Olivia (49 page)

Never mind.  She’d have a few hours at least between now and the climb back up.  Plenty of time to rest her arms.  And who knew?  One of the hunters might come down for a bath.  In either case, she didn’t want to think about it now.  Tucking her climbing spikes back in her pouch, Olivia walked down the silent passage and into the hot springs.

Cheyenne was pacing back and forth against the left wall.  She threw Olivia a murderous expression and came quickly over.  “It’s about time,” she snarled.  “I’ve been waiting over an hour.  Come on, I’ll tell you how to get—”

“Just a second,” Olivia interrupted.  She wasn’t sure what she was going to say until she said it:  “Show me a bruise.”

“What?”  Cheyenne stopped pacing and stared at her, incredulous.  “I don’t have time for this, God damn it!  He could be back any min—”

“Show me a bruise,” she repeated.  “Any bruise.  Show me where he hits you.  Show me—”  Olivia heard herself laugh a little, high and unhappy and angry, and she guessed she knew what she was saying after all.  “Show me where he chokes you.  Show me the burns on your feet.  Heck, show me just one claw mark on your ass, just one, and I’ll do this.”

There was no explosion, no outrage, no tears.  Neither did Cheyenne wrench up her shirt to display proof.  She only leaned back a little, her expression quieting into one which was merely thoughtful. 

“Why the bullshit, Cheyenne?” Olivia demanded.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

The knowledge that she had been manipulated from the start, fooled by a string of lies and a few tears into risking Vorgullum’s trust and the life that she had made for herself, struck up against Cheyenne’s calm and congealed all at once into cold fury.  “Bull
shit
!” she spat, her face inches from Cheyenne’s.  “All that crap you fed me about rape and beatings!  All the tears you turned on and off for me so I’d jump when you snapped your fucking fingers! 
That
bullshit!”

“Oh,” she said when Olivia was done.  “That.”  She shrugged. “I had to say something to get you on board.”

And then her hand flashed out and caught Olivia by the throat, her foot knocked Olivia’s legs out from under her, and Cheyenne expertly bent and slammed her into the rocky floor.

Olivia scrabbled at the hand that locked the air out of her lungs, croaking like the frog Murgull always accused her of being.

“If it makes it any easier for you, I didn’t lie about everything,” Cheyenne continued conversationally.  “He really does have a limp dick.  Of course, that may have more to do with me knocking the snot out of him whenever I get the chance than anything else.  According to you, he’s perfectly capable of getting it on with the other furballs here.”

Olivia scratched wildly at Cheyenne’s face, but the other woman merely batted her hands away.  Her struggles were weakening; all of her blood vessels were throbbing in chorus, making her feel thick and cold at once.  Her tongue protruded slightly.  She made a final plea, which emerged as a rattled gasp.

Cheyenne’s eyes were cold as she straddled Olivia’s stomach and leaned on her hand.  “And he likes you,” she said in that same even tone.  “If he knew what I’m about to do for him, why, he’d probably thank me.”

Light was exploding behind Olivia’s eyes, obscuring the image of her assailant.  She was distantly aware that her heels were drumming on stone and her hips were bucking wildly, but it didn’t seem to inconvenience Cheyenne, and Olivia was beyond being bothered by anything as she fell backwards through stone and into silence.

19

Olivia was dimly conscious of being carried, but could not say where or how long.  She could only feel herself swinging, her chin smacking steadily into the hard curve of Cheyenne’s back, until the moment when she was dumped unceremoniously on the ground.  She uttered a raspy groan, and Cheyenne chuckled softly somewhere above her.  The darkness was complete here.  Even when Cheyenne touched her, Olivia saw nothing.  She had to check her eyes to be certain they were open.

Olivia tried to speak, but emitted nothing more than a cracked whistle.

Cheyenne whistled back, mockingly.  “Gol-lee, I bet that smarts,” she whispered, and the sound hissed and flowed in the empty tunnel.  Cheyenne hooked her foot under Olivia’s ribs and flipped her onto her back.  “I said you were going to be a help to me, and one way or another, honey, you are!”

“…heh.” Olivia sucked in breath like razors and tried again.  “…hep…!”

“Hey, shout as loud as you can.  We’re deep in the wasted tunnels and the only one who would possibly hear you is the one I want to find you.”  Cheyenne dropped to one knee beside Olivia, reached into her pouch and pulled out the climbing spikes.  When Olivia mewled miserably, Cheyenne hushed her and said, “Don’t worry, you’ll get them right back.”

