Hunting The Broken: Age Of Madness - A Kurtherian Gambit Series (The Caitlin Chronicles Book 3)

by Daniel Willcocks

  “We can’t let anyone know it’s him,” Dylan said beneath his breath, loud enough for only his companions to hear. “The panic that could ensue…it’s the last thing we need here. People need to know that they’re safe.”

  “How did it happen, Dylan?” Mother Wendy whispered. “How can something like this happen?”

  “I don’t know,” he replied, only half-telling the truth. He didn’t have the heart to tell her that maybe his second in command had overlooked what should have been a very obvious step after a Mad attack. Either that or Ace had hidden his marks incredibly well and laid low for several days in fear of what might happen. “What I do know is that we need to get him somewhere out of sight.”

  Larry raised a finger. “Erm, I know I may be new to this town and don’t fully understand the ins and outs of how everything works, but shouldn’t you put him out of his misery? He’s not a person anymore. He’s a Mad.”

  Dylan’s face grew serious. “We’ll discuss this when we’re out of here. Now, give me a hand.”

  With Dylan holding the back of Ace’s neck, Larry holding the middle, and Mother Wendy holding the feet, they managed to lift the guard off the floor. It wasn’t easy as the fucker kept thrashing and trying to reach them, but as Dylan attempted to give words of comfort to those watching from their doorsteps, he felt nothing more than confusion and fear himself.

  What could he do with Ace?

  How could Sully let this happen?

  A thousand questions ran rampant through his brain but now wasn’t the time or place. All he needed to work out was where to store the poor bastard until he had made a decision about what to do with him.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The Broken City, Old Ontario

  At the bottom of the stairs was an empty basement, no more than a square brick and concrete room with a few stains on the floor. Vex—incredibly, even in his own mind—managed to light the table leg he had wrapped in cloth and doused with some kind of substance that was almost undoubtedly alcohol and now held the torch in front of him.

  “Where the fuck did he go?” he whispered. There was no sign that anyone had been there.

  “Oohhh,” Belle moaned. “We need to hurry. We don’t know what he’s going to do with Scout. He’s so big he could probably crush him in one hand.”

  “Unless Scout is one of them,” Vex said, jokingly at first, before a serious realization that that could be a possibility jumped into his head. “Shit.”

  “No,” Belle said. “Scout can’t be. Why would he lead us out of the woods and straight here if he was on their side?”

  “Maybe as bait,” Mary-Anne said nonchalantly as she held her ear up to each section of the wall and gave a small tap with her nail.

  “Listen to Sherlock, Belle,” Vex said. “She’s right. We’ve been suckered in as bait. We’re nothing more than gullible chow for the Weres.”

  Belle raised an eyebrow. “If that’s true, then why didn’t he take us with him? He snatched Scout. He didn’t snatch us. If we were bait, surely we would already be down there somewhere with the Weres while they held us on spits over the fire and ate our bodies.”

  “You know that’s not what Weres do, right?” Mary-Anne muttered. “They’re not tribal savages.”

  “Well then, why don’t you enlighten us—”

  “Shhhh,” she hissed. She was bent over almost double, tapping a brick with a small crack in the top corner. A grin spread across her face. “Abracadabra,” she croaked, scrunched her hand into a fist, and gave the area a big whack.

  A moderately large section of the wall pushed inwards. Mary-Anne shoved a bit harder, and the wall slid back farther. Taking one side, she shifted it to her left, and they all now saw an entrance to a dark tunnel.

  “And voila,” Mary-Anne said proudly.

  “Sorry, no one speaks Spanish anymore.” Belle strode past Mary-Anne and missed the confused look on her face.

  “French.”

  “Whatever,” Belle said.

  Mary-Anne laughed in disbelief, not quite believing the audacity of the young girl. “Erm…I know we haven’t really had much chance to bond, but you do realize that I’m the leader of this expedition, right?”

  Belle half-turned. “You do realize I’m not in the mood to play who’s got the biggest cock here? I merely want my puppy back and to get on with my day, please.”

