Taken (Ava Delaney #4)

by Claire Farrell

  Stairs led downward, and I took a couple of breaths before I let myself get eaten up by the dark. I stood and walked as soon as I could, my fingers trailing the stone wall.

  Cool air hit me, and I heard murmurs that could have been trickling water or the whispers of hidden voices. I couldn’t see a thing, and my own heartbeat drowned out the thumping in my head.

  I tried counting my steps, but soon lost count. The darkness distracted me. The steps were a little slippery, as though slimy mould grew on them. The only scent was faint, and I had the feeling I was getting close to the barrier that protected whatever was hidden there.

  A sound made me freeze to the spot, then a hand gripped my ankle, and I was falling, my head striking the stone steps, my mind sinking into oblivion.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Why would you do that?”

  “I thought she was one of them.”

  “Still. She wouldn’t have found us without being shown the way. All you did was convince her someone’s here, you fool. Well, you can be the one to tell Folsom.”

  “I panicked!”

  I opened my eyes to only darkness and tried to speak, but whoever was there fell silent.

  Again, I slept.

  ***

  I couldn’t open my eyes. I brought my fingers to my sockets and discovered my eyes were already open. I just couldn’t see anything. It took a couple of minutes of shaking, horrified fear that I had gone blind to realise it was simply too dark to see.

  Slowly, my eyes focused, and a dark greenish light showed me that I was at the bottom of the stairs in a space the size of a large wardrobe. My head ached. I suddenly remembered that someone had pulled me down. Someone was there. I wasn’t leaving until I found their hiding place.

  I explored the area with my hands. The length was about five steps, width maybe three. The wall next to the steps was covered with stacked crates. None were dusty. On a whim, I pulled the corner of the stack out slightly and pressed my palm against the wall behind the crates.

  My hand passed through the wall slightly, springing back from the pressure. The wall was definitely not solid. My curiosity overwhelmed my thoughts, eating away at me when I should have just walked back up the stairs. But I couldn’t leave, not until I knew who or what was hiding down there.

  I dragged all of the crates out of the way and used my entire body, pushing against the wall. At first it felt spongy, but something was pushing back, some kind of barrier.

  I used my other sense, trying to get a feel for it, but my way was blocked. That feeling was heaviest under the garage, the very edge of something.

  I concentrated hard, feeling my way around, and right at the edge of my senses, I found a chink in the armour. I was able to almost duck under it, but a veil stopped me from reaching through to the other side. I could probably enter if I pushed hard enough on that other plane.

  I pushed and pushed. The veil finally drew aside, but when I moved through and looked down, I was only an apparition, not me at all. I glanced behind me in fright and watched my physical self step through the wall. I stared myself in the eye before I was drawn back inside my body.

  “Okay, that was freaky.”

  A cold gust of wind blew around my ankles, and I smelled food and heard echoes of conversations. I was in a different place. The otherness of it clung to me. And I had no idea what was ahead.

  Shivering, I stepped down a stone corridor, hoping I wasn’t about to get lost underground. Or wherever the hell I was. Something in the air was off; I wasn’t sure if it was a smell or a sensation, but I knew it was wrong somehow.

  My boots scuffed the stone floor noisily, and the voices grew louder. The hallway ended in fire. A random fire blocked my way. I edged closer and felt no heat. However, something in the fire called to me, beckoned me. It almost felt like home, and I reached out to touch it.

  Flames flickered against my fingertips, but I felt nothing, and that somehow scared me all the more, as if the flames welcomed me. Taking a deep breath, I stepped through the door of fire.

  I found myself surrounded by people. Folsom watched me warily. A blond man, no, an angel, peered at me with curiosity. A human woman stood next to him, gripping his hand, but I kept turning, seeing more and more faces.

  I blinked in astonishment. “Leah?”

  The teenager who had escaped from the Council’s cell sat cross-legged on a blanket on the stone floor, appearing calmer than anyone else. I took an automatic step toward her and ended up on the ground after receiving a solid thump to my chest.

  “What the…?” I coughed, struggling to my feet.

  A woman I hadn’t noticed stood in front of me, her arms folded. I couldn’t help staring at her. Her hair, skin, and even her eyes were the colour of honey. Her long hair was plaited, and when she turned to look back at Leah, the braid swayed to reveal bumps on the back of her neck. That stirred a vague memory of Emmett’s drawings. The bumps began at her widow’s peak, I realised as she turned back to glare at me again. Tattoos swirled from her neck, past her cheeks, up her temples, and into her hairline. Beautifully intricate, feminine tattoos, but she wasn’t any inch of a delicate creature. She was a warrior. She carried weaponry like jewellery.

  “It’s okay, Val,” Leah said. “That’s Ava.”

  Val took a step back, still glaring at me, and then moved next to Leah and sank to the floor. Everyone seemed to breathe a sigh of relief.

  I stared around the room in amazement. The walls were all stone, and a couple of fires were lit here and there, warming the large living area. A number of hallways filled with closed doors branched off; those coupled with the tall ceilings made the area appear huge. But the place was so dreary, and the two dozen or so people I could see appeared to be living there.

