Chandra and I both struggled and cursed, continuing a bit just for form’s sake, though neither of us had a chance of getting loose.
“Ladies, ladies,” Hunter said, sounding bored.
I slammed my head back against him, satisfied when I heard him grunt. Petty, but pleasing. And he let me go.
“I am finished apologizing for who I am,” I said, jerking away from him and whirling to face them all. Chandra wasn’t the only one who needed to know this. I was breathing hard, and I knew my aura had turned red with anger. “Your discomfort with me is your problem, not mine. Got it? I know who I am.”
And I did. I could be beautiful without being soft, and I could be tough without being bitter. Without becoming Olivia, without experiencing the world through her body and eyes, I would have never realized this on my own. I folded my arms across my chest and silently dared them all to speak.
“Finally,” Micah murmured from his corner, lifting his drink.
“Yeah.” My eyes flickered to meet his. “Finally.”
A gurgle sounded in my stomach. Then a rising of heat in my gorge. Suddenly, I shuddered, and my intestines seized. Pain wracked my body, and I screamed, collapsing and clutching my loins. A searing pain shot from my thighs to my chest, paralyzing my lower back, and I whipped forward.
“What’s happening to her?”
I gave an uncontrollable twitch, then puked vodka, citrus, and blood.
“Jesus!”
“Olivia! What’s wrong?” Felix was there, but his outline blurred above me, tears and agony ruining my vision.
My organs felt skewered, like they’d been ripped out from inside me. I had to be dying, I thought. I
“It’s inside. It’s my insides…” I looked at my hands, which had been clutching abdomen and thighs, expecting to see them drowning in blood, but there was nothing. Surprise had my mouth closing momentarily. The pain abated, no longer acute, but the spasms and heat lingered. A groan spiraled out of me, filling the cantina.
Micah had reached me at some point, and I regained my sense of self long enough to realize he was cradling my head in his lap, his physician’s hands searching, inspecting my ribs and stomach and legs, and finding nothing.
“It’s not me!” I doubled over again, a fresh wound cutting me open from sternum to pubic bone. It wasn’t me, of that much I was sure. This was a power outside myself, outside this room too. Still, waves of nausea built again in my stomach. I took a deep breath, but the air was metallic with the taste of blood. I groaned, writhed, and finally, near unconsciousness, lay still.
“It’s okay. Just stay where you are, take a minute.” Micah shifted, turning to the others, though I couldn’t see them. “Somebody go get Greta.” There were footsteps, then the report of the door.
“She’s not bleeding.” Hunter’s voice, laced with concern, which would’ve been gratifying if it didn’t scare the shit out of me.
“Maybe she drank too much.”
The pain had subsided, but the echo of it was still in my bones. I swallowed hard against the vomit souring my throat and the brighter scents of pain and fear.
“Maybe she’s allergic to the masking pheromones?”
“No, I tested the solution on a small patch of skin before I applied it. They’re a perfect match.”
It didn’t feel perfect, I wanted to say, but a tongue of swollen sandpaper inhabited my mouth. It was as if I’d been denied drink for a week instead of imbibing only minutes before.
Then the roil in my gut again, a tight coil of fear that wasn’t really mine. I couldn’t understand it. It was like the core of my body belonged to someone else. I managed to sit up with Micah’s help, his large palm warm and supporting on the small of my back.
“Maybe she—”
The door to the cantina swung open with a resounding bang. A figure was silhouetted in the shadows of the hall; a man of great bulk, middling height, and only one arm. The dim lights of the cantina made him appear a ghost, and bent at the waist, he wavered like one as well.
“Gregor!” Vanessa abandoned me for him. “God! What happened?”
“Ajax,” he managed, before bending over himself. My body froze, even my shuddering stopped for an instant, and my eyes darted to the hallway behind him, half expecting to see Ajax there, the tip of his flaming javelin already pointed at my heart. “He found me last night, just after dusk. I don’t know how…I didn’t do anything…I didn’t —”
“Shh,” Vanessa said, arm over his shoulders. “Of course you didn’t. Come sit down.”
“I can’t…” He looked up at us with as pained an expression as I’d ever seen on another human being. “I can’t keep them in.”
I glanced down, unprepared for what supernatural beings could do to another nonmortal. His guts spilled forward, bulging from the hollow of his body, pink coils of twisting organs snaking from the cavity. His one good arm was plastered with blood.
“Oh, my God!” Micah left me so quickly I wobbled, then puked again, this time with shock and revulsion.
“I’ll take care of you,” I heard Micah say over my retching. “Don’t worry about a thing.”
“Did you see Warren?” Hunter asked. He was the only one who appeared remotely calm. I wondered if he was still reclined in his seat, ankle crossed over his knee, a detached observer. I couldn’t look, though. My eyes— like everyone’s—were fastened on Gregor.
His face collapsed upon itself, and red-tinged saliva bubbled from his mouth. “They used me as bait. He tracked my pheromones.”
The room fell dead silent.
“And Warren wouldn’t listen.” He was sobbing now, mouth wide. “I tried to tell him no, not to do it, but he never listens.”
“What? What did he do?”
“He traded himself for me.” Stunned by this news, nobody moved. Another helpless sob escaped him. “They let me go, but I was followed. I’m so sorry. I couldn’t close off the entrance to the boneyard by myself. And there was nobody to close it behind me.”
I gathered it was no small thing for a Shadow agent to infiltrate the boneyard. Still, what did it matter? Any enemy who tried to enter the sanctuary would fry, right? I opened my mouth to say as much, but another fiery assault wracked my body. My eyes bulged painfully from their sockets, my throat stretched and burning in a soundless cry. And I no longer cared about the sanctuary.
“They’re torturing him,” Micah said, kneeling next to me. “He and Olivia are linked, remember? She must be experiencing the residual effects.”
If this was residual, I never wanted to feel the real thing. Another slice, and I squeezed my eyes so tight spots danced there. I came out of it in time to catch the end of Gregor’s words. “—because he knows her true identity. We have to hand her over at dawn—”
“Or they’ll kill Warren,” Hunter finished for him. This time I did turn, arching my neck to find him. He sat back in his chair, eyeing me dispassionately, sizing me up like I was a sow to be sold at the country fair. I closed my eyes, wondering how I had ever thought him handsome.
“We can’t send her up, even if we wanted to,” Vanessa said. “She’ll incinerate herself before she even breathes fresh air.”
“Wha…?” Gregor grimaced. Felix quickly filled him in, and Gregor dropped his head back, groaning. I doubled over again.
“Stop it!” I screamed, to the sky, to Warren, to the torturers, and to a God I didn’t even know existed. I screamed until my throat was raw, and when I finished, a chuckle whispered like a heavy, bouncing wind across the room. Then the torture stopped. We all stared at one another.
“Your voice,” Hunter said quietly, eyes narrowed on my face. “Ajax heard it.”
