Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Once he was aware that there was a safe, soft place in his psyche, Nelson spent most of his time there.
He mastered the art of shutting down and sinking into the warm peace of Nox’s embrace and the taste of his laughter.
And each time he emerged, Nelson was sated and rested and the worst of his wounds were healed.
Dùbhghlas and his henchmen hadn’t noticed yet but there was a sense of desperation in their questions and the interrogations were happening more frequently.
Nelson was particularly interested when Dùbhghlas’s henchwoman—Nelson was pretty sure the creature was a woman and the valkyrie Smoak had warned them about—questioned him about their friends.
“Tell us what you know about the oracle and the halfling, Everly Wells.”
The stench of the creature’s breath penetrated the hood, making Nelson gag as his nose ran. He was on his back, the chair had been knocked over because Nelson wasn’t cooperating. Every time he was asked a question, Nelson answered with a loud snore or played stupid.
“Everly Wells? Never heard of him. What’s a halfling?
” He received a hard kick to his ribs but Nelson stifled a grunt, breathing through the sharp pain and shaking his head.
“Still not ringing any bells. Sorry.” Nelson was used to the taste of his own blood, snot, and tears.
It was the smell of decay and sulfur that had his throat clenching every time the seething, hissing voice grew closer.
“Let’s see if I can help you remember,” it said as cold claws gripped Nelson’s throat tight under the hood.
“No! Let go!” Nelson twisted his shoulders and arched off the back of the chair but it was no use.
“No!” he screamed as every nerve in his body burned and his vision went bright white.
Currents of searing, electric heat raced through him, making Nelson’s teeth rattle, and he was drooling as the skin on his neck smoked and blistered where the creature touched him.
“How did they make the oracle?” it demanded, releasing Nelson’s throat and lowering, resting its weight on his chest.
“I don’t know anything about an oracle, I’m afraid.”
That was answered by a sudden, brutal blow to the left side of Nelson’s head that made his ears ring and threatened to pull him under. Nelson wished it would. They couldn’t get anything out of him if he was unconscious and it might buy him more time.
“Was it Oglethorpe or MacIlwraith who created the halfling?”
Nelson knew that picking a name or saying both would confirm that Everly had been “created” and that some form of necromancy had occurred.
“Who created a what now? What’s a halfling?
” he said, then choked on a gasp as the pressure on his chest increased, making it impossible for Nelson to inhale or exhale.
He started to see sparks and flashes of color and his skin prickled.
“Keep going. I’m almost there,” he managed and the overwhelming weight lifted immediately and Nelson was able to pull in a deep breath.
“Perhaps you’ll be more cooperative if you can hear your lover’s screams,” the creature mused.
For a moment, Nelson panicked. What if they already had Nox and he was being hurt? Nelson scrambled to calculate the likelihood and how he’d negotiate before his common sense kicked in and he chuckled wryly.
“You wouldn’t be wasting your time with me if you had bigger fish on the line. Nice try, though.”
“He’s stubborn too.”
That got a sincere laugh out of Nelson. The pain in his ribs and abdomen would have blinded Nelson if he could see anything but complete darkness, yet he didn’t care. He was enjoying himself at the moment and could not wait for them to get what they were asking for and finally meet Nox.
“Thank you for that,” he said once he got himself under control. He was stunned by another blow to the head. Nelson waited through the ringing and dizziness. “Sorry. Where were we? Want to ask me about unicorns and flying monkeys?”
“Enough,” a voice whispered from Nelson’s right. It was faint but gravelly and deeper than the creature’s petulant hisses.
“Is that you, Dùbhghlas?” Nelson called and listened.
There was no answer as Nelson’s chair was quickly lifted and set upright and his interrogator stomped away.
It sounded like it required several paces before Nelson heard a door open and close.
He let out the slowest, softest sigh of relief, in case he was still being observed.
The room was a lot larger than a closet or a small cell.
Nelson also noted that he wasn’t healing rapidly outside of his Noxspace.
After Niall’s broken leg had healed in a matter of moments, Nelson did a secret experiment on himself to see if his proximity to Nox was having a similar effect.
It was hard to know if he’d slowed or stopped aging after only a few years with Nox but Nelson could test it out by injuring himself.
He used the blade on his Leatherman to slice the side of his calf in the shower and watched in horror as the wound slowly closed and faded.
He was healing at a normal rate at the moment. For Nelson, that was a huge relief. It meant that Nox wasn’t nearby and that Nelson was still just a man. If he survived Dùbhghlas’s latest scheme, Nelson could have as much time with Nox as he wanted without losing his humanity.
If.
Faced with another long stretch of black silence, Nelson searched his memories and his childhood.
Those years had seemed inconsequential and uneventful, the same cycles of seasons and customs that stacked into an unremarkable life before Nox recruited Nelson for their trip to New Castle.
Now, Nelson was finding Easter eggs from his childhood that he’d buried in his psyche.
“It’s good that you’re more like your grandfather.”
His mother gave Nelson’s hair a quick pet to smooth it and picked a bit of lint off of his coat.
They were headed into church for Mass and she looked pleased as each of her gloves received a tug.
He wished she would hold his hand or put her arm around him but she never did.
Nelson had been trained to follow closely at her side and speak only when spoken to.
“Yes, ma’am.”
