Giselle focused every bit of will still available to her and worked to suppress the phantom limb sensation. The effort seemed to yield results. A dim tingle remained, but now she felt the low throb at the end her scarred stump. She concentrated harder still and jabbed at the creature with the stump. The stump skidded past the creature on the first attempt, just brushing its fuzzy legs. The thing was mere inches from her pubic thatch and was still moving. Panic rose in her throat like an exhalation of poison gas. She sat up straight and jabbed downward. The suspended cage swung slightly on its chain, but she made direct contact this time. Her stump pinned its body against her leg. She felt it trying to escape from the pressure, exerting more strength than so tiny a thing should possess. Giselle gritted her teeth and pushed down with all her strength. Instinct and revulsion made her want to knock the thing off her body, but she knew she had to kill it while she had the chance.
The creature swelled beneath her stump, its legs growing longer and thicker. Giselle leaned forward, applying upper body leverage. Then there was a squeal as the thing’s body burst and a thick, gooey substance exploded against her flesh. Its legs twitched another time and stopped moving. Giselle gagged and flicked the tattered body away. Coated in goo, the thing’s body clung to the cage for a moment, then fell between two of the steel bars and landed with a sickening plop on the stone floor.
Giselle’s chest was heaving. Sudden tears erupted from her eyes and spilled in hot trails down her cheeks. She pawed at the mass of goo coating the center of her body, wiping as much of it away with her stumps as she could. The phantom limb sensation returned and she made a mess of the job, spread the goo over a wider area of her body. She managed to gather a fair amount of the vile stuff on her stumps and flick it away, but without hands it was impossible to clean herself thoroughly.
The room abruptly grew colder and her tears turned to frost on her cheeks. The atmosphere in the room was clearly being artificially manipulated. Yet another spell constructed by Ms. Wickman, likely designed to start working should Giselle somehow manage to thwart the shape-shifter. Knowing the cold was a product of magic did nothing to alleviate the spell’s effects. The temperature plunged several more degrees and Giselle moved into a corner of the cage, drew her legs up to her torso, and wrapped what was left of her arms around them. Her body shivered uncontrollably in the deepening cold, making the cage sway again on its chain.
And though they shamed her and added to her discomfort, her tears continued to flow, etching icy paths down her cheeks. She was so frustrated and afraid, more afraid than she’d been in years. More than that, she felt powerless. She still couldn’t accept that this had happened to her. A few years earlier she’d been at the height of her powers, the Master’s mountain kingdom destroyed through her efforts and years of patient planning.
In the aftermath of that triumph, she used her deep knowledge of magic to build a comfortable place for herself in the world. She returned to the home of her youth, Boston, where she was able to manipulate wealthy, powerful people in her special way, reaching into their minds and convincing them that it was their own idea to hand over large sums of money to the beautiful and tantalizing young girl. Money to buy a mansion in an exclusive neighborhood. She led an easy, comfortable existence in that big house, her every need and desire attended to by a large staff of well-paid and loyal servants.
Giselle’s teeth chattered as she recalled with dim bitterness the betrayal of one of these ostensibly trustworthy employees. It was to have been a lovely evening out at the opera. One of the world’s leading tenors was performing, and she’d managed to procure choice seats and backstage access. Her regular driver, the impeccably mannered and attired Mr. Thorne, pulled up to the mansion that evening in a limo. She recalled how he’d smiled and bowed slightly to her as she came down the mansion’s steps in her expensive evening gown, a fake fur shawl wrapped about her bare, slim shoulders. She’d felt not the slightest twinge of alarm as Mr. Thorne opened one of the limo’s rear doors, allowing her a glimpse of the legs of an elegant woman and two men wearing tuxedos.
These would be her companions for the evening. Her neighbor Angelica Anderson and her husband Henry, and her own date, Robert McDowell, a financier who’d been one of the many contributors to her still-growing fortune. As she approached the open door, she gathered up the hem of her gown and dipped her head in preparation for sliding into the car.
Then she froze, her eyes going wide and her heart stopping for an instant as she saw that the woman inside the limo was not Angelica Anderson. She was Ms. Wickman, flashing a mad grin as she laughed at Giselle’s shocked expression. The men with her were two wild-eyed boys barely into their early twenties. Giselle tried to back away, but then she felt Mr. Thorne’s firm hand at the small of her back.
His voice was fierce and hot against her ear, full of venom and so unlike anything she’d ever heard from the proper British man, “You’re not going anywhere, cunt.”
Then he shoved her inside and the hands of her enemies were upon her. She was too stunned to fight back instantly—as she should have—and by the time it occurred to her to strike at them with her magic it was too late, her powers blunted by the elaborate web of counterspells spun by Ms. Wickman. And when one of the men produced the machete from an inner pocket of his tux, Giselle knew that the battle was lost.
She cringed at the memory of the heavy blade punching through her wrist, the awful grind of steel on bone, then the blade passing into the upholstery beneath. And her hand coming away from her wrist, the explosion of blood across black seat leather. She screamed and thrashed, to no avail. And through it all remained the wild and desperate belief that one or more of her many servants would come running to her rescue.
It didn’t happen.
Her assailants were able to go about their grisly work unimpeded and unhurried.
Ms. Wickman raised the blade again.
And one of the men holding her down thrust his crotch against her ass as steel chopped through flesh again.
She’d been sure she would bleed to death there in the back of the limo, but then Ms. Wickman calmly accepted something passed to her from outside the car by Mr. Thorne. There was a glint of light on some metal object. Then she discerned the cylindrical shape of the object and knew at once they weren’t here to kill her after all. They wanted her to suffer, though. There was a whoosh and the acetylene torch grew a bright blue and red tongue of flame. Another hoarse exhalation of purest terror tore out of her as the flame was lowered to her violated flesh. And yet another, shriller scream as the flame made contact and burned brighter, cooking her flesh as the limo’s interior filled with the aromas of smoke and burning meat.
The flame burned and burned and it seemed like the torture would go on forever. Then there was a click and the whooshing sound stopped. Giselle saw her hands, one on the seat next to Ms. Wickman, the other on the shiny black floormat. A glimpse of protruding bone made her stomach knot. Her blood was everywhere. Splattered across the upholstery and all over the tinted windows. A zigzag pattern of coagulating gore across the front of Ms. Wickman’s black dress. Everywhere.
Instinct caused her to aim a strike of lethal dark energy at the grinning madwoman, but the anticipated blast fizzled and the energy dispersed. Giselle had forgotten about Ms. Wickman’s web of blocking spells. And the removal of her hands had eliminated her most powerful method of focusing and unleashing magical energy.