I felt my face redden, as though the blood that wasn’t running down my arm was rushing to it, felt the heat in the room turned up to twelve. My breathing exercise wasn’t working to purge the emotion anymore; the feeling was too strong. I held myself in place, but I felt my hand shake with the sword in it. I knew my face was betraying me, but I couldn’t hold back the tide of emotions. I let my feet drift back to a closed stance, shoulder-distance apart, and I brought the sword up.
My mother raised an eyebrow, a subtle motion, but she stopped clapping, and she fixated on my sword. “What are you planning to do with that? You know what it means if you point it. It’s not a butcher’s knife, but still you wave it around like—”
I flung the sword, felt the hilt release from my hand with one last sharp stab to my palm, and I heard it hit the wall with a clatter and bounce off as I ran at her. My fists were balled up, my rage coming from deep within, somewhere that a million breaths out through the mouth could never expel. I hissed as I came at her, dropping into a low stance as I readied my first attack. I was not thinking, I had no plan, no intention but to hurt her, to hit her and drive the arrogance out of her, to make her feel the same pain she kept pushing on me. I watched her register surprise just before I landed my first blow, and I knew it would be sweet.
It lost its sweetness as she sidestepped out of the path of my strike, moving so quickly I didn’t even see her do it. She landed a punch to my jaw that caused my head to snap back, and I saw a flash of blackness before I came back to myself. My legs felt like rubber bands that I was trying to stand on, unable to support my weight. She hit me again, this time in the belly, in the solar plexus, and I lost all the wind out of my lungs, expelled in one loud noise – through the mouth. I cradled my stomach as I hit the mat without concern for the cushion I was landing on.
I stared up at the ceiling, still holding my midsection, trying to regain my breath but failing, wheezing. I knew cerebrally that I wasn’t dying of asphyxiation, but it felt like I was, like I couldn’t get enough air to my brain or my body, that I was going to die gasping right there on the mat.
Mother stood above me, arms crossed, calm and collected, unmoving. “You’ve got spirit,” she said, looking at the black gloves she wore, the same kind she always forced me to wear, “but spirit won’t get you anything save for a nasty death.” She squatted next to me, and I felt her glove on my arm. “Discipline. Control.” I looked into her eyes as she stripped my glove off, baring my bandaged palm. “Obedience.” She shifted position and gripped me under the armpits, lifting me up. I saw the box in the corner, she faced me toward it, its wide maw open as if ready to swallow me up, and I tensed in her arms.
She gripped my wrists, lifted my hands above my head and I felt the pain begin to subside, deep breaths flooding into my lungs. It still hurt, I still had trouble breathing, but it got better. “Breathe,” she said, as I stared at the box, taking deep breaths, all through my mouth, every one of them. “Get your breathing under control. You don’t want to hyperventilate.”
Her grip on my wrists faded and my legs took up their own weight again. I stared into the box, into the shadows and darkness inside, and realized I couldn’t see the back of it, not even with the lights on. It waited for me, a silent mouth ready to devour me whole. I turned my head, slow, fearful. Mother was still standing directly behind me, close enough that I could smell her sour breath, like rancid milk.
“Spirit won’t get you anything but killed,” she said to me again, and her face was blank, an empty reservoir of no emotion. “You use your strength by putting your emotions on a leash.” She looked down, then back up at me again, and I could have sworn she shifted her feet, as though from nervousness. “You will obey. You will listen. There are rules for a reason.”
“I just…” I choked out. “I just…I needed to…I felt…”
“I don’t care,” she said with a slight shake of her head, and by the total neutrality of her voice I could tell she meant it. “Feelings are irrelevant. Feelings won’t change anything; action will.” She took a step back from me, and turned toward the stairs. “Follow the rules, not your feelings.” She cast a look back as she reached the bottom of the stairs. “Your feelings will lead you to make stupid decisions – like they just did. Listen. To me, to the rules. Ignore your instincts; they’ll get you killed.” She cocked her head at me. “Like they almost just did.”
I watched her head bob back, as though she were looking down her nose at me, surveying me coldly, and then she disappeared up the stairs, head first, then torso, until her feet receded from view and I was left by myself in the basement.
Chapter 23
Now
“You jackass,” I said, and Mormont raised his other hand to reveal a gun. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“I think I did,” he said, and I watched Mom writhe again as he pushed a button on the grip of the taser. “This is a taser built specifically for metas, so it holds a lot higher charge than the civilian models sold for use on humans.” He seemed to be talking to my mom. “It has a over a dozen charges, so I can keep you writhing in pain until you pass out, or you can just accept that I can drop an elephant with it and we can go on about our business without me having to push the button again.”
“Oh…okay,” my mother said, from her hands and knees. “But gosh…I sure was enjoying…those lovely…zaps of electricity.”
“And she wonders why I smart off at her?” I asked.
Mormont’s grin faded and I saw him thumb the trigger again as my mother jolted and fell to her face. “No one likes a smartass,” he said when she finished writhing. “You done?”
“I’m ready to start if she’s finished,” I said.
He waved the gun at me. “I hear so much as a word out of your mouth, I’m just going to fill you full of bullets and drag you to the car. I’ll let them sort you out later.”
I stiffened at his words. “Your car? You’re not planning on taking us to the confinement cells?” I watched him, and something connected before he even reacted. “You’re the spy! Oh, you bastard!” His eyes narrowed and his gun stopped waving at my insult, pointed instead at my heart. “Did I say bastard?” I felt the heat of emotion run through my veins. “Yeah, well, I meant it. You ran that interrogation on me and messed with my head when all along it was you?”
He rolled his eyes. “You sound surprised.”
I opened my mouth to answer, then after a moment’s thought: “I probably shouldn’t be. So, you work for Omega?” I felt my nostrils flare in irritation. “You turned the vamps loose too, then?”
“Yes,” he said with a narrow smile. “My boss won’t be too happy that they died before I could stop you, but I’ll smooth that out a little by delivering a second succubus.” He stroked the trigger again and Mom rolled in another jolt of electricity. I started to make a move toward him and he cocked the hammer of his pistol. “Watch it. You can take a lot of bullets before you die, and every one of them will hurt, I promise.” He gestured with the gun. “Drop the sword.”
I felt my fingers clench on it, not wanting to surrender my only weapon. “Why? You afraid you can’t shoot it out of my hands before I jump at you and slice your face off?”
“Don’t insult us both by patronizing me,” he said, and I heard the threat in his words. “Drop it now, or I’ll put you on the ground and drag you out of here in a bloody heap.”
I smiled thinly as I held out the sword and dropped it to the mat. “But you’d rather do things the easy way.”