Chapter 22 – Kalista
Chapter Twenty-Two
Kalista
I tried again to move my limbs and open my eyes, but I could do neither. It was as if I was trapped in a tomb in a mummified body swaddled in endless strips of cotton. Everything around me seemed muted by a loud, clogging white noise. God, I couldn’t even hold a coherent thought for longer than one second to the next.
I don’t know how long I remained in that state before the white noise lowered slightly and I started hearing male voices.
“I told you not to bring her here,” a male growled angrily.
I immediately labeled him, Dumbass1.
“We had no choice.” The other male’s deep voice seemed loud to my ears. “This is the only place that the Petrovs have no powers. The Petrovs, their wolves, and her vampire will have no immortal powers down here. If by any chance her people know about the Regiment, none of their buildings would be safe. They have resources out there but not here,” the deep voice insisted. “Besides, they promised us over two hundred acres of land for our Pack. We have never had that kind of territory for our Pack or even access to such a rich food source.”
I labeled him, Dumbass2.
“If they find her down here, they will level this fucking place and will kill us long before we can enjoy our reward.” Dumbass1 clearly wasn’t at all impressed with the compensation offer. “The job was for us to deliver her to them and our part would be over!”
“We wouldn’t be caught,” Dumbass2 said confidently. “They don’t know that we were involved and would never think to look for her here.”
I was glad that they continued arguing between themselves because it gave my body more time to get rid of the remaining grogginess from my mind. And then as soon as I felt fully awake, another pressing need became unbearable to suppress. I don’t know how long it has been since I had my coffee, bagel, and fruit, but suddenly the entire mixture was churning in my stomach, and my bladder was excruciatingly full.
Although I hadn’t wanted to alert Dumbass1 and Dumbass2 of my awake state, I couldn’t stop what was coming out of me whether I wanted to or not. I was cuffed on both hands on either side of the narrow bed, and my feet, which were still in my work boots, were also cuffed rendering me helpless and flat on my back. So, my choices were either choke on my own vomit or beg to be released, but the only word I could get out was a very weak, “Help.”
And then I started writhing and whimpering in agitation to be let up.
“What the fuck?”
“Dude, let her up!”
“Are you crazy? We can’t let her loose.”
“She’s going to be sick. Let her up, asshole!”
“She is probably faking?—”
I started retching violently. Of course, the entire mess spilled from my mouth like a clogged sink spitting up disgusting, chunky goop, bubbling over onto my cheeks, chin, neck, and into my nose, which then had me choking, fighting to breathe but vomiting at the same time.
The dumbasses finally started frantically unlocking the cuffs and letting me up. While I was able to sit up and stop the clogging to my nose, the damage was already done. I was a complete mess. Not only did I vomit all over my face and chest, but I hadn’t been able to hold in my pee, so my dark cargo work pants were soaked.
“Damn! What a fucking mess!”
“I told you to let her up. No, you had to wait. Now look at this shit.”
“Well, I’m not cleaning this clusterfuck up. You insisted on giving her an immortal drug. She is not an immortal, genius!”
“This is your fault. This is your mess!”
I drowned out the idiots squabbling and conducted a quick inventory of my body. I felt weaker and stronger at the same time. I also noted that my favorite boning knife, which I kept in a leather case under the band of my bra, the Glock 17 that I kept strapped to my thigh, and the switchblade that I kept in my right boot were still in place. I was grateful that my kidnappers were such idiots.
On the pretext of pulling at my soiled shirt, I palmed the boning knife from my bra. I don’t know what happened to my heightened senses, but given the size of my captors and their overpowering scents, I could tell that they were wolves. Maybe a boning knife against two wolves wasn’t enough.
“Can I get cleaned up please?” I said loud enough to be heard over the ongoing bickering between my captors. They had gotten to the point where it looked as if they were about to trade punches.
“The bathroom is through there,” Dumbass1, or was that Dumbass2, instructed. “And when you’re done, you’re going to clean up this mess!” Okay, so it’s Dumbass2.
I slouched and bent my head submissively as I walked slowly to the closed door Dumbass2 had pointed to. With practiced casualness, I took in the shabby condition of the tiny room and the one window and door to exit the room.
“Don’t get any bright ideas,” Dumbass2 continued. “You have two minutes to clean yourself up.”
The sight and scent of the dingy, dirty bathroom made me want the hurl all over again, as if the scent of my own vomit wasn’t revolting enough.
However, despite turning the water on in the sink, I made no effort to wash my face or clean the vomit from my shirt. My sole focus was on the tiny, dirty bathroom window, which was closed, and trying to determine if my butt could fit through it.
