I nodded, heart pounding at the fear in his voice. The air grew thick around us, heavy with moisture. Minute shards of ice floating in the air pricked at my face and neck. The sound of crackling, of a layer of ice solidifying onto my cloak and hair, sent a sizzle of fear racing up my spine.
We raced with every last bit of energy we had, reaching the cave as the thickest clouds swirled down the rocks, pooled on the ground, and billowed outward. Ice formed solid and clear on the rocks, making instant icicles on anything it touched. The bare trees glimmered as if encased in glass. Branches shattered. The ground snapped and split, the snow forming fractals. All around, the heavy silence was broken only by the crack of a snapping tree or the slushing of the water as it froze over.
Ashton’s arm slipped around my waist and he held me to him, shaking. We stole deeper into the cave, leaning against the rough rocks, clutching to one another.
“I have never seen anything so beautiful and so deadly in my life.” I looked at him—and at the pale of his skin, the blue of his lips, the chattering of his teeth. “We made it.”
“Almost, love,” he said softly, his gaze darting over my shoulder.
“What?” A sound behind me made my stomach drop. I turned, a scream catching in my throat. Deeper in the cave, a tunnel led into darkness, but it was the forms slumped against the walls that nearly made my heart stop. Blue, ragged bodies twitched against the rock or flailed on the ground. The nearest jerked at my gasp, its roving black eyes locking onto mine. “Tremblers…here?”
19
Ashton
There was no light. No sun pierced the ice storm outside the cave. Wind, thick and frigid, seeped along the tunnel shaft whistling softly as it drifted past them. Keeping an eye on the immobile Tremblers, Ashton panted against the cold biting his skin and rode out the shiver rattling through him. He paused at a sound. Deep within the darkness, the uneven noise set his senses on edge. Unable to see if it was above or behind as the echo warbled around them, he gritted his teeth, pressing onward.
“Do you think there are more?” Charlotte’s voice floated to him in the darkness. Wary, but controlled.
“If there are, I hope they are as unenthusiastic as the first one.” Ashton shook his head in an attempt to right his mind. Mottled with cold and pain, he fought to keep his wits. His ice-laden clothes crunched with every step, dropping sheets of frost at his feet. He slid with Charlotte against the rock wall, deeper into the darkness of the cave. Arm across her small shoulders, he tried not to lean on her as he limped. Crackling hair sticking to his face, he fought for balance despite his injured leg. Another knock deeper in the cave and Ashton’s hand twitched, reaching for the sword no longer at his side.
“You are certain the entrance is in here?” Charlotte moved against him, her grip steady on his arm. “You’ve been here before?”
“Y-yes, I believe so.” Ashton blinked the melting ice from his lashes. Reaching into his vest pocket, he located and lit the igniter. The shivering of his hands cast a shaking shadow on the stone walls.
Charlotte squinted, raising her hand as if the flame were the sun. The black rings once again lined her irises. The chill of her body next to his made him wonder if she, in her constantly cold state, suffered the bone deep ache that assaulted his joints with every step. “Are you all right…are you in p-pain?”
“Just slower.” The meager light from the igniter lit up the wisp of white vapor that escaped with her words. She nodded to the prone figures on the ground. The Tremblers did not move, merely watched their progress with unblinking coal-black eyes. “I fear I may be doing what they are. Shutting down.”
The shadows moved with them, skittering along the uneven path hewn from the cliff’s stone. Light for only a foot or two in front of them, bodies and menacing faces emerged from the darkness. A woman lay on the ground in the long white skirts and apron of a nurse, her face turned to the wall as her arms bent at wrong angles and twitched when he and Charlotte passed.
Ashton raised his arm, illuminating a figure curled on the floor.
A young man, tufts of hair missing from his head, grimaced at them when the light slid across his ravaged face.
Charlotte’s breaths paced up next to him, her eyes wide.
“Quiet and slow,” Ashton whispered. “Let us not rile them up.”
They edged past another Trembler.
It stood upright, frozen to the rock, its legs and torso encased in ice with only its thin, blue arms free. The poor man moaned, his face snow white and glossy as if made of glass. His eyes, unable to close, reflected the flame as they passed.
