Wrong Side of Hell (The DeathSpeaker Codex Book 1)

by Sonya Bateman

  “Okay, I’ll take it from here,” I said.

  Taeral readjusted his grip, and I fumbled the padlock out and untangled the chains. Daoin’s ankles were raw and bleeding where they’d wrapped around him. “Time to go,” I said.

  It took far longer than I liked for us to stagger back to the entrance and out of the vault. At least I started feeling instantly better when we passed through the door. Taeral didn’t look so great, but he’d stopped shaking.

  “Three minutes, guys. Move your asses.”

  Sadie’s voice in the earpiece startled me. I’d managed to tune out most of the chatter, but now all of my senses sharpened. “No one used the elevator, right?” I said back.

  “Right. Stop talking and run.”

  “Way ahead of you.” With a glance at Taeral, I sprinted down the hall toward the elevator, knowing he’d be right behind me with Daoin. I could get the doors open while he caught up.

  If we didn’t explode before then.

  CHAPTER 39

  Someone had used the elevator. That, or it’d just stopped working, because nothing happened when I slid the passcard through the slot. And there was no time to wait and see if it’d get there eventually.

  I doubled back and caught Taeral just as he entered the hallway. “Stairs,” I said, practically pulling him toward them.

  “We’ve no time—”

  “I know!”

  I’d stay behind him this time, in case there was some way I could help. But somehow he managed to move faster with his burden. He took the stairs two at a time, and I jogged up after him, using the rail to heave myself along.

  The door at the top of the stairwell was closed. I slipped in front of Taeral to open it, since he had his arms full.

  “Two minutes,” Sadie said.

  “The countdown’s not helping!” I shouted.

  There were still two long hallways to the exit. I kept pace with Taeral, who’d started dragging a little after the rush up the stairs. “Do you want me to take him?” I said.

  “No. We’d waste time.”

  He was right, but that didn’t make me feel any safer from exploding.

  I tried not to count the seconds in my head. But I was sure a million of them had passed by the time we rounded the last corner and had a straight shot to Sadie, who was standing in front of the supply closet. “Just go,” I said to Taeral. “We’re right behind you.”

  He managed a half-nod and picked up a burst of speed.

  Sadie gaped at them as he plunged into the closet. “Is he…”

  “Don’t know,” I said. “Run.”

  She ducked after Taeral, and I slipped in behind her.

  Moving through the narrow closet cost us precious seconds, with Taeral slowed by his burden. I tried to catch my breath, ignoring the burning stitch in my side. “Everyone else out?” I said.

  She nodded. “They’re in the tunnels.”

  “Good. You shouldn’t have waited for us.”

  “When we get out of here, remind me to punch you,” she growled.

  “What?”

  “You’re a moron, Gideon.”

  “Yeah, I know. Sorry.”

  Taeral was through the back of the closet and into the crumbling subtunnel, moving with an awkward, clomping sidestep. At least it was faster than shuffling along. I had no idea what a safe distance from the explosion would be, but this didn’t feel like it.

  Just as I passed through the opening into the tunnel, I felt the sound before I heard it—a massive flump, like the world’s biggest match being struck, that strained my eardrums and liquefied my insides.

  Then the actual explosion shattered the air.

  The ground trembled violently. A cloud of hot dust and splintered debris slammed into my back as it rolled past, engulfing Sadie and the rest of the tunnel. Rocks and dirt showered from the ceiling. I ducked and threw my arms up, but not before something heavy and jagged bashed me full in the face—and sharp white blooms of pain nearly knocked me out.

  Eventually things settled to a black, eerie quiet. I straightened slowly, gagging on dust and dirt, and tried to brush myself off a little. Warm, sticky blood matted the side of my face, and my heart thrummed like a strobe through the ringing in my ears. “Everybody okay?” I managed to get out.

  “Fantastic,” Sadie groaned from somewhere in the darkness. “Taeral…?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Taeral!”

  A faint moan. “Here,” he whispered.

  “Here where?”

  “Hold on,” I said, and fumbled the pendant out with shaking fingers. “De’ársahd.”

