Shotgun Sorceress (25 page)

I nodded. “All that, yeah.”

She stepped up beside the table and started feeling the lymph nodes in my neck and under my jaw. “You’ve definitely got some swelling in here.”

She pulled a wooden tongue depressor and a penlight out of her breast pocket. “Open your mouth, stick your tongue out, and say ‘Aaah.’ ”

I did as she asked.

“Okay, you can close now.” She turned away and tossed the depressor into the trash. “I think, my dear, that you’ve got the local superbug:
Ehrlichia mutans.
”

I suddenly felt a bit queasier. “What’s that?”

“It’s a bacterium in the family
Anaplasmataceae.
” She went to the sanitizer dispenser on the wall, pumped some clear alcohol gel into her palm, and vigorously rubbed her hands together. “Normally it’s transmitted by tick bites, and normally symptoms don’t develop until a few weeks after exposure, but things aren’t exactly normal around here, are they? Our local mutation is a speedy little bugger. It mostly causes the flulike, rashy ick you’re feeling now, but I’ve been seeing it destroy some people’s kidneys. To my regret we haven’t had much luck at keeping people alive on dialysis around here, so aggressive treatment from the start is our best option. Knock it out before it knocks you out.”

I nodded. “Sounds good to me.”

Dr. Ottaway turned to the nurse. “Please bring me a bottle of doxycycline, the usual strength, and a bottle of ibuprofen 200s.”

The nurse left to fetch the antibiotic, and the doctor pulled a small notepad out of one of her front coat pockets and started writing down some directions. “I’m going to give you a bottle of hundred-milligram doxycycline tablets. I want you to go straight to the cafeteria, have some food, and take
three
of the doxy pills. You’ve already had eight hundred milligrams of ibuprofen, and you’re likely to make yourself sick if you take all this on an empty stomach. And then tonight when you get ready for bed, I want you to take two more doxy pills, and then one in the morning and one at night until the bottle’s empty. I’m also going to give you a bottle of ibuprofen, but do
not
take more for at least eight hours … after that, take two every four to six hours as you need them for fever.”

She paused. “Also, try to stay out of the sun as much as possible—both these drugs can make your skin burn very easily. Do you understand everything I’ve told you?”

I nodded. “I think so.”

“Good.” She tore the instructions off her notepad and handed them to me. “If you see any blood in your urine, come back in here
immediately.
”

“I will. Thank you.”

Nurse Barnes returned with my medication in a small brown paper bag, and the good doctor bade me good-bye and sent me on my way.

chapter
twenty-three

Monsters

A
fter a breakfast of antibiotics, rubbery powdered eggs, and watery oatmeal in the student center’s cafeteria, Pal helped me back to the dorm and strapped me back into the restraint chair so I could take a nap.

“That egg ration wasn’t terribly filling,” Pal said. “I’m still feeling rather peckish. I think I smelled rats when we were in the lobby … do you mind if I go down to the basement to see if I can do a little hunting?”

I don’t think that’s a good idea
, I thought back, unable to speak with my head immobilized.
I mean, I don’t mind for myself, as long as you locked the doors so nobody could come wandering in here while I’m asleep. But you look like a monster and practically everybody here has a big gun. I wouldn’t want you to get shot
.

Pal looked offended. “I was aware of that, thank you. I planned to turn myself invisible. And I am otherwise perfectly capable of defending myself against firearms.”

Still. I just don’t think it’s a good idea … how about I go down there with you once I’ve rested for a little while?

Pal blinked at me and scratched the carpeted floor impatiently with one of his middle legs. “I am really
quite
hungry, but I suppose that would be an acceptable compromise, provided you don’t sleep too long.”

Cool
. My eyelids were already growing heavy, and soon I was fast asleep in the chair.

    I woke with a start when I heard a key scrabbling in the lock. Based on the angle of the sunlight streaming through the miniblinds, I’d been asleep for at least two or three hours. It was hard to look around, but I was no longer seeing the fey, and my headache and chills were gone, so apparently the medicine was working. Unfortunately, I also couldn’t see my familiar.

Pal, where are you? Someone’s coming into the room
, I thought, suddenly aware of how vulnerable I was. And I didn’t know how many people might have access to the dorm’s master keys.
Pal, are you here?

