Wild Hunt (6 page)

T
he prison resembled
some sort of huge concrete and steel box. From what I could see from my vantage point in the car, there were no windows and part of me wondered why.

Obviously, you couldn’t hold a vampire in a cell with access to daylight, but surely the option would have been a good idea, in case something went wrong? And anyway, what kind of trouble could the rest of the prisoners cause with access to a little sunlight?

The car drove in through the barricaded gates and the screech of metal as they closed behind us reminded me of nails on a chalk board.

King City wasn’t visible from the prison; the closest town was at least fifteen miles away and from what I could tell, the government had bought up most of the land surrounding the prison itself. There was even a rumour that in some of the barren stretches of land, they’d placed land mines and other assorted deadly weapons as a deterrent to the prisoners contemplating escape—and also in case anyone thought it was a good idea to try and break in.

I’d never heard of anyone trying to break into one of the prisons, but attempted prison breaks were a pretty regular occurrence.

The car wound its way up the hill to the main entrance, which would have looked more at home on the front of a fortified castle.

The moment the car came to a halt, someone opened the door and I slid out into the cold morning sunshine. Seven guards stood at the entrance, their black armoured gear hiding most of their bodies; even the helmets they wore had black tinted visors down the front of them. They were armed, and from where I stood, I could see their weapons didn’t have the safeties on.

The car I’d got out of drove away as smoothly as it had arrived, its tyres silent on the slick asphalt.

“You brought your ID?” Jason said, appearing out of the group of armed men and approaching me slowly.

“Yeah, and my badge and gun.”

“They’ll want to take the gun and badge; you can’t bring anything like that in with you in case it’s used against you…” he said, gesturing for me to walk ahead with him.

As we approached the large iron doors, the tell-tale flash of security cameras told me whoever was manning the inside already knew we’d arrived and the doors swung open without us having to lift a finger. I stepped inside; the air itself buzzed with static and I could feel it prickle along the back of my neck, strands of my hair frizzing into life and floating around my face.

Jason paused next to a white screen and waited until a green light flashed overhead. I copied him, leaving my gun and badge in the small lockable box supplied to me. And after a couple of seconds the light turned green for me, too, and another, smaller door swung inwards.

The place looked pristine and the glare from the all-white walls, floors, and ceilings made it almost uncomfortable to walk down the length of the corridor. Static continued to buzz, worse in some areas as I followed Jason silently through the maze of hallways and heavily-fortified doors.

We stepped through another of the fortified doors and Jason turned to me. The expression he wore more than a little intimidating as he studied me carefully. “What does she want from you?” he said, his gaze searching and probing mine.

“I have no idea. I was hoping maybe you could tell me,” I said, keeping my voice as steady as I could.

He shook his head and sighed. “As you can imagine, beyond the first interview I had with her, she doesn’t want to talk to me at all. We simply stare at each other day after day in a never-ending game of who will break first.”

I didn’t know what to say to him so I kept silent. If he wanted to confide in me then I wasn’t going to stop him. Anything he could tell me about how Lily felt or what she was planning would be a good thing.

“And she didn’t say anything about why she wanted me here?”

He shook his head and pulled another key card from his pocket. “When she asked me to bring you here, it was first thing she said to me since the night she turned herself in.”

Struggling to keep the surprise off my face, I nodded. None of it made any sense. She had to have a reason for turning herself in, but why it would involve giving one interview and then never speaking to anyone again … well, that wasn’t something I could quite wrap my head around.

“You can’t touch her, and if she tries to give you anything, stand back and we’ll take it from there…” he said as he pressed the card to a keypad. One of the walls swung inwards to reveal a small, square cell.

Stepping inside, I stared at my surroundings in surprise. It resembled more of a padded cell than anything else; there was nothing in the room aside from Lily and she sat in the centre of the room on the floor, her long dark hair hanging limply around her face. Showering was obviously a luxury they couldn’t afford the inmates much access to.

“Hi, Lily,” I said, keeping my voice low and as unthreatening as possible.

