Within These Walls: Series Box Set

by Tracey Ward

  “It’s not as big as the aquarium,” Marlow says critically. “But the grounds are bigger. There’s more space for gardening. Farming. Could be worth it. It could definitely be worth it.”

  “It being me,” I shout before remembering I’m supposed to shut up.

  My hand on the knife freezes as all eyes shift to me.

  Marlow chuckles as he and Vin clear the stairs and cross the room. “Don’t flatter yourself. You’ll definitely grease the wheels, but you won’t cover the entire cost. We’ll have to check the other inventory we get from this place. Where are they, by the way?”

  “Where are who?” Vin asks innocently.

  “The other people. The hundreds of people you claimed you have hidden away here. Did we not see the entire property? Where are they?”

  “Basement.”

  “We saw the basement.”

  “Sub-basement.”

  “Vincent.”

  “They’re around, don’t worry, Marlow,” Vin sings easily. He slowly paces around the room, subtly putting distance between himself and Marlow. “I said they were being kept safe. I didn’t say they were being kept safe here.”

  “Don’t double speak with me,” Marlow warns.

  “It was a misunderstanding.”

  Marlow watches Vin closely, his eyes narrowing to sharp slits. “Maybe we need to be more clear with each other. Bring me the girl!”

  Two of Marlow’s men take hold of my chair and drag me backwards to the center of the room. Vin’s eyes follow me with interest, but he never stops moving. Never stops circling Marlow so very slowly.

  I’m parked beside Marlow, the chair slammed forward so hard I worry for a second it will tip over and my face will meet the beaten hardwood floors. I also worry I’ll lose hold of my knife. I grip it so hard it turns slightly, the blade digging into my skin.

  “Take it easy, Marlow,” Vin warns casually. “Westbrook won’t want her with a broken face.”

  “What good is she as payment for an empty building?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I want the people, Vincent. This place is useless to me without the people to run it.”

  “Bodies,” Vin says thoughtfully, still turning. Still pacing. He drags every eye in the room with him, Marlow’s men tensing as he steps behind them, between them, swoops in slowly near Marlow before gliding away again. “Hands, legs, feet, arms, backs to break. This world is worthless without people, isn’t it? No one to work the fields. No one to cook and clean. No one to create the law, to break the law, enforce the law. No one for the zombies to eat. No one to watch over you while you sleep. No one to warm your bed.”

  “Get to it,” Marlow snaps.

  Vin suddenly stops moving and I’m almost dizzy because of it. It feels like the entire room jolts. He’s standing to Marlow’s left, the same side I’m sitting on. Ryan, I notice, is standing to Marlow’s right, just outside his peripheral.

  “I want the building,” Vin tells him firmly, no longer whimsical. “I want the building and half the people in it. Men or women, I don’t care.”

  “And what will you do with it?”

  “I’ll run it, same way you run The Hive. We’ll do business, same as you do business with the Colonies, but I don’t like the terms. Both those and the building will be entirely mine.”

  “Why would I ever allow that?”

  “Because if you don’t, you’ll never see a single one of the people from this place. You can have half or nothing. Run the numbers on that and get back to me.”

  “You’re an idiot. What’s happened to you?”

  Vin smirks at him. “Same thing that happens to every man who tastes power. I’ve grown hungry.”

  “You’ve gotten greedy.”

  “I’ve become wise,” Vin counters in an eerie whisper. “I know you can’t man this place. You wouldn’t know how even if you did have the bodies to fill it—which you don’t, by the way. Do you know how I know that? It’s because I know everything about you.”

  Marlow examines Vin for a long time, neither of them moving. “So this is what it’s come to? After all these years, after all I’ve done for you, you’re going to turn on me? You’re no better than your dad was.”

  “Oh I’m much better than my dad was, because I have his mistakes to learn from. I won’t live under your thumb forever and I definitely won’t let you put me in the bottom of the Sound.”

  “You’re on the same course. He tried to shake me on, just like you’re doing now.”

  Vin’s responding grin is cold. “He wasn’t holding all the cards.”

