Blackthorn [3] Blood Torn (22 page)

He slid his hand up her abdomen, over her breast to her throat, his thumb pressing her chin up so she was forced to look him deep in the eyes. ‘Keep reminding me of that,’ he said.

She subtly slid her leg up the wall, her hand ready to meet her heel as he glided his thumb along her jaw line, his gaze not flinching from hers.

‘And I’ll remind you that if I wanted you dead, you’d be dead,’ he said, ‘whether I need you or not.’

She slid her fingers over her heel, pressing on the ball of her feet to create enough of a gap behind it that she could slide the hidden encasement open.

‘But you
are
going to work for me,’ he added.

‘And then you’ll kill me anyway, right?’

He slid his hand gently down her throat. ‘I’d advise that whatever weapon you’re reaching for right now, that you don’t.’ The breeze blew lightly through his hair, a sharp contrast to the steadiness of his gaze. ‘Unless you want me to show you
just
how
feral I can be.’

Her fingers halted on her half-open heel. Only now she realised her hand wasn’t just trembling, it was shaking.

The battle drums of Blackthorn’s hub now seemed a painfully long way away. Everything felt a painfully long way away, alone there, trapped between the fence and the wall, in the dark with the lycan who stared coolly back at her.

‘In fact, I’ll show you
exactly
what untamed is,’ he said, his lips dangerously close to hers. ‘Unless you hand it over.’

Less than a few hours before, she would have looked him straight in the eye and defied him. And had absolutely no doubt she would have paid the consequences. Badly.

Just as there was a time when she would have taken a punt and tried to ram that blade into his throat regardless.

A time when she thought she had nothing to lose. When she despised herself enough not to care about the consequences.

But she learned one quietly terrifying thing in that moment: she
needed
to live. What she did at that moment, the decision she made, mattered – not just for her, but for those she had left to care about.

Intentionally or unintentionally, Jask Tao
had
tamed her in some way. But she’d be damned if she’d let him know.

And there was absolutely no way she was sticking around now to give him long enough to find out.

She removed the small blade from her heel, keeping her breathing as controlled as she could as she placed it in his open palm. ‘Another time,’ she said.

‘I’ll hold you to that.’

Jask held her gaze for a moment longer before he backed away, walked away, without another word.

Chapter Sixteen

J
ust as Rone had promised, the trapdoor in the greenhouse was unlocked.

Inside was silent. Even the water sprays had ceased for the night.

Lifting the trapdoor, Sophia stared down the wooden slatted steps into the darkness. Hesitation cost time, and time was something she didn’t have.

Collecting the torch Rone had left her amongst the shrubbery – a diver’s torch in preparation for its task – she took the first two steps down. She shone the light around the depths, the vast space having far too many objects for there not to be the potential for something to be hiding behind them. Keeping watchful, she reached up to close the trapdoor behind her, sealing herself in the darkness. It was quiet enough down there to hear a page turn, her only comfort the beam of light – but even that could only ignite one corner at a time.

She sat on the bottom step and collected the taped-up plastic bag that contained dry clothes and, hopefully, the map out of there. It also had a cord, clearly so she could attach the bag to herself whilst she swam. Next to it was a knife. She pulled the heavy blade out of its encasement, the impressively sharp edge now jutting 180 degrees. Rone sure knew how to pick his weapons.

Shining the beam back around the room, she rested it on the door ahead – the entrance point to the tunnel.

She made her way over, sending the occasional wary glance over each shoulder. She should have been used to the dark, but there was no denying it was an inherent fear no matter how accustomed she was to it.

She unbolted the door and reached for the key on the hook beside it. The internal lock mechanism giving way echoed in the silence, momentarily overwhelming the blood pounding in her ears. Fortunately, the door opened silently.

She shone the torch into further darkness.

It looked like nothing more than a tunnel through rock but then, from what Rone had told her, that’s exactly what it was.

She stepped into the dense chill. Closing the door behind her, she stood for a moment, her breathing ragged.

‘Come on, Phia,’ she whispered. ‘You’ve been in darker places than this.’

She held the torch beam ahead.

The tunnel was no wider than four feet, no higher than seven.

‘Single-file only,’ she whispered again, muttering to herself as she always had when she was frightened as a child.

The temptation to leave the door open behind was immense. But she did what Rone had instructed. She locked the door behind her and slid the key back through the tiny gap at the floor.

‘No going back,’ she muttered as she replaced the torch with the knife, ensuring she held the weapon in her best hand, the ray of light in the other, the plastic bag tucked under that arm.

And she took her first step forward.

‘There’s nothing to worry about until you get to the other side of the water,’ she whispered, putting one foot in front of the other. ‘They don’t come this way. Nothing comes this way. Twenty minutes, that’s all. Just twenty minutes to the lagoon.’

She picked up pace, the beam allowing her to see at least thirty feet ahead.

