Then he started the changes, again and again, tracking her through all the corridors of her soul. Nowhere, nowhere to even try to hide. For Father Laughlin was above her then, tearing her, excoriating her, penetrating, whose gentleness had been an island all her life. And after him, she should have been prepared, but—oh, Mary Mother, what was her sin, what had she done that evil could have power over her like this? For now it was Kevin, brutal, ravaging, burning her with the blood of his missing hand. Nowhere for her to go, where else was there in all the worlds? She was so far, so far, and he was so vast, he was all places, everywhere, and the only thing he could not do was reclaim his hand, and what good would that do her, oh, what good?
It went on so long that time unhinged among the pain, the voices, the probing of her deepest places as with a trowel, effortlessly. Once he was a man she did not know, very tall, dark, a square-jawed face, distorted now with hatred, brown eyes distended—but she did not know him, she knew she did not know. And then he was, most shockingly, himself at the end, giant upon her, the hood terribly thrown back and nothing there, only the eyes, endlessly, only them, raking her into shreds, first sweet fruit of his long revenge.
It had been over for a long time before she became aware. She kept her eyes closed. She breathed, she was still alive. And no, she told herself, her soul on a spar in a darkest place, the only light her own and so dim. But no, she said again within her being; and, opening her eyes, she looked full upon him and spoke for the second time. “You can take them,” Jennifer said, her voice a scrape of pain, “but I will not give them to you, and every one of them has two hands.”
And he laughed, for resistance here was a joy, an intensifying of pleasure unimagined. “You shall,” he said, “give all of yourself for that. I shall make of your will my gift.”
She didn’t understand, but a time later there was someone else in the room, and for a hallucinatory instant she thought it was Matt Sören.
“When I leave this room,” said Rakoth, “you are Blod’s, for he brought me a thing I coveted.” The Dwarf, who was not Matt after all, smiled. There was a hunger in his expression. She was naked, she knew. Open.
“You will give him everything he asks,” the Unraveller said. “He need take nothing, you will give and give again until you die.” He turned to the Dwarf. “She pleases you?”
Blod could only nod; his eyes were terrifying.
Rakoth laughed again, it was the laughter on the wind. “She will do anything you ask. At morning’s end you are to kill her, though. Any way you like, but she must die. There is a reason.” And moving forward as he spoke, Sathain, the Hooded One, touched her once, with his one hand, between the eyes.
And oh, it was not over after all. For the spar was gone, the clinging place for what she was, for Jennifer.
He left the room. He left her with the Dwarf. What was left of her.
Blod wet his lips. “Get up,” he said, and she rose. She could not do otherwise. There was no spar, there was no light.
“Beg me,” he said, and oh, what sin had it been? Even as the pleading spilled helplessly from her, as his filthy abuse rained down, and then real pain, which excited him—even through it all she found something. Not a spar of light, for there was no light anymore, it was drowned; but here, at the last, the very last thing was pride. She would not scream, she would not go mad, unless he said for her to do so, and if he did that, it was still being taken, after all, she was not giving it.
But at length he tired and, mindful of his instructions, turned his mind to killing her. He was inventive, and it appeared after a time that pain did impose impossibilities. Pride can only carry one so far, and golden girls can die, so when the Dwarf began to truly hurt her, she started to scream after all. No spar, no light, no name, nothing left but the Dark.