A slave soldier dropped a knife at my bare feet. “Pick it up,” he ordered in Mandarin.
I looked down at the little knife, stuck point first into the dirt. The handle was antler, wrapped in leather strips, stained with dried blood. Last time I’d been forced to fight it had been with bare hands. The time before, I’d been given nothing but a sharpened stick.
I left the knife there. “Why doesn’t the Pale Man just kill me and get it over with?”
The soldier backhanded me hard in the face. It barely registered. Blood dripped from my split lip and down my rags. I knew if we didn’t fight, they’d just execute other prisoners in front of me until I provided them a good show, women, children, they didn’t give a shit. “Pick up the knife.”
Instead, I shouted at the alcove. “Why won’t you kill me?”
Surprisingly, there was movement in the shadows above. “The better question, Lorenzo . . .” Sala Jihan’s voice was cold, distant, ominous. “Is why won’t you die?”
I picked up the knife.
“I’m Lorenzo,” I said through the crack in the wall. “What’s your name?”
The prisoner in the next cell didn’t respond, but I could hear his labored breathing. I’d heard him in there for the first time today. There were no lights in the cells except for what the guards brought with them, so I’d never seen the man, had no idea who he was, but was extremely thankful for the company anyway.
“I was part of the Exodus mission to assassinate Sala Jihan. We got our asses kicked. Never even saw it coming. I got shot a few times on the mountainside trying to get away. How about you?”
Still no answer. Keeping my voice down, I tried a few other languages. The guards didn’t tolerate noise, and I was in no condition to take another beating.
“Do you know what day it is? What month?”
More breathing, sort of wet and gurgley.
“Yeah, me either.”
I’d been delirious from blood loss and hypothermia when Jihan’s men had carried me off the mountain. I’d woken up in surgery. Well, surgery is an overstatement. No anesthetic. Just some slaves yanking bullets out of me with pliers, and piecing me back together with needles and thread. Even then, barely coherent and half dead, I knew Sala Jihan was keeping me around only because dying quickly was too good for a trespasser.
Healing, I’d spent days in the dark, alone, with no sense of time. Unidentifiable, tasteless food had been shoved into my cell. Occasionally I’d wake up to someone tending my bandages, but asking them questions always ended with a beating. They would give me shots, probably antibiotics, because dying of infected gunshot wounds would be insufficiently painful.
Once I was healed enough to handle the stress, the torture had really begun.
It was purely for sport. They never even asked me any questions. Thankfully they didn’t cut any parts off of me, break any bones, or drill any holes. The really invasive stuff tended to kill the subject, so I figured they’d work up to that eventually. It had been things like electrical shocks from a car battery or drowning me in a bucket over and over. Then they’d drag me back to my cell, burned or soaked, and leave me all by myself in the dark for who knew how long. Once I was recovered, they’d do it again.
But the worst part wasn’t the torture, it was the noise. I can’t explain the sounds in this place, or what made them, but they never stopped. They were always there, just past where you could make sense of what they were saying. Sometimes there was chanting, even singing, but the only sounds I could tell for sure were human were the screams.
“Do they make you fight in the pit too?”
The other prisoner panted and hissed.
“I don’t have a choice.”
Fighters who refused got shot in the head, and then they’d just haul in the next one. Those that didn’t have the will left to put up a fight simply got murdered by their opponent, and I’d seen some savage bastards in the pit. Fighting was the only time I’d interacted with anyone else, but I’d quickly discovered that many of the other prisoners in this place were mentally gone, full-on psycho killers, little more than animals. They’d been here too long, the constant whispering burrowing into their heads, twisting everything. Hell, when I put some poor bastard out of his misery in the pit, I was doing them a favor.
Wheeze, gurgle.
“Don’t judge me.”
