Maybe the Sweeper had made up its mind, I thought darkly. I didn’t like that thought.
I spun briskly to head back for the safety of the bookstore.
That’s when they dropped from the sky like great, smelly, black, suffocating straitjackets and took me down.
35
“If I only had a heart…”
I regained consciousness to find myself staring straight up at the ceiling of a dimly lit industrial warehouse.
I could tell what it was by the vast metal beams and girders and pulleys used to move supplies. I guessed I was somewhere in the Dark Zone, flown up and out by the gaunt wraiths that were far more formidable than I’d ever imagined.
When they’d descended from above, their assault was instantaneous, almost as if they’d sifted, expanding their leathery cloaks, smothering me. I hadn’t even managed to lift a finger before my hands were immobilized.
My spear and guns, useless. I hadn’t been able to get to anything, not even my cellphone. Then again, from what I’d seen, Barrons’s tattoos hadn’t been finished and IYD wouldn’t have done me any good.
One moment they’d been in the sky, the next my arms were tightly straitjacketed to my sides, my legs bound. Their smelly, leathery cloaks had covered even my head and I wasn’t able to breathe. I thought I was dying. The horrible thing about being suffocated is you don’t know if you’re going to wake up or not.
I’d decided in my last, fleeting moment of consciousness that the way the Sweeper had decided to “fix” me was apparently to kill me; a sentiment I might not have entirely disagreed with at various points in my life.
But not now. Jada needed me. Oh, she didn’t know that and probably wouldn’t agree with it, but she did. The Sweeper could try to kill me later. Now was not a good time. I wasn’t staying here to get “fixed.”
I leapt up.
Er, rather, my brain gave the command for my body to leap up.
Nothing happened.
Manacles rattled. Slightly. My wrists and ankles burned. I groaned. I’d practically broken my neck trying to stand. I was strong. My restraints were stronger.
I tried to move my head. It didn’t work. There was a wide band across my forehead, strapping it tightly to the surface upon which I was stretched, flat on my back.
I was horrified to realize I was secured to some kind of cold metal gurney. For a moment I was afraid I’d been given a paralytic drug, but then found that I could move my head a few inches if I put effort into it. The rest of me was so tightly buckled down, I couldn’t move my arms or legs at all.
There was a sudden rustling in the distance, the sound of my stalkers, their dry chittering. I stank to high heaven, drenched in their disgusting yellow dust.
I went motionless and closed my eyes again.
In horror flicks, when the hero gets strapped to this kind of thing, in this kind of place, the villain always waits for them to regain consciousness before the truly gruesome acts of barbarism begin.
I could play dead a long time.
As the rustling wraiths drew nearer, I heard a whirring and grinding, the sound of badly greased cogs turning. I kept my eyes closed and concentrated on breathing deep and natural.
I recognized the sound.
The thing ambulated ponderously closer, panic and dread accompanying it, filling me with the same immobilizing fear I’d felt the night the walking trash heap passed through the alley behind BB&B. I couldn’t have moved then even if I’d been unrestrained.
If I had been able to move, I would have smacked myself in the forehead. As I ran like hell.
The trash heap I’d seen the other day was the mysterious Sweeper!
It had been right there with me, inside our protective storm, looking for me two days ago, and I’d had no clue it was the thing that had its minions watching me.
In my defense, they didn’t look anything alike. And who would think something ancient and all-powerful that fixed other things would itself be compiled of refuse?
Although, I brooded, it sort of made sense. Maybe it was always fixing itself, too, and just grabbed whatever was handy. I remembered the metallic things embellishing the Unseelie princess’s spine, the metal I’d seen flashing on my carrion stalker’s faces, and it made even more sense. Sort of. As much as anything in our Fae-infested world made sense anymore.
The thing crashed to a rattling halt somewhere to the right of me. I lay rigid with fear, listening, trying not to let panic completely unravel me.
There were noises then, smaller ones than the Sweeper’s heavy tread. Metal against metal: clinks and clacks of things being turned on and off and moved around.
Beyond my closed lids the environment grew brighter. Two more clicks and it was abruptly brilliant. Focused, intense lights had been turned on and were shining directly down on me.
I didn’t like this one bit. I was strapped to a table, with bright lights above, about to be fixed by something that couldn’t even walk straight and was made of trash and guts. Despite the panic immobilizing my limbs and clouding my mind, I couldn’t help but wonder what the hell it thought was wrong with me. How was I broken? I wanted to know, to argue with it. I wisely kept both mouth and eyes shut. Not that I could have opened either anyway. Its mere presence was a paralytic.
After what felt like an endless amount of time, it rattled and clanked away.
The chittering of the ghouls faded as they went with it, and I collapsed in my skin with relief as voluntary motion returned.
A reprieve. No clue why. Didn’t care.
I slitted my eyes open and closed them quickly again, blinded by the bright, cold lights shining down. I turned my head as far to the right as I could. That was where I’d heard the ominous sounds, and I wanted to know what I was facing. I opened my eyes again.
After ascertaining no wraiths lurking in the shadows, waiting to sound the alarm the second they saw me stir, I strained my muscles to peer as far right as possible.
A long metal table.
A dazzling array of sharp, glittering instruments.
It was straight out of a horror movie. I had the sudden unsolicited, disturbing memory of sitting in BB&B five nights ago, trying to dig bullets out of myself, thinking about what sick things could be done to me if I was tied up, given my regenerating abilities.
Breathe, I told myself. Above the table was a large rectangular screen featuring a picture of something gray and black and white and shadowy.
I narrowed my eyes, focusing on the screen. It took me a few seconds to process what I was seeing, and I only did because my nose itched and I couldn’t get to it so I scrunched it up and sort of tossed my head the small amount I could, and the image on the screen moved.