by Tracey Ward
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 leaving, 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.
“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.
“We should keep moving,” Vin says, taking my hand again.
I pull it back. “And go where? Deeper into the tunnels with no clue where we’re going? We could accidentally circle back and end up right under the MOHAI again.”
“We’re still under it now,” he says impatiently. “We haven’t run very far.”
“We need to wait for Ryan and Andy.”
“He told us to go. Besides, does your boy know how to get out of here? Can he see in the dark?”
“No, but Andy can. He’s a cannibal. He knows the tunnels.”
Vin chuckles darkly. “That son of a bitch. Don’t think I’m taking him out the second I get the chance.”
“Take him out how?”
“Not on a date, that’s for sure.”
“You’re going to kill him?” I ask in amazement. “Why? He killed Marlow for you!”
“He didn’t do it for me.”
“It’s still done.”
“Not the way I planned.”
“Oh no!” I cry sarcastically. “Vin didn’t get his way. Poor baby.”
“It makes a big difference how he did it. The difference between me taking over The Hive and The Hive chasing me into the sewers like a friggin’ rat.”
“How would you ever have taken hold of The Hive?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he replies with his signature composed calm. Whatever he’s mad about, he’s stowing it. For now. “It’s done. It’s all jacked, and now every member of my Pod is lost somewhere under the city.”
“I told you, Trent can find his way out. You’ll get your precious followers back. Which reminds me.”
I take a swing at him. I’m not aiming for his face, but I’m not worried if I hit it. When my fist connects with something solid and slightly meaty, I’m pretty sure I’ve hit him in the chest.
“Ow!” he cries. “You punched me in the boob!”
“You were going to let Marlow have me, you ass!”
“Oh come on. No matter what, he wasn’t making it out of that building alive.”
“Ass.”
“Whatever. Be mad, but while we’re talking about betrayal, how did you know Andy was a cannibal?”
“He ate Marlow, genius.”
“Drop it. You knew before then, didn’t you?”
I take a slow, silent step back from him. “Yes.”
“How?”
“How do you think? I came here with the cannibals. I met him in the underground where they live and I’d seen him in The Hive when I went to Marlow with your ring. I put two and two together.”
I take another step back.
“Where are you going?”
I freeze. “Away from you. I don’t want to get punched in the boob.”
His laugh fills the darkness with warmth that makes me realize I’m shivering. It’s cold in here. My feet are wet and chilling my entire body, but more than anything I’m nervous. I’m worried about Ryan and part of me is just waiting for an explosion to rip through these tunnels until the sky collapses on us, smothering everyone.
“They’re taking a long time.”
Vin quiets, and just like that the warmth is gone. “I know.”
“Should I be worried?”
“You should always be worried.”
“Should I be scared?”
He doesn’t answer right away, and when he does I wish he’d kept his mouth shut.
“Yeah.”
“What if Marlow’s guys got them?”
“Then they’re dead.”
It’s amazing how fast my throat closes up. How with those words, with the simple, ugly thought of it, my body wants to fold in two until I’m choking on the sobs rising in my chest.
I take a shaky step. I’m heading north.
Then I’m heading south—right onto my ass.
I feel like I’m underwater. My hearing is gone, my sight is destroyed from the sudden burst of bright firelight that flared up and burned out almost instantly. I have no idea which way is up or down, left or right. I try to call out to Vin but I don’t know if I make any noise. Even if I do, he probably can’t hear me.
I rise up my knees in the water, taking deep breaths that fill my lungs with smoke and dust that I can’t see but I can definitely smell and taste. My hearing is coming back to me, but it’s nearly worthless. It’s a horrible ringing that I think is more painful than the boom from the blast was.
A hand brushes my arm. I’m shocked when my first reaction isn’t to lash out in defense, to break every finger attached to it, or to run in the other direction. Instead I latch onto it with mine, immediately feeling the familiar hard circle of Vin’s ring under my fingers.
“Are you okay?” I try to ask.
Whether he answers me or not, I don’t hear it. His hand takes hold of mine, lacing our fingers together. He pulls me up, then we’re running. We rush blindly through the tunnels, both of us tripping and stumbling over hidden obstacles or over our own feet. My balance feels off and when he falls to his knees, I know his is too. It’s disorienting not being able to see, but with our hearing messed up too it feels like we’re running in nothing. Like we’re nowhere when we could be anywhere.
I don’t know how long we run and I definitely don’t know where we are, but when a light suddenly appears ahead, I yank Vin to a stop.
“Who do you think it is?” I whisper.
It’s stupid and pointless, but I ask anyway.
The light is beginning to grow. It moves like firelight over the glistening, wet walls and part of me relaxes. It’s a torch, one being carried by someone pretty tall. Someone like Trent.
The outline of the person is beginning to take shape as they close in on us. They’re not just tall. The blackness of their shadow fills the tunnel behind them, making them look broad. Huge. Not like Trent at all.
More like Bryan.
Chapter Fourteen
The closer the torchlight comes, the more the tunnel fills with darkness. With shadow that’s building behind the figure. Then it’s not shadow. It’s form, full and large. Too big to be friendly. Pale skin. Bright eyes. A malicious smile.
I look anxiously at Vin, desperate to warn him but lost over how to do it
. How do you tell someone who can’t hear you that the man cornering you both in a pre-dug grave is a killer? Worse yet—he’s a cannibal.
I squeeze his hand hard, pulling his eyes from Bryan and down to me. His brow is pinched in confusion so I hurry to clear up our situation for him. I flip his hand over and scribble franticly with my finger. He’s a smart guy. I’m hoping he can pick up what I’m saying.
Rebecca.
When I’m finished, I open my eyes emphatically and I write one more letter firmly across his dry palm.
X
He gets it. I can see it in the calm that comes over his face. The confusion clears and suddenly Vin is very, very sure of his world. He reaches slowly for my side. I want to ask what he’s doing but when his fingers close around my ASP, I know. I shake my head, wanting to tell him I need it to fight, but he already has the weapon and he’s pushing me behind him. I hate this and I want him to know it. I want to fight him on it, tell him I can help, but there’s no time.
Bryan lunges at Vin. He wastes no time trying to get his hands on the smaller man’s neck, but Vin is fast. Scary fast. I’ve never seen him fight before, there was never a reason, but seeing it now reminds me of something Nats said about him once. He’s always lived like this. The end of the world, living in the wild—that’s nothing new to Vin. He was an orphan on the streets when he was just a kid. He’s always known how to fight. To survive.
But if he was an orphan as a kid, how does he have his dad’s ring? His dad who was killed by Marlow for betraying him?
Bryan tosses aside the torch. The entire tunnel is instantly plunged into darkness and my heart leaps into my throat. I can hear my blood rushing in my ears and I wonder if that’s my hearing coming back or my body going insane with terror. I’m scared for Vin because he’s obviously Bryan’s first concern, but I’m scared for me too because once Vin is dead, so am I.
I pull my blade out of my boot as I lower myself into a crouch. I doubt Bryan can see any better than we can, not immediately after using the torch. There’s a very narrow window of opportunity here where he’s just as blind as we are and if we’re going to have any chance of surviving this, it has to happen when the playing field is nearly even.