Archon's Queen by Matthew S. Cox Read Free Book Online Page A

The bottom of the capsule-shaped cage offered no comfort; no matter how she sat or curled, the bars pressed pain into some tender exposed bit of flesh. Only by virtue of withdrawal did she lose blocks of time. Sweating, shivering, and freezing cycled in minutes-long shifts.
    Anna had not eaten since breakfast the previous day, though her condition kept hunger at bay. Sometimes falling into a dream, she imagined herself a real faerie in a real jar, pounding at the glass and begging someone to let her out. Anna cradled sore hands to her chest, unable to distinguish the line between real and dreamed pain.
    She tried to cover her body, even the unblinking gaze of an empty room made her feel exposed. Her prison hung near the center of the club, she had no direction to turn where someone could not find a view. Sleep teased at the edge of her mind and the sense of cold metal on her back changed to something warm and smooth. She sat up, finding herself sprawled at the bottom of an immense bottle.
    Hand-blown glass distorted the face of the mad wizard leering at her, chin to brow as tall as her height. The initial shock wore off at the realization her world was a flashback. Anna pressed herself into the glass away from the monstrous face as it grew shorter and fatter. The eyebrows thickened, and the ancient mage morphed into the visage of Blake.
    The sphere of a man hovered outside the cage, raking his truncheon back and forth across the bars. Her entire body ached as if she had been hit by a maglev train, then run over by another one going the opposite way. The deafening cacophony made her grab both sides of her head.
    Floor hit her in the face. She did not remember the cage opening or him grabbing her. The bucket appeared in her hands, the truncheon struck across her buttocks in a series of sharp slaps, urging her across the club to the rear hallway and a bathroom, where he made her dump it. Blake shouted the whole time, though his words drifted through her brain in the form of random explosions of sound somewhere far away.
    Compared to the bathroom, the cage had been warm.
    The annoying metronome rap of the baton upon her backside chased her on unsteady legs from there to a corridor where her face met the wall several times. Each time she stumbled, he helped her up by a fistful of hair. Time stopped and started; her vision presented as a blur of still images flashing in sequence through her mind.
    One by one they came: hallway tilted left, floor, wall, hallway tilted right, ceiling, a bright LED bulb hanging on a naked wire, and doors. From blur to magnificent detail, every grain of sand and every mite upon the surface of each picture glowed in her mind before it returned to unrecognizable haze. The cycle repeated until she sprawled on tattered green carpet that reeked of sweaty socks.
    Blake’s hand gripped her shoulder and warm sausage-laden breath choked her gagging. “Think ye kin freeload here, eh?”
    It should have hurt, but nothing broke through the full-body agony of the absent zoom. He opened a door with her face and shoved her through. The blurring colors in front of her hinted at the shapes of a messy bedroom. His erection stabbed her in the back through his pants; she stumbled when he shoved her forward. The fall seemed to take longer than it should have.
    She landed on her chest in a mound of cold, wet trash.

    Anna lifted her head out of the plastic and stared into the rainy grey of an alley. For several seconds, an empty can adhered to her cheek before it peeled away and fell back into the pile. Water pooled in the small of her back and her surroundings glowed azure from the false wings that still managed to work despite the rain. Her soreness receded to a point, shrinking out of her limbs and hiding in her head as if someone had wedged a cannonball between the lobes of her brain, and it crushed outward at the back of her skull.
    With a soft whimper, she braced a hand to the side of her head, surprised to find the