Shadowstorm (The Shadow World Book 6) by Dianne Sylvan

Author:Dianne Sylvan [Sylvan, Dianne]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Published: 2016-02-22T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

There was no light, no warmth, no solace—after the first four hours, it wasn’t even pain, because that word had lost all meaning. Everything lost all meaning.

“It’s said that Rene Descartes used to vivisect dogs in a public display to show that their shrieks weren’t real pain, but a mere reflex, response to stimuli. Documented evidence of this is slight, of course, but it is a strong indicator of attitudes of the time. I wouldn’t go that far, myself—this is the modern world, and we know anything with a nervous system can feel pain.”

The voice droned on and on, destroying any hope of silence—it was its own form of water torture, a constant flow of words.

Different parts of his body went in and out of focus as the endless hours crawled by. The itchy trickle of blood on the side of his head when they took a scalpel and sliced off his ear—only to reattach it, letting the healing process do its work as they did with every incision, every broken bone. The dull crunch of those bones…one rib, then another, cracked and removed, then put back in.

And through it all, the Prophet never seemed to stop talking. His diatribe was at turns pedagogical and disgustingly intimate—he would lean close and describe in loving detail what they were doing, what would happen next, how it would probably feel. He would praise Nico’s pain tolerance one minute and then call him a halfbreed demon the next.

His strangely hot hands would lie on an unbloodied patch of skin and knead the muscle, or caress the skin, murmuring appreciation.

Then one of the “doctors” would send an electric shock through Nico’s body, and Nico would lash out with magic, throwing them to the ground with a feline hiss while the Prophet laughed quietly in the corner.

That wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was the feeling of human hands inside his body, digging around, touching where no hand should ever touch. They discussed his body as if he were a particularly interesting insect pinned to a board. One made notes while the other cut, or scalded, or carefully peeled back patches of skin. Pain, he had felt before, the night he was turned. He didn’t understand this kind of humiliation. Over and over he asked himself, Why? Even though there was no why, even though the pretense of scientific inquiry eventually gave way to flat out sadism, it simply wasn’t in his nature to comprehend causing pain just to cause pain.

At least, it shouldn’t be.

At some point he heard the Prophet say, “…yes, it’s in the way—go ahead and cut it, and get the bone saw ready…what is it, Barnes? …Fine. I shall return in a moment.”

He heard the “doctors” muttering to each other, then felt the cold shadow of one fall on his face. The human reached down and took hold of the Elf’s hair, and with rough sawing motions, chopped it off. The comparatively mild but sudden pain of the human pulling on it sent Nico’s senses into sharp focus.

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