Stephen screamed, and Alanna did as well, the pain far too much to bear. She writhed, fireworks exploding in her vision. The darkness of the cave became silver green, and she was dying, she had to be dying, because no one could hurt this much and live. She couldn’t even move, because there was no way to escape the pain.
Help . . . help . . .
Alanna, I’m here. I’m here. Evan’s voice, her Master, in her mind, and then Niall, too, the two of them holding on to her. There was the smell of blood and metal, a howling rage in her head breaking through, drowning them out
There was no practical purpose to his invasion now. Stephen was caught. This was pure, malicious vengeance. He cracked open her subconscious, the nightmares flooding in. The agony twisted her, choked her, yet she was screaming.
A hard thudding, and she had a moment’s respite. Someone was hitting Stephen, trying to knock him insensible, probably Niall, or maybe Evan, she couldn’t tell. All she knew was her soul was clutched in his hand, a vise grip intended to destroy her.
Fire sizzled from her throat, down into that place deep inside the body that ached from emotional pains too great to bear. Blood on her lips, fingers working on her throat, making her swallow. Adam, a skeleton with skin dripping off him like water, reached out to her, wanting to pull her into a swamp of nothingness, of despair. So real, she could smell the mud, bony fingers around her wrist.
Alanna, don’t listen. Don’t look. Don’t let him win.
Such a faint noise. Someone speaking . . . it was like being in a pitch-black room, a haunted afterlife, everyone moving, no one aware of one another, yet each person able to see all the insensible ones. She could hear that voice, would move toward it if she could find it.
I’m here. In your heart, in your soul. It’s a choice, Alanna. Choose.
No, it wasn’t a choice. It was about power and strength . . .
You’re stronger than any of us. Forest for the trees . . . trees for the forest . . .
No. Stephen was her Master. She had to be true to her training.
Be true to your heart. I am your Master, Alanna. Niall and I both. You serve us, and us alone. Not Stephen. You love us. You will obey us, no matter the pain, no matter your fear. I forbid you to fail us. Be the extraordinary servant I know you are.
She struggled like a child pulling against an adult hand as Stephen dragged her toward that abyss. She couldn’t find Evan or Niall. There was nothing in the chasm but utter madness. She wasn’t strong enough. She couldn’t override her Master . . .
He was never your Master, Alanna. Your heart has tae be earned, remember? Ye gave us your heart and soul. Now get your arse back to us, where ye belong. Dinnae make me come after you.
Need . . . you . . . to do that. Help. Trying . . .
Try harder.
Arteries exploded, her heart galloping. She’d give anything for one touch from each of their hands. When she went to that abyss, they’d be lost to her forever.
Choice . . . she thought she’d given up choice, but Evan had proven that a lie. In a world where they gave up all other choices, servants retained a single significant decision.
Who they served.
She wanted to make that choice, but it was too late. I’m so sorry. She threw herself against that steel wall, again and again, bloodying herself, breaking bones. She’d lost, but they’d know she’d tried to obey. The walls closed in on all sides, a permanent, fearful coffin.
Evan . . . Niall . . . Masters . . . She went down screaming, fighting. Then her grip slipped, and the fall happened, plunging her into permanent oblivion.
It was utterly horrifying, what the spirit could bear. Hellfire, terror, pain, darkness, suffocation. As she spun through that endless morass of familiar nightmares, she discovered a known nightmare was far worse than a new one. Faced with the unfamiliar, hope could exist for a blink. She had died. This was the Hell Stephen had designed for her to share in their eternal afterlife, for she could feel his howling presence throughout all of it.
She was used to letting go, submitting, so she didn’t fight any longer. There was nothing left to fight for. She existed in that macabre world, in jerky motion under strobe lights. Screams and tears. A soul, cut apart from everything else and plunged into this, had no sense of death or life, Heaven or Hell.
“It may save her . . . she knows how to be empty . . .”
A voice she knew, here then gone. She marched with an army of stumbling, headless children, whose arms fell off and geysered black blood if she touched one of them. They became charred toys.
In a world of horrors, she saw everyone she knew. Adam was the worst, his corpse, his twisted spirit, his screams in the night as she lay wrapped in sharp barbs, unable to help him. But there was someone missing from the never-ending morbid show. She didn’t want to long for them, because the worst nightmare of all would be to have them here. But she couldn’t help it. She was a child in need of the only source of comfort she trusted. As the river of blood eddied and spun, taking her on and on, she needed them there, no matter in what terrible form they’d come. She struggled for anything about them. A scent . . . a touch . . . any memory at all. She needed one single scrap of memory. She couldn’t remember their names. Stephen had taken that from her.