  “Anyone wanna tell me what all of this is?” I turned to Leah. “And how on earth did you get out of the rabbit warren that is the Council’s cells?”

  “Val rescued me,” Leah replied.

  Of course she did.

  Folsom sidled up to me. “We don’t want any trouble here. We’re not doing any harm. I promise you that.”

  “But what are you doing? Where are we? And who the hell knocked me down the stairs?” I noted a small figure scurrying back into the darkness.

  “We’re hiding,” Leah said.

  “From who?”

  “Everyone, really.”

  I scratched my cheek, still trying to figure out what to do next.

  “How did she get through without an invitation?” Val asked. Everyone stared at me with a weirdly collaborative type of horror in their eyes.

  “I just walked through the wall,” I said, feeling slightly ashamed for some reason.

  The angel got to his feet and approached me. “What brought you down here?”

  “I might ask you the same thing, angel.”

  His smile was full of smarm, reminding me of Gabe. He was prettier than Gabe, but there was something sly about his eyes that I didn’t like.

  “We can’t allow her to leave,” he said. “She’s seen too much already.”

  “Oh, for the love of—”

  And then a familiar voice called my name. I glanced around in surprise.

  “She’s in the first room,” Folsom said wearily. “Come.” He led me into a perfectly ordinary-looking bedroom off the main stone hall. A woman lay on the bed, obviously sickening from something. I would never forget her face.

  “Helena?” I rushed to her side, my heart bursting.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry about the trial.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

  Helena looked a lot older than she had when she tried to bring Nancy and me together in my younger years. Back then, she had been vibrant, and even her scent had seemed magical to me. At the trial, she had been older, but still nowhere near the kind of deterioration in front of me.

  “I’m dying,” she said as if she knew what I had been thinking. “No
need to look so horrified. You always did show your heart in those eyes of yours.” She laughed, and it turned into a horrendous cough. Folsom held a cup to her lips, and she sipped once the hacking stopped. “Trust me, Ava, this is a good thing. I’ve stolen far too many years, seen too many things. I’m not able to keep up anymore.”

  “How did you get here? Where did you go all those years ago? What’s going on?”

  Folsom produced a couple of chairs and bade me to sit next to him at Helena’s bedside. “Talking tires her,” he said. “Maybe I’ll tell you her story.”

  Helena nodded. Seeing her so weak ripped a hole in my chest.

  “What’s really going on?” I asked Folsom.

  “This is a safehouse,” he said, his faint Scottish accent thickening. “Those who need to be hidden hide here. It’s not safe out there for many of us. For many reasons. They all have their own story. Some came to me and asked for help, and I gave it willingly. I built this place for a reason, and when the time came, we stole a piece of somewhere to hide in.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We built the walls, but where the walls are hidden does not belong to us. Yet the place protects us, from all kinds of things. We call it the Féinics because it is a place of rebirth. Some create new identities and leave, while others stay in peace, but everyone changes here. The old ways die here. They must.”

  “Are you the Féinics?”

  “No.” He glanced at Helena with worry in his eyes. “This place is.”

  I screwed up my nose in confusion. “Are you rebels?”

  “Only in the sense that we hide from the vultures above. Ava, the old ways don’t help the helpless, and some need sanctuary. If that makes us rebels, then so be it, but my dearest wife refused to turn away a soul, and I will keep doing what she wanted for as long as I can. I suppose that makes me a rebel.”

  I let out a giggle of relief. “I’ve been looking for you lot for ages!”

  He sighed. “Aye, for the Council.”

  “No. Well, not really.” I pulled up my sleeves to display my brands. “I owe some friends a favour. I promised them I’d get them out of England and bring them to the Féinics. I made a deal, and I’m going to keep burning until I do it.”

  “So bring them.”

  “You don’t understand. They’re in a place like this, a pocket that’s hidden from everyone else. And there’s a war going on in England. Last I heard, they were trapped in their place with Esther, a Guardian friend of mine.”

  “Well then, you can’t help them. No Guardian can know about this place.”

  “But—”

  “No. They aren’t welcome here. The Council will kill us all.”

  “Esther would never do anything to hurt you. She promised to sneak the twins out of the country to help me.”

  “Twins,” Helena said weakly.

  I turned to her. “You know them, don’t you? The twins. They’re part-fae, kind of psychic. The girl accidentally showed me a glimpse of you one time.”

  A tear rolled down her cheek. “My babies… they’re alive?”

  “They’re fine. Or at least, they will be when we get them out of there.”

  “Helena, I’m sorry,” Folsom said. “Your twins… I—”

  “What happened?” I said, interrupting him. “How did they end up in the slave market?”

  Helena let out a shuddering breath, and I imagined I could scent the death coming from her. “When I was young, I fell in love with one of the fae. He came from a powerful family. I dabbled in magic. I’m a Wiccan, and I met him after I helped heal someone he cared for.”

  “One of the consultants is a witch,” I said.

  She made a scornful sound. “No Wiccan. She uses black magic, dark magic that can’t be trusted. Keep away from her, Ava. Promise me.”

