'Til Death (part fourteen of fifteen)

‘Til Death

A Trick Molloy Mystery

©2009 Michael A. Stackpole

Part Fourteen

Generally it’s a good thing when someone enjoys their job. Turpeluk did. It showed in his work. He used spell that must have been something the KGB came up with in the old Soviet days—enhanced interrogation techniques. They didn’t just hit the pain receptors, they hit everything. When he raked a hand over me, pain was the furrow, but heat and cold came fast on after. A stripe would be broiling, another freezing, pain would just jet through me.

Not only did Turpeluk like his work, he knew it well. He could tell when I was faking exhaustion. He could tell when I was truly there. The first he’d reward with pain stabbing so deep I wanted to claw my belly open to rip it out.

And when I was about to pass out, he’d have one of his boys hit me with more cold water.

Then he’d go to work on Irina.

A lot of what he did on her was psychological. Lots of Russian spoken quickly. Then a magick lash. He’d let her cry, then get control before he started in again. While he waited he’d take hits off a bottle of clear liquid—that homemade vodka—which I guessed was his trigger.

He’d have broken me down a lot faster, but he’d given me a shield. He wanted me to beg for my mother. No way. I hated her more than I hated him. Not by much, mind you—and he was moving up the charts really fast. But what he’d done for hours, she’d done for years. I wasn’t going to call for her.

Hell, if I did, she’d show up.

And she’d start giving him pointers.

So I had hatred, and then I had pain. I remember a freelance healer Lou and I once hauled in for fraud, telling me that one had to be “present” to pain for it to hurt. I needed to be a “silent witness” to my pain. If I did that, he explained, then healing energy would flow.

He’d offered that advice to make up for one of his aides having dented my shoulder with a crowbar.

The whole silent witness thing never worked for me. Saying, “Ow, ow, ow-fricking-ow!” defeated the whole silent part of things.

Turns out the silent witness thing didn’t work for the healer, either. Clumsy fellow. He had a habit of walking into walls, falling down stairs, and bumping his head on the squad car. Made a lot of noise.

But we made sure there were no witnesses to his pain.

My pain, on the other hand, had one big witness. Me. It ground on me. It was like I’d been wading for years through lava, breathing sulfur and sweating shrapnel. My broken arm felt the best. That was honest pain. The magick stuff played hide and seek. No anticipation, just ambushes. I couldn’t even shiver, so dead was my body.

Screw being a witness to my pain. I was my pain. I’d stopped being me.

Turpeluk recognized that fact. The look on his face wasn’t surprise. It was pure knowing. If there was a hint of curiosity, it was that I’d taken so long to get to this point. And yet, the disappointment told me others hadn’t been so easy.

I coughed. “How much longer?”

“Until I kill you?” He shrugged.

I shook my head. “How long ’til I set the record?”

He laughed, but his henchmen were too afraid to join him. “My time in gulags, Molloy, I saw much. You’ve not even lasted as long as I did.”

“Go for it.”

He shook his head. “Pity, but we cannot. Sunrise. We must end this now.”

He thrust his right hand against my chest. The lightning bolts sank into my flesh. They curled like ivy around ribs, then tightened, slowly crushing them. The vines pushed on, wrapping my heart. It beat furiously, trying to escape. One pulse, one tensing, and he’d burst my heart.

And the pain…

Every muscle in my body fired. I arched away from the fence, bound at wrists, waist and ankles. My right arm warped. That pain vanished in the background. My body burned. I opened my mouth to scream. Pain paralyzed my lungs. I began to suffocate.

Then the door exploded in off its hinges, whirling like a playing card. Nikolai never saw it coming. His top half flipped lazily above it. His legs flopped below. A thin, pink, tissue rope connected them. Ivan, who had providentially been tying his shoe, looked up and vomited.

“I think, lad, you want to be leaving Patrick alone.” Loki, silhouetted by the dawn, stood in the doorway. “Let’s not make it harder on you than we must.”

Turpeluk gave me an extra jolt, then backed away and recovered his bottle. He drank. He laughed. “Do your worst.”

I let out a low laugh. “Look at him, tovarish.”

