"I asked you why you thought Miss Edna"s was about rape. The people there are offering it. If they say yes, it"s not rape, is it?"
"It still is," I said, wanting to go back to the hotel, get in my shower, curl up on the floor, and cry for a couple days with hot water sluicing down on me. "They don"t understand what they"re doing."
"Some of them might not, I grant you," said Incy, eminently reasonable. "But some of them truly do understand and want to do it anyway. It"s kind of like hypnosis. While you"re joined, you can instill a sense of peace and well-being in them. They feel high afterward."
"It could kill them," I said.
"It never does," said Incy. "We"re always very careful."
"Who taught you how to do that?" The car"s powerful heater had come on, but I was still trembling.
"Miss Edna," said Incy, turning down another street.
"Are we headed back uptown?" Boz asked. "Where are we?"
"We"re in my car," said Incy with exaggerated patience. "It never does kill them. It makes them feel fabulous, and they offer it up freely. How is that rape?"
I was sick of this discussion, so sick of Incy, so anxious to be out of this car and alone somewhere so I could let some of this emotion out. As of tomorrow, I was going to start completely suppressing all emotion again. There was no other way.
"It"s statutory rape," I said stubbornly, leaning my head against the window again. "It"s just wrong."
"Wrong!" said Incy, astonished. "Wrong for who?"
"Wrong in general," I said, feeling sobs start to thicken in my chest, like storm clouds. "It turns out that there actually is a wrong and a right, and it makes a difference which side your decision falls on."
Incy took his eyes off the road to stare at me in disbelief. "What are you talking about?"
"Some things are right to do; some things are wrong." I actually had to explain this.
"Like you would know!" Incy said, unconsciously mimicking the words Dray had shouted at me. I was detecting a theme here. "You, who stole from people for decades! You, who"ve left people behind to die while you escaped! This is me you"re lecturing from your pulpit, Nas. Me. I"ve seen you do stuff that would make a c.o.c.kroach give you a high five! What about that train wreck in India? How many people did you save then? Oh, wait-you were too busy picking their valuables up out of the gra.s.s, stuffing them into your pockets!"
"That was then!" I said, burning with the knowledge of how true it all was. Incy could go on for days about the many awful things I"d done. I"d never be able to remember them all, even if I tried for the rest of my life.
Incy laughed shortly, derisively.
Some scathing, defensive retorts came to my lips, but I bit them back. It was pointless to remind him of his own crimes. He was right. I was no one to judge.
"That was then," I said again lamely. "But I know right from wrong now, and I can"t unknow it." I could barely speak, full of revulsion for myself, my past. In desperation I closed my eyes. Immediately I saw Reyn"s face, harsh and forbidding, then intent and focused, then flushed with desire as we fused our present and our past with just a kiss.
I"d thrown him away like an old apple core.
"I don"t know about all that," said Boz, "and this is all interminably boring. But I would definitely rather hang out at a different bar."
"Me too," said Katy.
"Me too." My voice sounded as broken as I felt.
There was silence for a while, though Incy was muttering angrily under his breath. Probably cursing us out as ungrateful traitors. Inside I was writhing in pain, my thoughts ricocheting in panicked hysteria. I was lost; I was alone. I had nothing and no one to help me. Not anymore.
When Incy spoke, his voice was mild, almost disinterested.
"I"m really sorry to hear you all say that," he said, and flicked his hand sideways, as though shaking off water.
And suddenly I was drowning in darkness.
CHAPTER 23.
I couldn"t move. My hands, my feet-all of me weighed a thousand pounds. I could still feel everything, but even my utmost, straining, panicked efforts couldn"t move anything except my eyes.
The world looked like it was smeared with Vaseline. Edges were blurry and indistinct. Lights outside the car were fuzzy halos. Incy seemed to be talking to me from very far away.