  The glow of the moonstone filled the space, and revealed why it was so dark. A huge spill of dirt, stones, and broken support beams blocked the far end of the tunnel—our way out.

  “I still don’t see him.” Sadie stood a few feet away from me, covered in dust and scratches, looking toward the landslide. “Where…oh, God.”

  I followed her horrified gaze. Taeral knelt on the ground, curled protectively over Daoin, with a massive roof beam across his shoulders pinning him in place. He strained against it, his body trembling with effort.

  If he stopped pushing, it would crush them both.

  Sadie sprinted for him, and I was right behind her. Without a word, we both grabbed the end and tried to lift the beam off—but it wouldn’t budge.

  “Goddamn it.” Sadie shrugged off the string backpack she wore with her change of clothes in it and handed it to me. “Hold this,” she said. “And stand back.”

  I took the bag and backed off.

  Nodding, she focused on the glowing pendant. Then she went wolf.

  Sadie the werewolf snarled and wrapped both powerful arms around the beam. She lifted sharply, straining for a moment until there was a tremendous crack, and the end still wedged in the rubble of the tunnel snapped like a twig. Huffing a breath, she threw the beam aside and glanced at me. “Dig.”

  “Yeah. Good idea.”

  She snorted and attacked the landslide.

  I moved toward Taeral, who was straightening slowly. The back of the armor shell had torn away at the top seams, and both of his shoulders were almost black with bruises. “You all right?” I said.

  “Relatively speaking? No.” He raised his head to look at me. “Are you? Gods, your face is…battered.”

  “It’s probably superficial.” At least the bleeding had stopped, but I didn’t want to look in a mirror anytime soon. “What about him?” I said reluctantly, looking down at Daoin.

  Taeral closed his eyes. “I’ve no idea,” he said. “There’s been no change.”

  I almost pointed out that he didn’t look any worse, but considering the baseline, that wasn’t exactly encouraging. “Is he breathing?”

  “I’m not even certain of that.”

  For the first time, I entertained the possibility that maybe we’d been too late. If I’d thought that while we were still in that place, I would’ve just given up—so I didn’t let myself believe it. But now, looking at Daoin’s still, wax-like features and the wasted condition of his body, I couldn’t stop thinking it.

  Whatever they’d done to him, they’d done it thoroughly.

  “Uh, Gideon?” Sadie called, her voice hollow and tinny. “Could you pass my bag out, please? It’s kind of chilly out here.”

  I blinked and clambered over to the landslide, where Sadie had cleared a smaller tunnel and broken through to the main subtunnel. She stood on the other side of the hole, peering through with her arms crossed in front of her. “All yours,” I said, heaving the bag through. “Thanks for getting us out of this.”

  “And you didn’t want me to wait for you.” She smirked and disappeared from view.

  “Yeah. My mistake,” I said under my breath. I turned to Taeral, and said, “Listen, if I go through, can you pass him out? Then I’ll hold onto him until you clear the hole.”

  “All right.” He didn’t sound real enthusiastic.

  Maybe he’d started to suspe
ct we were dragging a dead body around down here.

  I climbed through the werewolf-made hole and slid a few feet on dirt to the tunnel floor. Sadie was already dressed and watching me. I gave her a thumbs-up, and she rolled her eyes.

  “Whenever you’re ready,” I called back up to Taeral.”

  After a minute, he peered through the hole and pulled back.

  He sent Daoin out feet-first. I grabbed his shins, careful to avoid the torn skin at his ankles, and eased him down while Taeral steadied him until I could get an arm under his knees. “All right, I have him,” I said. Taeral let go, and I scooped the other arm behind his back and lifted.

  It was terrifying how light he was. Just as tall as Taeral, but he couldn’t have weighed more than ninety pounds. His head and limbs flopped rag-doll limp. Only his feverish warmth suggested he wasn’t dead—he radiated heat like a furnace.

  Taeral slid out, generating a small shower of fresh dirt. “I’ll take him now,” he said.

  “You sure? Your shoulders—”

  “I’ll take him.” His voice was firm, but not angry.

