by Fleur Smith
The image of Clay falling to his knees as he passed the anti-fae symbols crossed my mind. “I’m going to get you out of here.” Swallowing down my fear and aiming for soothing tones instead, I tried to ensure my voice didn’t belie my words, “I just need to know more. Is there anything physical blocking your way?”
“I do not think so,” she said quietly. “Just the pain. I tried to ignore it, but it is too much.”
Now that I knew we were alone, I grabbed the cell phone I had, it was a basic one with only text and call capabilities, but I hoped it might be able to give me some light in the darkness. I unlocked the screen and tried to use it as a torch, but the muted light was dull and not of any real assistance.
“I have another plan,” I said, heading back toward the desk or bench or whatever the hell it was that I’d bumped against earlier, taking less care to be quiet now that I was certain we were alone in the room. Rummaging over the surface and searching in the solitary drawer, I tried to find anything wooden and sufficiently long enough for my plan. Once I’d found something that might suffice, I wrapped my scarf tightly around the top of it. I walked back to Mackenzie knowing that even if I could get the torch to catch, it wouldn’t give too much light, or stay lit for very long without some sort of accelerant to burn before the flames destroyed the material.
When I was close enough that I could see Mackenzie’s outline among the shadows, I wrapped my hand around my scarf and forced heat into my fingers. Almost instantly, the material caught and a flash of flames lit the room. I glanced up to see Mackenzie and immediately felt foolish for not having guessed who she was to Clay when I’d lived in the court with Aiden.
I could vaguely recall her face from the time I’d spent in the classrooms, but her features had matured a little over the years. She’d grown into a beautiful young woman, almost the spitting image of Louise, except with Clay's slightly rounder and softer features.
Maybe if I’d known Clay and Louise when they were much younger, I would have seen it.
I shook away the guilt and self-doubt and focused instead on assessing Mackenzie’s well-being. Her face and clothes were dirty, and she was gaunt from the lack of food, but she appeared healthy enough to assist in her own getaway.
When I found I was openly staring at her, I forced my eyes away. Instead, I focused on the area surrounding her for every symbol that could be holding her in place.
“Let’s get you out of here,” I said with as reassuring a smile as I could muster. “Hold this.” I stepped into the area that was surrounded by the protective charms and handed her the torch.
Setting to work quickly, I broke all the symbols and laid crystals in a pattern that would allow her to pass across the line and out of her metaphysical cage.
The makeshift torch died before I’d finished, but I’d memorized the placement of everything enough that I could complete the task without the benefit of sight.
“Be careful when you step this way,” I warned as I reached for her hand. It was difficult adjusting back to the inky blackness after the brief intrusion of light. “If you knock the crystals, some of the protective charms might still be in place.”
As soon as she stepped free of her prison, she thanked me.
“Don’t thank me yet,” I said. “We still have to get out of the building.” And I don’t think that’s going to be quite as easy.
I spent a few moments checking the electrical room for another exit, but I couldn't see one. There was a button and door on one wall that might have belonged to an elevator, but nothing at all happened when I pressed it. It must have been out of service or needed something more to power it or a special key to make it run. I tried flicking on a light switch that I’d found, but it seemed like it had been disconnected.
“Let’s go,” I said to Mackenzie, indicating the doorway to the stairs.
Grabbing the cell phone again, I unlocked the screen with the intention of sending Clay a message that I’d found Mackenzie. Before I could, I noticed a little envelope icon indicating I had a message.
When I viewed the message, my blood became ice.
‘Dad’s holding Clay and demanding to know what happened.’
“Shit,” I murmured under my breath.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s, um, Clay,” I said, not knowing whether the name would even mean anything to her. I didn’t know how much she knew about her mother’s other family. “He’s in trouble up on level six.”
“Did he come with you?” she asked, and I had my answer about how much she knew—not a lot. She didn’t even seem to recognize his name.
“Yeah, he was keeping the Rain distracted while I searched for you.” It was a version of the truth, even if not entirely correct. “But they’ve discovered he’s hiding something from them and I think he might be in danger.”
“What do we need to do?”
“Regroup,” I said. There was no way I’d risk trying to get Mackenzie out through the lobby by myself. The probability of capture was too high. I fired off a quick text to Aiden, letting him know that I was in Room 407. I hadn’t noticed any anti-fae symbols throughout the lobby or in the elevator so I hoped they’d be able to get at least that far. We’d have to work with any other opportunities as they arose. “We’ll go to the hotel room I’ve booked and plan our escape from there.”
We raced up the stairs to the sixth floor. A little sigh of relief left me when I saw that it had a lock on the knob. My earlier assumption regarding the Rain’s security measure to ensure that no others escaped into guest areas was probably correct. Kneeling in front of the door, I pressed my ear to the surface, listening intently for any sign that the people who’d been milling around in the hallway earlier were on the other side.
Mackenzie did the same. “I don’t think there’s anyone there,” she murmured.
Grabbing the hairpins that I’d used to pick the lock downstairs back out of my pocket, I set to work on the door. The knowledge I’d gained from the first lock made the second one easier and a little quicker to manipulate. In under a minute, I was able to unlock the door.
