I fade back into unconsciousness a couple of times, each time coming out more aware than the last. I’m pretty sure this is an office building. Acoustic tile on the ceiling but cement on the floor. The lights stopped being the kind of fluorescent tubes that suck out all your Vitamin D and possibly your soul a ways back, and now what little illumination there is comes from the occasional work light.

I’ve tried casting a couple of spells, but I can’t concentrate well enough to do a damn thing. I fade back into unconsciousness and when I come to again I’m in some sort of workshop. I can hear an air compressor, and one of my arms has been hauled up over my head.

“Oh, you’re up.” Sastre stands over me, holding my hand up over a table where I can’t see it. She has a surprisingly strong grip. I guess it’s from all that chopping off heads. “Good. I wanted to make sure you were awake for this.”

The room is a corner office suite in a skyscraper that’s being renovated. Carpet pulled out, internal walls knocked down. Windows cover every foot of the exterior, giving an amazing view of nighttime Los Angeles, a blanket of jeweled streetlights, cars, homes, all the way out to the horizon.

She hauls me up until my left arm is completely on the table. Now that I can see the table better, I can tell it’s an empty cable spool that’s been put on its side.

“I had these made special for you,” she says. What the hell is she talking about? I try to pull out of her grip but I’m still too groggy, too weak. “He wanted something that would hurt you. I planned on crucifying you and setting you alight, but he said that would kill you too fast. This way I can hurt you for days.”

She picks something up and I recognize it right before she slams it down onto my hand. The nailgun pops as she drives three long nails through my hand and into the top of the table.

If I wasn’t awake before I sure as fuck am now. There’s nothing but pain and blood and her laughing mixing with a noise I kind of think is me screaming. I pull myself up and look down at what she’s done.

I want to pull the nails out, or my hand out, or something, but I don’t know where to start and every shift brings on new agony. The nails dimple the skin like buttons. Blood wells up from the wounds, pools under my hand.