. Maybe when he died hers would take a while to fade? But she wasn’t sick. Maybe when your mate died you lost that link to them. She didn’t
know
!

Was it worth hoping? Could he be alive? Or did it mean nothing?

Without hope, she was nothing. She hadn’t offered her fingers up for Kasper to chop off for nothing. You couldn’t run with toes missing. She’d hoped she could stop him mutilating Ally. She’d wanted to spare her pain but also she’d hoped the girl could get away somehow, sometime, and run.

That was hope: the last thread of flesh caught on the nail of life that stopped you falling into the abyss.

She wiped her nose. Yeah, she was going to hope Stom was alive.

In the meantime no one was rescuing them. What could she do? She had no weapon, no hacksaw. All she had was herself. She was the woman who walked through fire. What good would that do her without matches or anything? Besides, if she set fire to this place, Ally would likely burn before she got to her.

A last reflected ray of sunlight flashed on a shoe buckle in the cupboard.

Fire.
What if she could make it as well as survive it?

It might be bullshit but it was also another piece of hope. So she lay on the bed most of that night striving to set alight a piece of paper she found on the floor beside of the bed. Sometimes she even imagined it felt hot.

By morning, by dawn’s light, she could see the scrap of paper again. Her eyes were dry and gritty. She rotated the scrap with her finger and thumb. White. It was whiter than white.

Fuckitty fuck. Did I really expect that to work?

That particular hope was looking tatty.

Maybe she should, instead, be trying to undo the handcuffs or get the chain loose?

Brask stared into the regen tank that the black thing floated in. Stom. Flecks of burned flesh peeled away while he watched and were sucked up by the filters. Underneath, some of him was pink.

He made sure his words would come out steady.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” The medic nodded. “His brain is intact because we prioritized saving that but we don’t have more than thirty-five percent of him alive. Even with major prosthetics, major off-world hospital care, organ regen, we’d end up with a brain on a stick, basically, and we’re struggling. We don’t have the equipment here to get him stable.”

Brask swallowed, blinked rapidly. “He’s still dying?”

“Yes. I’m sorry, sir. Two hours at most.”

“Kak.” This was not fair.

The door behind him whisked open. His last hope walked in. Jadd and Brittany.

He held up a finger to indicate they should wait.

The medic stepped back “I’ll leave you to make your last tribute to the man. I’m sorry we can’t save him. I truly am.”

“Thank you.” The medic had the wrong assumption there, but he said nothing and watched him leave before he turned to Jadd and Brittany.

They were such a pretty couple, young, full of life. For a moment she rested her head on Jadd’s arm. Locks of her auburn hair trickled across the sleeve of his shirt and he leaned her way as if to reassure her. What would it be like to have that sort of bond with a woman?

Brask smiled sadly. These females of Earth seemed to suit his men. There was a uniqueness about them.

“Thank you for coming. I have a strange request for you both. Though perhaps you already know.”

“I think perhaps we do, sir.” Jadd took his mate’s hand, cleared his throat. “What do you need of us?”

“Stom is dying. Nothing we have here can save him.” He sucked in a breath and prayed this wouldn’t sound too crazy to them. “Can Brittany heal? I’ve seen evidence that suggests that.”

“Uhh.” Jadd looked at her then when she whispered
yes
he met Brask’s eyes. “Yes, she can. But this. This is far beyond anything –”

“Wait. No, it’s not.” Her grip on Jadd’s hand looked tight enough to strangle all the blood from it but the man merely nodded, encouraging her. “I’ve healed a man who almost died once before. An enemy. A Bak-lal. The one who I killed at my apartment. Jadd and I figured it out afterward but we’ve been afraid to say.”

“Okay.” That she was brave enough to tell him raised her up in his estimation. “I’m glad you’re both being honest. Dassenze already suspects this so don’t think we’re about to persecute you.” He looked at them from under his brow. “The evidence suggests there was a widespread burst of life that day, around your apartment. We have nothing to lose. I want you to do whatever it is you do, and try to save him.”

“I can try, yes.”

The downcast and miserable look didn’t tie in with what he expected.

“What?”

“Just…” She spread her palms. “I don’t know how I do it, sir.”

“You don’t?”

The crisped thing in the tank rotated a little, like a spit roast had been thrown in by accident. Tubes ran everywhere, some of them into where his face should be.

“Brittany, I don’t care. Try. Do your best. Anything at all is better than letting him die without trying.”

“There’s something we haven’t tried. What happened on the day I truly bonded with Jadd. When I kneeled for him and said my vows.”

Words? He considered this. Maybe words had powers here, or perhaps it was something else. All he cared about was the result. “Do what you wish to. I’ll watch over you both.”

“Good.” Jadd eyed the tank, saying nothing. The horror of what he saw seemed reflected in the small lines shifting about the man’s eyes. “He’s far gone. I love the man, but I don’t know what trying this could do to her.” Then he looked back at Brask. “If anything goes wrong, keep her safe, please.”

She nestled into his side and whispered something Brask couldn’t understand.

Meaning save her over him, if it came to that? He nodded. “I will.”

Kasper had not done the same thing again. He was like a creature with a bucket list to check off and once done, he moved on.

