Chapter 27 #2
Nigel blinked. This was news to him. He’d had no idea Luna had interacted with Lancelot Mortimer, of all people, only yesterday!
Had he known . . . well, he couldn’t say what he would have done.
Possibly wrapped her up in cotton wool and hid her away in Garden for her own protection until he’d had time to hunt the man down for himself.
But Luna always kept her secrets. How she managed to rid herself of Mortimer’s tag, Nigel couldn’t guess, but he shouldn’t be surprised.
After all, Luna had always proven herself resourceful.
She’d eluded the Brotherhood successfully for the better part of three years, had she not?
Mortimer narrowed his eye, studying Nigel, gauging what he could from his reactions. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to, Grimm,” he said at last and waggled the metal tip of his walking stick just under Nigel’s nose.
Nigel merely looked at him. Boiling wrath simmered in his eyes, unrestrained.
Mortimer’s mouth twisted in a venomous smile.
“You’re planning to bring her back yourself, aren’t you?
You’re laboring to restore the former glory of that Green Magic garden of yours so you can use it to fuel the spell.
You think if you can resurrect her on your own, she’ll be so grateful to escape the Void that she’ll forgive you for putting her there in the first place. ”
Nigel snorted softly and rolled his head to one side, peering up at Mortimer from behind the lock of hair fallen across his forehead. “Were you always such an idiot?” he mused. “Or had I simply forgotten how deep the wellsprings of your stupidity run?”
For a moment, Mortimer didn’t react. His face was so still, the human eye could not track the painfully slow shifting of his features into a snarl.
It was like a magic all its own. “It doesn’t matter now,” he declared.
“Because I’m going to kill you. Here. Tonight.
Yes, Jastira says she wants you kept alive, but .
. . I’ll tell her you fought me. I’ll tell her I had no choice, that it was life or death.
She’ll understand. She’ll be gracious, she’ll be forgiving. ”
“Oh, sure.” Nigel snorted. “That sounds like Jastira all over.”
“And she’ll take me back!” Mortimer continued, his manic voice filling that vaulting space. “When she realizes that I alone have truly loved her all this time, that I rescued her from the prison to which you sent her, that I faced and fought you for her sake—ah! Her love for me will flower anew.”
Nigel raised a brow. “You have fun with that.”
The skull-head hit him in the cheek, fast as a viper’s strike.
There was no preliminary, no warning of any kind.
Just a sudden crash of stone against bone and a shocked ringing in Nigel’s head.
He collapsed on his elbow, too stunned to do anything but brace himself.
Spittle and blood fell from his lips, and he wondered briefly if a tooth had been knocked loose.
Then Mortimer’s fingers tangled in his hair, dragging him back up onto his knees.
He wrenched Nigel’s face up and spat in his eye.
“I’m going to make it hurt,” he said, lifting his other hand and drawing sigils in the air.
Nigel felt the life force sucked out of his own body, like the pain of a knife gliding across cringing flesh.
He gasped and tried to recoil, even as he watched the Dire answer Mortimer’s summons and begin to form in his fingers.
“I’m going to hurt you again and again. I’m going to make it last, all night perhaps.
By the time the sun is rising, you will be begging me for death. ”
Not if Ward the Wardsman is any good at his job, Nigel thought. Which, was in itself more torturous than anything Mortimer had planned. Gods, was he actually hoping for Ward’s arrival?
“Please,” he grunted, spitting a blood gob onto Mortimer’s vest, “get on with it, why don’t you?”
Mortimer grasped his face, planting the palm of his hand over Nigel’s mouth and nose.
A bolt of pure Dire force surged through his fingers, straight into Nigel’s brain, and everything else faded in an explosion of agony.
All fears for Luna. All loathing of Ward.
All hopes or desires or terrors or plans, nothing mattered now.
Only pain. Pain that went on for years, for centuries, for eons.
Then suddenly, he blinked hard. The vaulted ceiling of the warehouse swam back into focus, and he realized he was flat on his back.
Pops and sizzles of agony burst in different parts of his body at random, no longer the constant flood.
But this was almost worse. The moments of relief in between made those sharp stabs all the more intense.
Nigel groaned, limbs shaking as he curled into himself.
“That was oddly gratifying.” Mortimer’s voice floated down to him from some dark space of awareness. “Funny. I’d forgotten what a good torture does for a man’s soul. I’ve not felt so alive in years!”
He traced another sigil in the air, gathering a burning cluster of Dire into his fingers. Staggering a little on his bad leg, he knelt awkwardly beside Nigel and reached for his forehead. “Let’s have another go, shall we?”