“And then you will die. Now begin.” Slater drew off his jacket and placed it neatly on a low table. He then lay on top of the table and clasped his hands across his ribs.
The body would be his, a house immortal. Death would be cheated. And then he would have all the time he needed to take rulership of this House and the others.
* * *
A man’svoice repeated a message, the words making little sense:Orange, hidden enemy,and coordinates. And then the words were gone, and so was his memory of them.
The exhaled hush of mechanical equipment cycling, a soft ticking, and the clink of metal against metal woke Slater Orange. He opened his eyes.
He was lying on an operating table, staring up at the ceiling and lights pocketed there. But he could not feel a thing. Could not feel his body, his face, his own heart beating.
He inhaled. Panic, sharp and sour, coated the back of his throat. What had Quinten Case done to him? Had he paralyzed him? Had the transference failed? Was he dying?
Hot rage surged through him. That, at least, he could feel. If Quinten had failed, then he and his stitched sister would die.
Slater would make them suffer all the way to hell.
“The disorientation should pass soon.” Quinten stood to one side of Slater, near enough he could see him. His face was an impassive mask. He held a syringe in one hand and a bone saw in the other.
“The paralysis is temporary. Speech will return first.” Quinten’s gaze flicked up, as if reading a clock or some other machine across the room. “Now,” he said. “I’ve done what you wanted. You have your new body. Call off your gunmen.”
A bone saw. Quinten was a clever man. If Slater didn’t speak the word and call his men away from Matilda Case, Quinten would saw off Slater’s head.
And the horror of it? Slater would not die. He would be trapped, bodiless, his thoughts suspended in a brain that never degraded.
In his desire to be discreet about this operation, this crime he was committing, Slater had disabled all recording devices. There were no men standing by to kill the clever Quinten Case.
“She . . .” Slater wheezed. He inhaled, exhaled again. It was strange not to feel anything. But that was the coin paid for immortality.
He had known galvanized couldn’t feel, but the reality of occupying a body that had no sensation was far more overwhelming than he had expected.
“She is alive,” he said. The dissonance of hearing his words come out in another’s voice sent fear crawling over him. Madness scratched at the edge of his mind.
“Call off your snipers,” Quinten said again. “And let me speak to her. That will be the only proof I will believe.”
Slater ran his tongue across his teeth. Clumsy. Each body part was too thick, disjointed, and miles away from his control.
But he would learn to control this awkward vessel. He would make it his own. And then he would claim the head of House Orange again—the first immortal to seat such power. After that, he would take the world.
“Gòu,”Slater commanded through a direct link triggered for just that one word.
Quinten Case glanced at the screen. The tightness at the edge of his eyes relaxed as the gunmen responded to the command by standing down.
“Now,” Quinten said, pressing the bone saw against Slater’s throat. “You will open a direct line to House Gray so I can speak to my sister.”
“That was not our agreement.” Speaking was easier now, and even though he couldn’t feel his extremities, he had a sense of where they were and how they would respond to him.
“We didn’t have an agreement,” Quinten snapped. “Not since the day my employment became imprisonment. Your communication system is locked. Unlock it.”
Slater pulled both hands flat to his sides and pushed himself up to sitting. There was power in this body. Strength he had not felt in decades.
Vertigo spun the room, but quickly passed.
Quinten had not pulled the saw through his neck.
Slater smiled. “You cannot kill me. It is not just my communications that are locked. It is my entire estate. But you knew that, didn’t you?”
He had endured the pain of his own ruined flesh for decades. Having no sensation was so much better than being in constant pain.
