Betrayals
Page 111
The Huntsman snarled. “Monster? If you knew what they did to me, your precious Cn Annwn—”
“Love to hear it, but this isn’t the time for backstory. You say Cn Annwn don’t bargain. That’s a lie. The fact I’m walking around proves it.”
“That is a deal, not a—”
“Hair-splitting. You’ll bargain, because you’re fae, too, in your way. The hound is ours. Freedom is yours—and mine.” I held out my arm. “You have my oath. Now take it in blood.”
The Huntsman agreed to the deal. After I made the oath, I tried to wrangle my gun from him, but he was still pissed about the hound. I suspected I hadn’t seen the last of him. For now, though, he was stepping off the playing field.
He did give me a parting gift: two minutes of deep and restful slumber. Yes, he knocked me out before he escaped, thankfully not with the head-splitting TKO. He’d touched the side of my head and I’d barely had time to say, “Wha—?” before I was on the floor, asleep.
When I jolted up, it seemed hours had passed, but a check of my watch showed it had been only minutes. The door was open, though, and he had left the penlight. I took it and made my way into the hall.
It wasn’t long before I realized why he’d knocked me out … besides just being a jerk. He hadn’t wanted me to see where he went. I wandered the tunnels for only a few minutes before I discovered Melanie had sealed the exits; I reached a metal door that I knew led back to the drop-in center, and it was bolted from the other side. So was the door that led to the room with the windows.
My goal, though, was finding Pepper and Aunika—I’d worry about locating an exit later. The problem was that the tunnels were, well, tunnels. They predated Prohibition, and I could only guess at their original use. Chicago has a rich history of putting stuff underground, despite the fact that we’re on a lakefront and have several rivers running through the city.
As soon as I had an inkling of how big this place was, I stopped running down halls and randomly pushing open doors, and began handling it systematically, drawing a mental map in my mind and marking every door using a broken piece of brick.
I kept stopping and listening … and hearing nothing. What if Melanie had already gotten to them? What if she’d taken Pepper? Killed Aunika?
This wasn’t a race. It was a hunt, and I had no scent to follow, and all I could do was proceed step by step and hope I wasn’t too late, that if anything happened, I’d hear it.
I walked up to the next door and went to put my mark on it only to see an X already on the wood.
Damn it, this was an endless maze where every hall looked exactly the same. I could be walking in circles, lost in some alternate dimension, like in the psych hospital where all my logic and reasoning didn’t do shit because this world wasn’t logical or reasonable or—
Deep breath. Focus. This wasn’t the psych hospital. I’d had flickers of visions when I opened doors in that one area—near the manacles and the room with the lamiae bodies. But they were flashes only, like I’d stepped over a trip wire.
I turned back the way I’d come, but the mental map in my head said I’d checked every passage. I’d looked everywhere.
Except behind the locked doors.
Therein lay the problem, didn’t it? I’d encountered four bolted doors. Presumably, they would be exits, keeping me in. But still …
Damn it.
I took a deep breath and tried not to panic. Back up. Recheck and add a second X. It was all I could do.
I was heading down the next hall when I caught a noise inside a room. I eased the door open. Something darted across the dirt floor. Something furry and not nearly as small as I like my rodents. A wharf rat. I pulled the door shut, shuddered, and started to walk away. Then I stopped.
I backed up to that room, opened the door again, and looked in, expecting to see a rat-sized hole. But the walls looked solid. And there was no sign of the rat.
While ghost rats or disappearing fae ones were certainly a possibility, I wasn’t jumping to that conclusion just yet. I walked into the room and started examining the walls. It didn’t take long to find what I was looking for—a hatch on the side wall, set in a rough wooden-plank wall. It hung open an inch or so, not enough to be noticeable when I’d peeked through the door but enough for that rat to squeeze through.
I opened the hatch and peered into a narrow passage. I could see faint, flickering light at the end. I got down on my hands and knees, penlight between my teeth, and crawled into the passage.
The tunnel was about fifteen feet long. When I got to the middle of it, I had a mental image of someone slamming hatches on both ends, trapping me in—
Deep breaths. Which weren’t easy to take when I had a metal tube between my teeth.
I continued on. As I neared the other side, I paused to listen. Silence answered. I crawled to the end and peeked out. An empty room with a partly open door on the other side. Wonderful—more rooms to search. The flickering light came through that door, though, which gave me hope I’d nearly reached my goal.
I pushed myself through … and a hand grabbed my hair, wrenching my head up, a blade pressing into my throat, Melanie’s voice saying, “I think that’s far enough, Olivia.”
DÉJÀ VU
Ricky parked his bike beside the Jag. Gabriel was nowhere to be seen, which meant he’d arrived at least five seconds sooner and God forbid he should actually wait—not if Liv was in danger. Ricky sighed softly, but it wasn’t so much annoyance as resignation and acceptance. This was how it was, how it would always be, and he had as much chance of changing it as he did of changing the course of the sun and the moon.