I twisted the handle slowly, listening intently with every turn. If I was about to alert anyone to our presence, I wanted to know about it as quickly as possible so I could try to be proactive. Opening the door a crack, I peered through the opening and tried to figure out if we were alone. The space beyond seemed empty and I could do little more than hope that was actually the case.
“Come on,” I whispered to Mackenzie as I held the door open just enough for us to pass through it.
Leading her, I walked as briskly as I dared along the corridor to the elevator. The fact that she didn’t fall to the floor in pain gave me hope that I’d been successful in removing the anti-fae protections. Not that it mattered any longer, but it was good to know that I could do it if I needed to.
I stopped short as we hit the corner. Two people, a man and a woman, stood in front of the elevator shaft. Their eyes appraised the empty corridor in steady sweeps. Mackenzie continued walking, and she smacked into my back, forcing an audible “oof ” from me with the impact.
Without waiting to see if the sound had drawn the attention of the operatives in front of the elevator, I clamped my hand down over Mackenzie’s mouth to stop any sounds of exclamation from my actions and shoved her back around the corner out of sight.
“Stairs,” I mouthed to her, unwilling to hang around in the corridors of the floor any longer than was necessary. With a gentle nudge, I guided her back to the stairwell.
“What now?” she asked in a hushed whisper after I closed the door as quietly as I could.
I stared down the stairway for a moment. “We can’t go down, it only leads to the room you were in. We’ll have to go up.”
It was Mackenzie’s turn to glance upward. Her eyes, such a similar shape to Clay’s, glanced up the stairwell as though it would provide answers. “What is up there though?”
Trying to get the heat of my skin under con
trol, I swallowed down the fear and doubt that was creeping over me.
“There’s only one way to find out. Come on.” I grabbed her hand, as much to confirm for myself that I’d done at least part of the task, before leading her up to level seven.
As I worked the lock on the next door, I gulped down my breath. “I don’t know what’s through here,” I warned Mackenzie. “There might be fae protection. A room full of Assessors. Anything.”
When she didn’t respond to my statement, I glanced up at her. Her eyes flashed with fear. “I am ready. Tell me what I need to do.”
I stood and held her shoulders in my palms, hoping that the bite of my heat wasn’t too much. “Be careful. If there are any anti-fae symbols through here, they’ll hurt, but you can’t scream out or make any noise. Can you do that?” The memory of Clay’s screams rang through my mind. “No matter what.”
She seemed to understand how important it was when she nodded, sincerity and another flash of fear racing through her blue eyes.
“We’ll be okay,” I promised her even though I had no right to say it. I was speaking to the parts of her that didn’t want honesty. They wanted platitudes. They wanted to know that everything would be all right. I recognized the tattered edges of insanity from my own flights from the Rain. “Let’s go.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
STEPPING THROUGH THE door cautiously, I glanced around. The corridor was darker than the one only a floor below. Symbols littered the walls, not only the anti-fae ones Ethan had warned us about, but a litany of others as well. Eight metal doors lined the walls to either side of us. Each had the M-shaped rain symbol, the shorthand symbol of the dove; a small flap, no doubt to pass food into the room behind; and a number emblazoned on the surface.
The scent of death tinged the air in the corridor and from each of the doors around us random noises sounded out. Snuffing. Scratching. Sobbing.
It was clear what the purpose of the rooms was. My stomach twisted at the image. Had Clay been put into one of these during his retraining? Would one of these have been my home had the kidnapping attempt when I was a child been successful?
Taking in the row of doors, I wondered why Ethan hadn’t sent me to this floor first. All I could assume was that he’d hoped I wouldn’t need to see these rooms. These cells. The place that would become my new home if I didn’t get out of the Bayview Hotel soon.
My heart beat so loudly I was surprised Mackenzie didn’t shush me. The heat of my stress radiated around my body. I had to be cautious not to touch anything, or I would risk igniting everything around us.
Mackenzie let loose a small whimper. At first, I assumed I had moved too close to her, that my warmth was hurting her. A glance in her direction put that concern to rest, and raised a whole slew of new ones. She had one hand on her mouth and tears in her eyes as she moved toward one of the doors—the one with the number thirteen on the front—with her other hand stretched in front of her.
“Is it the protections?” I asked.
She shook her head. “This is different.”
I reached out for her, daring to touch her shoulder even though my hand must have been hot enough to burn her. It didn’t stop her movement in the direction of the cell though.
“What is it?” I asked with as much volume as I dared.
Her breaths came as nothing more than a forced panting. It was almost as if she was having a panic attack, only I’d never seen a fae experience one of those.
“So. Much. Pain.” Each word was forced out between her teeth because her jaw was clenched so tightly I could see the muscles near her ears flexing.
“We have to go,” I said, reaching for her hand to draw her away from the door.
Once more, she shook loose of my hold. This time, she glanced at me and the pain radiating in her eyes was too much for me to bear. “I have to do this, Evelyn. The agony, it’s too much. No creature on this earth should be made to feel it.” She rested her hand against the metal. “I have to get in there and help him,” she repeated.
