This could have all been different.
Another world, another time, he’d said. That was just the problem. Even if they managed to live through the next twenty-four hours, they were literally from different worlds. The hard truth was that death and life were incongruous. Those who attempted to meld the two either ended up wraiths—everlasting life, or ghosts—everlasting death. She was the daughter of Death. Adam was bursting with life. Incongruous. Incompatible.
Maybe Aunt Maggie had fed her one too many fairy stories as a kid. Tales of magic and kisses and wishes. Of happily-ever-afters and obstacles surmounted by love. Aunt Maggie had been a die-hard romantic, but maybe the emphasis had been because she knew something about how Talia was conceived. What must her mother have told Aunt Maggs about her father? Talia had asked, many times, but had never received a straight answer. In the light of her newfound knowledge, Aunt Maggie’s fairy tales did not seem so misplaced.
The book Jim had given her had suggested something else, something that she couldn’t yet voice to Adam. The faery were a breed apart—they were old, diminished spirits of the earth, shut out from heaven, and consigned for eternity to the Otherworld except for occasional trespasses into mortality. Her instincts told her that there would be no world but this one that Adam and she could share, and no time but now in which to share it.
At least she could give him her scream and with it, she hoped, peace.
The washer buzzed the end of its cycle and Talia tore her eyes away from the city to throw the clothes into the dryer.
She turned toward the corridor, spied the book on the sofa, and thought to tuck it away in case Adam decided to investigate further. The last thing she needed now was—
A crash behind her had her bringing her arms up to protect her head.
After her initial cringe, she whirled back toward the window to find a hole the size of an apple radiating white cracks up the glass. Beyond the hole, the fresh black of New York City night. An odd metallic burning smell hit her senses. Before she could identify the source, another impact sent something whizzing by her side to lodge in the sofa. Shards scattered the floor.
Her heart beat wildly, breath coming in shuddering draws as she turned to run down to the hallway. Smoke rose in her path, smelling sharply chemical and rankly...wrong. Wrong to a degree that superseded the normal world. She knew it with every freakish cell in her body.
She attempted to breathe through clenched teeth. The stench made her mouth taste sour. Her eyes teared profusely. She swiped at them with her palms and wrists.
A third crash brought her to her knees, huddling in the middle of a rising cloud. Her body screamed for air. She chanced a breath and choked on the fire that seared her nose and charred her lungs.
She covered her mouth and nose with the hem of her T-shirt and tried a breath. Her throat burned.
“Talia!” Adam’s voice was a thick roar.
“Here!” The word was a rasp. Stars floated in the periphery of her vision. More air! her body cried. Reflex took over and she drew in a shallow gasp. Pain.
An arm came around her, dragged her up. Adam. She knew the hard lines of his body, the curve of his arm, the warmth his body exuded. Together they moved through space, though in which direction, she had no idea until Adam kicked open a door and blinded her with light.
A storage room. Boxes open. Guns. His supposed inventory work.
She tried a little air in a series of thin pants to move oxygen into her blood and to clear her vision. Her throat and lungs felt raw.
Adam slammed the door shut and powered through the room to the other end. He tapped a keypad. The concealed door slid open to reveal a tight room, smaller than a closet, just big enough for two.
“Can you stand?” Adam’s voice was low, gruff, angry, a perfect match to the feelings she sensed in him.
She nodded, though she really didn’t know the answer. Her breathing became long, broken wheezes that left her light-headed. She put a hand to her chest, but it neither helped her move air, nor stopped the pain.
He took her hand and pulled her in, hitting the second of two unmarked buttons. The urgency that poured through his touch spurred hers. Get away. Get away fast.
Talia’s stomach hit her throat at the sudden drop. An elevator. A bullet to the bottom.
“Are you okay?” Adam gripped her chin and turned her head to face to his. His expression was controlled, but his emotions a mix of concern and horror. What she felt from him kept her on her feet; she wouldn’t add to his worry if she could help it. With his free hand he lifted each of her lids in turn to look at her eyeballs, and then moved a raised finger in an arc before her eyes to track the response of her eyes.