I tried to scream, tried to summon an immense noise from deep in my belly, but I was aware of only a high-pitched keening sound. Again I tried to move my arms, my legs, but gravity was much too strong. And of course this reminded me of some of the worst times in my life: The night my parents died, my father"s steward hid me in a neighbor"s wagon, beneath a mound of hay. I hadn"t moved or made a sound for many long hours, out of shock, trauma, the fear of being found. Even when I breathed in warm hay dust, I fought the coughing down. I kept my eyes squeezed tightly shut, as if the world couldn"t see me if I couldn"t see it. Covered by the heavy weight of suffocating hay, I"d had hours to vividly relive the deaths of my parents, my brothers and sisters. Over and over I had seen Eyds"s head topple off her shoulders and fall to the ground.
Other times, during raids by the Butcher of Winter or other tribes, I"d hidden up in trees, down in root cellars, in the special hidey-holes I"d made sure to have until the late sixteen hundreds, when raiders weren"t part of my world anymore. For hours I"d clung to tree branches, my skirts tucked up under me, trying not to shake a single leaf, knock loose a single acorn or pinecone. I"d stayed silent and still until my muscles screamed in agony, until I was shaking with cold and my jaw ached from keeping my teeth clenched. When I"d finally been able to move, long after they"d gone, my body had been so stiff that I couldn"t climb down. I"d fallen, hitting several branches and then landing so heavily on my shoulder that my collarbone had snapped.
Later I"d found a neighbor who"d hidden in a hay rack, which had been torched with him in it. Another neighbor had hidden in a barrel that had been axed open as the raiders looked for ale. The neighbor had been axed open, too. I"d been the lucky one, for I was still alive, broken collarbone or no.
All my memories of having to be still, silent, all those memories that were a.s.sociated with terror and pain and dread-they came back and whirled around me like tumbleweeds of barbed wire, like shrieking banshees, as I sat petrified and immobilized in Incy"s car. Oh G.o.ddess, help me. Oh G.o.d oh G.o.d oh G.o.d...
Next to me, Incy laughed. He swiveled to look at Boz and Katy in the backseat.
"There! All of you are nicely coc.o.o.ned, right?" He laughed again. "Even better, you"ve shut up. No more of your whining and yapping and self-righteous mewling. Fantastic!" He turned to me. "See what I can do when others give me their power? I become very, very powerful myself."
m.u.f.fled sounds came from the backseat. Incy had obviously put some kind of binding spell on all of us. How did he know how to do that? I wondered with rising hysteria. Had the mysterious Miss Edna taught him this, too? I tried to grit my teeth, to lift one finger using all my strength, and screamed inside when nothing happened.
Incy let out a sigh. We"d left the main streets and were now on a smaller road that wasn"t lit. Holy Mother, where was he taking us? This couldn"t be happening. In all my fears of Incy I"d never imagined things coming to this, never truly believed that he would turn on me, hurt me.
I tried to say, "Incy, you love me!" but it was like being encased in firm jelly and I couldn"t get out any sound, couldn"t move my jaw.
"You know, I really tried, Nasty," Incy said. "I really tried. This is all your fault. You brought this on yourself, and you know it. This isn"t how I wanted it. I didn"t want you dead. I wanted you by my side, bread "n" b.u.t.ter, like the old days. The two of us, ruling equally."
My eyes widened. Ruling? Ruling what? Wait-dead? Dead?
Incy reached across and took my hand, which felt like it had been dipped in Novocain-I could sense it, but it was numb.
"I"ve tried so hard, for so long," he said. "I did everything you wanted. I was there for you. I supported whatever you wanted to do. But it was never enough, was it? You should have been thanking me. You should have been grateful. Instead you just left, with no word. With no word!" He shouted the last part, painfully loud inside the car, and slammed his hands on the steering wheel. "You left me!" he shouted. "How dare you! How dare you! You ran away! I had to ask people! No one knew where you were! Do you know how humiliating that was? Everyone was surprised that I, your other half, didn"t know where you were!"
