Until I saw the look of absolute sincerity on his face.
A tingling feeling shocked through me that had nothing to do with the memory of the demon this time. Finding some words to shape into sentences and communicate between my brain and mouth seemed difficult.
But I was being stupid. I shrugged nonchalantly, pushing away any other thoughts that might stray into my mind. “I guess we could try being friends.”
A smile split his face. “Good to hear, princess.”
I held up my finger to stop him saying another word. “On one condition. You have to stop calling me princess.”
He pretended to have a heart attack, clutching at his chest. “But what will I call you then?”
“Uh, my name.”
His smile returned. “I’m sure I can think of something more creative than that. So, do we have a deal? You’ll promise not to do anything else on your own? We’ll do it together?”
He held out his hand for me to shake. I stared at it for a moment, wondering if I was about to make a deal with the devil. Perhaps I was being naïve, or reckless. Perhaps it was the cozy warmth of the small room and the way he had been so careful with my arms.
Perhaps it was just what I needed.
Perhaps it would be my downfall.
I shook his hand. “Deal.”
Whatever come what may, at least Jet was on my side. For now. It couldn’t hurt having someone with as much clout in the city as he did in my corner.
But there was still one thing I wasn’t sure of. “Where is your gang these days? All those boys?” I couldn’t think of them without remembering what they had done to me in that factory.
A near death experience tends to stick in the mind.
“I don’t really speak with them anymore.” He paused, lost in his thoughts somewhere, before quickly adding, “They aren’t going to hurt you again, you don’t need to worry about them.”
“I thought they were your friends.”
“They were. Now they aren’t.”
That was my fault.
He didn’t need to spell it out for me. After what went down in the factory, he was angry with them. I had seen him preparing for a fight with the boys and it wouldn’t have ended pretty. Not when he had turned up at my house on the hill with a split lip.
Jet and his gang of boys had seemed so close and tight when I saw them all together. They had me tied up and kidnapped at the time, but they were like a family together. It was a shame he was no longer their leader. He probably missed them like they were all his brothers.
Still, I wasn’t going to apologize. I had done nothing wrong, Taz had taken it upon himself to try to kill me. I hadn’t asked for that kind of treatment. If it wasn’t for Jet, I would have died that day.
An insistent knocking on the door interrupted us before I could say anything further.
Jet scooted off the bed to lean against the wall, like that was where he had been the entire time. He threw me a coat and I shrugged it on to cover the bandages.
“Come in,” he said casually.
Perry pushed open the door. Her gaze swept over me but she didn’t make any further acknowledgement. Her eyes were only for Jet. “Something’s happening down below with the adults. You need to hurry.”
And just as quickly, we were gone.
Chapter Seven
Everyone always forgot I couldn’t run through the tunnels like the mole people. For one, I couldn’t see in the dark. Secondly, there were that many twists and turns that it would take me a lifetime to remember the layout.
I desperately tried to keep up with Jet and Perry as we ran along the tunnels, getting deeper and deeper into the underground passageways. Even if I had travelled that way before, nothing looked familiar. It was just one endless corridor after another.
I knew we were getting close when I heard the screams.
Ear piercing loud shrieking echoed off the walls and bounced down the tunnels. The minute we heard them, Jet picked up the pace even further.
The tunnel led into a large cavern – that, I did recognize. The pathway that ringed the open expanse led down to the area I had seen the few adults on the two occasions I had been there before.
All the adults were crouched on the brown dirt floor. Their hands were covering their ears as they writhed in pain any way they could. The sounds escaping their mouths were guttural and primal, terrifying to witness but no doubt worse to actually experience.
“What’s happening?” Jet asked.
Perry shrugged. “I have no idea. They started doing this a few minutes ago. I went straight to get you. None of them will talk any sense.”
That wasn’t unusual. The adults only ever spoke nonsense. The one time I had attempted to communicate with them they had spoken in nothing but riddles about nonsensical things. I couldn’t understand anything.
But this? This was different.
They were in agonizing pain and we were powerless to help them.
Jet crouched down beside one of the women. She was about forty, if I had to guess. Although, the way her face was twisted made it difficult to really tell.
He laid a hand on her back gently, like he was trying not to startle her. “Eloise, tell me what’s happening. Where does it hurt?”
She shook her head violently, keeping her hands over her ears, trying to block something that we couldn’t hear. It reminded me so much of the Event that I wanted to run away and never come back. Noise had been involved then, too.
So had death.
“Eloise, can I help? Tell me what I can do to help,” Jet continued. He wasn’t getting anywhere, but he kept on trying anyway. He moved to another one of the adults and repeated the same words.
None of them answered. They were too lost in their own private version of hell.
Weren’t we all.
It was impossible not to think of my parents while watching them. I’d seen their actual passing and it went something like this. The noise. The pain. The fear. And then the death.
So, so much death.
All of a sudden, whatever was holding the adults released them. They fell to their sides and my heart stopped. They were dead just like all the others. Kostucha had made more spirits to feed from.
