The Builder (The Young Ancients) (51 page)

Gwen made a noise, trying to form words around the gag, the taste of rubber in her mouth as her tongue moved against it. The object tasted and felt like a car tire to her tongue. Not pleasant, but at least they hadn't just shoved a used sock or condom in. She'd had both done to her in the past, along with a lot of other things, some of them worse. Bullies, for some reason, always seemed really drawn to her mouth. Attacking what they feared.

He looked slightly shocked and asked her to repeat herself, which she did, calmly. Mostly calm. She tried for peaceful, if nothing else. Gwen understood that she was going to die, the knife in the hand of the man that walked into view looked sharp, wickedly so. Pointy too.

So hey, the imaginary guy was real. Well, main hood guy should be happy he had friends. Never could have too many of those, or so she'd heard.

Scrambling mentally, she tried to think of a reason someone would kidnap her from bed, probably drugging her somehow first, as a prank or to do something that didn't involve simply killing her. Any reason at all. She came up blank. Rape would be right out. In her entire life, after dozens of assaults, from men, women, and even a few kids, not one of them had even bothered trying to feel her up. Not looking like she did. So, someone had apparently just decided to make her life easier and do it. Kill her.

Well fuck.

After the third, very calm, she thought, all things considered, attempt to speak the man seemed to grow curious and loosened the gags strap, pulling the fairly large ball of black rubber out of her mouth. Her jaw ached as the pressure was relived, and she moved her mouth a little, trying to regain circulation.

“Here, this will make it easier to speak, dear. Do you have some kind of last request or statement you wish to make before the sacrifice?” His tone sounded nice – kindly – almost like a grandfather from a television show or something. That or some old country doctor, but with a slightly British accent that had to be fake. No one talked like that in Nebraska. Even English people didn't. Not that she'd ever heard at least.

He drew his hood back, heavy black material of some kind, showing him to have a face that matched the voice. Older, in his sixties she guessed, face lined, but with smile lines as well as others, not someone that frowned all the time. Hair a mix of white and gray, neatly combed and freshly cut looking. It was a good face, she realized. One that people would trust. It would be a mistake, but people would do it anyway. People almost always judged based on looks.

Swallowing so that her voice wouldn't sound too rough, she looked at him with her eyes, head and body still bound somehow, or frozen from drugs. Her tongue moved, so maybe her voice would work. Only way to tell would be trying.

“I said, fuck you, motherfuckers. I hope you all burn in hell.” Her voice sounded strange to her, softer than normal, less nasal, lower pitched. Then again she didn't know what she really sounded like after having her mouth stretched for hours, or however long it had been, by a black rubber ball gag. It sounded better to her. Another thing she'd missed out on then. Who would have thought gags could have therapeutic value?

The man smiled at this, laughing suddenly.

“Oh ho! Very good! You know, most people try to beg and plead their way out of things at this point. Too bad you're about to die, I think you may have been a very special woman, Katherine.” He flipped his hood up and took the knife back from the person next to him, a man she thought, from the hands. No identifying rings, but the hands didn't look old and wrinkled, for what that meant. Why couldn't the bad guys ever have identifying tattoos on their hands in real life like they did in the movies? It would make things so much easier later.

Even knowing she'd probably die, she kept making herself record everything, the scent of the room, something she didn't recognize but tried to hold in memory, just in case. How many people? Six or seven, her head held in place somehow, so she couldn't just look around, there could be more, out of range. Keep everything, just in case.

As the man spoke something – maybe Latin? She couldn't tell exactly, something like that, it sounded like movie gibberish to her, but it clearly meant something to the freaks watching the whole thing, because some of them chanted along. Gwen felt tempted to start a counter chant of “kegger-kegger” just to throw them off.

This whole thing reminded her a little of some kind of frat house movie for some reason. Some weird hazing. Gwen laughed, sounding slightly panicked, at the thought. Really, no one wanted her in any club enough to go to this length. No one wanted her enough to make a phone call or send a letter, it wasn't her being down on herself, just what was.

The one with the knife would have to be the oldest college student ever. Maybe it was the Freemasons or something instead? She'd never heard of them doing any human sacrifices, but then they were a secret organization, who knew what they were into behind closed doors? When the old man raised the blade high, just as his voice reached a fever pitch and it felt like he'd plunge the blade into her chest, she spoke what she figured would be her final words.

“My name's Gwen Farris, bitch. Remember it.” She spoke just loud enough to be heard over his thunderous voice above her. He paused for a second, as if he wanted to ask her a question, a quizzical look on his face. With what looked like a tiny shrug, his hands holding the knife above his head, he quickly brought them both down, hard, thrusting the blade into her chest.

The pain!

She couldn't breathe, the sharp burning in her chest so intense she almost passed out. Tasting copper and iron, blood she thought, the world going black around her. As her dying act she tried to gasp out one last thing.

“Fuck you...”

Not original, but she hadn't planned out anything ahead of time. Really, they should have warned her if they were expecting a speech, right? It would have to do, because she'd run out of time. Gwen tried to repeat it, but no sound came out. Hopefully the man could read lips.

She heard something as she lay in the dark, a crashing sound followed by yelling, maybe the police had come? That would be good, the creeps would be caught in the act, so even for killing her, there'd be punishment. Very good. About time something worked in her favor.

