Page 50 of Cry of the Damned
I spat and hit her shiny boots.
She glanced down, her mouth twisting in disgust, then she shrugged. “Cleaning my boots is what the initiates are for.” She smirked with satisfaction.
When I was little, I had fought Val for theprivilegeof polishing Magistrate Magnus’s boots. My blood boiled at the thought of Nirliq being brainwashed to the point that she forgot who she was and became nothing but a pawn to the whims of people like Novus.
She slowly strolled toward the shelves, and as she perused their contents, she ran a finger along the edge of the wood. She took her time pondering and picking different objects. She turned them around in her hand while she hummed a tune I’d never heard.
When a shiver ran down my back, I glanced away. I hated how my fear kept mounting. How she played with my instincts of self-preservation.
A moment later, she stood in front of me, her hands empty.
“I decided that I might enjoy close contact better.” She cracked her knuckles, her head tilted to one side as if deciding what would inflict the most damage.
Coming closer, she fisted a handful of my hair and forced me to look into her eyes. “The hair is a nice addition,Jaz, so lovely around your beautiful face. But it won’t remain this way for long.”
She released me, though not before pulling so hard she tore a handful of hair from my scalp. I clamped my teeth together, refusing to make a sound that would give her any satisfaction.
So fast that I barely saw it coming, she pulled her fist back and smashed it against the side of my jaw. My head snapped to one side as pain exploded all over my skull. My ears rang, and my vision filled with white dots of light.
My head was still hanging to one side when she landed another punch exactly in the same place. This time, my mouth filled with blood, the metallic taste making me nauseous.
“Where are your friends?” she asked, punctuating each word.
I swallowed thickly and blinked, trying to clear the spots from my vision. Magistrate Novus looked blurry, appearing like no more than a blob standing in front of me. The pain across my jaw was unbearable, and my head started pounding with a sharp headache that felt like hot hammers hitting my temples.
When I opened my mouth to speak, a trickle of blood slipped down the corner of my mouth and splattered onto my T-shirt.
“F-fuck you,” I said.
The insult earned me a jab straight to the gut. The air was knocked out of me as pain made my insides feel as if they were liquefying. I made a strange choking sound as I struggled for breath. I heard Novus’s boots slap against the stone floor in the direction of the shelves. She returned shortly, and as I still fought for breath and to clear my vision, she kneeled in front of me, holding something in her hand.
Panic rushing through me and flooding my veins with adrenaline, I stared at what appeared to be a pair of needle-nose pliers.
Impossibly, my heart started pounding even faster. I tried to melt into the chair as she took one of my hands in hers and slid the sharp, thin tip of the pliers under one of my fingernails.
“If I removed this,” she mused, “will it be gone if you shift into your grotesque wolf form?”
She snapped the pliers closed and pulled. What three jabs to my body hadn’t accomplished,thishad no trouble doing.
I screamed.
Novus jiggled the pliers from side to side and up and down, dislodging my fingernail until it was torn from its bed and she discarded it on the floor.
“There are nine more. Nineteen if we count your toes,” she said, her voice full of wicked delight, making me think she was doing what she enjoyed most. “Are you going to tell me where they’re hiding? Or do I need to keep going?”
I knew that Ila, Kall, Maki, and Novuk weren’t hiding in George’s warehouse anymore. They wouldn’t be that stupid, but I couldn’t tell her about that place or any other—not without bringing trouble to the people who’d helped us. For all I knew, Owen was already a suspect, and that was enough to make me hate myself. He was a good man who didn’t deserve the likes of Novus sniffing around his affairs andasking questionsabout the whereabouts ofwildlings.
Tears sliding down my face of their own accord, I clamped my mouth shut and braced myself for the pain that was to come.
Shift and get it over with.
“Very well then.” She grabbed my middle finger this time and started sliding the pliers under the nail.
Feeling at the end of my rope, I reached for my wolf, the thought of death a relief. I was ready to shift when the door opened abruptly.
“Magistrate!” one of the guards said. “You’re needed upstairs.”
“Can’t it wait?” she asked, annoyed.
