Grab my left hand, grab my left hand, I willed silently.
“?’Cause you’re younger and stupider, that’s why.”
Grunting, Alfie turned, bent, and grabbed my right hand with his left and began dragging me down the sidewalk on my back. I employed one of Shazam’s tricks—made myself heavier. I used to do it when I was a kid. I have no idea how it works, I just know it does. Kat’s daughter, Rae, often does it to me, especially if I’m trying to pick her up to put her down for a nap. I needed him to grab my left hand, too, see if my killing touch worked through fabric.
He made it a dozen paces before snapping, “Bugger, the bitch is heavy!” He stopped, reached behind him and grabbed my left hand with his right and resumed trudging.
My theory had been tested: only bare skin to bare skin was deadly. One goal down.
“Hey, Cal,” Alfie called excitedly to Callum, “maybe she makes up for not getting more. We could say it took us all night to capture her ’cause she’s some kinda superhero. That’d give us plenty of time to have fun with her first.”
Callum was silent a moment. “Dunno. Maybe if we add in the sword. But I ain’t sure the bitch’s worth giving it up.”
“The fuck she ain’t, look at the tits on her. We don’t get many like this. Bet she’s red all over, got the fire down below, you know? Jaysus, you can see it in her eyes. Give him the sword and tell ’im it’s got some kinda magic, thought he’d want it more. You know he thinks we’re stupid and eager to please. C’mon, let’s take her back to the arcade.”
Another silence, then Callum said, “But we bust ass and bag his dozen tomorrow. I don’t want to get on his bad side.”
“All he’s got is bad sides.”
“Hustle it. ’Spect I might take all night with this one.”
“I get my turn,” Alfie protested. “You ain’t the only one got needs.”
“Your turn’ll last about as long as your dick, while I blink once.”
As they devolved into juvenile bickering about the size of their genitalia, and speculative attributes of mine, all I could think was they’d done this before. How many of the people they’d abducted were women? How many paralyzed, helpless women had they raped?
Callum and Alfie were going to die tonight.
* * *
π
They dragged me four city blocks before Callum finally came back to help Alfie haul my boneless body up a steep flight of stairs, into an abandoned office building that housed several businesses on the first floor.
The back of my biker jacket was no doubt shredded but I didn’t think my back was. Yet. I had enough scars and was proud of each one, but scars from getting stupidly ambushed and being dragged were not something I wanted to sport. I’d been off my game, brooding in a corner of my mind about Bridget, worried about Shazam and the beast in my flat. I’d been as stupid as my prey.
I’d pondered two things while being dragged, staring up at the clear, starlit skies, unable to close my eyes: Where exactly was the paralysis spell inside me, and how would events unfold? Would they undress me, or only the necessary parts? How far down my chest had the blackness beneath my skin spread? Would I blow them up if they touched my bare breast without my consent? I liked that thought. Problem was, it would only take care of one of them. The other might take my sword and vanish, leaving me lying there paralyzed.
As they half walked, half dragged me through a door into a retro-eighties-style arcade, I searched deeper for the magic that had given my central nervous system orders to stop functioning properly. Spells that entered the bloodstream invariably latched onto some part of the brain, pressuring and reshaping it. But where was the bloody thing and how did I neutralize it?
I envisioned my brain, rummaging around in it, seeking an anomaly. I don’t know if other people see their brains like I do. Perhaps years of confinement tortured me into forging pathways I’d never have developed otherwise. Perhaps whatever Rowena did to me made me different. Regardless, I have an acute, detailed awareness of what’s inside my skull, and the ability to experience it with multiple senses. I have files and vaults and I’m constantly moving things around, optimizing functionality. You have to take care of your brain. It’s your greatest weapon.
Aha, there! A shimmer of silver, a bead of possession, nestled close to the pain center in my head. I’ve spent a lot of time working on that spot. When I used to hurt so bad from hunger, I’d mentally stuff soft cushy pillows in my stomach to absorb the acid, and cocoon the pain center in my brain with cozy, warm comforters. It passed the time more tolerably.
“Not too close to his fucking door,” Callum snapped.
“Why? He never comes through. He ain’t gonna leave.”
“Hang onto her while I set things up. Gonna be at her awhile.”
Callum left Alfie supporting me crookedly while he rummaged audibly about in a part of the arcade beyond my ability to see, preparing a place to rape me.
My eyes were unseeing anyway, turned inward as I teased at the small silvery knot spiking tendrils of control into the complex membranes inside my skull, whispering commands to my body.
It was powerful magic. Old magic. Old earth god, I was willing to bet. Perhaps whipped up with a bit of sap from a sacred tree that no longer grew, blended with minerals found deep in the soil, ground with mortar and pestle to a thin, vile poison, enhanced by arcane arts.
I had magic, too. I envisioned a single black vein of the Hunter residue beneath my skin expanding across my collarbone, encouraged it to creep up my neck, where it glided effortlessly, almost eagerly, into my brain, meeting the silvery knot, seeping into it and nullifying—
Holy hell, my head jerked!
“Jaysus, Cal, she bloody jerked!” Alfie exploded, flinching.
“No, she didn’t,” Callum scoffed. “Nothing moves after a hit from one of those darts. Not until he says so.”
“She did, too,” Alfie insisted.
I don’t know what else was said then because for a time I simply wasn’t there.
I was drifting in space, sailing between stars, tumbling head-over-heels through nebula-stained wormholes, gliding along the edges of gaseous rings encircling planets. A deep, hauntingly beautiful gonging resonated in the enormous vacuum of space around me—a technical impossibility—vibrating into my soul, expanding outward to the stars, and the stars answered. Space was a living ocean, lapping gently at the stars, planets, suns, moons, and asteroids. The sound, the vision, was so exquisite a part of me wept. It was…heaven. It was…peace. Nothing hurt, nothing was wrong, everything fit and made sense and I could stay there forever and nothing could ever touch me again.
But. I thought.
My. What was it that mattered to me?
World.
No peace for me.
I thrust away the lovely vision and returned my attention to the silvery knot, cramming it full of Eau d’Hunter.