“How far in will we have to go?”
She gave an empty smile. “Fortunately, not so far that we could never leave. But we have to hurry. We’ve made our presence known. More will come of their own accord, out of curiosity. We passed one ring on foot, but you need to bring us closer, to cut them off.”
I quickly spread the word. The news travelled down the line efficiently and quietly. I was almost impressed. I leaned against a wall that didn’t feel protected in any way and pushed my fingertips into the old, crumbling stone. But try as I might, I couldn’t focus long enough to create a gateway.
“Val, can you hold on to me again?” I asked, hearing the strain in my voice. If we were stuck…
To my surprise, Lucia touched me, sending me an image of the market itself. It was weak, but between that and the pictures Emmett had drawn, I had a good mental image.
As before, I sought out the market, and I found myself shooting through darkness until I came to a sudden stop. I saw the entrance, but when I made to return to my body, I got stuck again and struggled to get back for a few moments. My soul twisted and turned frantically for release, and finally, I loosened myself and made it back into my body.
The gate was harder to release, and I fought to keep it open for everyone. I urged them to hurry as I sweated profusely, my entire body shaking with the exertion, and even Coyle moved without argument. I felt shaky and knew I wouldn’t be able to keep opening gateways indefinitely. Everything had a price.
We were getting closer to danger. I could feel it under my skin, a drumbeat underfoot, and the heat was unreal. I wasn’t sure if it was a figment of my imagination or not, but my hands were slick with sweat, and my dagger moved easily in my fingers, slipping in my grasp.
We found ourselves in a darker place. There was more noise. That drumbeat hadn’t been a fantasy; it vibrated under my feet. I wondered where it was coming from. The hallway was a lot wider, slanting downward, and we were able to group together. The Guardians managed to flank Val and Lucia, and Lorcan and I were left to stick together in front. Esther occasionally joined us, but for the most part, she stuck with the other shifters as they used their combined skills to keep a nose on any potential danger.
“Getting closer,” Val panted. “Something will come before the end. Be aware.”
The something that came turned out to be a childlike creature, pale and small, defenceless looking. But it spoke in violent tongues, telling me how useless I was, regurgitating every horrible memory I had buried. By the looks on everyone’s faces, we all heard our own specific stories. Our pasts were dragged to the fore and used against us. Its words drove wedges between the Guardians. One frustrated shifter ran at the creature, hoping to scare it off, but when he grew close, the figure changed shape, and the shifter drove his sword into his own stomach, collapsing to the ground in a pool of blood.
We were warier, but we couldn’t fight the tiny creature, not when it knew everything about us.
Finally, Gabe took a crossbow and sent an arrow directly through the child’s heart. The child exploded into a flock of black birds that flew over our heads, pecking as they went. All of our fears went with it.
Some laughed, others cried, but all of us were shaken. There were worse things in hell than hell hounds. That was a certainty.
“They are wards,” Val said. “We won’t find it until we get past the wards.”
“Any idea what’s next?”
She shook her head. “What comes depends on who approaches, and with so many of us, who knows what will happen?”
The next ward was a voice: no image, no sensation, only words. The words were designed to confuse and betray, to incite hatred and suspicion. A few succumbed, abruptly running forward in a desperate attempt at attacking Val and Lucia, but enough volunteers assisted me and Lorcan to render the incident unworthy of concern.
Apart from the dead bodies. Not only had we murdered our own, we were leaving their bodies in Hell.
Lucia soon decided she needed to walk, but her bitten leg bled still, leaving tiny wet trails of blood drops in her wake. I wanted to help her, but we needed as many fighters as possible, in case anything else attacked.
The next ward was just for me: a door of flames, Hell of my own visions. The way I had imagined hell had been as a fireball, basically. I had imagined fire and brimstone, and I was getting it.
“It’s fine,” I told them. “It won’t hurt us.”
“It won’t hurt you because you’re as bad as the hellspawn,” a panicked voice said. “What of the rest of us? It’s a trap, a—”
The voice was cut off with a wet sound, but I refused to look around and see what had happened. I didn’t want to know what we were doing to each other.
“We’re almost there,” Val urged. “One more door, and we’ll be out of the tunnels. Show them the way.”
I passed through the fire, feeling no heat from the flame, and found myself creating yet another doorway. I stepped through, keeping my eyes wide open, and suddenly I was in a different place, a wide open space. Everything was murky, burgundy and violet, even the sky, a stark reminder of a place I had once been, the place I had first gotten stuck on my search for Becca.
Suddenly terrified, I hurried back to the others, wary of being left alone. “It’s fine,” I said. “Nothing’s there.”
There were no offers to go through. Nobody said a word.
“You’ll have to go through eventually,” I said after a minute.
“I’ll go through first,” offered a tall shifter.
Aiden wasn’t happy about the unauthorised offer of assistance, but he didn’t stop the young man from passing through the door I created. The shifter didn’t hesitate, but a terrible scream erupted as he passed through, and everyone backed away.
