“Nice logic.”
The rest of the group sticks close behind, with Alex bringing up the rear.
“After you, kid.” He holds the door for Linx.
“I’m not a kid.” She pouts and pushes past him.
The two of them are the only ones who don’t need to use flashlights, since the virus gives their violet eyes superb night vision. They can see everything in perfect clarity, while the others have to rely on what little visual stimuli they can capture with their tiny, inadequate beams of light.
At the bottom of the steps, a cobwebby, damp room that was once filled with machinery has been completely stripped. The metal was almost certainly melted down and recycled. Anything of value was probably sold. Silver’s seen ruins looted like this a hundred times before in the crumbling streets outside Amaranthe.
One wall in the room has been attacked by a sledgehammer, revealing a tunnel beyond. The jagged hole in the wall is plenty big enough for a person to fit through, but no-one volunteers to go first.
“Don’t all jump at once.” Silver climbs through with her flashlight clamped between her teeth.
“It ought only to be a fifteen minute toddle from here,” Bold figures, fumbling through after her. “We’ll soon know if we’re going off round the Wrekin.”
His estimation turns out to be frighteningly accurate. After thirteen minutes of walking down the same length of tunnel, they reach a fork. Although Silver has no clue where they are in relation to the warehouse, she spots some of the old wartime rules painted on the wall.
“This is it.” She taps the faded lettering. “This is part of the air raid shelter.”
Her violets affording her an advantage in the darkness, Linx pushes past Silver and takes the lead, the scent of stagnant water hinting at the presence of the canal.
“This place stinks.” Linx pulls her sleeve over her hand and presses it to her nose.
“So does your attitude.” Silver pushes her up against a wall. “Now shut the fuck up and stay behind me.”
After two or three twists and turns in complete darkness, Silver detects the faint hum of electricity and follows it all the way to a lit tunnel.
“I remember this.” Luka steps up beside her. “It’s not far.”
His memory serves him well, and he manages to lead them back to the toilet block with no wrong turns. There’s only one problem: Tomkin’s nowhere to be found.
“He’s dead.” Mason huffs loudly. “I told you.”
“He’s not dead.” Silver looks around twice, checking in all the stalls to make sure there’s no corpse. “He’s just not here.”
“So where is he?”
“Somewhere else.” She doubles back into the other tunnel. “Let’s keep looking.”
“Silver,” Alex barks sharply at her. “This is crazy.”
She ignores him, but Luka doesn’t. Risking a punch to the face, he grips Alex’s shoulder and turns him around so that they’re eye to eye.
“Do you really think snapping at her like that is gonna help you get what you want?” He senses Linx hovering in his periphery. “Do you even know what it is you want anymore?”
“Hold your horses.” Carmen stumbles after Silver. “Don’t leave me back here with all this testosterone. It’s not my thing.”
Slipping on a chunk of debris in a hitherto unexplored section of tunnel, Silver falls into a wall and comes face to face with the devil. A spray-painted image of a devil face, that is.
When she regains her footing, she finds herself in a vast space that might once have been some kind of loading bay, but was clearly remodeled and repurposed. Walls have been erected throughout, dividing the space into separate rooms which could’ve been used for emergency civilian housing.
One of the rooms—an old tuck shop—has a square cutout in the wall where a window used to be, and Tomkin’s hanging in it.
Yes, hanging.
His wrists are bound with a length of rope—one end tied to each wrist. The rope has been tossed over the top of the wall, looped through the cutout, and wrapped around his neck. If he lowers his arms, the rope will tighten around his neck and he’ll choke. If he slumps down, the rope will tighten. He’s been there so long his whole body is shaking, his muscles burning from the stress of holding himself in one position, and he won’t be able to stay upright much longer.
“Shit.” Silver sets her flashlight on a ledge and holds his head. “Hey, Tomkin. Do you remember me? I’m going to get you out of here.”
He mumbles something unintelligible.
“Holy crap bucket.” Carmen enters the dingy space moments behind Silver.