  The vampire looked to Vex for support. He smiled and shrugged. “She’s a determined bitch when she wants to be. Feel free to challenge her, but I don’t know if you’ll get far.”

  “Okay,” Mary-Anne said. “Well, I’ll at least match your speed and walk beside you. If a Were jumps out from the shadows, you’ll want me at your side. I’m not sure how useful your little knife will be.”

  The tunnel seemed to stretch on for miles before they reached their first junction. Occasionally, a rat could be seen scurrying across the floor and into some broken brickwork. Vex glanced at the torch now and then, anxious that the flame might not last as long as they needed.

  “Left or right?” Vex asked.

  “If only we had Scout,” Belle whined. Though she whispered, the tight space seemed to carry her voice for miles.

  “We don’t need Scout,” he said. “We’ve got Scout 2.0, ain't that right, vamp?”

  “I’m not sure I appreciate being compared to a dog. Particularly in a tunnel that might potentially be crawling with them.” She took a deep sniff in either direction, then declared, “Left.”

  After another stretch of walking with little conversation and no real sign that they were heading in the right direction, they found themselves at another dead end.

  They halted, and Belle looked around frantically for any sign that they were in the right place. She patted the walls and stamped on the floors until Mary-Anne told her to calm the fuck down and look at her feet.

  There were large footprints squashed into the thin layer of grime that stained the floors.

  “Funny,” Mary-Anne said.

  “I don’t see the joke” Vex watched in anguish as the torch spluttered embers and began to diminish.

  “No,” Mary-Anne said. “The footprints aren’t facing the dead end. They’re facing right into this section of wall.” She traced her hand across the bricks, feeling for anything that might give them some kind of a clue until her finger dipped into a small hole. “Here. Shine the light.”

  She bent closer, Vex approaching to hold the torch so the fading light illuminated the wall. A small keyhole had been shaped into the brick. “Hold on,” Mary-Anne said as she scratched the wall with one long fingernail. A thin strip of the brick disappeared, leaving grey metal shining through.

  The vampire rubbed her fingers together and examined the debris. “Clever fuckers.”

  “What? What is it?” Belle asked.

  “It’s paint.” Mary-Anne showed them the dark stain on her fingers. “Or at least, some kind of cover-up mix that looks like the walls. There’s a doorway here, but it’s locked.”

  “Great. So now what do we do?” Belle sighed.

  “Can’t you get your vamp on and punch through it?” Vex suggested. “You know? Hulk out and charge in there.”

  Mary-Anne considered this for a moment. “No. Not like this. If perhaps this tunnel was open, we could have snuck up on them. Maybe tried some kind of sneak formation and taken them out one by one—depending on their abilities to smell us, that is. But to smash our way in now would be idiotic. We don’t know how many of them there are.”

  “Then what do we do?” Belle repeated, crestfallen. “Scout is in there, and he needs our help.”

  “Only one thing to do,” Mary-Anne said. “We’ve located the hidden entrance. Now we need to lure them out and grab that key. But first…” She held a finger in the air. “We’ll need backup. And I know just the people who would love this information.”

  “Who?” Vex asked excitedly, his face disappearing as the flame from the torch extinguished.

  They stood for a
moment in complete darkness before Belle said. “Ma?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Mind doing us a favor and leading us out of here?”

  “Sure.”

  They began to walk, a hand on each of Mary-Anne’s shoulders.

  “Oh, and Vex,” Belle said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Get your hand off my ass.”

  The Sewers, The Broken City, Old Ontario

  Kain’s room was exactly as he had left it.

  It wasn’t a huge space, just large enough to host a bed and an old set of furniture which had been salvaged from the surface world. He stood for a moment at the door, not quite able to believe that he was back.

  What was the point in running away if this is where you were going to end up, buddy boy?

  “Sure you don’t want to join me?” Kain winked at Madeline.

  “I’d rather shove a rat up my ass and seal off its escape route.”

  “Wow,” Kain said, letting the image sink in. “Colorful.”

