Downworld

Chapter 42

If I'd ever had a choice to pick what kind of freak I was, most of the time I would have picked an energy stealer. Hell, as much as it had been responsible for so much self-hatred, I wouldn't have been able to escape downworld as a kid if I wasn't one of the more powerful incubi. My seduction powers had been useful for other things during my self-imposed exile as well, and had kept me out of trouble, and in money, more than once. If I'd been anything other than an energy stealer, I wouldn't have been able to pass for human as well as I had, and my own kind would have probably dragged me back down a long time before I was ready to return.

But fucking hell, tied to a chair with hunger gnawing at my insides and pain making me near useless, I would have killed for some more offensive powers. Something to help me get free, something to wipe that self satisfied smirk off Afra's face, something to made the brutes who were methodically turning every inch of my skin black and green or the bastards with the knives who were having fun poking holes in me back the fuck off and leave me alone.

I wouldn't say it didn't hurt, because it fucking hurt. The brutes and the bastards, four of them in total, who tag teamed so I wouldn't get a break, were not the most imaginative torturers, but pain was pain and I was in a lot of it. Occasionally, Afra would ask me questions, but I'd stopped answering and it was pretty clear that this torture was mostly just for fun, not information. I think she wanted me to beg, and I wasn't going to, not even if they cut my arms off.

I'd stopped healing a while ago. What little of Malik's fire I still had in me was waiting in reserve, not expending itself on these minor wounds in case something life threatening happened. I felt weaker than I had in years -- I felt as weak as a human -- and that and the hunger were worse torture than the actual pain.

I wondered how the fuck I thought this was a good plan. I should have stayed with the bodyguards, I should have fought harder, because this torture was actual fucking torture. I would take a quick death any day.

'Do you think the humans will want to listen to you after this?' Afra said, after one of the bastards applied his knife to making a shallow cut across my face that bled like a mother fucker. 'You do realize it's because you're pretty that the humans have been listening to you at all? I wonder what they'll do when you look like the freak you are.'

I gritted my teeth together. I didn't know how long we'd been at this -- long enough for Afra to have taken a few breaks, if not long enough for the brutes and the bastards to have done so -- then again, maybe they weren't the same ones that had been there at the beginning, I was a bit distracted and they all looked the same in their all black outfits -- but it was long enough that I didn't care so much about how I was going to look after this was over. My main concern was wondering where the fuck everyone was -- when Malik showed up I'd be able to take some energy from him to heal myself anyway. If he showed up. Maybe I'd over estimated his ability to find me -- or find someone who could find me -- in the above.

We continued in this way for a while, until Afra wandered off again. The brutes and the bastards tended to go easier on me when she wasn't watching. Maybe they didn't like this torture business either.

I leaned my head back and stared up at the rafters. It was lighter now, and probably afternoon outside the warehouse's darkened windows. Up high, some of the windows even let in the odd beam of sun. It was just enough light to make out a white shape in the rafters, and the flash of light on reflective eyes. Cat's eyes, unless I was beginning to hallucinate from the pain. I was too far away and the light was too poor for me to make out whether the cat was a two-tailed nekomata, but I was willing to hope that it was.

I let my head slump forward, lest someone notice me looking. If any of the brutes or the bastards had two brain cells, they would also be able to connect a white cat with Isamu and figure out that rescue was coming.