“Love to hear it, but this isn’t the time for backstory. You say Cn Annwn don’t bargain. That’s a lie. The fact I’m walking around proves it.”
“That is a deal, not a—”
“Hair-splitting. You’ll bargain, because you’re fae, too, in your way. The hound is ours. Freedom is yours—and mine.” I held out my arm. “You have my oath. Now take it in blood.”
The Huntsman agreed to the deal. After I made the oath, I tried to wrangle my gun from him, but he was still pissed about the hound. I suspected I hadn’t seen the last of him. For now, though, he was stepping off the playing field.
He did give me a parting gift: two minutes of deep and restful slumber. Yes, he knocked me out before he escaped, thankfully not with the head-splitting TKO. He’d touched the side of my head and I’d barely had time to say, “Wha—?” before I was on the floor, asleep.
When I jolted up, it seemed hours had passed, but a check of my watch showed it had been only minutes. The door was open, though, and he had left the penlight. I took it and made my way into the hall.
It wasn’t long before I realized why he’d knocked me out … besides just being a jerk. He hadn’t wanted me to see where he went. I wandered the tunnels for only a few minutes before I discovered Melanie had sealed the exits; I reached a metal door that I knew led back to the drop-in center, and it was bolted from the other side. So was the door that led to the room with the windows.
My goal, though, was finding Pepper and Aunika—I’d worry about locating an exit later. The problem was that the tunnels were, well, tunnels. They predated Prohibition, and I could only guess at their original use. Chicago has a rich history of putting stuff underground, despite the fact that we’re on a lakefront and have several rivers running through the city.
As soon as I had an inkling of how big this place was, I stopped running down halls and randomly pushing open doors, and began handling it systematically, drawing a mental map in my mind and marking every door using a broken piece of brick.
I kept stopping and listening … and hearing nothing. What if Melanie had already gotten to them? What if she’d taken Pepper? Killed Aunika?
This wasn’t a race. It was a hunt, and I had no scent to follow, and all I could do was proceed step by step and hope I wasn’t too late, that if anything happened, I’d hear it.
I walked up to the next door and went to put my mark on it only to see an X already on the wood.
Damn it, this was an endless maze where every hall looked exactly the same. I could be walking in circles, lost in some alternate dimension, like in the psych hospital where all my logic and reasoning didn’t do shit because this world wasn’t logical or reasonable or—
Deep breath. Focus. This wasn’t the psych hospital. I’d had flickers of visions when I opened doors in that one area—near the manacles and the room with the lamiae bodies. But they were flashes only, like I’d stepped over a trip wire.
I turned back the way I’d come, but the mental map in my head said I’d checked every passage. I’d looked everywhere.
Except behind the locked doors.
Therein lay the problem, didn’t it? I’d encountered four bolted doors. Presumably, they would be exits, keeping me in. But still …
Damn it.
I took a deep breath and tried not to panic. Back up. Recheck and add a second X. It was all I could do.
I was heading down the next hall when I caught a noise inside a room. I eased the door open. Something darted across the dirt floor. Something furry and not nearly as small as I like my rodents. A wharf rat. I pulled the door shut, shuddered, and started to walk away. Then I stopped.
I backed up to that room, opened the door again, and looked in, expecting to see a rat-sized hole. But the walls looked solid. And there was no sign of the rat.
While ghost rats or disappearing fae ones were certainly a possibility, I wasn’t jumping to that conclusion just yet. I walked into the room and started examining the walls. It didn’t take long to find what I was looking for—a hatch on the side wall, set in a rough wooden-plank wall. It hung open an inch or so, not enough to be noticeable when I’d peeked through the door but enough for that rat to squeeze through.
I opened the hatch and peered into a narrow passage. I could see faint, flickering light at the end. I got down on my hands and knees, penlight between my teeth, and crawled into the passage.
The tunnel was about fifteen feet long. When I got to the middle of it, I had a mental image of someone slamming hatches on both ends, trapping me in—
Deep breaths. Which weren’t easy to take when I had a metal tube between my teeth.
I continued on. As I neared the other side, I paused to listen. Silence answered. I crawled to the end and peeked out. An empty room with a partly open door on the other side. Wonderful—more rooms to search. The flickering light came through that door, though, which gave me hope I’d nearly reached my goal.
I pushed myself through … and a hand grabbed my hair, wrenching my head up, a blade pressing into my throat, Melanie’s voice saying, “I think that’s far enough, Olivia.”
DÉJÀ VU
Ricky parked his bike beside the Jag. Gabriel was nowhere to be seen, which meant he’d arrived at least five seconds sooner and God forbid he should actually wait—not if Liv was in danger. Ricky sighed softly, but it wasn’t so much annoyance as resignation and acceptance. This was how it was, how it would always be, and he had as much chance of changing it as he did of changing the course of the sun and the moon.
