I was getting tired, panting, my breath coming in ragged rasps, my heart thundering inside of my chest. Then I made a mistake, jabbing instead of throwing a right hook. The Horseman took the opportunity to grab my throat, swing me around, and pin me against the wall.
I grabbed his fingers and tried to pry them free, digging my claws into his skin, but it was like he was made of iron, his skin too tough to pierce, his grip vice-like.
“Murderer,” I snarled through my teeth.
“Fiend,” he replied, his voice cool and low, his face inching closer to mine.
“I’m going to kill you. You know that, don’t you?”
“You’re going to try.”
The Horseman drew his face nearer still, forcing my heartbeat to thump in wild, erratic patterns. I licked my lips, gasping hard against his mouth. “I hate you,” I hissed.
“Good…” he whispered, the feel of his breath on my lips exciting my already burning skin.
The door to the hole abruptly unlocked, the fantasy dispersing into the air like a cloud of smoke, the impression of the Horseman’s face lingering until the last. I backed away from the door and turned to face it, still breathing hard and sweating profusely. The guard standing in the light cocked an eyebrow.
It was Sanchez.
She cocked an eyebrow. “Do I have to stun you and drag you to your cell by your hair?” she asked.
I gulped a breath. “No,” I said. “How long has it been?”
She checked her watch. “Twelve hours exactly,” she stepped aside, “Now it’s time to go.”
Hesitating for a long moment, I walked over to her and then followed her through the prison. She didn’t immediately take me back to the cellblock, though. Instead, we went out, to the yard Cellblock-D yard where the rest of the inmates were taking in some fresh air.
I say fresh, but it was gloomy out, and raining lightly. Some of the inmates didn’t seem to care about the rain, choosing to spend their time outside playing a wet game of basketball. Others hung out in little cliques beneath the long metal slab that passed for a rain cover around here. Every once in a while, a guard would come and break the groups up to keep inmates huddling too close to each other.
I looked up at the cloudy, deep-grey sky. Thunder grumbled distantly, but I could still see the faint impression of the sun beyond the clouds. It was the first time I’d seen daylight since I’d been thrown in here… and I didn’t care for it.
My people had an aversion to sunlight that verged on the supernatural. The sun’s warm rays cracked their skin and dulled their powers, and if they stayed out in it too long, they could even die. Strangely, not even direct sunlight had the same effect on me that it did others of my kind, though nobody had been able to figure out exactly why.
It was without too much effort that I found Odessa.
The water elemental was—well—in her element, out in the rain. She was standing by the furthest perimeter fence, with her head turned up at the sky and a big grin on her face. I shuffled around the other inmates, ignoring the whispers and the deliberate attempts at nudging me out of my path.
They were trying to get a rise out of me, but it wasn’t going to work.
When I got close enough to her, I sent a psst in her direction, catching her attention the first time. She came over wringing her hair out with her hands as she walked, then stepped underneath the rain cover so we could talk.
“You’re back,” she said, smiling.
“Were you expecting something else?” I asked.
She shrugged. “You can never tell in this place. They threw you into the hole, didn’t they?”
“They did, but it was nothing I can’t handle. Where’s Knives?”
“She’s not back yet. I guess she needed a little more time to cool off.”
“You want to tell me what that was all about?”
“No offence, but we just met. I don’t know if I can trust you yet.”
“Sure, but I got my ass thrown in the hole the second night running for defending you. The least you can do is tell me what she wanted.”
Odessa’s eyes darted over to the nearest inmate to us. If I’d had to guess, she was probably trying to figure out if we’d be overheard, but there was a lot of noise in the yard. She pressed in a little closer, hugging the fence. “Alright, I’ll tell you,” she said, “But you can’t repeat this to anyone.”
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I don’t have any friends in here.”
“That makes it way more likely that you’ll tell someone what I’m about to tell you. Anyway, just be quiet and listen, because I’m only going to say it once.”
I nodded.
Odessa leaned in, conspiratorially. “I can get things,” she whispered. “I don’t personally have a hookup to the outside, but I’m cool with a guy who does, and he owes me.”
“Get things?” I asked.
“Didn’t I tell you to be quiet?” she hissed. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re in Harrowgate. There are no sentences here, no parole boards. Nobody gets out. That means, the people who can get things in from the outside are one hell of a commodity. Now, my guy is in C-block, so we only get to meet when we’re allowed to go to the prison commissary once every few days.”
“Does he work in the commissary?”
“He’s part of a crew that runs the commissary. He also has a hand in the Harrowgate black market. Problem is, he wasn’t at the commissary the last time I went.”
“You think he’s missing?”
“No, his crew takes turns running the window. Just so happens that the roster had been moved around on the day I went down to see him to get what I’d promised Knives.”
“Let me guess—what she wanted wasn’t on the commissary menu.”
“Right, and I won’t be able to head down there for another couple of days, so I need to keep her off my back. She already thinks I stole from her.”
“Stole from her?”
“I’ve paid for her goods, so I don’t have her original investment. What I need is to get down to the commissary, talk to my guy, and get what she asked me to get. Then maybe she’ll let me eat my lunch in peace.”