Ashton’s stomach tumbled, the bile rising at what once had been a man. “How are there any out here?” he whispered. “There was no one else here. That was the point of choosing this location.” Unless Hunley brought others in. More than the fellow escapees of The Order. Perhaps there was some sort of outbreak here? The thought made his chest tight. Charlotte sagged in his grasp. Already showing signs of the affliction’s grip on her, she could not run any more. This had to be a safe place. “It makes no sense why there are any Tremblers here at all.”
Charlotte shook her head, her calm almost as unnerving to Ashton as the Tremblers. She turned to face him. “Are any of their faces familiar? Could they be someone whom you knew…helped to get here?”
“I don’t know.” Ashton stepped over another Trembler. He was dripping. His coat, his gloves, his hair, all of it thawing as he went.
“It is all right,” she whispered, her voice eerily calm. “They are dormant. Like the animals at the laboratory.”
“The one you broke into with Riley?” Ashton asked, fighting back the pain throbbing through his thigh. Something occurred to him, an errant thought that he struggled to snag despite the weakness from loss of blood and cold.
“It is why I did not know.” Small tremors wracked her slight frame yet again. “Why I did not sense they were here.”
“I should have died.” Ashton turned, squinting back into the darkness from which they came.
“Well, yes, it was a close call, but…” Charlotte’s voice fell away. “What is wrong?”
“No, Charlie, I am not freezing to death in these clothes.”
“I do not understand.”
Behind them, a tearing sound echoed. Ashton froze, panting as he listened. Then he heard it. A shuffle. Faint, but clearly the footfall of someone or something.
“Look, Charlie,” Ashton hissed, propelling her faster down the cave. “I cannot see my breath any longer. My clothes are dripping.”
“Oh, no.” Charlotte cut across him, worry furrowing her brows. “You are getting warmer.”
“Yes, and that means—”
Multiple moans warbled through the dark. Guttural at first, rising to piercing shrieks.
Ashton ground his jaw, pulling on Charlotte.
“How?” Charlotte gasped next to him, her face pulled tight with tension. She winced, struggling to support his limping gait. “How is it getting warmer?”
“I have my suspicions.” Ashton grunted, shining the igniter’s flame ahead of them. Movement in the shadows—lurching, flailing forms loomed just beyond his sight.
Charlotte’s hand went to her head, the pain evident on her features. “They are waking.”
“How long do we have?” Ashton pushed himself, ignoring the pain flashing up his leg into his thigh. He fought to stay conscious, aware that the heat of his breath, the warmth of his blood, compelled the Tremblers. He released the igniter’s lever, plunging them into inky black. “We must be close to the end of the tunnel,” he whispered. “Can you sense them now, Charlie?”
“Y-yes,” Charlotte said, her voice cracking. Her body wrenched in his grip. She doubled over, a moan escaping her and joining with the others. “And they are…the need, it’s so overwhelming.”
The tortured moans rose again, the echoes bouncing around them from all angles, every hidden space. In the black of the tunnels, forms lurched out of crevices. Feti
d breath blew from the rotting creatures, close enough to hear the snap of their jaws. A hand, slick with wet, closed around his neck. The Trembler’s loose skin slipped around the bones of its fingers. He jerked away, lashed out with his arm, and threw the creature aside.
“Hurry, Charlie,” Ashton urged, his face tight with pain. “Keep ahead of them.”
The squeal of metal sounded up ahead, at least a hundred yards.
Ashton risked the flame once more, and the outline of a heavy metal door appeared from the shadows. A sliver of light slipped across the floor. The wailing increased, the afflicted excited by the light and noise. In the meager light of the flame, Ashton’s eyes widened at a dozen flailing bodies. They wandered, gnashing their teeth, grasping with hands barely covered with strips of skin.
“Help,” Charlotte shouted, dragging him towards the light. “Help us, please!”
The door slammed shut, rendering them blind in the cave with the Tremblers. A metal bolt slid across, its finality echoing.
“Hunley!” Ashton yelled. He tripped, his bad leg folding beneath his body. Charlotte fell with him. He crawled, floundering for the door along the filthy ground. Cold slime pushed between his fingers. Grit bit at his knees and palms.
