The Magician's Keeper, page 22
The inside of the warehouse was gritty beneath her sock-clad feet, the smell of diesel and dust thick in the air. She looked around, and could hear Bear enter the building behind her. He felt like an almost solid weight at her back, reassuring and large. She was glad he’d stayed, still her throat felt thick, the brutal, terrible way her father had died seemed to eat at her brain making other thoughts difficult to hold. She heard a strangled choking sound, and realised it had come from her own throat.
She looked down and saw Tom staring at her.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked urgently, and he took her hand in his. Tom’s eyes were glittering and wide, and she remembered fleetingly how she’d once dreamed that he may look at her with such desire, with such intensity.
It seemed like a lifetime ago, before she’d joined Ixion, before she’d been attacked by microbots, before she’d met Bear, before her dad had died.
The look on Tom’s face now made her skin crawl.
She couldn’t reply, her throat was so constricted words were once again impossible.
‘Of course, she’s not OK,’ she heard Bear snarl from behind her. ‘Stop asking her inane and stupid questions. Where is the telephone?’
Tom’s attention shifted away from her and the prickling sense of unease grew.
‘I’m asking her because I care …’ Tom retorted. ‘Unlike you, who is more concerned with finding a telephone.’
She saw Bear’s face contort with a scowl, his muscles bunched and she knew he was very nearly ready to hit Tom.
‘I need the bathroom,’ she whispered quickly. Her words broke the testosterone-laden air between them better than any knife.
‘Of course—’ Tom’s furious gaze returned to her, ‘—it’s over there to the left …’ He gestured to a mean looking area cordoned off by thin corrugated iron walls.
***
Bear watched as Dora moved into the bathroom, his chest was tight and all his senses seemed on high alert, made even worse by the sense his bickering with Tom was making Dora feel uncomfortable. He shifted his gaze back to Tom, the man was dressed in casual pants, and a warm looking sweater, splattered with Professor Splat’s blood.
It seemed an awful lot of blood.
Although significantly smaller than he was, Tom looked muscular, strong and his stance exuded confident aggression, albeit slightly underpinned by a peculiar sense of urgency. Then Bear saw something that set his teeth on edge even more. The other man’s gaze was locked hungrily on Dora’s receding form. He shifted where he stood, his boots grazing over the dirty cement flooring. Then Bear saw it, the tent-poling effect of an erection in the other man’s pants.
Anger sparked through him.
The dirty fucker.
‘Take your filthy eyes off her,’ Bear heard himself snarl.
The door closed as Dora disappeared into the bathroom before Tom smiled.
There was nothing kind or warm about this particular smile. Tom’s lips curled at one end, displaying the white sheen of his teeth.
‘I’ve got to get that bitch out of my system,’ Tom said and cupped the obvious bulge in his crotch.
‘What?’ Cold trickled down Bear’s back.
Tom laughed, throwing his head back in throaty mirth. He then whistled long and low.
‘What are you talking about?’ Bear snarled again.
‘My brothers have told me that my desire for that bitch is unnatural.’
Bear tried not to show his alarm, but involuntarily stepped backwards. ‘Your brothers?’
Tom laughed cruelly again, but this time his eyes crinkled. ‘My brothers.’
Then Bear felt it, cold constrictive irons clamp down on each wrist. He spun around, only to find himself captured by multiple strong arms and biting iron hooks.
The iron hooks bit into his biceps, he twisted his head, four, five, six men restrained him. Iron chains binding him to non-magical compliance.
Where had they come from? How hadn’t he heard them?
He’d been distracted.
‘Who are you?’ Bear snapped and struggled, but the attempt only caused the iron hooks to bite into his flesh all the harder.
He cursed himself and swore under his breath. No magic would work with this level of iron around him. He’d been so distracted by Dora and her suffering that he hadn’t noticed anything.
‘Struggling will only make things worse for you,’ Tom said. The sinister smile had dropped from his face now.
‘Why? I thought you were with the UMC? What are you doing?’ Bear asked, hoping against hope that Dora had heard the trouble and escaped while she still could.
