4. Chapter 4
4
F rom the moment Rebecca and Maxwell left Shade headquarters, she’d had a terrible feeling about this.
Now that they were here, parked a quarter-mile up the road from the chain-link fences marking the perimeter of the Old Joliet Prison property, it had only gotten worse.
Infiltrating the prison yard the last time she was here had been horrifying enough. Now, Rebecca could only imagine how terrible it would be once she and Maxwell entered the building to get a good look at the inside of Harkennr’s operation.
Assuming Harkennr kept his word and let her in at all, under a banner of truce.
More than that, though, she worried for Maxwell’s state of mind during this visit, and for good reason. Her Head of Security had crashed her covert solo mission the last time, thinking he was helping her stay out of trouble and blowing both their cover before they used the chaos in the prison yard to escape.
Even after how pissed Rebecca had been at him that night, she hadn’t overlooked how deeply the mere sound of Harkennr’s screaming victims had affected the shifter, even in his wolf form. She certainly hadn’t forgotten the sight of that shaggy gray wolf standing before the prison’s open doors, hackles raised and ears pressed flat against his head, whining as he fought the urge to run inside and free the abducted magicals wailing for mercy and release.
Pleading to be saved. Begging to be freed.
Now, when Maxwell killed the van’s engine and they exited the vehicle together in a tense silence, Rebecca hoped he could hold himself together this time a lot better than he’d managed before.
They headed down the road together, side by side, Maxwell’s jaw set firmly and his perpetual glower magnified by a grim determination. The shifter looked very well-put-together and in control of himself now.
But what about once they got there?
Once they reached the prison yard and heard the agonized screams and cries of the magicals Harkennr imprisoned within his compound to aid him in his own dark purposes? Once they heard the pain of all those souls tortured again and again, with no end in sight?
Rebecca knew that was what they would hear, and she hoped she could still depend on her Head of Security—her second in command, her self-proclaimed shadow and bodyguard—to stay by her side and stick to the plan. Once they entered the prison, everything they heard and saw would be far worse than the mere glimpse of it they’d each received the night Rebecca had finally healed the homunculus poison from her body.
Boots crunched over loose gravel scattered across the old road toward the prison, none of which had seen updates or maintenance in decades. The morning air fluttered past, cool and still muggy in the middle of August at just before 10:00 a.m. A calm, sunny, breezy day in the Chicago area, at odds with the darkness and the agony and the horrors into which she and Maxwell would willingly step once they reached the end of this road.
Rebecca couldn’t help shooting him fleeting sidelong glances to gauge his mood, look for signs of hesitation or uncertainty. There were none as they walked side by side. Not visibly.
But she felt his hesitation and growing nerves with every step.
Six months ago—hell, even three weeks ago, before Shade voted her in as their new commander—she would have said nothing could affect Maxwell Hannigan. That the shifter remained cool as a cucumber in every possible scenario. Until he got aggravated and tried to blame Rebecca for whatever might have gone wrong.
But that was before. Everything had changed since then, including her understanding of what existed beneath the shifter’s stony exterior and his perpetually brooding mask.
He didn’t look at her once as they headed toward the front of the prison, which became particularly concerning until Rebecca just couldn’t take it anymore. She’d agreed to let him join her, and he’d agreed to follow her lead and follow orders. Beyond that, though, they hadn’t discussed a bit of what they were about to do or, more importantly, what they would have to ignore so they didn’t make this situation of Nyx’s abduction any worse.
As the twin guard towers on either side of the tall, reinforced chain-link fence surrounding the prison grounds came into view, Rebecca slowed and turned toward him. “Hold on a second.”
He stopped and turned to face her before finally meeting her gaze for the first time since they’d left her office. He said nothing, watching her expectantly, but his hesitation and somber expectation pulsed off him in waves, filling Rebecca with the exact same sensation that didn’t belong to her.
She was feeling what Maxwell felt, but admitting it out loud would only make her sound insane.
She studied his stoic, deadpan expression and settled on the closest thing to an appropriate question as she could find. “You good?”
Maxwell’s eyebrows flickered toward each other in either surprise or confusion before he lifted his chin. “I can handle it.”
“I know you can. It just feels like a good idea to set some expectations before we go marching in there. No matter what we hear or see after this, we have to—”
“I am aware of our objective, Roth-Da’al,” he said stiffly. “I agreed to follow your lead on this one, which we’ve already discussed.”
“Right. Now that we’re here, though, I just wanna make sure.”
He studied her face for a long time before his brows drew together and he cocked his head. “Have I given you reason to believe I’m in some way unfit for this mission?”
“What? No. Definitely not. That’s not what I said.”
“Do you not take me my word?”