At least there were no corners at that part, not for a good way in.

She swallowed hard against her arid throat. ‘You’re made of stronger stuff than this, Phia McKay. Much stronger.’

Keep it going. Keep it going.
Only now she said it silently in her head, anxiety muting her speech.

The torch indicated she was veering right and before long she was veering left.

One way in. One way out. And nowhere to hide should something come the other way.

But nothing was going to come the other way. Rone had assured her there was minimal risk until she got beyond the water.

She picked up pace, striding ahead as fast as she could, the distance she needed to cover passing too slowly.

Five minutes. Ten minutes. Approaching fifteen at least.

As the tunnel became more twisted, she slowed down a little for fear of knocking herself out cold on a wall, before it opened up again. The walls spread, the ceiling now beyond her reach.

But she kept her pace steady. She ploughed forward, the beam bouncing off the walls, off the floor.

Until there was only a wall straight ahead, nothing but rock beneath.

No more tunnel. And no lagoon.

Her stomach clenched. She came to a standstill.

It was a dead end.

She shone the beam around more erratically for a smaller opening. Nothing but rock. Nothing but rock and a locked door behind her.

He’d tricked her. Rone had tricked her. The double-crossing…

She growled under her breath, kicked a rock against the wall ahead and turned away just as she heard the plop.

She spun back around.

Ripples spanned the small pool ahead – a pool that had been so perfectly still, it had been nothing but a mirror to the rocks around it.

Sophia warily stepped closer as the water began to still again – water that seamlessly reached the rock’s edge.

Her dark and cold abyss of a way out.

Her heart leapt.

Dropping the bag, knife and torch to the floor beside her, she untied and slipped off her boots before sitting cross-legged at the water’s edge. She stared down into the darkness, her heart pounding, her hands coiled around the rock. She closed her eyes, muttering to herself as she psyched herself up.

Opening her eyes again, she grabbed the plastic bag and used the cord to tie it around the small of her back. She eased herself from the edge into the cold water, shivers shimmying up through her body.

Once submerged to mid-waist, she grabbed the torch and, most importantly, the knife.

She mouthed from one to three, and slipped into the darkness.

Chapter Seventeen

A
s soon as the cold water enveloped her, she knew there was no going back.

Eyes wide open, she held her torch ahead as steadily as she could whilst clumsily pushing herself through the water in moves that were too erratic and energy-draining in their urgency.

She kept veering ahead as Rone had told her. But having suspected he had betrayed her once, the paranoia was now at the forefront of her mind that she’d hit a dead end – that the air pockets were a lie. She’d know in her final seconds that he’d got one over on her, his problem solved.

She couldn’t expect anything less, and had been naïve not to consider it before. She’d threatened him. She’d threatened to expose him, and subsequently he’d made up some lie about her being able to get out of there to be rid of her.

But she’d taken the only chance she could. If she didn’t get out of there, if she couldn’t save her sisters, The Alliance, then she may as well drown.

The pain started to consume her chest at the lack of oxygen, the light-headedness kicking in, her body taking over her mind as it punched her into accepting she needed oxygen.

She kicked harder, knowing the panic that consumed her was not going to help.

Rone had said it was at the midway point.

She kicked to the surface of the darkness, slamming the back of her hand up through the water, the panic taking holding as she hit rock every time.

She clutched the knife tighter, fearful of dropping it – fearful of never getting out of the tunnel without it, even if she did get to the other side of the lagoon.

She kept slamming her hand above her head, kept finding rock, her whole body starting to jerk in desperation for air.

She slammed her hand upwards again, but this time broke into cold air.

She pushed her head above the surface, and took the deepest and most desperate breath she had since that day in the lake.

She pressed her torch-holding hand to the rock as she used it to help balance herself, to curb the panic as her legs kicked erratically beneath the surface.

Regaining her senses, she took in the small dome in the rock – the small crevice providing air from somewhere. But the regular supply didn’t mean she could stay there, even if the thought did cross her mind for a split second. Her body would freeze, her stationary position already evoking blood supply stagnation further than in just her extremities.

She needed to get back into the darkness, back into the cold depths and face the final twenty feet.

She closed her eyes, took as many deep breaths as she could.

And pushed herself back under the water.

The second part was more difficult – her body working less fluidly. She knew she couldn’t hold her breath as long the second time, already tiring quickly, the extra effort to make her body move consuming more energy.

But she kept the torch ahead, kept veering right just as Rone had told her, pushing through the water, her legs exerting themselves to keep her momentum going.

When she suddenly hit rock, her knuckles scraping against the stone, she took in a mouthful of water in her panic.

But her instinct was to swim upwards.

She kicked hard, sliding up the wall, seeming to get nowhere until suddenly her head pushed through the surface water into the darkness of a tunnel.

She swam forward, dropping the knife and torch onto the side of the rock. She coughed and caught her breath, her forearms pressed down onto the hard edge.