I had thought of him as my best friend, my other half. It had seemed like a good thing. Now I saw it as I was a building, and he was poison ivy covering the building, blocking the windows, creeping inside. Again I struggled, my arms trying to push against ropes that weren"t there. Maybe his spell had lessened, or he hadn"t done it right, or it would wear off.... No. I tried to scream and barely got a tiny unnhh sound out. I was drowning, drowning in a coc.o.o.n of dark magick.
"And you," Incy went on, pointing his finger at me, as he had done in the hotel room. Had that been tonight? Just tonight, earlier? "You have all this lovely power. Did you offer to share it with me? No. You ran away and gave it to strangers! You threw it all at those laughable puritans! And they don"t even care about you! Not like I do!"
I discovered my eyes were still capable of tears. They had cared about me, at River"s Edge. They had. I"d given them nothing in return. Had I ever even said thank you? Once? I couldn"t remember. My eyes burned. All of Solis"s words about consequences, about cause and effect, came tumbling into my brain. This was the universe dropping an anvil on my head and shouting, "You made the wrong effing choices, you colossal idiot!" Because none of the previous hints had worked.
Incy wanted my power. He wanted more power than a regular person could give. Just like in my dreams, my visions.
Why was I-why was I wasting time wallowing in self-pity? My brain suddenly cleared, my shrieking panic temporarily held off. I would deal with the unending regret and despair later. Right now I had to save my a.s.s, if only so I could go to River"s Edge, apologize for being me, and then hide in a cave for the rest of eternity.
I concentrated. I focused on dampening the white-knuckled terror rising in me. Think, Nastasya, think. I remembered all the boring meditation lessons foisted on me. I inhaled slowly, one, two, three, four. Those four seconds felt endless. Adrenaline lit my brain as I exhaled slowly, one, two, three, four. And again. Pull the air into your belly, Anne had said. Inhale and exhale only through your nose. Breathe in calmness, breathe out external distractions. Breathe. And again.
My jaw felt looser. "I don"t have any power," I managed to mumble almost incoherently.
Incy laughed, throwing his head back. Then his face contorted and he swung at me. I couldn"t move, couldn"t duck. He slammed his fist into the seat right by my head, making my head bounce. "Don"t lie to me!" he screamed in my face. "You keep lying to me!" His face was ugly, splotched with red. Suddenly he leaned over and yanked on the scarf around my neck. I felt so enveloped that I was shocked when he managed to touch me. He tugged on it several times and got it off my neck. Rolling down his window, he threw it out into the night. My scarf, my protection... now I was completely bat-s.h.i.t freaking.
Oh G.o.d. Breathe. Breathe. Slowly. In, two, three, four.
Incy was driving crazily, speeding down the dark road. The car kept slipping on the falling snow. If we wrecked, Boz, Katy, and I would be trapped, unable to move. If he flipped the car and the gas tank exploded, we would burn and burn, with so much pain that we would lose our minds. But not die.
Incy roughly pushed his hand beneath my collar, his fingers easily finding my scar with its raised edges. "Do you think I"m stupid?" he shouted. "I know who you are! I know what you are! Did you think I couldn"t add it all up? I"m! Not! Stupid!" He banged on the steering wheel with each word, and the car zigzagged, making my stomach roil.
He knew? About my family, my heritage? How? For how long? Had he stayed with me only to try to benefit from it? The thought was crushing, deepening my sadness and disillusionment about all that Incy and I had been to each other. So Incy knew I was the only heir to the House of lfur the Wolf. My power was supposedly immense and ancient. Incy was going to take it from me.
"You"re a selfish b.i.t.c.h!" Incy said. "But I welcomed you back with open arms. You didn"t deserve it, not after what you did. But I took you back." He looked at me with a cold malevolence, and the car skidded again.