Even though it went against everything I’d planned, I couldn’t deny her such an earnest request. With a frown tugging at my lips, I agreed. “But . . . we need to be careful. Okay?”
She gave a small nod. “Thank you.”
With a glance up and down the hall, I checked to make sure there was no one around. Once I’d confirmed we were still alone for the moment, I blew out a breath and grabbed the hairpins I’d used to unlock the doors in the stairwell.
When I twisted the metal into the keyhole to manipulate the locks, I said a silent prayer that the cell doors weren’t alarmed. The locking mechanism was more complicated than the other ones I’d unlocked so far, but not so difficult that I couldn’t eventually get the door to swing open. Only, when it did, it issued a shudder and a groan.
“Crap,” I murmured as I grabbed Mackenzie’s hand and tugged her straight into the room. It was a risk. If the sound had attracted anyone nearby, they might search every cell to find the perpetrator. But if they came to investigate and found an empty corridor and closed doors, it was possible they would leave again before long—at least I hoped so.
It didn’t even occur to me to be worried about what might be in the cell until after we were inside with the door to our exit closed behind us. While I listened at the door for any indication that the sound of the cell door opening and closing had attracted a Rain operative, Mackenzie gave a small gasp, followed quickly by a sob.
After backing away from the door, I spun to see what had drawn such a sorrowful sound from her, and my eyes met a sight straight out of a nightmare. On the opposite side of the room, a glass tank ran the length of the wall. Around four feet high and two feet wide, set at least a foot above the ground, and filled with pink water, the tank was an oddity. If I couldn’t see it for myself what it was used for, I would have wondered the possible reason for such a container in the Rain’s holding cell.
At one end of the tank, right at the bottom, was a loop of silver metal. Acting as a hook, the loop pierced through the thick, muscular tail of a merman. Around the metal anchor, wisps of blood seeped into the water tinging it the terrible pink color. The angle of the hook through the tail kept the merman almost fully submerged with only his nose bobbing in and out of the water as his jet black hair floated around him like seaweed.
Tears pricked my eyes at the sight. He appeared strong, healthy. The muscles that lined his chest and abdomen were the sort most human men would spend hours in the gym for. His tail was thick from his waist and only thinned where the fins tapered away into two sections at the very end.
“Help me help him,” Mackenzie said.
“Wait.” It broke my heart to say it, but I wasn’t sure what we could do. We couldn’t exactly risk taking one more other from the hotel with us. “We can’t.”
“I cannot leave him like this.”
“We have to go. Clay—”
“Is not dying,” she said. “This man is.”
The protector within me battled with my sense of self-preservation. We couldn’t carry him out; it would be too hard and we would be risking everyone’s lives to try. But maybe we could give him a chance at saving himself.
I had no idea how he’d get off the floor without an access card for the elevator, or whether we’d be sentencing him to death by even trying, but Mackenzie was right. We couldn’t leave him in such a helpless state. At very least, we could save him from suffering for a while.
As if he’d sensed us in the room, he turned in our direction. Something new—hope maybe—replaced the fear on his features when he saw us. His eyes, the luminescent pink of coral, met mine. Something in his gaze told me he wasn’t like some of the creatures the Rain hunted. That he was more like me. Conscious. Caring. Not a cold-blooded monster.
“Okay,” I said to Mackenzie. “What do we need to do?”
The two of us moved closer to the tank. As we did, the muscles on the man’s stomach tensed and his head surged forward out of the water w
ith a gasp. His hands clutched at the side of the tank. The effort needed to hold himself out of the water contorted his face into a mask of agony.
Any doubt that remained over whether to help him washed away as a wave of pink water splashed over the side of the tank and surged toward our feet. The water never reached us though, instead disappearing down a hole in a drain in the middle of the floor.
“Please,” he whispered, his voice hoarse and desperate. The water clung to his hair, causing the black tendrils to stick to his face. His muscles flexed from the effort as he clung to the side of the tank with one arm. With the other, he reached toward us. The motion caused the hook to tear through the muscles in his tail. Although I was certain he could have cried out in agony, especially the way fresh blood flowed from the new wound, he simply bit his lip and issued a low whimper. His eyes pressed tight as he continued, “You have to get me loose.”
With his chest heaving from the exertion of holding himself up out of the water, he met my gaze and then Mackenzie’s.
“Please,” he murmured again before letting go and splashing back under the water.
His final quiet plea was enough to spur me into action. I tried to see if there was some way of releasing the hook through his tail from outside the tank. The metal protruded from the bottom of the tank, and I couldn’t see any way of releasing it. My hands scrambled along the brick wall to the side of the tank, feeling for any hidden switch or mechanism. Even on the floor of the tank, I couldn’t see anything.
“I can’t find a way to get him out,” I said.
Mackenzie walked to the tank and pressed her hand against the glass. Even though she was barely tall enough to reach inside comfortably, she leaned over the tank and offered to help the man up. He reached out to her, locked his hands around her forearms and pulled himself from the water again. Once he was up, he clutched onto the top of the glass with one hand and left the other wrapped around Mackenzie’s arm for support. The position left his face just inches from hers, and he stared at her with an intensity that made my stomach twist with a new desire to find Clay.