Darkest Whispers (Eternal Shadows Book 2)

by Kate Martin

  I frowned. This martyr act was going a little too far. “You volunteered for this, remember?”

  “To save you.”

  “Yes, and you did, and I’m grateful.”

  “I should have made you cut a deal with me.”

  “What kind of deal?”

  “I save your boyfriend if you agree to dump him and come with me.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  He shrugged, the action causing another body wracking shiver. “Too late now anyway.”

  “I’m going to pretend you’re only acting like this because you’re hurt.”

  “Whatever helps you sleep at night, babe.”

  “Stop being an ass so I can be nice to you, please.”

  A pathetic laugh escaped his throat. “All right.”

  I reached out again, and this time he didn’t pull away. I took his hand in mine and put my other on his face. The trembling was worse than it looked. “Maybe you should sit down.”

  He grinned his normal lopsided grin. “I’m afraid to. I figure if I stand the fear of the longer fall will keep me from passing out.”

  “I’m not sure that’s sound logic.”

  “Works for me.”

  “Lean on me at least?”

  “I can manage that.”

  I tucked myself under his arm and started leading him down the hall, thinking maybe if I got him outside the night air would do him some good. “Will you tell me what it was like?” Curiosity. It made me a nosey jerk. But maybe if I knew, I could make myself feel worse for doing what I did to him. I probably should have felt worse.

  “It was like reliving every terrible event in my life all at once,” he said, answering me without hesitation as we started up the first flight of stairs. “I tried to think only about what Thera had shown me that night, but when he touched me . . . It was impossible not to try to hide every painful memory, and by trying to hide them, I thought about them.”

  We reached the top of the stairs in silence. That quiet continued until we had dragged our exhausted bodies down the long front hall, through the main door and out into the cool night. We stopped, and Solo closed his eyes once the door had shut behind us. I had been right; the fresh air seemed to help. The shaking had lessened.

  “I really am sorry,” I said. “And I really am grateful. Not many people would put themselves through something like that for someone else.”

  “Like I said, anything for you.”

  I sighed and lowered us both to the front steps, sitting so I could still support his weight. “I really wish you would get over your little crush on me.”

  His smirk had returned, and that alleviated some of my worry. “Nothing little about it. And seeing as I’m the one hurt here, I can crush on anyone I like.”

  I couldn’t really argue with that. “Fine. But only because you’re hurt.”

  His eyes closed and he leaned into me, scooting down until his head could rest on my shoulder. “Sweet.”

  I snorted. Trouble maker.

  Moments passed. Quiet moments in which all that could be heard was the increasingly steadier breathing of Solo as his body relaxed and eventually he slept. I wished for the sounds of birds and insects, to trick myself into thinking things were normal, but I got not so much as a cricket chirp. Solo turned to heavy for me to hold up, and I gently guided him to the grass, resting his head on my thigh as he slept. Lifting my gaze to the sky, I began counting stars, wondering when it would finally be time to go to Rhys. I fought the urge to fidget—then perked when I heard a voice.

  At first I thought it was the General, the tone was so low and barely audible, but then I recognized the accent as Cordoba. He was speaking to someone, though I couldn’t hear who. Whatever they were talking about sounded serious, urgent. Worried, I slipped out from under Solo and went to the door, peeking into the main hall and seeing no one. The hushed words came from behind a thick steel door on the right, and Cordoba snapped in some language I didn’t know.

  Cold ice lanced down my neck.

  Before I realized what I had done, I was inside and down the hall, pressed against the thick door. I pressed my ear to it, hearing the hum of electricity that ran through everything in order to give privacy—yet I heard words.

  “They haven’t left yet, but they will soon. Get it done with before they realize—”

  Silence. I held my breath. The ice on the back of my neck grew colder. I knew without a doubt that the danger had just compounded to include me.

  The door swung open, sending me stumbling, then suddenly slammed backwards until my back hit a wall with such force my teeth shook. A giant hand had locked around my throat, and in my last gasping breath all I could smell was the unmistakable lack of scent. Cordoba flexed his hand around my neck, lifting me until my feet no longer touched the floor. His breath passed over my face as he leaned in close. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you that eavesdropping is rude, little girl?”

