Angel magic, p.4
Angel Magic, page 4
part #2 of Sirangel Series
If he looked this rough… “Quinn, tell me what Dimorelli has done to you. Please.”
Quinn stared out into the dark, dank, open space in front of our cells for so long that I didn’t think he’d answer. When he finally did, he leaned his forehead against the bars and held on to them.
“Dimorelli doesn’t know what I am any more than I do. He thinks I’m a regular shifter. But he knows I have at least some power, because every shifter does. Since he has me, he wants to take my power and merge it with his, the way greedy supes like him do. But you can’t steal a shifter’s power from them when they’re in their human forms. You can only do it when they’ve shifted. Dimorelli figures if he hurts me enough, then I’ll shift. Whether to avoid more punishment, or because he thinks I won’t be able to resist the impulse, I don’t know.”
He shrugged, the gesture continuous since I woke up. “The result is the same. He figures that if he hurts me enough, and keeps me hungry, thirsty, and sleep deprived, I’ll do whatever he wants to make it all end.”
“And you won’t?” I whispered, my heart painfully lodged in my throat.
“No,” he growled. “He killed Uncle Irving. I’m not giving the vampire a damn thing. I don’t give a shit if he breaks me in two or if he kills me in the process, I’m not giving him anything he wants.”
I blinked back tears behind Quinn’s back. Had Dimorelli already killed off the gentleness of the man I’d met?
“And I’m certainly not giving you to him.” The growl that accompanied his defiance was so ferocious that the hairs on the back of my neck and arms stood on end. “I’m getting you out of here if it’s the last thing I do.”
“Quinn?” I waited for him to turn around. He didn’t. “I don’t want to go anywhere without you. I won’t.” His shoulders tensed, but why I wasn’t sure. “I’ve been looking for you since that day.”
Though the truth was that I hadn’t been able to look much while stuck at the Menagerie, I’d tried. I’d pestered Sir Lancelot to keep him looking and tapping into his network in search of any word, any clue as to Quinn’s whereabouts.
“Now that I’ve found you, I want to … be with you.” My words were bolder than they usually would be. But Quinn was visibly broken. I wouldn’t waste a chance to keep him with me. “If we escape, we escape together.”
“When you escape, you get the hell away from here. You don’t want me near you.” His knuckles tightened around the cold bars. “Not anymore.”
5
Hours passed. The sun set and plunged us into deep darkness within our prison. As the shock of whatever spell Naomi had cast on me wore off, the sharp pain morphed into a dull, aching throb that pulsed just about everywhere. It would have been more bearable if the wet cold of our cells hadn’t set into my bones. Once I’d started shivering, I couldn’t stop, and I suspected the temperature would only continue to plummet the longer the night wore on.
Why hadn’t I listened to Egan and worn battle gear for our training session? Oh, that’s right, because I hadn’t expected to be kidnapped! My usual garb of short shorts and a crop top—as close to the nudity I was accustomed to—wasn’t doing me a single favor right now. At least I still wore my leather knee-high boots and arm guards. It wasn’t much, but bottom feeders can’t be choosers.
Quinn pressed against the bars that could’ve passed for icicles so he could squeeze between them to touch me. He placed as much of his arm and hand against my bare thigh as he could manage, and while the heat of them really didn’t accomplish much, at least Quinn was reaching for me again. I feared I’d already lost him entirely, but now hope again burgeoned to life inside me.
I lay my own arm and hand across his and worked to temper my shivers, though it appeared to be an impossible task. On land, I didn’t possess a mermaid’s resistance to the frigid temperatures of the deep sea. I’d lost the ability to resist cold along with my tail. “H-how did you m-make it through all th-those n-nights?” Alone. Freezing. In the dark. My heart panged. A wave of guilt whipped through me for every night I’d spent in the warmth of the fairies’ cottage. I’d had a pillow filled with molted pegasus feathers for goodness’ sake!