“In her defense, you’d already finished your lunch.”
She grinned. “You mean you finished my lunch.”
An inmate stumbled and went crashing into the wet, concrete ground, stealing my attention. A moment later, he was on his feet again, angrily pointing at the guy he accused of having punched him in the face to make him miss his shot. Blood was pouring out of his nose, but the other guy denied even touching him.
Before anyone could trade blows, a whistle pierced the air, and the guards brought rec time to a close.
“Gods-dammit,” Odessa cursed, slinking into the rain again, “We’ve only been out here a little while.”
I started shuffling along toward the door into the Cellblock-D with the rest of the inmates, Odessa walking beside me in the rain.
“Does that happen often?” I asked.
“All the time. After your skirmish with Knives, lunch was called off, too. Most of the inmates who hadn’t taken full advantage of their plates went back to their cells on empty stomachs. It’s a way to keep us all in line, to remind us who’s in control… and if we fight amongst each other, all the better for them.”
“It’s barbaric.”
“Yeah, well, this place isn’t exactly a five-star resort, is it?” She paused, scanned me, then hurried to get closer to me. “You know, now that we’re on the topic…”
“What?” I asked, cocking a suspicious eyebrow.
“Well, the commissary is open every day for inmates to go and buy stuff, but we’re sent over in groups, and if we’ve already been, we can’t go back for another three days.”
“I’m sensing a request.”
“I’m just saying, you… could go, if you wanted to.”
“If I wanted to?”
“I would owe you. Big time. Think about it. All you’d have to
do is go down there, ask to talk to Scratch and tell him I sent you.”
“And how’s Scratch supposed to trust that I’m there for you?”
“Word’s spread that you’re the newest addition to Harrowgate by now. Everyone knows we’re cellmates, and that means Scratch will know too. All you’d have to do is accept the package. It’ll look like it came from the commissary, you shouldn’t raise suspicion bringing it back.”
“Shouldn’t?”
“Please?”
“I don’t know…”
“Please?” she batted her eyelids.
“Look, I want to help you, but I can’t. I offered you my protection, and you’ll have it, but you have to run your own errands.”
Odessa tugged me closer to her by the scruff of my jumpsuit. “I get it,” she hissed into my ear, “You just want to sit in your bunk and not talk to anyone, but that’s not how life around here works. If you’re going to stay here, you’re going to have to learn to become part of the ecosystem.”
We reached the guards and the door to the cellblock. They broke us apart, forcing us to walk through one after the other, and killing the conversation before it could continue. I didn’t like shooting Odessa down the way I had, but I wasn’t an inmate here—I was an agent on a mission.
I wasn’t here to fix anyone’s problems but my own, and I definitely wasn’t here to join the ecosystem.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The harsh buzz from the cell door’s electronic locking mechanism shook me out of a deep, dreamless sleep. My whole body wound up as taut as a tightrope, and every single one of my senses lit up as if firecrackers had gone off behind my eyes. The lights flickered on, and the door started opening.
I shot out of bed just as the door opened. Two guards fully garbed in tactical gear rushed in and pointed assault rifles at my head. Behind them came Officer Brickmore, his sidearm drawn. The guards stepped aside for the higher-ranking guard to move between them, but they kept their guns squarely on me.
Knowing any form of attack was doomed to fail, I put my hands up. “What the hell is this?” I asked, heart slamming against my chest.
“You’re coming with us,” Brickmore said between his teeth, contempt heavy in his voice.
“Where are you taking me?”
Brickmore approached, slowly, his shoulders swaying, then he smashed the side of his gun against my cheek. The pain was instant and sharp. My ears popped, my head started ringing, and I staggered to the side, my hand held up to my face, heart thundering.
“Maybe next time you won’t ask stupid questions and just do as you’re fucking told, fiend,” Brickmore snarled.
Blood pooled in my mouth, and I spat it out at his feet. “How about you tell your guards to put their guns down and you and I go a couple of rounds?” I asked. “Or do you only hit women when they can’t hit you back?”
Fury flared in his eyes like lightning. He went to approach, his arm cocked, but Odessa—now fully awake too—grabbed hold of his hand and yanked him back, stopping him from swinging the butt of his gun on me again. Instantly the rifles went from me, to her. Roaring, Brickmore reached for her throat, but Sanchez shoved her way into the room and filled it with an authoritative roar.
“Brickmore, enough!” she yelled. “Do you have to turn everything into an incident around here?”
His furious eyes flicked to her. “I’m subduing the threat,” he growled.
“You’re telling me two unarmed, suppressed inmates are somehow a threat to you?”
“Only to his masculinity,” I muttered.
She raised a hand to me. “You stay out of this. Brickmore, let that prisoner go, and escort this prisoner out of the cellblock. Now.”
A tense moment passed, a moment filled with panting and heavy breathing. In my mind, I was already trying to figure out which of the guards in the room posed the highest threat to me if I made a move on them, and how fast I could take one of them down without being shot at.
My chances of success weren’t looking good, but Brickmore stepped away from the bunk, tugged on his shirt, and stuffed his sidearm into its holster. He jabbed a finger at Odessa. “That’s one night in the hole for you,” he said.
