“I won’t let you down,” I said. “I promise.”
Click.
CHAPTER SIX
I was back in that dull, grey office, but something was different. I blinked hard, my heart hammering inside of my chest. My breathing came in fast and ragged, my chest tightening, my feet and hands curling.
“Can you hear me, Six?” Calder asked.
I stared at him sharply, panting, breathing so hard now I thought I was going to pass out. I swallowed. “Holy shit…” I said, my eyes wide. “Did that just happen?”
“Yeah,” he paused, “I can probably help you relax with a little magic, if you want me to.”
I stretched my hand toward him and shook my head. “No magic. Let me just… I just need to calm down.”
Calder fell silent, giving me enough room to breathe, to think, to piece together all the memories falling into place like bits of a jigsaw puzzle. Some of the pieces were missing, others were a little warped, a little unrecognizable, but they were there. Together they painted a picture of a woman, me, who’d been found in a squat somewhere in New York living like an animal—if you could call it living.
“I remember…” I said, on the back of a sigh.
My name… is Six.
I remembered the day Seline came for me. I remembered the Black Fortress. The fight on the rooftop of that crumbling old building I’d been found in with the fiend who’d kept me in chains. No, not fiend… Serakon. That’s what we were called. My kind, my people. Serakon. Fiend was a word used by others to put us down—to remind us that we were little more than savage brutes to the rest of the world.
“How much do you remember?” Calder asked.
“It’s hard to say,” I said, looking at him now with what felt like fresh eyes. I’d seen him before. Many times. He visited the Black Fortress often, he and others of his kind who were sympathetic to our cause. Mages. “I don’t hate you.”
Calder half-laughed. “Christ, I should hope not.”
“My memories are still messy. I feel like I should know way more than I do.”
“It’ll come to you, and it’ll come to you quickly. I think by the time we’re done in this room, you should be mostly back to your old self. We don’t have a lot of time, though, so we should get started.”
“Started?”
“They think I’m in here to try and find out what you know about the killing.”
Blood. So much blood. The memory came back, not with images and light, but with the stench of all that blood, the taste of it in my mouth. My stomach turned upside down. “I killed a man…” I said.
Calder nodded, then he quickly put his hands up. “I don’t say this lightly as I believe death should only be used to punish the worst of us but. He deserved it.” He ruffled through a couple of pages and handed one over. It had a polaroid snapshot of a man whose face brought more memories pouring into my brain. The flash of magic, a blood-curdling scream, the feel of my claws tearing through the soft of his throat.
His name was Jensen. Officer Randall Jensen.
“He was a Hunter,” I said, reading the words on the page in front of me. “He went out looking for Outsiders to snatch up and bring in. He enjoyed beating them…” I glanced up at Calder. “One of the guards last night said the man I’d killed was a good man. Why would he do that if this Jensen guy was clearly a psychopath?”
“That should tell you something about the kind of people that run this place. They hate your kind, but it goes deeper than the Native, Outsider thing. The Coalition thinks its people are better than everyone, like they’re a master race.”
“But I saw them drag a mage down the corridor. Why would they imprison their own people?”
“Like I said. Everyone.”
I took a deep breath, making peace with the idea that I’d killed a man who deserved to die last night. “I have questions. So many questions.”
“I know. We discussed some of what we’re going to go through here as we prepared for this mission, but we couldn’t go through it all, not without risking the success of my memory suppression technique. It would’ve been a lot easier to wrap you up in a spell, but that wouldn’t have worked here. Not since the prison came under new management, anyway.
“Why not?”
“A few years ago, Harrowgate was attacked by a group of mages who staged a prison break. The Coalition, the people who run it, weren’t happy about it, so they brought in new people to increase its security and amplify its stranglehold on the area around it.”
He handed me another file with a document inside it titled “The Harrowgate Break.” It talked about a mage by the name of Hugo West who was broken out by a group of mages masquerading as other inmates. Official records weren’t filed with the Magistrate—the governing body of mages in New York City—so the identities of the mages responsible isn’t known.
But the Coalition sure had a lot to say about it.
“The old magic wards around the prison were stripped down and replaced with far more sophisticated defensive measures,” Calder continued, “The kind that nullify all active spells the moment a person gets near the compound, but they didn’t stop there. Psionics scan the brains of every inmate coming into the prison for signs that they’re gonna be trouble for the Coalition. Most of the staff get scanned, too.”
“Even you?”
“Trust me, suppressing my own memories without the use of magic, day in, day out, is a lot harder than it sounds.” He paused. “Can you tell me what you remember about your interrogation?”
I set the Harrowgate Break down and looked at Calder, who took another sip of his coffee. “I didn’t remember anything,” I said. “I had flashes of… something. Memories, I guess. Like they were trying to come up, but couldn’t. The guards tried to dig them out of me. I think one of them tried to rip them from my mind, but he wasn’t strong enough.”
“Standard practice. First, they ask, then they pry, and then they hurt. Sometimes they hurt first—depends on their mood.”
“One of them was a lot stronger than the other two. I think he tried to tell if I was lying, but I guess he must’ve thought I was telling the truth.”