After what seemed like centuries in the place of the eternally damned, she received the miracle of a single moment. Large hands on her face, a Scottish brogue soothing her, another long-fingered hand touching her arm, both holding her . . .
It was a memory, the past, yes, but she clung to it, made it hers, defended it with a futile savagery. She spun a cocoon around it and herself, letting the nightmares do everything else they wished, as long as they didn’t try to touch that cocoon. She could put faces with those hands. Brown eyes, gray eyes. Wanting something from her, demanding something from her.
Her world of fire, of death and decay, despair and pain, started to turn gray. Fiery color leached away, taking all substance and form with it. Before she was aware anything had changed, she was drifting in a storm, where there were lightning flashes and thunder, but she was in the colorless current, oscillating in the eddies. The nightmares boiled onward in the sky above, indifferent. Then everything became gray and still.
She lay there, blinking at the uniform solidity of it. She hadn’t been aware of herself as a body for some time, so it felt like working a puppet when she lifted her own hand. She pushed at the gray. It swirled around her hand, odorless smoke, its coolness clinging to her fingers. Her arm was bloody and thin. Bloody thin, someone might say. It gave her heart a twist, the memory of that voice.
Not just thin. Bone. She was a skeleton herself, her soul a monarch butterfly fluttering against her rib cage. Veins traced their way over the bone and then muscle surrounded them, like clay settling around straw, forming something solid, enduring.
It was odd to watch oneself be created. Skin adhered to the muscle. In the hollowness of her torso, a mass of organs started to fill her. Heart, lungs, all those things a doctor knew about. Brian would know what they all were, she was sure, and then she wondered who Brian was.
Her toenails and fingernails, her hair, came last. It was brittle, but it would perhaps get stronger. Because Evan liked her hair so much. Niall was fond of wrapping his hands in it . . .
She cried out at the painful joy of it. The return of their names was the greatest gift she could imagine Heaven bestowing upon a wretched, lost soul. Evan, Niall. Evan Niall Evan Niall . . .
“We’re here, muirnín.”
Evan Niall Evan Niall Evan Niall . . .
“It will take her a while to be coherent. Perhaps never. There was significant trauma to her brain.”
“Bollocks. You said she’d die. She’d never wake up. She’d never speak. She’s doing all that.”
“I said it wasn’t likely. The odds have been against her throughout. She continues to defy them.”
“Of course she does.” A hand closed over hers, those artist’s fingers stroking her. “She’s a constant discipline problem.”
“Always mouthing off, telling everyone tae truth about themselves. ’Tis damn irritating.”
She twitched, frowning, and those hands tightened on her. She wanted to say something, but she couldn’t. Something was missing. The emptiness . . . truly empty. There was no connection, no mind inside hers. Nothingness. It alarmed her, scared her in a way even the nightmares hadn’t.
“Gone. Marks . . . gone.” She was straining for something, but then she felt lips brush her face, her hands, and things eased.
“Wheest. It’s fine. We’ll fix it. But now ye have to rest, grow strong again.”
“You are the most perfect servant,” Evan said. His breath touched her still-numb face, but yet she felt it. “You’ll get better now, return to us. Niall has been a rabid bear. He stormed into Council chambers, demanding that Lady Lyssa—‘High Heid Yin of the whole bloody Council’—get off her ‘arse’ and help you. I’ve promised to have him severely flogged, but with you occupying my nights, I can’t get any work done. Marcus has sent me dire messages about the death of my career. I’ll have no money to feed Niall.”
The words were flowing water, gurgling beneath the surface, then coming clear again. She was a leaf spinning in the eddies, trying desperately to follow the current, to hold on to their voices.
“An artist who cannae do his art is like living with a fully stocked pincushion up your arse all day.” Niall was speaking now, his fingers tightening on her, helping her focus. Tears were running over her gaunt cheeks. Tears of joy. “I’d stake him, swear to God, except I’d follow him, aye? So I’m fucked unless ye come back.”
The gray was closing in again, but the touch of their hands wasn’t going away. She drew in a sigh, so very tired, but it was all right. She could sleep now. Somehow, they’d rescued her from Hell. How or why wasn’t important. They were her Masters, and she expected nothing less than miracles from them.
As she sank back into oblivion, but for the first time in weeks with a look of peace on her face, Niall’s and Evan’s gazes met over her body. When his usually stoic Scot reached across and gripped Evan’s wrist, hard, Evan put his other hand over Niall’s. They were both shaking.