No response came. The door swung open and I was relieved to see the Warlock come in. But when I saw that he was alone I felt anxious all over again. He was dressed in a pair of tiger-stripe camouflage pants and a tan T-shirt; based on the soot, smudges, scratches, and bruises on his face and arms, I guessed his tuxedo pants and shirt had been ruined during his overnight mission.

He had an olive-drab canvas map bag slung across his shoulder; he set it down on the nearby bed. His black kitten crawled out and climbed up to the shelf above, blinking its yellow eyes at us. Its twin crept out from under the bed and clawed up the bed up to join it.

“Where’s Spiderboy?” The Warlock’s eyes were glassy, bloodshot. He had the thousand-yard stare of somebody who’d been up far too long but was too wound up on adrenaline to sleep. He looked at the strap holding my jaw shut. “Right. You can’t possibly talk with that on, can you?”

He locked the door behind him and came over to my chair to take off the restraints binding my head. His hands were dark with dirt, grease, and speckles of what was probably blood.

“Wash first, please,” I slurred around the mouthpiece as he reached for it.

He gave me a slightly annoyed look, but went into the bathroom to quickly scrub himself off at the sink.

“Thanks,” I said after he pulled the mouthpiece out with clean, damp hands. “I guess Pal got hungry and went off hunting rats. Where’s Cooper?”

“He’s off killing meat puppets, still. He’s enjoying it far too much if you ask me.” The Warlock set the mouthpiece aside on one of the dressers and pulled a folding chair over to sit in front of me. “But who am I to deny my own brother his pleasures?”

Something about the way he said “pleasures” set the Gothic bells tolling in my head. I gave him a harder look. “Get me out of this chair, please.”

He was staring at my breasts. “You know, you look really hot all strapped in like that. Really, really hot.”

My heart beat faster in mixed alarm and—goddamn it—arousal. No, no, this was
not
happening. I met his gaze, and knew that part of his mind was just
gone
. His superego had fled the building, leaving his id in charge of the party.

“Did you see Miko out there?” I stammered. Obviously, he had, and she’d triggered a lust in him that was at least as bad as mine. Worse, maybe. “Please just unstrap me. This can’t go anywhere good.”

“I saw …” He trailed off for a moment, then leaned in and breathed deeply near my neck. My skin prickled under his hot exhalation. “I saw you naked in the desert. I’d wanted to see that for a long, long time. I think I want to see it again.”

I tried to squirm away from him, but the chair held me fast. I started trying to summon the words for a spell to free myself, but all I could think of was letting the Warlock take me to the bed and fuck me blind. Panic rose along with my abject lust, chasing the ancient words from my mind.

“Please don’t,” I begged. “You’re not thinking straight.
I’m
not thinking straight. Miko’s messing with us.”

He didn’t seem to hear me. “You’ve got a gorgeous pair, Jessie. Did you know I can make a woman come just by sucking on her nipples? Oh yeah. That’s one trick I
know
I can do better than Coop. He doesn’t half deserve a fine woman like you.”

“Christ, Warlock. He’s your
brother.
”

“I don’t see a ring on your finger. If he wanted you all to himself, he should’ve made the vow by now.”

“I’ve. Got. Hepatitis!”

“And I’ve got condoms.” He started to pull my shirt up. “And I can tell when a woman’s getting all juicy. You look like you’re getting a whole bunch of honey on those tight leather pants of mine.”

“No, dammit,
no
. I don’t want you to do this.
Stop.
” I was starting to get angry now.
Really
angry. So what if I was obviously aroused by him? That didn’t give him the right to jump on me like a dog that had found a bitch in heat. He owed me more respect than this, damn him.

The Warlock stood up and unzipped the fly of his camouflage pants. Levered his cock out. His organ was about as long as Cooper’s but much thicker and gnarled with hard veins, the purpling mushroom head boastfully flared, and I couldn’t help but wonder how it would feel inside me. Damn Miko to oblivion.

“This is another thing I know I’ve got on Coop,” he said, stroking his cock slowly with his left hand. “All the ladies who’ve done a taste test with both of us have always come back to
me
for seconds. And usually thirds and fourths.”

