26. Chace
Something smacked me in the face. Once. Twice.
I flinched and awoke with a moan on a frigid stone floor. Two wads of crumpled paper lay at my side, having bounced off my cheek and nose before landing on the ground.
Someone had purposely awoken me. Only I saw no one with my limited vision in the dim light.
Still laid out flat, an aching chill consuming my body, I turned my head and soaked in the surrounding gloom.
The bars running the length of the wall in front of me suggested I’d been dumped in a dungeon.
Had the queen changed the time allotted for my citadel departure as soon as I stepped foot outside of the palace grounds?
I hated assumptions, but I saw no other option. Royals could be fickle and cruel.
Unless…me being here had nothing to do with the queen at all.
Blinking slowly, I recalled the figure I’d seen hiding in the shadows the day the afflicted had attacked Raven. Who had that person been, and had they now targeted me?
I pushed up onto my elbows, held back the hiss my body demanded, and swallowed hard against the desert in my mouth. My tongue felt rough as sandpaper, and my skull throbbed from the blow I’d suffered.
Lifting a leaden hand, I rubbed the base of my neck. My muscles had solidified into a tight, tender, and sore ball in the spot where my abductors had jabbed me with something. Something that had resulted in my struggle becoming nonexistent.
This is nothing more than a setback, I told myself, rising to a full sit.
I needed to assess my surroundings and situation. Make a plan to get out and back to my fellow reapers.
“Good. You’re awake.” A male’s voice came from the shadows on the other side of the bars. Features indistinguishable, he appeared as nothing more than a dark outline. “Now we can begin.”
You threw trash at my head. Of course I’m awake.
My head thundered with the pounding of a herd of horses galloping through my cranium. A discomfort I masked for the sake of my cell-side visitor. My captor didn’t deserve the thrill or satisfaction of witnessing my pain…or my bewilderment.
Rolling my head, I released the tension in my neck and rose to my bare feet. Forced my body to ignore the frosty bite seeping into my system.
With a glance over my shoulders in both directions, I noted three windowless walls at my back and a few small holes cut in the stone floor. Drainage holes, likely for washing down the dungeon after…
I didn’t want to think about that.
“Begin what, exactly?” I rubbed the back of my hand across my forehead and scrutinized every decipherable aspect of my surroundings.
Several feet beyond the wall of bars stood the chamber’s gray brick barrier, and mounted to the brick, two torches emanating green-tinted light.
In the center of that barrier, an archway led to a deeply shadowed void.
No windows to the outside world. Nothing to provide a clue as to the location of my dingy prison within the citadel.
For my “comforts,” the confined cell offered a wide bench chained to the wall that served as both a sitting and sleeping space, a chamber pot for my personal needs, and a shallow, water-filled metal bowl set on the floor and chained to the bars.
Was I to be fed like a dog?
“I might share, but first”―my jailor lifted his arm, motioning to the shallow bowl―“may I interest you in a refreshment?”
I glanced at my feet and the large shackles closed around my ankles, locked to a spike in the center of the cell. The situation looked rather…challenging. At least the chain upon my person appeared to grant me enough mobility to reach the few necessities offered.
The desire to quench the dry scratch of my mouth and throat burned fiercely. And yes, the water could be drugged, but was taking the chance and satisfying my thirst worth the gamble? It was. After all, I’d already been drugged, and my captor…or captors…could have easily kept me in such a state.
I shuffled to the bowl, scooped a handful of the liquid, and swallowed. The water tasted warm, less than refreshing, but it sufficed.
I scooped several more gulps, then asked, “Who are you, and what do you have planned that requires I be awake?”
Within the darkness, the male shifted closer to the bars, and I spied the hint of a flecked green aura clinging to his outline. Like the day on the train platform, my departure for the citadel, an unexplainable colorization surrounding others plagued me once again.
How long had I been laid out, unconscious in the cell? When was the last time I’d taken my pills?
“Who I am is of no consequence to you.” He took another step forward, revealing the stiff edge of a lapel, the flow of a short cape, and hair cut, or pulled, close to the scalp. Not a single feature that would help identify the prick in a police lineup.
