Chapter 45 #2
Soren shoved me toward the far right of the cavernous lobby, through a side door into a smaller, shadow-cloaked room that smelled like mold and old wires.
A security office, maybe. Once. Or even still.
I found myself leaning against the first surface I could reach to steady the dizziness of not enough food and water, coupled with too much movement.
“There’s something you need to know about The Red Room,” Soren said, voice hushed as he pushed me backward until I was sitting on a counter that held some kind of archaic computer and other devices I didn’t recognize. Everything was coated in forty layers of dust, and soon my shorts were, too.
“Shouldn’t we be running?” I asked. “Or hiding from the Extermins?”
“They won’t come in here,” he said. “That’s what you need to know. This hotel is still in use. And you’re in more danger here than you were outside.”
He turned to an old computer and began pressing buttons.
I reached for the pack, grabbed the canteen while he worked, and took slow sips.
The screen of the computer he was messing with flickered to life. Grainy black and white boxes appeared.
I leaned closer to get a better look. Then recoiled.
People chained to beds or walls. Knives cutting across skin. Clothes torn off the prisoners. Whips cracking. Silenced screams wrenched from bloodied lips.
Acts too depraved to name forced on victims with features twisted in anguish, happening live—I assumed—across dozens of small, monotone boxes.
“Are those…cameras?” I asked, horror cracking my voice.
“Yes.” His expression was strange and distant.
Then it dropped away, and he stood taller, all shadow and height and looming threat.
“If they catch you out there in the city,” he said, tone clipped, “They might accidentally kill you. Or maybe they’ll bring you straight to the Founder, like they’ve been ordered to.
” He turned back to the screen. “But if someone finds you in here? You’ll end up in one of these rooms. And the people who run this place—they won’t hand you over. ”
I gulped.
“They’ll use you. However they want.” His attention whipped back to me. He pressed forward into my space. “Until one of them decides the reward from Abadon is worth more than whatever fun they’re having with your body.”
I sat frozen as he moved a strand of hair from my face.
“This place is a playground for the most depraved creatures. I would know. And I’ll have to kill a lot of them to get you out. Even then, it might not be fast enough.”
He stepped even closer—too close. His arms caged me in, one hand on either side of my thighs. The counter pressed into the backs of my legs.
“So,” he said, voice a low growl, “Stop screwing around. In here, you follow me. No questions. No hesitation. You do exactly what I say.”
His breath hit my cheek.
“You’re mine,” he finished, “And I’ll be damned if anyone else gets to touch you, much less hurt you. Don’t make me even more of a murderer than I already am.”
Blood rushed to my head and then rushed right back out, leaving me in a spin. I stared at his shoulder, willing my heart to stop slamming against my ribs.
I nodded once, quickly, and dropped my gaze to my dangling feet, which now hovered dangerously close to brushing his legs.
As terrifying as Soren was…the kind of pain waiting in those rooms upstairs would not come with even a shred of confusion or a possibility of desire. Soren had at least alluded to consent when touching me. No one here would bother with that.
With me thoroughly and visibly terrified, Soren seemed satisfied and backed off.
“One thing,” I said quickly, hopping down from the counter before he could turn the doorknob. “I don’t belong to you, Soren. You think I’m going to fall for you just because you say so? I won’t. I only want one thing. Revenge. So, stop playing games.”
He only turned his head partway. Just enough for his left eye to drag over me, top to bottom, and back again.
“This isn’t a game, Little Shadow. Never has been.” His gaze lingered on mine. “You can lie to yourself all you want. But I know exactly which emotions you’re feeling right now. I always do. Let’s just say I do not repulse you in the least.”
He twisted the knob. The door clicked open.
I bit my tongue and followed silently, shadowing him like the name he always used for me. A part of me wanted to ask what the hell he was talking about, but no part of me wanted to risk being heard in this place.
Yet, his last words lingered, curling through my thoughts. He hadn’t said them like someone fishing for affection. He said it like a man who already knew the answer. Like he did know exactly which emotions I was feeling.
But how could he? Even I wasn’t sure of that.
Desire, comfort, curiosity, embarrassment, lo—
Oh, hell no. No time for the psych couch right now.
I rubbed a hand down my thigh to wipe away the unnecessary thoughts, and we moved quickly, hugging the walls and ducking into open rooms.
The sounds upstairs bled through the floors. Moans, screams, the smack of flesh on flesh. Shouts. Begging. Crying and pleading.