“If you touch me,” I warned him through gritted teeth, “I will kick your ass like it’s never been kicked before.”

“Oh yeah?” He cocked an eyebrow and smiled at me as if he’d taken my threat as a challenge. “Well, we’ll just have to see about that, won’t we?”

He pulled up my sports bra, leaned down, and took my left nipple between his lips. His death-memory hit me, and the sensation of the phantom blade sawing through my throat fired my anger into a profound rage that overwhelmed my lust and panic. He
had
to know kissing me would hurt me, and he did it anyway, goddamn him!

Screaming in pain and fury, I pulled us both into my hellement.

The Warlock was standing in my bedroom, dressed in his tuxedo again, looking exactly as he had when we drove out to the Faery Tavern. He looked around, startled. “What the—where are we? What is this place?”

I slugged him right in the mouth, and he tumbled backward into the closet and slid to the floor, his lip bleeding. He was no physical match for me in here.

“You’re supposed to be my friend!” I screamed down at him. “You’re supposed to show me common decency and respect, not
rape
me, you jackass!”

He tried to get up. “I—I wasn’t—”

His protestation put my rage right into orbit. Screaming obscenities, I fell on him, straddling him, and punched him over and over and over as hard as I could, feeling his nose and cheekbones and jaws and teeth shattering under my fists. After a dozen blows, his face looked like fresh roadkill, and he was gurgling for air through the blood filling his wrecked mouth. He didn’t even look human anymore.

Something hard was poking my inner thigh. I rocked back on my heels, grabbed the waistbands of his tuxedo pants and boxers, and ripped them open. His cock bobbed up, huge and hard and insolent.

“You’re still horny?” I snarled at him. “After all that, you’re
still
horny?”

His lacerated tongue twitched and he moaned, his mouth too destroyed to form any words. I could feel my sanity slipping away from me, but was too angry to care. The Warlock hadn’t learned his lesson yet, and by God I was going to give it to him.

I started to strangle him with both hands. Miko’s memory of killing the GI echoed darkly in the back of my mind. The Warlock gagged and tried to pry my fingers off his throat, but he couldn’t budge them even a millimeter.

“You wanna fuck?” My clothes had disappeared, and I could feel his dick hard against the mound of my loins. “Well, you’re gonna get fucked, bitch!”

I lifted my hips and drove my cunt down on his cock, imagining my gash not as an organ of love and life giving but as the callous, toothless maw of a savage forest hag, the kind that consorts with ancient horned gods, devouring haughty princes and fattening bratty children in cages of bone deep in the blackest heart of the wilderness.

I pounded down on him, choking him, waiting to feel his pelvis ground to wet rubble beneath me, and was surprised to find myself coming, coming hard.

Crying out, I fell backward against the side of the bed, my flesh still shuddering. The Warlock looked dead; surely I had suffocated him. Jesus, what had I done?

Maybe there was still time to save him. I got up on shaky legs, grabbed his wrist, and started to drag him toward the portal door.

He suddenly came awake with an animal growl and lurched to his feet, glaring at me, blue eyes bright in the ruin of his face, his tool hard again. I could have muscled him over to the door, could have stopped what happened next, but his sudden show of force had ignited my damnable lust again and I just stood there staring back at him.

The Warlock threw me facedown on the bed, and in a heartbeat his rough hands were jerking my hips up in the air, pulling me onto my hands and knees. The jarred traumas rattled in the darkness beneath us. He wedged my legs apart, pressed the blunt tip of his cock against my tightness, and there was a sun-bright pain as he forced himself inside me, and oh God it hurt, but to my hellish need agony was just as good as ecstasy. He thrust again, and an orgasm unwound inside me, fast and relentless as a striking rattlesnake. I howled into the mattress, my muscles rhythmically clamping down on his cock and he was coming, too, shooting stinging heat deep inside me.

A little sanity returned, and I realized that if we stayed in the hellement, we’d tear each other to pieces, and Miko would laugh all the way to the graveyard.
Christ, we’ve got to get out of here
.

Suddenly the room tilted and we were on our feet; the Warlock was rutting me against the portal door. I reached down and turned the handle, and we both tumbled through.