I"d never felt so powerless, which was ironic, since he was doing this to get my power. I had no doubt he had already mapped out how. Innocencio was going to wrest my family"s power from me, and unlike me, he had plans for it. Look at what he was able to do just by stealing power from regular people. What would he do with a power so big, so strong? I"d done nothing with it besides try to flip Nell out. I had done nothing with my legacy, my potential, my heritage. Now I was about to lose any chance to.
I had to get out of this, had to come to terms with who I was and what I could do, or I would never do anything else again. This knowledge settled on me like a shroud, and I almost wept with desperation.
Is there a manual somewhere that lists abandoned ware-houses suitable for crazed maniacs to take victims to? On TV, in movies and books, there always seems to be one handy where the axe murderer of the week can hole up and do his dastardly deeds.
Incy apparently had that manual. His was, I think, on the very outskirts of Boston, past Quincy, on a spit of industrial land that jutted out into the ocean. He pulled the Caddy onto a loading dock and got out, leaving the car"s headlights on. As soon as he left the car, I struggled again, trying to squirm, then relax, then squirm again to break free of this G.o.dd.a.m.n holding spell. I didn"t know how Boz and Katy were doing. I hadn"t heard anything from them, and I couldn"t turn to check.
I watched as Incy jumped up on a platform and pulled open a metal sliding door that led into a vast darkness. Looking excited and determined, he came back to the car and yanked open the side door.
"You first," he said grimly. I heard rustling sounds and felt someone"s legs. .h.i.t the back of my seat. It wasn"t until Incy had hauled Boz out onto the gravel and dragged him past me that I could see him. Boz"s face was white and wet with sweat. His eyes were half closed, unfocused, his mouth hanging open slackly. Incy put his shoulder under one of Boz"s arms and walked him up the cement ramp to the open door. Boz"s feet scrabbled clumsily on the ground; an onlooker might a.s.sume he was completely wasted. Incy pulled Boz into the warehouse, right into the darkness, and my throat ached with sobs. Incy had brought us here to die. I didn"t know why he was going to include Boz and Katy in this scene-it was aimed at me. But their deaths would be on my hands as well.
My brain was locked in a dull panic. I was trying to remember any magickal thing I"d ever been taught, from how to keep flies away to how to help onions grow, hoping that something useful would hit me. My thoughts were random, disorganized, pinging slowly from one side to another like atoms in a supercooled matrix. I heard a quiet huffing sound from the backseat, as if Katy was trying to cry or was having trouble breathing.
Innocencio was gone for ages, I don"t know how long, and then he came back for Katy.
He grabbed her and pulled her out of the car, handling her more easily than Boz. She slumped like a stringless puppet over his arm, looking unconscious, bloodless. It occurred to me that Incy was probably drawing power from Boz and Katy right now. And it was hurting them. Maybe even killing them. He was using them to keep us all bound, so that he"d be able to get my much greater store of power.
Eventually he came back for me, his third hostage. I wanted to kick him, punch him, scream like a harpy, but the little I"d said before had taken herculean effort. Think, Nas. I had to harness whatever mental and magickal energy I had for the brilliant escape plan that I was sure was going to pop, fully formed, into my fogged brain at any second.
"Tsk, tsk." Incy looked regretful as he opened my car door. I was encased in a magickal spider"s web, a deadened coc.o.o.n of numb helplessness. He unclipped my seat belt and pulled me out of the car as if I was deadweight.
"Incy," I murmured, struggling to get my feet under me as he hauled me up the ramp.
He frowned down at me. "Shut up. You"ve had your chance. Now you"re going to do what I want." My legs felt like blades of gra.s.s, unable to support my weight, unresponsive to my hazy commands. At the warehouse door, dank, chilly air wafted out, and with it came an unmistakable impression of corruption and malignancy. Dark magick had been worked here before. Foul, inhuman deeds had taken place. Pa.s.sing through the doorway reignited my panic, as if crossing the threshold removed my last bit of hope.
