9. Artemis
9 ARTEMIS
I sit at my desk in Bow & Arrow and work up the nerve to peel off the bandage on my shoulder.
I’ve been trying—and failing —to do so for the past hour.
Which means, yes, I still haven’t seen what he put on me.
It’s a permanent mark that I’ll either have to pay to get covered, if it is indeed a phallic symbol, or…
I don’t want to think about the or.
The idea that Saint might’ve been nice or thoughtful for such a brief moment in time.
Doubtful.
He could’ve tattooed his name on my shoulder, for all I know.
Or slut.
I shiver and pull the short sleeve of my shirt down again.
I don’t want to know right now.
My attention goes back to work, and I open the security feeds.
Scanning to make sure everything is okay…
“Holy shit.” I lean in close to the lower screen.
Kade. Sitting on a stool, drinking something in a short glass.
He’s looking around.
Maybe looking for me?
Or Reese. If he knows Reese was here…
But Reese was upstairs in the VIP section.
So maybe he doesn’t know as much as he let on.
I dial Apollo’s number, tapping my pencil on the desk until he picks up.
“Atlas is here,” I say without preamble.
“Aren’t you on your date? The sun hasn’t set. He should be where you are.”
I bite my lip.
“Everything he said pretty much relates back to…” God, I can’t even say its name.
“He’s in this building and he might have no idea what went on here, or he knows everything and he’s fucking messing with me.”
“Okay. What do you want to do?”
Great question.
“Get him out without making a scene,” I say.
“My security guys will just throw him out on the street… this needs a more delicate approach.”
He hums. “Okay. We’ll be there in twenty. Stay out of sight.”
“Thanks,” I whisper.
He said… what had Kade said?
That I’m the only one who can find Reese?
And is that because of Terror or something else…
?
My cell rings. I glance at the caller ID and allow a teeny, tiny smile at Nathan Bradshaw’s name scrolling across the top of the screen.
He’s an asshole in the worst of times and a life saver in the best of them.
“Hey,” I answer.
“Are you at Bow & Arrow?”
“Yeah…?”
“Fuck.” Behind his voice are sirens.
Not just one cop car, but a few.
The sounds all overlap, like wolves howling at the start of a hunt.
“Any chance of you getting out of there?”
“Did my brother call you?”
He pauses.
“Should he have?”
I wince.
“No, no. Why are you sounding so freaked out?”
“There’s been a bomb threat.”
My stomach swoops, and I swivel back to the security feeds.
“Did they say where?”
“They said, ‘Where everything began.’”
Oh.
Fuck .
I hang up on the sheriff.
I grab my holstered gun from my purse and tuck it in my jeans, shove away from my desk.
At the last second, I shrug on the hoodie that was hanging on the back of my door.
It conceals the handle of the gun.
No need to alarm my staff, right?
It could be a moot point, because as soon as my hair is out of my face, I sprint out of the office.
I take the service stairwell down past the club and say a silent thanks that I wasn’t planning on going into the club tonight.
That decision led me to keep on the leather pants and boots I wore earlier.
Although after my visit to Starlight, I had to walk home in my bra with my jacket zipped up to my chin to cover it.
My ruined shirt was tucked in my pocket.
At home, I couldn’t control my frown as I changed into a shirt and replaced my jacket.
I bypass the club’s levels and reach the lowest floor in this stairwell.
And there, standing in front of a heavy metal door that I make every effort to avoid, my heart skips.
Beyond this door lies Terror.
Some of it anyway.
This part of the building has been sealed off for years.
But even as I reach for the handle, pulling it open on squealing hinges, I know someone else has been here.
Not me.
Reese?
Someone else?
The space in front of me is pitch-black.
I reach blindly to the left, my fingers tripping on a light switch.
A row of dim bulbs flicker on, one after another, revealing the long-abandoned hallway.
Grime clings to the walls.
The air is stale.
There are doors every so often, all closed up tight.
They have deadbolt locks on the outside of each one.
Memories of my time here surge up.
Guards shoving us into the rooms, the scrape of metal on metal as they locked.
