| |
Chinese Water Torture Cell
Not surprised.
Really?
Try my day. Mission with swords has been
compromised.
Next move?
Sparrow’s castle. Asking the sword what the
next move is.
What?
There was no answer. But honestly, there was little time for an answer. I had been putting the finishing touches on my traps, setting my various explosive concoctions inside small camouflage-print bags, taping them to the walls and touching them with a bit of magic. I had pulled anything even remotely explosive from my pockets and made sure several of the cave tunnels had them settled at the mouth at the top to cause maximum damage, and any flammable liquids I had coated the walls and floor.
I didn’t bother covering up the smells. The foxes would be so overwhelmed by the nauseating mix of odors they would be forced to stop and identify where the noxious stench was coming from. By the time they figured out what all my mess was, there’d be no time left.
As an added measure I managed to fish out various aerosol cans—anything from computer cleaners to air fresheners—taped the top down for a continual spray and touched it with a bit of magic. These things had the potential to make one hallucinate if inhaled, and it also had the potential to paralyze a body and make the heart stop.
Tying a small disposable respirator around my face to ward off the fumes already crawling through the humid cave walls, I made my way towards Afanasiy’s torture chamber. Flipping my phone open, I recorded a small video message as I walked. Keeping my voice as low as possible, I spoke in my native language so no eavesdropping foxes would be able to send out a premature warning. Slipping my hat off, I activated a small portal inside the brim and dropped the phone down it, making sure I was thinking of the kid. The message would hopefully save her life.
I rounded the corner, coming up on the metal room. Olyvia’s screams echoed down the chamber, irritation building at the sound. Not only did Afanasiy prove he would no longer be useful to me by trying to intimidate one of my clones, he had proved what an annoyance he truly was. It was time to scratch an itch that had been developing for years.
I slipped through the open doorway and halted, Afanasiy turning to me with something sharp and electrified in his hand. Fresh blood was spattered on the ground, a trail of it leading up to Olyvia. Her lanky body was strapped down. She looked weak, barely hanging on. Looks like I got here just in time, Afanasiy put his weapon down as he continued to talk, hands slowly moving over a table of various blades and pincers.
“I must be honest,” he was saying, picking up an old hand saw and playing with the edge, “I did not think you would last as long as this. You have strong will.” Putting the saw down, he pondered and brandished a hooked tool, glancing over at her. “I would compliment, but strong wills are easy to shape.”
I slid across to the other side of the room, careful to avoid the two foxes milling around and taking notes. One biped fox walked up to her with a clipboard and stared at the she-wolf for a moment, writing something down as he moved away.
Olyvia grunted, but didn’t give in to his taunting. Good girl. Give me a little more time.
“Tsk tsk,” Afanasiy shook his finger at her. Apparently deciding his tool would not be enough, he dropped it down on a table and began mulling over a blunt set of pliers. “You do not play well, little one. You do not talk back.”
I pressed myself against the back wall, moving at a snail’s pace. Afanasiy paused, glancing around the room with a frown. If he sensed me here, he didn’t let on. Instead, he picked up a small handful of needles, the red-hot tips burning at the ends. “Let us see how your Bonded pup takes this punishment. Do you hear her cries when I strike you? I am curious.”
“Tell...me...one thing,” Olyvia managed to say through gritted teeth.
Afanasiy smiled, the foxes around him moving in sync as he drifted towards her.
“And what is this that you must know?”
I was directly across from them. Slipping my hat off quietly, I knelt to the floor and grabbed the edge of my jacket. This would take the perfect kind of timing.
She took a shuddering breath, eyes sluggishly opening as she attempted to watch him. “If you’re so...powerful...so menacing...then tell me this...why are you afraid?”
His back stiffened. The foxes flanking him flinched and glanced at each other. Presenting a single needle, he rammed it into her leg, directly under her knee. She suffocated a scream until only an aggravated groan came out, dissolving itself into a clipped, mocking laughter.
Her shoulders quivered as she managed to pick her head up and look him in the eyes. “She’s just...a child...and you are terrified of her.”
Another needle burned its way under her other knee. Another choking growl of pain dissolving into choppy, mechanical chortle.
“When you...faced off...against me...when you killed...my mate...you had no problems.” Her head fell back and lolled to one side as her choppy laughter continued. Afanasiy jammed another needle into her lower abdomen, but it didn’t stop her. “But this time...you bring a child into your lair...and you pick on...someone you find so insignificant...you don’t even call me by my name.”