“Yes.” Her answer exhaled in a harsh burr, several octaves below her normal tone. And it hurt.
“Damn it.” Adam’s face was flushed, though white around the mouth with tension. “You look like hell. Had to be some kind of chemical weapon in aerosol form. Poison gas, maybe.”
And mixed with something worse. Otherworldly worse. But Talia didn’t voice it.
“...okay.” She meant to say I’m okay, but the first word was lost on uncooperative vocal cords. It was a lie, and Adam had to know it was a lie. What she meant was that she would keep going until she fell over. He’d find her medical attention. Immediate medical attention, preferably.
The elevator came to an abrupt stop and challenged the lock she had on her weak knees. Adam pushed her behind him, protecting her body with his, then drawing his gun, touched a button. The door slid open.
The darkness beyond was mellowed by soft light, its source unknown. It took a couple of her weak breaths for a wet, fetid stench to hit her. She pressed her face into Adam’s shoulder. They could be in only one place. The sewer. A mangy rat darted past the elevator door.
“We’ve got to move. Got to find somewhere safe.” Adam sounded like he was talking to himself. He stepped out into a tunnel, looking each way as if weighing his options, debating between the two stretches of stinking tunnel.
It was strange to see Adam at a loss. Adam, who had a contingency for everything. Adam and his redundant securities. Not that she blamed him—no one could think of every unforeseen need. He’d done so much already by taking the whole of the wraith war onto his shoulders.
“Ah, hell,” he said, dragging her to the left. “The loft should have been safe. Should have been secure. It’s not affiliated with Segue, but they found us anyway. How’d they find us?”
Talia knew he wasn’t really asking her. Her job was to keep breathing, and she poured her concentration into that effort. It was the only way to help him.
“If they find us again, Talia, you run and hide. Got that? You run and hide. You do your dark thing and get to safety. I’ll try to hold them off as long as possible.”
He took some of her weight by circling his left arm under her shoulders. The dank length of darkness was slick with wet—the kind of dampness that never dried. It clung to the walls and soaked the debris at their feet made of disintegrating newspaper and unrecognizable trash. Only the bright white plastic of a fast-food cup seemed impervious to the sludge.
He stopped at a rusted metal ladder bolted to the concrete wall, manhole disk above, and peered at it intently.
“What about—” Talia began in a croak. She meant What about Custo? who was to meet them at the loft. Had he turned traitor like Spencer and led to the attack or was he walking unsuspecting into the hands of their attackers?
Adam turned quickly to her. “Shhh. Don’t talk. You need to rest your voice. You need to heal. You won’t be safe until you heal. No one will be safe until you heal.”
In a rush of horror Talia understood. Her scream, their great defense against the wraiths, had been silenced.
CHAPTER 15
Oh, shit. Which way? Indecision crushed Adam’s shoulders. It bowed his head with its incredible, immediate weight. He gripped the cold, wet metal of the ladder in frustration. Each stinking breath in this rotting
tunnel cost them time they did not have.
He glanced at Talia—her face was gray, chest heaving as air rattled in her lungs. She’d needed him, and he fucked up. Again. Every time he fucked up, people died.
Case in point: The Collective had not challenged Segue and he’d been lured into a false sense of safety. He may have gotten his people out of the West Virginia research facility, but the satellite offices were unresponsive, his people most likely dead. His fault. And he’d stupidly thought the New York loft was secure, yet it was attacked, and Talia, the only weapon they had against the wraith war, was hurt. His fault.
Now it all came down to an either-or decision. Up to the surface or stay in the tunnel. So simple.
But he had no idea.
Talia needed medical attention, which could only be found on the surface, but then again, no medical attention was better than capture and final defeat.
Ah, hell—what should he do?
“Pssst.”
Adam spun, swiftly drawing and pointing his gun in the direction of the sound.
He’d taken too long. They’d been found.