The pungent fear overlaying despair.
I draw my gun and step into the hall.
I creep down like something is going to leap out and bite me.
I pause in the doorway of the room used by a sadistic doctor.
It’s empty and weathered, the chair equipped with stirrups and restraints tipped over on its side and covered in dust.
She was the only woman who worked on this level—the only one I saw.
She inspected us when we arrived, examined us after particularly vicious sessions, patched us up or drugged us when necessary, all with a cold, alien expression.
The tile floors are cracked, the glass cabinets over the counter broken, medical supplies strewn about.
She didn’t bother to take anything of value with her, not the vials of drugs or anything else.
My throat tightens. I can’t breathe in this space, but my mind must’ve warped it, too.
Because while it looks bad, it felt worse.
And feelings dictate nightmares.
I step away. The more I explore this level—there’s an amphitheater at one end and two different shower rooms—the more I’m certain there’s no one here.
But there is another level.
To get to it, I have to take another staircase.
It remained separate.
The door acted as a warning to everyone trapped here, and a symbol of worse things if we were disobedient.
It’s been kicked inward, the metal door hanging at an odd angle, only attached by one hinge.
Fear coats my skin like sweat.
I really, really don’t want to be down here.
I get to the bottom of the stairs and inch out into the huge room.
There are old, broken cameras mounted on the walls, directed at furniture that has long since been torn apart by rats…
Or someone furious enough to rip them all apart.
My toe hits a glass bottle.
It clinks as it rolls out in front of me.
My stomach twists, and the fear rises up my throat.
It chokes me, threatens to spill out if I let it.
They kept so many boys and girls down here, got them addicted to drugs, and profited off their bodies.
And it was fear of ending up here that kept us obedient upstairs.
“I knew you’d come here.”
I shriek and spin, raising my gun and flashlight together.
“Hey. It’s just me.” Apollo steps out of the shadows, a gun in his hand.
It’s lowered down to his side, and his other hand extends to me.
I force myself to breathe and stuff mine back in its holster.
While I’m getting more wound up, he exudes calm concern.
“Sheriff called me after he talked to you. Hinted about you doing something stupid after he mentioned the basement. This place…” He winces.
“I wasn’t good enough to find you. It took me days to figure out you were gone, and weeks to beat it out of Dad. And then you were…”
My stomach twists.
As much as it kills me to be here, knowing Apollo knows what went on here is even worse.
I was here for months—but it wasn’t just here .
I was shuffled around like my importance was noteworthy.
A prize hidden under a shell, kept just out of Apollo’s reach.
I approach him. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“This bomb threat, Tem…” He takes my hand.
“You don’t think they’d come down here, do you?”
Reese knows it.
Maybe Kade does, too.
“I think I’m going crazy,” I whisper.
He drags me into a hug, tucking my head under his chin.
Of anyone in the world, my brother gives the best hugs.
It doesn’t matter that we’re in the darkest place I’ve lived through, it doesn’t matter that he holds a gun, all that matters is the wash of safety that comes over me.
But…
It doesn’t.
The longer he holds me, the more I feel something terrible is going to happen.
Or maybe already happening.
I pull back and look up at him, and I open my mouth to put it into words…
Except nothing comes out.
Hypnos threatened ruin.
Kade wants to uncover old, vicious memories.
Reese is supposedly in hiding, but I suspect he’s up to something, too.
Why else would he come back?
Sterling Falls just got through one war…
how will we possibly survive another?
After my mini existential crisis, Apollo and I split up to search the rest of this level.
He seems hesitant, but I brush him off.
I can do this.
More like, I have to do this.
If only to prove to myself that I’m fine.
Except every step invokes memory after memory—an onslaught of things I desperately shove out of my mind.
Things I’ve spent the last ten years trying to forget.
Officially a decade, now that I’m twenty-five.
When it gets to be too much, I allow myself to return to the floor above.
There are areas still to be uncovered and relived.
I find Reese in the amphitheater.
I don’t want to go farther in.
To stand on the stage, even as dimly lit as it is.
