“Can you change mine?” I ask.
“Really?” Justin raises one eyebrow and peers out the curtain. “Luka would kill me.”
“Well, I don’t know what he’s told you, but I make my own decisions.”
Just as I say it, Riley walks into the room, not bothering to give us any warning.
“Hey, I’ve been looking for you,” he says to me. He offers Justin a nod, who returns the favor. “Come on. I want to talk to you.” He holds the curtain back, expecting me to take the bait.
“I’m in the middle of something,” I say to him. I look over to Justin. “Now good for you?” I grab my gun and lay it on the table.
Justin nods to me and opens the small bag of dust. “I’m a dead man.”
I’ve never taken any kind of drug before, save for aspirin, and my palms become sweaty in anticipation.
Riley drops the curtain. “Hazel, what the hell are you doing?”
I lean back in the chair, the head cage hovering over me.
Justin hands me a small white plate with one straight line of dust cutting through the center. “It’s just a little bit…to take the edge off the pain. It shouldn’t last more than a couple of hours.”
I nod as he’s talking, trying to psyche myself into snorting the powder through my nose. I’ve seen plenty of dustheads hopped up on it, but this is just one time. I can handle it for a couple of hours.
“No, no, no, no!” Riley says as he heads toward me. “Have you lost your mind? Do you know what that stuff does to you? Not to mention people have gone blind getting these tattoos done.”
Before I let him change my mind, I grab the plate from Justin and hold one of my nostrils closed. I take a deep inhale through my nose and glide it along the plate until I feel the unfamiliar burn of the dust coating my brain.
“Got it all in one swipe!” Justin says. I lift my head and hand him the empty plate. I exhale deeply as the room starts to sway back and forth.
Riley comes closer and grabs me by both shoulders. “Hazel? Hazel?” His face is distorted, like looking in a fun house mirror. Although he’s inches from my face, he sounds so far away. I hear muffled talking as I lean on the headrest of the torture chair. I close my eyes for a few seconds to find some relief from the spinning room. When I reopen them, I’m unable to move my head and vaguely notice the cage is strapped down around me.
I see a bright light moving toward my eyes, and my first instinct is to close them, but I can’t. Somehow, my eyelids won’t shut no matter how hard I try. My heart is pumping through my chest, and the feeling of claustrophobia kicks in. The room is quiet. I reach out my hand, but all I grab is air.
Someone is hovering over me, but their skin is sagging over their face, like it’s melting off their bones.
“Just relax,” I hear a voice say. It’s deep and slow, and it resonates in my head like an echo in a cave.
Just breathe, just breathe, I remind myself.
But it’s no use. With every breath I take, I feel like I’m inching closer and closer to insanity. Is it over yet? But I remember we haven’t even begun.
My eyes start to feel dry and scratchy, and I’m desperate to blink them. The saggy face comes back into the light.
“Ready?” it says. My breathing is short and shallow. The room starts to fade darker and darker. Butterflies flutter across the room, and my eyeballs follow them as they disappear into the wall.
“Make them blue,” I sputter. “Blue like hers.” I hear the sound of buzzing in the background and feel the sting on my eyes. The world is black. I am numb.
Chapter 26
I feel the soft sand under my fingertips and swirl it between my fingers. I slowly open my eyes, squinting at the bright sunlight. Birds are singing in the background, and water is lapping nearby.
Propping myself on my elbows, I take a look around. Looking up, the sun shines down from a blue sky. There are no clouds, just a hint of the moon. Where am I? It feels like Razor Pointe, but I’m not sure. Something feels different about it.
I slowly rise and take a minute to look out to the lake. A breeze flutters by, billowing the skirt of my white lace dress. I feel so peaceful here. Across the lake I see a misty silhouette of someone standing by the shore. Whoever it is, they’re waving me over. As I walk closer and closer, the face becomes clear. I abruptly stop as the image of the person standing before me takes my breath away.
