Chapter Forty
Espie
Aubrey takes my hand with his before Kev even pulls out of the driveway, and neither of us lets go as the city slides past outside the windows. Lex rides shotgun with his window cracked two inches, staring at nothing. Ezra is on my other side, his scent burning at the edges.
Somewhere on the highway, when the city lights thin out and the highway beyond them turns black, Ezra puts his hand on my knee. I'm wedged between him and Aubrey now with a hand on each side, sitting straight, shoulders back, both feet flat on the floor as sweat drips down my back.
Kev glances at me in the rearview mirror. Checking on us. Always checking.
“She texted Levi before she went in,” Ezra says eventually. “Did I tell you that? Then she turned her phone off.”
“I'm going to strangle her,” Aubrey says, after a moment.
“You and me both,” I say.
Aubrey shifts, his hand coming over his abdomen as he swallows a pained groan. I face him, knowing exactly what he’s trying to hide when he shakes his head. I settle back because he wants to be here. Needs to be here, but I’m uneasy.
The rest of the ride is a blur before Kev pulls off the highway and into narrow streets. We pass houses then enter a business district of warehouses and the occasional truck laden with crates.
“If she's gone feral, she won't recognize faces,” Ezra says, not looking at either of us. “She'll recognize scent though. So don't rush her when we get to her. Give her a second to find you before you move.”
I know what he's telling us.
Sera's been away long enough that she might not know me when we find her.
I can't think too hard about what we're walking into down there. Every time I try, I stop before the thought finishes.
Like naming it might make it real.
The city thins around us as Kev drives deeper into the warehouse district. Streetlights smear across the windows. Empty loading docks. Rusted fencing. Long stretches of darkness between buildings. My thoughts keep skidding apart and reforming around the same thing.
Sera underground.
Hurt.
Alone.
Kev brakes hard enough to jolt me forward against the seatbelt. My pulse jumps straight into my throat.
“We're here,” he says.
We get out of the car surrounded by shadows.
“This way,” Kev says.
The alphas close around Aubrey and me as we move three blocks through the warehouse district, keeping to the shadows between buildings. It's silent here. No traffic. No wind. Nothing.
We round a corner and I spot massive males draped in tactical gear grouped at the base of a red-bricked warehouse. A shape emerges from the shadows to approach us. Ronan. He casts a hard gaze over me, giving nothing away before turning it back to Kev. “Ready?”
Kev nods. Ronan turns and Kev stops him with a grip on his bicep. “She's not to be harmed. No matter what we find. Do you understand?”
Ronan gives Kev a clipped nod. “We'll bring her back.”
We follow Ronan to the rest of the team. There's maybe twenty of them standing solid in the dark. Aubrey moves with me, his shoulder at mine. None of them are looking at us. None of them are looking at each other. They're looking at the job. All these people. All of them here for her.
Ronan steps to two males I don't know, big and dark-jacketed. They’re familiar to him. His pack. I drift close enough to catch his words. Perimeter. Trapdoor. Sub-level.
I shift to see the building beyond the corner we're hiding behind.
The building is nothing. It's a falling-down industrial wreck at the edge of a block that time forgot, all broken windows and chain-link and weeds pushing up through cracked concrete.
I've thought about what the outside might look like.
I thought it would be more visible. Like the horror would show through the walls.
It doesn't. It's just a building. Rotting quietly while the city in the background gets on with its business.
Sera has been inside it for two days and it looks like nothing. It looks like somewhere you'd walk past without slowing down. It doesn't seem possible that something this terrible fits inside a building that ordinary.
“We go in on my signal,” Ronan says, pulling everyone's attention back. He regards Aubrey and me. “You two stay behind us until we're inside. After that you don't move unless I say so.”
I nod. I'm not arguing with that. I want to find Sera, not get shot trying.
The team streams out in a silent black ribbon to the fence.
The sound of it is small and sharp in the silence and then the SWAT team moves and we move with them and the cold hits me full in the face as we cross the open ground between the fence and the building.
No cover out here except my alphas surrounding Aubrey and me.
Just cracked concrete and dead weeds and twenty people in black moving without a sound, and I focus on Kev's back directly ahead of me and put one foot in front of the other and don't look at the windows.
We head to a broken door, the team streaming silently through, and then Kev's hand is at my back and we're moving inside.
The smell hits before my vision adjusts.
Damp concrete. Dust. Abandonment. Every sound sharpens.
The scuff of boots on the floor. Cold presses in from the walls.
The flashlight beams cut through the dark ahead of us and the SWAT team moves through them, dark forms with rifles up, spreading out through the corridor.
I don't look at the dark between the flashlight beams. I look at the next patch of lit floor and put my foot on it and move to the one after that.
The deeper we go, the worse the smell gets. It slips beneath the damp air, chemical enough to sting with every breath.
I know this scent. I know exactly what lives inside it.
Suffering.
Aubrey’s grip crushes tighter around my hand. I squeeze back just as hard and keep moving.
The far end of the corridor comes into view. The door to the storeroom is ahead. The SWAT team is already moving toward it, spreading out, and I'm tracking the man two steps ahead of Kev when he stops. Weight back. Rifle up.
A huge shape steps out of the dark, bulk sitting wrong on the frame. The male moves faster than he should, and then the corridor explodes. Modified beta.
A crack so loud my whole skull rings and my vision whites at the edges. Then Kev's hand is on my arm, wrenching, and I'm moving backwards into Ezra's chest. Lex's voice somewhere to the left. Then Aubrey is pressed against my side. I'm shoved against a wall. I drag Aubrey to the ground with me.