Charlotte’s baton ratcheted out, the pieces lighting up with flickering silver threads as they locked into place. The power crawling from the mechanica in her hand wavered, sparked out, and then glowed again more dimly. She was weakening.
“Prudence!” Ashton found the door, banged on it with both fists, yelling as the shrill cries of the Tremblers grew closer. “Let us in!”
Charlotte yelled, grunting as she swiped at the bodies closing in, flashes as her baton delivered ever dimming blows. “Ash,” she panted, going down on one knee, completely spent.
“Pru,” Ashton shouted, sliding down along the pitted metal to the ground. “Please…”
Charlotte’s baton flickered out, the outline of her form burned into his mind. She screamed, a sound full of pain and fear, and then nothing.
20
The bright orange of fire blasted at the end of the tunnel. The Tremblers ambled towards it, leaving Ashton and I crumpled at the metal door. It clanged, the lock released, and the wheel spun in its center. Light from inside the facility stole across the filthy floor, silhouetting two large men.
Too weak to resist, I tried to bat the manacles away, but the metal clamped down on both wrists. The man hefted me over his shoulder and carried me down a concrete-lined corridor. The second man grabbed Ashton’s arm, dragging him behind us, oblivious to the trail of crimson he left. The metal door closed behind us, hissing with an air seal. I craned my neck, struggling to see where they were taking us. No doors or windows. We proceeded down at a steep angle and then I heard water—the splash of our steps as we waded through what appeared in the flickering bulbs of the corridor to be flooding. Worried for Ashton, I squinted in the wan illumination. Head lolling to the side, free arm dragging through the water, he did not stir.
We pushed through another door, this one higher off the ground like the hatches inside Wind Reaper vessels. I tried to call out to Ashton, but my strangled words came out in a gargle. The man holding me recoiled, tossing me off of his shoulder. I hit the solid ground with a splash, and all the breath whooshed out from me in a gasp.
“Put her in. Hurry.” The other man rushed over. They pushed me with their boots, sending pain through my ribs as they rolled me into a dark space.
“W-wait,” I stammered. My hands clung to the side trying to stop them. “Stop!”
My fingers flared with pain as a boot heel met my knuckles. I let go, screaming as a door shut, leaving me in complete black. Darkness pressed in on all sides. Disoriented, I blinked, widening my eyes, desperate for any shape or shadow. Arms flailing as much as possible with the shackles, my fingers found a smooth, solid wall. I was trapped in a space no bigger than a closet. “No, no, no. No, please!”
Mist erupted from the corners and engulfed me with a cold so deep it seared my lungs with a chemical taste. I slammed my fists against the wall of the chamber over and over, not caring that my bones shrieked in pain with every blow. I had to get out. I couldn’t breathe. Chest tight, pulse pounding in my brain, the panic tore out of me in a ragged scream. “Let me out of here!” My voice echoed back, deflected by the metal walls enclosing me. “Please…” Sobs tightened my throat. “I can’t…I can’t…”
Memories of the watery tank in Arecibo’s lab squeezed the air from me in gasps of fear. Death’s dark fingers wrapped around my mind, stealing all reason. Pain and terror flooded my thoughts. The shock treatments. Arecibo’s hollow gaze as he tortured me. My screams rising in bubbles.
Dread flared up my spine, and I pounded the wall again, tasting blood with my screams.
Mind shredded, soul trembling, I sank to my knees as the weight of darkness smothered my sobs. Alone and broken, I hugged myself, shaking. I couldn’t survive this again. I wasn’t strong enough.
Feeling for the wires that used to sedate me in my liquid prison, I found nothing embedded in my skin. I was not in a fluid. I was on my own two feet. Hands to my face I reassured myself there was no breathing mask. No tubes down my throat. “He is not here.” I told myself through whimpers. I was not in that nightmare. “Arecibo doesn’t have you again.”
A mechanical whir vibrated below my feet, and I stilled, barely able to control the shaking of my hands as I reached out, feeling for the vents in the floor. Another burst of frigid vapor rushed through my fingers. And then, a crack of light against the floor. I leaned in, desperate for its touch. The side of the chamber rose, sliding up, leaving only glass separating me from the bizarre scene.