Calder frowned, then picked one of the files on his desk up and examined it. “There were three guards in the room? There are only two listed on your report…”
“Does it say I broke their mouths, too?”
“No, it says here you were unsuccessfully questioned, showered, and thrown into the hole for…” he sighed and shook his head. “Being a mouthy little bitch. Brickmore, God-dammit.” He looked up at me. “Did you really break his mouth?”
A grin curled my lip. “He called me a fiend. I didn’t like that.”
“Not even memory suppression could bottle that instinct down, I guess.” He paused. “Do you remember the unlisted guard?”
“He was big… and strong. Stronger than the other two. I think he was in charge because they looked pretty scared of him.”
“Scared… this guy didn’t happen to have long, black hair and muscles you could break a two-by-four on, did he?”
“I think so.”
Calder paused, then shook his head. “What was he doing in that room with you?”
I shrugged. “Beats me. He didn’t do anything besides stop me from killing the other two guards, but I don’t like the way he looked at me.”
“The question was rhetorical, trust me. Intake interrogations are usually beneath him. I’ve never heard of him actually showing up to one.”
“Who is he?”
A soft sigh escaped his lips. “They call him the Horseman of Devil Falls. He’s the highest ranked guard in the prison, he holds the track record for most captured Outsiders, most skulls smashed, most asses kicked, and he’s a Vivimancer so he’s about as tough to put down as a Tyrannosaurus Rex made of solid titanium.”
The Horseman.
My skin tingled.
I caught myself thinking about him, catching flashes of him in my mind. The shape of his chest, h
is half-smile, the way his eyes had lingered on me… the smell of him. My body flushed with heat. I’d met many men before, but none quite like him. Then again, he wasn’t really a man, was he? He was much, much more than that.
“Let me guess, he’s my target?”
“I’m afraid so.”
I rolled my eyes. “That’s just perfect. What do I need to know about him?”
“Well, he used to be a Magistrate mage, one of us, but a few years ago he went missing. Nobody knows why, what happened to him, where he went. We only know when he surfaced again, he was working for the Coalition, here, at Harrowgate.”
“I mean…” I paused, “I’m sure we’ve already talked about this, but if we want to stop what’s happening here, shouldn’t we go after the Warden? Or whoever runs the Coalition?”
“Harrowgate itself, even the Coalition, aren’t as much of a threat to the people who get thrown in here as your target is. The prison can’t move, so it sends its agents out to do its bidding. Without them, it’s only a prison. The Horseman isn’t only the Coalition’s strongest asset in their crusade against… everyone else. He’s ruthless, a monster, but he’s also like a hero to these people. If we can take him down, we deal a solid blow to the entire organization.”
“If not, I just die.”
“It’s not going to come to that. I’m going to help you. Now that you’re inside, getting to him will be a lot easier than if we were to try and attack him directly. People have tried… good people.” Calder’s eyes lowered, words left unsaid hanging in the air like a specter. “He won’t expect an attack from an inmate, but you’re going to have to play along for a little while.”
“Play along?”
“No one just gets close to him. Definitely not new inmates.”
“That’s not exactly true, is it? I already got close to him once.”
“Sure, but… well, none of us expected that, and even though that’s already thrown our plan way off, we should still follow it as much as we can. I don’t want you getting hurt.”
“So, what’s the plan?”
“Well, that’s where this part gets a little tricky. I hadn’t expected him to have revealed himself to you already, so that changes things.”
“Changes things how?”
“You need to get close to him, but in order to do that, he needs to feel like you aren’t a threat to him, or to this prison’s integrity. If you stand out in any way, it could compromise the entire mission.”
“Fat chance of that. I broke two of his guards in front of him.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “That’s why laying low is way more important now. At least until you run into him again.”
“And when will that happen?”
“The Horseman is the heard guard, but he likes to make the rounds at least once a week. That means, once a week, he’ll be in your cellblock, and you’ll have a chance to interact with him.”
“Interact…”
“Right, find a way to get close enough to him in a private enough setting that you can… you know.”
“Assassinate him.”
I could tell Calder, like Seline, was also uncomfortable with the topic of murder. The Obsidian Order wasn’t a guild of assassins, we were peacekeepers. The fact that I wasn’t uncomfortable with killing, though, didn’t surprise me anymore. Not now that I could remember where I’d come from, how I’d been treated. I’d killed before, several times. It was that, or die on the hard streets of an uncaring New York City.
“Yes,” Calder said. “Exactly that.”
“So, you want me to sit in here and stay out of his way, and everyone else’s way for… an unknown amount of time. That sounds fun.”
“I know you don’t remember—”
“—yes, I remember agreeing. I’m also pretty sure I disliked the part of the plan where I sat on my hands and waited.”
“We’re asking a lot. We are. But you’re the only person who could do this. No one else can.”
I frowned. “Alright. I still don’t like it, but I’ll manage.”
“Good. Thank you. I’m going to do everything I can from my position to keep your cover and your profile down. We’ll meet once a week to brief each other with any updates. But you have to understand, I can’t meddle too much or my own cover will be blown. You also can’t tell anyone about this mission—not even other Outsiders.”
