Extract from Dead Men’s Bones

1

The pain is everywhere.

It pulses through his head as if there’s a hole in his skull and someone is squeezing his brain in time to his heartbeat. It shoots through his veins like acid, burning him from the inside. It grinds in his joints even though he is motionless. It smothers him like a blanket made of fire.

He doesn’t know where he is. Only the darkness surrounding him and the echoing roar in his ears and the all-consuming agony. Is he back in Afghanistan? Has he gone the way of  Bodie and Jugs. Trodden on one of those towelhead IEDs? No. That was then. He did his tour, survived. For all the good it did him.

He remembers the city, the secret life of the street people. His people. He’d been safe there, for a while. He’d steadied, built himself a life of sorts. Something he could understand, fighting for survival, hustling for the next hit of booze.

Calm. Try and calm. Let the training kick in. He’s been in worse situations than this, surely. Just need to get his shit together. Easier said than done with the pounding in his head, the itching all over his skin, the sandpaper in his hips and knees and shoulders.

Slowly the panic subsides, leaving just the pain. He can cope with that. Focus beyond it. Try to work out what’s going on. He flexes his hands, grunts as the pain lances up his arms. The noise is a reassurance, something he can understand, and he feels the restraint on his left wrist give a little. Concentrate on that. Use that. Ignore the agony sapping his energy. He works at the strap like a terrier with a rat. Tenacious, stubborn, fixated.

When it gives it’s as if someone’s put a bullet through his brain. The darkness explodes in a kaleidoscope of colours, swirling and flashing even as he can feel himself going under. He grits his teeth, chokes out a short, sharp bark. Half triumph, half defeat. Lets his freed hand fall down by his side as he gathers his strength for the next battle.

The head strap first. Sweat slick fingers struggle with a buckle pulled too tight. It seems to take hours before it finally clicks loose. He’d hoped the release of pressure would ease the pounding in his head, but if anything it worsens. Touching his forehead, the skin is rough and puckered, the point of contact exploding in fire.

He has known agony before. Training for Special Forces they did things to your body most people wouldn’t believe. This is far, far worse. It’s only the straps tied tight around his ankles that keep him from falling when he tries to sit up. The effort of untying them almost kills him. There is nothing he can do to stop himself slithering to the floor. At least it’s cold, soothing the parts of his skin that come into contact. He hugs it like a child hugs its mother, desperately clinging to that tiny relief.

It is only transient, the cooling touch inflaming his skin to new levels of torture. As if the stone has become sandpaper, rasped across flesh already raw. Salt and lime rubbed into the wounds.

He staggers to his feet. Steadies himself on the gurney. There is light here. Real light, not the fireworks that have filled his vision since he first tried to move. Soft and low, it barely illuminates the room. Still, what he sees is enough to bring the panic bubbling back up his throat like vomit.

It is a torture chamber. He is surrounded by a collection of apparatus designed only to inflict pain. Needles on long mechanical arms, boxes with wires looped around them, crocodile clips lined up on chrome rails. Bottles of coloured fluids, poisons, acids.

He pushes away from them, recoiling in horror, and as he does so he catches movement across the room. Glass, a mirror, an unfamiliar figure echoing his own ungainly movements. It’s too dark to see clearly, but he staggers towards it anyway. Closer and closer, not quite able to say what is wrong with the image he is seeing.

And then it is there. Glaring out at him in the half light. The face. His face. But the face of a demon. Wild eyes staring. Black swirls curling over cheeks and nose, forehead and shaven pate.  He looks down at his arms and sees the patterns writhe and snake across his body. They are in him, alien, spectral creatures under his skin, devouring him.

The panic hits full on. Adrenaline sweeps everything else away. There is only running. He crashes through doors, down empty corridors oblivious to anything but the fear. There is no direction to his flight, no plan beyond get away.

And then he is outside. White snow blizzarding out of a night sky. He hardly notices his nakedness as he runs from the building. Barely feels the icy cold on his feet or the ripping of low branches against his battered skin. His terror is so complete that he doesn’t even notice when the land runs out. Arms and legs pumping as momentum carries him off the cliff and down and down.

Dead Men's Bones by James Oswald

Book four in the Inspector McLean series

A family lies slaughtered in an isolated house in North East Fife . . .

Morag Weatherly and her two young daughters have been shot by husband Andrew, an influential politician, before he turned the gun on himself.

But what would cause a rich, successful man to snap so suddenly?

For Inspector Tony McLean, this apparently simple but high-profile case leads him into a world of power and privilege. And the deeper he digs, the more he realises he’s being manipulated by shadowy factions.

Under pressure to wrap up the case, McLean instead seeks to uncover layers of truth – putting the lives of everyone he cares about at risk . . .