by Tanith Frost
Daniel’s not fighting back.
Why should he? He knows I’ve created a diversion but probably thinks it’s to cover my escape. And now he’s faced with the consequences of what he sees as his failure to protect those he was responsible for.
He thinks he deserves this.
I push the vent cover out of place and drop down into the room. Neither of them notices me until I let out a piercing whistle. Hugo halts his punches and turns to me, and now I can feel his ill will, burning hot and unfettered.
Daniel’s eyes widen. He’s in worse shape than I realized—nose broken, one eye swollen, the front of his shirt soaked with blood from the reopened wound under his ribs.
“Go!” I point at the vent, then throw myself at Hugo. Daniel might not be willing to fight him, but I am if it means we have a chance to make it out of here. Hugo is literally half the vampire he used to be. I can handle this.
He grabs me by my hair and swings me around, slamming me into the wall before letting go.
Maybe I can’t handle this.
I leap back to my feet.
Hugo’s between me and the vent. Daniel pauses. His power swells. “Hugo. Stand down. You don’t want to do this.”
Hugo’s throat gurgles. “Hhhhyeah,” he breathes.
Either Hugo is too strong or too far gone for Daniel’s tricks to reach him. There’s no way to convince him to end this peacefully.
I dodge his next blow, aimed at my chest, but he kicks out a leg, blindingly quick, and I fall to the floor. I try to tuck into a roll that will carry me past him, but he brings his weight down on my back, crushing my spine with one knee. He grabs my hair again and pulls, bending my back into a painful bow, trying to break me so he can get back to his true mission.
“Stop,” Daniel orders again.
Hugo’s grip weakens. Only for a second, but it’s enough. I buck hard and throw his weight off me, though he takes a chunk of hair from the back of my scalp with him. I twist away and back to my feet, ready to flee, but he’s shaken off whatever momentary effect Daniel had on him. He attacks me again.
He’s bigger than me and would be physically stronger if not for his injuries. I’m near my best. I should be able to win this. But each time I throw a punch, he’s ready. Each time I dodge one of his lunges, he’s ready with a countermeasure that I don’t have time to avoid. Within moments, blows land on my jaw, my ribs, my left thigh.
Of course he knows how I’ll fight. He’s been training with Daniel for years, and I got all of my moves from him.
Daniel throws himself at Hugo, interrupting his rhythm. They slam to the floor and slide toward the bars.
“Your problem isn’t with her,” Daniel snarls as he pins Hugo’s shoulders to the floor and rests a knee in the hollow of the vampire’s wrecked torso. “I don’t want to hurt you more than they already have, but I swear by the void, I will if you make me.”
“Heee,” Hugo sighs. His eyes are bright with agony.
Daniel looks as if he’s been slapped.
“Ackheh.” Hugo pushes back. Daniel gets to his feet and backs away. “Hhho.”
Daniel’s hands are shaking at his sides. “Aviva, get out of here.”
“I can’t leave you again.”
He turns to me, fists clenched, eyes shining with tears. “And I can’t do this in front of you. I can’t worry what you’ll think of me. I can’t—”
It’s enough. I run toward the wall and use my momentum to climb up into the ventilation shaft. I don’t want to leave him, but I have to trust that he’ll do the right thing, that he can handle this, that he’ll be right behind me.
I can’t see what’s happening and can’t turn around until I reach the crossroads. I can hear, though. Punches, snarls, a cracking noise, and a helpless scream. I push myself forward more quickly, ready to turn back and fight again if I need to.
And then all is silent. I sit at the junction, knees pulled up to my chest, trying not to shiver as I wait.
A slow sliding noise, followed by a thump. And again.
Daniel comes into view, pulling himself by one arm, teeth gritted against his pain. He won’t look at me. “Go,” he whispers.
“Are you okay?” I ask, and immediately feel like an idiot. He’s not okay. And even after his physical wounds heal, he might never be.
“Please,” he says. “Just go.”