  I choked, clawing at his hands, desperate for enough air to scream.

  He held me like I was nothing more than a ragdoll. “I suppose if I kill you it will make no difference. Everything changes now anyway. Perhaps you will meet your dearest in whatever lies beyond for those of us who have transcended death.”

  His free hand grabbed my shoulder, and his muscles flexed, preparing to rip me in two. I dug my thumbs into his wrist, pushing and pushing until I was sure my nails cracked and began to bleed. I drove my fingers into his flesh with every ounce of strength I had, and finally it gave way, and his grip on my throat faltered. All I needed was enough breath to scream.

  His hand spasmed. Blood poured over my tingling hands. I sucked in air—

  —and screamed.

  Chapter Twenty-eight: Heartbeat

  My scream rang in my ears, then cut off all too suddenly, my lungs seizing once again. Cordoba reasserted his hold on my neck, and began to pull. The fibers of my body strained and stretched, each instant an agonizing eternity.

  The air shifted. The ground rushed up to meet me, and my head knocked against the stone wall. My vision was nothing but greys and sparks. When the rushing sound behind my ears began to fade, a terrible snarling and tearing sound took its place.

  Then I heard my name.

  “Kassandra. Kassandra, get up.”

  Cade’s familiar hands wrapped about my arms, lifting me to my feet. I wobbled, clung to him for a moment while I regained my balance and my vision steadied. Over his shoulder, I could see only blurs of movement, but I smelled that obvious nothing, and sandalwood. The General.

  A sharp shake from Cade kept me from wondering beyond that. “Are you listening to me?”

  “Yes.” My voice croaked.

  “The dismemberment is on. Cordoba betrayed us. We have no time, I need you to run.”

  I was doing just that in the next second, tugged along by Cade’s unyielding grasp of my forearm. The stone of the building gave way to cold night air, then the crisp scent of trees and dirt. We were probably miles away before I remembered to speak. “Where? Where are going?”

  “Infragilis.” Cade didn’t slow us, in fact, we gained speed. “There isn’t time to send word, and we don’t know who we can trust. The entire council is fighting each other. Apparently Cordoba is not the only VFO sympathizer with a seat.”

  If I tripped, Cade never let me fall. “But Rhys was cleared. The sentence was called off.”

  “And Cordoba was the one to volunteer to pass that along, but he didn’t. He ordered it done immediately. If we don’t get to Rhys quickly they will tear him apart and leave us nothing.”

  Panic began to set in, my heart unbearably still in my chest. “How can we get there in time?”

  “It’s not far. We can be there in under thirty minutes if you focus and run.” He swiped branches out of our way, and avoided roots that he then had to half throw me over. “Put aside your worry. Remember what I taught you. We have no one to help us. It is just you and me, and if you don’t clear your mind, and start watching yo
ur feet we will be too late. You have your dagger?”

  “Yes.” I couldn’t think beyond what he had said. Too late. We couldn’t be too late. We couldn’t. I forced myself to think about each footfall on the ground, used them to focus my mind, and keep my thoughts from wandering away to places that would only make things worse. Cade continued to issue orders to me, reminders of things he had taught me, and things I would need to look out for once we arrived. He wasn’t going to stop. We would go straight through the door, and into the fight. There were many factors he wasn’t certain of, but one thing he was certain of was that the guards would try to stop us. It would be at least five against two. The Warden, Katya, would most likely be with Rhys.

  I was just about to voice all my reservations when those terrible dark spires rose up against the night sky ahead of us. The trees broke into open land. Cade yelled the word “focus” at me one last time, then shot us straight for that huge, thick, seemingly impenetrable, front door. A slam of his hand to a stone to the right resulted in all the locks and bolts opening simultaneously—another of the prison’s secrets, I assumed—and the door burst open when he set his foot to it.

  Then we were inside, and all my thoughts had no choice but to go quiet.

  Four guards waited for us.

