by Logan Fox
“Care to join me, gentlemen?” came Javier’s infuriatingly smug voice from the hall.
Angel forced his eyes open when a sound echoed down the dank passageway. He pushed into a sit, wincing as his muscles complained. Javier’s cartel men had put bruises on his bruises, and there was something terribly wrong with his left ribcage. Every breath came with a horrendous price.
He slid a little closer to the grates, and then grabbed the metal to drag himself the last foot.
Voices. Footsteps.
Angel wedged his face between the grates of his cell, trying to see as far into the passage as far as possible. Eventually, a pair of silhouettes appeared. The main gate leading from the cells was opened, and a pair of men walked inside, trays in their hands.
Plastic slid over concrete. Then the men came up to his cell and pushed a plate through the bottom of the grate.
Angel ignored it. He clung to the grates, squinting to make out the features on his jailer’s face.
“Please! I must speak with El Guapo!” Angel called out in Spanish.
His jailer paused. “You must?” The man let out a cruel laugh. “You must do nothing but rot down here.”
“I have information for Don Javier.”
“Information?” This seemed to intrigue the man. He stepped closer as his friend moved to the next cell and crouched to slide a plate to the prisoner. “What kind of information?”
Angel shifted a little, trying not to grimace at the stab of pain that brought. “It is for Don Javier’s ears.”
Miguel glared at him through the grates, and then left with a wave for his friend to follow him out.
“Please!”
Angel heard a snatch of conversation before they were out of earshot.
“…too busy to—”
“What if he knows something of use? Little rats like making friends. If he thinks jefe will go easy on him…”
“Fine. But jefe’s going out early tomorrow. We’ll need to tell him tonight…”
In the distance, a gate slammed shut. Angel flinched and sank to the cold floor.
He had to get out of this cell. Had to find Eleodora again. If he didn’t, Zachary would do unspeakable things to his brother. Which, he’d said, he would record and force Angel to watch. What would happen to him after that… the wolf had left that to his imagination.
43
Plutonium
Cora narrowed her eyes against the brightness of the room as she peered around to establish substance from light. But everything glowed like she was in heaven.
“Cora?” She turned her head to the side, and her lips moved into a parody of a smile when she saw Finn. He smoothed a hand over her hair, and gave her a grimace in return.
“You’re here,” she murmured. Her voice came from far away and never really felt as if it had issued from her own throat.
Finn stroked her head again. “How are you feeling?”
“Warm,” she murmured, snuggling her shoulders into whatever soft surface she lay on. “What are you doing here?”
“I came back,” he said.
Her heart fluttered. Or maybe it was just her lungs. Breathing seemed to take too much effort, like her ribs were too tight to allow anything in her chest to stretch. “Why?”
It didn’t look like he had an answer for that. Instead, he glanced away, and then focused on her again.
Another voice, one that seemed to come from far away, asked, “I need to ask you something important, Elle.”
She turned her head, giving Javier and then Lars a wide smile. “Hello,” she said. “Are you all here to see me?”
More of the room was becoming visible now. This wasn’t her bedroom in the villa. It was too sterile, too white. It looked like the inside of what she’d expect a hospital room to look like.
“Elle, can you hear me?”
“Yes,” she said. Him and Lars looked too solid in the vague whiteness of this room. She lifted her hand, and lay it against Javier’s chest. He flinched at the touch, and then lay his hand over hers. She could feel his heart beating, hard and slow, beneath her palm.
“Did your father give you anything before you left your house?”
She frowned at him. She could remember a conversation with her and Papá on the front steps of the manor, but most of their discussion was a murky, opaque pool where all she could make out were the vague shapes of things. “No,” seemed the simplest answer to that.
“Nothing?” Frustration brimmed in Javier’s voice. He pressed her hand harder against his chest, as if willing her to remember. “He gave you nothing? Not a file, or a—”
“Javier, she’s pumped full of drugs,” came Finn’s voice. “You can’t expect her to remember her own name right now.”
