“NO!” I kicked and screamed, bucking in his arms. “NO!”
But Carven wouldn’t let me go, dragging me back up the stairs, one at a time. Still I saw blood. It dripped from the ceiling and smeared along the walls.
That was Colt’s blood…
That was COLT’S BLOOD!
“Let me go, Carven!” I slammed my hands against his shoulders until I broke his hold. My head impacted the wall with a crack as I fell. White sparks of agony detonated, but still I pushed upwards, then lunged, slamming into Carven’s hard chest.
“You’re NOT looking. DO. YOU UNDERSTAND?” he roared, bending to grab me around my thighs, then heaved me up over his shoulder.
We were out of those stairs before I knew it, charging back into that tiny room that still haunted my dreams. “He’s dead. HE’S FUCKING DEAD!”
Carven stilled, sucking in hard breaths until a wounded sound tore free and he yanked me against his chest. “It’s not him, Wildcat. You hear me? It’s not him.”
I froze, unable to process what he was saying. All I could do was stand there as he crushed me against his chest. It’s not him…it’s not him. But there was blood. So much blood. It was all I could see as I whispered. “It’s not?”
“No…” he whispered. “No, baby, it’s not.”
My body trembled as the faint voice came through his headset. “Carven, answer me, or we’re coming in.”
He pressed a button on his headset. “We’re here. But you need to get here…now.”
I looked past him to the darkened stairs. The horror in that room pulled me toward it. Like I was no more than a puppet on a string. One wrapped around my neck, determined to drag me back into the past.
Back where they took me and the other Daughters down there for another reason.
Fucking beg me to stop, bitch.
I flinched with the memory.
My shoulders curled as phantom pain tore across my nipples.
The cruel pinch of their fingers was so close to the surface of my mind. It was this place. This fucking place.
Go on, show us what you learned with The Teacher. Open your goddamn mouth.
The foul tang rose in the back of my throat, just like it had then when they’d forced me to my knees in that cold, dark dungeon.
“We’re going to do a sweep,” Carven spoke into his headset. “We’ll meet you at the entrance.”
He stepped closer, grasped my chin, and forced my gaze away from the entrance of that room to him. “We need to check the rest of the building. You with me, baby?”
I dragged myself away from that hell and gave a nod.
“Got your gun?”
I nodded again.
“Good. Let go.”
I didn’t think I’d be able to move, but Carven sheathed his knife, then grabbed my hand and pulled me with him. I looked over my shoulder as we left. “Who,” I whispered. “Who is it?”
He just shook his head and adjusted his goggles, turning his attention to the hallways. He released my hand and headed back to the double doors. Red lights flared green before we pushed through. We moved faster this time, sweeping through one section as we moved to where the rooms were.
Not rooms.
Cells.
Because this was a prison.
My hand trembled, but I still gripped the gun, aiming it at the doors when Carven pressed the card against the scanner and the locks opened again. My heart was booming, filling my head as I waited for the onslaught of guards that’d come any moment now…
Any damn moment.
But as we passed through one set of doors to the wing where the bedrooms were, I felt it. The hollowness. “Carven,” I whispered. “Something’s wrong here. Something’s really…really wrong.”
The first door to the bedrooms was open up ahead. I shifted my focus to the next, then the next, and I saw the same…they were all open.
“We’re here,” Harper’s faint voice came through the headset as Carven stopped at the open door to the first bedroom.
Carven scowled and glanced ahead to the rest of the rooms. He wanted to keep searching, to find out why the fuck there were no guards and no Daughters, but he muttered instead. “Come on, Wildcat. Stay with me here.”
We headed back to the side entrance and opened the door for Harper and Guild, and finally London to step inside. I caught a shake of Carven’s head as he glanced at the others. But whatever silent conversation they had, it didn’t involve me.
“The bedrooms are open,” Carven said finally. “There’s no one here as far as we can tell.”
“We need to do a complete sweep.” Harper glanced at the hallway. “Guild and I will take north and west. London, you have south. You keep pushing along the east wing, checking the rest of the bedrooms. Signal if you make contact.”
Carven nodded and glanced my way. “You ready, Wildcat?”
Anger burned inside me. The moment he moved, I lashed out and grabbed his arm. “Hey!”
He shifted his gaze to me.
And in an instant, that fire in me died, buried under the weight of the horror of this place. “Don’t shut me out,” I hissed. “I need to know what’s going on. Who the fuck is down there?”
Even in the darkness, I caught his flinch. The others left us behind as they spread out. London was the last to leave, glancing at Carven, then me over his shoulder.
“You trust me, right?” The son slid his arm around me and pulled me close. “You trust I’d kill for you. That I’d protect you any way I could.”
The image of him and Colt rushing into that room in Macoy Daniels’ house filled me. “Yes.”
“Then I need you to trust me now, Wildcat. I need you to understand that this is me protecting you. Can you do that right now? Can you put your faith in me?”
He pushed the night vision goggles from his head. Those blue eyes looked black in the darkness. “Baby?”
“Yes,” I answered. “Yes, I can trust you.”
He gave a nod. “Good. That’s good. I promise, when this is all over, I’ll tell you everything you want to know. Everything, baby. But right now.” He glanced at the doorway. “Right now, we need to move.”