She puffed out a sigh. “Hey, if anyone knows you do exactly what you say you’ll do, it’s me. I didn’t mean—”
“Then while I appreciate your concern,” he said gruffly, “I would rather move forward and get this over with as quickly as possible. If it’s all the same to you.”
Ouch.
He didn’t want to talk about any of this, did he?
So much for trying to ease some of the roiling tension inside her Head of Security that was now spilling over into the admittedly awful prospect of what they were about to do. But he was right. He hadn’t given her any reason to think that once he agreed to something and set his mind to it, he wouldn’t follow through.
She wasn’t here with Rowan, for instance. That was for sure.
Time to quit talking and face the music, then.
Turning back toward the prison, Rebecca nodded grimly. “Fair enough. Then let’s get this over with.”
As they approached the prison’s guard towers and the mechanized front gates serving as the base’s first line of defense, the wary tension Maxwell exuded only intensified. Rebecca felt every iota of it.
Her attempt to clear the air hadn’t done a thing, but the way he felt so far had no bearing on their ability to do what had to be done. As long as it stayed that way—and Rebecca hoped it did—they stood a decent chance of making it out of this in one piece. Hopefully, they’d be able to say the same about Nyx when this was over.
With daylight on their side this time, their visibility was far better now than their first visit to Harkennr’s base. The ability to see every soldier, vehicle, and armed artillery system stationed around the prison yard made the whole thing that much more intimidating.
Now that Rebecca saw it all in broad daylight, it seemed more of a miracle that she and Maxwell had successfully escaped the first time.
On the other hand, broad daylight also made it easier for the guards manning those towers and every soldier stationed in the yard to see the prison’s two newest visitors approaching far before they came within conversational speaking range. No alarms went off this time, though a few alerting shouts rose through the air until Rebecca and Maxwell stopped in front of the closed mechanized gates on wheels.
A troll manning the guard tower on the left poked his head out through the window to study them from above.
“Identify yourselves,” he barked, though there was no alarm or suspicion in his voice. In fact, the guy sounded bored as hell.
Rebecca reached into her jacket pocket and withdrew the first figurine of dark stone before holding it up toward the gate-tower window.
“We have an invitation,” she replied, feeling rather ridiculous for using old-world protocol outside an allegedly haunted prison on Earth. But ritual and tradition held, and Kordus Harkennr had brought them along with him to Chicago.
The troll squinted at the figurine, hawked and spat out the window, then disappeared inside again before an echoing buzz blared from within the gate’s mechanism as the system turned on. The gears turned, and the wheels rolled aside, opening the gates for two guests on foot—either brave enough or stupid enough or both—to walk willingly into the Old Joliet Prison and all the horrors and hidden dangers within.
Once those sliding gates opened fully, Rebecca and Maxwell took their free pass to walk right on through. It felt like every eye of every guard and soldier on duty focused intently on them, with plenty of suspicion and aggression in their stares. But no one acted on the impulse.
A few soldiers shifted their positions or readjusted their grips on magitek weapons, whether they stood guard on foot or up in the backs of vehicles behind mounted assault weapons.
So far, this was the epitome of a truce, though whether any of Harkennr’s forces recognized the elf and the shifter who’d infiltrated their defenses more than a week ago was anyone’s guess.
The second Rebecca stepped past the open gates and entered the prison yard, this time from the front, those terrible screams, wordless cries of agony, and sporadic flashes of magical light from inside the prison kicked up in her awareness.
Harkennr must have erected some type of dampening ward to keep the worst proof of his presence here hidden from anyone beyond the gates.
But now that she and Maxwell had returned, that proof was once again right here in front of them. The volume and intensity of those tortured wails weren’t nearly as terrible as the last time, but they still existed.
Shooting Maxwell another sidelong glance, Rebecca instantly recognized the harsh set of his jaw and the overly stony expression he’d adopted to mask everything beneath the surface.
From everyone but her.
She felt his righteous fury and his guilt almost as if they were her own, and she would have been lying if she said she didn’t agree with his reaction. Most likely, she felt the same, though it was hard to tell the difference between her own emotional response and what she felt so viscerally pulsing off her Head of Security in dark, trembling waves.
She wanted to ask him one more time if he was all right, if he thought he could handle this now that they were here in the middle of it, but she didn’t want to insult him.
She didn’t want to give anything away to Harkennr or his forces, to make them think their two newest visitors might not be operating at their best with the added discomfort of knowing more abducted magicals in this building currently suffered a fate no one should ever be forced to endure.
Maxwell could handle this. He’d known what this mission would entail before insisting on coming with her. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have joined her.
Rebecca had to believe that, or their chances of success today were already dangerously slimmer.