Ashton struggled in the grip of the two men near a bank of levers. A woman yelled at him, her voice lost behind the clear barrier separating me from the room.
I banged on the glass, but they did not turn. I recognized her from the news bureau article in the journal Ashton had shown me. Professor Prudence Hunley brandished a cane at Ashton, and the men pulling on his arms dragged him back to an examination table.
“Help!” I coughed with the raw pain in my throat. “Please!”
Blinking in the light, I took in the snaking lines of glass tubing, boiling liquids in myriad flasks atop burners, walls lined with every manner of tools both mechanical and surgical, and the metal tables draped with sheets. A laboratory. This was Hunley’s lair. My breath fogged the glass, and I wiped the forming frost from the surface, squinting to see.
“You do not understand what you’ve done,” Ashton mouthed, his face full of worry. “To imprison her like that, Hunley. She will react badly to the confinement…” I did not catch the rest as he turned, saw me, and froze.
Hunley followed his gaze and startled, her brows pulling down over dark eyes. Hands shaking, she signaled to her men, and they released Ashton.
He hobbled over, his leg bandaged, blood seeping through the bindings. Palms to the glass, he spoke, but the muffled words escaped me as I glanced over his shoulder at Hunley. Her hand slid to a dial and she licked her lips, watching us, seemingly debating. Her gaze went to an object on the table, and I gritted my teeth, realizing it was my baton.
Despite the cold rush of mist at my feet, I sank down, huddled as if folding into myself.
Ashton followed me to the floor, the meat of his fist banging on the glass. He turned and his muffled scream was unmistakable. “Let her out!” He faced me, his eyes tracing my form, anger lining his features.
Hands to my temples, I fought frantically to form a plan before she froze me completely. The mechanica in my hands sparked weakly, a flicker that warbled in the dark chamber. Deep moans bubbled from my throat. The forlorn emptiness of the Trembling Sickness seeped into my chest and squeezed my heart painfully. It slowed, the beats so far apart, my breath so shallow.
The poor half corpses in the tunnel flashed in my mind. Would they throw me out there with them? Would I freeze to the ground, my eyes staring o
ut at the icy wasteland? I would die here if I did not think of something.
The mechanica whirred in my head. I was not the debutante needing to be rescued. I had lived through too much to be that girl anymore. I refused to fold in on myself and drift into oblivion. Not ever again. I had to save myself.
And then the rage churned. A slow boil of anger in my gut that took me over, steeled my nerves, sharpened my thoughts. The tone started in my head, dull at first. An echo that focused to a single painful high-pitched throbbing. The mechanica at my temples warmed, then burned with excruciating heat as all the power left me, and every fiber of my body gave what it had. The glass between me and Ashton vibrated ever so slightly.
“Wait…” He scrambled backward, his eyes wide as he mouthed something. “Charlotte, stop!”
Palms flat on the barrier, I cried out, the sound tearing across my mind as it had when I’d fought the Trembler Knights in Outer City. Beneath my hands, the glass shook, undulating with every pulse of the tone.
And then a voice echoed throughout the chamber, Hunley’s words scratchy through the speaker grate in the wall. “Look at me,” she demanded. “Blackburn, look up!”
The trance broken, I fell away from the glass, shivering uncontrollably as the strength in my legs gave way, completely spent. I locked gazes with her angry one.
Piercing, her eyes showed an obvious intelligence as well as barely concealed fear.
“Why are you doing this?” I managed.
“I would be a fool not to contain Arecibo’s Dark Wrath. That is what they call you, isn’t it? Your victims.” Her thin lips curled into a snarl, and she watched me intently through the glass like a repulsive specimen.
“N-not who I am.” My voice broke. “Not any m-more.” Shivers rattled along my entire body, and I tasted blood. My head jerked, banging painfully on the wall behind me.
“That is not what it looks like to me,” Hunley said evenly, the wisps of hair framing her heart-shaped face trembled, belying her outward show of calm.
Chasm Walkers Page 16