I wouldn’t break like the others. I couldn’t die, because I had things to do. I was going to find a way out of this hole. I was going to find my brother, stop Katarina, and get back to the woman I love. Love was an alien concept in a place like this, but when the anger and determination ran out, it was all I had left. I’d spent most of my life alone. To survive as a criminal at my level, you had to be willing to abandon everything as soon as you sensed danger. I’d always thought that falling in love was a weakness. Only now, when there was nothing else but the darkness and the whispers and the pain, remembering Jill, imagining her alive and happy somewhere beneath the sun . . . It kept me sane.
The other cell was silent. The breathing had stopped. He’d either died or melted through the floor, I couldn’t tell anymore. I was alone again.
Sala Jihan had seen right through my disguise, even recognized what I was, and called me son of murder. He’d warned me not to come back here. I should have listened.
Without any sort of reference, it was impossible to keep track of time. When you can’t even tell if it is night or day, scratch marks on a wall are pointless. Food came at random times. The temperature never changed. It was always hot and muggy. It stank like a zoo, that kind of cloying, rancid, primal stink of spice and fear and waste. There was a pipe in the floor for waste. When it would rain, water would trickle down through the rock and make a puddle in my cell. That was the closest I came to bathing, well, that and the occasional waterboarding.
Blind, I explored every single inch of my small cell with my fingertips. I knew every crack and bump, but there was no discernible weakness. My chains were heavy-duty and sunk into the rock. I had no tool that could pick the lock on the shackles. It would be virtually impossible to break free, but I picked what I thought was the weakest link, and then I spent most of my time rubbing steel against steel. I had nothing but time. The chains were thick enough to pull a truck, but I worked on them constantly anyway. I did it so often that I could reach down on instinct and immediately find the right link. I’d rub them together until the metal was so hot from friction that it burned my fingers, but I still kept going. I didn’t know what would erode first, that metal, or my sanity.
The bad thing about working on the chain was that while my hands were busy I couldn’t put my hands over my ears. I was blind, but I wished I was deaf. That damned indescribable background noise never stopped. I tried to make plugs out of scraps from my ragged clothing, but I could still hear it. It was like the noise got inside your head. I slept with my hands clamped over my ears, and if I did it tight enough, the sound of my own pulse would keep the haunted noise out of my dreams. Sometimes.
I seriously contemplated scratching out my own eardrums, but truthfully, part of me was afraid that even then the noises wouldn’t stop. I was already mostly deaf in one ear, but even in that one I thought I could hear the whispers. And if I did destroy my hearing, but the voices were still there, then that meant this place had succeeded in driving me crazy.
The only time I saw light was in torture sessions or when they’d drag me into the pit to fight. Even then there was no schedule to it. Strangely enough, I started to look forward to the fights. Despite it being bloody, horrific, and awful, at least I knew it was real. And for a few brief minutes, at least I didn’t have to listen to that damned chittering in the walls.
The food was cold slop with chunks in it. It was so devoid of flavor I couldn’t tell if the chunks were animal or vegetable. I was so malnourished that I was having a hard time concentrating. I hadn’t had much fat on my body to begin with, but there was nothing left now. There were barely enough calories an
d nutrients in the gruel that I could still fight in the pit, but that meant I was strong enough to get out of here.
After enough time passed for the gunshot wounds to harden into scar tissue, I was ready to escape. The instant I was given an opportunity, I’d take it.
Then one day the chain broke.
When the guards came for me again, I made my move. Their light was blinding, but I was used to not being able to see. I struck the first one in the throat hard enough to crush his windpipe. I beat the second one over the head with his big aluminum flashlight, plunging us all back into the dark. I caught the last one in the hall and choked him to death with my broken chain before he could scream for help.
I swear, as I killed those men, the noises in the walls got louder. I dragged the bodies inside my cell and closed the door. They’d only had the one, now broken, light, so I had to blunder around in the dark, hands on the stone walls, looking for a way out. The prison was a maze. There was no rhyme or reason to the layout. I knew where the pit and the torture room were, and that was it. As I moved through the darkness, I couldn’t tell if the voices were cheering me on or ratting me out.
