He laughed and released me. “We shall see how long that bravery lasts. Give her ten minutes, no more.”
Meaning there was someone else in the room with us? Someone I hadn’t sensed? I swallowed heavily, but it did nothing to ease the rising tide of tension and fear.
His footsteps retreated. For several long minutes, nothing happened. Deep in the distance water dripped, a soft and steady sound that gnawed at my nerves. Then the whispers began. I had no idea what they were saying, because they weren’t speaking English. It didn’t even sound like any of the Darkside languages I’d heard over the years.
They circled around me, moving the air but not the foul water, spiraling ever closer, filling my nostrils with their acidic scent.
Something hit my face. I jerked away, felt warmth trickle even as my skin began to move, to crawl, with life. Dear god, something was burrowing into my cheek …
Horror erupted, and I snapped my face from side to side, trying to shake the thing loose. The whispers grew louder, more excited. Another sting, this time on my arm. I couldn’t move, couldn’t shake the thing from my skin as it dug into my flesh.
More stings, more life eating at my flesh. Then a dark heat began to crawl from the various entry points and flooded my veins with utter agony.
I screamed. Screamed long and loud. Screamed until my throat was raw and my voice broke. Screamed on in silence until the pain broke me and I collapsed into the welcome arms of unconsciousness.
Waking was another nightmare. My heart raced, my chest ached, and my body was slick with moisture. Whether it was sweat or blood, I couldn’t say and honestly didn’t want to know.
But deep in the pit of my stomach, a thick knot of determination had formed. I would survive this. I would get free.
And then I’d fucking make Winter, the whisperers, and most of all my brother, pay.
I was done playing nice.
But to do any of that, I first had to escape.
I drew in a careful breath and took stock. I remained tied to the post, though the tape around my waist didn’t feel as tight. Maybe I’d thrown myself around so much when the bastards had been burrowing that I’d stretched it.
The burning ache in my shoulders had given way to numbness. I wasn’t sure that was any better, given it was a sure sign the muscles—and maybe even the blood vessels—in my arm were under deep stress.
There was no sign or sound of the whisperers. Nothing to suggest I was anything but alone. There was no guarantee that was true, of course, especially since I hadn’t sensed their presence initially. The rolling wave of dark energy remained, but otherwise, the place was silent. Even the faint dripping had muted.
I raised my head fractionally. Nothing stirred at the movement. I looked sideways to the spot where Winter had stood and saw the vague outline of a curved wall.
It took a moment to actually register the fact that I could now see. Not well, and not fully out of both eyes just yet, but joy nevertheless surged. Sight definitely improved my chances of escape.
I blinked a couple of times and felt the muck gumming my lashes move. The moisture that still ran down my face and slicked my skin must have softened it. I blinked like a crazy woman and eventually managed to pry my eyes fully open.
The barrier I’d felt was a constantly flowing river of dark, purplish energy that emitted just enough light for me to see. I was in some sort of sewer junction that was about ten feet wide. The ceiling was high and arched and made from slabs of stone rather than brick or concrete, suggesting this place was very old indeed. Or even, perhaps, that it was something other than a sewer, despite the stench.
Three tunnels led off it. Water trickled in from two of these, pooled around my ankles, and then trickled off into the third. My gaze returned to the barrier. I had no idea whether I’d be able to get through it, but that was something I could worry about once I’d gotten free from the restraints.
I started flexing my arms, trying to gauge how much give there was in the tape around my wrists. After a few minutes, the tape shifted. The moisture slicking my skin was obviously enough that it was affecting adhesion.
I continued twisting and pulling my hands apart, trying to force enough slack in the tape to get a hand through. The movement eased the numbness, and the pins and needles hit instead. I bit down on the instinctive curse and kept twisting and pulling at the tape. Eventually, it loosened enough that I managed to pull one hand free.
I sucked in a relieved breath, bit back the resulting cough as the air burned my throat again, then ran my fingers around the outside of the tape at my waist, looking for the end of it. Picking it free from the rest of the tape seemed to take forever, and frustration surged. I couldn’t afford this delay. I had to get out of here before the bastards came back.
As if to emphasize this point, something heavy splashed deep inside the tunnel to my right.
I stilled, my heart in my mouth, barely daring to breathe as I waited to see if that splash was repeated. It wasn’t, and there was no sense of anyone approaching, but urgency nevertheless pounded through my veins. If I was caught now, when I was so damn close to getting out of here, it would break me.
But maybe that was the whole idea.
I thrust the thought away and continued to unwind the tape, my shaking fingers making the task all that much more difficult. Once it was off, I tossed it onto the ground, then repeated the process with the tape around my ankles.
I was free. But as I stepped away, my legs went out from underneath me, forcing me to grab wildly at the pillar to keep my balance. It wasn’t weakness as much as the slipperiness of the stone underfoot that was the problem. I kept one hand on the pillar and reached for my phone. Thankfully, it was there, but I couldn’t ring out because there was absolutely no reception in this hellhole. I shoved it away and checked Elysian; she remained strapped to my back. It seemed the only thing I’d lost was one goddamn shoe.
But Elysian’s presence did raise an interesting point—was she the reason they’d been unable to take me through the dark gate?
There’d never been any suggestion she was capable of such a feat but, in a way, it would make sense, given Darkside’s beings couldn’t physically touch her.
And if that was true, then I was damn well going to keep her strapped across my back, no matter what, until this whole goddamn mess was sorted.
I released her hilt and glanced around again. I had no idea where I was, other than deep underground somewhere, and no idea which of my three exit options would take me back to the surface. There was a way to find out, however. I tugged off my remaining shoe and both socks. It would no doubt be dangerous to run barefoot through these waterways, but it would be calamitous if I picked the wrong tunnel and ran into either Winter or those whispering things. I needed the connection to the stone and the earth if I was to have any hope of escape.
There was no immediate response, and it took me a few seconds to realize why. Not only were my feet numb with cold, the stone in this place was so old that any resonance had all but leached from it. But after a few more rather anxious minutes, the faint and very distant pulse of the earth began to beat against my toes.
I pressed them harder against the stone, though I doubted it’d make accessing that distant heartbeat any easier, and studied the three exits. The one the wastewater emptied into was the most logical escape route, but that fact alone probably meant it was the one I shouldn’t follow. The distant pulse of the earth wasn’t relaying the weight of anyone—or anything—down there, but that didn’t mean there weren’t physical or even magical traps waiting.