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 per sonhood 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