I stretched my back and held my demeanor in check.
Calm and collected. “I happen to disagree. Given the situation…me on this side of the bars and you on the other…” I motioned to either side with a lazy wave.
“Add in the little fact that you appear to have plans that somehow involve me, and I’d say who you are very much matters to me. ”
He released a low chuckle. “You may think of me as your keeper. For now. Together, you and I will be looking for a solution.”
“A solution to what?” I made no effort to temper the bite of my tone as bitterness washed over my tongue. Instead, I addressed irritation’s physical manifestation and massaged the strain building in my neck,
“I thought it would be obvious.” He sighed. “A solution to that which has plagued me and the rule of the land for over a hundred years.”
“How can I—”
My captor slapped his hands together. “Shall we begin?”
With the only source of light at his back, darkness covered him―nothing more than a shadow haloed by an unnatural green glow. Small movements became lost in the thick of his silhouette, but larger actions appeared quite clearly.
As was the case when the jerk reached for a lever at the edge of the gloom, the limited illumination highlighting the crank and the hand upon it.
With the lift of the lever came a loud wrippe.
Black braided restraints shot up from the floor on either side of me.
I had wrongly identified the holes in the floor.
They weren’t used for drainage but for hiding misery.
The leather whip-like belts blasted straight for me and, as if by magic, found my wrists, upper arms, and thighs with ease.
The restraints wrapped around me, tightening and pulling. Yanking me to my knees.
Wanting to buck the touch from my skin, my struggle immediately ignited…and stopped short. The hold, firm. The give, nearly non-existent.
“That’s better,” he said. “Now no one will get hurt while we do what we must.”
I laughed a strangled, deranged song that thrust from my lungs. “No one but me, you mean to say. No one but me will get hurt.”
“You may hurt. Yes. But you can take solace in knowing that all that we do here is for a greater cause.”
Yeah, sure.
I hung my head and nodded. “Isn’t that what every villain always tells themselves?”
Another leather band shot free of the floor as if it had been waiting for me to lower into the ideal position. The strap slung around my head like a crown and dove back into the same hole through which it had exited. The restraint pulled taut, holding my head in a bowed position.
“What the hellfire?” I exclaimed through clenched teeth.
If the bastard stepped from the shadows now, I would see nothing more than his shoes. And only if the bastard moved close enough.
The cell door opened with a creak, and my captor entered my cage. “I realize this must be uncomfortable for you, but holding you this way will make it easier to extract a sample of your spinal fluid.”
I balked, my body stiffening.
“Beautiful.” He ran the tip of his finger along my backbone. “I’ll need to send a personal note to your father, thanking him for sending me such a gift from the gods. A pure soul hunter.”
“A what?”
He replied with a hum and then ripped open the back of my shirt. Something cold and sharp traced a crooked line across my skin. “This tattoo, does it serve a purpose? Is it magical in origin?”
The inked chain wrapped around my body had existed for longer than I could remember. As had the assemblage of creatures on my back. I preferred not to talk about them on a good day, and today landed leagues away from good.
“What do you suppose will happen if I cut away a strip of the tattooed skin?” The knife sliced into my skin, and wetness ran down my back.
Fists clenched and teeth gnashed, I trapped a holler in my throat. With a tug, a thin ribbon of skin pulled away from my back.
“I sense no change,” the bastard said. “Do you feel any different?”
I feel in fucking pain.
I jerked against the binds. Binds that refused to give.
“We have plenty of time to explore all the possibilities.” He began poking, prodding, extracting.
And the torture became never-ending.
A needle pierced my skin, and the world became unfocused, turned black.
Time was lost. When I opened my eyes, I was no longer tethered to the ground in my cell but strapped to a surgical chair in some sort of laboratory.
A stockpile of medical instruments, ideal for torture, filled the surface of a nearby metal rolling table.
My left arm and hand tingled, the flow of blood restricted by a tourniquet, and an intravenous line siphoned blood from my right. I shivered, the room too cold and me absent of clothing.