  Marlow grabs a fistful of my hair, yanking my head to the side violently. I bite my lip to keep from crying out in pain.

  “Not all the cards,” he sneers.

  “Take her,” Vin replies flippantly, waving his hand like he’s brushing off the loss of a sock. “I’d hate for you to have made the trip for nothing.”

  Marlow shakes his head, his face contorted in anger. “I could take everything from you right now.”

  “And lose one hundred head. This building too. What would be the point of paying Westbrook for it if you can’t manage it? Give the building to me, half the people will be yours, we’ll work as partners, and you’ll never have to do business with the Colonies again.”

  “I have a better idea,” Marlow snarls. “You and your pathetic Guard will die here and now, but not until you watch me drain every last cent out of this girl. Then I’ll burn this building with your bodies inside it and leave its charred remains as a reminder to anyone who ever thinks they can take what’s mine!”

  Vin pinches his lips together briefly, appearing to think it over. “Well, I mean, it’s less appealing than my solution, but it’s something to think about. Let me sleep on it?”

  “You’re not seeing another sunset.”

  “I’ll bet you anything I see one more than you.”

  The room explodes into action around me. Marlow releases my hair as I frantically saw at the rope holding my left arm down. I feel like weeping at the end, my weak and sore muscles in my still-healing arm aching and crying out against the abusively odd angles I’m asking my hand to work at. I cut my skin again, deeply. Blood oozes over the ropes down onto the seat, seeping hot and sticky into the fabric of my jeans. Finally I cut the rope hard enough to get my arm free.

  I look up to find Vin and his Guard fighting the men that came in with Marlow, Andy included. Andy has jumped in to fight Ryan, a fact I’m almost happy about because I think it’s less likely he’ll actually kill him. Andy might hurt him for show, and that pisses me off something awful—I’m not even promising I won’t seek revenge for it—but at least I don’t feel like he’s going to die right this second.

  It’s when I feel Marlow’s hand on my chin, forcing my head back roughly, that I realize I’m the one in real danger.

  He doesn’t say a word to me. He stares down at me gasping for breath and fighting to free myself, a cold glint in his eyes and a stone’s grasp on my face. I only have a second to think about it, a moment to react, and even as I do I know it won’t be enough.

  I spin the knife in my hand, pointing the blade out and down. I want to go for his neck or his eye, do him like a zombie on the streets, but I don’t have the time or the reach. His arms are blocking me and I have to make do with what I’ve got.

  I slash my small blade across his stomach, sinking it as deep as I can. He gasps, his hand falling away from my face as he doubles over in pain and surprise. Both will wear off too soon.

  He’s stumbled back too far for me to be able to make another stab at him so I don’t bother. I can’t reach my bigger, sharper knife I strapped to my ankle, so I do the only thing I can: I start hacking at the other rope on my right hand and hope I can get free before he recovers.

  I never stood a chance. Maybe not ever. Maybe not since the day my parents died and I ran and ran and ran. I’ve been running for years. Hiding from the monsters that want to destroy me, that w
on’t quit until I’m lying on the ground in a pool of my own blood and the stars are going black in the night sky for the last time. Maybe I was never meant to be more than a memory in the mind of a bright, beautiful boy. Just some words on a wall. Hidden music echoing in the darkness.

  As Marlow lifts his head, his eyes landing on mine and promising me the end I’ve always known was coming, I’m surprised to find myself calm. I’m not ready to die, not by a long shot, but if it has to happen at least I got to live—even if it was just for a little while, a brief flash of lightning in the eye of a terrible storm. It was still brilliant and it was mine.

  Marlow disappears from view. He falls to the ground in a blur of color and slices of silver. He cries out in rage and pain, a terrible howl that echoes through the whole room. Men stop fighting, putting distance between each other to look at the madness still brewing at my feet.

  It goes on forever, but when it’s over, when the crazy finally stills and the room is deathly silent, we all stare in amazement.