Everything went blank. Not black, because it would have taken some kind of thought to allow that, no, it was just nothing. As things dimmed, she wondered if there would be anything else after. The thought never finished itself.

When she opened her eyes she felt a sense of shock. After all, when you look down and see a god-damned knife sticking out of your chest, you have a right to assume that you were pretty much finished. Right? It sounded reasonable in her own skull at least.

She turned her head slowly, the burning sensation in her chest letting her know that she'd indeed been stabbed. That, or it was the most vivid dream ever, but those didn't include pain, did they? No. Gwen seemed to have survived somehow.

Go figure.

So much for the “maybe it was a dream” theory.

The room around her seemed... odd. The light fixtures looked more like oil lamps than normal and hospitals almost always used fluorescents these days anyway, not... whatever these were. She'd been in enough of them over the years to know. These had what looked like a white ball of flame hanging in the center of the glass lamp shades and gave off a small hiss. They were bright, whatever these kinds of lights were called. The light felt a bit cold, a pure white, so at least they gave the room a hospital kind of feeling. Stark and joyless.

Check.

The sheets were course woven for a hospital bed, almost like thin canvas, not overly comfortable, but warm enough, not that the room was cold. The bed itself was a wonder. At her feet, a shiny piece of wood, oak she thought, made up the foot board. It looked like real wood as far as Gwen could tell anyway.

The railings were a soft yellow-orange, so brass, she guessed. She didn't know a lot about really nice furniture, but everything here had the feeling of being handcrafted, rather than being bought at Wal-Mart, which was where her own house had been furnished from.

There was a company in her area that delivered, so she could shop online.

She wanted to sit up, maybe get a drink of water, but couldn't take the pain, so just laid there instead, looking. It beat doing nothing, which was the other option.

Next to her there was what looked like a metal globe, a steel gray color, about six inches across and sitting on a rounded cylindrical wooden stand, that gave off a low rumble of sound, kind of like the purr of a cat, only deeper. It felt like the noise penetrated her very bones, as if the bed vibrated, but it didn't, that feeling came from inside her somehow. The thought made her itch, just a little. It had to be an imaginary thing, so Gwen worked to ignore it. If you were going to bother imagining things, it paid to make them good. Otherwise you just sank into depression.

After about half an hour, a tall, severe looking woman came in wearing a white nurse's uniform that would have looked perfectly correct, in the early nineteen-twenties, but now seemed like someone playing dress-up for Halloween. The nurse carried a clipboard that held several sheets of paper that looked thick and had a dull gray color. She smiled when she saw that Gwen's eyes were open.

“Well, hello!” Her voice sounded chipper, even though her smile didn't touch her eyes at all. Still, a better attempt at being polite than most people managed with her, so the woman should get extra credit for that. She marked this on the mental tally she kept of everyone she met.

Gwen tried to smile, which felt strange to her. The action itself felt... easy and not frozen on the right side of her face like normal at all. It didn't hurt, but then, maybe the drugs they had her on were just that strong? If she could move her face like that, something big had happened. If fifty surgeries couldn't fix her face, it must be nearly gone to allow this kind of movement.

Fuck.

Still her estimation of the lady in front of her went up. Her face had sent little kids running in fear and whatever happened can't have made looking at her easier.

“May I have some water please?” She made a point of being polite to the woman, after all, she'd done the same for her so far.

Gwen wondered if water would be allowed. Sometimes it wasn't depending on the level of damage. That she could talk heartened her. She remembered the time her jaw had to be wired shut for six months, which turned into eight after a gang of boys had beaten her with sticks while she tried to heal from the corrective surgery. That surgery had been almost enough to let her mouth close under her own power, if she really tried.

The woman didn't answer in words, simply hurried to a glass pitcher on a table nearby and filled a small tumbler with water, then she turned back to Gwen.

“We'll have to sit you up to drink it. I'm afraid it might hurt a bit... The radiant coil hasn't had a lot of time to work yet, you'll need to rest here for several more days before you can go home. Let me know when you're ready and I can adjust the bed for you.” The woman put her slightly wrinkled hand on a small handle, one made of more shiny yellow orange metal which, when Gwen said she felt ready, she began to turn slowly, causing the head of the bed to rise a tiny bit at a time, almost invisibly slow.

It hurt, but not as badly as being stabbed had, so Gwen decided no new damage was being done. Something she'd learned a long time ago, fresh damage always felt worse than the original wound. Anything less and it was just an annoyance.

Once mainly upright, tilting back only slightly, the nurse carefully gave her a small sip of water. Severe looking or not, the woman seemed good at her job, letting her drink the entire glass a tiny bit at a time without even a hint of impatience. Gwen decided to give her a second hash mark on her mental tally, tentatively at least. Only one person had ever managed to get to four before, but this lady seemed well on her way to taking the record if she kept this up.

After the woman took the glass away Gwen thanked her. It was the only reward she could give the woman for her good work, after all.

“It's no bother, dear. Now, I need to get the doctor, and I believe some people from the Constabulary wish to speak with you, as soon as you feel up to it. Let's have the doctor in first though, to make certain you're ready for such things, shall we?” Not waiting for an answer, the woman left the room, her hard shoes making clip-clop noises on the floor.