His heart pounded as he anticipated an attack. Soldiers most likely—wraiths would have overpowered him by now. He strained his eyes and aimed down the barrel. Murky darkness swallowed the tunnel. He couldn’t see shit.
Talia’s hand on his arm startled him. He darted a glance at her and she shook her head. No. Don’t shoot.
He peered back into the darkness. Whatever was down there didn’t alarm Talia, but he wasn’t about to make another mistake. His grip on his gun tightened.
Talia squeezed his wrist, her hand warming with pressure. The shadows around him shifted, differentiated like overlapping thunderheads on a moonless night. The stench grew thicker, smells separating into distinct pools of foulness, each with its own fetid personality. Drops of water pinged clear notes in a strange wind chime of wetness.
And in the depths of the tunnel, a white face became visible.
A ghost.
No. A young girl, eyes outlined and dramatically shadowed in black. She had to be—what? Sixteen? Seventeen?
What the hell was she doing down here?
Adam almost started toward her—she might know a safe, sheltered way out of this hellhole. Somewhere they could hide.
But he pulled back. He wouldn’t make another mistake and get that young girl killed. He couldn’t possibly trade a hope of safety for a child’s life. He drew the line there.
Up the ladder, then.
He turned his back on the girl and heaved himself up a rung. He’d have to dislodge the manhole before helping Talia up the ladder. The motion pulled her hand from his wrist. The blackness flattened. The smells stirred back together in a rank soup.
A soft splash had him looking down again as Talia moved beyond the ladder toward the girl.
“No. Talia!”
But she was already a couple yards away. Another step, and she disappeared into the darkness.
Damn it. “Talia!” His harsh whisper echoed.
No answer. He had no choice but to follow and hope that they didn’t get that kid hurt or worse.
Three long strides and he found her. She wasn’t that hard to track what with her wheezing and smothered coughs.
Closing the distance, Adam could finally see the young girl clearly for himself. Dressed in a witchy getup, she was gothed out with black hair shot through with streaks of scarlet. Her skin was pearl white and though smooth, somewhat older than he had first suspected. Midtwenties, maybe.
“You the faery?” The girl lifted a multipierced eyebrow.
Adam startled. Faery? How the hell could she possibly know—?
In his peripheral vision, he saw Talia nod the affirmative.
“’Course you are or you wouldn’t be skulking around this shit hole. This way.” The girl cocked her head, turned, and headed down the sewer tunnel.
Talia took his elbow and pulled him after her. When they’d caught up, Adam leaned forward, keeping his voice low, and said, “Who are you? Where are we going?”
The goth girl canted her head over her shoulder. “I’m Zoe, and I’m taking you to Abigail.”
That made everything much clearer.
Adam tried again. “How did you know we’d be down here? And who’s Abigail?”
The girl smiled wickedly back at him as she walked. “Abigail is my sister, and I knew you’d be down here because she told me where to find you.”
Adam wanted to shake her. Her answers only begat more questions, and she was enjoying this. “How did Abigail know where find us?”
“She saw you.” Zoe didn’t even look as she drawled her answer.
Adam could come to only one conclusion: they’d been spotted. Where? “How?”
He hadn’t realized he’d voiced his last question until the girl answered, “That one I don’t know. You’ll just have to ask her.”
They trod the length of the sewer, breath and footsteps too loud, echoing off the walls and creating phantoms of sound and movement along the corridor. Adam felt Talia’s weight grow heavy on his arm.
“How much farther? This woman needs medical attention.”
“Abigail’s got a doctor for you. She saw that, too.”
Abigail better damn well have some answers.
When Talia stumbled, Adam caught her before she hit the sewer water. She groaned as he lifted her into his arms. He’d have liked to sling her over a shoulder so that he could have at least one arm free to aim and shoot, but he didn’t trust the pressure on her diaphragm. Cursing, he shoved his gun in his belt and opted to cradle her, baby-style, though it was damn frustrating that her body protected him more than he could protect her.
The tunnel came to a crossroads of refuse, and Zoe took the left path toward a buzzing bass din accented by a high whine—somebody’s idea of music.