Incy let go of me and I fell heavily to the cold, dusty concrete floor. A dull, radiating pain started in my shoulder and snaked around to my chest, making it painful to breathe. He pulled on some rusty chains, and the loading door creaked and groaned, then crashed down like an old-fashioned portcullis. Dust entered my nose and mouth and I wanted to sneeze, but even those muscles seemed incapable of getting organized, and I was left with a nagging irritation in my sinuses.
"I"m sorry we"re ending this way," Incy said conversationally as he grabbed me under the arms to half drag, half carry me to a wire cage. "It didn"t have to be like this. It could have been you and me. Bread and b.u.t.ter. Sharing your power." He got me inside the cage-it was an elevator. He pushed the b.u.t.ton and the cage rose unsteadily, with screeching cables and grinding gears. It stopped with a heavy jolt that made me lose my balance again, and I toppled against its wire-grate side. Incy pulled the gate open and looped one arm around my waist. We were up on a balcony that ran around three sides of the building, overlooking the main warehouse floor. Ragged-edged shafts of moonlight fell through holes in the rusted metal ceiling and streamed through the broken panes of windows placed high up on the walls. It was freezing in here, as cold as it was out in the open. The air itself was tainted. This place was soiled and unclean, filling me with a creeping revulsion with every breath. Incy had known of this place. What had he done here?
Think, Nastasya, think. You"re so powerful-show us. Think of a spell, any spell, that you could use. Think of something, for G.o.d"s sake. Oh, River, help me. I"m so sorry. I"m so sorry!
Incy pulled me along, an unwieldy and clumsy baggage. Our feet kicked up dust that filled my nose and mouth, and I would have given a lot to be able to spit, to sneeze. Candlelight flickered ahead; as we got closer I saw the dark, slumped forms of Boz and Katy kneeling on the floor, their hands behind them, chained to two rough wooden support posts some eight feet apart.
I stumbled, seeing their gray faces, hair streaked with sweat. Their chests moved with rapid, jerky breaths. They neither looked up nor gave any impression that they knew we were here. Lightning-fast images of the two of them through the years flashed through my brain. Boz, dressed in a white linen suit, laughing and drinking champagne; Katy, in black from head to toe, holding one finger to her lips as she helped me break into a wall safe. I saw Boz"s white, wolfy smile as his eyes lit on a new mark; saw Katy"s brown eyes gleam as she whirled at a dance, her skirts swinging around her.
"Here. Join your friends. The three of you can sit here and think about what hypocrites you are." Incy roughly dragged me to a post across from them and pushed me toward it. My injured shoulder slammed against it, making me gasp thickly as fresh pain exploded across my collarbone and back. I slid down, ending on my side almost face-first on the filthy wooden floor. Boz blearily tried to look at me, but after a moment his head dropped again.
"You"ve done this, not me," said Incy, like he was talking about a stain on my clothes. He pulled out a length of chain and grabbed my shoulders, propping me up against the post, which was maybe twelve inches square, unfinished, studded with old nails and staples, th.o.r.n.y with splinters. As soon as the chain touched my skin, I recoiled as if it was electrified. The chain was spelled. It was antimagick, anti-life. I hadn"t known something like that existed.
Incy wrapped the chain several times around my wrists, and I heard the click of a lock. I felt dizzy, light-headed, the cold chain burning against me. I couldn"t get two thoughts to line up together in my brain. I saw what was happening in front of me, around me, heard Incy talking, the m.u.f.fled gagging sounds Boz and Katy were making. But it all seemed surreal, as if I were watching a horror movie out of the corner of my eye. My shoulder was still a throbbing pain, and now I became aware of the ache of pulled muscles, starting at my elbows, felt the bare, splintery wood of the post rubbing against my wrists.
"None of this had to happen." Incy waved a hand around the warehouse, then leaned down in front of me. Even through my haze I saw a yellow glint deep behind the blackness of his eyes. Why hadn"t I seen that yesterday? The day before? Last summer?