Another guard died by my hand before I found the stairs, but at least now I had another flashlight. The crumbling prison was a maze of passageways. This place had to be ancient, and put to use more recently by the Pale Man. I found rooms filled with nothing but dried blood and scraps of clothing. There was an empty wheelchair in the hall. Eventually I found a set of stairs. The noise seemed to be louder downstairs, so I went up.
The cells on the next floor were separated by iron bars, and each one was packed with people, children mostly. The older males would go to the mines to be worked to death, the younger branded and brainwashed into the ranks of Jihan’s army. The females would be sold to vile, horrible men around the world. They stared at my light, fearful, but I was in no position to do anything for them. Exodus had tried to save these people, and gotten themselves slaughtered for it. The only reason I was in here was because I’d been soft and stupid enough to make myself into a distraction to buy time for the Exodus survivors, and I didn’t even know if any of them had made it out.
I knew Jill had escaped though. Sala Jihan had seen us together. So if he had caught her, he would have taunted me about it. If he’d killed her, he would have showed me her body. No matter what Jihan did to me, she was beyond his reach, and knowing that was plenty to live for.
They caught me before I could find the way out. I never figured out how they tracked me down, but somehow they knew right where I was. Maybe the whispers told on me. Despite me doing my best to gouge their eyes out, the slave soldiers fought like fanatics and accepted their casualties, determined to take me alive.
It seemed the Pale Man wasn’t done with me yet.
Ears ringing from the beating, I woke up chained to a different wall, but from the humidity and the animal stink I knew I was still in the same prison. There was light here though, coming from a bright orange fire burning in a nearby metal tub. There were guards there, and one was holding a metal rod in the fire, the end glowing red hot.
Branding irons. This was new.
I was hanging there, arms stretched overhead. There was no give when I tested the chains. The guards noticed I was awake, but paid me no heed. I was no threat. My body was covered in fresh bruises, cuts, and scrapes. My muscles were cramped and trembling. I was so weak I could barely think. If they were going to burn my face like they did to mark his slaves, there wasn’t much I could do about it. The ringing in my ears subsided enough that I could hear the crackle of flames, and then I could barely make out that damnable noise, the whispers and mutters. It was like they were laughing at me.
The door creaked open.
There was one man there, wearing a long black coat, leather and fur, with the hood up. The guards saw who it was and silently bowed their heads. In the shadows beneath the hood I could only make out his jaw, skin deathly white around neatly trimmed black facial hair. He studied the scene for a moment, before pushing back the hood with one gloved hand. His skin was somewhere beyond albino but his eyes were black holes. It was the Pale Man himself.
A feeling of terrible dread formed in my stomach and radiated out through my limbs as Sala Jihan entered. His age was impossible to guess. Neither old nor young, he just was. He’d claimed for himself the name of a villain from local folklore and lived at the bottom of an abandoned missile silo. He was a man who had built a kingdom in place where there was no law, reigning over people who believed he wasn’t a man at all. The mountain tribes thought of him as a vengeful demon from their past, and feared him accordingly.
The first time I’d met the slave-trading warlord, I tried to tell myself it was all an elaborate act, a mind game to fuck with his opposition. That was before he’d slaughtered the Exodus strike team sent to kill him, and before I’d been exposed to this godforsaken place.
The Pale Man didn’t speak for a very long time. He said something to the guards in a language I didn’t recognize, but probably meant leave us.
The guards closed the door behind them, so it was just me alone with the devil.
“Just kill me already,” I croaked, my mouth so dry that I could barely talk at all. “Get it over with.” At least then the whispers would stop.
He tilted his head a bit to the side, as if listening. “What whispers?”
I didn’t remember saying that part out loud.