A too-bright light shone in my face, and I squinted to make out the finer details of my surroundings…or the faces of my torturer and that of the assistant who shuffled at the edge of my vision.
“You awoke too soon.” My torturer tapped the side of a syringe he held in his hand. “A situation that will soon be rectified.”
“Why the rush?” I wiggled my shoulders against the straps holding me in place. “We have yet to hold a productive conversation. One where you explain the purpose of all this. As well as why the room is so damn freezing and why I’m absent of any clothing.”
Because I was…utterly naked.
“I find it easier to monitor your healing and collect viable samples when clothing isn’t in the way.”
Every possible fluid had been taken from me.
Every. Possible. Fluid.
Additionally, hair and skin and fingernail samples were collected. And my seed, in the most humiliating way.
Samples preserved in vials awaited further attention. When in my cell, I’d been cut and carved, and my pain tolerance tested. What would happen to me in a space equipped for dissection?
“I hope everything you’re doing here ends up being a waste of your time.”
My torturer chuckled. “You’ll find I’m rather persistent. We’ll keep taking and testing until we find the answers sought.”
I didn’t think to question who the “we” was my captor referred to, as my vision swam, producing two versions of him, both smothered in a plethora of colors. Not only was I now seeing double, but my recently developed aura-detecting ability was smashing into chaos.
Using two fingers, the bastard tapped my vein then inserted the needle and injected a drug. The liquid scorched a path through my limb, returning me to oblivion.
Days later (at least, the passage of time felt as long) and the bastard had yet to explain what he’d meant when he’d called me a soul hunter. He likely never would. But I suspected he engaged in mind trickery. Wordplay meant to keep me unbalanced as the torture played on and on.
My muscles weakened from lack of nutrition, and the cuts upon my body healed far too slowly for my liking. Filth and dried blood covered me everywhere. And somewhere within the pit of exhaustion and screams and agony, I’d lost track of the minutes, hours, and days.
When I laid prone upon my bed of wood I tried to decide if, beyond my windowless cage, the citadel sat beneath the light of the sun or the moon. From the moment I’d opened my eyes to find myself trapped in the cell, telling day apart from night had been impossible.
A cough rattled in my chest, awakening aches I’d thought had faded. I tilted my head to the side of the wooden bench I lay upon and spit up blood.
Each trial used me as an experimental guinea pig, and the sadist in charge cared nothing for his test subject, only that I be kept alive.
When left awake through the process, he expended no effort to make me comfortable.
If I were going to survive, find a way out of this situation, energy conservation and restoration were essential.
So…sleep. I needed to sleep. Only my mind refused to settle.
Is Aldine, now improved, searching for me? Did Raven return to find me missing? If so, does she care? Is she looking for me? Am I lost to them, and is my situation solely dependent upon me to change?
“What is the black stuff?” The voice sounded small, that of a child.
What in reaper’s hell is a child doing in a place such as this?
I cracked my eyes open a sliver and glanced to the wall of bars and the space beyond.
A young girl stood on the other side, her hands wrapped around the iron rods.
Her gaze sharpened and her skin almost as dark as the shadows surrounding her.
Unlike my captor or the individuals who had stood with me on the train platform so very long ago, swathed in a haze of green, an inviting pinkish aura hugged her small form.
I wanted to ask who she was or why she was here, but words—actually speaking them—took energy. Energy I currently lacked.
She extended her arm and pointed to me. “What is that?”
I knew of what she inquired. I lifted my left arm and peered at the dark veins running beneath my skin.
“The other prisoner never did that.”
What prisoner?
“Oh!” She spun around and peered down the dark tunnel leading to my cell.
“He’s coming.” She glanced back at me. “Sorry. I have to run before he sees me. Plus, I want to check on her.” She took a step and then looked back once more.
“I do hope, though, that you don’t die or disappear like the last one. ”
The last what? What prisoner?
The questions never left my arid throat.
She ran on silent feet, vanishing into the darkness not a moment too soon.
The bastard―my captor―slinked from the shadows and pinned his cold gaze on me. “Ready for another round?”