“Mom?” I trot toward her, picking up the pace as she reaches her hand out to me. Her long hair is flowing in the breeze as well as the long white gown she is wearing. She looks beautiful and healthy—the way I remember her before the cancer took over her body.
“Hazel,” she says. Her voice trails into the air.
I stop short just inches from her. This close I can see right through her.
“Mom, what are you doing here?”
She offers a half-smile. “It’s lovely here, isn’t it?” She looks up as a large bird flies over our heads, screeching as it soars into the sky. It bounces back from an invisible shield and bursts into flames.
Small fire balls rain from the sky and land near my feet, smoldering as they hit the sand. I look to my mother with panicky fear as she gazes at me calmly.
“What’s going on?” I ask her.
Her eyes glow with a soft white light. “They’re coming.”
I look around but see no one, only the fire dropping around me. An ember hits my arm and burns into my flesh. I smack away the flame as the smoke rises from my skin.
“Who? Who’s coming?” I cry.
She closes her eyes for only a second before reopening them with frightened exaggeration.
“Run!” she yells. A flame catches in her hair, and she burns away into ash.
* * * *
“Hazel, wake up!”
I tell my brain to open my eyes, but my eyelids just won’t comply. Someone is cradling my face, gently squeezing my cheeks together, making my lips purse.
“She’s not responding.”
“Is she breathing?”
I feel someone lay their head on my body as my chest meets their ear.
“Yeah, she’s breathing.”
A breath of relief.
Wake up! I force myself to push past the pain burning in my eyes and open them. The first person I see is Luka, kneeling over me. I let out a painful moan. It’s all I can manage.
“Hazel? Oh my God. She’s awake!”
Luka helps me sit up on the floor. How I got there in the first place I have no idea. I blink my eyes several times, trying to clear my blurry vision. The room is dark, but I can still only manage to squint.
“Hazel, can you hear me? I’m going to pick you up and sit you down on the chair.”
Luka scoops me in his arms and sets me back down on the torture chair.
“We have to leave,” I mutter. I remember my mother’s warning in my dream. Was it a dream or a hallucination?
Luka ignores my request and shines the light right into my aching eyes, lifting each of my eyelids with his thumb.
“What the hell were you thinking?”
Riley walks into the room and hands me a glass of water.
“How many fingers am I holding up?”
I take a sip of the lukewarm water. My mouth is so dry it feels like I’ve been eating sandpaper.
“Five. I’m fine. We have to leave now!” I try getting up from the chair, but they both hold me down.
Justin clambers into the room, drawing the curtain behind him, panting in panic.
“Is she okay?”
Nobody bothers to answer, as the sound of gunshots penetrates the air. Two succinct shots, one after the other.
Luka and Riley lean up from either side of the doorway. The adrenaline pumping through me is enough for me to forget the pain and jump from the torture chair to grab my gun.
“Get back!” Luka mouths.
My heart is thumping and echoing in my ears. I feel sweaty and clammy, and my breathing is rapid and uneven. I feel like
I’m going to vomit or pass out, or both.
Soft footsteps make their way down the hall, checking the other rooms along the way. With every footstep, my heart beats a second faster, until it feels like it’s going to burst out of my chest. I notice Riley holding a gun of his own and wonder where he got it. Was he carrying it in that backpack of his?
Justin crouches under the table. He is the only one unarmed. Two sets of feet stop in front of the curtain as Luka grabs me by my shirt and pulls me to his side of the wall. Two bullets burst through the curtain and ricochet off the torture chair. Sparks fly off the metal head cage and float in the air, catching my skin.
Déjà vu.
No one moves or even breathes. The curtain is drawn, and before I can catch my breath, Luka and Riley raise their guns just as the two men enter the doorway.
“Don’t move!” Luka commands.
One of the men scoffs as they both lower their weapons. “Go ahead,” he says. “There’s more where we came from.”
Luka looks to Riley who shrugs his shoulders.
“What are you talking about?” Riley asks.
Both men are wearing Pigeon Police badges.