“Hold his head up for me,” Silver commands, summoning her over.
Carmen complies, and Silver pulls out her hunting knife, starting to cut through the thick rope.
“Why did you come back?” Tomkin croaks, his throat so dry he can hardly speak.
“Because I don’t leave innocent people to die.”
Silver slices through the final braid and Tomkin falls forward. Together, Carmen and Silver catch him and sit him down on the ground.
“Water.” Silver flicks her fingers for Carmen’s canteen.
While Tomkin drains the canteen and quenches his thirst, Bold, Mason and the others arrive on the scene.
“Tommy!” Bold rushes to his side.
“We need to get him up and out of here.” Silver gets ready to brace his weight over her shoulder, but Mason barges in front of her.
“I can do it.” He budges her out of the way.
“Suit yourself.” She retrieves her flashlight, catching eyes with Alex when she turns around. “Guess what? Now we can leave.”
Voices in the tunnel spur them on in the opposite direction from which they came, and they end up following the old canal bed down a series of lit and unlit tunnels. Luka, Carmen and Linx guard the front of the group, while Bold and Mason carry Tomkin in the middle, leaving Silver and Alex to guard the rear.
Walking along a towpath beside yet another stretch of old canal bed, something grasps for Silver’s ankle. She feels it latch onto the hem of her pants, tugging gently and briefly before slipping away again.
When she peers down a drop of almost eight feet into the dry canal bed—which has been purposefully dug out far below its original depth—she sees rats swarming everywhere. The hole is littered with trash: cigarette butts, old food containers, empty liquor bottles, and piles of rotting food on which the rats are excitedly squeaking and feeding and fighting.
Standing in the midst of it all is a beautiful woman. Tight black leather pants show off the curves of her ass and hips, and a pair of calf-length boots give her an extra three inches of height. A thin cotton, off-the-shoulder white shirt provides little warmth, and it seems the only function of the charcoal, corset-style waistcoat she’s wearing on top is to display her generous cleavage.
She must be in her late twenties, Silver guesses, based on the absence of any noticeable creases in her perfect, milky complexion. Her long, dark hair is tied back in a French braid, her red lips trembling as she tries to hold back the tears welling in her pleading, desperate chocolate brown eyes.
“Take me with you,” she begs Silver. “Please.”
Silver hesitates. She’d heard a woman sobbing the last time they broke free of this place, and now she’s silently cursing herself for not having insisted that they try to help. She should’ve stuck to her guns. She shouldn’t have let Alex drag her away so hastily.
“Silver,” Alex growls out her name from an archway at the end of the room. “Come on.” He beckons to her urgently. “We don’t have time for this.”
No, not again.
Determined not to make the same mistake twice and deny a vulnerable woman the assistance she so clearly needs, Silver jumps down into the canal bed.
Squelch!
She explodes a fat male rat beneath one of her boots, its mushy innards bursting out left and right, its large testicles popping and spraying their contents over t
he ground at the astounded woman’s feet.
“Not that I don’t appreciate the company, but I asked you to help me, not join me,” she despairs. “Now we’re both stuck in here.”
Silver is quietly confident, more than happy to use this opportunity to show off her strength and dexterity. “You’re allowed to underestimate me once. After that, I hope you’ll know better.”
Without waiting for the woman to respond, she presses her back against the canal bed wall, and lowers herself till her knees are bent at ninety degrees, mimicking a seated position. Once ready, she gestures to the woman with a ‘come hither’ motion.
“Climb up.” She braces herself. “Use my shoulders.”
“How will you—”
“Do you want out of this hole or not, lady? I don’t have all day.”
Leaping on the opportunity before it expires, the woman snatches a bag of her belongings up off the floor and tosses it up onto the towpath. Then, she steps onto Silver’s thigh, transferring her weight tentatively.
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Don’t worry, it won’t be the first time I’ve been hurt by a pretty woman.” Silver offers her a reassuringly warm smile, then winks. “You won’t hurt me, I promise.”