I can’t fix this for him, but I can do my damnedest to get him out of here.
I turn left toward the entrance to the servants’ passage and lead him deeper into the darkness.
30
We’re free of the vents now, walking through empty hallways. The waterfall crashes up ahead, filling the air with thunder, drowning out anything else.
“Almost there,” I tell Daniel. “Are you ready to swim?”
He’s cradling his left forearm in his right hand. “Not yet. Give me a hand?”
“Okay. Sit for a minute, and try to relax.” The words come naturally, but they’re unnecessary. He’s been through this before, as have I. A dislocated shoulder is incredibly painful, but he’s got so many injuries that, at this point, I don’t know how his brain can sort out one from the others. I massage the muscles beside his neck, encouraging them to let go of their protective tension, then move down over the injured shoulder. His body is willing to be healed. There’s none of the violent, dramatic yanking that the procedure always seems to involve on television. With a little careful manipulation, the joint is restored.
It’ll hurt like a bitch until he has a chance to rest and heal, though, and maybe to feed, but at least he can move.
“Thank you,” he says.
His voice is completely flat. So is his expression. Whatever is going on in his mind right now, he’s holding it in. That’s good… for now. But it’s going to have to come out some time, or it will poison him.
“Straight through there,” I tell him. “Take a look and see what you think.”
He walks ahead—quickly, but his steps lack their usual confidence and determination. I don’t think he’s scared. I’m just not convinced that this matters to him at all.
“Don’t move.” Bethany’s commanding voice comes from behind us, overpowering the rush of the waterfall.
I turn slowly, hands in the air—not surrendering, just showing that I’m not armed. She’s holding a knife in each hand, but she’s alone. At least that’s a mercy.
“Where’s everyone else?” I ask, as if I didn’t know.
“Dealing with a little issue. I assume you’re responsible for that?”
No point lying now. “I didn’t kill them if that’s what you mean. I only wanted to release them. They did everything else.”
Bethany nods and steps closer. “It’s for the best.”
“What do you mean?”
She gives me a coy smile, then looks past me and frowns. “Daniel. I’m disappointed in you. After all we’ve been through since your arrival. And you…” She looks back to me and presses her lips together, shaking her head. “I should have known better than to try to save you from yourself. A vampire who was so recently foolish enough to feed from a werewolf and carry his power in her was a lost cause from the start.” She tilts her head to one side and tosses a knife in the air, flipping it and catching it. “Do you know why I gave you that chance?”
I take a step backward. I don’t want to think about it, but I know the answer. “Because it felt good to find someone who experienced the world as you did. Who had similar struggles. Who understood.” I swallow hard. This might be the truest thing I’ve revealed to any of Tempest’s vampires. “It would be very tempting to trust someone like that. Even to like them.”
“Indeed.” Bethany shrugs. “Lesson learned.” She throws the knife at me without warning. I dodge out of the way, and it whizzes by my left arm and skitters across the floor. She throws herself at me before I’ve fully regained my balance, the other knife in hand.
She’s strong, and she’s angry, but this fight is two again
st one. Even weak and injured, Daniel will be an asset. I catch sight of him going for the knife.
But she doesn’t have to beat us to win. She just has to keep us here until reinforcements arrive.
I have to reach deep to find my fire, and it rises reluctantly. Maybe it knows that this is cheating. I don’t care. Fair doesn’t matter right now. Nor do past kindnesses. Bethany might not have enjoyed it, might even have mourned later and resented Lachlan for it, but she’d have stood by and watched while Hugo tore Daniel apart. She’d hurt me now. This isn’t friendship, no matter how badly I might have wanted it to be.
The fight makes it hard to concentrate on drawing out my fire. She’s nothing like anyone I’ve fought before—hers are precision movements, as much a dance as a fight. She darts in, slices at me, then is out of reach before I can react, flitting like a hummingbird.
Still, I motion for Daniel to stay back. I don’t want him to have to hurt anyone else tonight. It’s my turn now.