She stepped away and Olivia felt one of her bare feet lifted into the air.  A heartbeat after she realized what was going to happen, Cheyenne jabbed the spike into Olivia’s sole, just below her big toe, and yanked the serrated edge down to her heel, deep enough that Olivia could feel the rough iron scrape against her bones.

Olivia felt her skin rip open, and tried to scream.  All that came out of her ruined throat was a whooping, raspy, “Haah!”

Cheyenne dropped the foot, and picked up the other.

Olivia kicked at her, and Cheyenne reared up and slammed her fist into Olivia’s stomach.  Olivia gave a groggy belch and tried to curl up, but Cheyenne yanked her leg out straight and carved another jagged line into her instep.

Gagging, weeping, Olivia tried again to roll over.  This time, Cheyenne let her.

She tossed the spikes onto the ground next to her.  They clattered loudly, disguising the pathetic sounds of Olivia’s distress.

“He’s going to trip right over you,” Cheyenne said.  “But just in case he’s tempted to run and get help right away…”

Olivia heard a muted popping noise, and then she was being doused with something wet.  She thrashed, trying to get out from under the trickling liquid, but it landed everywhere—her skin, her hair, her clothes.  There wasn’t much of a smell, but what there was seemed familiar.  Musky.  Like boiled down she-goat piss.

“I sure appreciate you giving me this stuff,” Cheyenne remarked.  “I hope it works.”  She started to crunch away down the tunnel.

“Don’ lee me!” Olivia whispered scratchily.

Laughter was her only answer and soon, even that was gone.

Olivia rolled over and felt blindly for her climbing spikes.  The tunnel swam and buckled around her, unseen.  Finally, her fingers brushed against cold iron and she pounced on it, fitting the haft into her palm and clenching around it.

A weapon.

She found the other within seconds and then tried to stand.

Her mutilated feet shrieked out in agony and she shrieked with them—horrible, empty rushes of air that the tunnel tossed back in her face as though laughing at the futility of it all.

Olivia started crawling, dragging her heavy, throbbing feet behind her, but the uneven stone surface soon weakened her knees until they wouldn’t support her either.  She lay on her side in the tunnel, sobbing with fear and pain.

A sound.  A stealthy rustle.  She turned her blind eyes towards it, and tried to speak.  “Help,” she rasped.  “Help me!”

Pain shocked up her right leg as unexpectedly as a bolt of lightning in clear skies.  She kicked without thinking, struck something small and hot, and heard a squeak.

All the considerable horror in her very young life congealed into a single, cold clump.

Rats.

She screamed her scratchy scream and stabbed at the sound with her climbing spikes, yanking her feet up behind her.  She struck sparks off the cavern floor, jarred her arm up to the shoulder, and was bitten at the same time near her left hip.

Olivia thrashed in the blackness.  They swarmed on her, biting and screaming their ratty war cries.  Olivia scrambled back until she struck the wall, trying to gather her feet up beneath her where they would be protected.  She slashed and struck, beating wildly at the stone, sending up a raucous din as her iron spikes struck and struck at the stone.

Suddenly, her spikes punched through living flesh, and the rat sent up a shrill cry, scrabbling and biting brainlessly at the rock.  Its struggles waned and stilled.

Olivia continued to press on its body, listening desperately for the others.

Slowly it occurred to her that there were no others, at least not now.

She yanked the rat off her spikes and flung it away.  It smacked wetly into the other wall and Olivia began crawling again, her panic lending new strength to her knees.  She had managed maybe twenty feet when she heard a new sound, that of blunt claws tapping on the tunnel’s floor.

The feet slowed, then stopped.  Silence.

Olivia froze, not breathing, sensing the other out there listening as hard as she to determine what was in the tunnel.

Good God
, she thought suddenly. 
What am I keeping quiet for
?

She sucked in breath, concentrated on her voice, and let out a ragged croak.  “Help!  Help me!”

“Who—?”  Kodjunn’s voice abruptly silenced, perhaps because the answer didn’t matter, and he started forward rapidly.  “Where are you?  Keep talking!”

“Here, I’m here!” she gasped.  Her voice was a little stronger, but not much.  “Rats!  Help me!  Help me, I—”  She stopped as the image of Cheyenne rose up in stark relief against the ragged backdrop of her mind.  Despite her disbelief and self-disgust, she heard her own tortured voice saying, “I got lost, I dropped my spikes and stepped on them.  I can’t walk, and there are rats!”