Tom scoffed softly. ‘Oh, but I am with the UMC,’ he assured. ‘But I’m also a human purist.’
‘But …’
‘A little slow on the uptake, aren’t you?’ Tom said pityingly. ‘No matter, you won’t be around for much longer. I’m sorry, Mr Gordon.’
Bear’s heart sank, after all the running, all the hiding, he and Dora had literally given themselves to the purists.
That meant he was a dead man, and she was most certainly going to be a dead woman.
‘What about Dora? What will you do to her?’ Bear asked, and stilled beneath the hooks and hands.
A muscle constricted in Tom’s jaw before his lips curled into that horrible sneer again. ‘You care for her, don’t you?’ Tom asked.
For a moment, Bear felt his heart skittle around in his chest.
He did care for Dora.
Very much.
‘Don’t hurt her,’ Bear said. ‘She’s been through enough, hasn’t she? She’s done nothing wrong.’
The muscle constricted in Tom’s jaw again.
‘Her mere existence is wrong,’ he barked. ‘She will be used for my aversion therapy.’
A hand tightened on Bear’s wrist and he felt himself being dragged away. He struggled forward.
‘What do you mean your aversion therapy?’ he cried, his feet slipping on the cement floor.
Tom’s face grew pale. ‘The first step was disassociating her from humanity. Killing her father did that.’ A shadow chased over his face. ‘The second part will be disassociating myself from her.’
‘You killed her old man?’ Bear heard himself gasp, disgust was sour in the back of his mouth.
‘I did what I must …’ Tom sniffed, though he looked a little uncertain. ‘My obsession with her is a sickness. Now, my brothers will assist me in desensitising myself from her … charms.’
Bear swallowed. He knew what they’d do, they’d torture her, they would strip her, harm her and do terrible things to her until there was nothing left for Tom to desire.
‘No,’ Bear gasped. ‘You can’t …’
Tom’s face twisted and his lips drew tight. ‘We can … we must.’ The fanatical gleam in Tom’s eyes flashed again.
‘Shut up,’ one of the men dragging Bear hissed. ‘He doesn’t need to know this.’
One set of hands released him but the iron hooks still caged his arms and behind him, Bear could hear a roller door rising.
Then he was dragged unceremoniously into a cage. A heavy iron cage. The hooks fell from his arms and the cage door locked shut with a heavy, final clatter.
‘She doesn’t deserve this, you know she doesn’t deserve this,’ Bear yelled, throwing his weight to test the strength of the bars. A loud sizzle followed by a stinging jolt of electricity singed through his skin. Bear’s muscles spasmed and tensed uncontrollably, and he flew back from the cage bars and landed in a crumpled heap.
Tom stared at him for a long moment. ‘I think you should be more concerned with what is going to happen to you,’ he said. ‘Rest assured though, I will do everything in my power to get this over quickly.’
His words echoed with promise as the roller door closed.
Bear stared around the dark room and calmed his breathing.
The air was thick in there, and toxic. He also noticed the darkness wasn’t silent. He squinted and looked around. The soft purr of a car engine hummed from nearby. The smell of its exhaust growing stronger in the small closed-in section of the warehouse.
Fuck.
Bear turned around to see a large utility thrumming merrily in the corner of the room. The smell of exhaust grew stronger still.
He sank low in the cage and scanned the area for windows.
There were no windows, in fact, not even a glimmer of light shone beneath the roller door or cracks beneath the corrugated tin walls. The room was sealed.
Totally sealed.
Soon, the air would grow thick and impossible to breathe with carbon monoxide from the vehicle’s exhaust.
Bear bit his lip. Tom and the human purists were going to gas him to death.
Chapter 24
Through a gap in the door, Dora listened to Tom and Bear argue. Her belly twisted.
Tom killed my dad.
She struggled to catch her breath and calm herself.
Through the thin gap in the door she saw Bear being bound with new iron cuffs and metal hooks. She heard his alarmed exclamations and Tom’s cruel replies.