“All night?!” Odessa shrieked.
“Be glad it’s not longer,” Sanchez added, backing her colleague up. She rounded on me. “You, time to go, and don’t ask me where.”
Scowling, I did as she asked, walking over to the guards holding the assault rifles. I spared a moment to glance at Odessa, who was still looking on, wide-eyed, and mouthed a silent thank you at her. A thank you wasn’t nearly enough to ease the discomfort a night in the hole was going to do to her, but it was all I could do.
The guards ushered me out of the room and into the cellblock. All the other doors were closed, but many shadowy faces stared at me from behind small windows. The other inmates had clearly heard all the commotion and wanted to find out what was happening. Entertainment was, after all, hard to come by around here.
“Four guards sent to pick up little old me,” I said as we reached the cellblock door. “I’m going to consider that some kind of flattery.”
“Flattery won’t do you any good where you’re going,” Brickmore said.
Then it hit me like a sledgehammer to the gut. They know.
Shit.
My thoughts started racing a mile a minute. My cover had been blown. That’s why I was being picked up and dragged out of my cell in the middle of the night. But how could they possibly have known who I was?
Calder.
I remembered him telling me about how Psionic mages frequently ran mental scans of the prisoners, and even some of the staff. Had they discovered him? Had whatever protection he’d been using to stop his mind from being probed failed?
If that was true, then I was being marched to the executioner’s block, but that wasn’t where Sanchez and Brickmore took me. Sanchez unlocked the door to a small, empty room that looked more like Calder’s office than a holding cell.
The only furniture was a desk, simple and grey, and bolted to the floor. On it was a small pile of clothes and some socks, and nothing else. The window to the outside was boarded up with thick, metal slabs I would’ve had no hope of getting through even if I tried. Not that I wanted to. I was here on a mission to kill the Horseman, not escape from Harrowgate.
“We gonna play dress up?” I asked.
Brickmore shoved me into the room, but he didn’t follow. It was Sanchez who came in after me and shut the door. “Get changed,” she said, “And make it quick, we don’t have all night.”
“Clothes? What for?”
“Don’t ask a hundred questions, inmate. I don’t have the time or the inclination to answer them.”
I looked around the room. “Are we in a hurry?”
“Just get changed, already.”
Sighing, I turned around and walked over to the pile of clothes. They’d left me a ripped-up tank top, a pair of dark jeans, and a cropped, scuffed, leather jacket. They weren’t my clothes and they looked used, so they probably belonged to other inmates. Lucky for me, I wasn’t picky about the clothes I wore.
Eight years ago, I’d been found in a dump wearing rags, so I wasn’t a stranger to tattered clothing. In fact, I preferred it most of the time. Especially if that bit of tattered clothing was a genuine leather jacket—those things only got better with age.
“You gonna watch?” I asked across my shoulder. Then I paused and scanned Sanchez up and down. “Because I could be into that.”
She rolled her eyes, saying nothing, but then she turned around. I stripped out of my prison jumpsuit, letting it fall around my feet and stepping out of it, leaving me in a bra and underwear. That was when the door to the holding cell opened.
I spun around to find two things happening right in front of me. First, Sanchez was leaving—and second, the Horseman had arrived. He entered the room without so much as a word, running his hand through his hair and fixing me with a sturdy, lingering gaze.
Heat flushed into my chest; rage mixed with a desire to… something… creating a dangerous cocktail of anxious energy within me. “I guess I should’ve seen this coming,” I said, cocking my head to the side, well aware of just how almost naked I was.
But that was the point. This was a planned move. He’d waited until I had started stripping to enter the room, knowing he would catch me in a vulnerable position and expecting… what? For my cheeks to redden? For me to yelp and cover myself with my hands? I didn’t do any of that. Instead, I stared at him, one hand slapped against my hip.
“Did I catch you at a bad time?” he asked.
“Not at all,” I said, scanning him up and down. He was wearing a white t-shirt, black jeans, and a leather jacket of his own; roughed up and worn with age, like the one I had been given.
He ran his thumb across his lips and grinned. “I’m here to take you out.”
“Take me out?”
“We’re going on an investigation.”
One of my eyebrows cocked. “An investigation,” I said, my voice dropping.
“I thought you’d be relieved to be leaving the prison for a time.”
Leaving the prison. That definitely wasn’t part of Calder’s plan.
I shook my head. “What?”
“There’s been an incident. I want you to come and investigate.”
“An incident… with the Crimson Hunters?”
“Yes. Now, if you’re going to insist on asking questions, I suggest you do it while getting changed. The clock is ticking.”
The Horseman shut the door, making it clear he wasn’t going to be leaving—or turning around—anytime soon. So be it. I faced away from him to grab the jeans that had been left on the desk for me and started slipping them on. I could feel the weight of his stare on my back, but I wasn’t going to let that throw me. Not in front of him.
“Are you going to tell me what happened?” I asked.
“A mage was found dead fifteen minutes ago,” the Horseman said, “Strung up by his innards to a spike at the back of a deep alley.”
“A Coalition mage or someone else?”
Night Hunter (The Devil of Harrowgate Book 1) Page 7