Turpeluk blinked his eyes, then his mouth slowly gaped. Seen through magick, Turpeluk looked like molten silver. Loki, on the other hand, burned dark and cold. Power radiated off into unseen frequencies.

I twisted my right arm, wringing more pain from it.

Loki’s image sharpened intensely. “That’s enough, Patrick.”

“You don’t know this clown.”

“Don’t need to.” Loki smiled as he walked into the warehouse. “Drink up. That being your last, after all.”

Turpeluk drained the bottle, then threw it at Loki. My cousin let it sail past. Turpeluk used the momentary distraction to launch his first attack. He used that same fire-jet he’d hit me with. All golden and hot, it geysered at Loki.

My cousin didn’t raise a shield. Didn’t dodge. He just gestured. A dark tube raced back along the shaft, engulfing the fire. Chased it right back to the source. The ebon cylinder closed over Turpeluk’s left forearm. Flames licked at the Russian’s elbow.

Loki’s hand convulsed into a fist.

The tube contracted into nothing, then evaporated.

Taking Turpeluk’s forearm with it.

I don’t think the Russian had time to feel the pain before Loki opened his hand again. A wrought-iron spherical cage blossomed at the Russian’s feet and caught Turpeluk up. He grabbed a bar with his good hand, then screamed. It came away bloody. Long metal splinters wholly transfixed his hand. He stumbled back into other bars. More metal quills punctured his back.

Then the sphere began to spin, tumbling Turpeluk. He bounced around inside it, needles piercing his flesh. The ball sped up gradually, flicking him around more forcefully. Shredding him.

Loki glanced at me. “Patrick, I can’t control it.”

I looked at him through magick. Every scream, every whimper, made Loki’s outline stronger. Burning more darkly.

Burning more intensely than I’d ever seen before.

“Patrick, do something!”

Aching, spent, all but dead, I really had nothing to give him. Loki, I learned long ago, had the same trigger as he had channel: pain. The more he inflicted, the stronger he got. He was a magick breeder-reactor. The pain from the beating I’d taken earlier had been controllable. Now, with me and Irina and Turpeluk all burning out of control, we were talking a firestorm of pain. Loki’d inflict more and more, getting drunk on it, the cycle building. Me, the women, the neighborhood. No one would escape.

“Loki, control it. You can.”

“I’m losing it, Patrick. Help me.”

There it was. That note in his voice. The same note I’d have sounded if I’d called out for my mother. Utter desperation. Complete hopelessness. Surrender to that which will destroy you.

The resignation echoing from a well of pain that shouldn’t be inflicted on anyone.

And yet, to stop Loki, I had to inflict more.

Loki absorbed pain the way we all did: through nerves. I reached down inside myself and found the last traces of magick. I teased out a slender green thread, and wrapped it around every shred of agony coursing through me. I tied it up all in a nice little package. And as the cage peeled Turpeluk’s flesh from his face, I pumped it full-force into my cousin.

Magick might make you incredibly powerful, but it doesn’t change your basic physiology. I hit Loki with as big a dose of pain as I could deliver. One big flash, all at once.

I pushed it into his chest, and lit it off.

Only so many ways a man can react to that much pain.

His body stiffened as mine had, but he wasn’t chained to a fence. Arms and legs shot out. He leaped up a little, fell back. Smacked his head hard on the floor, then rolled onto his side. His knees came up to his chest, fetal. Blood on his lips from biting his tongue.

That much pain, the body can’t take it. Like staring at camera flash: all of a sudden he was blind to the pain. Since pain was fueling him, blindness cut him off from his trigger. He couldn’t connect. The thing driving him vanished.

Abandoned, he lay on the floor and twitched.

And what was left of Peotr Turpeluk drained past him and into the sewer.

If you are enjoying this story and don’t want to wait for the thrilling conclusion to make it to this blog, I’ve collected the entire story and you can purchase it from The Stormwolf Store. It costs $3, and your purchase goes to supporting more serial fiction like this.

If you were wondering how we got here, please visit the Stormwolf Store. The short story “The Witch in Scarlet” is the Trick Molloy tale that immediately precedes this one.