She stopped at a metal ladder directly under the noise. “This one,” she said, though Adam had to read the words on her lips to understand her.
The girl climbed, and Adam wondered briefly if he would have to sling Talia over his shoulder after all, but Talia struggled against him and reached for the bars herself, scaling the ladder one rung ahead of him. When she neared the top, several arms reached down to lift her out of the hole as if they expected her.
Adam cleared the hole and found himself in a dark alleyway, damp concrete buildings jutting several stories high on either side of him. A group of people carried Talia into the back entrance of the nearest one. A wave of distorted electronica poured from the door.
He leaped out of the manhole and followed, fingers itching to draw his gun again, but cautious reason overruled the impulse.
Wait and see.
He entered into the back of what appeared to be a club, a heavy metal door thumping closed behind him. The smell of stale cigarette smoke clung to the doorway and pervaded the air of the interior. The walls were painted black, as was the concrete floor, and papered with layers of bright, cheap flyers, which lent the underriding gloom of the place a decidedly happy spin.
Likewise the music was bottomed by a murky bass beat and overlain with melodic guitar effects that would’ve been downright perky if the tone hadn’t been subtly dissonant. A woman’s voice crooned the melody with ethereal, if synthetic, perfection.
A group of decidedly counterculture people clustered around an open door to the left, some swathed in black, like Zoe, their club attire selected for mood and show, rather than dancing. One wore a variation of the goth getup, sexed up with a corset and fishnet stockings, while another paid homage to piercing, including a rather tribal stretching of his earlobes around metal rings in addition to the series of studs he wore across his eyebrows and in his lip.
Like the music, their expressions were contradictory, evoking a strange combination of nihilism and concern about Talia’s condition.
Adam craned around the group, glimpsed Talia’s telltale white-blonde hair in the noir hole of what must have been a dressing room
, and pushed his way through the crowd.
A transparent oxygen mask was in place over Talia’s mouth and nose, and a young woman in jeans and a T-shirt crouched at Talia’s back with a stethoscope. How she hoped to hear anything in this squealing noise was beyond him. The doctor attached a white clip to Talia’s finger; the clip connected to a digital reading, probably for pulse and blood oxygen levels.
Adam searched Talia’s eyes for signs of distress, though her skin was pinking nicely. “Are you okay?”
Her eyes wrinkled at the outer edges in answer, an attempt at a smile, and she raised a thumbs-up.
The tension in Adam’s neck and shoulders eased somewhat.
Adam addressed the doctor. “Is she going to be okay?” He hadn’t meant his voice to sound so demanding, so stern. He knew a little gratitude was in order.
The woman’s gaze shifted from Talia to Adam. “Give me a minute, yeah?”
Adam stepped back—patience was not one of his strong suits. “What about this Abigail? Where is she?”
“I’ll take you,” a voice piped up from behind him.
Adam turned. Zoe, again.
“I’m not leaving Talia. Bring Abigail here.”
Zoe raised a thin eyebrow. “What—you think we’re going to hurt her?”
“You might not, but the people who did this to her might be behind us.” At the very least, they had to have discovered the concealed elevator by now and its route to the sewer. This building was not that far away from his loft.
Zoe waved away the concern. “Nah. Abigail would have seen it.”
“Who is she? Has she got the sewer wired or something?”
Zoe snorted. “She’s got the whole world wired. Come with me and meet her yourself.”
Adam looked down at Talia. He couldn’t just leave her here.
Talia lifted a hand and waved him away. When still he hesitated, she shoo-shooed him again. “Oh, go on.” Her voice rasped into a cough.
“Please,” the doctor added, her eyes rolling.
Damn it. Adam leaned down to Talia’s ear. “Stay alert. Be ready to use the dark.” And because she managed to retain a hint of sweetness in her hair after the foul crawl in the sewer, he dropped a kiss on her jawline.
Dark and Dangerous: Six-in-One Hot Paranormal Romances Page 78