“I think I got that.”
“Then we’re ready to get going with the operation.” Calder stood, extended his hand.
I extended my hands, forgetting they were cuffed together. Still, I shook. “So, what happens now?”
“Now I hand in these notes I’ve written up about what I found in your brain to my superiors, and your mission officially begins.” He glanced at his notepad and read. “Progress is slow, but she’s regained some of her memories. I can’t confirm she killed Randall Jensen yet. I do know her name, at least. Six.”
“It’s good to have one again. Let’s get to work.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
It was time to enter the cellblock.
After my meeting with Calder ended, I was asked to step out of the room and into the hall, where Brickmore and Howes were waiting for me. They were there to escort me to the place I’d be calling home for the foreseeable future, leaving me to wonder if they were two of only three guards in this entire facility, or if they’d been assigned specifically to look after me.
This time I didn’t talk, and I didn’t ask questions, I didn’t open my mouth more than I had to. Now that I had a mandate, a purpose in here, a mission, I needed to be careful who I spoke to, and how much I said.
I was headed for Cellblock-D. I knew I’d been briefed on the prison’s layout as much as possible before coming here, but the memories hung at the edges of my mind, just out of reach. I still couldn’t tell where the other cellblocks were, or where the exit to this place was. I could only hope the memories came back quickly, because I didn’t like not knowing my way out of this place.
The large, metal door to D-block opened at the sound of a buzzer, and Brickmore shoved me through it grunting, “Move.”
There were two levels in D-block. The main doors opened on the ground floor, and since all the cell doors were shut, the center was entirely empty. The guards marched me through the wide, open space between doors, and already I could feel eyes on me. Inmates, prisoners, they were everywhere, staring at me from behind the tiny, squared window holes in their cell doors.
I tried not to look at any of them, not to make eye contact as I walked toward a set of stairs heading to the next level up. If I didn’t look at them, I wouldn’t feel the urge to want to kill them. That much I remembered.
At the far end of the block was a control room where two guards sat behind thick, probably bulletproof glass panes. Brickmore yelled out, “Open thirteen!”, and one of the guards in the room gave him a thumbs up.
“Hear that? Thirteen,” Howes said, pleased with himself, “Unlucky for some.”
“Unlucky for you,” I grumbled.
“What was that, inmate?”
I bit my tongue. No use starting something with him now, that would only lead to more trouble. If I hadn’t known about what I had been put in here to do, I would’ve probably said something clever, something that would’ve gotten me stunned, or injured, or thrown back into the hole—maybe all three.
But Calder had asked me to lay low, to keep a low profile. Only, it wasn’t just Calder who was counting on me, but also Seline, the entire Obsidian Order, and just about every single other Outsider unlucky enough to wander into Devil Falls and get picked up by these bastards.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Howes said.
Bite your tongue, Six. Wait.
Another buzz sounded as we reached the door to a cell on the second level. Brickmore pushed me up against the railing and stood between me and the door to the cell as it slid open by remote.
“Inmate, up against the wall,” he barked, “Now!”
A woman scrambled out of her bunk and backed up against the wall inside of her cell. She was thin, wiry, and pale skinned, with long auburn hair that looked like it was soaking wet—as if she’d just come out of the shower and hadn’t towel-dried it.
“What’s up, Bricky,” she crooned, “Gonna frisk me again? It’s been a while.”
Bricky? I snorted.
Howes shot me an angry look. I glared back at him.
“I’ve told you before, and I won’t tell you again,” he said, pushing the woman against the wall of her cell and pinning her in place. “Don’t fucking call me that, or I’ll strip you down and throw you a cell with a shifter. I bet they’d have a good time even with a skinny little thing like you.”
He was easily three times her size, but she didn’t seem too concerned about him even when he threatened her. “Would you?” she asked, pouting, “It’s been so long since I had a man, the idea of being ravaged by a hungry shifter doesn’t sound half bad.”
Was it possible for the back of a bald head to flush red? Because if so, Brickmore’s did, and so did the rest of his neck. “You’ve got a new cellmate,” he growled. “Make sure she doesn’t kill herself.”
He turned on his heel and left the room. Howes then undid the chains binding my wrists together and then shoved me into the cell, leaving without so much as an introduction. The cell door slammed shut, the buzzer sounding just as the locking mechanism finished sealing us inside.
The woman, my cellmate, cocked a curious eyebrow and ran her fingers through her luscious, hair. She was prettier than I’d been able to tell from outside, with deep blue eyes the color of a vast ocean that glittered with specks of silver light. She was an Outsider, but unlike with Azlu, I could hear her pulse, her breathing. I could even smell her. She had a strange, briny scent, like salty sea spray.
Cocking her head, she approached, examining me, scanning me with her eyes. I noticed, then, the collar around her neck. It was the same one I had. The same one Azlu had been wearing.
“You here to cause trouble?” she asked.
Night Hunter (The Devil of Harrowgate Book 1) Page 4
