He lifted me up and off of him. Pulling me off the bed, he laced his fingers around mine and led me across the bedroom to the wardrobe.
A smile tugged at my cheeks. “You have a secret passage in your wardrobe?”
“What? No.” He opened the door and rummaged through the rack of clothes; he pulled out a heavy blue frock coat. “You’ll needs this.”
I pulled the coat on as we walked, back across the bedroom and to the fireplace. He pressed his hand against the moulding, some seam against the dark wood paneled wall and the marble mantel.
A narrow door swung open. It wasn’t so much a door as it was a recessed panel in the wall; no higher than my knees.
He cocked his head down. “Go first so I can close it behind us. You’ll have to crawl, I’d say, twenty yards before you can stand. Wait for me there.”
“Where does it take me?”
“Freedom.” He grinned, quickly pulling me against him and kissing me. “At least, temporary freedom.”
I trusted him. I didn’t have any reason to, other than sweet words and an intoxicating touch, but I could see it in his eyes. I could feel it in my soul.
And so I dropped to my knees. I crawled forward, into the dark, thick, unknown.
Twenty-Eight
We were a bolt of lightening through the dark.
The tunnel led to a staircase; the steps down to a cramped, bricked in hollow against the house. There was only enough room for us to stand—extremely close together—and a motorcycle.
He only had one helmet, which he insisted I wear, and then we were roaring down a narrow road; mostly free of snow, but still enough where he had to swerve around drifts and debris fields of cracked ice. He took the curves with ease, his body hunkered down over the front of the bike. It was like this was his element: wild and free.
It wasn’t, however, mine. I clung to him, my hands rooted against this chest. The speed took my breath away and the rumble between my legs only reenforced how much I craved him. I needed him to fuck me; I needed to feel him inside me.
But…okay, yeah, a motorcycle ride was cool, too.
He drove for miles. I had no idea which direction we were going or how far we’d actually traveled. The sky was the color of ancient slate, muted and faded, and it seemed lower here than it did back on Earth. If there was a sun here—if we shared the same sun—it was buried behind the clouds. There was no warmth. Only shadows.
The road eventually brought us to a junction: the leftmost area was straighter and plunged through a snow blanketed field. The right path dipped immediately down a steep hill. From what I could see, it was all covered in snow; not plowed, not shoveled, only tamped down by vehicle tracks.
Asher flipped up the visor on my helmet. “Hanging in there, love?”
“You’re going right, aren’t you?”
“Of course. They can’t follow our tracks because everyone takes this road. Look left, the snow is still pristine.” He leaned close and kissed the tip of my nose. “It’s not much further. We’ll get you warmed up once we get to the meeting.”
Meeting. Um…I knew my expression was blank, probably somewhat dazed and listless. I managed to spit out, “Meeting?”
“Just hold on to me.” He slid the visor back into place. “You have no idea how good it feels to have your arms around me like this; your legs wrapped around me.”
“I can think of a few ways it could feel even better.”
“Saucy girl.” He guided my arms back around his chest. “Save that fire for later.”
He didn’t give me a chance to respond. The bike roared back to life and we lurched forward, recklessly flying down the hill like someone was in hot pursuit.
Maybe they were.
He only stopped one other time, to navigate around a sharp turn, and then urged the bike on down the road. We were probably at top speed or, at least, as fast as he wanted to risk in the conditions. I had no idea where we were, no point on reference. For all I knew, he was taking me out into the woods to slit my throat.
I tightened my grasp around his slim body. No. I couldn’t even pep talk myself into thinking that; the bond between us was too strong.
And then it hit me. I could feel him.
Not just in the physical sense, but in some recess of my brain, an awareness had sparked to life. It was as if I could feel his pulse pounding in time with mine or the gentle reverberations of each beat of his heart. I felt him: his aura, his being. I knew how much he wanted me, how deep his desire ran.
My cheeks burned.