"Here"s your chance," said Incy. "Give me your power, and all this can stop right now. You aren"t using it. If you give it to me, I"ll let Boz and Katy go." He looked at me. I imagined shooting him the bird. I wished I knew a spell that would let me control one finger on one hand.
I swallowed, almost gagging on the simple action. "Bite me," I managed thickly.
His mercurial face changed again, and then he was raging, shouting, stamping his feet, making billows of unbearably itchy dust swirl around us. He swung a thick length of chain, whipping it right next to my head, so close that I felt it brush my hair, and all I could do was blink.
"I hate you for making me do this!" he screamed, an inch from my nose. "For what you"re making me do to them!" He lashed out with the chain again, hitting Boz"s post, where it gouged out a chunk of wood.
Incy was incensed, out of control, shrieking and spewing and kicking things. He picked up a hunk of metal and hurled it across the warehouse, where it hit a brittle old window, making it explode.
There was no reason to think he would let us live. I knew this with cold certainty, fear forming pointless, stinging tears in my eyes. He was going to kill us and take our power. No one would miss us. We were old hands at disappearing. People would a.s.sume we"d taken other names, gone to other cities. Who would care, anyway? The three of us had left a wake of disappointed friends, hurt and embittered acquaintances. We were losers, and losing us would bother no one.
After everything I had been through, the dozens of times I had cheated death, I would actually die, tonight. I hadn"t, 450 years ago. Tonight I finally would. I was already shaking with cold, and now fresh fear sent a new surge of adrenaline into my heart. I felt jittery, hopped-up and yet immobile, as if I"d drunk a hundred cups of espresso and then gotten sewn into a mummy costume.
Even as Incy ranted, working himself up, I kept picturing River"s face, how she had looked at me with kindness and understanding. I saw Reyn, remembering how angry he made me, how much I"d wanted him, how much I didn"t know about him, how much I should try to understand. Reyn had been there, the day my first life had ended. He had been here in my present, as I"d tried to become yet another new me. I would never see him again. The idea was shocking.
Incy stopped suddenly, standing taut and furious in front of Boz. Boz blearily raised his head and blinked, his eyes unfocused. He was so handsome, even pretty. I"d known him for ninety years or so, seen his looks change through the ages. He"d always been the most handsome man in any room, not in a supermasculine way, and not in a fallen-angel way like Incy. Just blond and fine-featured and twinkly-eyed. Now he was in a stupor, his mouth open, hair mussed and streaked with dirt and nervous sweat. He was bent far forward, putting a painful strain on his shoulders, his hands chained behind the post. He slowly licked his lips, seemed to struggle for a minute.
"Don"t do it, man." The words were barely decipherable, his voice sounding clotted in his throat.
"Boz." Incy looked regretful as he knelt next to him. "I"m sorry. I really wanted Nas, but you got in the way."
Great. That wouldn"t haunt me forever. As short as my forever would be.
Gently, Incy reached out and put both his hands on Boz"s face, framing it with his fingers.
"Give me your power, Boz, old man," Incy whispered.
Boz struggled to swallow, weakly formed the words: "Fu... ck... you."
Incy"s fingers tightened on Boz"s face. "Give me your power." His voice was low and deadly.
"No." I saw Boz"s mouth move, but couldn"t actually hear him. But Incy did. He began to chant, slowly and softly at first, then building in strength and volume. I couldn"t make out any of the words, but even from ten feet away I could feel their vindictiveness, their hatred. My skin p.r.i.c.kled as I felt bits of dark magick coalescing, creeping up through the floorboards like insects drawn out by the scent of refuse. It sank down through the holes in the roof, the broken windows, dark wisps of evil and despair coiling through the air like cold, oily smoke.
A regular person would have felt nothing, sensed nothing. But all the hairs on my arms were on end, and I writhed inside as darkness rose.