With those comforting words, she turned and her heels clicked on the floor as she disappeared, leaving me and the Hound alone. I swallowed the painful lump in my throat and fisted my hands as pain pierced my soul. It didn’t matter what Michael did to me, my own flesh and blood abandoning me would be the greater pain.
“You ready for this?” he asked.
I glared at him. “If I said no, would you give me a break and we could pick this up another time?”
He grinned. “Unlikely.”
“Then hit me with your best shot, so we can both be disappointed in your abilities when you fail.”
He shook his head. “Game on, little angel. Let’s see if you bleed red like the rest of us, or if you’re made of angel dust underneath all that pretty creamy skin.”
***
I lay somewhere between agony and a strange blankness. The agony was unbearable, but the empty cavern terrified me, that way lay a broken mind to go with my broken body. I’d lost count of the slices Michael had taken, the fingernails he’d pulled, and the bones he’d broken. But through it all I’d clung to the pain and used it to keep my heart beating. I’d locked my power down tight, which meant no healing, no defense, and definitely no blacking out, allowing my crazy alter ego to run the show. If she did that, we’d be drained dry and my grandmother would have the power to enact her master plan. It was time for me to protect Indigo for a change. But with each new injury, my body was getting weaker.
Hours, perhaps days, had passed. Occasionally, they led a healer into the glass box of pain and fixed me up enough to continue. A dead Nephilim was no use to them.
Michael walked around the outside of the box, fingers stroking his chin as he thought of new and inventive ways to make me hurt, frustrated with his lack of progress. I spat red onto the stained floor, sticky with my spilled blood, and grinned at him. “What’s wrong, Michael? Fresh out of torture techniques and agony afflictions? Is that the best you’ve got?”
It hurt to speak and breathe. I was fairly confident I had broken ribs that had punctured a lung.
Michael froze directly in my eyeline. “You think you’re safe because you are her flesh and blood?”
I laughed which turned into a hiss. “This is your version of safe?”
“You know, I’ve left that pretty face of yours unmarred, perhaps it’s time to give you a makeover.”
“Aww, are you going to braid my hair too?”
“Tear it from your head, perhaps.”
“He won’t be touching our face,” Indigo asserted. She’d remained quiet but present, shoring up my strength as best she could.
“I’ll heal.”
“I don’t care, he won’t be touching our face.”
Michael’s gaze narrowed, like he’d overheard our internal argument. My heart stuttered in my chest. He’d done a number on me in the last round, and I think I was bleeding from some vital organ, but he’d not called in the healer yet.
He pressed a button on a small remote and the glass slid open once more. He appeared a minute later, his hands covered in leather gloves and carrying two flasks of clear liquid with a manic look plastered on his face. This was going to be bad.
He placed the flasks on the floor and leaned over me, tearing my shirt and bra in half to expose my chest. He tilted his head as he studied the bruising and blood stains, like an artist contemplating where his next brush strokes should go.
He grabbed one flask and tipped it over my breasts. A scream ripped from my throat and I tried twisting away, my wrist snapping in its restraint.
He grinned. “Sulfuric acid,” he said with glee as he grabbed the other one. “This one is a little diluted.” His fingers dived into my mouth and pried apart my lips. The first drop of the liquid made bile rush up my throat, but it had nowhere to go as he forced me to drink the acid. He was going to kill me, I realized. Perhaps it was for the best, I was never meant for this world. I wondered who would meet me at the pearly gates. Let’s hope it was someone more sympathetic than my father.
Harry burst into the room and his face went slack in horror. “Miss Roberts.”
Ha, now I was delusional, seeing my ghostly side-kick before I died. “No dying. Not here, not like this, and not today,” Indigo growled. She pushed on my mind and I found I no longer had the fortitude to hold her back.
“Hold on, help is coming,” Harry said. Then he disappeared. It was truly cruel to taunt a dying woman with false promises of rescue. It was worse than the torture being inflicted on my body.
Michael tore at my pants and the last of my resistance melted away, and with it came the sweet relief of emptiness.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
My heart beats for you alone.