Gradually the road lost its cover of snow and instead turned to pitted, pockmarked streets. At the speed we were going, it was hard to tell if the roads had once been cobblestone or if we were riding over broken-up concrete. Whatever it was, we were rumbling over mud pits and puddles; grit was splashing out from the wheels. It was gross. I longed for the days before the Division, back when civilization had snowplows and treated the roads with deicing chemicals before the snow even hit.
Asher guided the bike to a narrow alleyway and hopped off, holding out his hand out to me. “This is our stop.”
“Where are we?”
“Come By Chance. It’s all that’s left of a fishing village; in times past, it was one of the richest, most profitable settlements in Serata. This is all that’s left.”
It was a husk; a wet, gloomy pile of shit next to a frozen body of water. Maybe once it was prosperous, but for now, it was nothing more than a few dilapidated buildings and a slew of rubble. Everywhere I looked was a pile of wood and brick; the neat lines of stone foundations left behind whatever disaster befell this place. Nobody walked the streets. The only sound that met my ears was the wind: it whistled through gaps between stones and underneath loose shingles.
It was like the town was dead…but the spirits hadn’t left yet.
I sucked in a sharp breath. I didn’t want to be here.
Asher rolled the bike into the alley and behind a pile of charred brick and gravel. Pulling a tarp down from a low beam, he looked at me and smiled. “Don’t look so scared. We’re amongst friends.”
I tried to smile back, but I couldn’t. My face was too cold; my body in too much of a panic. Sure, we were in a town with a name—Come By Chance—but I had no clue where that was. My reliance was fully on Asher; without him, I’d be lost. That was true anywhere, but here all the more so. Without him, I was lost. My life was forfeit. I’d never find my way back to the Coulthurst mansion and, even if I did, they likely wouldn’t take me back. Or, if they did, it would only be for as long as it took to find a new buyer and coup come of their investment—
He pulled the helmet off me and tugged me into his arms, crushing his lips to mine. When he pulled away, he said, “Stop worrying.”
“I’m not.” Lie.
“You are, I can read it in your face.” He balanced the helmet on the seat of the bike, and then covered it with a tarp. Obviously, he’d done this before. “Your lips suck in when you’re nervous. You chew on that beautiful, full bottom lip of yours.”
Heat filled my cheeks. I could pretend all day that his words didn’t affect me, but every time—every damn time—my body would react. A blush, a shiver. He knew.
“Next time, I’ll nibble on it.” He tugged the coat hood over my head and downward, so it obscured my face. “Almost there, lovely. Just hold onto me and walk.”
I wasn’t going to argue with him. Sliding my arm around his waist, I let him guide me out of the alley and onto the main street; if you could call it that. There was very little left of the town, though, I could make out foundations and the remains of buildings and factories. It likely was once a huge town, full of cramped housing units and large workshops, but now left to ruin. I wondered how long it had been—from the looks of it, it seemed this place was wiped out long before Asher’s time.
He led me underneath a shattered archway, holding my hands tightly as I picked my way across the rubble and behind a stone wall. We then doubled back several paces before
cutting across a narrow side street. The were houses in this section; wooden monstrosities that seemed like they were held up by sheer will alone. Most had shattered windows and many were blocked with quilts or wood; some had both windows and doors planked over with boards.
It was a boarded up house that Asher brought me to, guiding me down a narrow path between it and the next building. The backyard was grassless and bricks were scattered everywhere. Something about the house, maybe the town itself, felt wrong. It felt…disturbed, like something very bad had happened here—and that feeling never left.
Asher walked up to wooden cellar doors just off the rear of the house. He let go of my hand just long enough to knock on the chipped, red painted exterior, and then pulled me close.
I was immediately grateful. The cold was biting here, rough to the point it took my breath away. Being pressed next to him and tucked beneath his arm was what I needed…it was what I craved. The frigid wind stung my eyes and they watered, a few tears escaped down my cheeks. “This place is hell.”