What else could Nelson say? He did his best to be just like his father, who was just like his grandfather. At ten-years-old, Nelson could already see his father and grandfather staring back at him in the mirror. To him, they looked like three stages of the same man.
“Too much ambition makes a man worthless. It makes him boring.”
She smiled serenely as they sat in their usual pew, tilting her head back proudly. Her mouth barely moved as she quietly admonished and gossiped about their neighbors and the congregation around them.
“Your father’s too busy to worry about his soul, but your grandfather has always been humble and he isn’t afraid to pick up the Bible or a book now and then.”
Nelson’s father could read but the only things he made time for were files, reports, and court briefings.
He was either at work, or working in his study.
It was Nelson’s mother who had influenced his love of reading and curiosity.
She rarely discussed her own interests or seemed all that curious but she had sparked an intense desire to read and learn when she told Nelson he could teach himself anything if he simply found the right books.
She died when Nelson was sixteen and his grandfather died when he was twenty, leaving him with just his father.
He had no other family on his mother’s side and Nelson had never been good at making friends.
Like the other Nelsons, he was too serious and too devoted to his work and his only appetite was to learn more.
Not because Nelson wanted to be superior to others, but because he had so many questions and he felt poorer when he didn’t have an answer.
“I never had to tell you to stand up straight and mind your posture. You were born with integrity while men like your father spend their lives grasping at it. That’s why he’s so hard on you, dear.”
His mother didn’t cuddle with him or coddle him with cozy affirmations but now and then, she would inform Nelson that she was proud of how he had turned out and that he had her approval.
As much as she was capable of providing, between appointments and social obligations.
He wouldn’t understand until much later that he was asexual and queer but Nelson suspected that his mother would have accepted him in her own dry and disinterested way.
“Some men are born knights and heroes, others are simply borne.”
Once again, Nelson was left wondering if his mother had seen something in him or sensed something bigger in his fate. And once again, he was left wondering if she had been wrong and if he had let her down as well.
“You’re strong but you didn’t get that from your father, Nelson. Don’t let him fool you into believing he had anything to do with that.”
Where would it have come from, then? Where was it now, because Nelson wasn’t feeling particularly strong. Even with his new Noxspace, Nelson was still scared—for himself, but mostly for Nox—and he was still so mad at himself for being such a gullible target.
At the thought, a door opened and Nelson listened as someone entered and slowly strolled closer.
He braced himself, waiting for a strike to the head or his gut or for something to slam into his kneecap.
Instead, the silence stretched and became a different kind of punishment as Nelson’s skin crawled with the knowledge that he was being watched, that someone was there and enjoying his paranoid discomfort.
“I didn’t think it was possible but I might be the first person to actually die of boredom,” Nelson said, receiving a hoarse chuckle.
“I was hoping it was you, Dùbhghlas. That weird chicken—or whatever that thing is—isn’t very bright, is she?
” He shook his head and huffed in disappointment.
“Really thought you’d have better minions. ”
“Hildr will be devastated when I share your assessment with her,” Dùbhghlas said with another sinister chuckle. “I have a feeling you’ll change your mind when that hood comes off. You’ve seen how terrifying a valkyrie can be but you’ve yet to see what I can do with a death-spirit.”
Nelson couldn’t suppress a shudder as he recalled the carnage at Coudersport and Ingrid’s, Sigrid’s, and Freya’s gleeful savagery.
Like the Badb and so many other mystical beings, valkyrie were agents of the light and the dark.
Their natures were wild and unpredictable because they were deeply natural at their cores and were connected to nature.
They weren’t beholden to humans or their laws and were capricious like the seasons and the creatures of the forest.
“You’re beginning to understand,” Dùbhghlas said, his husky rasp drawing closer.
“You’re finally seeing my vision: that death is just the beginning!
” he said excitedly and was now so close, Nelson could feel the coldness and smell Dùbhghlas’s decay.
“And I don’t just mean a rebirth! Death itself can be another form of gestation that produces a new, darker, and more powerful being.
One that can be made even more vile and more vindictive with the proper rearing,” he explained as Nelson’s hooded face was stroked. “What could I make with you?”
“Fuck off,” Nelson said flatly, refusing to even entertain the notion. “You’ll never touch my soul.”
There was a long pause before Dùbhghlas answered with an amused snort. “We’ll see. Hildr still has a lot of tricks up her sleeve and you have a lot of friends, Agent Nelson.”
“It won’t work,” Nelson said simply, attempting a shrug despite his bindings.
“You’ve been studying us so you know about the fucking vows.
They’re a pain in the ass but this—you—are exactly why no one says shit, not even to each other.
The one thing we do know is that we’ll all be together again if we keep our mouths shut and our souls intact. ”
Dùbhghlas could torture Nelson any way he wanted but the end result would be the same: Nelson was keeping his soul. As long as he kept it and it was under his control, Dùbhghlas couldn’t twist Nelson into something dark and damned.
“You’re welcome to waste your time trying, though,” Nelson said and smiled when he felt another blow coming. It hit his left cheek with enough force to knock the chair onto its side and send Nelson sliding.
Wooden floors, he noted, laughing despite the myriad of stings and aches and the way his side burned.
Nelson heard the sound of footsteps retreating and a door opening, but his relief only lasted a few moments.
“Do whatever you like with him, Hildr. Just make sure the hood doesn’t come off.”