In The Dark Of The Night
REBEL
Nothing like waking up with a probable concussion and half a pound of ash in your mouth.
My tongue feels like it’s full of gravel, and my eyes are crusted shut.
For a minute, I try to remember what day it is and what the fuck happened, but it comes rushing back pretty quickly.
I taste blood mixed with something musty and ancient, like I ate a fucking mummy or something.
My shoulder cracks against the wet stone and sends a current of pain all the way to my ass.
I have to do a more thorough inventory before I attempt moving, or I might make shit even worse than they are now.
I lie still with my gross eyes closed, assessing damage piece by piece.
Both legs and arms: attached, but numb, which means pain is coming, eventually.
The left side of my face is pressed to something damp and fuzzy.
If it’s moss, fine, but if it’s a dead rat, that’ll fit the mood for today.
My body feels like a deep, solid bruise, but everything seems to be in one piece.
I’m not sure if I should be grateful or pissed.
Memory seeps back in, like water working its way through a plugged drain. There was a flash—a sound that ate all other sounds, then… nothing. That part doesn’t track because I’ve survived bigger explosions. Javi’s implosion couldn’t be worse than being too close to six pounds of TATP, right?
But if I’m alive, so is everyone else. Unless, of course, this is the Fae limbo area where we get sent to new bodies because we can’t really die—which would just be embarrassing.
I’m too highly trained to end up here because a phoenix did its thing and blew up a magical pedestal. I’ll never live it down.
It’s time to open my eyes. One lid peels back after some convincing, but there’s nothing to see except darkness and a faint shimmering gray stone. I drag in a breath and nearly cough up a lung. The air is heavy, damp, stinking of rotted wood and that sourness you get in old root cellars.
“Rogue?” My voice is a fistful of sandpaper. “Archie? Damon?” I hesitate, then say, “Angelo? Javier?”
My voice echoes off the walls, just barely, which means the space is bigger than a coffin but not by much.
It sounds like my voice has been smothered with a wet towel.
The silence that follows is eerie, and I growl softly under my breath when nothing responds.
I’m definitely somewhere soundproof or alone.
I’m not sure which option is worse yet, so I’ll try again.
I try again, louder this time. “Time to make some noise!”
Nothing.
My heart beats faster as panic grows in my chest, but I smother it with a curse. I have no idea what it looks like when a phoenix dies and comes back—maybe Javi’s gone all the way molten and needs to reconstitute from a pile of carbon. Maybe it takes hours, or days, or a fucking century.
What about the others? I repeat the names, just in my head this time, one after the other like a litany, hoping the words will shape the dark into something familiar.
Rogue is always first—if she’s alive, she’ll be furious, and if she’s furious, nothing in this world or the next will stop her from burning it all down to find whoever’s left.
The back of my throat closes up. I don’t want to think about ‘if’ and ‘left’. That’s not a useful direction.
I try to reach for her, not with words, but with that channel that runs straight through our bones. If Rogue is somewhere in range, even if she’s locked in another goddamn hole, she’d feel me or I’d feel her response. I fumble for that thread, my breath gone shallow, and get… nothing.
Dead air, silence…like the world’s been unplugged.
Fear doesn’t suit me, but it skates across my skin, anyway.
Either she’s dead or I’m dead, which is unlikely based on what I remember of the battle.
Maybe the concussion is worse than I thought, and I’m hallucinating this whole thing.
Or I could be in a coma, like in that shitty ending to Lost, and I’m imagining all of this because my brain is a lazy-ass writer.
I spit on the floor. This can’t be the limbo-esque space; there’s too much pain, dirt, and my own goddamn sweat in the air. The world is still here, so somebody’s captured me. Honestly, that’s a feat in and of itself, and I almost have to admire the motherfucker… almost.
My head spins like a loaded roulette wheel as I push myself to my knees, and I gag.
The ceiling is low, maybe two feet above my skull.
I reach up and smack my palm flat against it to feel slimy, cold stone.
I stretch my legs as far as they’ll go and hit another wall there.
The wall at my head is rough and flakes under my fingernails.
A cave? A grave? Who the fuck knows?
I consider screaming, but decide against it.
Instead, I talk, just to keep my voice from vanishing.
“Gotta hand it to whoever did this—points for creativity. Last time I got kidnapped, there was at least a mattress.” I snicker, but the humor tastes sour.
“But this is good—old-school, even. I respect the classics.”
They’ve stripped me down to the bare minimum, so I won’t find much help in my pockets.
I have a torn, dirty undershirt, boxers, and my left sock, which is deeply insulting.
No phone, no weapons, and I’m not sure if calling my Fae blade will work if this place is magically enhanced.
If I had a knife, I could start carving tally marks or shank myself out of boredom, but even that’s denied.
For a while, I sit here fuming while I try to slow my pulse.
I inventory the rest of my injuries, including bruised ribs, swelling over my eyebrow, and a cracked molar.
I dig at it with my tongue until the metallic taste gets overwhelming.
Maybe it’s dumb to worry about a tooth when you’re locked in a stone coffin, but I’ve never been good at focusing without Rogue around.
She balances out my natural tendency to jump from thing to thing as I think.
I try the Fae link again, this time pushing with every bit of magic I have at the moment.
The effort leaves me sweating, but it’s like screaming into a void.
Something is actively blocking us, which means this wasn’t a simple snatch-and-grab.
Our attackers planned to take us out, and when that didn’t work, they adapted quickly by kidnapping one of us.
Plus, they’re powerful enough to make sure no one can trace a line right back to me.
That’s some serious firepower, so it wasn’t Luca or those idiot Stuhll goons led by Rogue’s shitty ex.
