Dragon-Ridden (40 page)

“If I let you go, you will die.
Your backup is not close enough to help you. You will have saved nothing. The
boy will still die, and your friend from the cages will die.”

“You don’t know that,” Tate said.
If she could have, she would have stomped her foot. “I can save them. Please!”

Light glinted off steel.

“There is no string of events where
you save all of them,” Ai said. “A choice must be made, and I can not let you
die.”

“Bullshit,” Tate hissed. “You don’t
know anything unless you try. And sacrifice? Don’t be stupid. Only the weak
spout that nonsense. Those that give up because it’s easy and safe and don’t
have the stubbornness to find the solution.”

“I am sorry.”

Tate could hear in Ai’s voice her
resolve and knew pleading with her wouldn’t gain her the freedom she wanted.

“Why me and not them?” Tate asked.

Ai’s face and body appeared in
front of Tate, painting itself over her view of the other chamber. Her form
half protruded from the stone. Tate struggled to move as Ai reached out to
touch Tate’s face, stopping a mere breath away from skin.

“What’s so important about me and
not them?” Tate asked again when it didn’t seem like Ai would answer.

Ai met her eyes. “Because he loved
you.” She tilted her head a wistful look crossing her face. “They all loved
you.”

“I don’t understand.”

“No, you wouldn’t. Not yet.” Ai
dropped her hand from Tate’s face. “Maybe someday.” She shrugged, her shoulders
moving sharply up and down in an imitation of a human emotion.

“Please,” Tate’s tongue darted out
to wet dry lips. Despair slid in and wrapped around her heart. “I can’t fail
them.”

“Why is it so important to you?” Ai
asked again, her expression demanding.

Tate struggled to see past Ai, back
into the chamber and what was going on. The only thing worse than not being
able to move was not knowing what was happening while she was paralyzed. The
possibilities were throwing her mind further into panic.

She didn’t really want to get into
why she felt compelled to act. A big part of that was because she wasn’t quite
sure why herself. She had as developed a sense of survival as the next person.
But not acting felt wrong on a fundamental level. Tate might not remember her
past and what events shaped her into the person she was now. She did know that
to walk away from someone in trouble went against every principle she had.
Really, it all came down to the mirror.

Finally she met Ai’s gaze. “When I
look into the mirror every morning, I need to be able to meet my eyes and not
feel ashamed of my actions. If I were to just sit here and let them do anything
they wanted because I was afraid I might get hurt, I wouldn’t be able to face
the person in the mirror.”

Ai considered Tate’s answer, tilting
her head thoughtfully as she seemed to turn in on herself. Tate held her
breath.

“You are just as stubborn and
reckless as he said,” Ai told Tate. Though her features were still smooth and
unmarred by emotion. It sounded almost as if she disapproved.

Tate squelched her urge to ask once
again who this ‘he’ was. Ai wouldn’t answer and Tate had more important things
to focus on then this nebulous individual who evidently knew Tate so well, he
could guess at her actions.

You will owe me,
Ai
whispered in her mind. Suddenly, the invisible bonds holding Tate in place
snapped. Not expecting the sudden freedom, the tension in Tate’s muscles
responded by sending her crashing into the roof of her crawl space. Her head
thumped against the rock sending shooting pain radiating to her temples. She
groaned and cradled it in her hands.

“What’s this?” a voice asked from
in front of her.

Tate lifted her head to meet one
brown eye peering at her from the crack in the wall. Her heart dropped to her
stomach and for a moment she was paralyzed as the eye held her spell bound. For
a moment she thought it was Ai, pulling another trick, but gradually she
noticed details such as the fact the angle meant the eye’s owner had lain on
the floor to get a glimpse of her.

“A spy,” he said gleefully.

Tate gasped and began pushing
herself back.

“Where are you going, little spy?
You came all this way. Don’t leave right before the good part starts.”

Tate squeaked and struggled to get
away from the words. All the while taunting her, he kept his eye fixed
unblinking on her. It took a lot longer to wiggle free, panic making her sloppy
and hindering her progress.

