I’ve heard of the deformations some of them possess from too much watering down of the Diablim bloodline.
I wonder if it hurts. If the human part of them rebels against their Diablim blood. If they live in burning agony every minute of the day.
“I asked you a question,” I bite out, tearing my gaze from the burning woman and her child, sounding braver than I feel. But when I chance a look at the Mr. Kincaid’s face, he is studying me. His brows drawn and eyes cast in shadow.
“I’ll be the one asking the questions.”
What can this creature possibly want to know that I can tell him?
“What are you?”
My pulse begins to thrum in my ears. Human, I want to say. This is all a mistake. I’m just human.
But something tells me that wouldn’t be wise.
This monster thinks he purchased a low-level Diablim slave. What will he do if he finds out I’m human? Useless? He clearly thinks I’m something more than what the announcer told the crowd back at the market.
“Did he send you to spy on me? Is that it?”
Confused, I fight for something to say, but lamely only come up with, “Who?”
The demon Kincaid turns on me with a furious sneer, his eyes ablaze and teeth bared. “Don’t you lie to me, wench.”
I cower back against the window, feeling around behind my back for the handle. We’re entering a suburban area with lots of narrow streets and wide yards with high fences. If I can find a place to hide, then maybe…
Kincaid’s eyelids lower, his gaze far away as he seems to consider another option. -
“Or was it one of them?” he breathes. “One of my brothers? It would be so like them to place you in my path like a gift,” he says with a wicked lilt to his voice, face twisting in disgust as he flicks a lock of my multicolored hair. “Bow and all.”
“I-I don’t know what you’re talking—”
“They would know I wouldn’t be able to resist the bait. A pure-blooded Diablim masquerading as a…a common street urchin. Your power barely concealed.” He laughs darkly, rubbing a palm roughly across his jaw.
I stare close-lipped as he speaks, waiting for him to strike. He has that look about him. The same sheen of madness to his eyes that Ford got when he was about to lose it.
“And you just happen to be at the market when I’m passing through.”
He shakes his head then turns to me with triumphant disdain. “Where are they then, hmm? What are they playing at?”
My lips part but no words come out.
Is it more dangerous to be a useless human or the thing he thinks I am? By the way he’s looking at me now, I have to guess if I were the latter, I wouldn’t be long for this world.
“I’m not what you think I am,” I manage, and as soon as the words leave my lips, the floodgates were open. “I-I’m just a girl. Human. They brought me across The Hinge this morning. It was some sort of mistake. The diviner said something to the officer and—”
The town car stops, and Kincaid wrenches me from the car so fast and so roughly, my head rattles and spins.
He shoves me hard against the car, pins me there. “You will tell me the truth,” he growls. “Or I’ll send you back to the pit you came from. Got it?”
“I’m not lying,” I sputter, trying to jerk my arms free from his bruising grip.
His silence is more terrifying than anything he could say.
Without a word, he drags me around the car and toward a massive structure with tall white pillars. I barely register being dragged up a short flight of stairs and through a door the Diablim kicks open before I am tossed onto a hardwood floor.
My hip bone smarts with the impact and my one still-injured palm screams as the tiny shards of glass are driven further into my flesh, making the tiny lacerations bleed anew. I bite off a whimper and lift my head just in time to see a heavy wooden door slam behind me with Kincaid on the other side.
The metallic knock of a lock being driven home might as well have been a gunshot in the dim room.
“I’m not lying!” I scream through the wooden pane, shakily rising to my feet until I am falling against the door. My good hand uselessly tugs at the handle. “Her name was Officer Silva!” I shout at him, emboldened by the separation of the door between us. “I was taken at The Hinge this morning after they dumped me on the other side. Please! Just let me go!”
Kincaid’s footfalls grow fainter as he moves away from the door. The old floor creaks and groans beneath his weight until there is only silence.
9
He left me here for two days.
The room is dust-coated and shabby. With no windows and only the door I’d been tossed through for a means of escape. I tried the lock more times than I care to admit once I’d finished picking all the glass and dirt from my palm.
There is a small bathroom, more of a closet, with barely enough space for a person to fit inside with the skinny sink and low toilet. Good thing I’m small. Barely five-five and scrawny from underfeeding.
If Kincaid thinks he can motivate me with starvation, he’s in for a surprise. I’ve gone far longer without food. And lucky me, this room has a working sink.
I can’t be certain the water is potable, but when faced with a choice between death by dehydration and a possible stomach bug, the decision is easy.
A person can survive without water for only three days.
But I can go without food for nearly three weeks.
Ford put that to the test once, making me suffer for upwards of eighteen days.
I’d allowed that to happen just that once, and then never again.
The creaky mattress sighs beneath me as I sit, the coiled springs within poking at my backside.
It’d been stripped bare when Kincaid threw me in here. There was nothing in the room save for mice droppings and this mattress. Old and stained, it leaned, the middle sagging against one of the wallpapered walls with a threadbare sheet slung over one side.
The style of the wallpaper, yellowed with age, paired with the thick crown molding at the ceiling makes me guess it’s an old estate home. Built in the Victorian, or maybe more of a Greek style.
It reminds me of Austen’s descriptions of Netherfield Park.
From the tall columns I glimpsed out front to this wallpaper. Even the worn wood floor, scuffed from years of use without replacement or resurfacing. It all screams Austen even though none of those beautiful places from her books could have ever been owned by a thing like Kincaid.
With nothing but my thoughts to accompany me, I do what I always did when Ford locked me away, falling back into that safe place in my mind.
A place where I am not being held hostage by a monster. Where there is no Elisium and no possibility I’ve been lied to my entire life about my illness—that last one is a fucking doozy.
If it were just Officer Silva saying it, I could have dismissed it as improper record-keeping.
But the Nephilim boy said it, too.
Not sick, he mouthed in the back of the slave seller’s van. I mean, it would explain why I’m not sick yet.
I should be.
In my dark, safe place, I replay the Wizard of Oz in my mind start to finish to keep my mind off it. It’s one of many movies I’ve watched enough times to recite the entire thing word for word.