  One went down immediately, Cade’s hand through his chest, his heart coming out the other side. Blood sprayed everywhere. The next two to converge on Cade weren’t quite so careless. The last came at me.

  I ducked his grab for my throat and slashed at his abdomen with my dagger. He hissed when the blade opened his shirt, then the gold burned his flesh. As I turned, his hand raked my back. His nails sliced like talons, and when I came around to face him again I could see that he wore a glove spiked with claws—claws that were now coated in my blood. The prison guard grinned at me, his eyes seeming to laugh. Standing only feet away, Cade and the other two vampires battling in a blur just beyond, he beckoned at me with those bloody fingers. I took a deep breath, identified his scent—something I could only describe as uncooked meat—and told myself this was just another exercise with Cade.

  Only this time I could die.

  I remained where I was. If he wanted me, he would have to make the first move. A few seconds later he realized my game, and the annoyed look on his face preceded his sloppy charge. I side-stepped, letting his own momentum send him careening onto my dagger before I tore it through his side.

  But he grabbed me rather than his wound, and whipped me around so fast I struck the wall, feeling all my earlier bruises from Cordoba scream in reawakened pain. His artificial claws bit into my arm, and he dragged them down slowly, opening me.

  Then his head suddenly twisted at an unnatural angle, the flesh of his neck straining against the new position, and he fell. Cade stood before me, covered in blood, his face a mess of scratches and cuts. “Third door. Down the stairs. Keep going until you find Rhys.” He spun around, driving his fist into the chin of the guard that had come up behind him, then slammed his own knife into the gut of the other. “Go!”

  I tore my feet from the floor and ran in the direction he had indicated. The third door had been left open, and I threw myself through it, stumbling immediately on the uneven stairs. I tumbled down, hitting each edge of each step at varying intervals. My dagger clattered away, out of my hand. Reaching for anything proved difficult, but I fumbled around, searching for the first thing that would give me purchase. Finally, one step lay out before me, more of a landing than anything else, and I dug my heels and hands into the stone so hard I stopped. For a moment, all I could do was lie there and gasp. When I sat up, I stared into nothing but darkness beyond. The stairs were lit by sporadic lamps, making seeing anything difficult, but I could see enough. Just beyond the landing was a hole the length of at least five steps. The stairs continued beyond. My first time there came back to me, along with what Cade had told me about all the pathways. They were traps in and of themselves. And I had nearly fallen right in. Worse, my dagger teetered at the edge of the hole, balanced there only by some greater act of God. Carefully, I wrapped my fingers around its hilt and dragged it back to safety.

  The air in the stairway moved. I smelled uncooked meat.

  Oh right. A broken neck won’t kill us. Apparently Cade was too busy to finish him off.

  I stood, judged the distance to the next step, got as much of a running start as I could on the landing—and jumped.

  This time I paid more attention to what was beneath my feet. I wouldn’t be any good to Rhys dead. But the scent of meat was growing closer behind me. He would have the path memorized. I prayed—something I rarely did since childhood—and urged myself to go faster.

  Two steps one size, three another. One so deep I nearly thought it was another hole and had to hold my breath as I fell down to it. The non-pattern continued on and on. The scent behind me was joined by the sound of ever-closer footsteps. The next lamp came, illuminating the way enough for me to see the glint of another steel door in the distance. I hurried instinctively.

  Three steps, four steps, two, a missing step, and thre—No, not three more. The third was nothing but an inch-wide rise. My heel caught and I went tumbling down what remained.

  The bottom of the staircase was non-existent. I fell.

  My free hand caught the edge of the last stair, saving me from an endless journey down into the darkness. My arm shook. Repeating Cade’s command of “focus” over and over like a mantra in my head, I retracted the gold lacing from my dagger and tucked it into my jeans. With two free hands I clutched the stair and began to pull myself up.

  Boots clicked against stone. Something cracked, like knuckles, or a neck. And dark laughter floated down towards me. “Well, well, what I have caught here? It seems you aren’t as well versed in the intricacies of our prison as we had feared. Would have thought the Executioner would have done a better job preparing you. But I guess we didn’t really give him enough time to plan.”