Chop off toe.
Check.

Interrogate sternly.
Check.

Deprive of food and water.
Check.

At least they mostly left her alone in the room, as long as she didn’t make too much noise. Willow sat on the edge of the bed and smoothed her palm over the sheet. Another day gone. They never changed the sheets and it was beginning to look grimy. No clothes still, but she was used to that. The men ignored her as if they were sexless.

She’d seen Ally yesterday while Kasper had talked. He seemed to like having both of them in the room at the same time when he was there. Though she was listless, her foot looked clean. It was bandaged even. Somehow they’d found a doctor, or maybe one of them was one? She had no clue.

Whatever they were waiting for, it was still coming. Nerve chewers. God. That scared her. Just the frickin’ term did. The one or two men who’d seemed…human, had changed too. After they’d changed, she’d seen them with puncture marks on their hands and ankles like some gruesome stigmata. It had made her wonder if this was, after all, merely a cult.

Then something odd would happen. Kasper would just give her one of his lizard looks, and she’d go no, no way, these guys are not human anymore. A word Stom had once mentioned had popped into her head. Bak-lal. His people’s enemies.

She’d used the word once to Kasper’s face and he’d ordered her beaten. It wasn’t conclusive. Hell, it meant zero really. That man was so fucking weird.

She followed the line of her chain leash to the new bolt on the wall.
Bastards.
They’d found out where she’d nearly pulled it off the headboard. Since Stom’s collar was reinforced with metal and locked onto the leash, she’d tried the other end.

Fuck.

She flopped back and found the bit of paper under her pillow.

Whatever they were waiting for she had a feeling it was soon.

But last night something had happened.

On the lower edge of the piece of paper was a brown smudge. A char mark? She prayed it was that.

When all the lights went out, she took it out, put the pale thing before her eyes, and by moonlight she tried again. Staring. Concentrating. Thinking of Stom. Imagining what she could do if she could control fire, beautiful, beautiful fire.

Burn you little motherfucker.

Last night her arm mark had also burned. She’d woken and clutched at it. Real, or dream? Did it mean life or death? Or something else she couldn’t conceive of?

Burn.

Like a sign of possibilities, an indefinite nibble played with her mind, calling her. When she tried to pin it down, the sensation vanished.

She concentrated again.

Burn.

He awoke, floating. The world a muted pink, distorted. Specks drifted before his eyes. His mouth was wedged open. His skin felt wrong. All of him felt wrong. When he tried to move his arms and legs, to swim through this water, nothing had stirred despite the distinct sensation of his limbs moving.

His thoughts wandered for ages.

Until someone appeared miles away through the water. Their faces were bloated, wavering. Then he knew them, her, him. Jadd and Brittany. And he watched as she lowered herself and looked up at her man with her hands in his.

His heart awoke.

A glow expanded, jarred him, like an avalanche of crackling glass, and swept him away in the torrent.

Willow.

Flames. The bang and the whirlwind of fire. He’d tied her to the bed and, what, left her there. Why was he
here
!

Where was Willow?

He struggled then, making a monumental effort to erupt from what he now knew was a regen tank.

Then the true burning began. His skin was ripped into fragments of pure, piercing fire. He arched his body and he screamed. Slivers of torment began to cover his skin. He could see them, feel them assemble, piece by piece, in layer after layer, sucking on his agony, sticking to him, merging, lacing him with more fire.

Whatever had gone before, those memories of the explosion had been mostly lost, though he knew he’d come so close to dying that death had a skeletal hand on his throat and his balls. This slow knitting together, this exquisite torment of his body with needles, threads, and patches of fire – unforgettable agony.

He was a conflagration concerto in A major and someone was going to pay when he got out of here.

The nerve chewers had arrived. She knew this because Kasper had ordered her brought into his torture room, as she’d decided to call it, to announce the arrival. She curled her hand around her charred piece of paper and went obediently with her handler, the leash dangling between them as he led the way. Down the hall, through the doorway.

Even if he had been taken over by some alien intelligence, she’d decided that some small part of him, perhaps the most creative part, was still Kasper. Unfortunately, it was the evil part.

He wasn’t dispassionate after all, which was why he was telling her about his fresh pretty nerve chewers with Ally also in the room. The girl sat slumped in a chair.

Whatever their doctor had given her, it left her spaced out ninety percent of the time.

Ally’s hair was so matted she ached to go to her and untangle it carefully. Then she would brush that long white-blonde hair that reached to her waist, and tie it in a bow, though Ally hated bows.

Kasper had said something else. She turned her head to listen.

“You will be second.”

Which meant…

What he was about to say, she predicted even to the flash of menace in his dead eyes, and this was when she became totally certain some deeper portion of this creature remained the original evil man.

“And you will watch while we give it to her.” He smiled. “While they begin their journey up her nerves to her brain, you will watch.”

They pulled her to the wall and attached the leash to a bolt. They tied her hands then they began on Ally. When the girl was securely held down on her back by four men on the Persian rug, Kasper strolled to a table. He picked up a piece of equipment. It was only when he kneeled beside Ally to use it that she recognized it. A drill.