A hand settled on my forehead. It soaked up the energy like a sponge. I still held the grizzly’s image in my mind, as vivid as if it stood before me, but my body remained unchanged.
“No,” said Myrddin simply. He held his hand in place as the energy fizzled. I struggled, tugging on the energy, trying to pull it back from him, but I couldn’t do it. He absorbed it all.
When there wasn’t a spark left, the pressure of Myrddin’s hand left my forehead. “It’s time,” he said. “Bring in the Reaper.”
I DON’T KNOW WHETHER I BLACKED OUT OR GOT SWALLOWED up by panic, but I don’t remember the Reaper entering the room. The next thing I knew, a figure stood beside me, holding an evil-looking sickle. The figure was robed, like the Old Ones, but the hand that held the weapon was human. A man’s hand.
I’ll have to tell Daniel he was right, I thought, then laughed hysterically because I’d never get a chance to tell Daniel—or anyone—anything ever again.
Stay calm, Vicky. And don’t scream.
The Reaper’s face was too deep inside the robe’s hood for me to make out his features. A distant cawing sounded. I opened my senses to the demon plane and was nearly deafened by the raucous sound of hundreds of crows. In the demon plane, a huge beak protruded from the Reaper’s hood and ghostly black wings sprouted from his back. He was thoroughly possessed by the Morfran.
Sharp pain yanked me back into the human world. The Reaper had unfastened the ties at the front of my gown and was dragging the point of his sickle along my breastbone, tearing my flesh with the blade.
I gasped. But I clenched my teeth tightly before the pain tore a scream from my throat. I would not scream.
The Reaper cut further, carving symbols into my skin. In the mirror, all I could see was his robed back. I didn’t know what the symbols were; all I knew was how much I hurt.
“Enough.” Myrddin put a hand on the Reaper’s arm. “That will do. This one is different.”
A high-pitched whine issued from the Reaper’s hood. The sickle sliced toward my throat.
Myrddin’s hand stopped its descent. A few muttered words from the wizard, and the Reaper was lifted from his feet. Two seconds later, a grunt and cry sounded as he hit a wall.
“Keep him back,” Myrddin said. “What? No, I don’t need the jar. Didn’t you hear me? This one is different.” Working quickly and silently, he picked up a length of tubing and fitted it with a long, thin, wicked-looking needle. Then he moved between me and Pryce, and I couldn’t see what he was doing. The mirror showed my chest as a mass of blood—so much blood I couldn’t make out whatever patterns the Reaper had sliced into me. Myrddin turned back to me, needle in hand. The tubing trailed behind, somehow connected to Pryce. Myrddin used the needle to trace the symbols the Reaper had carved into my flesh. I felt every inch. He paused directly over my heart.
“The heart,” Myrddin said, “is the center of a person’s life force.” He pushed. The pain sharpened. No, he couldn’t be—but he was. He didn’t stop. The needle slid into my heart and stayed there. My heartbeat went crazy, the muscle trying to push out the invader. “When the heart stops, so does life. Of course, I don’t want you to die at once, so I’ve spelled the probe to minimize its physical damage. What we’re going for here is the slow, painful draining of every last ounce of your life force.”
It hurt. God, how it hurt. Like nothing I’d ever felt before. Sweat beaded on my forehead, and I gritted my teeth against my agony. I would not scream. I would not think about the needle thrust deep into my heart.
“Like the blood,” Myrddin continued, “the life force circulates through the body. Chi, prana, élan vital—call it what you will. Every culture expresses the concept in some form. Now, these acupuncture needles”—he showed me a handful of fine needles with colored ends—“will be inserted at strategic points to slow down the flow of your life force. A sort of reverse acupuncture, if you will.” He stuck a needle in my arm, another above my eyebrow. “The aim being, of course, to drag your life force from you. I want you to feel the wrench of that chi leaving every cell of your body.”
He kept going, turning me into a pincushion. If I’d thought I hurt before, I didn’t even know what pain was. Each needle magnified the agony, spread it throughout my body. It felt like my soul was being slowly pulled out by the roots.
“Now.” Myrddin slapped my cheek to make me look at him. He showed me two thin tubes, each split into a Y shape with a needle at the branch of each Y. “They say, I believe, that the eyes are the windows to the soul. And since you’re donating your soul to my son, that will be the final touch.”
Oh, God. Not my eyes. My heart thumped wildly around the invading probe. I snapped my eyes shut, but his fingers forced the right lid open. I strained at the straps that held me immobile. I rolled my eyes in crazy, random directions.
And I screamed. I screamed and screamed because there was no other way to express the pain and horror.
“Hold still, damn it all!” Myrddin shouted. “I’d prefer not to blind you.”
Maybe I shouldn’t have cared. Maybe blindness would have been a mercy. But even now, some deep, primal part of me recoiled at the thought of losing my sight. I stopped screaming, stopped rolling my eyes. I lay still and watched the first needle descend.
Something clattered to the floor.
Myrddin froze. He took his hand from my eye, put down the needle, and bent toward the floor.
“Where did you get this?” he asked sharply. “You didn’t have it when they brought you here.”
I was shaking so badly that I couldn’t focus on the object he held in front of my face.
“This bloodstone!” he shouted. “How did it come to be in your hand?”
If I could have had one wish right then, it would have been the freedom to turn my head away from him. I said nothing.
Pain coursed through me with each heartbeat.
Myrddin swore. His footsteps crossed the room. The door opened. “Battle positions!” he shouted.
Seconds later, he was back at my table. He yanked the probe from my heart. I groaned. It felt like he’d pulled the heart from my body with it. “We’ll have to finish this later,” he said, ripping needles from my flesh. Something cool passed over my chest, stinging my skin. Myrddin tossed a bloodsoaked cloth aside, then refastened the front of my gown. “I must get you out of here before Mab arrives.” He cackled, and an ugly light shone in his eyes. “Perhaps Mab herself will be number four—or five! Yes, five. What a pleasure that would be, for her to see my son open his eyes to the world just as hers close forever. A pleasure for me, that is, not for that bitch.”
He turned toward Pryce and I couldn’t see what he was doing, then he stood between us, coiling the tube whose needle had pierced my heart. The tube, spattered with blood, glowed with a silvery light.
The pain receded, leaving me weak and light-headed. My ears buzzed. Myrddin’s movements, as I watched him in the overhead mirror, were slow and fluid, like in an underwater ballet.
“I need attendants,” Myrddin muttered. “Where the devil did Colwyn go?”
He stalked back toward the door. “Colwyn, whe—” The word ended in a grunt as the door banged open and Kane called my name.