Chapter 30 TESNI
THIRTY
TESNI
It’s a fucking maze of pipes, flooded with water up to my waist, and winter finds us down here.
My teeth are clenched too tight against the chill.
My bones quake beneath jolting muscles. The trembles aren’t a constant shudder, but rather a sudden violent force that strikes through me, head to toe.
For too long, we trudge through the tunnels with Bee’s nightlights leading us down our watery path.
Rats pass us on the way, skirting over the ledge-lined walls, or just swimming around us, and in the dusky gleam of nightlights, I find it hard to make out any changes in them, like with the cactus.
That shouldn’t be a thought on my mind, not right now, while we’re creating distance between ourselves and the fae warrior I shot under ice. I should only be thinking about other ways to get ahead, to hide our tracks and mask our scents.
But my mind is fractured—as it has been since the start of all this, a broken vase that has been poorly glued back together, cracks and lines splintering all over.
It’s hard to stay focused.
Doesn’t help that I’m on the fucking verge of hypothermia. The constant chattering of teeth is getting on my last damn nerve.
This watery trek is going kill me, kill us all, and I wonder if Bee is thinking the same—because not a moment after the thought takes root in my mind, she stops at a ladder.
The glow of her nightlights washes over the rusted metal bars. She lifts her arm above her head, and I can trace the crimson gleam up to a heavy metal slab.
A manhole cover.
The exhale that ribbons from me is quick to echo down the chamber. “Thank fuck for that.” I pull the rifle strap over my head. It crosses the chest of my parka. “I’ll go first. Keep the light on me.”
The gloves protect me from the ice burns, the ladder is so frosty, but I take extra care to grip firm before pulling myself up.
The light follows me to the cover—and below, Emily splashes through the water with a shout.
I throw a startled look down at her.
Her arms are raised overhead as she holds the shotgun out of the reach of the water, but she’s staggering in a frantic turn—trying to put distance between herself and the rat swimming by her waist.
A soft breath slumps me, and I turn back to the manhole before she can see the face I make at her expense.
People and rats, honestly, the way they react to rats digs into the core of my anger. Rats are darling, intelligent, cute, they are clean—I mean, they fucking laugh. They actually laugh, little pitched squeaks.
I had a rat once when I was young. Stole it from the kitchen pantry and my mum let me keep it.
The downside is they don’t live long.
“See if you can move it,” Bee whispers up at me, and it steals me back to now, latched onto the ladder, a manhole cover above my head.
Hooking a leg around a ladder rod, then my left arm around another, I anchor myself in place before I push upwards, my forearm pressing against the metal lid—and the strain tugs through me with a guttural groan.
The clatter of metal is fast followed by a long, drawn-out scrape. I boost myself up higher, shoving all my weight into the heavy metal, and tilt.
I angle the lid to scrape over the road.
The bone of my forearm throbs. I feel the pulsations of my blood gathering, trapped under the pressure. My groan turns gravelly as, lifting my boot to the next step, I force myself upwards.
The promises of bruises spring all over my flesh.
The manhole drags aside, the loud scrape like the thunderous moans of demons, and I can hear the hissed, cringed response from Bee below.
I drag myself out onto the street above.
Cold presses against my face, icy air wisping its way into my mouth. I suck in the deepest inhale before I roll onto my side once.
The breath is ragged through my lungs as I reach for the torch fastened to my belt. My thumb presses the slide button—and a small gust of wispy white light reaches over the snow.
I angle it around, wall to wall, then down the lane before I announce, “Clear.”
There is a code for it, but the exhaustion has me weakened, and I force all my energy into scooting back until my backpack touches the wall.
I slump.
My hand is deadweight as I lift it, limp and shaky, to the strap of the rifle, then tug it over my head.
I set it down on the ground.
Emily is next to come clambering out of the manhole—but my attention is on the slipperiness of the street. I run my gloved hands over it, the sheen of ice, then drag my gaze wall to wall.
A frown turns down my mouth.
That’s new.
Back in the lane, before we went down into the tunnel system, the ground was slushy. That old, murky kinda snow, but it wasn’t ice.
Now, ice is all I see.
Even as I drag my gaze up the walls of the buildings encasing us, that glisten under the torchlight, I feel like I’ve climbed out of underground tunnels and right into the movie, Frozen. The ice is… odd. Too much.
It has creeped up the walls as far as my measly torch can reach, it has thickened on the slippery floor, like I am surrounded by an imitation of nature.
And why the fuck was slush back on one side of this town, but now I’m surrounded with walls of ice?
Pristine ice, too.
Not a crack on its surface, not a scrape of a boot-scuff. It’s perfect, as if painted by a magical hand, a layer of nature’s varnish, or fucking CGI.
I’ve never seen anything like it.
The clatter of the manhole flinches me.
Bee is last to drag herself out of the hole, her backpack catching on the lid. She wrenches free, then rolls onto her back.
For a moment, she just lays there, shuddering, her teeth chattering in the frosty quiet.
Emily is crouched over, just a metre away from my soaked boots, swatting as much water off the surface of her trousers as she can, but that’s a useless thing.
We are drenched through to the prickled flesh.
“Change,” Bee hisses the order, then shifts onto her knees. “Quickly.”
A sigh slumps my shoulders at the chore.
But she’s right.