Her heart ached and tears of fury, as well as sorrow, burned her eyes.
Tom had killed her dad, as some kind of “dehumanising process”, through which he could disassociate himself from her and eventually kill her.
How could she have been so mistaken about him?
She’d heard of the human purists “Aversion Therapies”. They were therapies designed to “cure” a human of love and attraction to magical beings. Similar techniques had been used throughout history to “cure” homosexuals too.
She pushed the door closed as Bear was dragged into another room containing a large cage. Her large hands trembled as she fumbled with the bolt lock. It wouldn’t keep out a hungry puppy let alone four, or was it seven, human purists baying for her blood.
She sank back and scanned the toilets. They were foul, brown skid marks marred the grimy white porcelain of the pan, and drifts of toilet paper had collected in one dusty corner. Certainly not the place she wanted to spend her last moments on earth.
She jumped as she heard a knock on the tin door. ‘Dora? Are you OK?’
It was Tom, his voice was normal.
She swallowed, recalling the sinister twist of his smile and the flash in his eye as Bear had been dragged away.
What were they going to do to him? Would they kill him?
She shivered again and rubbed her arms. She couldn’t let it happen, he was only in this warehouse because she had trusted Tom.
‘Dor? You OK?’ Tom repeated, a note of alarm now audible in his voice.
She chewed her lip hard trying to quell her panic, until she tasted the salt of her own blood.
She brought her hand to her mouth, a hand that was already stained by her father’s blood.
How could she answer him? How on earth could she get Bear out of here?
‘I’m fine …’ she called back after a long minute. ‘I’ll be out in a second.’ She looked around frantically for inspiration.
There were no windows and she had no idea if the walls to the warehouse were single or double thickness. Not that it would matter, if she tried to kick her way out, she’d give herself away. She couldn’t outrun that many people, or fight them.
She heard Tom’s footsteps shuffle outside the toilets and the hair on her neck prickled.
She might just have to try.
‘Did you get Bear that telephone so he could ring his people?’ Dora asked, trying to buy time, giving the toilet an experimental flush. Discoloured brown water flooded the grimy toilet pan.
There was a pause and she could hear his feet shuffle again, or was that more than just Tom’s feet shuffling? She tried to picture the other men she’d seen.
‘Ah, yeah, he just stepped outside to get some fresh air,’ Tom replied after a moment. ‘Are you coming out now?’ His voice grew impatient.
Dora shuddered and recalled the look of frustration and anger on Bear’s face as they hauled him impotently into the cage.
‘In a minute,’ she repeated. Turning on the tap, more brown water flowed into an equally dirty old porcelain sink. ‘I just have to wash my face.’
‘I’ve missed you, Dor.’ Tom spoke softly through the toilet door, the impatience in his tone gone.
Dora’s stomach curdled. What had he said to Bear as she’d walked to the toilets, when he thought she couldn’t hear? I’ve got to get that bitch out of my system.
Stupid Tom for forgetting how acute a giant’s hearing was.
She smothered a bitter snort of laughter. ‘Yeah, I’ve missed you too,’ she lied.
After a minute of running her hands in the water to wash the blood away, Dora turned off the taps, dried her hands on the filthy cargo material of her worn and torn Ixion uniform. She had to leave the toilets soon, but she still needed a plan.
Perhaps she could use Tom’s attraction to her scent to her advantage. She didn’t know. Over the past forty-eight hours she’d had to live on quick wits that she wasn’t entirely sure she possessed.
Now, she was tired, but not too tired to know that if she didn’t get Bear the hell out of that cage, he was a dead man.
Gingerly, Dora unbolted the door and stepped out into the sickly fluorescent lighting of the warehouse. Tom moved back allowing her room to exit.
She noticed his nostrils flare as she stepped closer towards him, his physical reaction to her presence and scent obvious in the dilation of his pupils.
‘I’m very tired,’ she said softly. ‘Is there anywhere I can sleep for a bit before the UMC comes to get us?’
Tom’s brow furrowed, his gaze momentarily confused as he clearly warred with the desire her raw scent seemed to evoke.