“You’d be surprised at what you can do when properly motivated.” Quinn’s voice was rough. He wasn’t even trembling, as if he didn’t have the spirit left within him to bother. “We’re going to find the way to get you out of here.”
“Get u-us out of here. US.”
“Right,” he said in that lifeless voice that terrified me more than our current predicament. “Us,” he said without inflection, as if trying out the word. “There has to be a way. There just has to be.”
Quinn occupied the entirety of the time before night took over to push and pull on stones, yank on bars and locks, and gaze at the one window in each cell that was too small to fit a person through it. With a mostly useless right arm, he didn’t make any progress, though I doubted he would have even if he’d been whole.
“The c-cells look like they’re p-pretty well built to keep prisoners in them.” From the smell of the place, Dimorelli had housed many more prisoners than us in here. I wouldn’t allow myself to consider their fate.
Quinn began to breathe more heavily, and I turned my head toward him but I couldn’t see him. The bottom of the prison was an ink well. “What is it, Quinn?”
“I’m not going to let you die in here. We’re already running out of time. If his goblins come, you might not be able to take it. They might kill you on the first try.”
“But there’s no way for us to e-escape.” I whimpered a little before remembering I was supposed to be strong so Quinn wouldn’t feel like he had to be strong for me. I cleared my throat and pressed my teeth together in an attempt to keep them still.
“They bring food and water every few days. You were out for two. They’ll be coming down here in the next day or two. They want us to suffer, but not die. Not unless it’s on their terms, not mine.”
With how he said it, it sounded a lot like Quinn had wanted to die. I hurried to say something, anything, to move him on from that place. “Do they come in the night or in the day?”
“Always in the night. I think Dimorelli’s creatures prefer the nighttime. An old vamp like him is able to resist the daylight. But his minions … they prefer the darkness.”
I gulped. “So they might come tonight?”
“Yeah, they might.” His words were so tense, they had a life of their own. “If only we had magic, dammit,” he growled. “Then we could get out.”
“And we d-don’t have m-magic?” I asked, feeling a bit like a dunce for not considering it before. But even after two months of training, the pegataur hadn’t managed to shape me into a warrior, not my body or my mind, but my mind had been especially resistant. I just didn’t think that way.
“Of course we don’t. We’re shifters, not mages,” he said.
It sounded like Quinn was kicking at the floor of his cell with his good foot. “Selene?”
“Yeah?”
“What is it? Why’d you get quiet?”
“Hmm. I was trying to figure out what to call the things I’ve done. Because if only mages have magic, then I don’t know how to describe what I did.”
I sensed Quinn go rigid in his adjacent cage. Even his hand clenched across my leg.
“What do you mean?” His voice vibrated with pent up … something. I didn’t think it was hope; I wasn’t sure he was capable of it at this point.
“Naomi said I changed her magic or something. She was transporting us away from Irving’s house and I did something to her magic so we ended up somewhere else. Then I had to bring us back to Earth without any idea how. After that, I made Naomi and her cat Petunia disappear by accident. I didn’t know where I’d sent her. Then she popped up at the Menagerie and took me.”
“How?” The word was clipped, sharp, urgent. “How did you do these things?”
“I don’t know how I did any of it. I have no clue what I did to change Naomi’s magic or whatever I did. And I barely managed to bring us back by, uh, well, just picturing it, I guess. And then when Naomi and Petunia disappeared, I didn’t mean to do anything beyond stop her from killing Fianna. All I did was touch her and, poof, she and her cat were gone.” I sounded like one of those fish at the bottom of the ocean caught in an endless loop of chasing its own tail fin: a total loon.
I fidgeted, shuffling my boots across the grimy stone floor. If only it weren’t so damp in here, it wouldn’t be so cold. At least I’d managed to bring the shivering more under control—or maybe my body was just too drained to bother with trembling anymore.
“Quinn?” I said. “Are you all right?”
“Tell me everything. Don’t leave out a single thing. If against all odds you have magic, then we can get out of here. You can be our salvation, Selene.”