Jet was on the ground, nearly lying down himself while he tried to help them. He should have known better. There was nothing we could do against Kostucha’s power.
“They’re alive,” he announced.
I looked closer, rubbing the blur out of my eyes.
They were moving.
Barely, but still alive.
I raced over to join him. Eloise, the first woman he had questioned, was lying very still. She had tears in her eyes as she blinked up at me.
“Are you okay?” I asked. It was a stupid question. No-one was okay. Especially not down there at the moment.
She stared up at me with clear blue eyes as if seeing me for the first time. Hope sprang from deep within, maybe whatever they experienced had fixed them? Maybe they wouldn’t suffer with the same insanity they seemed to have last time I saw them?
“The rainbow is too bright. The grass needs to fix the fox,” she muttered seriously.
There went the hope. I pushed it down again where it belonged. Hope had no place here.
“Jet, what was that?” I asked, standing again. Slowly, the adults were recovering and sitting up. Some were already getting back to whatever they were doing before the noise had interrupted them.
He helped one of the older women to a seat. “I have no idea. It hasn’t happened before.”
Perry stepped in, passing the same woman some water from a bottle. “Maybe we should move them to a safe room.”
“They won’t go, you know what they’re like.”
“Perhaps it would be a good time to persuade them. You could convince them, I know you could.”
Jet let out a laugh. “They won’t listen to me.”
“Yes, they will,” Perry insisted. I stole a glance at her, she was staring at him wit
h wide open eyes. “You have no idea what effect you have on them.”
He stood, shaking his head. “If we move them now, they’ll get scared in their new surroundings. No changes for the time being. We’ll reassess tomorrow.”
I felt like an eavesdropper on their conversation. It seemed intimate somehow, like they were parents discussing children. I remained on the sidelines, helping the adults that were struggling to get to their feet.
“Whatever you say,” Perry said.
“If it happens again, come and get me,” Jet replied, standing. “I need to get to the pod.”
“You don’t want me to come?”
“Nah, I’ll be fine. You should stay and watch things here.” Jet’s gaze fell over the cavern until finally resting on me. “You up for an outing?”
“Where are we going?” I replied. Knowing Jet, it could be anywhere doing anything. I certainly wasn’t prepared to sign up for something without details.
“It wasn’t so much a question but a polite way of saying you’re coming with me,” he said seriously. I opened my mouth to tell him he could go to hell when he cut me off. “I’m not leaving you to run off and get hurt again. Plus, you’ll like where we’re going.”
Clearly my promise earlier of not getting into trouble without him didn’t hold much faith in his eyes.
He thought I was a liar.
He was right.
I stomped past him. “You should have just said that the first time then.”
Jet chuckled as he followed me. Within no time, he had caught up and was walking beside me. When we stepped into the dark tunnels, he gripped the top of my arm and guided me along, careful not to touch anywhere near my bandages.
When I was certain we were out of earshot – especially Perry’s – I asked my question again. “What do you think happened down there?”
“I already said I didn’t know,” he replied sharply.
“That’s what you said. I don’t believe you.”
He let out the breath he was holding. Even in the darkness, I could imagine how his brows would be furrowed as he scowled at me. “You think you’re cleaver, don’t you, prin-…”
I smiled at the triumph. He had actually managed not to call me his infuriating nickname.
He continued, recovering from his slip. “I think it was too much like the Event for it to be a coincidence. That noise… I’ve seen its effects before. It was the same.”
“I thought the same thing,” I said quietly.
“But it didn’t kill them this time. They survived the Event and whatever this was.”
“It’s Kostucha. He’s showing me his power,” I said. The more I thought about it, the more I was convinced. It couldn’t be a coincidence it happened the day after I summoned the demon.
He was angry.
At me.
And the adults paid the price. At least they had lived this time. It could easily have gone the other way and we’d have nothing but bodies on our hands.
“I didn’t think Kostucha’s powers work underground,” Jet continued. “That’s the only reason I could think of for those few adults managing to survive.”
“I thought the same thing. Spirits can’t come down here.” I didn’t mean to say so much. I inwardly kicked myself for not being more guarded with my tongue.
And, of course, Jet jumped straight on it. “They can’t? You’ve never seen one down here?”
I tried remaining silent, hoping he would let it go. He squeezed my arm in true passive aggressive style. I wasn’t going to get out of answering.
“It’s quiet down here, there are absolutely no spirits.” I wouldn’t add that I had also asked Oliver about it and he said there was a barrier around the underground tunnels. “I don’t think they are able to come down here.”
“So what’s your theory on that?”
“I don’t have one. Like everything else, it’s just another string that I can’t connect to anything.”
We walked in silence, ruminating on Kostucha and whatever he was up to. Every time I closed my eyes images of the adults doubled up in pain and clutching their ears appeared. I didn’t know how the demon did it, but he had to be behind it. Nobody could cause that much pain without being evil incarnate.
