36. Rhaek
RHAEK
“ N ow,” he said pleasantly. “Where were we?”
She ran.
I moved.
Not toward her. Parallel. Staying low, keeping the rock between me and the male, my wet boots finding the ground as quietly as wet boots can. Not quietly enough but it was going to have to do.
She didn't know I was here.
That was the problem. If she saw me she would make a sound — surprise, relief, something involuntary — and the male would hear it.
The element of surprise would be gone and I would be dealing with him head-on in a narrow space with one good arm and legs that were still conducting their ongoing grievance about the crossing.
The numbness was spreading now. It’d reached my elbow.
Great. Maybe I can use it as a club or something.
So I stayed back.
Close enough to track her. Far enough that she wouldn't turn and see me .
The interior of the spire's base was not what I had expected.
Catacombs was the only word that fit. Low passages, branching, the rock carved or eroded into a labyrinth of corridors that had no obvious logic to their arrangement.
Old. Older than the platform, I would guess.
For what purpose it had been built, I had no idea.
I took the first junction left.
Dead end. Four feet in, rock wall, no exit.
Shit.
I backed out fast and took the right branch instead. I found the corridor that ran parallel to the sound of her footsteps.
The male was behind her. I could hear him. Unhurried, that same patient economy of movement. He didn’t know I was here. So why rush or hurry? He was not running. He didn't need to. He knew this place better than she did and he knew she was going to run out of corridor.
I knew it too.
So I kept moving.
The passages branched twice more. I took the turns by sound. Her footsteps to the left, the male behind her, the acoustic of the rock telling me which corridors were long and which were short and which ended in nothing.
My shoulder was burning. My arm was burning. I was leaving a faint blood trail on the rock floor and hoped the male was not tracking by smell.
A long corridor ahead. Her footsteps were louder here. She had slowed. She’d hit a dead end.
I stopped.
Pressed into the shadow of the junction.
The male's footsteps slowed too. Deliberate now. Savoring it. I heard him enter the corridor and take his time. I counted his steps and waited .
Ten steps. Twenty.
Based on the acoustics, I could tell exactly where he was.
Her breathing ahead of him. His breathing measured and calm.
He stopped walking.
The silence had a shape to it.
"Alone at last," he said.
Not so alone as you might think, friend.
I came around the junction fast.
The corridor was narrow. One person wide, which was a problem for him and not for me because I was already moving.
He had not yet turned and the only variable that mattered in the next two seconds was whether my one good arm was good enough.
I had found enough once already tonight.
I had no choice but to do so again.