Our salvation. My heart leapt at the sudden hope in his voice. Perhaps the hybrid shifter wasn’t beyond saving.
Eagerly, I licked my lips, flipped the long braid of my violet hair across one shoulder and started stroking it as I proceeded to recount everything that had happened since we last saw each other. I lost track of time as I droned on, telling him things that probably weren’t important, but I didn’t want to risk leaving out the one detail that could help us. Since I was too clueless about magic to identify the important bits, I opted for the safe side of telling him all I could remember.
“So?” I concluded. “Is any of that helpful?”
“You’re a miracle,” he said, and for the first time since I’d woken in this prison I recognized the Quinn I’d briefly known before. The hard edge was a little softer, though torment still echoed in the low tones of his voice. “I wouldn’t have believed it possible, but whatever you did might just be enough to get us out of here.”
“Great. So what do I do? How do I get us out of here?”
“I don’t know, but we’re going to figure it the hell out. Let’s—”
“What? What is it?” I whispered. “Why’d you stop?”
“Shhh.” He rubbed his hand across my leg in a calming motion. “The goblins are coming.”
“What?” I yelped.
“Shhh,” he soothed some more. “It’ll be okay.” But the hard edge of fury was back in his words. And fear. I could sense it rolling off of him like waves on the ocean.
“I-I don’t hear anything.”
“Listen. Do not tell them anything about what you are. Under no circumstances should you mention this magical ability you have. That’s our one ace in the hole. We need to use it to get out of here. Don’t tell them a word, no matter what they do.”
I heard him turning to face me in his cell, though I couldn’t make out the outlines of his body. “If they...” He swallowed loudly. “If they hurt you … just hold on, okay? Once it’s over, we’ll get out of here, and then I’ll never let anyone else hurt you ever again.”
I tried to say something, but the panic in his voice was like a barbed whip subduing me into terrified silence.
“Tell them nothing. And do whatever you can not to change.”
“But I still have my wings. What do I do?” I said in a frenzied rush.
“Can you pull your wings in? Transform fully so you could pass for a human?”
“I don’t ... no, I don’t know how!” I whisper-yelled.
“Actually, it doesn’t matter. They’ll already have seen your wings. Just don’t reveal your siren side, whatever you do.”
“Um...”
“What is it? They’re almost here.” This time I heard the creak of a door on rusty hinges somewhere beyond the large room that enclosed us.
“I think Dimorelli knows I’m a siren.”
Silence. “You didn’t tell me that.”
“Sorry. I forgot. I thought I’d told you everything. I’m not sure he knows, but I sang at him and he saw my wings for sure. He, at least, probably has a good idea of what I am.”
Seconds passed until I could make out footsteps along with the skittering sounds of … rodents? I squeezed Quinn’s hand without thinking and gripped my braid with my other hand. “Should I try to do magic or something? Or … Quinn, what should I do?”
I was panicking, and beyond the ability to hide it.
“Try if you can, but whatever you do, don’t shift into your siren form and don’t reveal that you can do any kind of magic. If they find out, they’ll take you to a mage cage and away from me.”
My heart beat in my throat like thunder. I couldn’t be away from Quinn, I just couldn’t. “Can he take my power, since I’m half shifted into my angel form now?” I asked so softly that Quinn wouldn’t have heard me if his ear hadn’t been right next to my mouth.
“I hope not, but he might try. Whatever you do, just don’t cave in. Okay, Selene? Don’t give up. Stay with me here. When it’s over, we’ll get out.”
I couldn’t decide what was frightening me more: the deadly footfalls growing nearer to us with every ragged second, or Quinn’s fear…
Quinn squeezed my thigh and pressed as much of his body as he could against the bars. “Just hold on no matter what. And if they torture me instead, don’t worry … it’s nothing they haven’t done many times before.”
“T-torture?” This time my stutter had nothing to do with the cold. “They’re going to torture us?”
