Darkness & Light (War of the Fae: Book 3) (31 page)

Leck
moved forward, his eyes now focused on me.
 
I didn’t like the blank stare I saw there.
 
It was like he was an empty-headed zombie or something.
 
It was scary seeing eyes the color of Tony’s in a face like that.
 
I backed up, slowly raising my hands up without even thinking about it.
 

“Listen,
Leck
, you’d better stop right there because if you so much as touch me you’re gonna get hurt.”

He stopped about a foot in front of me.
 
“Sit down.”

“No.”
 
I stood my ground, my chin lifting slightly in defiance.
 
This guy
Leck
could kiss my big white ass as far as I was concerned.
 

That was the last clear thought I had before the headache started.

“Please sit.”

I grabbed my head, trying to stop the pain that shot through my skull.
 
“Go ... fuck ... yourself
... !
” I gasped out.

“The pain will not stop until you comply.
 
Sit down.”

I didn’t want to sit.
 
I refused to sit. But the agony was almost unbearable.
 
I felt my knees giving way and my legs buckling.
 
I crumpled to the floor, some deep part of my brain making sure I didn’t squash the poor little defenseless pixie in my hair.

As soon as I hit the ground, the pain receded and eased off to a dull throb – still awful, but nothing like the needles of misery that had just been skewering my gray matter.
 
I took short, shallow breaths, trying to move past the pain and nausea.
 

“What kind of evil
sonofabitch
uses torture to get a person to sit down?”
 
I looked at him through my veil of pain and saw that I was appealing to the wrong person.
 
He cared nothing for my complaints.
 
I looked over at Ben, still standing in the corner of the room.
 
“What is
wrong
with you?”

He shrugged, casually.
 
“You have information.
 
I need it.
 
You will either give it to me willingly or I will take it from you.
 
It’s up to you.
 
Just know that the end result will be the same.”

“I won’t sell out my friends,” I growled at him.

Ben nodded at
Leck
.
 

The pain began again, just a slight increase, but it was enough to cause me to draw my breath sharply inward.
 
I tried not to focus on it, but it was nearly impossible.
 
It was consuming my every thought.

Leck
spoke again in his empty voice.
 
“Tell us where to find the nearest entrance to the Light Fae compound.”

I just looked up at him and gave him the dirtiest look I could manage.
 
He waited a few moments and then just blinked ... slowly.
 
Before his eyes completely opened back up, the pain blossomed across my forehead.
 

A moan escaped my lips before I could clamp my mouth shut and stop the sounds from coming out.
 
I put my head down, squeezing my eyes closed, listening to the sound of my breath panting in and out on hyper drive.
 
I couldn’t tell them.
 
Nevernevernevernevernever
...

“Tell us where the nearest entrance to the Light Fae compound is,” he said in a louder voice.
 
It cut through the pain and drove what felt like steel daggers right into each hemisphere of my brain.
 

“
Gaaaahhhhh
!!”
was the only sound that would come out of my mouth.

Somewhere I heard Ben’s voice saying, “Ease up, I think she’s going to tell us.”
 

He sounded confident and as
assholey
as a guy possibly could, and that just sealed the deal for me.
 
I’d keel over from a massive stroke before I gave him anything he wanted.
 
As bad as this felt, all I could think about was how he could have just as easily done it to Tony or any of the others.
 
He had no conscience.
 
I prayed to the universe and anyone else who might hear me that they wouldn’t find Tim in my hair.

The suddenly pain lightened up and there were no longer stars shooting across my visual field.
 

“Look at me,” said
Leck
.

I lifted my head, but my eyes refused to open.
 

“Open your eyes.”

“Can’t,” was the only word I could manage.

He grabbed me by the hair on the top of my
head,
lifting me halfway up and forcing my eyes open with his other hand.
 
They started watering immediately, even the dim light in the room too much for them at this point.
 
I think this
dickbag
had somehow forced a seriously ass-kicking migraine on me.
 
It would serve him right if I stroked out right here on the floor.

“Where is the entrance?”

I whispered the answer to him, but he couldn’t hear me.
 

“What?
 
Speak louder.”

I gathered up all the energy I had left and shouted the answer.
 
“IT’S IN YOUR ASS, YOU FLAMING FUCKBAG!”

The pain blew up behind my eyes as he let go of my hair and released another torrent of punishment on my brain.
 
The room went dark and I fell all the way back down to the floor, landing on my side in the small puddle created by the drip, drip, dripping of that leaky cave.
 
The pain came and went in tortuous waves, over and over, along with nausea that may or may not have turned into vomit on the floor.
 
I was too far out of it to really know or care.
 
I felt myself convulsing and then a sweet, sweet release as my mind let go.
 
My last conscious thought was that I couldn’t wait to sink The Dark of Blackthorn into this guy’s vile, black heart.
 
He was going to be one sorry motherfucker if I ever got out of here alive.

I felt a gentle tapping on my cheek.

“Jayne.
 
Jayne!
 