‘They’ll be here soon,’ he said, his voice rough.
Dora began to walk towards the roller door beyond which she knew Bear resided in the iron cage. ‘I can hear a car,’ she murmured as she walked towards it. She laid an experimental hand on the cold corrugated metal of the roller door. ‘Are they already here?’
She turned to face Tom, and noticed his eyes linger on the open V of her shirt, and he shook his head minutely.
Dora frowned. ‘But I thought I heard voices.’ She looked around the wide open space, hoping to find something that could help her, and help Bear too.
‘Voices?’ Tom’s eyes narrowed and she could read the suspicion in his gaze.
She nodded and glanced along the back wall where a grimy work bench and a few rusted tools lay unused. ‘When I was in the bathroom, I’m sure I heard voices.’
‘I was talking to Bear,’ Tom said, the slight frown still folding the skin of his brow, ‘or it could have been Bear on the phone.’
Anger sparked through Dora’s body.
How can he blatantly lie to my face? The sound of his deceit had a taste and it was vile.
Hot and potent anger seemed to rip from the very fibres of Dora’s being. The rage was so visceral and painful, all Dora could do was clamp her jaw shut tight and try not to tear Tom’s throat out. Through the glistening, burning curtain of fury, she swallowed the painful lump in her throat and instead allowed her gaze to travel along the wall to an old punch card system. It took a bare minute before she could see through her emotions to the sorry remnants of a glorious bygone era of manufacturing in Western Australia. To her left, the bench was thick with cobwebs and clearly hadn’t been used in years. Old tools, welding masks and metal files littered its surface, covered in dust and long neglected.
Frustration boiled in the pit of her stomach. She needed to know where the other men who’d grabbed Bear were. She glanced at the grimy glass paned door of a fibro office, and quickly tried to assess it for movement and shadows.
Perhaps in there?
‘Why is Bear taking so long?’ she asked and moved closer towards the punch card rack, and gingerly ran her finger over the oily dust covering the surface of the bench. There was a small metal pole there, forged in some distant time. Her fingers slid over it slowly.
Could she hit him with this? she wondered.
Tom shrugged, his eyes watching the movement of her hand.
‘Dora …’ he began, and the sincerity in his voice sounded real. ‘I’m sorry …’
She turned her head to assess him, and as she did, noticed beside the punch card rack on the wall, a black switch. For just a second she allowed her gaze to travel up the wire from the switch. Above it was a large dusty, yellowed loud speaker. A siren.
Bingo.
She stepped closer to it, hoping that the siren worked and someone would come and investigate.
‘You’re sorry?’ she asked her feet scuffing the gritty floor as she took yet another step towards the siren switch. ‘For what?’
She was in arms reach of the siren switch now, and her heart started to race. She didn’t look at him but kept her gaze lowered slightly to the right, always keeping the siren switch in her peripheral vision.
‘For having to do this …’ he began.
He was going to kill her now, Dora was certain of it.
She lurched to the left, her fingers hitting the black switch of the siren.
For a second there was nothing, nothing but a scratchy electrical sound.
‘What have you done?’ Tom cried moving to pull her arm from the switch. The long lonely wail of the siren split through the air.
Dora didn’t turn but ran her hand over the small metal pole, and gripped it tightly.
‘Trust me, Dor, you don’t want to do this!’
She spun around, her hair obscuring her vision for a moment and swung the metal pole. ‘You killed my father, and you’re trying to kill Bear! I’m not going to let that happen,’ she snarled and struck him allowing the anger and hurt to break from her heart and fill her muscles with a strength she’d not known was possible.
Taken aback, Tom sailed backwards through the air landing on his arse on the dusty floor.
Men erupted from the fibro office to the left.
‘Stop!’ Tom yelled, his eyes were wild, and scrabbled to his feet. A massive blond Nordic looking man dressed in green combat uniform clipped Tom around the head with the back of his hand. ‘You’re a fool, brother,’ he snarled. ‘She’ll ruin everything, stop that siren!’
