Dead and Gone

horrible dream, and I would wake from it . . . sooner, rather than later. I’d known from a very early age that there was cruelty in the world—believe me, I’d learned that—but I was still shocked that the Things were enjoying themselves . I had no per sonhood to them—no identity. They were completely indifferent to the plans I’d had for my life, the pleasures I’d hoped to enjoy. I might have been a stray puppy or a frog they’d caught by the creek.
    I myself would have thought doing these things to a puppy or a frog was horrible.
    “Isn’t this the daughter of the ones we killed?” One asked Two while I was screaming.
    “Yes. They tried to drive through water during a flood,” Two said in a tone of happy reminiscence. “Water! When the man had sky blood! They thought the iron can would protect them.”
    “The water spirits were glad to pull them under,” One said.
    My parents hadn’t died in an accident. They’d been murdered. Even through my pain, I registered that, though at the moment it was beyond me to form a feeling about the knowledge.
    I tried to talk to Eric in my head in the hope he could find me through our bond. I thought of the only other adult telepath I knew, Barry, and I sent him messages—though I knew damn good and well that we were too far away from each other to transmit our thoughts. To my everlasting shame, toward the end of that hour I even considered trying to contact my little cousin Hunter. I knew, though, that not only was Hunter too young to understand, but also . . . I really couldn’t do that to a child.
    I gave up hope, and I waited for death.
    While they were having sex, I thought of Sam and how happy it would make me if I could see him now. I wanted to say the name of someone who loved me, but my throat was too hoarse from screaming.
    I thought about vengeance. I wanted One and Two to die with a craving that burned through my gut. I hoped someone, any one of my supe friends—Claude and Claudine, Niall, Alcide, Bill, Quinn, Tray, Pam, Eric, Calvin, Jason—would tear these two limb from limb. Perhaps the other fairies could take the same length of time with them that they were taking with me.
    One and Two had said that Breandan wanted them to spare me, but it didn’t take a telepath to realize they weren’t going to be capable of holding off. They were going to get carried away with their fun, as they had with Fintan and Crystal, and there would be no repairing me.
    I became sure I was going to die.
    I began to hallucinate. I thought I saw Bill, which made no sense at all. He was in my backyard probably, wondering where I was. He was back in the world that made sense . But I could swear I saw him creeping up behind the creatures, who were enjoying working with a pair of razor blades. He had his finger over his mouth as if he were telling me to keep silent. Since he wasn’t there, and my throat was too raw to speak anyway (I couldn’t even produce a decent scream anymore), that was easy. There was a black shadow following him, a shadow topped with a pale flame.
    Two jabbed me with a sharp knife she’d just pulled from her boot, a knife that shone like her teeth. They both leaned close to me to drink in my reaction. I could only make a raspy noise. My face was crusted with tears and blood.
    “Little froggy croaking,” One said.
    “Listen to her. Croak, froggy. Croak for us.”
    I opened my eyes and looked into hers, meeting them squarely for the first time in many long minutes. I swallowed and summoned up all my remaining strength.
    “You’re going to die,” I said with absolute certainty. But I’d said it before, and they didn’t pay any more attention now than they had the first time.
    I made my lips move up in a smile.
    The male had just enough time to look startled before something gleaming flashed between his head and his shoulders. Then, to my intense pleasure, he was in two pieces and I was covered in a wash of fresh red blood. It ran over me, drenching the blood already dried on my skin. But my eyes were clear, so I could see a white hand gripped Two’s neck, lifting her, spinning her around, and her shock was intensely gratifying as teeth almost as sharp as her own ripped into her long neck.

Chapter 18
    I wasn’t in a hospital.
    But I was in a bed, not my own. And I was a little cleaner than I had been, and bandaged, and in a lot of pain; in fact, a dreadful amount of pain. The part where I was cleaner and bandaged—oh, a wholly