“It’s likely where hell began.” He leaned over again—this time, keeping me tight against him—and knocked again. His voice against the wood was a near growl. “I know you fuckers are watching. Open the damned door.”
“There’s no one here but the petulant and blind.”
“The perverse will reign eternal.”
The cellar door swung open and a ginger-hair man, with outstandingly large ears that stuck out from the sides of his head like side mirrors on a car, scrambled up to the top step. He looked at me and then at Asher. “You usually come alone.”
“Not anymore.” He slid his hand to my low back, dipping his thumb down even lower, and urged me forward. “Get her close the fire.”
The only reason I was able to walk down those stairs was because Asher was at my side. An odor permeated everything, from the top of the steps to likely into the stone itself; it felt like a dank pit, the kind of place where people waited to die. Pinpricks of pain dug into my skull. I could feel the heaviness in the air, I could hear the wheezes and whispers, the phlegm-filled coughs.
I shuddered. This place wasn’t just where death waited—it was a tomb. They were still here.
The stone corridor emptied into a large room, almost like a centralized hub, with three closed doors. One door had a black X painted across the center. All gaps between wood and stone were tarred shut.
I shuddered.
“This isn’t a great time for you to show up.” The ginger man glanced over his shoulder, leading us through an unmarked door. It led to a staircase, but instead of ascending the stairs, he tipped his boot against a low brick in the wall, while simultaneously pushing on two bricks almost at eye level. “Palmer isn’t here.”
A section of wall slid back. It wasn’t very far, but it was enough for us all to wriggle through. Asher waited while the other man pushed the wall back into place. He said, “Palmer doesn’t always have to be around. What’s he doing? Peacefully protesting the Ascendency again? Because that worked so well the last time.”
“The lashes he got only strengthened his resolve.” He stepped in front of me, leaning over to try and look underneath my hood. “Who is this? Delicate and small, why, Asher, you’ve taken a mate. Or a whore.”
“She’s not any of your concern.” Asher shoved him away from me, positioning his body in front of mine. “And if you want to live to see the sun shine again, that’ll be the last time you call her a whore.”
The man clicked his tongue and snorted, turning on his heel and continuing down the hallway. “You’re the most sentimental former archduke I’ve every known.”
“I’d be surprised if you could even name another archduke, let alone be acquainted with one.”
I touched Asher’s hand, lacing my fingers around his. “Franz Ferdinand.”
“Who?”
“That’s another archduke. His assassination triggered the first world war on Earth in 1914.”
Asher chuckled and squeezed my hand. “See, even she knows more archdukes than you.”
The cramped corridor finally dumped us out into an equally cramped room. To one side was a set of bunked beds, flush with the wall, and the other, a large fireplace. A bizarre network of pipes and tubing ran from the chimney and, instead, seemed to be directed right into the rock above our heads.
And then I noticed the three figures in the room. They were each hunkered back on the beds, as if they were trying to blend in with the shadows. The closest to us slid out into the open and set a large, old-fashioned rifle on a table. “I was starting to think you’d given up on us, Coulthurst.”
“I didn’t. I’ve just been forbidden to leave the estate because of the storm.”
“Ah, yes, the storm.” Another person stepped into the light: a woman with a green eye. Her other eye was covered by a leather patch. “The druids insist this will be the one to end us all. Our suffering. Our supposed guilt; but the Ascendency says that’s nothing but talk of the damned.”
“So, why come all this way? Just to bring a friend to prove you have one?” The man spoke again. He was of almost equal height to Asher and crossed his arms over his chest, leaning against the table. The lower half of his face was covered in a thick beard; the upper flesh was scarred and pockmarked. A large, sunken divot was thickly scarred across his forehead. “You left abruptly last time, like I’d offended you.”
“You did.”
“Then why come back?”
“Because of her.” Asher tugged the hood away from my face. “She changed everything.”
All eyes were on me. The figures standing in the shadows, the ginger and the angry man, the one-eyed woman; all staring. Each judging who I was or how high the value Asher put on me.
