Chapter 10 #3
“Fuck off.” The vehemence in her tone had my head jerking up. Her gaze was steely as she tapped her palm lightly against my cheek. “There’s always a third choice, Gray—don’t choose.”
As her words rolled around in my mind, I stared blankly at my friend.
Don’t choose…
And there was a fluttering idea, a thread so thin I could barely see, let alone grasp it, but I mentally reached for it—
Then her voice cleaved it in two, and it was gone.
“How did you break the tunnel?” she asked, looking up and frowning.
She used my shoulder to pull herself up.
“Gods, Gray,” she muttered, brushing dust off her arm before offering me her hand, “remind me never to piss you off near a load-bearing—” Her voice snagged.
The half-formed joke crumpled as her mouth trembled and fresh tears glistened.
I took her hand and squeezed her fingers. She drew in a slow breath, twisting away to wipe her eyes and gather herself.
“Yeah,” I replied quietly, pushing to my feet, “the catacombs are doing a fine job collapsing on their own.”
That earned me a small, tremulous smile.
Eyeing the rubble, I rubbed my chin. I had no fucking idea how I broke the tunnel.
Though I had superior strength, it was nothing like that.
I flexed my fingers. The wounds on my knuckles had already healed, and only the residue of crimson crusted the skin.
So caught up with my fury, I hadn’t even been aware of what was hissing through my blood.
The soles of my boots scraped against rock as I shifted around, taking in my surroundings. We were standing in a small cavern, a burrow perhaps.
Though we’d followed several scents and tracked down mindless creatures, we hadn’t encountered Yezekael. However yesterday, we’d picked up a trail that led us deeper. Maybe it was Yezekael, maybe not.
As my gaze swung wide, I realized this wasn’t a krekenn nest, and as I dragged in the same scent we’d hunted yesterday, I knew deep in my gut who this belonged to.
A second later, Mela voiced the same thought.
“Yezekael.” She moved to a wall and slowly walked along the length of the rock face that had been gutted out and turned into shelves.
Her headlamp bobbed with her motion, and its light skimmed a collection of odd bits and pieces covered in a thick layer of dust.
I strode to the center of the chamber, my boots crunching over grit and shattered debris, to something that took up a good chunk of the burrow.
A nest had been built from the age-mottled bones of mortals and otherworldly creatures, with shredded fabric, feathers, and matted fur softening the ramshackle structure.
As if Yezekael were a magpie and liked to keep shiny, sparkly things close by, were treasures stolen from those it had killed and consumed and tucked within the macabre nest. I noticed an object that shone dully.
Curious, I bent down, picked it up, and dangled it from my dusty fingertips.
An expensive golden chain with interlinked diamonds crusted with dirt.
As the length of gold and gems spun around, it spun something in my memory.
A spark of a thread I followed. A necklace.
Maybe it was thinking of my mother, maybe, but a thought jarred my mind.
My mother…my aunt.
Years ago, Aunt Valarie had given my mother a necklace as a gift.
A simple pearl pendant. She loved it so much she wore it every single day unless she was going out to meet with another House.
Then, she’d wear one of those priceless pieces of jewelry from our treasury.
Last week my aunt was wearing the necklace she’d given my mother…
Which meant…
I sucked in a sharp breath.
Hellsgate…
My mother hadn’t been wearing the simple pearl necklace the day the Horned Gods stole her. Which meant she had to have met up with someone important from one of the Houses that day.
What had my mother been up to in Ascendria before she’d collected me from the Novak estate?
Mela’s voice broke through the silence of the burrow. “It’s been abandoned.” She shifted her tall, curvy body to face me fully, lifting a hand, gesturing about. “Yezekael’s not been here for quite some time.”
Maybe it had been driven out. Who knew?
“The trail we picked up yesterday is fresh,” I replied.
She nodded slowly. “He’s down here somewhere, but at least now we know for sure.”
Yellowed light limned the edge of the nest as she walked toward me. “There’s no point staying here any longer. Let’s get out of here for a few hours and have a drink.” She nudged me with her elbow, barely playful, but better than what she had been half an hour ago. “I think we’ve both earned it.”
