Chapter 17 #3
The guard shrugged and hung up the clipboard.
“I heard she was homeless, a wreck of a Crescent. She was better off dead. You shoulda seen her, banging herself against the walls, screaming. Thing was, she started out just telling her story over and over, but she went downhill fast.” He tilted his head. “What’s your story?”
Kade laughed, shaking his head. He would sound just as crazy. “Ferro’s trying to incite clan wars down in the Fringe. He’s killing Dragons in Miami, too, Breathing them for their power.”
The man gave a slow shake of his head. “You people concoct the nuttiest stories…”
“What if the stories are true? You think the Guard is immune to corruption? What happens if someone figures it out? They get brought here. Labeled insane. Dispatched.”
The man met his gaze dead on. “I follow orders. I don’t question. I do what I’m told and then go home at the end of the day. I spend time with my kids and husband. And I stay alive.” He left, making sure the door locked properly. After one last glance through the large window, he left.
Hell.
Ferro appeared in the window a few minutes later, unlocking the door. The man with him was an old Deuce. Kade couldn’t place his name.
Ferro gestured for the man to precede him into the room, following and locking the door behind him.
The stranger held an ornate box—a spell box.
This couldn’t be good. Kade had heard of them, possessed by those who practiced Shadow Magick.
The man handed the box to Ferro and waved his hand over the window.
He produced an illusion spell so anyone walking past would see only what the conjurer wanted him to see.
Which would not be Kade getting whatever was in that box.
The man took the box back. Something was moving inside it, bumping against the sides.
Triple hell. He skipped right past double.
Ferro approached Kade, kneeling down to his level. “This is a harsh lesson in the evils of insubordination. I do not enjoy this. Despite your reckless past, you’ve been a good officer. You chose the wrong mission to abort, I’m afraid. And for that, you must go away.”
“That’s a nice way of putting being executed.”
“I’m not executing you. There would be questions.
Procedures. Paperwork.” He shook his head.
“Messy. You’ve already created quite the spectacle, but you’ve managed to offer a solution as well.
” He stood. “You won’t die, not right away.
You will simply go insane. Everyone already thinks you’ve snapped, so if they come to visit—someone like your sister, perhaps—they will see that you are truly out of your mind. ”
The mention of Mia spiked even more fear into him. “She has nothing to do with this. She already thinks I’m mad, so you don’t need to bring her here.”
Ferro smiled. “As long as she accepts the story and leaves well enough alone, she’ll be fine.”
“And Violet?”
His smile mingled with an expression of disbelief. He shook his head. “All this over a woman.”
“She has nothing to do with whatever plan you’ve got cooked up. Leave her out of this.”
“Can’t do that. Like you, she’s trouble. You’ll have to be satisfied with your sister’s safety.”
The thought of Violet dying crushed Kade’s heart. All he could hope for was that she was clever and strong enough to evade them.
The man—Purcell, he thought his name was—opened the box and grabbed a black thing the size of a cockroach that tried to jump out. It wriggled in his hand where he held it tight.
“No doubt you’ve heard of the Black Bore Orb,” the man said, as though they were having polite conversation.
Every cell in Kade’s body froze. “Stories about them.”
“Well, you are about to get to know one very well. It bores into a person’s memories, fracturing them like a mirror being hit over and over, until all the pieces are so fragmented, they make no sense at all.”
Ferro stared at the orb with gruesome fascination. “Will it hurt?”
“I don’t think it’s terribly painful, per se, if their hands are bound and they can’t scratch at their heads or eyes to tear the thing out.
It’s hard to tell. The recipient always screams, but I believe that to be the result of the chaos in their minds.
” The man turned back to Kade. “Soon it won’t matter because your mind will be gone. ”
Was that supposed to comfort him? Kade couldn’t take his eyes from the squirming orb, so eager to do its job.
Ferro asked, “How long will it take?”
“In three hours’ time, his mind will give up trying to make sense of what doesn’t make sense.”
Ferro’s expression turned grim. “Do it.”
The man stepped forward. Kade tried to evade him, jerking his head away.
But he felt it drive into his ear with a suction sound, muffling everything but the horrid scrabbling sound as it pushed its way into his brain.
He hit his head against the wall, trying to dislodge it.
Pain washed through him, but it didn’t stop the orb.
Memories tumbled through his mind, like a deck of cards thrown up into the air. Mentally he grabbed for them, as though he could keep them safe. He latched onto one: making love to Violet. He saw her beautiful face as he touched her, kissed her…and then she fractured.