  “I will. I’ll be careful.”

  “Good. Remember that everything has a consequence, and the darker magics have the most painful consequences of all. My love was drawn to my pure magic. He wanted to know more about my coven, but we fell for each other before long. I wasn’t of his blood, so our relationship was forbidden. He left his people, and we had some great years. We had a boy and a girl and a wonderful life for a time. But one day, he didn’t come home, and I knew something was wrong. That night, they came.”

  “Who?”

  “The fae. And a monster who hid his true face. They took my children and beat me when I tried to stop them. The fae woman wouldn’t let them kill me. She said she had made a deal. But they took my babies, and I couldn’t stop them. The fae woman told me they were going to be sold, that they were going to be useful if they had to live. I woke up in a hospital a week later, and nobody believed that I ever had children. They told me I had never been a mother, nor a wife. My husband never returned to me, but I couldn’t give up. I searched for them, all of the time. I heard so many things.”

  She shook her head pitifully. “I heard of beings like you, Ava, beings who could find their way into the place my children were taken. I thought someone like you could help me. I’m sorry for that, too, for intending to use you in that way.”

  I shook my head, swallowing the lump in my throat.

  She looked away, her voice lowering into a bitter tone. “But you didn’t come along soon enough, and I had asked too many questions. I made it too obvious who I was. They took me to the market, told me I had given up my right to freedom by not sticking to the deal. I’ve never learned what the deal was, but they took me away nonetheless. I met Val there, and later, Leah. I took care of the children and taught the ones who were stuck there to take care of the smaller ones.”

  “So you never saw the twins? But they were there for a long time,” I said. “Maybe thirty years.”

  She wiped a tear with a shaky hand. “They were never going to allow us to meet again. I couldn’t take any more years, couldn’t keep myself young, even though I knew they wouldn’t age as quickly as I did, and my strength began to fail. But in the darkness, Leah came. She could do things that would make her invaluable, so I taught her to hide it. Val was a guard, but I persuaded her that Leah in the wrong hands could destroy everything, and I helped them escape. I told them to run. I went back into the dark until they ripped me out to stand at your trial. When I escaped from there, Val found me and brought me here.”

  “So you were there with Emmett?” My heart beat extra fast. “You’re the one who taught him to hide his gifts?”

  “The children have no names there,” she said sadly.

  “He’s almost ten, but he’s small. He can see ghosts… or maybe they’re trapped souls, but he can bend them to his will.”

  She struggled to smile. “I remember him. Is he free?”

  “Yeah. But not before they tried to trick his father into killing him. So you’ve been in the slave market? You know where it is?”

  She shook her head. “It isn’t that simple. It’s in hell, Ava. It isn’t a place you walk into with directions.”

  My cheeks burned. “Where are we now?”

  Folsom answered, “This is also a tiny, as you called it, pocket in hell. It’s the only safe place there is for us.”

  “So the twins are in another pocket? Can I get from one to the other? Make a shortcut? Find me a door?”

  “What is it you’re trying to do?” Folsom asked sharply.

  “Get my friends out of England and close the slave markets, once and for all.”

  “That’s impossible,” he said.

  “Nothing’s impossible,” I protested. “Helena tried to find me for a reason, right? Because I’m one of the tainted. I can open doors. I found you all, so why couldn’t I find the others, too? I’m supposed to be able to do weird crap like this, aren’t I?”

  “I can help her.”

  I turned to see Val standing in the doorway.

  “I can find my way around,” she said confidently. “I will help you.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “The market is well guarded,�
�� Val said between bites of food. “There’s no way the two of us could break out all of the children without them getting hurt.”

  “Yeah, well, if we get Esther free, she can speak on our behalf. The Council will listen to her and maybe send an army in with us.”

  We sat around a large dining table: me, Folsom, Val, Leah, the angel and his friend, and a couple of stragglers. They had invited me to eat with them as we discussed our plans, and I hoped that meant they had accepted I wouldn’t willingly do them any harm.

  “What makes you think the Council will help us?” Val asked.

  “I don’t. But we have to try.”

  “You don’t even know how to make a doorway out of here,” the angel said, sneering again.

  “I didn’t know how to make a doorway to get in here, yet here I am. Besides, if the likes of you got down here, then anything’s possible,” I retorted.

  “Cam’s fallen,” Val explained. “And he’s a traitor and a weasel besides.”

  “I came back,” he said in a voice that made it sound as though they’d had the same argument a million times. “I came back, and I led you here. That should count for something by now, surely.”

  The black woman next to him patted his arm, but the gesture seemed to be her drawing reassurance from him rather than the other way around.

  “The twins are important,” I said. “They see things. They saw this place. They showed me how to find the beast, and they helped me finish her off.”

  “We hear different,” Cam said. “We hear the shifter alpha did it.”

  “You hear what we want you to hear,” I snapped, and then I sighed. There was no point in my taking the heads off everyone around me because I didn’t like their words. “I’m sorry. I’m just worried. The English were about to start a war over the beast. Lies were the only way to diffuse the situation. But they’re warring over there anyhow, so it was coming no matter what we did.”