“I didn’t know if you’d come, especially after everything that happened between us,” she said, her voice hoarser than I remembered, as though she’d spent a lot of time screaming.

Lifting her face, she smiled at me, the purple bruises that ran in a thick line down one side of her face from hairline to jaw only emphasising how pale she’d become.

“Please have a seat. I’m sorry I can’t offer you anything more comfortable than the floor, but they’re not big on furniture in here….” There was a bitterness in her voice that seemed out of place in someone who had brought this on herself. She’d given herself in to the authorities; had she not known what awaited her inside the preternatural prison system?

“What happened to your face?” I asked, quickly taking in the other bruises that decorated every inch of exposed flesh that peeked out beneath the white jumpsuit.

“Things happen in prison and I’m not allowed the use of my magic in here, not even to protect myself. Sometimes the other prisoners get a little over zealous,” she said, tilting her head to the side to reveal several bite marks down one side of her neck. “And sometimes it’s the guards,” she whispered, running her fingers down the side of her face. “They don’t like it when we scream,” she said almost imperceptibly, “and they don’t like the word ‘no’; it makes them mean.” My stomach clenched in discomfort.

We’d had our problems. Lily had killed innocent people; she’d had her vampire allies kill an innocent child and she’d wanted me to take the life of another. She’d caused immeasurable pain to those she’d come into contact with; she was one of the bad guys and we were supposed to be the good guys.

She should have been safe in here, from the other prisoners but most particularly from the guards…. How were we supposed to protect the innocent if the line between good and evil was so irreparably blurred and damaged?

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know,” I said.

Glaring up at me, her eyes sparked with suppressed rage and power. “Don’t give me that shit. You don’t care about me. You don’t care about anyone but yourself and we both know it.”

“You asked me to come here. If it was just so you could take your frustrations out on me, then I’m leaving.” I moved as though I really planned on leaving and Lily lifted her hands in panic.

“No, not yet, I’m not done yet….” She paused and I watched as she tried to cram her rage back down inside her, forcing it down until she was little more than a blank shell once more. “I’m sorry, it’s just stressful in here…. I’m not used to being so confined. I was taught to abhor weakness and, well…” She shrugged. “they keep me weak, keep pushing in the hopes that they will break me soon,” she finished.

“I’ll talk to them, talk to Jason—none of this is right….” I felt ashamed of the words as they spilled from my lips. I wasn’t lying; none of it was right, but I was pretty certain my talking to any of the guards or Jason would make absolutely no difference.

I cast my mind back to when I’d visited Graham’s daughter Jessica. She’d had her fair share of marks, but I hadn’t even thought to ask…. Guilt swarmed in my guts. I hadn’t wanted to ask, subconsciously afraid of the answer because, yet again, I was far more of a coward than anything else.

“Jason is nice, isn’t he?” she said, her voice drifting a little, and I watched as her eyes grew more unfocussed. “The power he has, it’s extraordinary. I really want to see him really lose it; I can imagine it would be a sight to behold.” Her eyes snapped open once more and fell on my face. “What happened to you?”

“What?”

“You’re hurt; I can feel it, I can feel it in your blood….” She trailed off and leaned toward me. “They think my magic is void in here but I still have a few tricks up my sleeves,” she whispered and winked theatrically at me.

The more time I spent in her company, the more I was beginning to believe she’d lost her mind. That they weren’t trying to break her anymore because she was already broken.

“They have a white witch working for them, and they used her to build the wards on this place. They are nothing but hypocrites, Amber, you cannot forget that.”

I took the information on board and filed it away for later. I’d always known their methods were hypocritical but to keep a white witch on board just so they could better control their prisoners, who in some cases were also witches, well, it smacked of hypocrisy of the highest order.

Her hand whipped out faster than lightening and wrapped around the wrist where the Heart Hound had sunk its teeth into me. Something sparked between us and I felt her draw whatever magic existed within the Heart Hound’s venom out and into her own body.