  I handed Daoin over like he was made of glass. Even when Taeral lifted him away, I could still feel the heat of him sinking into my skin. I stifled a shiver and focused on turning the moonstone off. There were lights in here, and I wanted to conserve whatever was left in it—since I had no idea when I’d see moonlight again. “Well,” I said. “Guess we should check in with the rest of them.”

  No one agreed out loud, but we all started the long trudge toward the meeting point.

  CHAPTER 40

  Counting Daoin, we’d only managed to rescue a dozen Others from Milus Dei.

  All of them were long-term prisoners, tortured and broken to the point where those bastards must’ve decided they weren’t worth moving. Nearly all were missing something—a few fingers, an eye, a whole hand, a tongue. Scarred and shell-shocked, they sat listlessly wherever they’d been led inside the dimly lit, abandoned station, or curled on the ground in shuddering heaps.

  As we entered and Taeral headed for an empty bench with Daoin, Denei spotted me and stalked over. Zoba wasn’t far behind. “I see you got who you came for,” she said in forced tones. “What about my kin? Where the hell are they?”

  “I don’t know,” I said as calmly as I could.

  Sadie leaned in close to me. “Somebody found water back there. I need something in me, or I’ll pass out,” she said. “Are you okay with this witch?”

  “Yeah, we’re fine. Go on.”

  She sent Denei a look full of daggers before she walked away.

  “How adorable. You found yourself a girlfriend,” Denei said with a sneer. “Now, I’m gonna ask this one more time. What about my kin?”

  “Damn it, I don’t know!” I wasn’t so calm this time. “Do I look like Milus Dei or a psychic to you?”

  “No. You look like the goddamned DeathSpeaker,” she said. “So you just go grab one of them bastard’s bodies, like you done before, and you ask him where the hell they took the little ones.”

  My jaw clenched. “I can’t. Those bodies are buried under half a ton of rubble.”

  “Well, you find a way!” She drew a sharp breath, and then deflated a little. “Listen. We saved your life back there,” she said. “So now you owe us.”

  I bit back a sarcastic reply. “I’ll do everything I can to help you find them,” I said.

  “Yeah, you will. You’ll do that because you can’t not do it.” She smiled without an ounce of warmth. “But that’s not what I’m talkin’ about. You owe us a favor, handsome. And I want your promise that we can collect.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “What favor?”

  “Oh, I don’t know that yet. Probably something simple—a little blood, a lock of hair. But we’d never ask for anything you couldn’t give us,” she said. “Right, Zoba?”

  Zoba made a noise that was somewhere between a lion and a chainsaw.

  “Fine,” I said. “I promise I’ll do you a favor.”

  Denei grinned. “I’ll hold you to it, handsome.”

  With those chilling words, the pair of them melted back into the gathering.

  I shook myself and glanced at Taeral. He’d laid Daoin on a wooden bench off to the side of the station entrance and knelt on the floor next to it. He was either trying to heal him, or mourning him. Either way, I decided to give him a few minutes. So I scoped out the rest of the place.

  I knew some of the earlier subway stations and lines, and even a few residential parts of the city, had eventually ended up underground as Manhattan continued to spread up and out. This had been a waiting area of some kind. Benches lined both sides of the entrance, and just ahead, four wide stairs led to a large platform where a few more benches had survived the decay. Rusted metal grates and gaps in the semi-natural ceiling let in faint light from what I guessed was an active subway tunnel above. The rest of the light came from a fire in the center of the platform that someone had started with the remains of a bench.

  Murdoch was talking to a swarthy, black-haired man with an eyepatch. Grygg stood off to one side, a watchful sentry who nearly blended in with the wall. Denei and Zoba sat on a bench, their heads bent together as if they were sharing secrets. Others ranged around the platform, alone or in small groups.

  I spotted Sadie near the back of the place and headed there.

  She stood beside a low, hollowed shelf of rock. Water dripped steadily from an overhang into a fairly deep puddle formed in the hollow, and trickled slowly over the lip of the shelf. When I approached, she smiled and gestured at the puddle. “It’s pretty clean,” she said. “Cold, at least.”