Shaky, but desperate for escape, the woman bears all her weight on Silver’s thigh, using the wall for balance. From there, she steps up onto Silver’s shoulder and reaches for the top of the canal bed wall.
Instantly, Silver realizes her mistake.
Bearing the woman’s weight on her shoulder, she holds her breath and tenses all the muscles in her torso, doing everything she can not to yelp: she’d forgotten about her injury. Sharp pain shoots through her nerves, screaming right down to her fingertips, and she clenches her fists so hard her knuckles turn white.
In silent agony, she waits for the woman to latch onto something up on the towpath so that she can pull herself out, and when it finally comes, the release of pressure is dizzyingly euphoric.
The woman never finds anything to grab onto, though. Instead, she gasps when a strong pair of male hands suddenly wraps around her wrists, holding her firmly. Seemingly exercising little effort, the male figure, Alex, lifts her up out of the hole and plants her on the towpath, where she promptly collapses on her bum.
Taken aback and at a loss for words, she stares up at him and almost misses watching Silver make an athletic exit from the hole. In the nick of time, she glances back to see her rescuer run toward the far end of the canal bed and leap into the air, using one wall to springboard herself up against the other wall, and then up onto the towpath.
“Shit,” the woman murmurs, utterly captivated by Silver’s prowess.
“Admire me later.” Silver strides over and heaves her up off the ground. “We have to go.”
At the sound of angry male voices echoing from somewhere in the tunnel network—probably Slade’s men having discovered Tomkin’s disappearance—Silver tightens her grip on the woman’s hand and tugs her onward.
“We really have to go.”
Hurrying to catch up with the others, Silver leads the woman through an archway in the tunnel wall and almost bumps straight into Alex on the other side. Here, they find themselves in a large storage chamber with brick walls and a domed ceiling—one of four transhipment bays in this area of the tunnels.
Tables have been set up along the chamber’s length, and they’re covered with weapons: guns, knives, cattle prods, batons, spools of rope, reels of wire that could be used for garroting, and other handmade tools of torture.
Beside those tables, Mason, Bold and Tomkin are being held at gunpoint by two of Slade’s men. On the other side of the room, Carmen is detained at knifepoint by another gang member, his arm around her neck, and Linx is doubled over, restrained in a headlock. Luka is on his knees in the middle of the floor, his hands behind his head, a fifth man pointing a gun at him.
“You let yourselves get captured?” Silver scowls at her best friend. “You suck.”
“They got the girls first.” He sucks in his cheeks, his jaw tight. “There wasn’t anything I could do.”
“Oh, lemme guess.” Silver turns on Linx, her tone accusatory. “You ran in here without looking, like an impatient little child, and got blindsided by a thug who’s twice your size.” She rolls her eyes. “I should fucking leave you here.”
“I tried to stop her.” Carmen squirms.
“That worked well, didn’t it?” One of Silver’s eyebrows darts upward.
Movement at the top of a short flight of stone steps draws her attention away, and she looks up to see a familiar figure emerging from another tunnel.
Fucking great.
“Look who’s back!” Slade grins at her. “Miss me, did ya?”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Slade saunters down the steps and strides across the transhipment bay—which Silver estimates must be directly beneath the Great Northern Warehouse. He’s whistling a joyful melody, and steps in rhythm to the tune, every note echoing up and down the tunnels as if even his voice is trying to escape from him.
“I wish I’d known you were coming.” He flashes a large fake smile at Silver. “I’d have put a cuppa on.”
Having gathered her bearings slightly, Silver eyes the tunnel that she feels sure must lead to the rusty ladder they used for their escape last time, and makes an effort to reposition herself so that she can’t be cut off from it.
“We came by to pick up something we accidentally left behind.” She starts walking, pulling the woman with her. “We’ll be on our way now.”
“Not so fast.” Slade darts in front of her, thrusting the end of his walking stick against her chest. “Stay and chat awhile, won’t you?”
