And then he reached over and plucked the eyeball off the cloth, delicately dangling it by its red strands. He turned back to Alabaster.
There was not even the faintest hint of humanity in his shadowed features.
“If you cannot hold your head still, General Alabaster Saint,” he said. “I will steady it for you.”
He withdrew the small vial of glim and tin and flicked the hinged cork off with his thumb. Then he tipped the vial, his thumb over the mouth to catch a small pool of the odd green and silver mixture.
He recorked the vial, keeping glim balanced on his thumb. Then pressed his fingers across the top of the general’s head and poised his thumb in front of the general’s empty eye socket.
“Now you will know pain.”
The general set his teeth and inhaled through his nose. He had been tortured, maimed, and worse. He was no stranger to pain.
And he’d be damned if he was going to yell in front of his men.
Mr. Shunt shoved his thumb into the general’s eye hole.
The agony was staggering. Alabaster held his breath against the moan building in his chest as time dragged from one tick to the next.
Mr. Shunt took his time scraping his thumb inside Alabaster’s eye socket until the scarred flesh was raw and alive again.
And all the while he hummed and smiled.
Shunt drew his bloody thumb out of the hole, allowing Alabaster a small reprieve from the pain. Not for long. Not even long enough for Alabaster to release one breath and inhale the next.
Shunt forced his head back, clamped it still, and was over him again.
The general’s chest clenched in fear. His neck was exposed to a madman with blades for fingertips and no humanity behind those eyes.
It had been many long years since Alabaster Saint had feared any man.
Mr. Shunt was not any man.
Monster. Nightmare. Madness. Alabaster’s head squirmed with memories of every horror he had endured, every failure that had brought him to his knees.
The general wanted a gun in his hand, a knife in Shunt’s throat. He wanted out from under the vise of Shunt’s grip, out from under the damp heat of his breath, out from under these memories that choked him.
But he did not move, did not twitch. He met that man’s burning gaze with his own.
“Enough,” the general gritted out. “Just get this done.”
Shunt’s lips hitched up. “As you wish, Alabaster Saint.”
The world dissolved under a torrent of pain, battering every last nerve in his body.
Agony drummed through him, thick, constant, hammering, scraping, burning. He blacked out more than once, only to have the sharp horror drag him back from the terror of his dreams.
There was no escape from Mr. Shunt’s methodical, vicious mercies. No escape from Mr. Shunt, who followed him into his dreams and was there, tearing him apart when he passed out, and there, laughing, when he woke.
Finally, the general came to. Drenched in sweat and so wrung out from the pain that he didn’t have air enough to yell. His throat was raw. He couldn’t remember screaming, couldn’t remember anything except Mr. Shunt’s laughter and the endless pain.
The echo of agony still rode the edge of nerve, skin, and bone.
Every heartbeat hurt.
Mr. Shunt straightened away from the general, his long, knobby fingers clicking down one by one to tuck into his palm like feathers on a wing.
Alabaster blinked, trying to focus. The room seemed too far away and too close all at once. It was nauseating.
“General?” Lieutenant Foster said from over his shoulder. “Are you well, sir?”
Alabaster unclenched his fingers from around the base of the chair seat, his knuckles swollen and sore. He ached. Every damn muscle ached.
He glanced over his shoulder at Lieutenant Foster and realized he could see, clearly, out of both eyes.
He had spent years carrying half a world of darkness with him wherever he went. And now, finally, the world was whole and his to see again.
To own, earth and sky.
He licked the salt from his lips and tasted blood there. “Perfectly well, Lieutenant,” he rasped. “See to Mr. Shunt’s payment.”
The lieutenant nodded once.
The six men in the tent all pulled their guns and leveled them at Mr. Shunt.
Mr. Shunt held very still. Except for his head. That he turned, almost unnaturally far, first one way and then the other to assess the men and the weapons aimed at his person.
“You, Mr. Shunt,” Alabaster said in his ruined voice, “have done us a great favor. We intend to thank you for it.”
Mr. Shunt folded his hands together in front of his breast and tipped his head down. “Are you sure you want to do that, General Alabaster Saint? Have we not an agreement already?”
“We got what we wanted, Mr. Shunt. I can’t say the same for you.”
Shunt hesitated, as if weighing that statement. Then he smiled.
“These stitches, these gifts are mine to give,” Shunt said quietly. “And mine to take away.”
One of the soldiers behind Shunt lifted his gun, aiming at Shunt’s head.
Shunt couldn’t see him. Shouldn’t be able to see him, since he stood well at his back.
Mr. Shunt flicked one finger and the soldier’s hand shook. A guttural scream started up out of the soldier’s throat. His eyes bulged in terror and pain.
The stitches around the man’s wrist slithered out of his skin, leaving a track of bloody holes behind. And then his hand, the hand Mr. Shunt had given him, crackled, wet and gristly as it separated from the man’s arm, and fell to the floor with a thump.
His gun fell to the floor with it.
The man was still yelling, couldn’t seem to stop yelling. He buckled to his knees, grasping at his stump that gushed blood.
“You have entered
“You will be useful to me, Alabaster, or I will no longer offer my kindness.” He flicked his hand again and the soldier writhed on the floor, limbs thrashing uncontrollably.
“Or mercy.” Shunt flared his fingers outward.
The soldier fell apart at the seams. It was as if each joint, each crease, each piece of his body suddenly separated, tied by different strings that had all, violently, been tugged.
The soldier was nothing but a quivering pile of flesh, bones, and meat in a bloody stew. No more a living thing than the sweepings of a slaughterhouse.
To their credit, the remaining soldiers did not fire on Shunt, did not move, did not say a thing. They awaited their commander’s decision.
“What game do you play, Mr. Shunt?” the general demanded.
“One with few rules,” he answered, “and high risk. To you. You are now a part of me, General Alabaster Saint. A part of my…kind. Held together with glim and strangework.
“My finger is pressed on the knotted string that binds your flesh together. And if I lift my finger…” Shunt opened his hand.
Alabaster’s new eye squirmed and pulled against its roots, lancing pain through his skull. Agony bloomed in his joints, fired down every inch of his spine. He held his breath, tightening muscles to hold his shifting bones where they belonged.
Shunt chuckled. “…you will come apart like a straw doll.” Shunt closed his hand and the sensation was gone.
“Fire!” Alabaster ordered.