She turned to Finn, thanking him with a smile. Because she didn’t want to think about anything right now except the absence of pain, and that almost-bliss of not caring about anything.
“Then we’ll make her remember.”
Shoes clomped on the floor, sounding like hooves. The thought made her press her eyes closed at a vivid flash of memory.
“Go with him,” Finn snapped. Then, softer, “Cora. Cora!”
Her eyes opened to Finn’s face. He was bent over her, his face so close she could just lift her head to kiss him. And she wanted to, so desperately, but her head weighed too much.
His beautiful, stark blue eyes narrowed and his eyes flashed to her throat, her chest. She murmured faint protest when his fingers touched her and began exploring her neck, her collar bones, her breasts.
“Where is it?” he whispered furiously.
“What?” she managed, trying not to get lost in the feel of his fingers against her skin.
“That necklace. The one your father gave you.”
She managed a shrug, or maybe she didn’t. It was so hard to tell what she did and what she just thought she’d done.
Was she on heroin again? It almost felt like it. Except…this was softer.
“I don’t know,” she said as her eyes fluttered closed. And then they were gone as if they’d never been. Like visiting spirits.
Finn sped out of the sick room. Javier turned the corner, Lars stalking him like a patient leopard. Hurrying after them, Finn’s mind churned as he tried to think of a plan. Cora had been too stoned to give Javier a straight answer, thank God, but that meant he’d been unable to get intel from her either. Finn knew—he fucking knew—that pendant had something to do with this. The way she’d kept holding it, stroking it?
It hadn’t been just a gift. That ugly necklace held the answer. Except, she wasn’t wearing it anymore. He couldn’t remember a time she didn’t have it hanging around her neck and now it was gone? Maybe someone had taken it off of her while she’d been under. Or had it gotten lost when she’d fallen from the horse?
“You think she has the files on her?” Lars murmured as soon as Finn had caught up with him.
“If she does, then we have to get to them before Javier does.”
“To trade them for Cora’s freedom? What do you think The Wolf’s going to do if he finds out?”
“The wolf?” Finn’s brow creased.
“Miguel told me on the way here,” Lars said. “El Lobo means ‘The Wolf’. Apparently, this guy’s made a habit out of ‘wolfing down’ some of his enemies.” Lars cocked an eyebrow. “Yum, right? Think Cora’s daddy will survive past six-ten tonight if she’s not there with the files?”
“He’s the one that got her into this.” Finn glared at Lars. “Why should her life be on the line?”
“Whoa, easy there cowboy,” Lars said, taking a step back and lifting his hands. “I suggested a trade, not a—”
“He already tried taking her once. It was his guys on the road the other day.”
“So…” Lars mused quietly, “Escape the castle, find the archives, kill the dragon, rescue Princess’s father, try not to get Princess kidnapped. Again. Is that it, or am I missing something?”
“You really thin
k this is a time for jokes?” Finn hissed.
“I was hoping this was a time for getting the fuck out of here.”
Finn spun to Lars, catching his shoulder in a meaty hand. “You want to tell me you’ll have no fucking issue getting to sleep tonight if we leave right now with this shit going on?”
“My conscience is offended at that statement,” Lars said moodily. “Of course I won’t fucking sleep. But I’ll still be alive. Which I probably won’t be if we start off on this fucking rescue mission of yours.”
“Stop thinking about yourself, just once,” Finn muttered.
“I’m the selfish one here?” Lars yelled after him as Finn started forward. “You’re the one that just couldn’t bring yourself to let your little bunny go. Had to have your fucking plaything, didn’t you, Milo? Never mind the gig. Never mind the fact that she’s as dangerous as fucking—”
“Plutonium?” Finn cut in. “So what? She didn’t choose any of this, Lars.”
“Yea, oh, noble knight!” Lars said, throwing his hands in the air. “Her riches and wealth were simply thrust upon her despite her every protestation!”
