Mab’s voice snapped with contempt as she spoke to the thing within her. “Thou hast caused me problems enough, twisted little deceiver. Already has Mab vanquished thee once. From thirteen puppets you are now twelve. So it shall be again, and you shall be eleven.”
A muffled, raw, hideous sound came from Justine’s throat, though she was gagged with ice. Her eyes were wild, so bloodshot that the whites had all but vanished.
“With enough agony, carefully applied,” Mab said calmly, “the woman’s mind will eventually be unable to contain the spirit.” She held up the knife before Justine’s eyes. “And the very vessel in which it attempted to entermyCourt will trap it before it can flee. At which point I will consign it to as much torment and desolation and confinement asmyimagination can devise.” She stepped up close to Justine. “Already you feel the part of you imprisoned, and what it suffers. I will double that and more, thing. You think yourself untouchable. Howdareyou strike at the world inmycharge?”
Justine again made that raw sound of inhuman fury.
Mab’s slow smile was crueler than anything I had ever seen.
And I’ve seen some things.
“Harry,” Thomas said, voice tight, desperate. “She’s going to torture Justine.”
“Necessary,” Mab said, voice hard. “I did it to my own handmaiden. My friend of many centuries. It is the only way.” She turned back to us and faced Thomas calmly. “But know this. When it is done, the memory of her torment will be excised. Calmly. Precisely. She will remember nothing of her possession, or her necessary treatment. It will be a door in her mind that is closed, barred, and locked—and which must remain that way to preserve her sanity. You cannot bring it to her mind, by word or deed. She must not dig at the wound or it will once more rip wide open, and she will be torn asunder.”
The thing inside Justine screamed in fury again.
Thomas flinched at the sound. “But…I…how am I going to…There is a blood feud with Etri…”
Justine—Justine; there was a palpable difference in the voice, even to my ears—let out a scream of utter pain, high-pitched and desperately tired. Her body bowed, gravid belly rippling, and a sudden rush of fluid burst into steam in the air.
“Justine!” Thomas cried, suddenly surging to his feet.
“The child comes,” Mab said briskly. “As must balance. My Knight,have I your permission to summon aid to this place for the purpose of assisting in a safe birthing?”
And a horrible thought hit me.
The Outsiders had been trying to crack into Demonreach for a while now. I assumed because they wanted to release the horrors that lay imprisoned in its tunnels.
But what if they’d gotten to Mab, the way they had to the Leanansidhe?
What if she was about to trick me into letting more of them in?
Paranoid?
Yes, definitely. But I was up against beings that deserved paranoia. Nemesis was an absolute nightmare of corrupt influence that could be in more than one place at a time, could infest almost anyone.
“Harry?” Thomas asked, his voice desperate.
Oh yeah. This could be a setup.
I felt myself start to panic. To sink back into those dark places where I’d been living the past year.
I began to clench my teeth.
Justine screamed again in pain, her eyes beseeching.
“Harry!” Thomas cried.
I felt a hand on my shoulder.
I turned to see Lara staring at me. Her expression said it all. She didn’t understand my hesitation. But she knew it wouldn’t be happening without good reason. She gave me a small nod.
I closed my eyes.
I took a slow, deep breath.
Mab was a nightmare herself. The queen of every dark and horrible storybook tale ever told.