Shots ricochet off the concrete walls. I can’t tell how close they are anymore. Gunpowder chokes the corridor alongside the sharp copper-chemical stink of modified betas, and I bury myself against Aubrey’s shoulder.
The shots stop and the silence rings. Three bodies on the ground. Two SWAT officers down too. Not dead. One of them is moving, the other swearing steadily into the concrete floor.
“Clear,” someone calls. Then again, further down. “Clear.”
Kev's hands go to my shoulders first, then my face, turning it toward him, checking. He checks Aubrey the same. Aubrey holds still through all of it, chin up. When he's done, the locked muscle in his jaw releases by one degree. “You're not hurt,” he says.
“We're fine,” I say, but we're not even close.
Kev nods anyway. We'll all relive this later. But no time now.
My gaze slides to a still body lying face up. I know his face. He's one of the guards who loved throwing me into my cell after Wallace's treatment knowing I'd be too weak to stand. My mouth fills with saliva. I swallow it down and hold still and make myself look at him.
He's also still breathing despite the flow of blood running from his temple.
“He's alive,” I say. “He… was one of Wallace's guards. And he… he…” I can't finish.
Rage moves through Kev's scent, the oakwood going sharp and burnt, there and gone before he locks it down. “Ronan.” He doesn't raise his voice. Ronan appears from further up the corridor. “I want that one for questioning. Alive.”
“Understood.” Ronan gestures to a team member who cuffs his wrists and ankles. The male won't be going anywhere.
Lex and Ezra help us off the floor. I can't remember walking to the modified beta but I'm here.
Lava pours through me when I think about his sadistic smile.
The hungry glint in his eyes. I'm wearing heavy boots and I drive my boot into his side once.
Twice. Three times. He's unconscious so he doesn't move.
I want him to suffer the way I suffered.
He was there. He saw what Wallace did and liked it.
I lift my foot, ready to smash it into his face when Kev grips my bicep.
“I thought you wanted him alive,” he says.
I blink up at Kev, foot hanging.
“If you drive your boot into his face, bones will shatter and go into his brain and kill him. You have every right to do whatever you want with him. But if he'll help others first, then we can always kill him later after he gives us information,” he says.
I glance over his shoulder at Ronan who simply nods. I put my foot back on the concrete. He's right. The guard has information we can use. I clutch Kev's hand. “You promise?”
“Anything you want, sweetheart.” The smile that Kev gives me isn't nice. Mine probably isn't either. Aubrey comes up to my other side, looking down at the unconscious beta and hugs me tight. I clench my eyes and hold him back tight.
“Looks like we're compromised. I suggest the team goes through the trap door down to the fifth level, and you take the omegas to the platform. We did a sweep before and no one is there, but you might be able to give us some more clues,” Ronan says.
He indicates a corridor to our left, and beyond that, stairs.
“Those will take you down to the station level. Levi and two other members will go with you.”
I start to shake my head. I want to go with them to find Sera but Ronan holds out a hand in a stop gesture.
“The second we have her, you'll know,” Ronan says.
I know it's going to be dangerous down there and I don't want to compromise them finding Sera. I stare at Ronan, letting him see exactly what happens if he doesn't bring Sera back. “You better.”
Ronan grins, pride washing over his features. “Said just like my omega.”
He turns and walks to the head of the team, the door swallowing them as they find the trap door.
“Come on. Let's get this over with,” Aubrey says.
The moment we start descending the sound changes.
Everything muffled, close, the air still and cold.
The two SWAT officers go first. Then Lex.
Then Aubrey. I go next and Ezra comes behind me and I'm grateful for his linen scent at my back because the cold on these stairs is the kind that never fully leaves you.
The stairs open out and we step through a low archway and onto the platform. The scene opens up in vivid detail now I'm not drugged or passing out.
Green tile. Worn pale in the center from years of wear.
Iron fretwork above us, every bit of metalwork dark with grime.
The platform stretches out on both sides, lit only by the flashlight beams, and where the light doesn't reach there's just darkness and the smell of recycled air and that flat chemical undertone that never fully leaves.
On the wall to my right, where letters used to be, there are just the mounting holes left. Someone pried them off and scratched at the plaster underneath to take the name with them, and they did a poor job of it. The ghost of the lettering is right there in the plaster: A-S-H-C-R-O-F-T.
Aubrey stops beside me.
“This is it,” he whispers.
“I know.” My voice comes out steadier than it has any right to.
Aubrey's eyes are fixed on the ghost letters.
The flashlight beams sweep ahead of us and I move with them.
The SWAT officers push through the archways, check the alcoves, press into every shadow along the wall.
I leave them behind, eyes on the tile, trying to cleave the bad memories from my mind until—
Basil. Blood orange. Cedar.
Wrong. All of it wrong, stripped down and sour at the edges, the chemical bite of distress cutting through the base notes, and I'm running to where her scent grows thicker.
Lex says my name but I don't stop. The scent comes from the far archway. My feet pound on the tile as I barrel around the corner. My flashlight swings up and finds her.
Her face. My Sera's face, bruised along the jaw, a smear of her own blood dried on her. A rust colored bandage is wrapped around her left hand. She's tied to the wall, struggling against the metal binding her.
“Sera!”
Her eyes flare when she sees me. She starts screaming. Muffled sound coming through the gag, strangled, unmistakable. She wrenches against the restraints, the veins standing out at her temples and her throat, and she screams the same two syllables through the cloth over and over.
The sound hits me low, not in my ears but in my chest and belly, every cell pitching toward her. It takes me half a breath to understand what she's screaming.
Not help. Not hurry.
Get out.
Get out.
Get out!