With the water running, I pried open the rusty lock on the window and pushed the glass out. My heart galloped in my chest in relief on seeing that the window wasn’t too far from the ground. It was a drop, but it was doable without breaking my legs. I wasted no time climbing through the window and scrambling down to the ground below. I missed my usual agility, but I didn’t let my current lack of grace stop me in the least.
As soon as my feet touched the cobblestone street, I started running. I got the strangest feeling, as if this place was familiar but I couldn’t quite place where I had seen it before. It had an assortment of houses that were smaller than normal and very close together, and a network of caves and tunnels that were wired with modern electrical lighting. When I came to the end of the alcove, I hit an assortment of shops, restaurants, and other businesses with crowds of people going about and basically minding their own business. Outside didn’t feel like an outside at all. It felt as if I was in an enormous underground mall with streetlights and lights from the businesses providing the artificial visibility. It was then that it finally clicked where I was.
The Chamber.
You couldn’t know of the immortal world without knowing about the Chamber. Owen brought me here once when I was a teenager, wanting me to understand the significant differences between my human self and my supernatural powers. My lack of agility and diminished powers now made sense.
This whole layout made sense now. The Chamber had normal houses, apartments, and cave dwellings. The human criminals who made the Chamber their home lived in the houses and apartments, while the outlawed immortals lived in the caves. So, Dumbass1 and Dumbass2 weren’t as dumb as I thought. Tristan and the wolves wouldn’t think that immortals took me if they found me in a human dwelling, that was if they even thought to look in the Chamber for me.
My memory was spotty about how to get back to the surface, but I was glad that I had my boning knife and trusty Glock while I navigated the less-than-ideal streets. The Chamber was known for its unsavory characters. Usually, people living in this subterranean environment were the worst of the worst of the immortal world above ground. They were predators and unlikely to offer any kind of compassion or aid. I was on my own if I wanted to ever see the surface again.
I kept moving but was careful to stick to the shadows. It was fortunate that my clothes were dark, so the vomit and pee were not visible, but the scent was strong. My boots and socks were also damp with my fluids. I was a damn mess, but it was probably the only reason people gave me such a wide berth.
For the first time in my life, I swiped some clothes from an outdoor store. Of course, the attendant saw me and gave chase.
I ran as fast as I could, and it turned out that even without my supernatural capabilities, my speed was pretty impressive. I left the attendant in the dust within seconds. Still, even when the attendant was no longer following me, I ran until my sides hurt, and then I kept walking briskly some more.
As soon as I came to a larger-than-normal restaurant, I ducked in, ignored the scrutiny of the staff and patrons, and hightailed it to the restrooms.
Ten minutes later, I left the restaurant dressed in my still wet but now washed-in-hand-soap pants, and a T-shirt and an oversized dark hoodie that I had swiped. My soiled work shirt was left in the bathroom garbage.
Now that I wasn’t running, I noted the speculative looks that I was attracting as I moved through the streets. That wasn’t good, because if I attracted attention, it made finding me that much easier for my kidnappers. I preferred not to deal with them just yet, especially since I didn’t know if they had friends here.
Another reason that the good citizens of the Chamber would be eyeing me was because they knew that I was new and were planning an attack. I pulled the hoodie further around my face to hide my identity as much as I could. Still, I kept my gun in easy reach as I did my best to remain in the shadows.
As soon as I saw up ahead the entrance of the store owned by a guy named Mick, who peddled everything from guns, grenades, and knives to mundane things like toothbrushes, toothpaste, and deodorant, I knew that I was headed in the right direction to the Chamber’s exit. Mick was a contact in the Chamber that Alexi and Owen used when they brought me down here. I didn’t dare ask Mick for help. Despite working for us before, he still couldn’t be trusted. Mick’s only loyalty was to his pocket, and I had nothing on me to bargain with.
A few minutes later, I ducked into the darkened mouth of a tunnel to regroup and catch my breath. Before this, I never understood the term “running out of breath.” Hell, I was even sweating profusely as if I had been working out for hours when I had only been jogging or moving quickly from one shadow to the next for about twenty minutes.
Just then, I heard a woman’s harrowing scream, which raised every hair on my body. One scream turned into another and another. It was a cry for help, a cry of tremendous pain, and a cry of deep fear.
Knowing that the Chamber had no form of law or order, it was a place of the survival of the fittest, I couldn’t ignore that cry of distress. Being a police officer was sown in my DNA. I immediately palmed my gun and moved farther into the tunnel.