Sala Jihan came closer, smelling like wet earth. He muttered something else, but it was in no language I recognized, and I’d heard them all. He grabbed me by the hair and violently jerked my head back so he could better see my battered face. Holy shit, he didn’t look it, but he was incredibly strong. Somehow I knew he could twist my head off if he felt like it. Those terrible black eyes cut right through me
If I’d had enough saliva, I would have spit in his face. Sala Jihan noted my effort however. The warlord wasn’t used to such disrespect, but he refrained from snapping my neck. He spoke in clear, precise English. “What am I to do with you, son of murder?”
“Unlock these chains and fight me like a man.”
“I am not merely a man, and you are only a serpent. You invaded my home and killed my servants. You have deserved all of this suffering and more.” His words were calm, measured, aloof, yet threatening at the same time. “What you have experienced thus far is nothing compared to the punishments I could inflict next. You exist entirely by my whim.”
“Fuck you.”
Jihan showed very little reaction, he seemed more curious than anything. “I’ve known many like you, wretched hashishin, wolves who hide among the sheep. Death follows wherever you go. Friend or foe, it does not matter. Yet you are special, a unique variable.”
“What the hell are you jabbering about?”
“Fate has not determined a path for you. The son of murder is outside of destiny. Even when captured, you remain defiant, tempting me to end you. I did not because you could still prove useful. If your escape had not failed, what would you have done with your freedom?”
As tempting as it was to talk more shit, I told him the truth. “I’d run as far away from here as I could go.”
“And then?”
There was no point in lying. The Pale Man would know. “Find Katarina Montalban and kill her.”
“Yes. The woman who was deluded enough to think she could steal my kingdom. Her treachery is the reason you are here. Is it only your desire for vengeance so strong that it has kept you from breaking in this place?”
I clenched my teeth together. The Pale Man could never know what I still lived for, because he’d find a way to take Jill too.
“I know there is more, son of murder. Do not mistake my idle curiosity for caring. Love and hate are equally meaningless to me. I do not care about your motivation, merely the outcome. After you finished killing off the Montalbans, would you return and try to take your revenge upon the great Sala Jihan?”
“No.” Even if I managed
to survive taking on the Montalban Exchange, I was never coming back to this hell hole. “I swear.”
“I believe you mean that, for now.” Sala Jihan actually seemed pleased with my answer. “Katarina Montalban did not merely betray you and Exodus, she betrayed me as well.”
He had been Exodus’ target because he was an evil, slave-trading madman. Kat had nothing to do with that. Exodus was gunning for him no matter what.
“Exodus has tried to destroy me before. They have, and always will be my enemy. Thus, they are irrelevant. Now, I speak only of you. Katarina made you believe it was I who stole your brother. She tried to silence me, to usurp my throne. You were merely her weapon. She was naive enough to think she could use you to destroy me.”
The first time we’d met, the Pale Man had told me that though death had always been my servant, in this place, death only answered to him.
“Yes . . . In this place.” Jihan slowly lifted one gloved hand and gestured around the room. “For now my kingdom ends at the borders of the Crossroads. Yet, I desire revenge on Katarina Montalban. I do not like wanting things I cannot have. She must pay for her trespass, only she has moved beyond my reach.”
The idea that there was a limit to Sala Jihan’s dominion would make me sleep a little easier, at least until the whispers invaded my dreams and turned everything to blood again. “Let me go . . . I’ll take care of her for you.”
“An intriguing offer, only because the time of her triumph draws near. The Montalbans’ plan, this Project Blue as you have heard it called, is far more ambitious than you can imagine. Eduard Montalban tried to enlist my aid in this plot. He intended to buy my allegiance with this.” The Pale Man pulled a small object from the interior of his coat. There was a slight golden glow between his fingers. “This, too, had once been beyond my reach.”
In the palm of his hand was an ancient piece of jewelry. I recognized it immediately. It was the Scarab.
Alliance of Shadows (Dead Six Series Book 3) Page 3