It took her three attempts before she was able to lever herself out. Even then she could only manage to flop onto her side before rolling onto her stomach. She buried her head in her forearm before her survival instincts kicked in; before she reminded herself to tune into the potential threat of her surroundings.

She grabbed her torch and shone it into the darkness ahead.

There was no sound and no movement.

Rone had explained that most wouldn’t venture down that part of the tunnel. Territory ruled just as much down there as it did on the surface. But she couldn’t count on it and she certainly couldn’t risk taking a wrong turn.

Shivering, she eased onto her knees and unfastened the cord around her waist. She ripped open the waterproof bag and took out the dry tunic and the map, a light pair of ballet-style shoes hitting the floor.

She angled the torch so it remained down the tunnel as she hurriedly tore off the sodden tunic clinging to her wet skin. The friction was painful as she drew it over her numbing flesh before casting it aside.

She slipped on the fresh tunic, too big for her, but that was probably better out there on the streets where she was going.

She waited for her feet to dry as she grabbed the torch again and studied the map.

There was no way she’d memorise it. This required her keeping it open at all times.

She slipped on the ballet shoes and stood up, leaving everything else behind – everything but the torch, the map and the knife.

The first part of the map said straight ahead for at least fifty feet, ignoring every turn off to the left, each of those branching out elsewhere. She prepared herself for the worst as she pressed on ahead, even her quiet footsteps painfully conspicuous in the silence of the tunnel.

Not that her silence would make any difference if there were rogue lycans or vampires milling around the tunnel – they’d smell her coming from over fifty feet away. But right then, for the first time, they seemed like the least of her worries. Because what she dreaded, as much as any third species, was the potential threat of the humans that
chose
to lurk down there.

Rone had been right in saying they were the lowest of the low. The Alliance had trained her to pick out the cons and to avoid them at all costs. In the cons’ eyes,
they
were the humans that owned Blackthorn and would be as resentful of The Alliance’s presence as the third species themselves.

She tightened her grip on her knife as her sudden sense of vulnerability consumed her. She slowed every time she reached a recess, taking a defensive stance, the blade ready in her hand, her heart pounding wildly, the adrenaline pumping.

It had always been her weak point in combat. Zach had tried so hard to calm her down – warning her that the escalation of her pulse rate and breathing not only made her more clumsy and less focused, but also incited her third-species opponent more. It also made her seem weaker than she was – something she couldn’t afford to present.

Because she wasn’t weaker. She was impulsive and at times irrational, but she also had a determination that made her a relentless opponent. Some days it had been all she’d had.

She kept her back to the wall as she moved further and further along the tunnel. She checked the map, ensuring she was going the right way. But she wouldn’t move her back from the wall – not with the potential of anything coming up behind her, from in front or from the sides.

She quickened her pace, stopping every now and again to read the map before proceeding.

Suddenly the compound felt like a safe place. Being near Jask felt safe. But she rejected the thought as soon as it entered her head.

Nothing about Blackthorn was safe. Nothing about Blackthorn had ever been safe. Safe was something that no one but the elite could afford to feel. In fact, under the new systems,
no
human felt safe.

That was the point behind The Alliance – to break the system. To destroy the likes of Jask.

But still she couldn’t help her mind wandering to how he would feel when he found out she’d gone. If he would suspect Rone. What punishments he would inflict on him.

What punishments he would inflict on her when and if he caught up with her.

Or if that last moment with him
had
been the last moment.

Sophia took a left at the end of the tunnel and then veered right. It opened up for a while in width and height before closing in on itself again. Some sections were man-made – bricked in with cement. Others were natural rock cocoons where nature had paved the way centuries or thousands of years before. The whole place was a warren. A maze known only by those who used it.

Following the map, she ploughed on until her feet registered an incline. Her torch caught a metal grid two feet off the ground to her left.

As she crouched down to peer through it, she saw nothing but crates beyond.

She tucked the torch in her mouth and removed the grate before warily sticking her head out.

It was a warehouse just as Rone had said.

Slipping through the gap, she peered up over the top of the crates in front of it. The place was empty. Regardless, she kept alert as she crept around the side and into the open.

She hurriedly crossed the warehouse, stepping out into an alley.

She stared up at the night sky as the clouds blew past the moon, then turned to face the alley opening. She needed to know where she was – where the tunnel had brought her out. She could tell from the volume of people, let alone the noise, that she was near the hub. And that meant she wasn’t too far from home.

But she couldn’t go home – that she had already resolved. As much as she wanted to feel a fresh shower and get into familiar clothes, she couldn’t risk it. If they knew who she was, they also knew where she lived. It was a risk she wasn’t willing to take.

She knew exactly where to go instead.

Stepping out of the alley, she scanned the neon signs and the landmarks. Seeing the clock tower of the museum in the distance, she headed straight towards it.