The golden light burns hotter in the depths of the void. Rising. Now that I’m aware of how my powers affect each other, I feel it—the tension that still exists between them even though they’ve made peace, the challenge that makes the void in me stronger.
Bethany’s steps falter. Her eyes widen as her lips twist into a grimace, and she presses her free hand against her left temple as if I’ve struck a physical blow there. “Freak,” she snarls, and her voice catches. I kick out, sweeping her legs out from under her, and wrench the knife from her weakened grip.
Snarling, slobbering growls reach us over the roar of the waterfall. I look up as Bethany rolls out of reach. One of the zombie creatures appears in the doorway only to be jostled aside by another. Then a third.
I back away. Bethany grins and climbs to her feet.
The corpses enter the room, carrying the scent of roasted flesh and burnt fabric with them along with the hint of rotten egg and syrupy sweetness I smelled in the lab. Their quick, shuffling movements send them stumbling, and they snap at those who bump into them, sinking teeth into flesh, screaming at each other.
But though Bethany is standing near the door, and though they’re giving her wild, enraged looks from their pale eyes, they’re not attacking her.
The crowd parts, and Lachlan moves to the front of the group. The pack of zombies lets out a stream of growls and hisses, but falls silent when he raises a hand to them. His eyes are fixed on me, though, and his cold hatred cuts into me as surely as Bethany’s knife ever could.
Bethany laughs at my dumbstruck expression. “You didn’t think I was stupid enough to tell you everything, did you? They’re useless as food and terribly aggressive, but after proper brain function ceases, they make fine attack dogs for those who know how to control them.” She rubs her forehead and steps back. My fire is still affecting her even at this range.
I expect Lachlan to say something—to accuse me, to congratulate me on slipping under his radar, some other villain-appropriate monologue.
Instead, he raises his right hand and points at me.
The zombies rush forward. I turn and run, grabbing Daniel’s hand as I pass.
We don’t pause to gauge the depth of the water or what lies below. When we hit the edge of the concrete, we jump.
31
I’m frozen and as good as blind. I can’t hear anything but the muffled roar of water. I’m being tossed like goddamn laundry, and I don’t know which direction is up. But I’m conscious, and that’s more than I probably had any right to expect.
I lost my hold on Daniel when we hit the water and the current ripped us apart. We can’t risk trying to surface to search for each other, but we’re not completely helpless. At least, I’m not. Not as long as Daniel’s using his head.
I’m not trying to dampen my power anymore. I need it too badly to keep me conscious and to reduce whatever damage my body has taken from the fall. My focus is on my perceptions now, though. Not on danger, but on Daniel.
A full minute passes, and I feel nothing. Maybe he’s hiding himself from the others—I can’t let myself imagine any other reason for the loss. Then I relax, cease my struggling against the current, and let it carry me, hoping I’m moving toward the way out and not toward becoming trapped somewhere. I bump into a wall, and the force of the water crushes me against it.
Don’t panic.
I feel my way along, clawing with numbing fingers, and find the entrance to what feels like a tunnel. The current catches me again, sending me tumbling and bouncing off the rounded walls.
And there he is. Faint at first. He’s the furthest thing possible from a light at the end of the tunnel—a source of dark energy, far ahead. With that as my North Star, I can navigate better, and I pull myself along, kicking hard, trying to catch up.
The current slows, then flows backward for a few terrifying seconds before falling still.
They’ve closed off the waterfall. They’re coming after us.
I swim harder, eyes clenched shut. I can’t call for Daniel—even when I swim upward there’s no air in here to breathe. But he’s stopped. I’m catching up. My hand brushes against something, and I grab on. He pulls away, startled, then reaches for me.
The water’s not moving now. We’re just floating in the darkness. I barely feel Daniel’s hands tracing the contours of my face. I don’t know whether he can actually feel the details, but I’m sure he feels me—my void, my fire, whatever it was during his last fight that assured him I was there, strengthening him. I wish the current would move again so I could just hold on to him and let it sweep us away together, but it won’t. If we’re going to move forward, we have to be able to let go.
