Dead and Gone

I thought I was in a cave. It felt like a cave: cool, damp. And the sound was funny.

My thoughts were anything but speedy. However, the sense of wrongness rose to the top of my consciousness with a kind of dismaying certainty. I was not where I was supposed to be, and I shouldn't be wherever I was. At the moment, these seemed like two separate and distinct thoughts.

Someone had bopped me on the head.

I thought about that. My head didn't feel sore, exactly: it felt thick, as if I had a bad cold and had taken a serious decongestant on top of that. So, I concluded (with all the speed of a turtle), I had been knocked out magically rather than physically. The result was about the same. I felt like hell, and I was scared to open my eyes. At the same time, I very much wanted to know who was in this space with me. I braced myself and made my eyelids open. I caught a glimpse of a lovely and indifferent face, and then my eyelids clamped shut again. They seemed to be operating on their own timetable.

"She's joining us," said someone.

"Good; we can have some fun," said another voice.

That didn't sound promising at all. I didn't think the fun was going to be anything I could enjoy, too.

I figured I could get rescued anytime now, and that would be just fine.

But the cavalry didn't ride in. I sighed and forced my eyes open again. This time the lids stayed apart, and by the light of a torch - a real, honest-to-God flaming wood torch - I examined my captors. One was a male fairy. He was as lovely as Claudine's brother Claude and just about as charming - which is to say, not at all. He had black hair, like Claude's, and handsome features and a buff body, like Claude's. But his face couldn't even simulate interest in me. Claude was at least able to fake it when circumstances required that.

I looked at Kidnapper Number Two. She hardly seemed more promising. She was a fairy, too, and therefore lovely, but she didn't appear to be any more lighthearted or fun-loving than her companion. Plus, she was wearing a body stocking, or something very like one, and she looked good in it, which in and of itself was enough to make me hate her.

"We have the right woman," Two said. "The vampire-loving whore. I think the one with short hair was a bit more attractive."

"As if any human can truly be lovely," said One.

It wasn't enough to be kidnapped; I had to be insulted, too. Though their words were the last thing in the world I needed to be worrying about, a little spark of anger lit in my chest. Just keep that up, asshole, I thought.You just wait till my great-grandfather gets ahold of you .

I hoped they hadn't hurt Amelia or Bubba.

I hoped Bill was all right.

I hoped he'd called Eric and my great-grandfather.

That was a lot of hoping. As long as I was in the wishful-thinking zone, I wished that Eric was tuned in to my very great distress and my very real fear. Could he track me by my emotions? That would be wonderful, because I was certainly full of them. This was the worst fix I'd ever been in. Years ago, when Bill and I had exchanged blood, he'd told me he'd be able to find me. I hoped he'd been telling the truth, and I hoped that ability hadn't faded with time. I was willing to be saved by just about anybody. Soon.

Kidnapper One slid his hands under my armpits and yanked me to a sitting position. For the first time, I realized my hands were numb. I looked down to see they were tied with a strip of leather. Now I was propped up against a wall, and I could see I was not actually in a cave. We were in an abandoned house. There was a hole in the roof, and I could see stars through it. The smell of mildew was strong, almost choking, and under it trailed the scents of rotting wood and wallpaper. There was nothing in the room but my purse, which had been tossed into a corner, and an old framed photograph, which hung crookedly on the wall behind the two fairies. The picture had been taken outside, probably in the nineteen twenties or thirties, and it was of a black family dressed up for their picture-taking adventure. They looked like a farming family. At least I was still in my own world, I figured, though probably not for long.

While I could, I smiled at Thing One and Thing Two. "My great-grandfather is going to kill you," I said. I even managed to sound pretty happy about that. "You just wait."

One laughed, tossing his black hair behind him in a male modelly gesture. "He'll never find us. He'll yield and step down rather than see you killed in a slow and painful way. He loooooves humans."

Two said, "He should have gone to the Summerland long ago. Consorting with humans will kill us off even faster than we are dying already. Breandan will seal us off. We'll be safe. Niall is out of date."

Like he'd expired on the shelves or something.

"Tell me you have a boss," I said. "Tell me you're not the brains of the operation." I was sort of aware that I was seriously addled, probably as a result of the spell that had knocked me out, but knowing I wasn't myself didn't seem to stop me talking, which was a pity.

"We owe allegiance to Breandan," One said proudly, as if that would make everything clear to me.

Instead of connecting their words with my great-grandfather's archenemy, I pictured the Brandon I'd gone to high school with, who'd been a running back on the football team. He'd gone to Louisiana Tech and then into the air force. "He got out of the service?" I said.

They stared at me with a total lack of comprehension. I couldn't really fault them for that. "Service of whom?" asked Two.

I was still blaming her for saying I was a skank, and I decided I wasn't speaking to her. "So, what's the program?" I asked One.

"We wait to hear from Niall, who will respond to Breandan's demands," he said. "Breandan will seal us all in Faery, and we will never have to deal with your like again."

At the moment, that seemed like an excellent plan, and I was temporarily on Breandan's side.

"So Niall doesn't want that to happen?" I said, trying to keep my voice steady.

"No, he wants to visit the likes of you. While Fintan hid the knowledge of you and your brother, Niall behaved himself, but when we removed Fintan - "

"Bit by bit!" said Two, and laughed.