Every thread is soaked, from my snowpants, two sizes too small, and so they are a little on the snug side, and the leggings beneath them, and the two pairs of socks between my numb feet and my boots.
If there was a mirror in sight, and I dared look at it, I know what I would find. Shuddering blue lips, damp hair, a runny upturned nose, and crimson freckled cheeks.
I look exactly as I feel—battered, bruised and freezing.
Emily tears off her jacket, but her muttered curses come out in never-ending strings as she fumbles with the sleeves.
She throws a look at Bee, one of dread and wrinkled lips deflated over time without fillers, and it almost looks as though she smoked a pack a day with that pucker.
But her eyes are filled with the same worry written all over me.
Even if we change clothes, are we going to die of frostbite or hypothermia?
We can’t just keep walking. We need to find a place to stop and warm ourselves.
Bee ignores that look from Em—but she will listen to me.
“We need to stop.” My voice is small, so tired. The defeat is kneading into me, much too soon.
“What?” Bee’s whisper comes through the faint light between us, a strong of nightlights and a faint torch, chased by the crinkling sound of snowpants. “You need a rest?”
My grim look lifts to her as I tug off my boots. “We need to at least get warm.”
I don’t know what superpowers she might have with her fae blood, or if it’s entirely true that she is human to her biological core, but through the cold chattering of her teeth, she stands stronger than me and Emily.
Hesitation has her.
Her mouth thins, lips rubbing together, as she fights off the violence of the trembles. “By the time we find shelter and clear it—”
“It’s not a request,” I tell her, firm. “If we go on like this, we will get sick. Real fucking sick.”
That hesitates her.
The unspoken result.
We will die.
She shrugs off her jacket. It thumps to the icy ground. “We’ll find a place further out.”
That’s too far.
By the looks of our icy surroundings, we’re still very much in this town—and I don’t even know which town that is.
We’ve gone too off-track.
I need to check the map.
But first, warm and dry clothes.
Shrouded in the mists of my breaths, I’m peeling off the sopping gloves from my trembling fingers.
It’s a symphony of wet clothes hitting the icy ground. The slap of Emily’s tights, the tumble of Bee’s boot, the thump of my thermal-wear. Between the slaps and thuds of our undressing, and the screech of the bag zippers, our choppy breaths shudder through the still air.
I strip down to nothing. Even my underwear is discarded on the ice, soaked down to the individual threads.
Unlike Emily, who’s quick to scramble into whatever she can find in her bag, I take the moment to run myself over with baby wipes.
It’s not a thorough clean, but the thought of the water we waded through being left stagnant for so long, it doesn’t leave me with a clean, fresh feeling—and the urge to wipe as much of it away as possible takes root.
By the time I’m clambering into fleece-lined tights and a thermal long-sleeve, my teeth are chattering in the still air.
I layer up with baseball socks, jeans, a lumpy knitted sweater, a Kathmandu parka… until I’m shoeless.
The boots are the only shoes I have.
Too bulky to fit another pair into my backpack. So now I’m left with the soaked pair I side-eye, toppled over next to my backpack.
Before I can reach for them, Bee mutters “here” and pushes another pair towards me.
Not snowboots.
Just plain leather boots, soft soles, thin, moveable, quiet… but not made for the snow.
Still, they are better than a wet pair.
I tug on the leather ones, then repack my bag.
Before I tug the zipper shut, I put a fresh inhaler in my jacket pocket.
This jacket is my absolute favourite. Thin and slender enough to keep small in my bag, but insulated and soft and cosy, hooded and high-necked. It’s an embrace, cosy arms wrapped around me.
My lashes shut as I let the warmth knead into my prickled skin.
“Is that the last of it?” Bee is crouched opposite me, zipping her own backpack before slinging the straps over her shoulders.
At my blank look, she nods her head to the pocket of my Kathmandu. “The inhaler.”
My mouth thins into a slanted line.
The one I had in the tunnels, I drained that dry by the time we got here. I swear I had another one, but maybe I left it behind in the hospital, or lost it somewhere along the way.
“You don’t have more?” she presses, then turns to Emily. “What about you?”
Emily shoves hers into her trouser pocket, then zips it shut. “I picked up a few from the hospital.”
I pull my backpack on. “How many?”
“Two—and the one I already had on me.”
Bee presses her mouth together into a tight line. Her doubt can’t be for the inhalers. We have enough. So her doubt is placed elsewhere.
I shift my gaze to the rifle planted on the icy floor—and realise she has no weapon.
I snatch it up and offer it to her.
Bee frowns at the rifle, then brings that questioning look upwards.
“Take it.”
Bee shakes her head. “What about you?”
I pat the belt looped around my waist. The CB radio bobs with the gesture, and beside it, a plain black pistol is tucked into a holster.
It’s a bit damp from the wading through the waters—and I’m not sure if the gunpowder got soaked or not, or if that’s even anything I need to worry about.
“Here.” Emily hands over the shotgun to Bee. “You’re better with this—and I’m better with the rifle.”
True, Emily is a better aim.
Bee misses more often than not.
She knows it, too, so the swap happens without another word. Emily takes the rifle, and Bee gives a lengthy sigh before she snatches the shotgun, but with so much disinterest, like it doesn’t matter whether or not she has it.
Now I know.
I misread her before. Her concern isn’t for the weapons we have between us.
Her doubt is for our chances.