Javier had moved out of sight, and Finn swung around again, gritting his teeth at Lars. “Stay here, then. You don’t want part of saving her father’s life? Hers? Then you can just stand right here and watch.” He flashed his gaze down Lars’s body. “Isn’t that what cowards do? Watch?”
The words lashed from him like a whip, but he couldn’t claw them back.
Lars’s face grew hard, his eyes the green of fossilized grass. “Fuck you, Finn.” He took a step back, shaking his head. “Fuck you and the fucked-up world you live in.” He gave a wide wave, a brittle smile tugging up his mouth. “I’m sure you two will be perfect together. Maybe all the dead bodies you’ll have piling up around you will finally be enough to satisfy you. Fuck knows, nothing else ever does!” The last was a hoarse yell.
“Lars—”
But his friend had turned away and stalked away at a speed that Finn would have had to run to catch up with.
And he should have. He should have caught up to Lars and made him see reason.
But Javier was going to get god knew what to wake Cora up. And he had no idea what Javier intended to do once she started answering his questions.
44
A murder of crows
A wave of something akin to electricity sped through Cora. She sat bolt upright, mouth gaping open as her body drew an unbidden breath. When she turned her head, the room felt unsteady, but it snapped back to solidity as soon as she focused on Javier’s face.
He had his hands on the side of her bed, a grim smile on his face. Beside him stood another man, someone she had a vague recollection of. The man’s face was set in a disapproving sneer, and as she watched he put away a needle that was stained with a streak of blood.
“I’m sorry, mi reinita, but your rest will have to wait,” Javier said. “I need you to be lucid right now.”
He touched her wrist. It almost felt a fond caress until she realized he was feeling her heart rate.
Her breath became erratic. “I’m…awake,” she managed.
More. It felt like every nerve ending on her body burned with cold fire.
“Good. Now, do you remember your father giving you anything when you left your home? A file, or a disk. Important information?”
Her brain scrambled, and dragged the memory of Papá handing her Santa Muerte’s pendant.
“Yes,” she said, before she could stop her mouth forming the words.
Someone was holding her hand, and they squeezed her hard. She swung her head, and jerked in surprise at seeing Finn standing beside her. When had he come back? Or had he never left at all?
“Where is it?” Javier asked, near breathless. “Elle? Where is it?”
She opened her mouth, and Finn’s fingers twitched around her. He wasn’t looking at her, but at Javier. And he wasn’t happy.
“I…” She frowned and looked back at her uncle. “I left it in my room.”
“I had your room searched,” Javier said. “There’s nothing there.”
“I…hid it. Hid it away.” She had, and she could remember that now. Maybe it was the way her heart was thudding in her chest, driving surplus amounts of blood into her brain. She could remember taking off her necklace and shoving that pendant into her pocket, afraid she’d lose it as her gelding tore through the desert.
“Then show me,” Javier said. He dropped his voice, concern darkening his eyes. “Your father’s life is at stake.”
Urgency sparked through her body, so intense that she had to hold herself back from leaping off her cot.
“He’s alive?”
“Do you think you could walk?” Finn asked quietly.
She swung to him, mouth open. “He’s alive!” Then back to Javier. “You’ve found him? How? Where—”
“Cora, can you walk?” Frustration drew hard lines between Finn’s brows. She swallowed and tried to force down the wave of sparkling joy flooding her.
No, she couldn’t walk.
But she could fucking fly.
Cora slid off the bed, grabbing onto Javier’s arm when her left leg gave way under her. He slid his arm around her waist, and propped her up against him. Loud footsteps bore down on them, and Cora looked up just in time to see Finn coming around the cot to step in front of her.
“I’ll take her.”
“Do you really think I would let something happen to her?” It seemed a rhetorical question.
Finn ignored the man and bent to scoop Cora into his arms.