Neither of the men talks, prompting Luka and Riley to herd them into the room, shoving them violently.
“Start talking!” Riley says.
Justin runs from under the table to check on Junior.
“No!” he cries.
It takes me a while to blink the scene into focus. Lying on the floor is a lifeless body.
Junior is dead.
I make a break for the back room when I see more people burst through the front door of the tattoo shop. Time seems to lag, and I feel as if I’m moving in slow motion. I feel a tug around my waist and smell the sweaty stench of a stranger behind me. Luka calls out to me, and I open my mouth to respond. My screams are stifled when the stranger gags me with a dirty piece of cloth. A brown sack is clung over my head, and I’m back in the darkness.
Chapter 27
My head knocks against something hard, and it jostles me awake. The burlap shroud is still covering my face, and I feel the fabric of the gag over my tongue. I’m moving, but not with my feet; something is carrying me. When I open my eyes, the daylight seeps through the weaving of the sack over my head. It was still dark when the attack happened at the tattoo parlor. How long has it been since then?
The air smells of tobacco, and I hear the indistinct chatter of people around me. My hands are bound in front of me, but my feet are free to move. Whatever I’m lying on comes to an abrupt stop. Someone hooks their hands under my arms and hoists me up.
“Up you go,” says a scratchy male voice.
He leads me down a few steps, and I feel gravely rock beneath my shoes.
“Move.” The voice orders me forward. I walk blindly, hoping my guide is not leading me off a cliff.
After a few minutes of walking, I’m pushed forward and told to stay put. The next few minutes are agony. I have no idea where I am and who will face me when they remove the shroud. I think about Luka and Riley and hope with all my might they were able to make it out of the tattoo shop alive and in one piece. The image of Junior’s body scattered lifeless on the floor flashes in my head. I close my eyes tightly to wash away the image.
There’s a good chance Justin was taken with me. He was the first person they grabbed as I watched with terrified eyes as they draped the brown shroud over his head.
I ponder the idea of calling out to him, but just as I open my dry, cracked mouth to speak I hear footsteps approaching.
“Take it off,” a female voice says in a throaty tone.
I feel the relief of air as the shroud is lifted from my head. I take a quick look around to survey my surroundings. The space is huge; ten times the size of Uncle Will’s pole barn. There are a few old airplanes scattered around, and the building looks like it’s made from sheeted steel. There is no sign of Justin.
A woman makes her way toward me. Her hair is flaming red, and her eyes are covered with dark sunglasses. She’s thin but muscular, and the cargo pants and white undershirt she wears clings to all her curves. She’s older than me, probably Margaret’s age, but it doesn’t take away from her striking features. She looks oddly familiar, but I dismiss the feeling quickly, owing it to remnants of the dust still coursing through me.
“Remove the gag,” she commands.
Someone unties the cloth from my mouth.
I stretch my jaw back and forth, trying to release the tension in my chin.
“Where did you get them from?”
Someone from behind me clears his throat. “We brown-bagged them in a tattoo parlor ten miles from here. Pigeons were raiding the place.”
Someone else comes running toward us, waving something in his hand. He calls the woman with the red hair LaRoux. I blink my eyes several times, trying to bring them into focus. Surely what I see is a hallucination, a trick my news eyes are playing on me. When I look at the boy’s face, I think I see Shane.
He’s whispering something to LaRoux, and I watch his lips move close to her ear. His eyes briefly meet mine, but flicker away too quickly. My heart sinks to my stomach, and the deep pain of betrayal jabs in my gut. What is he doing here, and why isn’t he helping me?
They break in conversation, and LaRoux approaches me. I catch a glimpse of my reflection in her glasses. The image reflecting back is unrecognizable. The girl I see has short blonde hair. Dirt is smudged on her face and neck, and a bruise hovers under her swollen bright blue eyes. Shane’s eyes meet mine once again, and I’m met with the same disappointing reaction. This time I understand why—he has no idea it’s me.