Her laughter turned into a strangled, pained noise as Afanasiy drove two more needles into her torso.
He said something quietly to her, something I couldn’t hear. A cruel smile crossed his face, clearly expecting the news to shock Olyvia. I wouldn’t say her face was shocked, but a strange expression came over her as she stared at him. With a sudden wave of fury the she-wolf spit in his face and gave me my cue.
His hand went up, balled fist swinging in a backhand when I activated my hat and coat at the same time. The invisible sheet went down as my coat expanded and hardened, utilizing both the expandable threads and strips of Kevlar woven into my jacket’s hemline. A portal opened up underneath me and I slipped down into it, focusing on Olyvia.
The magic forming underneath her grabbed at her body, forcing it to disassemble and crumble into the hat, reassembling her inside my jacket’s shield and making me pop up on the table. Afanasiy’s swing clipped my shoulder as I came up, sharp pain shooting through my chest and out my other arm.
Flipping out a handful of cards, I activated the edges and flicked them at Afanasiy and his foxes. The edges sliced through limbs and clipboards, startling the foxes and forcing Afanasiy to recoil. I took advantage of his retreat, throwing a handful of activated ice shards in his face. A few of them stuck, digging into his face and drawing out a sharp shout of anger.
He came at me with one of his serrated blades, screaming with rage. He was quick, but his strikes were sloppy. I dodged his swings, slapping at Olyvia’s silver cuff and activating its pliable tendencies. I pulled up on it, the silver bending upward and catching the light.
The room was bathed in a blinding white light, the overhead light intensified in the reflection of the silver. Afanasiy and the foxes stumbled around for a few seconds, fighting off the temporary blindness and struggling to control their natural instinct to run. By the time they remembered their noses, I had sprayed the air with the scent of a predator and abandoned my spot on the table.
“You should have killed me when you had the chance, Af,” I called out to him from three places at once. He flinched, trying to blink the blindness from his eyes and focus. When he finally managed it, he was facing down three mirror images of me, all moving and talking in unison. “You’re getting sloppy in your old age.”
“And you should not show yourself,” he responded with a gruff growl. “After all these years, could I have found your weakness?”
We laughed together and began to circle around him. “I have no weaknesses. I’m not a creature like you.”
“No?” He barked out a laugh, brandishing a short silver knife. “Then why do you attack me now, when I have broken so many others? Could it be you have attachment to the little alpha?”
I slipped a joy buzzer out of my pocket, pressing it up against the silver cuff and activating them both.
“You’ve become an annoyance, Af,” I said, drifting slowly closer. He watched, body relaxed and steady. “And I don’t like annoyances.”
“Then I am right. You care for the woman. Otherwise you would not be so worked up, I think.”
“I’m not any more worked up over you than you are over a fly constantly buzzing around your ears.” I presented the piece of silver cuff and smiled. “Tell me, what do you usually do to an irritating, biting, stinging little bug?”
We rushed at him, all three images reaching out with a silver cuff. With a single fluid motion, the fox’s blade cut through all three of us. We shattered.
Releasing the velcro on the bottom of my shoes, I curled into a ball and slammed both of us into the ground. Joy buzzer and cuff in hand, I shoved them downwards and made contact with Afanasiy’s back. The buzzer sprung to life, an activated current shooting through the cuff and the silver amplifying the current. There was a loud snapping and popping accompanied with the smell of burning flesh, Afanasiy’s body going rigid before he fell into a fit of spasms.
Payback’s a bitch.
The other two foxes had fled by now, but I could hear reinforcements coming. Running back to the portal still open on the operating table, I leapt inside and quickly found myself back under the protection of my jacket. Olyvia was crumpled in the corner, unconscious. The strain of passing through the portal my way must have been too much.
I summoned my hat back into its regular form only to toss it back on the ground, this time thinking of my ultimate hideout and shoving Olyvia down in. I released the magic on my jacket, the black material deflating in my hands. I swung it around me and looked up in time to see Afanasiy’s head turned towards me, black eyes burning.
“What can I say?” I asked, pulling my arms through the sleeves. “You should have known your limits.” I tipped my head to him and slid my feet into the portal. Something exploded in the distance, foxes suddenly screeching in pain. A wave of heat washed over us and I gave a short half-bow. “Goodbye, Afanasiy.”
I slipped under the portal just as an angry red light began to engulf the room, the very edges of my explosion reaching us.