  “Define pretty clean,” I said with a smirk. Still, I wasn’t going to pass up a drink. I was hot, filthy, exhausted, sore as hell—and so furious over the failed raid, I could’ve punched a hole through solid rock.

  All that planning and preparation, and we’d almost killed ourselves for nothing. Now we’d have to start all over again.

  I cupped water in my hands and drank quickly. It was cold and crisp, kind of earthy, but not that bad. When I’d swallowed all I could for the moment, I caught up a little more and hesitated, then splashed my aching face.

  Christ, that stung. Whatever hit me had cut a pretty deep gash just under my eye and left a fantail of scratches down my cheek, and also split the corner of my lip for good measure. I rubbed a little fresh water gingerly around the gash, trying to clear some of the blood and dirt I knew was there.

  Just as I finished, a small, unfamiliar voice behind me said, “Are you the DeathSpeaker?”

  My shoulders slumped. Word sure got around fast in the abandoned underground room. “That’s the rumor,” I said, turning toward the voice with a hesitant smile.

  The girl didn’t look more than nineteen or twenty. Big brown eyes, dirty blond hair cut short in a style that could only be described as butchered. Scar tissue twisted and bunched over the right side of her head—where an ear should have been. The scarring spread down the side of her neck and disappeared into the paper-thin hospital johnny she wore. Rings of old bruises circled her wrists and ankles.

  My throat clogged with rekindled anger, directed straight at Milus Dei. How could anyone do these things? Maybe the Others weren’t technically human…but damn it, they were still people.

  She smiled. “I’m Lovinda,” she said shyly. “People…well, they used to call me Lo.”

  I worked past the lump in my throat and mentally ran through the various combinations of greeting-word and Lo. None of them sounded right. Especially hello-lo. “Nice to meet you, Lo,” I finally said. “And people call me Gideon.”

  “Gideon.” Her smile wavered a bit, and tears welled in her eyes. “You saved my life,” she said. “Can I…hug you?”

  For a second I thought I wouldn’t be able to respond. At last, I managed to nod and say roughly, “I’d like that.”

  Her tears spilled just before she wrapped her thin arms around my chest, shaking with sobs.
<
br />   I hugged her back, with no idea what else to do but hold her. There was nothing I could say. I couldn’t even imagine what she’d been through in that place, but I did know one thing.

  I was wrong. All this hadn’t been for nothing.

  Eventually her sobbing eased and she leaned back, sniffling and wiping her tears. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I just…”

  “No. Don’t be sorry,” I said, and smiled. “You’re welcome. But I’m not the only one who saved you, right?”

  Lo shook her head a little and sent a watery half-smile at Sadie. “She found me. And she told me about you.”

  “Did she? What’d she say?”

  “All right.” Sadie stepped forward and shot me a look, then took the girl’s arm gently. “Let’s get you cleaned up. You’d like a drink, wouldn’t you?”

  Lo nodded. “Thank you.”

  I decided to ask Sadie later what she said about me, though I doubted she’d tell me. “Okay. You ladies have fun,” I said. “I’m going to go check on Taeral.”

  Sadie flashed a pained expression. “Any word on…him?”

  “Not yet. I’m hoping that’s changed, though.”

  “Me, too,” she whispered.

  “I’ll let you know.”

  With a nod, I walked back across the platform. A few of the new strangers stared at me curiously as I passed, but most weren’t in any shape to concentrate for that long. I just hoped they’d eventually recover.

  A prospect that didn’t seem likely for Daoin.

  When I reached Taeral, he was standing in front of the bench, his back to the motionless figure. “I’ve healed what I can,” he said. “He breathes easier, but…that room. Cold iron walls.” His voice was like nails on sandpaper. “If they’ve kept him there all these years, he may well never awaken.”

  “Is he in a coma or something?”

  “I’ve no way to tell. To my knowledge, no Fae has ever been subjected to such torments.”

  Well. There was a distinction he probably wouldn’t be proud of, if he ever woke up. I frowned and looked at Daoin. Some of the bruising had faded, and his skin had regained a little bit of natural color—or maybe that was just wishful thinking, since his natural color seemed to be blue. His hair kind of looked better, though I couldn’t imagine how. And he really did have silver eyes.