He pushes her back a couple of paces, causing her to bump into the woman.
“Well, oh, well. What do we have here?” Slade fixes his beady eyes on his pretty captive instead. “Made some new allies, have we?”
“Let me go home,” she implores him. “Please.”
“You are home, love. You’re exactly where you belong, with the rats and mice.” He strokes his beard, eyeing her lustfully. “For now anyway.” He slaps a hand over his chest, where his heart would be if he had one. “It’s going to rupture my poor, weak heart to give you back.”
“Give her back to whom?” Silver demands.
“Left that part out of her sob story, did she?” Slade twirls his walking stick, enjoying this little interlude far too much. “She belongs to Luther.” He tilts his head to one side, peeking at the frightened brunette behind Silver’s shoulder. “All bought and paid for. Entcha, darlin’?”
“She doesn’t belong to anyone.” Silver maneuvers the woman behind her back. “People can’t be bought. They’re not toys.”
“Blah, blah, blah.” Slade pantomimes flapping gums with his hands. “Spare me. Do I look like a bloody human rights activist to you? Hand over the whore.”
“Get screwed.”
Genuinely confused as to why Silver would want to help this woman, he unintentionally allows some real emotion to seep out: frustration.
“What in the bloody world do you want with this troublesome little muffer anyway?”
“I don’t think that’s any of your fucking business.”
Looking for clues—perhaps for a sign that they have some undisclosed connection with one another—he glances down and sees that they’re holding hands.
“Are you a raging dyke, too?” He forms those words with a sneer of disgust, hoping to cause her offense.
The attempt fails.
Far from being offended, Silver isn’t in the least bit fazed by the accusation.
“Yeah, that’s right.” She smirks impenitently. “I’m gonna spend the whole night with my face between her thighs. What’re you gonna do about it?”
On the other end of her arm, she feels the woman cringe, the tremor of fear creeping into her fingers. Still, refusing to back down, she holds the woman’s hand tighter, unwilling to let her pull a
way. Slade seems out of his element, infuriated that he’s not able to say anything to strike fear or submission into her, and she intends to take full advantage of his burgeoning anger.
“What’s the matter?” She feigns an exaggerated look of concern. “Are you jealous ‘cause she won’t have you? ‘Cause she fantasizes about lapping up my hot, wet pussy instead of sucking off your pencil thin dick?”
That does it.
Slade strikes out with his walking stick, smacking her cheekbone with all the force he can muster. She reels, but recovers quickly.
“Is that it?” She laughs at him, finally releasing the woman’s hand. “Is that all you’ve got?”
He winds up to hit her again, but this time, Silver seizes the end of the walking stick before it makes impact. She tugs it toward herself, dragging him along with it, and uses his own momentum to swing him around and pull the ornate piece of wood tight against his neck. Gripping the walking stick firmly, she draws upward and back, putting pressure on his throat.
He coughs and sputters, his legs almost buckling beneath him. “Shoot her,” he gurgles to his men.
“I wouldn’t do that.” Silver holds him steady, addressing his men. “You might kill me, but not before I break his scrawny little neck.”
Slade’s men exchange glances. When one lowers his weapon, the rest follow suit.
“That’s a much better idea,” Silver praises them. “Well done.”
Wasting no time, Bold and Mason disarm the men and herd them into a corner.
“What should we do with them?” Alex appears at Silver’s shoulder.
“I think a little taste of their own medicine is in order.” A small smile tickles at her lips. “You and Luka throw them in the canal bed, but to make things fair—since a few burly men have a slight advantage over one dainty woman—tie them up first. Hands and feet. Take Bold and Mason with you.”
Using rope from the table to complete the task, the four men do as instructed, leaving Tomkin in the care of Linx. While they’re gone, Slade—held on the verge of unconsciousness by Silver—tries to warn her off her current course.
“You think Luther’s going to let his prized whore get away?” he rasps.
Lex Talionis Page 12