My back arched as she tugged it free, my breath whooshing out of my body. I didn’t even have the chance to fight against her. Images filtered into my head but they were so garbled that I found it impossible to latch onto them in any real, concrete way.

Sounds filtered through and arms that felt more like tree trunks wrapped around my chest, jerking me back from Lily and breaking her grip on my arm.

“He wants you, Amber. He’s not going to stop until he wins you over, and when he does, then the real fun will begin!” she shouted after me as I was dragged back out of the room and dumped unceremoniously on the floor.

Guards flooded into the room and Lily screamed in rage, power sparking to life and illuminating the white walls as she tried to fight them off. But they’d weakened her, she hadn’t lied about that, and I pushed onto my feet as one of the guards caught her across the back of her neck with the base of his baton.

Surging forward, I followed them into the room, but someone grabbed my arm and jerked me back into the hall as Lily’s howls of pain and terror set the other prisoners off. Her screams were joined by the howls and mournful cries of the other inmates.

“Get off! You can’t do this to her, she wasn’t trying to hurt me!” I said, fighting to shake free of Jason’s grip.

Bringing my fist up, I caught him across his jaw, but the blow seemed to bother only me and pain flared across my knuckles. His hold tightened and he swung me around so my back slammed into one of the white walls behind us. Stars exploded behind my eyes and the white gleam off my surroundings did nothing to help the situation.

“Stop fighting, you’re only making it worse,” he said, gritting his words out between his clenched teeth—it was then I glanced up into his clouded white eyes.

“You can’t let them treat her like this. You can’t let them treat any of them like this. It’s wrong, we both know it is.”

Jason shook his head and cast a quick glance over his shoulder into the room behind him. Lily screamed again, pain contorting her voice into something inhuman.

“They’re monsters,” he said simply, and his words hit me like a blow to the stomach. And then Nic’s words rang again in my head.
He likes you.
If it were true, then perhaps I could manipulate him, make him feel differently.

“No, they’re not, they’ve still got rights like you and me and she doesn’t deserve this … please…” I said. The words tasted like ash on my tongue but I poured as much pleading into my tone as I could muster. The urge to force my way past him and destroy everyone in the room beyond was almost unbearable but all that would serve to do was to get me caught, too.

Jason swayed for a second and then turned away from me with a groan. He strode into the room and I shifted away from the wall, my head and back throbbing as I shuffled forward to the doorway.

In the time we’d been in the hall, the guards had managed to get Lily pinned on the floor, her face pressed into the white floor. But she’d managed to do a little damage of her own and several of the guards lay scattered around the cell like broken rag dolls. From their moans, I could tell she hadn’t killed them, but there were definitely bones broken.

“Get off her, she doesn’t need to be pinned,” Jason ordered and the guards reluctantly released their hold on her as he crouched next to her.

A woman kneeled next to Lily’s head, her hands moving in time with her lips as she wove an incantation. One of the guards who had been holding Lily pulled a syringe and a small bottle of clear liquid from the one of the many pockets covering his body armour.

“Please don’t let them put me to sleep, I’m afraid of the things they do when I’m asleep!” Lily pleaded, her words striking a chord within me and stirring me forward.

The white witch working over Lily paused mid-sentence and lifted her face to mine, recognition flashing in her eyes as soon as my foot crossed the threshold. It had never occurred to me that other witches would be capable of sensing what I was, but it made perfect sense. I watched as she opened her mouth to speak, but the pause was all Lily needed.

Lifting her face barely a millimetre off the floor, Lily jerked her now-free hand to the left and the white witch’s neck snapped to the side as the guard slammed the needle into Lily’s arm.

Lily’s eyes glazed over as whatever had been in the syringe took immediate effect. The other witch made a small, pathetic sound in the back of her throat, but it was more of an involuntary reaction than anything else. She was dead before her body even hit the white floor, her brown eyes wide and staring as death stole her.

The smile on Lily’s face was nothing short of beatific as the cocktail she’d been injected with worked through her system. The moment he was certain she was out for the count, Jason lifted his accusatory gaze in my direction.