Freed, she eyed the small tunnel
Night and her had found the chamber with. More than anything she wanted to
crawl up there and escape. She could already hear the rush of pursuit while the
eye’s owner taunted her in a low voice. Despite what she’d told Ai, she wasn’t
a brave person. She felt fear and a strong urge to run. The only thing holding
her in place was the knowledge that she’d hate herself forever if she did.

She looked around the chamber, her
heart pounding. She wouldn’t run. That meant she’d have to fight. Unfortunately
the only weapons she had on her were a few knives. That was hardly enough to
make a difference.

Ai had disappeared as soon as Tate
had been released. “It would have been nice if she’d stuck around to use that
phase thing on these people,” Tate muttered.

It would not work on them.

There were no other weapons in the
room. It looked like those knives were about as good as it’d get. She darted
through the doorway and into a tunnel. Several men rounded the corner and gave
a shout, alerting others. Tate sprinted away from them. Perhaps if she kept
them busy, she could buy some time.

How much longer until Night got
here with backup? She’d lost all track of time but guessed it could be no more
than an hour since he’d left. Moving fast and taking risks he might have cut
away at the time, but there was no way of telling. If Ai was to be believed, it
would take longer than either of them had thought. No amount of evading or
fighting on Tate’s part would delay their enemies long enough for it to make a
difference. Looked like she was on her own.

An enemy turned the corner in front
of her; Tate didn’t pause, drawing a knife and increasing her speed. She evaded
his grab and plunged her blade into his throat, wrenching it sideways in a
spray of blood. Another man grabbed her arm— she twisted using his momentum to
pull him off balance and plunge her blade into his back, angling up into his
heart. He dropped to his knees and flopped face down. Two down. Tate’s jaw was
clenched as men ran down the tunnel behind her; she ran in the opposite
direction turning a corner and was out of sight.

The men closed fast, not even one
of them stopping to check on their comrades. Guess there wasn’t a lot of
camaraderie in the Red Lady’s gang. No matter though, it just made what Tate
had to do that much easier.

She dispatched three more men with
the same ease as the first two. Each time she paused for the seconds it took to
kill, her enemies closed in faster and faster. The constant movement and stress
made keeping ahead of the men chasing her that much harder.

She wondered how long since they’d
started this game of cat and mouse. Had she succeeded in distracting them from
their original purpose? Hopefully they wanted the key enough that they’d wait
to act.

She dodged down another narrow
tunnel as two more men pounded at her from opposite tunnels. All of these
tunnels were connected, creating a maze where sense of direction was quickly
lost. She turned down three more tunnels, barely evading the Lady’s men who
swarmed out of connecting tunnels. It dawned on her that she hadn’t had a
direct confrontation in awhile. Her pace slowed as it occurred to her that they’d
been avoiding cornering her or attacking her since she’d killed that fourth
man. It was almost as if they were herding her.

The tunnel around her seemed
lighter than the ones she’d been traveling down earlier. It wasn’t a big
difference, just an infinitesimally lightening of the dark. Tate looked behind
her at the sound of labored breathing. The men stopped when they noticed her
still figure, not daring to approach but not retreating either. With a sick
sense of certainty, she advanced on the last intersection. Two of the tunnels
had men stationed at the end of them, watching her avidly. Feeling numb she
turned down the third tunnel, sure of what she’d find.

Clapping greeted her as she stepped
into the chamber. “Wonderful. Wonderful. It was so kind of you to join us,”
Brown Eyes said. He turned to the Red Lady who regarded Tate with a covetous
expression. “I told you she’d run right into your arms.”

“So you did,” the Red Lady
murmured. The heavy throne looked exactly like the one in the last room Tate had
seen the Lady in. She wondered if they’d carted it all the way down here or if
it was a replica. Perhaps there were similar chairs in all the Red Lady’s
hide-a-ways. “We meet again, little dragon.”

Tate held her silence and watched
the rest of the room. There were more people than last time. Too many to fight,
she realized with despair.

Tate’s attention strayed to
Dewdrop, who kept his head down, his hair falling forward to cover his eyes.
The woman, noticing where she was looking, jerked harshly on Dewdrop’s collar,
bringing his head up sharply. “Say hello, pet.”