“So,” she says. “What is your name?” She scans me from head to toe, slowly sinking the image of me into her eyes.
“Catherine,” I say.
“So, Catherine,” she says slowly. It’s as if she’s looking at a photograph, trying to remember a face. “Why were Pigeons raiding that tattoo shop? There hasn’t been a Pigeon in this ward for months, and now, all of the sudden, they’re everywhere.”
She walks closer to me until we are only a few inches apart.
“How should I know? I was just getting tattooed,” I say.
“Somehow I think there might be more to the story.” She leans against a metal table and removes her sunglasses. Her emerald eyes slice me in half. “Rumor has it that some Officials are looking for a very bad girl…and they’re offering a pretty reward for her, too.” She raises one eyebrow, crossing her arms over her chest. “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
A bead of sweat drips from my forehead and rolls down my nose. I feel the shove of a gun in my back. I look at Shane with heavy eyes.
“Answer her!” someone yells from behind.
I remain silent, and I’m shoved to my knees.
LaRoux looks down at me with wary condescension.
“Take her to the booth with the other one until they’re ready to talk.” Her voice echoes among the emptiness.
The two men scoop me up from my feet and make sure not go out of their way to be delicate about it. I fumble and try to maintain my balance as I realize just how effective my disguise really is.
I’m overwhelmed with relief when I’m thrown into the holding cell, otherwise known as the booth, and see Justin huddled in the corner. He rises quickly, his eyes widening as I find my footing.
“Hazel!” He wraps his arms around me.
I’m relieved he’s seemingly unharmed.
“Where the hell are we?” he asks.
The room has cinderblock walls and smells of mildew.
“I have no idea.” I rub the spot where the rope cut through my now unbound wrists. We both sit on a weathered wooden bench and listen as water slowly drips in the background. The sound is enough to drive you mad.
“How’s your arm?” Blood is caked on his skin around a small gash.
Justin looks it over and shrugs. “It’s fine, I guess. Hurts like hell, though.” He exhales
. “Let me check your eyes.” He studies my face up close, squinting. “Not bad. Fucking crazy, but some of my best work.” He smirks. “Are you sure you’re not from Salem? Luka just about lost it when Riley told him what you were doing.”
“Yeah, well, crazy’s my middle name.” I chuckle at the irony of it all. Me, the one who always played it safe, is now a tattooed, gun-toting fugitive.
Justin scratches above his eyebrow. “So how the hell are we going to get ourselves out of this one?”
Before I can answer, the door to the booth unlocks, and my heart swells when Shane walks in.
He approaches us slowly. “Look, just tell her what she wants to know, and then you can go. Nobody wants to hurt you.”
Justin interrupts him. “Wait a minute.” He looks to me and then back at Shane. “Is this some kind of joke?”
Shane stands there, a confused look on his face. He plants his hands on his hips, and the sight of it brings me back. I take a deep inhale and exhale slowly, trying to level my heartbeat. Just tell him. He can help you out of this.
“Fine, have it your way. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.” He turns on his heels to head back through the booth door. A shiver runs through me as the words resonate through my body. Shane had offered help to me once before, and I turned it down. I’d be stupid to make that mistake now. I may be many things, but stupid isn’t one of them.
“Shane!” I cry, just as he’s about to close the door.
Justin looks over to me in surprise, most likely wondering just what the hell is going on. The door stops mid-closing, but Shane remains hidden beyond the threshold. He walks slowly back in the booth, his own confused look dominating his face.
“How do you know my name?” he asks in bewilderment.
“I know a lot about you.” I stand up to emphasize the words. “I know you can’t swim, though God knows you try. You hate the Officials more than anything else, and you’re deathly afraid of bugs.” Relief washes over me, and I exhale it through a drawn-out breath.
Shane takes a few more slow steps toward me, examining my face. He continues until we are only inches apart. His eyes smolder through me, the confusion melting away.
The Unforgiven (The Propagation Project Book 1) Page 12
