Chapter 1 Maeve
MAEVE
I opened my eyes slowly, then sat up with a start as the memories slammed into my brain: standing outside at night with Ray, movement behind me, the pinch in my neck, the man who’d thrown me over his shoulder.
And Ethan Todd’s face, swimming before my eyes in the moments before I lost consciousness.
My heart raced as I frantically looked around, trying to get my bearings. What I saw did nothing to calm me down.
I was in a shadowed, windowless room, stone slippery and damp under my body, water dripping from several places I could hear but not see. The smell — cold rock and dirt and dead things too close for comfort — told me everything.
I was underground.
Not in the tunnels, but somewhere like the tunnels. Somewhere dark and isolated.
Somewhere buried.
Panic clawed at my throat. Ethan Todd had taken me from outside the loft.
And he’d put me underground.
I took inventory of my body to make sure everything was working, made note of the pounding at the back of my head, and tried to remember if anyone had hit me.
Not that I remembered, but I’d definitely been drugged, and the headache could be a product of whatever Ethan and whoever had been with him had given me. Plus, I had no idea how much time had passed (my phone was gone, no surprise), how long it had been since I’d eaten or had any water.
I got carefully to my feet, wincing at the dull throbbing in the back of my head.
I felt a little shaky, but my legs worked, and I walked the room, looking for opportunities to escape. The room was a hundred square feet, more or less, a box with three stone walls, the fourth wall made up of rusted iron bars with a door that was locked.
Like a jail. Or a… dungeon?
I leaned against the bars to look and saw a long stone hall, several other cells — empty as far as I could tell — opposite my own.
Dim light shone from lamps on the wall, not the old-fashioned kind I would have expected in such a dungeon-like space but industrial fixtures that hummed and cast cold white light over the stone hall.
“Hello?” I shouted.
My voice echoed off the stone.
I was alone.
I thought about the Butchers. I had no way of knowing what had happened during the invasion of Ethan Todd’s compound, but Ethan obviously hadn’t been there.
He’d been stalking the loft, waiting for his chance to take me.
I wondered if Bram, Poe, and Remy had found Ray when they got home, wondered if Ethan had tossed my phone there or somewhere else, wondered if the tracker the Butchers had installed would give them any clue about where Ethan had taken me.
I was so deep in thought, my hands curled around the iron bars of my cell, that I practically jumped out of my skin when a crackly voice sounded from behind me,
“There’s no way out. You might as well settle in.”
I knew that voice. I turned to follow it and realized it was coming from high on the wall.
A small red light blinked from the camera installed near the ceiling.
My fear turned to a kind of cold, quiet certainty. “You’ve made a mistake.”
“You’re the one in the cell,” Ethan Todd said from the camera’s speaker. “Looks like you’re the one who made a mistake.”
I shook my head and slid to the floor. “They’re going to kill you.”
“They have to find me first.” There was a note of humor in his voice. He was having fun.
“They will.” I felt suddenly calm. “And when they do, you’re going to wish you’d never taken me.”
I almost felt sorry for him.
Actually, never mind. I didn’t feel sorry at all. I hoped the Butchers tore him limb from limb.
I hoped they’d let me help.