  Marlow is dead. More than dead, he’s nearly disappeared. His body is riddled with stab wounds and bite marks, his blood running across the floor in wild, dark torrents as his vacant eyes stare up at the ceiling. His mouth still hangs open in an expression of shock and pain. It happened so fast. Too fast to follow and too fast to understand.

  And there in the center of it, coated in blood, red tissue dripping from his chin like the juice of a watermelon from a starving man’s maw, is Andy.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “The f—” Vin begins, his face a mask of shock and confusion.

  Ryan is at my side immediately. He takes my borrowed, craptastic knife from my hand and uses it to quickly cut the ropes still holding me down. When I’m free, my eyes still fixated on the mess at my feet, he runs his hands over me. I hear him hiss when he finds the cuts on the inside of my wrist.

  I shake my head weakly, dragging my eyes to his. “It’s nothing. It happened while I was cutting myself free.”

  “What about your leg? It’s wet with blood. How bad is it?”

  “The blood’s from my wrist, it’s fine.”

  Ryan lifts my arm into the air, hovering my bleeding hand above my head as he rips the sleeve off his shirt to apply pressure to my cut.

  “It’s not fine for your wrist to be bleeding like this. You might have nicked the artery.”

  “I’m still doing better than he is,” I mutter, looking around Ryan at Marlow.

  Andy is sitting on top of him. His eyes are closed and his hands are pressed into the open wounds he dug into the man’s body. I can hear a hum coming from his motionless mouth—a mouth still dripping with blood and tissue. He’s not even a little bit worried about the men surrounding him, staring at him, and he shouldn’t be. No one is moving. So far, Ryan and I are the only ones who have really spoken since it happened.

  That won’t last.

  “Vin!” I shout.

  His eyes snap to mine for the briefest of seconds, but it’s all he needs. He’s back in control of himself. He scans the room, his eyes lingering on Andy for one long moment, then he’s all action.

  “You’re leaving,” Vin tells Marlow’s men.

  “Is he…” one of the men begins before becoming lost. “Is Andy…?”

  “A cannibal, yes. And if you don’t want to become the second course to his dinner, you’ll get your ass out of here now. Let this be a warning to you all. The Hive is not welcome here. This is my house, aligned with the cannibals and run by my rules, and anyone who has a problem with that or thinks they have the balls to rip it from my cold dead hands is welcome to give it their best shot. Now get out!”

  They run. They don’t even hesitate, and I don’t blame them one bit. Two of Marlow’s closest men, his most trusted allies, just went biblical on his face. There is no loyalty anymore. Leadership is dead and when you find yourself on an every-man-for-himself-type basis in the middle of a room full of enemies, psychos, and traitors, running is the smart choice. I would applaud them if Ryan would let me lower my hand.

  “I’m not going to die,” I tell him irritably.

  “Not if I can help it, no.”

  “Everyone out now,” Vin says sharply, already ushering his Guard toward the back of the room. “We gotta move.”

  “Where are we going?” Ryan asks, helping me to my feet.

  “The showers. We need to get in the tunnels now.”

  There’s shouting from outside. Men come running from every corner of the property, all of them heading for the group of guys that just left.

  Vin points out the window. “That is not going to end well for us. Marlow came here with at least thirty men. They won’t be afraid of a traitor, a flesh eater, and a girl when it dawns on them that they have us seriously outnumbered. They’re shaken but they’re not idiots.”

  “Andy!” Ryan shouts.

  Andy looks up calmly, his eyes creepy crystal clear. “I’m right behind you.”

  The swarm outside is growing. Several men are already running toward the door, about to make it inside.

  “Then you’re already dead,” Vin replies darkly.

  We run for the back of the building. I don’t know if Andy is behind us, but I know Marlow’s men are. I hear the door crash open, barked orders, the thunder of too many feet on the floor—too many to fight, too many to run from, but we do it anyway because every one of us is a child of the wild. We don’t know how to quit.

  Vin leads the way through the back halls, down the stairs and straight to the very familiar, very troubled shower room. It’s seen a lot lately, but somehow I know I’ll never see it again. I’ll never come back here, no matter who is running the show. This place is tainted. It’s dead to me, and when Vin throws open one of the cupboards and yanks out what I recognize as homemade explosives, I feel cotton candy light and sweet at the sight of it.