They didn’t have long to find out. He put his arm around my waist and pulled me close. “Tobias bought her at the auction house. For me.”
“You don’t say.” The man uncrossed his arms, instead running his hand down the length of his beard. It wasn’t all that impressive, jeez. “And your name, human child?”
“Wren. And I’m not a child.”
“I can see from here that his bracelet is yellow, so you can’t be of much use, whatever you are.”
“She’s mine, Kane, and that’s worth more than any gold coin in your purse.” Asher backed me up closer to the fireplace. The warmth was intoxicating, but the headache I had left me feeling unsteady. I clung to him, trying to mentally help him understand that I wanted him to stay at my side. It felt better that way.
It was better that way. Near him, with him.
Apparently, the other souls in the room though so, too. They drifted in towards us, slinking around each side of the table, effectively boxing us in. It was the four of them—I still didn’t know if the last nameless figure was male or female—against us.
Kane leaned into him, their faces separated by only a few inches, and jabbed his finger to Asher’s chest. “There’s no magical prophecy going to save you, Coulthurst; not any of us. No fair warrior maiden from that poisonous rock through the portals. We’re dying. And now it’s only a matter of time.”
“The Ascendancy is lying to us. You know that.”
“Do I?” Kane shoved him backwards and then turned away, pacing back towards the other side of the room. “I know that last time you were here, you said it was futile. Pointless.”
“The situation has changed.”
Kane snorted. “Has it? Because of a woman?”
“Because of this woman.” Asher ran his hands through his hair—there was that nervous tic again—and swept his bangs to one side. “It wasn’t personal to me until now.”
“You must be a doll, then, sweetie.” The one-eyed woman practically purred her words, slinking towards Asher, but staying just out of his reach. “Do you give him what he wants? What he begs for?”
She was reaching out to caress his face; Asher held up his hand and blocked her touch. “That’s enough, Joy-Again.”
I could see the
startle in her eye, the brief wide-eyed look of shock at his refusal. She recovered quickly. “You must satisfy him in ways I couldn’t, girl.”
“It’s Wren, actually.”
Her head snapped in my direction, her one good eye glaring at me. It narrowed, her brow knitted down into a deep frown. “Excuse me?”
“My name is Wren. It’s not girl. It’s not human child or woman.” Energy pricked the tips of my fingers. I quickly balled up my fists, trying to pull the force back. “It’s Wren.”
“I think you’re an prattling little pest.” She scoffed. This close, I could see the patch wasn’t held in place by a band or clip, but bolted to her skull with small, brass nails. “I could rip you apart.”
“You can try.”
Kane started laughing, a loud an obnoxious ‘har har’ sounding chuckle. He shook his head. “Your father knows how to pick them, Archduke Coulthurst, sire. If you’re willing to bet your future on this little flit of a human, have at it.”
And then he was across the room, on top of us. He was in our faces; he slammed Asher against the wall and grabbed him by the throat. “But I will not have you take me or the underground down with you.”
I thrust my hands out. The force of the energy was like a bolt of lightening: it hurled Kane across the room and into the wall, nearly toppling the ginger man with him.
Everyone was staring at me.
My eyes still locked on the two figures opposite us, I ran my hands across Asher’s shoulder. “Are you okay?”
“I’m always better with you at my side.” He flashed me his lopsided grin and then cocked his head towards the others. “She can reach those we can’t. Bastien, even you have to admit having a witch on our side would be an asset.”
The cloaked figure across from us, next to Joy-Again, threw his hood back. His dirty blond hair was tied back with a leather strap and his face, as young and likely once as handsome as Asher’s, was etched with heavy black tattoos across his brow and jawbones. He smirked. “Aye, that it is. Most of ‘em are either too afraid or strung-out to be of any use.”
“Use?” I glanced at Asher. “What the fuck does that mean?”
Claimed: Faction 3: The Isa Fae Collection Page 25