Aiden’s eyes seemed to bulge out of his sockets as he confronted me. “You said it was safe!” He pushed me against a wall, his blade at my throat.
“It was. When I passed through, nothing was there. Back off, Aiden! We could all end up stuck here for this.”
“I’ll go through,” Val said in a tired voice. She did, and we heard more screams, but after a few horrified seconds of silence, she popped back through, a wry look on her face. “He’s standing there wondering why he’s alone,” she said. “Nothing happened to him. He didn’t scream.”
“More tricks,” Lorcan said. “When does it end?”
“Soon,” I promised. “We’re almost there.” I felt the children closer, could almost hear whispers. Maybe it was more trickery, but I had a good feeling in my gut.
We moved on, slower, more carefully. It was as if everyone realised the biggest battle was yet to come, and our numbers had shrunk already.
The area had become as large as a football field with a darkened sky and a breeze that stung as if filled with miniscule shards of glass. I glanced at Lorcan and saw tiny bloody dots all over his face.
“Straight on,” Val said, and she broke into a slow jog, helping Lucia along. Lorcan nodded at me, and we flanked her together, looking around warily. I heard the others behind us, but everything sounded dulled, smothered. Their heartbeats and their footsteps were muted, as if they were covered in something that muffled the sounds of their existence.
I saw odd shapes in the distance, but I couldn’t make them out. As we ran, my sides ached, and my chest made wheezing noises, as if the air was too thin for my lungs to process. We didn’t slow down, and I soon saw that the figures were really trees of fire, circling a mound marked by a burnt scarecrow. When we got closer, I discovered that the scarecrow was the body of a person, and I shuddered to think of what else we might find.
I turned in a circle, taking in the scenery, if it could be called that. I could no longer see where we had come from, but the path we had walked upon resembled scorched grass, as if we were tearing and burning up the ground with our presence.
Sounds came to me all at once, and my fingers twitched at the idea that I could have lived there, could have been
brought up there.
“Here,” someone called, interrupting my thoughts. “Steps down.”
“I’ll go first,” I said, really wanting to heave. I took hesitant steps into the darkness, catching one last glance of the muted violet sky. Val was first in line to follow me. Our way down was lit by torches, but something about the darkness couldn’t be penetrated, as if it were one large, thick, mass-filled substance. I heard water, and the air grew damper, until I reached the foot of the steps and came to my first guard.
Val and I took care of the hell hound. It was too easy. He was smaller than the others, and he barely fought back.
“A younger one. New-blooded,” Val guessed, but she frowned.
We moved on, the group pulling together as if one unit again. I heard shouts as we passed into a cavernous habitat where small figures lay on makeshift beds in the distance. A number of guards approached, but as the closest one broke into a run at me, he froze, eyes bulging, and choked out a sound. He fell to the ground, the back of his head caved in.
A teenage boy stood there, long dark hair falling into his grey eyes. He tossed his head and threw down a weapon that looked a lot like Val’s.
“Don’t hurt the children,” he said.
Twenty guards came for us, and I wondered that there weren’t more. After all, the children were worth money. We cut through them, but they all seemed to go after the teenage boy, so I shoved him behind me and went ballistic on the rest of the guards, careful not to let them back near the sleeping figures.
The guards gave up the fight too easily, and as I dodged a half-hearted strike, I became aware of Lucia and Gabe taking the boy back toward the other children. Using my dagger, I slashed faces, weaving in and out in an attempt to weaken the hounds. I blinded one and regretted it. We needed them to talk, not to hate us for maiming them.
Soon it was over. Too soon, a suspicious little voice in my head said. The guards were overwhelmed and the survivors arrested. We were down to twenty, and as we approached the children, I realised at least fifty of them were sleeping there, guarded by about a dozen women. Not warriors, they seemed like caregivers.
Some of the women fought us, refusing to allow us to approach the children, but they were soon subdued. Most begged us not to harm the children, and those we brought with the kids. Almost all of the children slept, apart from the teenagers who had been given work at the market, and the rest of my group carried the smaller ones while I sought a good place to go.
Lucia gripped my hands and showed me our original meeting place. More Guardians were there, anxiously waiting our return.
I called, “Take the smaller children, and move quickly out of here. Then come back for more. They won’t wake yet.” I made the door and held firm as everyone hurried through it. Esther was holding a baby, maybe a year old, who was wide awake and screaming, “Mama, mama, mama,” over and over again.
“She was new,” a boy was saying. “She came here today.”
My breath caught my throat, and I saw the tears in Esther’s eyes, but she didn’t say a word, even though she knew the Council would keep the child.
The Guardians moved quickly, and soon the market was empty. But I had a terrible feeling that we had missed out on something. It had been far too easy. There had been far too few guards. It was as if they knew we were coming and made a run for it, perhaps taking the most powerful children with them.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Processing the children and captives took two days. The Guardians divided into two teams. One took the arrested guards and humans to the cells, where they were locked up until they could be questioned. The other took the children and submissive market workers into a large housing area of the Council’s property. It was above ground, I was happy to see, and although it was surrounded by eight foot walls, there were three acres of grass and playground equipment.