Yes, we had.
A while later, after traveling through the rabbit warren of tunnels, clambering up maintenance shafts on rickety ladders, and climbing up the endless steps of stairwells with dull lighting guiding the way to the subway, finally, we reached the paint-peeled door that led out of the catacombs.
Our phones went off in a flurry of notifications.
We’d been out of contact for days now. I dug mine out of my daypack I’d reclaimed along our journey, and fished out a bottle of water too.
Both of us were filthy, and I figured we could grab a room at a hotel, clean up, and maybe Mela could get some sleep on an actual bed, not the shitty bedroll in the fridge-like conditions down in the catacombs.
Sweat glanced over my forearm as I used it to wipe my forehead, and cool, refreshing water quenched my thirst as I guzzled half the bottle down, while flicking through my messages and phone log.
There were a series of business calls and texts to attend to, then Ferne… She’d sent several messages, a fuckload of them, and the nature of them grew more urgent for me to contact her.
Unease slid through me.
As I pressed the button to call her, she called me.
“Hey,” I greeted her, dragging a hand through my dusty hair.
It wasn’t Ferne on the phone, it was Penn. Except this time, her normally softly spoken voice was leaden with worry. I tensed instantly.
The words rushed out over the crackling line. “You need to come home. Now. Right this minute.”
A cold sensation twisted through my gut. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s Nelle. She’s not right. There’s something wrong with her.”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s ill…maybe… We don’t know. It’s unnatural, whatever’s ailing her. That damned collar you’ve put around her neck! And I—” She cut herself off, breath hitching.
Penn wasn’t one for being pushy or rude, not because she was a member of our staff, but her instinctive nature was to be quiet, or maybe that wasn’t right either, she’d been broken in her childhood to be that way—unassuming, fade into the background and to tiptoe around others.
It was telling how anxious she was because she’d forgotten herself and verbally snapped at me.
“You don’t stop for anyone or anything, Graysen. Get home now!”
She ended the call, not me.
I stared at my phone blankly. Fear washed through me like a dirty wave, pushing me under, choking the air from my lungs. “I’ve got…”
“What? What’s going on?” Mela asked, already concerned.
“I’ve got to get home now. Fast.”
Mela didn’t ask; she acted, and I loved her for that. She scooped up my daypack, grabbed the keys to my car, and tossed them my way. “Go. I got this.”
I surged ahead, then something made me slam to a halt and spin around. Mela looked at me in confusion.
“Elyse isn’t dead, Mela. They didn’t kill her. They took her.”
Her soft, round cheeks tightened, along with every single muscle in her body. She glanced upward, biting her bottom lip, trying not to cry. “She may as well be.”
“Not yet. She’ll still be alive. They’ll have given her to the Pellans. You know we’re gathering as many others as we can to fuel their experiments. Processing takes time. If you want to free her, let’s find someone to get you inside the Pellan’s laboratories.”
Her gaze shot to mine, incredulous. “Go against the Horned Gods?”
“Is she worth it?”
A fierce look came upon her, and she nodded.
“Then we’ll do it.”
I twisted to bolt, panic blinding me, but Mela lunged forward, her hand raised to stop me. “Wait!”
“Yeah?” I silently cursed myself for mentally screaming at her to hurry and speak, because every molecule in me roared for me to leave and find Nelle now.
“Whatever is going on with you. Whatever it is you’ve got yourself into, you know you can come to me anytime, don’t you?
I can help you fix it, make it right.” She couldn’t, but I gave her a nod anyway.
She smiled fleetingly, a flash of white teeth, just before she added, “Gray, who’s to say you have to choose?
If there are only two players in the game, only two choices, then become the third.
” She made a shooing motion with her hand, and I took it as the release she was giving me. I spun around and ran.
But as I erupted into the subway with its boisterous, chaotic sounds of life and the throng of mortals milling about the platform, her words resonated deep inside, a bell tolling deep and loud.
Become the third.