I was quickly lost in the tunnels but that was nothing new. What was new was the exit we used. We popped up in a different part of the city and Jet instantly let go of my arm. The patch still felt warm even without his fingers holding me any longer.
Jet strode over to a large mass covered with a blue tarpaulin. He pulled it off, wrapping the cover around his arms until it was neatly folded. He tucked it in the back of the machine.
“What is that?” I asked, hurrying over to join him.
“It’s a car that works on the railway lines,” he replied, like that explained everything.
The contraption did look like a type of car, in a weird, homemade way. Instead of wheels, there were small metal rollers like you would see underneath a train.
“I call it a Crain,” he said proudly, opening the door and holding it for me. “It’s a combination of a car and train, get it? Patent pending.”
“You actually expect me to get in that thing? It looks like a death trap. Are you trying to kill me now? Because you could have done that a long time ago.”
It was rusty. So rusty I wasn’t sure if it would hold together under any kind of weight or stress. It was likely the whole thing would fall over if nudged the wrong way. Hell, if you even looked at it the wrong way.
Jet rolled his eyes. “Come on, just get in. We don’t have all day.”
I crossed my arms.
Then winced with the pain.
“Would you rather walk? It’s all the way across the city so it will take a few hours. And then you’ll have to help me carry back the things we’re picking up. I don’t think either your feet or your arms will like that.”
He flapped the door at me. Honestly, I was surprised it didn’t fall off in his hand.
The chances of me walking away and getting out of the whole thing was zero. Plus, I was a tiny bit curious about where he was taking me.
“Fine. But if I die, I’m coming back and I will haunt you for all of eternity,” I warned as I climbed in. Jet just laughed, jumping in behind me.
The car only had two seats, which was probably all it could handle. Jet started the engine and it whined to life like a strangled cat. “It will quiet down in a minute after it’s warmed up,” he yelled over the noise.
He hit the accelerator and we started chugging along the railway track. I wondered if we would have to manually push it around any actual trains that we encountered along the track but I left it unspoken. Jet would probably find the question amusing. He seemed to think everything else I did was.
Just like he said, the noise did quiet down after a while – a long while. Everything seemed too quiet after that. The scraping of the metal wheels on the rails was unpleasant at best but it did beat walking. Even with the fear of death looming with every inch we moved.
We didn’t encounter any trains along the rail. “Where are all the carriages?” I asked, too curious not to ask after all. Oliver and I had counted loads of them when we walked around the city. They couldn’t have all disappeared.
“We moved them all down the line and out of the city to clear the tracks.”
“That must have taken forever.”
Jet shrugged while still keeping his hands on the steering wheel. Not that I knew what he was actually steering. “Not as long as you’d expect. Most of the trains were still operational once we figured out how to work them. We just drove them out of the city and dumped them.”
He would have encountered a lot of bodies doing that. It was the unspoken part of the story. One that he, and anyone else who saw it, would rather forget.
It took about half an hour before Jet hit the brakes and we came to a screeching halt. We were in the factory district. Instantly, I wanted to leave. That was the place I almost died.
“Picking up supplies.”
“Just us? Or will other people be there?” Like the thugs who had tried to turn me into a human candle. If I had to run, I would. I would race through all the snow and slush until I either collapsed or found refuge.
I would do it in a heartbeat.
My feet were ready.
Jet studied me, his eyes grazing over my face like I was a puzzle he couldn’t work out. Another second and his features relaxed. “It’s just us, there’s no-one else. Nobody is going to hurt you here. I promise.” His hand rested on my leg to reinforce his words.
God help me, I wanted to believe him so badly.
When the fear kept me frozen, he continued. “Like you said, I could have killed you many times before. I wouldn’t drag you all the way out here to do it. It’s a waste of fuel.”
He smiled carefully, like he was wondering if he’d actually helped me or not. Joking about killing me wasn’t exactly safe territory.
“For the record, I don’t like this,” I muttered as I followed him out of the Crain.
“Noted.”
I followed in silence as we walked the streets to a short, fat building with red bricks. We were at least a few blocks from the factory where the fire had been. I wasn’t sure if Jet purposefully skirted around it or whether this was just the fastest route. A part of me suspected it was the former.
He led me to a door in the building. Jet fished around in his pocket and pulled out a ring full of keys. He went straight to one and it slid into the lock. It clicked open.
“It’s going to be dark inside but I’ll grab a flashlight which you can carry,” he explained before entering. “There might be some rodents because we can’t seem to get rid of them but there will be no people inside. Stay close to me but I promise there are only supplies inside, nothing to hurt you.”
I appreciated the way he was explaining everything in great detail for me. It helped settle my nerves slightly.
But that was only if I actually trusted Jet.
Which I really hoped was the right thing to do.
I nodded and Jet stepped inside. His arm went straight to the wall and pulled off a flashlight. Flicking it on, he handed it directly to me. “Despite my many talents, I can’t see in the dark. So please try to keep it faced forward. There will be stairs I’d rather not fall down today.”
I Am Never Alone Page 7