  His boot came down on my right hand. I screamed despite myself. He ground his heel into my fingers. A few snapped.

  Breathe. Breathe. I repeated the words to myself, refusing to black out. Hoping it would piss him off, I looked up at his ugly face, and forced a smile. “You fight like a girl. Cade’s beaten me harder than this a million times.”

  With his foot still harshly ground into my hand, I released my hold on the stairs with my good hand, grabbed my dagger and slammed it into his other foot. It went through his boot better than I had hoped, and he staggered, releasing my broken hand. Before I could slip, I pulled with all my strength, leveraging myself with my dagger and his foot, getting myself high enough to wrap my other arm around his leg and drag myself free as he fell over.

  Don’t think. Just act.

  I stood, taking my dagger with me, and put distance between myself and the hole meant to swallow intruders or escapees. The guard rolled, got back to his feet, and came at me. The move was in anger, I could see that. Cade never let me attack out of blind emotion. It was one of the first lessons he had taught me.

  I kicked hard, landing my foot directly in the guard’s groin. He doubled over, stumbled back—and disappeared.

  Nothing but the door stood between me and Rhys. And perhaps the warden. And that deep, cavernous hole. There was nothing but a scant two or three feet of floor in front of the door.

  I decided not to stand there and think. A running start would be impossible this time, so I bent my knees and got as much leverage as I could before jumping, keeping my body weight forward, reaching for the door even as I flew through the air. My feet touched the ground, and my hand found the handle in the same instant, my weight striking the door—which swung open.

  Unlocked.

  Sound poured out of the room. Harsh breathing, and a chilling cry of pain.

  Gripping the door out of pure shock and fear, I stood in the doorway, frozen, staring a dimly lit room of stone and steel, chains hanging from the ceiling and rising from the floor. Amidst those chains
hung Rhys. He was pale, his body sagging under its own weight, knees buckled, supported only by the chains that had been attached to each of his arms and legs. His shirt had been torn away, covering only the right side of his chest. Upon looking closer, his left arm had been twisted at a funny angle, his shoulder looking ready to pop. He stared at me with wide blue eyes.

  Between us stood Katya.

  She held the other end of the chain attached to Rhys’s left arm. When she pulled, the sound of mechanical workings creaked above the ceiling, and Rhys’s shoulder wrenched further from its proper place. The sound of the door brought her attention to me.

  “You?” she said, sounding unimpressed. “I had expected Cade, if anyone. I suppose I’ll finish my work then.” Smiling, she reasserted her grip on the chain with both hands and pulled.

  “Stop!” My cry was punctuated by Rhys’s, and a tearing sound that ripped through the room.

  Katya let the chains go slack, but her eyes held a gleam that could easily have become darkness. “Stop? Why would I do that?”

  My heart felt so terribly still in my chest, as if it wanted to beat in a panicked rhythm, but couldn’t. “These orders were rescinded.”

  “Not my orders.” She toyed with the chain, pulling and releasing it, as if it didn’t lead straight to the abused limb of another living, feeling being. “However, it appears that I’ll get to fulfill my original orders after all. What do you think, Rhys? Ready to watch her die?”

  “Kassandra, run!” His words were strangled by pain, but they didn’t illicit the response in me they once had. I hadn’t run from the cariosus, I hadn’t run from my old classmate in her undead state, I hadn’t run from Henry, or even from the vampire who had gone after Sara. I didn’t run. Not anymore, and sure as hell not now.

  Dagger steady in my hand, I stared down the vampire warden. “Try me.”

  “I plan on it.” She pulled hard on the chain.

  Rhys’s scream drowned out my terror-filled thoughts as his arm came free of his shoulder.

  She moved before I could. Her hand came at my throat, nails slashing. Blood ran over my collarbones, soaking into my shirt as I dropped to the floor and grabbed for her ankle. She tumbled down beside me, but twisted immediately, kicking and sending me skidding across the room. I landed at Rhys’s feet, but didn’t dare look at him, afraid of being distracted. Katya had gotten back to her feet, and beckoned me on, a thick metal chain wrapped about her right hand.