He tugs on my arm, urging me on in the direction we were going, then slowly releases me. It’s quiet now. Eerily so. I keep my focus on him, staying close as he leads the way. The blind leading the blind, I guess, but at least we know we’re not alone.
The tunnel narrows, and soon we’re struggling to squeeze through a passage clogged with muck and plant life that tangles around my limbs as if it’s trying to hold me back. I touch bars in front of me, and my chest squeezes tight in claustrophobic panic.
The tunnel’s closed off. There’s no way through.
But Daniel is above me now, still searching. We can’t give up. Not now.
I follow, and moments later, my head breaks the surface. Wherever we are, it’s completely dark. Water splashes beside me.
“Here,” Daniel whispers. I feel for him, and his hands close around my wrists and haul me onto a ledge of rock. The ceiling is too low to stand, but we can sit and move and speak. He pulls me close as soon as I’m out, and I press my face to the soaked, slime-covered front of his shirt, reassuring myself of his presence.
“Where do you think we are?” I ask.
“I don’t know. Hold on.” He lets go of me, and I hear him moving around. The air is colder than the water was, and damp. A slight breeze passes over me, and I shiver.
“It’s just an air pocket,” he says. “Probably filled with water when everything’s flowing properly. There’s another pool on the other side of the gate. We’ll have to go back in to get out of here.”
“No, wait. This air had to get in here somehow, right?” I can’t see anything, but as I explore the silence of the cave, I catch the faintest sound—a soft squeaking to my left. I reach out and find more empty space above ground that tilts steeply upward. It’s probably a dead end, but Daniel will pull me back if I get stuck. I haul myself along on my stomach over slippery, uneven stone. The walls close in around me, then open up overhead. I stand and reach out. This space is larger.
“It’s okay,” I call back. “Just don’t get stuck.”
Daniel follows but doesn’t speak. It’s my turn to lead, now.
I take a few steps with my arms outstretched and touch a rough wall covered in smooth outcroppings. The noises are louder now, coming from directly overhead.
“Bats,” I whisper. “And if they can get into the cave…”
> “There’s a chance we can get out,” Daniel says. “It’s worth a shot.”
“Can you make the climb with your shoulder hurt?”
“I’m not going to let it stop me. You go first, though. Do you need a boost?”
I touch the wall, feeling for hand- and footholds. “No. Just give me a minute.”
I’m glad I don’t have to speak or breathe when I reach the top, where the air is thick with the scent of guano. The bats are more agitated now, disturbed by this intrusion into their nesting area.
The ground beneath my feet is an unpleasant mix of slippery and crunchy, and I have to move carefully. I know where I’m going, though. There’s a stronger breeze on my face now and a hint of light.
The entrance to the cave starts several metres off the steeply sloping ground, but the vertical crevice looks as if it might be just wide enough for us to squeeze through. I scramble up the incline and listen. No voices. No vampires I can sense otherwise, either.
I make my way back into the darkness of the cave. “Daniel,” I whisper when I think I’m close to the drop-off. “We’re getting out. No more swimming, but hold your breath anyway.”
I listen as his shoes scrape over the rocks. Whatever pain he’s in, he doesn’t let out a sound. That fucking stoicism. We have to get somewhere he can rest, though, and soon. Even a diamond will crack under enough pressure.
Bats flit around us, but their own incredible perceptions keep them from crashing into us. I climb the rock face again, pause to listen, and finally squeeze through the narrow passage and take a deep breath of air that passes through leafless trees in a gentle breeze. A thin crust of sparkling snow crunches beneath my feet.
We’re well into the pre-dawn hours of a frozen, cloudless night. The stars overhead shine bright, welcoming us back to freedom.
It’s not totally dark, though. We may be in the woods, but the perfect darkness of the night is tainted by man-made lights shining in the near distance.