“The way I survive is by going someplace else in my mind. Lately I’ve been fantasizing about killing Dimorelli, nice and slow. They can break my body, but if they can’t break my mind, then I’ve won.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. Quinn sounded broken all over. How could he find relief in fantasizing about killing someone, no matter what the person had done?
A nearby door creaked open and a beam of light shone in a straight line across the empty half of the room in front of us.
“At the start, I used to think about you,” Quinn whispered so that those about to enter wouldn’t hear. “When it got really bad, I didn’t want to bring you into that, not even in my thoughts.”
The faint light outlined the hard, gaunt edges of his face, but it didn’t reach his eyes, the ones I wanted desperately to stare into.
“I’m sorry. I wish I could’ve protected you from this,” he said.
With a final squeeze to my leg, he scooted across the floor toward the other side of his cell. I missed his touch instantly, wondering why he’d move away from me when our comfort was all we had. Why would he be sorry for something that wasn’t his fault?
The sounds of light feet pattered into the room. Someone flicked on a switch and lights flickered and held overhead … revealing exactly who—or rather, what—had entered the room with us.
I wanted to scream, but even the sound was terrified out of me. I shuffled against the wall behind me. There were six of them. Two of them shuffled right up to the front of my cell to leer at me. They bared crooked, foul-looking teeth at me in what might’ve been wicked smiles.
“Well, well. Lookie who’s finally awake,” one said, wrapping long, knobby fingers around the bars of my cell with slow, mesmerizing movement. “The masta will want ta know.”
Deep, cruel laughter rumbled low in the belly of the other one. “He will indeed. He’ll want ta get ta know ‘er.”
I was too terrified to do anything more than whimper. I flicked a frantic glance at Quinn, but he wasn’t looking my way. He was back to staring vacantly off into the distance.
The creatures would’ve reminded me of the trolls that worked at the Menagerie if the trolls had taken a tour through Nasty Hideous Town. Like the trolls, they were waist high, but while the pygmy trolls were so ugly they were cute, these creatures were plain ugly. They didn’t have a strand of hair anywhere on their bodies, their flesh dark as shadow. Their pupil-less eyes, aimed at me through the bars, and somber as a moonless night, seemed to try to suck the life from me by their intent alone. Their stomachs were big, bloated, drooping things, and their arms and legs were spindly, like their hands and feet. Their ears and noses were larger than anything else on their heads.
Skittering paws raced across the stone floor. My breath hitched in my throat when I noticed the cause of the sound was several ginormous, equally hideous rats.
One of the things watching me scooped to pick one up and ran a long-nailed hand across its head as if it were a pet.
I recoiled, my gaze jumping from one terrifying sight to the next.
The creature petting the rat, which was as large as Petunia the cat, snickered at me, then made some strident grunting sounds deep in his throat. He hawked straight into my cell, straight at me. I managed to move out of the way at the last second, setting my throbbing head to pulsing again. A wad of spit and mucus began its slow descent down the back wall of my cell where I’d just been leaning.
The creature laughed, a snickering, giggly sound that suggested the creature was completely unhinged. “Oh, the masta will have fun with this one,” he said, petting his cat-rat. “Maybe he’ll decide she’s too pretty. You know how the masta likes to have fun with the pretty ones.”
The one next to him rewrapped his knuckles around the bars to my cell. “He loves the pretty ones extra. Maybe he’ll take ‘er power and keep ‘er.”
His companion snorted and grunted. I supposed that passed for laughter in monster land.
The other four sloughed across the floor toward me, not bothering with Quinn. Six hideous faces squeezed between the bars to leer at me. One of the huge rats squeezed through the bars and approached me with what looked disturbingly like a swagger.
One of the uglies said, “Maybe we could have a little fun with ‘er before we get the masta.”
I swallowed down bile as I imagined all the awful things creatures like these might consider fun.
“Yes. A little pain for ‘er before we get the masta,” another said.
“A lotta pain for ‘er,” yet another one said and all of them erupted into laughter.