“Fine,” I answered.
I was starting to understand Carven now. All the looks that I’d taken to be cold anger were instead…fear. He showed me that now as he moved away, lifted his gun, and stepped through the doorway.
Trust me…
Those words resounded as I lifted my own gun and followed him. That tight knot in the middle of my chest throbbed. I sank into the ache as we made our way back to the rooms once more. It wasn’t Colt in that room.
It wasn’t Colt…
Then who the hell was it?
Carven swept the barrel of his rifle along the hallway, checking the first lot of cells we’d left only minutes before, and then moved further along the hall. But every room was the same. Empty. Abandoned.
The heavy thud of his boots echoed along the hall as I stepped into the room that’d once been mine. My cell. My hell. At first, my feet refused to move, until I forced them to move from the doorway and head for the bed.
Nights.
Weeks.
Months…
Years.
That’s how long this place had been my prison. I suppressed a shiver as I glanced from the messy sheets that’d been ripped from the bed in a hurry to the open top drawers in the dresser. It was those open draws which drew me deeper into my one private torture.
Step by step. I stared into the darkened edges of that void until I stood over it, staring at the messed up white lace panties that’d once been there. They’d left in a hurry. That was easy to see. I looked over my shoulder, mapping out the frantic movements.
She’d been dragged from the bed, no doubt by the guards as they stormed the room. Did they scream at her to grab her clothes? Or did they wrench open the drawers, or did…no, she did. In her last frantic moment, she’d grabbed the only thing she had, even if it was a symbol of power over her existence…she’d tried to, at least. I looked down, seeing all of her things there. White filled the space.
“It’s all clear,” Carven’s voice in the doorway made me flinch. In the murky light, he watched me standing there.
“Did they take anything? From their rooms, that is. Did they take their belongings?”
A look passed over his face. Sadness. Anger. He gave a gentle shake of his head.
No?
“We need to meet up with the others.”
He meant they wanted to go back to that dungeon under the ground. For a second I didn’t want to move. The entire room…no, the entire world shifted. Like I stood in the middle of some terrifying kaleidoscope, one twist of the wrist and my world would change. I fixed on Carven, knowing it wasn’t a twist of a wrist I needed to worry about.
Whatever was down those stairs terrified him.
Enough to haul me over his shoulder and drag me kicking and screaming out of there.
Part of me didn’t want to know.
The naive part.
That part who wanted to believe this was all just one sick, crazy dream. But here was the thing about dreams…they soon turn into nightmares. Fuck if I wasn’t going to be prepared for whatever came my way, nightmare or not. I stepped toward him. “Then let’s go.”
He stepped away, leading me back to that dungeon. By the time we pushed through the last set of double doors, I felt them standing outside that room, filling up the hallways with their energy and their strength. But there was only one of them standing there. “Anything?” Harper asked as we neared.
“No.” Carven glanced at the stairs. “The rooms are…empty.”
Empty.
Not, the Daughters are gone. Not, everyone has disappeared. Just…the rooms are empty.
Movement came in the dark as London stumbled out from the stairway and kept going until he slammed his hand against the hallway wall, bracing himself.
“London?” I stepped close.
But he stopped me with a shake of his head. “No…not yet.”
“Not yet?” I jerked my head to where the silence waited.
Guild…Guild wasn’t here. He was down there…in the dark. In all that blood. I shoved forward.
“Vivienne! WAIT!” Carven roared.
But it was too late.
I didn’t slow, not when I hit the first stair and my knees nearly buckled with the impact. I grasped the banister and held on as I hit halfway and all but fell the rest of the way until the bottom.
That’s when I saw him.
Guild, with his back to me, staring into the darkened room.
All I smelled was blood.
But I knew there was more.
I reached up, knowing there was a cord for the light switch…
My fingers grasped something.
Click.
The dull yellow light seemed to ooze into the darkness, eating at the edges of the emptiness…spilling around the mess.
Then I saw it, even as thunder came on the bottom of the stairs…and Guild jerked his goggles from his head then spun. There was blood…so much blood. It arced across the wall, slipping out of the bullet holes that peppered the wall and pooled on the floor, around the bodies.
All the…all the…all the…Daughters.
They’d fallen in piles. Arms and legs wrapped around each other. Some missing half their heads, others half their faces. Some…some facedown on the edges of the piles as they’d tried to run.
That same tilt came back to me now.
Sweeping my feet out from under me.
Strong hands grabbed me.
“I got you, sweetheart,” Guild murmured in my ear, until more hands grabbed me. “I got you. You shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t see…this.”
But it was all too late. I had seen…I had seen.
“They killed them.” I lifted my head, and through the blur, I saw their faces. “They killed all of them?”
Carven looked away.
So did Guild and Harper.
Only London didn’t turn away from me. Those dark, merciless eyes were deeper and blacker than they’d ever been before.
“Why?” The word was a wounded moan.
London shook his head.
“WHY! WHY KILL THEM? THEY DID NOTHING, LONDON! THEY. DID. NOTHING!”
“Because this is what they do,” London answered. “This is who they are.”
Torturers.
Murderers…
Beasts.
“He’s not here,” Carven croaked. “My brother isn’t here.”
Then where was he?