His eyes were full of terror as he
said softly, “Hello.”

“I really must thank you for
bringing this one back to the fold,” the Lady stroked her red fingernails down
Dewdrop’s cheek, leaving bloody furrows in their wake. “I was at a loss when he
escaped. You won’t be doing that again, will you, pet?”

Her fingers tightened sharply on
his neck. His thin body quaked with fear as he answered her with a shaky, “No.”

Tate bit her lip, knowing any words
or emotional response from her would only result in greater attention being
turned Dewdrop’s way.

“I know where the key is,” Tate
said quietly.

“Of course you do,” Umi said
turning to Kadien. “You have it.”

Tate took a deep breath. This next
part was a definite gamble. In a quick move she drew a knife and held it to her
throat. “Yeah and if you don’t want it to disappear in a wash of blood I
suggest you let Dewdrop and the boy walk out of here.”

Tate glanced at the Red Lady who
watched her with amusement. “I want my friends released.”

“Do you?” she asked in a bored
tone.

Umi’s glance was sly when she
turned her back on Kadien and strode to face Tate. “Perhaps you’re bluffing.”

Tate tried to back up but found she
was hemmed in when the crowd closed around her. She was, but hoped they would
focus on her rather than the others.

“There has been only two instances
of the key being transferred to a living person and neither was to an
outsider.”

“Guess I’m just lucky,” Tate said.
She didn’t in fact know if she really had the key. She was just spewing
nonsense in the hopes of stalling everybody until the backup could get there.

Tate would have liked to say that
Umi had lost some of her poise and ladylike exterior when she showed her true
self. That wasn’t the case, however. Her movements were graceful and refined as
she clasped her hands in front of her at waist level.

“I do not think so. One must be a
descendent of the Saviors for the key to attach to them. It is more likely that
it found a host in an object you had on your person.”

Tate was seized from behind, the
knife knocked from her fingers. Someone clasped her under the arms before
bending their arms to lace their hands behind her neck. It left her back arched
and her arms useless unless she could reach behind and unclasp her attackers
hands from her neck. She struggled briefly before determining she was caught.

Ten minutes had passed since she’d
entered this place.

“Did she ever tell you why she
handed me over to Lucius?” Tate shouted at the Red Lady.

The lady sat up in interest, her
glance assessing Umi and then Tate. “No, as a matter of fact she didn’t.”

“Don’t you find it a little odd
that she accused me of having the key and all along she knew that Lucius had
me.” Umi’s face was beginning to flush a splotchy red and take on a murderous
cast. “You were supposed to get the key, though.”

“Yes. I was.” The Red Lady waited
expectantly for Umi to explain.

Umi hid trembling hands in the
folds of her skirt as she turned to the Red Lady with a placating smile. “My lady,
I didn’t know she had the key until after she escaped Lucius.”

“That doesn’t wash,” Tate said.
“You’re the one who pointed out to the Red Lady that I had the key. What were
your words again?” Tate pretended to think. “Oh yeah, that I had stolen it from
Lucius, but he was under the impression that I had it all along. In fact he
seemed rather assured that you didn’t have it, almost like he had a little
birdie feeding him information.”

It wasn’t Umi she had to convince.
At this point she was spewing random nonsense, hoping only to spin a tale
plausible enough to stall for time and perhaps drive a wedge between her
enemies.

Twelve minutes had passed.

“I would be very interested in your
explanation at this point,” the lady said.

Umi was at a lost for words. She
couldn’t figure out how Tate had so neatly cast her actions into a suspicious
light.

“My lady, on my family’s honor-“

The lady held up one hand
imperiously. “I am not interested in your honor. Below the surface, family
honor doesn’t exist, only the strength of your actions.”

“She is trying to divide us,” Umi
argued passionately.

“Divide? Ha!” The Red Lady threw
her head back and laughed. She wiped tears from her eyes when she finally wound
down. Umi looked unsure. It was obvious she hadn’t realized how unstable her
ally was. “My silly little noble. We have never been working together.”