The emergency lighting, the little strips along the stairs and around the platform that must’ve come on with the hall’s switch, don’t do much to beat back the shadows.
All that’s missing is the spotlight.
The people hidden in shadows.
The cruel, cutting gazes and the voice that calls out numbers…
I touch the heavy curtain at my back.
It’s one I’d stepped through a long time ago, countless times, with burning eyes and fear locking up my chest.
After a moment, I push forward and step onto the stage.
Reese sits halfway up, a few seats in from one of the aisles.
The plush seats are faded either with disuse or dust. The air in here is stale, as well, but at least it’s more open than the hallway below.
There are no windows.
The gridwork of lights overhead are untouched, and they might even work if I found a switch…
Definitely don’t want that.
“We were here under a very different set of circumstances,” he says sadly.
His voice travels the distance, and the silence, easily.
He looks like he hasn’t slept since I last saw him, with dark circles under his piercing eyes.
His light-brown hair is spiked, as if he keeps running his hands through it.
What would cause that?
Frustration?
He does it again, his nails scratching his scalp.
“We were both forced into different roles.”
I don’t have a reply for him, if that’s what he wants.
I wet my lips and inch farther out onto the stage, turning in a slow circle.
The audience chairs are arranged in pairs, with slim tables between them and dividers separating the pairs.
Each table has a lamp and a button for silent bidding.
Although some lamps have missing shades, or holes eaten through the fabric.
Some have been knocked over, the bulbs broken.
Deja vu .
I’ve done this before.
Spun. Gaze wide open, mouth dry, taking in the room.
I can almost smell my old fear, feel how it used to choke me.
I swallow sharply, almost to prove that it’s not the same.
I’m not the same.
“I found this,” Reese says, motioning to the table beside him.
His voice simultaneously drags me deeper into this place and lifts me out of my memories.
“I called… But I didn’t know what to tell them. Or how to explain.”
My chest tightens, and I climb the steps to his level.
A cardboard box sits on the slim table next to him, the flaps open.
I creep closer and peer down at a mess of wires inside, and a small digital clock frozen at 6:23.
“I disarmed it.”
“Why are you down here?” There are more questions, of course.
Like how he disarmed it, why he’s still sitting beside it, why he hasn’t been sleeping, what brought him back to Sterling Falls…
But because I still have a grip on my self-control, I shut my mouth after the first one.
He shrugs.
“Tem,” Apollo calls out.
“Get away from him.”
I automatically step back, glancing over to see my brother striding toward us.
His gun is inching higher—but the last thing I want is more death.
Senseless death without answers.
“The bomb is here,” I tell my brother.
“It’s disarmed.”
“Did he tell you that?”
I don’t answer—he’s probably thinking that it would be easy for Reese to lie.
If the man sitting only a few feet from me had rigged the frozen clock, while an internal one counted down…
That would be suicide, true, but it would take out me, too.
Who knows if that’s the goal?
“Artemis,” Apollo snaps.
Reese meets my gaze.
“You should go. I’ll see you around, Artemis.”
A chill sweeps down my spine.
I don’t think I want to see him around—I just want him and Kade to leave .
I hurry down the steps.
As soon as I’m within reach of my brother, he grabs my arm and tows me behind him.
He remains staring at Reese until I tug on him, forcing him to abandon the man from my past.
We get upstairs just as Sheriff Bradshaw arrives.
The farther I get away from that hallway, that amphitheater, the more I tremble.
I stand and stare at my shoes while Apollo directs the bomb squad to the right place.
“We should evacuate,” the sheriff says.
“No,” I say. “It’s disarmed. Do your damn job and make sure it stays that way. No need to disrupt my guests.”
Apollo sighs.
Doesn’t take a genius to know he’s judging me for believing Reese.
If I’m wrong, hundreds of people could be hurt.
But the strange thing is, I do believe him.
My gaze stays on my shoes.
Nathan Bradshaw’s gaze lingers on me for a second, burning the side of my face, before he continues behind the geared-up men.
There are about to be a whole lot of questions for me.
And I’m not sure I can answer.