  “What are you planning to do with that?” Ryan asks, scowling at the bundle in Vin’s hand.

  “Blow the exit behind us.”

  “You’ll kill us.”

  “I know what I’m doing.”

  “Obviously not. That much clay will level half the building.”

  Vin is on the floor by the drain, circling it with brown lumps of explosives linked by a wiry black fuse. Most of his men are gone down the hole, running for their lives. If we’re smart, we’ll be right behind them, but it looks like the guys want to cat fight for a minute first.

  “We don’t have time for this,” I warn them.

  “Then get moving,” Vin tells me.

  Ryan shakes his head angrily. “The tunnels will collapse on us. We can’t outrun what you’re about to do.”

  “Get her out of here, Hyperion!”

  “Don’t kill her, Vincent!” Ryan shouts back.

  Vin stops to glare up at Ryan, a rare moment when the curtain is clearly raised on his emotions. He’s livid. “I told you, I know wha—”

  “That’s too much clay,” Andy says calmly, appearing in the doorway. “You’ll kill us all.”

  Vin drops the explosives on the ground, making Ryan flinch. “Fine! You do it then. I’m getting out of here. Lower her down to me.”

  Vin smoothly drops himself down the hole before the guys can respond. I turn to look at them, to tell them to forget the explosives, but I hesitate when I see Andy.

  “What’s in your hand?”

  “A heart.”

  “No.”

  “Marlow’s?” Ryan asks, eyeing Andy warily.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?” I demand.

  “For the ceremony.”

  “What ceremony?”

  “Do you really want to know?”

  “No,” I groan, feeling sick to my stomach.

  “Kitten!” Vin cries from the darkness at our feet. “Now or never!”

  He’s not kidding. The building is filled with the sounds of footsteps and shouts. They don’t know exactly where we are, but it won’t be long until they find us. If we’re leavi
ng, we need to go now.

  I look at Ryan. “You’ll come down right behind me, right?”

  “On your heels.”

  “Kitten!”

  “Ryan.”

  “Go, Joss,” he tells me firmly. “Go to Crenshaw. I’ll meet you there.”

  I lower my legs down into the hole. I do my best to not panic the second Vin grabs them. My first instinct is to kick the hell out of him until he lets go, maybe because he’s kind of pissing me off lately, but also because I don’t like being touched by someone I can’t see. That’s how zombies get you: in the dark when your guard is down.

  Ryan takes hold of my right hand, my good one, and helps to lower me down into Vin’s arms. It feels weird. It feels wrong. When he lets go of my hand, his face disappearing from the circle of light above me, it feels like goodbye.

  “Come on.”

  Vin doesn’t hesitate to grab my hand and yank me forward. Once we’re running at a sprint he lets go so we can both run our hands along the walls of the tunnel for guidance. I want to yell at him that we need to wait for Ryan, but I know it’s better to get out of the way. Back there I’m a liability. With me gone he can concentrate on the dangerous, stupid, necessary thing he’s about to do.

  “Do these tunnels branch out?” Vin asks me.

  I nod even though he can’t see it in the pitch black we’ve dropped into. “Yeah, they do. A lot.”

  “Do you remember how to get out?”

  “Not really.”

  “Great. So somewhere down here your buddy Trent led all two hundred of my people into a maze he doesn’t know how to get out of?”

  “Trent can get out,” I assure him, grunting as I stumble on something in the dark.

  I can feel Vin backtrack, coming into my space. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  “This is pointless,” he says bitterly. “We’ll never find our way out of here in the dark.”

  “Do you think we’re far enough away from the blast they’re about to set off?”

  “No.”

  “Oh.”

  Vin curses under his breath. I hear his feet shuffle through the water as he feels around the tunnel, looking for God knows what. The cannibals keep torches in the tunnels they use but they said they’d never been this far north before, and if they left one from their visit, we passed it back at the drain. No way I’m going back looking for that.