Shadowspell

I was giving Grace just what she wanted, and her cheeks flushed with pleasure. I clamped my jaws shut and resisted the urge to beg some more.

Heedless of the gun pointed at his head, Ethan struggled against the other man’s hold. I think at that point he’d have found it a mercy if Grace shot him, which was probably why she didn’t. He was too badly injured to have much hope of escaping, and his face was etched with pain.

Grace frowned at Ethan. “I don’t want you distracting me. I want to savor every moment of this.”

Instead of shooting him, she slammed the butt of the gun against Ethan’s wound. He screamed, then went limp. Grace’s half-Fae friend let Ethan’s body collapse to the floor, then planted a foot in Ethan’s back and pointed his gun at his head.

“I’ll keep him under control,” he told Grace. There was no emotion in his voice, like he didn’t care what was going to happen one way or another.

Grace turned her full attention to me, and if I’d had anything left in my stomach, I’d have hurled again. Fred grabbed me by one arm and yanked me to my feet with so much force I would have fallen down again if he hadn’t kept his hold on me. Then he slammed me into the wall, knocking all the breath out of my lungs. While I was still struggling to breathe, he grabbed my wrists and pulled them up above my head, pinning them to the wall with one big hand, his grip so hard I could feel my bones grinding together. Ethan yelled a protest, but injured and pinned to the floor as he was, he couldn’t help me.

No one could help me. Or Ethan. No one but the bad guys even knew we were here, and we weren’t anywhere near the more populated regions of the tunnel system. Fred was going to rape me, and in doing so bind Ethan to the Hunt once more. And then Grace was going to kill me.

Despite all my lessons with Keane, I knew my self-defense moves weren’t going to be enough against Fred. He was just too much bigger than me. The best I could hope to do was slow him down.

My terror was like a living creature writhing in my chest and belly. Tears streaked my cheeks, but I didn’t care about that, didn’t care about appearances, or how much satisfaction my pain and horror were giving Grace.

I knew now what hatred felt like. It was an ice-cold burning sensation in my gut. It was an enraged scream that clawed its way up my throat. It was a narrowing of my world until there was nothing that existed except me, the hatred, and its object. Fred put his hand on my breast and squeezed brutally hard. I felt it, and the human part of me cringed, but the hatred had taken charge, and Fred was barely worthy of its interest.

I turned my head to stare at Grace. Grace, who blamed me for every mistake she had made. Grace, who wasn’t satisfied to get her revenge by simply killing me, but who had to torture me and condemn Ethan.

I was in what could only be described as an altered state, and everything I did, I did from pure instinct.

I began to hum under my breath, just tuneless noise at first, but my fury searched out the angriest song I knew, and the hum turned into “O Fortuna” from Carmina Burana. Fred was dragging the bottom of my sweater up, but I ignored him, my entire being focused on the song I was humming so quietly no one could hear.

I felt the first prickle of magic almost immediately. I had no idea what I was going to do with it, seeing as I’d still never actually accomplished anything remotely like a spell before, but I had nothing better to try.

My utter lack of response to his groping had made Fred complacent, sure that I was completely beaten down and helpless. I could tell by the hard lump that swelled behind his zipper just how much he liked helpless.

Maybe I really was helpless. Maybe I still couldn’t get the magic to do anything useful. But I wasn’t going to lose everything without putting up one hell of a fight. The magic was still gathering, but I knew I could call more, and the more I called, the more powerful the hypothetical spell I could cast. Which meant I had to find a way to stall before Fred got around to the main event.

It was hard to hum and fight at the same time, but all those lessons with Keane had created a lot of muscle memory, the kind that worked with a minimum of conscious thought. Since Fred had gotten careless enough to leave me a little room to move, I managed to stomp down on his instep.

He had me pinned firmly enough that I couldn’t get a whole lot of leverage on the stomp. I think it surprised him more than hurt him, but it accomplished its purpose, interrupting his groping and slowing him down. The magic was still building, and I hoped like hell Grace was far enough away that she couldn’t sense it, or she’d be sure to destroy my last chance.

I might not have hurt Fred very much, but apparently he didn’t appreciate me stomping on his foot. He retaliated with a backhand that made my head spin, even though he hadn’t been able to get a whole lot of leverage, either, not while keeping me pinned.

Blood filled my mouth, and my humming screeched to a halt. The magic started to recede, and I desperately reached out for it, the song rising once again in my throat. Fred was giving me a funny look, which probably meant I was now humming loud enough for him to hear. He must have thought my elevator wasn’t going to the top floor anymore, but that didn’t lessen his eagerness to rape me. His hand dropped to my jeans, and he began fumbling with the button.

Panic tried to seize hold of me, but I fought it off with all my might. If I allowed the panic to take hold, I was doomed, and so was Ethan. We probably were anyway, but I was determined to take that one, desperate last shot.

The magic was everywhere now, so thick in the air I could hardly breathe. Fred was so eager to get down to business he was being clumsy about opening my jeans. As long as the intensity of the magic kept growing, I kept humming, determined not to unleash it until the last possible moment, until I’d drawn every scrap of it I could to me.