I punch the wall, just to see if it’ll budge.
All it does is split my knuckles and smear a red streak across the stone.
I lick the silvery blood away; no use wasting it.
Rogue would say I’m posturing—that I knew that wouldn’t work and did it, anyway.
She’d be right, as usual, but that doesn’t mean that getting some of my fury at this situation out doesn’t help clear my brain a bit.
My eyes are slowly adjusting to the dark here, but there’s nothing to see. I count seconds, lose track, start again. I try humming, first a pop song, then a drinking song, then just a single note until my voice cracks. There’s no feedback, no sign that anyone is listening—not even a rat.
There’s a reason they say people lose their minds in solitary, and I can bet you a hot fiver it has to do with neurodiversity.
For a second, I think I hear water, but it’s probably just the blood in my ears.
My mind flips through possibilities of what this place is as I whistle.
It could be an underground bunker, dungeon, abandoned subway, or root cellar.
But none of that fits because who kidnaps a known Guardian and puts them in a wet rock closet unless they have a death wish?
Rogue and I aren’t actively watching our charge, but we’re active in the Society, and it’s no secret.
It’s asking for more trouble than it’s worth.
I force myself to lie back down, pressing my spine into the cold ground.
The contact helps somehow because physical touch is real.
While my mind wants to panic, I keep it pinned to reality through pure stubbornness.
If I’m alive, then there’s a way out. It may take time, but someone will come for me.
I just have to keep my shit together until they do.
“Sis,” I mutter again, softer this time. “Don’t be dead. I need you to be alive so you can tear whoever did this to shreds, preferably with your teeth.”
If she were here, she’d roll her eyes and say I’m being dramatic.
Even if I have to drag myself over broken glass and through three dimensions of hell, I make a promise to myself to do whatever it takes to get out. I grip the floor as if it’s an anchor and let the anger settle in.
Fear is useless, but rage—rage I can work with.
I close my eyes and wait for whatever comes next.
Time is weird down here. I measure it in heartbeats and the way my body aches more or less depending on whether I’m awake or drifting. Sometimes I shout myself hoarse, to see if anything echoes differently, but mostly I let the silence fill up the gaps in my skull.
The thing is, there’s no guard, no torture, not even a taunting voice on the other side of the wall. It’s almost offensive, being kidnapped and then left alone.
Do they think I’m going to go insane and off myself? Sorry, but I’m not wired that way.
I spend a while sitting with my back to the cold stone, legs outstretched, face tilted up to where the ceiling is so close I can smell the mineral sweat weeping from it.
I talk to myself, sometimes I talk to Rogue, and sometimes to whatever god or goddess might be listening.
Occasionally, I even talk to my captors, just in case they have a camera or spell working to watch me.
“So this is it? You grab me out of a crowd, throw me in a hole, and just… forget about me? Not even a ransom note?” I sigh, annoyed, and pick at the crust on my busted knuckle. “If you’re trying to break my spirit, you’re going to be sorely disappointed.”
Little rituals help me keep from going crazy. I count my fingers and toes, flex my limbs, see if anything new has snapped or gone numb. I run through a mental checklist of every person who has the resources to pull off a stunt like this.
But I can’t stop coming back to my stepsister.
She’s been my favorite person in this realm since they brought me here, and not just because of our link or our partnership for the Society.
The memory of her is so sharp I can smell it, and it’s both torture and bliss.
If she’s gone, then I’ll go down swinging to avenge her because mating with her was going to be the best moment of my goddamn life.
I won’t have mercy on anyone who takes that from me.
Eventually, I get bored enough to theorize again.
This isn’t about ransom or revenge because they could have taken any of my family left alive for that.
Whoever locked me up wants me neutralized specifically, even though my absence will activate the other Guardians the second they find out.
That’s attention they shouldn’t want to swing in their direction.
It’s a tremendous risk for their bosses on high to take notice of the shit going down in Bay City at the moment.
So why pick me when it would make everything worse?
Sighing, I put myself in the place of our mysterious enemies.
When we thought this might be about the mob goons, it made sense that if you can’t take down my little sis directly; you go after her crew.
Take us off the board and maybe she hesitates or falls apart.
That opens the door for them to get a hold of her when she’s not paying attention, and it’s a plan someone as simple-minded as Mina would think is a banger.
But that stupid bitch doesn’t have the juice for this, nor does she know my girl well enough to realize that it wouldn’t happen that way, either.
Rogue in the Derby is not the same as Rogue, the Unseelie Fae hybrid Guardian, which is who you get when you touch the people she cares about.
Mina has no idea how much power my sis hides, especially since she lost Reck.
If the jailers had a single clue about what she’s going to do to them, they’d let me head for the darkest realm they can gain entry to as fast as possible.
They had better options for kidnapping if all they wanted was money or leverage on shit in Bay City without bringing a raging Fae or the Society, too.
Archie is pure shifter royalty; all of his parents are on the Council.
Sariah would arrange a ransom without batting an eye.
Javi’s a wild card—once he went up in flames, his parents would take great offense at his having to reveal his magic in public.
They wouldn't like that Rogue and the rest of us were involved, but if these dickwads had taken their reformed son, the Phoenix Consortiums would have bought his freedom.
Damon and Angelo not being targets makes sense even though their sketchy-ass parents didn’t do this.
The two of them are too ancient and too connected across the realms to make their disappearance not launch a demonic hunt.
There hasn’t been one of those on the surface in so long that they were probably in college, and that’s a long goddamn time.
The only thing that makes any sense is that I’m bait, and unfortunately, I can’t warn anyone about it.