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Lauren gave him a tiny nod. She hadn’t sensed him in the room, which wasn’t surprising. Also, Ying’s vision hadn’t told her something was off, which meant Mordecai likely hadn’t stood in front of her while she was naked.
“And he gave us the time and route to figure it out,” Gavin said. “Now we just have to figure out who and why.”
Gavin understood Mordecai was bound by rules that said he wasn’t supposed to interfere in the affairs of this realm. When he could find a way to help them understand something without actually telling him, it let him bend the rules without breaking them.
But the whole situation pissed Lauren off, and she told Mordecai. “If another god is fucking with us, I would think your rules should allow you to tell us. He or she is breaking them first, right?” When Mordecai kept his stony face, she turned to Gavin. “I need to touch the bastard.”
Kirsten stood with her, looked at Gavin, and back to Lauren. “Do you have access to the dungeons, or will Gavin have to let us in?”
“She has access to everything in the penthouse, but she’s never asked for access to the back part of the underground,” Gavin said.
“I’m asking now,” Lauren told him.
Gavin was silent a few seconds, and he gave a single nod to Lauren. “It’s done. Do you know where to go, or shall I lead you?”
“I would prefer you take me. Are we at odds? Or are we on the same side?”
“Same side, as always, but I can’t protect you from someone who can fold reality. There are protections on the entire building so no one can teleport in, but…” he sighed.
Lauren walked through the penthouse, down the steps, out the door to the elevator, and took it to the sub-basement level. Everyone followed her, so she felt like the Pied Piper without the flute, but she didn’t comment, and neither did anyone else. When the elevator opened, Lauren motioned Gavin to lead them, and she followed him with Nick beside her this time, and her mother trailing with her men.
Jason hung in the air, in obvious pain.
His arms had been bound behind his back, and a chain attached to it, lifting his feet a foot off the ground. His shoulders were torqued at a horrible angle. A humming noise drew Lauren’s attention to his dick, standing tall and proud. He wore a vibrating cock ring, and the head of his dick was flaming red — some kind of irritant?
He’d also been shaved everywhere. Legs, pubes, chest, head. Even his eyebrows were gone.
She scented fresh blood and a whole lot of pain. More than the shoulders alone should give him.
“I need a rundown of what’s been done to him,” Lauren said. “Details, please.”
“His tongue has been removed with a normal knife so my guards don’t have to listen to him beg for a mercy that will never come,” Gavin told her. “His tongue will return when he’s allowed tochange, and his new owner will have the final decision on how best to keep him from speaking, going forward. We’ll likely sever his vocal cords with silver, but there are other options. The slave is wearing an enormous butt plug with pepper oil on it, spreading him wide and filling him full. It comes out at the top of every hour to have more pepper oil added before it’s replaced, and we rub the oil on the head of his cock while we’re at it. He’s lost three fingernails so far — we’re pulling a single fingernail or toenail off at the bottom of every hour, but he only has twenty. We’ll begin pulling a tooth every hour at that point.”
Lauren walked in a circle around the man, taking in his pain and humiliation. She stopped in front of him and met his gaze, and told Gavin, “Go on. I know there has to be more.”
“There will be, certainly, but that’s it for now. Once his nails and teeth are gone, we’ll perform the procedure to sever his Achilles tendons and remove his thumbs. His future owner is going to do it with a steel knife for now, though he plans to do so with silver and fire once the Concilio approves of permanent ownership.” Gavin shrugged. “Or, he might keep doing it over and over with a steel knife, once a week for years until he tires of doing it and finally makes it permanent.”
Lauren was probably going to feel some of Jason’s pain when she touched him, but she’d learned a little about how to aim what she got from someone. It wasn’t a perfect system, but as was usually the case when magic was involved, intention aimed the process.
She focused on learning who he was working with, or who had hired him, or possibly blackmailed him into service, and grabbed the werewolf by the balls.
She squeezed, and took great pleasure in his screams while she watched him for whatever visual clues her gift could provide.
And she saw someone that looked like Striker, and then a man with horns and wings, which she assumed was a demon. The two melded into a single being, and she flashed that image to both Gavin and Mordecai.
Striker was an immortal her mother had taken out and then, with Cora’s help, cut into parts which were strewn around the planet and possibly in different realms so the bastard could never regenerate. He’d been some kind of lizard god, with scales and a tough hide. Could he even mate with a demon? How would that work?
It took thirty seconds for Jason to stop screaming after Lauren released his balls and stepped back. When the room was silent, she asked, “If Striker or one of his children had sex with a demon and produced an offspring who could open wormholes, that’s different than flashing into a protected space, right?”
Nathan said, “Fuck me” at the same time Nick said, “Motherfucker.”
“If such a being exists, they have kept this abomination a secret from even me,” Mordecai said.
“Are we certain Striker is still out of commission?” Lauren’s mom asked.
Striker was part of the Norse legends, and he was supposed to be around for the battles that would happen at the end of the world. But even an immortal can’t regenerate unless fifty percent of his or her body is in one place, and Lauren’s mom had made certain the reptile god couldn’t come back.
“I can’t imagine his progeny have managed to gather enough of his pieces in secret to allow him to return,” Mordecai said, “but I’ll make inquiries to be certain.”