Once they’d made it halfway across the prison yard, still without any sound or movement from Harkennr’s forces stationed out front, she centered her gaze on the building’s closed front doors. It would have cost her and Maxwell more than they could afford to open those doors the last time, but now, with a hollow thunk and a squeal of rusty hinges, the prison’s old double doors swung open toward them with a stuttering creak.
The cries of agony and torment from inside magnified in the air.
Rebecca tensed, scanning the darkness beyond those open doors, her senses on high alert for any indication of having walked right into an ambush on the enemy’s home turf.
Beside her, Maxwell stiffened as well, his every muscle rigid with wary readiness as a low growl rumbled deep within his chest.
He’d promised not to take action until she gave the word.
The intensifying cries from inside now joined by the muted sizzle and crackle of magic and occasional beeps, blips, and clunks of machinery felt almost like a physical blow bombarding them from inside the building. Rebecca hoped more than ever now that her Head of Security was capable of keeping his word.
From this moment forward, anything could happen, and they had to be ready for it.
It was just the two of them, with no backup team and no contingency plan. If things went south—which was still a very real possibility—they’d also have to get out of here all on their own, just the two of them.
As long as Maxwell could handle himself until then.
The hairs on the back of Rebecca’s neck prickled with static from such concentrated magic billowing through the open doors. She almost summoned an orb of crackling crimson battle magic in response.
But movement through the darkness in front of them made her pause.
Someone was coming.
It wasn’t Harkennr.
An especially squat, hardily built dwarf with a bald head and an enormous brass ring through his nose that made him look like a tiny two-legged bull stepped out of the prison’s entryway, partially illuminating himself beneath the mid-morning light.
His wide eyes—of the strangest turquoise and glowing from within—flickered across both their faces before he dipped his head in greeting.
Not an attack, then. Just an odd one-dwarf welcoming party, apparently.
The dwarf lifted one bushy eyebrow, clearly waiting for something.
So Rebecca offered him Harkennr’s first figurine of dark stone—the token of his open invitation.
A cruel smirk flickered across the dwarf’s lips before he plucked the figurine from Rebecca’s outstretched hand, just like she knew he would. Then he pocketed it, looked Maxwell up and down with an unexpected level of apathy and unconcern, but he spoke only to Rebecca.
“Welcome. He’s been expecting you.”
Ew. How creepily cliche and so very like Harkennr.
The dwarf’s voice was startlingly low and broad, a booming bass completely at odds with his small stature. He nodded, gestured behind him toward the looming darkness inside the prison with a sweep of his arm, then spun around and shuffled back inside.
That had to be an invitation to follow. Probably the only one they were likely to get.
Rebecca had expected something like this, though that didn’t lessen the urge to shudder as she and Maxwell stepped through the front doors together.
“Follow me, if you will,” the dwarf boomed without looking back at them. “And do stay close. This place can be a maze.”
As soon as they’d made it over the threshold and two feet inside the prison, the double doors creaked shut behind them with a resounding bang, plunging the entryway into striking darkness after the comparatively bright daylight outside. The preternaturally long echo made their arrival feel that much more final.
There was no going back now. Not before this was finished and she and Harkennr had the little chat he so desperately wanted.
The low lights within the prison’s entryway flickered occasionally, casting the dwarf’s shadow long and thick across the dusty, chipped concrete floor. Rebecca and Maxwell followed their guide side by side, and she was especially glad for his decision not to take up his usual bodyguard position three feet behind her and to the left.
They were in this together now, and she might very well need him at her side for whatever came next. Even, she dared to admit, as her equal.
The slightly louder screams of agony and tormented wails from within the bowels of the prison ricocheted toward them from every direction through the semi-darkness. Then Maxwell surprised her when he leaned toward her and murmured, “How did you know to bring those figurines with you as our ticket in?”
She couldn’t bring herself to look at him. She didn’t want to risk him seeing on her face the uncertainty she now felt, and she wasn’t sure she could successfully hide it.
“I didn’t,” she whispered back. “Just a lucky guess.”
Worst of all, that was the absolute truth.
Walking into this manufactured meeting, Rebecca could count on nothing but blind luck to steer them both down the right path. Whether Maxwell suspected it, she didn’t want to confirm for him that blind luck wasn’t usually how she operated.
Today, though, it was her only option. Even with all her previous knowledge of Kordus Harkennr and how he operated.
Maxwell couldn’t know about any of that, either. Not just yet.
Every move she made from here on out would, by necessity, be a lucky guess if they wanted any chance of surviving a face- to-face with the sadistic psychopath running this horrifying operation.
Rebecca just hoped her luck would hold until she and Maxwell were free of this place—with Nyx—and even that still wasn’t certain.