Phrases like “belly of the earth” really get to me. The thought of my cuff lying back there in that alley, useless, got to me even worse. I was hours from Dublin, beneath tons of stone.
Mallucé was right; without the cuff, I would never be found, alive or dead. At least Mom and Dad had gotten a body back with Alina. Mine would never show up. What would it do to them, to lose their second daughter without a trace? I couldn’t bear to think about it.
Barrons was out. I couldn’t count on V’lane. If he was hovering in whatever manner he hovered, he would have stopped this by now. He wouldn’t have let Mallucé do these things to me, which meant he was off somewhere, probably on some errand for his queen, and it could be months in human time before he came around again. That left Rowena and her group of tightly controlled sidhe-seers, and she’d made her sentiments plain: I will never risk ten to save one.
Mallucé was right. No one was coming for me.
I was going to die down here, in this miserable, dark hellhole with a rotting monster. I would never see the sun again. Never feel grass or sand beneath my feet. Never listen to another song, never draw another breath of sweet Georgia blossom-drenched air, never taste my mother’s pecan chicken and peach pie again.
He was going to turn me into a quadriplegic, he told me, by slow, infinitesimal degrees. The suffering he planned to inflict on the remnant of my body was too horrific for my brain to allow my ears to hear. I turned them off. I heard no more.
Hope is a critical thing. Without it, we are nothing. Hope shapes the will. The will shapes the world. I might have been suffering a dearth of hope but I had a few things left: will, desperation in spades, and a chance.
A glittering, gold and silver, encrusted with sapphires and onyx chance.
I’d eaten today, I wasn’t too badly beaten yet, and one of my arms still worked. Who knew what shape I’d be in tomorrow? Or the next day? I couldn’t think about a future in this place. I might never be as strong again as I was right now. Would he really begin torturing me with psychotropic drugs, as he’d said? The thought of having control of my mind stripped from me was worse than the thought of more pain. I wouldn’t even possess the wits to try to fight. I couldn’t let that happen.
It was now or never. I needed to know: Was I epic? I might never have another opportunity to find out. He might chain me up the next time. Or worse.
He was still talking, didn’t seem to care that I’d willed myself deaf and was no longer even responding with flinches to what he was saying. This was the performance he’d been living for. His sickly yellow eyes burned with psychotic zeal.
When he reached for me again, I threw myself forward, as if seeking his embrace. It startled him. I plunged my good hand beneath his robes, groped for the amulet, and locked down tight on it when I found it. It was like closing my hand around dry ice. The metal was so cold it burned, felt like it was eating straight through my flesh to the bone. I pushed through the pain. For a moment nothing happened. Then a dark fire, a blue-black light began to pulse from the folds of his robe, from between my fingers.
I had my answer: MacKayla Lane had potential for greatness!
I’d settle for a little superstrength and a map to get me out of here. I yanked, but the chain was forged of thick links. I couldn’t snap it. I remembered how the old man’s head had been nearly ripped off. Were the links reinforced by magic? I focused my will, tried to jerk it through his rotting neck. The translucent stone inside the amulet blazed, bathing the grotto with dark radiance.
“You bitch!” The vampire looked incredulous.
I’d been right. He hadn’t been able to make it work. I smirked. “Guess you just don’t have the right stuff.”
“Impossible! You are no one, nothing!”
“This nothing is going to kick your ass, vamp.” Bluff, bluff, bluff. And pray there was some truth in it. When the chain snapped abruptly, I stumbled backward into the wall, clutching the amulet.
For a moment, he stared blankly; his gloved hand went to his neck, and I knew he was wondering how I’d gotten it off him when he’d had to nearly behead the last owner to tear it free, then his face contorted with rage. He fell on me, fangs tearing, fists flying, trying to take the amulet back before I was able to use it.
I curled in on myself, clutching it, protecting it, focusing on it fiercely.
Nothing happened.
I flexed that hot place in my brain and tried to impose my will on it. Destroy him, I commanded it. Rip him apart. Kill him. Save me. Make him die. Let me live. Make him stop hitting me make him stop make him stop make him stop!
Still the blows rained down. I wasn’t impacting reality one bit.
The amulet was colder than death in my hand, seeping up my arm. It radiated dark light, offering me its chilling, immense power. It had some kind of shadowy life, this arctic thing in my hand. I could feel it pulsating, the thud of an impatient dark heartbeat. I could feel that it wanted to be used by me. It was hungry for purpose, but there was something I didn’t understand about it, something I had to do to make it mine. I realized then that I’d not broken the chain; it had snapped of its own dark accord, chosen to come to me because it had sensed I could use it.
But that was where it stopped. I had to figure out how to make it work.
What did I need to do?
Mallucé’s teeth were in my neck, tearing. His stiffly gloved fists were eighty-mile-an-hour hardballs in my sides, trying to force me to uncurl so he could take the amulet back. The pain was rapidly becoming more than I could think past.
The Dark Hallow was useless.
If I’d had time to learn how to make it work for me, I’d have had a chance.
As it was, I’d managed to do just enough to really piss Mallucé off: I’d proven myself epic when he wasn’t.
As he continued to pound me, I had a sudden insight into his character: At the core of it, beneath the monstrous villainy, the vampire was a self-indulgent, spoiled bully. Not a sociopath at all, but an out-of-control, petulant child that couldn’t stand anyone else having better toys, more wealth, or greater power or, in my case, being more epic than him. If he couldn’t own it, do it, or be it, he would destroy it.
My mind revisited the bodies he’d left at the Welshman’s estate. The terrible ways they’d been killed.
No one was coming for me. I couldn’t make the amulet work. Rotted though he may be, I was not and would never be a physical match for Mallucé. There was no way out for me. That was just the truth of it.
When all the control you have over your world gets stripped away, leaving you no choice but to die—the only difference how you do it: quickly or slowly—life distills to a bitter pill. The pain I was in made it easier to swallow.
I would not let him make me a quadriplegic.
I would not let him take my mind away from me. Some things are worse than death.
He was in a blind rage, more intense than I’d felt coming off him yet. He was on the brink of total loss of control. I braced myself to fuel it, to push him over the edge.
I remembered what Barrons had told me about John Johnstone, Jr.’s past. The mysterious “accidental” death of his parents, how rapidly he’d disassociated himself with everything they’d stood for and been. I remembered how Barrons had provoked Mallucé with references to his roots, and the vampire’s instant, livid fury, his irrational hatred of his own name. “How long have you been insane, J.J.?” I gasped out, between blows. “Since before you killed your parents?”
“It’s Mallucé, bitch! Lord Master, to you. And my father deserved to die. He called himself a humanitarian. He was squandering my inheritance. I told him to stop. He didn’t.”