Chapter 4 #2
“Excellent.” He lifted me onto and pinned me down on a table with one massive hand. I glanced to the side and immediately regretted doing so. The table was equipped with stained leather straps and rimmed along all four edges with some sort of narrow channel to funnel liquids. Like blood.
I arched my back to get away and tried to scream, though the ability to get free or even make sounds was obviously not allowed. Not with the sort of torture I feared was about to go down.
“Still,” he ordered, as I tried to wriggle free of his nine-hundred-pound hand. Now it was like he’d injected my whole body with lead; I couldn’t move anything. Not even my eyelids. The only thing I could do was breathe, and not very deeply.
Dangit, I knew this was Hell. I was smooshed so flat, the smut on my back oozed into every nick in the surface of the wood.
“Better,” he grunted. What was it with this guy and one-word sentences? Weren’t evil villains supposed to monologue? I needed some time to figure out how to get out of this.
He began lifting my arms one at a time like I was a doll, peering at them through some type of a jeweler’s loupe.
Next, he held up what looked like a small silver bell with no clapper.
“When I find your name and speak it, the bell will chime. There’s always a mark that should resonate…
” He held the bell over my hands, arms, elbows, all the way to my shoulders.
Nothing.
He rubbed under one arm at a spot of muck, which tickled.
“You should have a sigil on one of your arms… Hmph. Nothing. It should glow, even through all this smut. Did my Apprentice mark your leg, maybe?” He glared at my face.
“No, I must have created you. He’s been gone for centuries.
No wings. You can’t be old enough to have been formed by Azazel. ”
I had no idea who that was, but I couldn’t ask anyway. He kept moving the chime, obviously not in a mood to explain. I was getting really close to using actual curse words in my thoughts.
“On your foot, maybe? No. Defective from start to finish. How did you ever leave this Hall? You should have been unmade and re-formed correctly at once!”
I should never have been born? Gee, thanks, Daddy, I muttered mentally. I’d heard that enough times in my Earth lives to make the phrase sting more than a little. How had I ever thought of that frowning face as hot? This guy was a jerk, and if I ever got my voice back, I’d tell him… Whoa!
My legs left the table one at a time, and when Growly’s fingers started exploring my feet, dipping in between each toe, scraping lightly at the thick gray smut, I realized there was Hell… and then there was Tickle Hell.
Being tickled while your mouth was sealed shut and you couldn’t move or react was a new form of torture for me, and I’d been tortured by some real experts.
I stopped breathing for a second, black stars swimming before my eyes.
I would have kept holding it, but passing out might stop me from finding my moment to escape.
Finally, the torment stopped. “Hmph. Nothing I can find.” He paced back and forth, glaring at me. I had a bad feeling he was thinking about just unmaking me and calling it a day—problem solved. I used every ounce of the fading energy I had to widen my eyes.
“What?” Still pacing, he casually waved a hand. “Speak.”
“Number one,” I said furiously, my body still held to the table. “You are the world’s biggest basshole. I. Am. Ticklish.” He lifted a hand again like he was going to do the Silence Thing, so I rushed to get the rest of it out. “I would have just told you my name, if you’d bothered to ask.”
“Feather?” he scoffed. “That’s not a name, it’s a—”
“A nickname, I know.” I closed my eyes. I hated telling anyone my real name. I hadn’t even heard the word for almost four hundred years, and only the nuns at the abbey outside Rome where I’d spent my first life had used it. I should have known there was no escaping who I really was.
Mikhail had stopped pacing. “You know your name?” he asked, quietly for once. “Your true name. The one you were given here, when you were formed, as a Protector.”
“I think so.” I took another breath. “I don’t remember being named, or this place at all. But on Earth… it was different when I was called what might be my real name. Like, I felt it, deep down.”
“At the core of your being, yes. A name is given to every soul formed here. It reflects who the soul is, their defining trait. Sunny is named for beaming light of many kinds.” He mumbled something that sounded like, “Though I should have chosen something more dignified.”
“Yes, that’s her. That’s exactly who she is,” I agreed, then hesitated. “I never liked my name.”
“Stop complaining. Tell me your name, and you can begin the process of purification.” His next words were almost too quiet to hear. “And I can discover what happened when you were made. What failed in your creation.”
Failed in your creation. I had lived long enough not to react to casual insults, but those words cut deeper than any I’d heard on Earth.
Suddenly my limbs were freed, so I lifted a hand to cover my face.
“My first memories are of when I was orphaned, and sent to work in a small abbey. The nuns spoke—when they spoke at all—in Latin.” My jaw tightened, like it didn’t want to let the word out.
Not here, in this golden place. Not in front of this gorgeous, grumpy basshole who already thought I was filthy.
Once he knew who I was deep down, I had a feeling I’d be unmade sooner rather than later.
“I went by Tili.” I fought back the memories of the one who had given me that nickname, my sister in that life.
The brutal memories of the night when I’d tried to save Dina’s life and ended up losing not only her, but my own innocence.
When I’d found the shadow voice that taught me about keeping the balance.
I stared down at my limbs. On Earth, I’d always looked innocent.
After each birth, I’d grown into a girl or a young woman before I died again.
Always smaller than those around me, and usually weaker.
It was ironic that after all those years of my outsides not matching the festering shame and guilt I held, in Sanctuary I’d ended up showing exactly who I was to everyone.
“Some called me Tili.” A burning tear rolled down my cheek and splashed on the table, but I shook away the strange pain and continued, “But my first name… was Inutilia.”
Useless.
With that word, the small bell in Mikhail’s hand chimed a loud, sour note, like it too was ashamed of who I was deep down, at my core.
By what I’d been named by the one who had created me. Whoever that basshole might be.