Suck through a straw—check.
Crunch some ice—check.
Scream for a while—double check.
Occasionally the sense of movement would return. Or it was always there, and I just didn’t notice. Time blurred in a manner that made higher thought difficult. Thackery no longer talked to me. The kid was there a few times. I rarely had enough energy to rasp out a couple of cuss words. I tried, determined not to show that Thackery was starting to break me.
He seemed to like his scalpels best. I tried to stay asleep and ignore it whenever possible, but Thackery knew anatomy. He knew the nerves and tendons to cut. I was in a constant state of healing, leaving my body throbbing and itching like mad. All the damned time. Couldn’t stop it. Just had to endure a while longer. He had to be nearing his research limit. Death was coming for me soon.
Right?
We were moving again when he came. I listened to him shuffle around, my eyelids too damned heavy to lift. Everything hurt; even my insides ached. My kidneys throbbed, and I wondered if the catheter had shifted. My throat was raw from screaming, the insides of my cheeks still bleeding from having bitten through them at some point.
But God wasn’t listening.
“I have one last experiment for you, Ms. Stone, and then I believe we’ll be through.” Thackery’s voice was like sandpaper in my head, grating and painful. “I’ve seen your torn flesh and muscles regenerate, and I know from your own word that repaired bones have mended within a day of their breaking. I simply cannot isolate the physical process that causes it to happen.”
“Magic.” Somehow I got that single word out.
“No, I’ll find it. I simply haven’t taken you far enough.”
“The answer is here, in how your body regenerates from its wounds. It must be here. We’ve tested so many things, but I wonder how far your regeneration ability extends.”
I forced my eyelids apart and sought him out with bleary vision. He stood on my left side with something in his hand. I stared, not quite comprehending the object. His expression was contemplative, neutral. It horrified me. A high-pitched keen tore from my damaged throat. Even before he switched the object on and grabbed my left hand, I understood what the cordless carving knife was for.
Unceasing agony beckoned to me from the source of that damned voice, and I shied away. Tried to stay locked firmly into my own mind. To ignore Thackery’s ranting. He was angry. I was glad. We’d completed his last experiment. Time for him to uphold his end of the deal and kill me.
Please, just let me go.
No, no, no, you promised.
Son of a goblin’s bitch! I wanted to wake up and attack him. Stab his eyes out with the scalpel. Cut a few small appendages off with that electric knife. Pay him back for what he’d done to me. For taking back his promise. I just can’t move. Won’t stretch toward consciousness, not now. It hurts, and it’ll hurt worse if I wake up. I can’t scream for him again.
What was that noise? Cell phone?
The world around me shuddered. Pitched. Rolled.
I slammed against my restraints as everything turned upside down.
Chapter Twenty-three
I jackknifed into a sitting position, screaming to wake the dead. Or the supposed-to-be-dead. My body was on fire, burning with every muscle I clenched or patch of skin that rubbed against fabric. Each scream was torture to my damaged throat—scorching shocks that put the taste of blood and bile on my tongue.
No. Either I’d gone deaf or the screaming was just in my head. The only sounds coming from my throat were tiny squeaks and squeals. I caught hold of myself and realized two things. First, I was sitting up, which seemed wrong. Second, I was in a dusty, dim room with a single newspaper-covered window that hid any hint of day or night, and no furniture. Just the pile of blankets on which I sat.
Where the hell was I?
My nose twitched, and I forced back a sneeze. Black dots danced in my vision. The pained muscles in my back gave out, and I flopped onto the hard floor again, energy spent. I felt the sticky pull of bandages on my arms, legs, and stomach. My left hand was wrapped tight in gauze, and as I lifted it above my head to really look, agony speared me all the way to the shoulder. Blood splattered the cotton gauze above my left pinkie joint—the source of that awful shock of pain.
What happened to my hand? What happened to the rest of me?
I closed my eyes and tried to think. Push past the cocoon of pain that kept my brain muddled and my thoughts mushy. This wasn’t my room, of that I was positive. Being able to move had surprised me, but I didn’t know why. I was wounded and didn’t know how I’d been hurt, or by whom. I couldn’t even shout for help, because my throat was damaged. This was so fucked-up.
An image formed in my mind’s eye. A man with black hair and dark eyes, a shadow on his chin and cheeks. He was smiling at me, laughing. I knew him, didn’t I? What was his name?
Hell, what was
Footsteps thundered toward me from elsewhere in the house. I stared at the warped, faded door, my heart pounding in my ears. The steps seemed heavier than any man should make, like bricks falling on wood. The stamps stopped at the door. My right hand fumbled for a weapon and found only scratchy blankets.
The knob twisted, and the door squealed open on rusty hinges. A large figure towered in the doorway, so tall he actually ducked to step inside. I sucked in a startled shriek, positive I’d lost my mind. It couldn’t be a man, this seven-foot-tall giant with his hard-looking gray skin and figure that seemed hewn from stone. His face was squared off, his head flat and hairless. Eyes gleamed predator-like, and I suddenly knew what a cornered mouse felt like as the cat approached.
“You are awake,” the thing said, his voice grating like sandpaper on metal. “This pleases me.”
I couldn’t come up with a reply. Did he prefer his meals awake before he consumed them? He took another shambling step forward, and I hunched lower under the blankets. Instinct screamed at me to flee or attack, but my body hadn’t the strength to do either. Just lie there and let it kill me, like someone else should already have done. …
The creature regarded me for a moment, head tilted to one side, his chiseled face blank. “Evangeline, do you not remember me?”
He knew my name. “Evangeline” sounded correct, even though something else lingered in the recesses of memory. A name that sounded like “Alice.” I studied him, repeated the way his gravelly voice had said my name, so foreign and familiar at the same time. It seemed impossible to be both. My head hurt from trying to decipher it all.
“You have suffered recently,” he said. “It is not uncommon for memory loss to occur.”