Every point of light in the room—a fluorescent bar on the ceiling, a small window high up in one wall, a computer monitor on a small desk—left tracers in their wake. Streaks, like afterimages, that made her think she could see into another dimension.
Cool air moved over her skin as Finn carried her somewhere. Sunlight blinded her. A stray thought—crows?— made her try and stare past the sun to the pale blue sky.
She was aware with every jolt and bump that there was something wrong with her leg. The skin around her knee felt too tight, the leg itself too stiff. And there were places on her cheeks and arms that were more sensitive than the rest. She could feel the sunlight oozing into it like liquid fire.
Finn was taking her through the villa. Lights flashed down on her, cast through the pillars of the hallways they strode through. So fast, it was like a strobe light flashing over her closed lids.
The horse. Falling. Her body scraping over the rough ground.
She grabbed Finn’s shirt in a fist, disorientated when gloom replaced sunlight. When she looked up at him, he was staring ahead. But, as if he could feel her looking at him, he glanced down. Almost nothing in his expression changed, but suddenly he wasn’t glaring bloody murder at the world, but gazing down at her like he’d found something he’d lost a long time ago.
She sighed when he set her down on her bed.
Her one leg was crooked at the knee, but the other didn’t want to bend like it used to. Her jeans had been sheared off mid-thigh. Bandages wound all the way from the top of her knee to halfway down her shin. That’s why her leg had felt so weird. She could see some scrapes on her leg; more on her arms when she stretched out a hand to investigate the bandages.
She heard people moving about in the room, but it was almost drowned out by the sound of her jaw creaking. No, not her jaw, her teeth.
Finn’s hand fumbled in his pocket and came out holding a mint. He slid it between her lips. She took it grudgingly, and then closed her eyes and sighed at the burst of flavor that filled her mouth. Her mouth shuddered as she sucked at the mint.
Someone clicked their fingers.
Cora swallowed hard. Her throat had gone bone-dry. “Water.”
She looked up, and saw Javier staring at her, impatience carved into the unhappy set of his mouth. “Where, Eleodora? Where did you hide it?”
“What?” she asked.
“What did you give her?”
Finn’s voice drew her eyes to him.
Her chest inflated with a hard, happy breath. In this moment, she could have kissed him over every inch of his rugged face. His eyes crinkled with a frown, and he looked away from her.
“Something to wake her up.” Javier’s voice. God, it sounded so deep and melodious.
“Do you sing?” she asked, lights streaking across her field of view when she turned to her uncle. She still thought of him as that, even though he’d told her he wasn’t. She had a memory of him pushing her on a swing, but for the life of her she couldn’t tell if it was real or not.
“Do I sing?” he repeated, voice quavering as if he was about to laugh. “No, mi reinita. I do not sing.”
She brought fingers to her throat. “You should. Your voice…it’s…”
“Cora!”
She jerked. Javier showed her his teeth, but he wasn’t smiling. “The files. Now.”
“What files?” Cora asked. But then an image flashed in her head. Papá, handing her the Santa Muerte pendant.
Something as strange and insidious as deja-vu crept over her. She’d had this exact same thought. A hand wrapped around her, and gave her a squeeze.
It had done that before.
A warning.
“I lost it,” Cora said, and her eyes slipped closed. People were talking in the background, and the sound of their muted conversation rose and fell like a radio with the volume turned down low. It lulled her, rocked her, sang her to sleep. A sleep filled with an army of marching Santa Muerte pendants. A foaming gelding crashed through them, splintering them like glass as it plowed through their ranks. Javier rode that gelding, one hand holding down his cowboy hat, the other on the reigns. Smiling at her, wide and deep. A smile so warm, so inviting, so suggestive that it didn’t matter how many of those unsmiling skeletons he crushed under his horse’s hooves.
A hand on her shoulder. A warm breath touched the side of her neck. “Are you with us?” came Javier’s voice, so close and so sonorous that she shivered violently as she came to from that vivid dream.