He reached her, fumbling his hands clumsily over her head in the dark, and then lowering himself carefully to gather her up.  “Where are you hurt?” he began, and then he was sniffing.  “I smell bl…blood…”

He went suddenly silent, his hands digging at her slowly, becoming painful and then surpassing it. Like a scent they cannot smell, Murgull had said.  He didn’t even know what was happening to him.

“I’m hurt,” she said.  “I need help.  Please, Kodjunn!”

The sound of his name seemed to bring him out of it, but not very far.  He pulled her into his arms and stood, but didn’t start walking, and his muscles only seemed to be locking up tighter and tighter. It was as though she had been plucked up and dumped into the arms of a stone statue, one that had come to just enough terrible life to breathe.

“Please,” she whispered.  “Take me to Murgull.”

“I left a candle burning,” he said, a statement so nonsensical that for a moment, she thought Murgull had made the wrong potion after all and he was hallucinating.  “I have to…I have to…”

“Go back for it,” she told him.  “I can wait—”

“No.”  His arms tightened with bruising force, then very slowly eased. 
“You’re hurt.  I have to…”

Breathing.  Just breathing.

“Hurry,” said Olivia.  This was bad, but maybe it wouldn’t get any worse.  If he could get her out of here fast enough, get her to Murgull—

He started walking, lurching like Frankenstein’s monster back down the passage, hissing through his teeth with every step as though his were the feet cut to the bone.  It couldn’t have taken as long as it seemed, but darkness, pain and fear run in their own time.  It seemed that hours passed, hours, before she saw the glimmers of golden candlelight and smelled tallow burning and smoking in the air.  He had left not one candle, but many, set all around this abandoned cavern, here in the ruins where the wasted ones had laired.

It wasn’t a very romantic setting, if this was where he was meeting his secret lover.  A sleeping pit had been scratched out in the center of the room, but it was empty.  A brass brazier, tarnished by years and neglect, lay on its side in one corner, the ironwork of its legs rusted through.  Kodjunn’s pink Powerpuff backpack sat up against one wall, unzipped around a water jug and a few unlit candles.  The only furnishing at all was a single bench, and it was there that he set her down and knelt to examine her feet.

“Bleeding,” he hissed, and pulled in one hard, shuddering breath.  “Need…to bind it.”  He cast his eyes around desperately, but apart from a half-dozen guttering candles, the room held nothing. 

“Here.”  Olivia struggled briefly with the catches, then pulled her homemade shirt off.  She held it out with one arm, covered her chest with the other, and shivered in the cold.  “Use this.” 

Kodjunn took a deep breath, snatched the shirt and tore it into strips.  He crawled back to the very edge of reach and began to wind it tight around her left foot.  It hurt, but it was a whole different kind of pain, not the raw and savage agony of an open wound, but a dull throb that was infinitely more bearable. When he had them both bandaged, Kodjunn dropped her and hunched further over, his head now nearly touching the stone floor.  He took breath after shaky breath, and finally looked up at her, his eyes showing the whites all around.  He reached out with one hand, slammed his claws into the bench at her side and pressed his other palm over his bulging loincloth with a ragged moan. 

Olivia watched him suffer helplessly. 

During spring break in college, she had once arranged to go camping with a group of girl friends.  One of them, through a poor knowledge of field botany, watered the wrong bush and managed to acquire poison ivy inside her vagina.  They had been driving her to the nearest hospital, three of them holding her while Olivia drove.  On the way, the girl had managed to free a hand and scratch.  Olivia had chosen that moment to look in the rearview mirror.

The expression on that hapless girl’s face and the expression Kodjunn wore now was exactly the same: unspeakable pain disguised as carnal pleasure.

Cheyenne had really thought things through.

“Kodjunn,” Olivia said softly, gritting her teeth against the brief flare of pain in both her feet as she shifted on the bench to straddle it.  “Come here.”

He jerked his head towards her, then away, breathing hard.  “No,” he panted, but his hand was scratching at the stays of his loincloth. 

Steeling herself against the agony crawling up her legs like poison, Olivia pulled her skirt up.  “You need me,” she told him, and it was true.  Damn Cheyenne and damn that stupid potion, but it was true and there was really nothing else she could do.