You have to wake up.”

Tim’s voice.
 
It sounded worried.
 
Why was Tim so worried?
 
Was I late to breakfast?
 
Had I slept in?

I slowly became conscious of the sensations I was experiencing in various parts of my body.
 
My neck was kinked.
 
My shoulder, ribs and hip ached from laying on a hard, unforgiving surface of some sort.
 
Stone?
 
Why wasn’t I in my bed?
 

And then I remembered.
 
And then I smelled the smells.
 
I opened my eyes and saw that I was looking up at the room from my position on the floor.
 
There was a rancid puddle of what smelled like dried up barf right in front of my face.
 

“Fuck
balls,
what happened?” I asked as I sat up.
 
“
Arrgh
!
 
Shitshitshit
, what the hell?
 
Why is my head exploding?”
 
My brain was pounding as if Tim and a few of his friends had started a rock band in my skull – and they were a mostly percussion group.

“They tortured you,” cried Tim softly, “It was the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life.
 
I can’t believe a fae would do that to you.”
 
My poor pixie friend was really broken-hearted.
 
“You’ve been out for a long, long time.
 
I was afraid you weren’t going to wake up.”

I took a few deep breaths, trying to convince the pain to go back into the recesses of my skull.
 
“I don’t remember everything too clearly.
 
Who was that guy that was in here?”

“
Leck
.
 
A
wrathe
.”

“Yeah.”
 
Hearing his name helped my memory return.
 
“And what the hell was up with the whole migraine brain-melting power, anyway?”

“I don’t know, but I thought you were dying.
 
It was horrible.
 
I wanted to pixie him, but I wasn’t sure if I could do it without hitting you, and I was worried they’d kill us both if I tried.”

“No, I’m glad you didn’t.
 
Don’t do it unless I tell you to.
 
I don’t want them to know you’re here; they’ll just use you to force me to tell them stuff.”

“You can’t tell them, Jayne.
 
No matter what, don’t do it!” he said in a panic.

“No shit.
 
You think I don’t know that?”
 
I reached up to hold my head in my hands.
 
“
Fuck me
, I need an aspirin.”
 
I started massaging my temples thinking it might help, but they felt so bruised I finally gave up.
 
I wondered what a CT scan of my brain would show right now – probably a lot of dead spots.
 
I seriously thought it was highly probable that they had disintegrated parts of my brain.

“We’ve got to figure out how to get out of here.
 
I don’t know how much of that torture stuff I can take before I resort to killing myself.”
 
I wasn’t kidding either.
 
I decided after this encounter, that I was officially a wimp.
 
Insult me all day long and I’ll manage, no problem.
 
Bring the pain and I’m ready to check out.
 
And I’d rather check out that sell out any day of the week.

“I won’t let you do that, Jayne.
 
If I have to, I’ll pixie you so they won’t be able to hurt you.
 
All you’ll feel is happiness for the rest of eternity – or at least until you die of exhaustion from dancing and singing.”

“Well, let’s save that for our Plan Z, okay?
 
I’m not suicidal and I’m not ready to give up my occasional defeatist view of the world quite yet.”

“And none of us are ready to have you give it up either.
 
There’s a special charm to your fatalism.”

“Shut up and help me figure this out, would you?”
 
I got up carefully, waiting until I knew my legs were steady enough before moving back to the stone slab.
 
I had to get away from the disgusting yack on the floor.

“We need a brownie or someone in here to clean up this shit.
 
There’s not a hell of a lot worse than looking at your own upchuck after suffering the world’s most
excrutiating
migraine.”

“Yeah there is ... being forced to look at a giant puddle of someone else’s.”

I gave him a withering look, but I couldn’t really argue.
 

He walked across the floor to join me and I reached down to give him a lift up, wincing at the throbbing pain that started again in my head.
 
We sat there like that on the cold bench, me doing an occasional deep breathing routine to try and manage the aftereffect echoes of pain that still pounded across my head, talking for what seemed like hours.
 
I
laid
down, drifting in and out of sleep, choosing to rest on my sides as much as I could.
 
Lying on my back intensified my headache.

At some point in the night someone delivered a plate of bland food just outside the door.
 
I noticed it when I got up to use the bathroom.
 
I felt a little better after eating and washing my face off.
 
Tim also ate a few bites of the tasteless garbage that was our dinner.
 
Neither of us knew if meals were going to be offered with any regularity, so we ate even though we didn’t feel like it.
 
I used the small napkin they included with my plate to cover the grossness on the floor.
 

“These Dark Fae are animals,” I said with disgust as I sat down on the stone slab, my back against the nearby wall.
 
“We would never treat fae like this.”

Tim cleared his throat and gazed up at the ceiling.
 
He looked guilty as hell.

“What?” I asked.
 

“Well ... that’s not exactly true.”

“What the hell are you talking about?
 
We don’t torture fae, Tim.”

“You haven’t seen
all
of the rooms in the compound, have you?” he asked me mysteriously.

“No, have you?”