  Howie and Madeline reluctantly left Kain to his devices. He could hear them bitching and moaning as they walked down the tunnel, but he didn’t care. All that mattered to him was that he was out of that cell block and was now able to stretch his legs. They’d had their fun, trying to tease him with word that he was to be put to trial and had to move to a shittier cot. But he got them back and laughed as their faces dropped when he told them he’d overheard their entire conversation.

  Stupid fuckers.

  He waited until they had gone completely before taking himself on a tour through his old habitat. Most things were exactly as he had left them, though the Weres he ran into left an impression that the atmosphere in the under-city lair had changed a lot in his absence.

  When Kain had lived in the sewers before, there had been a general sense of camaraderie. Though they had always lived under threat from the city folk, the Weres were polite among themselves. Fair and patient—as far as Weres could be. But as he nodded his hellos to familiar faces, there was a general sense of mistrust which put him on edge.

  Sure, maybe it had something to do with the fact that he had abandoned them all and a Were never abandoned his pack. But as he rounded corners, he heard snippets and snatches of conversation cut short by his arrival, whispers of overthrows and how shit life was down there. Some voiced dreams of living on the surface world or fears of the choice Weres were being forced to make regarding how they would spend the rest of their lives.

  Kain was also surprised to find that more and more Weres had chosen the animal life as their future. Before he left, there had only been a couple of Weres who had chosen the creature life. Mikkel, for one, had been one of the first to remain as a wolf, and he now remained loyal to Geralt as a sniffer and tracker hound. Another, Wes, who Kain now passed in the tunnels, had been blessed with the form of a panther. Kain hardly noticed the black fur in the darkness until they were virtually next to each other.

  “Lovely evening for a stroll, don’t you think?” he said, pausing as they squared up.

  Wes growled, bared his teeth, then continued by.

  Kain walked on, not quite sure of where he was heading until he found himself at a thin door, cracked and battered, allowing torchlight from inside the room to spill into the tunnel.

  He knocked on the door.

  “Who is it?” a woman’s voice called.

  “Mama? Tommy won’t play with me, and Davies keeps hitting me with rocks,” Kain whined, doing his best impression of a five-year-old.

  The door swung open to reveal the grey-haired woman from the underground creche, Cynthia, dressed in nothing more than an old dressing gown. Her hair was wild, but her smile was broad. “Oh, thank goodness, Kain. I worried they were going to hurt you.”

  “You and me both.”

  “Come inside. Come on.” She ushered him inside, glancing down the tunnels before she shut the door behind him.

  Compared to his room, Cynthia’s quarters were the definition of homely. Made from a large cutout in the rock, there were several rooms to Cynthia’s pad. She had enough rugs, pictures, and faux flowers to cast the illusion that they could have been up above ground right now, and not in some shitty hole in the ground.

  Guess that is one of the perks of being the eldest female in the pack.

  Cynthia took Kain’s hand and led him to a chair. She turned and poured a glass of water, gave it to him, then poured another for herself.

  They passed a moment in silence as she studied him before she said, “You know, you never said goodbye.”

  “I know,” Kain said, not hiding his real shame. “Truth was, I didn’t know that I was going to leave. Not until the last minute. And by that point, I figured the less anyone knew, the better.” A beat passed before he spoke again. “How have things been?”

  Cynthia, who had always seemed so full of life and vibrant before Kain had departed, now sighed. Her back hunched over and he was sure he’d never seen her look so weary. “Exhausting. A lot has changed here, Kain. It might not seem like it, but it has.”

  “I see you’ve got a new spot as the daycare lady?” he smiled.

  Cynthia chuckled. “Yep. Guardian of several dozen rug rats, all queued up and waiting in line to become the next one in Geralt’s mad experiments. They’re treated well—at least by me—before they’re taken to the sub-levels for trials.”

  “Geralt says that progress is being made. That we’ll soon be overrun by Were cubs. Is that true?”

  Cynthia sat back in her chair, took a sip of water, and thought for a moment. “Yes—and no. From what I’ve seen, the conversions are proving tricky. You can’t calm the kids enough to stop them from transforming. It seems a painless enough procedure, and the kids do just fine—aside from the initial shock of missing their families which they overcome surprisingly quickly when they’re reunited with their friends. It just means that Geralt has yet to breed warriors. All he’s creating right now are pets.”