“Even here, I am with you.” As small as ever, yet I somehow believed that gentler voice this time.
I needed the voice to be louder now. Louder than the horror above.
Even the hissing voice would’ve been better than the sobs I swore came from someone far too young to be in a place like this.
Soren pressed behind me as we crouched on one side of a cabinet of dust-caked dishes.
His warm breath brushed my neck. I never wanted to feel his breath as much as I did in that moment because it pulled me away from the image now playing out in my head of someone like the small girl in the frilly, pink pajamas being tortured and abused by these monsters.
“That door,” he whispered, pointing, “Leads to the basement. Entrance to The Tower’s below.”
His breath stirred the hairs at the back of my neck and something deeper under my skin. But it was his next words that nearly undid me.
“You’ve been a very good girl so far, my Eliana.” He trailed a knuckle down the back of my arm—a whisper of touch that lit a spark in my core and a tightness in my thighs. “Just stay quiet. Follow me.”
Against my own better judgment, I leaned back just enough to feel the heat of him at my spine. Better him than what waited in those rooms upstairs, right?
Soren moved first, sliding out and checking both ends of the hallway. Then he motioned for me to follow, and I scurried after him, through that door and down uneven stairs.
It was pitch black in The Red Room’s basement. Soren felt around inside a drawer—somehow knowing exactly where to look—and pulled out a candle and a box of matches.
Only the last match in the pack lit after testing three others. He used it to light the candle, then handed me a second candle and shared his flame with mine.
Together, we moved down a narrow hallway lined with closed doors and damp cinder blocks.
Then we saw it.
A pile of rubble blocked the corridor ahead.
Soren forced out a harsh, gutted sound, and his candlelight caught the hopelessness in his face. I knew then that our way into The Tower was beyond that rubble. Or it once was.
“No,” he breathed.
My chest sank with that simple word. My fingers clenched around the base of the warm, soft candle. Wax dripped, scalding my good hand, but I barely felt it.
Soren raked a hand through his hair, staring at the collapsed entrance. He turned toward me, but I couldn’t meet his eyes.
I looked away. Looked down at the floor leading nowhere.
“They must have known we were coming for it and destroyed this entryway. We’ll figure something else out,” he said quietly. “I promise.”
Then the light hit something beside me, catching both our attention.
A plain brown door.
Or almost plain.
The flicker of my candle illuminated the glint of my necklace. It reflected onto the door. Something shifted in the wood.
I stepped toward it, then froze.
Ignoring the pain in my fingers, I used my injured hand to grab the pendant. I turned it, angling the reflection, moving clockwise.
There.
A carving.
A tree.
The Living Tree.
“Eliana,” Soren said behind me.
I didn’t look at him.
He stepped forward and gently took my mutilated candle from my hand before it collapsed. With both candles now in his grasp, he lit the carving more clearly.
“Look for a keyhole,” he said.
But I couldn’t move.
I kept staring at the door.
Answers. They hid behind that door. Here in The Red Room.
“Why?” I whispered. “Why should I open it?”
He glanced down at the pendant.
I shook my head.
He gave a faint smile. It was soft and strange, like he understood more than he let on.
“You’re impossible.”
“What if I don’t want to know what’s behind that door?” My voice sounded hollow, like it wasn’t mine.
He nodded slowly, serious again.
“You do.” His words came from right next to my ear in a tease of a whisper. “It’s part of you. And I think it’s something you’ve always wanted—to know this part of you. Maybe even more than revenge. You want this. Family.”
Family.
He’d said that before.
“You know, don’t you?” I whispered with my eyes roving over the door for a hole or specific indentation. “What’s behind it?”
“Not exactly.” He straightened, stepping back a hair. “I’ve seen a pendant like that used before, but not here. I’m guessing it’s the key.”
“Who used it?” I asked, focusing on the tree.
“I’ll tell you after you open the door.”
I groaned and turned to glare up at him. I’d expected a smirk, but his expression was wholly serious with brows tight and jaw clenched. When I turned back to the door, the light of the candles followed.
The carving was just like the one on the top half of the door to the Upper Room. A tree, full of mysteries and expectations.
I searched the woodwork.
There. Inside a knot in the bark.
A keyhole.
My hands trembled as I struggled with the clasp of my necklace. Stupid sweaty hands!
Finally, it came loose.
I turned the scepter sideways. Slid it in.
Click.
I twisted the pendant to the left. Another click. The door creaked inward beneath my palm.
And I stepped into the room with all the answers.