But it wasn’t home.
Some doctors and nurses were waiting at the building that would house the children. They studied the kids and made sure they weren’t alone when they woke up properly. Some of the older children fought so hard upon waking that they had to be sedated all over again. Others cried; more still stared at nothing. The home was chilling and alien, and I wanted to take all of the children there and then. But the Council could do more for them than I could. At least, for the moment.
Slowly, the children adapted, or at least, stopped looking so traumatised. They didn’t speak much, and the little girl Esther had carried cried her heart out for hours every day. Nothing would appease her except her mother, and her mother was probably dead.
I was happy to work alongside the Guardians to help the children. Val and the twins had left almost immediately. I had forced them to go before they were trapped in a “home” of sorts. I hung around to make sure the children were treated properly.
The news came while I was helping persuade some of the children to eat.
“Ava, can I speak to you?” Gabe said in a soft voice. He wasn’t good with the kids, but he had learned to talk in a certain way around them.
“What’s up?” I asked as I followed him into the hallway.
“The cells were raided during the night.”
“What do you mean, raided?” I asked through gritted teeth.
He looked older all of a sudden. “They’re all gone, Ava. The guards, the carers, all of the older ones in the cells.”
“Escaped?”
He shook his head. “Dead. All dead.”
“What the hell happened? There were teenage girls in those cells, Gabe!”
“I don’t know what happened. Not exactly. Someone silenced them. That’s all I can tell you.”
“Fuck you!”
“Ava—”
“No! Fuck off! They knew we were coming, and they knew how to get rid of the witnesses. They’re one of you. At least one of you is involved in the market.”
“Would it help if I told you I agreed?”
“No, it wouldn’t.”
I walked away and didn’t look back. I couldn’t without feeling sick. I was leaving the children to the monsters who had taken them in the first place. The only difference was the Council were wearing prettier masks. I had no way of fighting.
At least not alone.
***
Emmett seemed happy to see me home again, but Carl had already left.
“He was going crazy locked up in here and having to listen to Maria on the phone,” Peter told me. “And the trouble’s over.”
“It’s not over. One of the Council has to be involved. They got away with it. The witnesses are dead. And now they’re keeping the children. Nothing’s over. Not a whole lot changed. Not for the better, anyway.”
He pulled me into his arms. “I’m sorry.”
“They will be, too. Some day.”
“What now?”
“I don’t know,” I half-sobbed. “I don’t know what to do anymore.”
“Yvonne wants us to go home. She wants to stay with me to take care of Emmett.”
“Is she still working for Daimhín?”
He shrugged. “But I can’t do this alone, Ava.” I stared at him, and he smiled suddenly. “Emmett wants to stay.”
“And you?” I asked.
“I think Emmett needs to go to school in September. I think he needs a chance at a normal life.”
My heart sank. “Oh.”
“But he’s special, Ava. And I don’t know how to deal with that. I need help with that.”
“From Yvonne?” I couldn’t keep the venom out of my voice.
“It’s her house,” he reminded me. “And it’s full of memories I don’t care for. I can’t even call it safe.” He hesitated, but his eyes said more than his words.
“Emmett’s safer here.”
“With you? Or with us?” His voice softened so much that it became unrecognisable.
I had to pull away and stare at him for a couple of seconds to understand. “You want to stay? With me?”
“If yo
u don’t mind. For a while, at least. It’s been… different here with you. I’ve been different. Better. And I’m terrified to do this by myself.”
“You’re an idiot,” I said, but I smiled at him. At least something had gone right. Emmett wasn’t leaving, and that made me feel… calm.
Carl came back to find out what had happened, and we stood side by side as we watched Peter and Emmett strengthen their bond by playing football in my backyard. I told him everything, and I felt better for it.
“It sounds unreal,” Carl said.
“Felt it, too,” I admitted.
“Was it… what was it like? To be there?”
I bit my lip. By the time I left the slave market, I had felt comfortable in Hell, too sure of myself. But the darkening in my blood had been all too real, all too familiar. So I didn’t say a word about it. I just kept on looking outside at two of the people keeping me in the light.
“What happened with Maria?” I asked to change the subject.
He sighed. “The usual. We’re drowning together. I have to let her go. She could be so much better without me.”
“Don’t. You can make it work. You can fix it. She loves you.”
He turned to me, something akin to understanding in his eyes. “That isn’t always enough, Ava.”
I looked away, unable to bear the raw pain inside me at his words.
“Be careful,” he said a couple of minutes later, and I felt his fingers squeeze my hand.
“Of course I will. Nobody can hurt us here.”
“I’m talking about this.” He nodded toward Peter and Emmett. “This is dangerous for you, Ava.”
“He’s your friend,” I said in surprise.
“And so are you. But a ready-made kid isn’t a miracle cure.”
I opened and closed my mouth a couple of times before deciding to go with avoidance. “I don’t want to hear this.”
“I know,” he said sadly, releasing my hand. “I know.”
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