  Kain tried to imagine a room full of baby animals running around and wreaking havoc. Kain grinned, then sighed.

  “I know that’s not what you want to hear,” Cynthia said. “Truth is, I hoped I’d never see you again.”

  “The feeling’s mutual.” Kain smirked. He swilled the water around his cup, spilling several drops onto his lap. Outside, he heard the sound of footsteps as someone passed the door. He waited for them to fade into the distance.

  “I tried to stop him, y’know?” he said.

  “I’ve heard stories.”

  Kain’s eyebrows raised. “Oh, yeah? How’d I come off?”

  “Not good,” Cynthia replied. “The tale goes that on the day Geralt began unveiling his grand master plan and gathered the crew together to discuss how the kidnapping of surface kids would be approached, you protested. Geralt smashed you across the room, and you shifted into a wolf and then sprinted off into the sunset without looking back.”

  “Not exactly my version of events.” He snorted in derision, then gave in to the need to tell the whole truth of what had really happened.

  Quietly, Kain laid out the truth to Cynthia. It had actually been only Geralt and Kain on the day when things went shit. Little known to the rest of the Weres, even then, the Alpha had taken a strange shine to him. On the odd occasion, he would find himself invited to Geralt’s quarters for a chinwag and a drink.

  On that night, the Alpha had a few too many drinks, and his tongue had grown loose. As the conversation turned and the booze poured, the topic turned to legacy and survival.

  “Us Weres have had our time, my friend,” Kain had slurred as he poured himself another cup. “Hear my words. It’s over. We’re the last of a dying breed. Soon, we’ll be nothing more than the dodo or the mammoth. Fossils in the grounds, though no one will know our secret because our fucking skeletons are the same as humans.”

  Geralt, who by this point was heavy-lidded and not quite fully possessed of sober faculties, chuckled at that. His great mane of hair rested in his dri
nk. “Nah,” he said. “You’re wrong, bucko. There’s a way to survive, I’m sure of it. Mark my words. I’ll find a way. You’ll see. You’ll all see.” He pointed around the room at what Kain could only presume to be an imaginary crowd.

  “And how is that?” he said. “What are you going to do? Dress animals up in clothes and pretend they’re Weres?”

  Geralt shook his head sleepily. He closed his eyes. “The key is in the kids, Sudeikis. Young. Nimble. Durable. That’s the starting point. Fuck the surface fuckers and their fucking guns. Lure the kids. Convert them all.” He chuckled and burped. “An army of teeny child Weres.”

  Kain frowned. “You’re not serious?”

  Geralt nodded. “Where do you think Bryce is right now?”

  He explained to Cynthia that he had left the drunken Were to sleep in his chair and had meant to return to his room, only to find his feet leading him towards the exit.

  Several Weres called after him as he passed, asking where he was going at that late hour, but he didn’t bother answering. His head was swimming. Sure, over the years Geralt had made a few rash decisions. Survival of the Weres was key, and that was half the reason he had been put in charge. But to turn his attention now to creating new Weres after years of horror stories and failed experiments with adults from the surface, he was going to start on the kids?

  That was something Kain couldn’t hang around to see. Nor did he think, at that moment, he had the power to change anything.

  As he had passed Howie in the tunnels, for the first time in years, Kain had chosen to transform. In a few seconds, he had taken Wolf form, sprinted from the tunnels, and never looked back. One of the Weres he passed must have reported the shift to Geralt who had burst out from the lair and given chase. How he had managed to outrun him, he still had no idea. The forest provided the cover, the trampling sounds of the bear faded, and so began the days of his solo journey.

  “Wow, that’s a lot different to what I was told.” She looked at Kain, her eyes filled with pity.

  “Don’t get me wrong, I was hunted for years. After I left, no matter where I went, I always had the feeling I was being tracked. There were even a few times when I smelled the others. But I guess in recent months, I must have let my guard down.”