"He was able to find enough information to track you down. And so did we. We found your brother's house one day, and there was a gift outside in a truck. We decided to have some fun with it. We followed your scent to where you work, and we left your brother's wife and the abomination outside for all to see. Now we're going to have some fun with you. Breandan has said we can do with you what we will, short of death."

Maybe my slow wits were speeding up a little. I understood that they were enforcers for my great-grandfather's enemy, and that they had killed my grandfather Fintan and crucified poor Crystal.

"I wouldn't, if I were you," I said, quite desperately. "Hurt me, that is. Because after all, what if this Breandan doesn't get what he wants? What if Niall wins?"

"In the first place, that's not likely," Thing Two said. She smiled. "We plan to win, and we plan to have a lot of fun. Especially if Niall wants to see you; surely he'll demand proof you're alive before he surrenders. We have to leave you breathing ... but the more terrible your plight, the faster the war will be over." She had a mouthful of the longest, sharpest teeth I'd ever seen. Some of them were capped with gleaming silver points. It was a ghastly touch.

At the sight of those teeth, those awful shining teeth, I threw off the remnants of the magic they'd laid on me, which was a great pity.

I was completely and utterly lucid for the next hour, which was the longest of my life.

I found it bewildering - and utterly shocking - that I could feel such pain and not die of it.

I would have been glad to die.

I know a lot about humans, since I see into their minds every day, but I didn't know a lot about fairy culture. I had to believe Thing One and Thing Two were in a league of their own. I couldn't imagine that my great-grandfather would have laughed when I began to bleed. And I had to hope that he wouldn't enjoy cutting a human with a knife, either, as One and Two did.

I'd read books where a person being tortured went "somewhere else" during the ordeal. I did my best to find somewhere else to go mentally, but I remained right there in the room. I focused on the strong faces of the farming family in the photograph, and I wished it wasn't so dusty so I could see them clearly. I wished the picture was straight. I just knew that good family would have been horrifed at what they were witnessing now.

At moments when the fairy duo wasn't hurting me, it was very hard to believe I was awake and that this was really happening. I kept hoping I was suffering through a particularly horrible dream, and I would wake from it ... sooner, rather than later. I'd known from a very early age that there was cruelty in the world - believe me, I'd learned that - but I was still shocked that the Things were enjoying themselves . I had no personhood to them - no identity. They were completely indifferent to the plans I'd had for my life, the pleasures I'd hoped to enjoy. I might have been a stray puppy or a frog they'd caught by the creek.

I myself would have thought doing these things to a puppy or a frog was horrible.

"Isn't this the daughter of the ones we killed?" One asked Two while I was screaming.

"Yes. They tried to drive through water during a flood," Two said in a tone of happy reminiscence. "Water! When the man had sky blood! They thought the iron can would protect them."

"The water spirits were glad to pull them under," One said.

My parents hadn't died in an accident. They'd been murdered. Even through my pain, I registered that, though at the moment it was beyond me to form a feeling about the knowledge.

I tried to talk to Eric in my head in the hope he could find me through our bond. I thought of the only other adult telepath I knew, Barry, and I sent him messages - though I knew damn good and well that we were too far away from each other to transmit our thoughts. To my everlasting shame, toward the end of that hour I even considered trying to contact my little cousin Hunter. I knew, though, that not only was Hunter too young to understand, but also ... I really couldn't do that to a child.

I gave up hope, and I waited for death.

While they were having sex, I thought of Sam and how happy it would make me if I could see him now. I wanted to say the name of someone who loved me, but my throat was too hoarse from screaming.

I thought about vengeance. I wanted One and Two to die with a craving that burned through my gut. I hoped someone, any one of my supe friends - Claude and Claudine, Niall, Alcide, Bill, Quinn, Tray, Pam, Eric, Calvin, Jason - would tear these two limb from limb. Perhaps the other fairies could take the same length of time with them that they were taking with me.

One and Two had said that Breandan wanted them to spare me, but it didn't take a telepath to realize they weren't going to be capable of holding off. They were going to get carried away with their fun, as they had with Fintan and Crystal, and there would be no repairing me.

I became sure I was going to die.

I began to hallucinate. I thought I saw Bill, which made no sense at all. He was in my backyard probably, wondering where I was. He was back in the world that made sense . But I could swear I saw him creeping up behind the creatures, who were enjoying working with a pair of razor blades. He had his finger over his mouth as if he were telling me to keep silent. Since he wasn't there, and my throat was too raw to speak anyway (I couldn't even produce a decent scream anymore), that was easy. There was a black shadow following him, a shadow topped with a pale flame.

Two jabbed me with a sharp knife she'd just pulled from her boot, a knife that shone like her teeth. They both leaned close to me to drink in my reaction. I could only make a raspy noise. My face was crusted with tears and blood.

"Little froggy croaking," One said.

"Listen to her. Croak, froggy. Croak for us."

I opened my eyes and looked into hers, meeting them squarely for the first time in many long minutes. I swallowed and summoned up all my remaining strength.

"You're going to die," I said with absolute certainty. But I'd said it before, and they didn't pay any more attention now than they had the first time.

I made my lips move up in a smile.

The male had just enough time to look startled before something gleaming flashed between his head and his shoulders. Then, to my intense pleasure, he was in two pieces and I was covered in a wash of fresh red blood. It ran over me, drenching the blood already dried on my skin. But my eyes were clear, so I could see a white hand gripped Two's neck, lifting her, spinning her around, and her shock was intensely gratifying as teeth almost as sharp as her own ripped into her long neck.