“You’re a sick f**k.”
“I know.” Hugh nodded at the table next to him. “Hungry?”
Food covered the table. Fresh bread, still warm and crusty from the oven waited on a cutting board. A rib eye roast, the fat crisped and melting, lorded over a bowl of soup, a tub of golden butter, and a dish of mashed potatoes. The air smelled of seared meat, roasted garlic, and fresh bread.
My mouth watered, while my stomach clenched in pain. How come I didn’t have arms to throw a chair at him, but I still had a mouth and a stomach? The Universe wasn’t fair.
“I’m an hour away,” Hugh said. “If you ask me, I’ll come and fish you out and all this will be yours. All you have to do is say, ‘Hugh, please.’”
“Stick a thumb up your ass and twirl on it.”
He smiled, cut a piece of bread, and spread butter on it. I watched the butter slide over the slice. He bit into it and chewed.
Bastard.
“Are you done with your food p**n show? I have a cold wet hellhole I need to get back to.”
“Sooner or later you’ll break,” he said.
“Keep hoping.”
“You’re a survivor. Voron put you on the edge of that cliff again and again until he conditioned you to claw onto life. You’ll do whatever you have to do to survive, and I’m your only chance of getting out. At first you’ll balk, but with every passing hour my offer will look better and better. You’ll convince yourself that dying will accomplish nothing and you should at least go out with a bang. You’ll tell yourself that you’re accepting my offer just so you can stick that broken sword into my chest and feel it cut through my heart. Even if you die afterward, the fact that I’ll stop breathing makes your death mean something. So you’ll call me. And you’ll try to kill me. Except you’ve gone three days without food, and that body . . .” He tilted his head and looked me over slowly. “That body burns through calories like fire goes through gasoline. You’re running out of reserves. I can put you down with one hit.”
“You’re right about the sword. You broke mine. I owe you one.”
He tapped his na**d chest over his heart. “This is the spot. Give it a shot, Kate. Let’s see what happens.”
“What is it you want from me, Hugh?”
“Short term, I’d like you to say my name with a please attached to it. I’d like to walk into Jester Park with you on my arm.”
Jester Park, Iowa. Once a park in Des Moines, and now one of my father’s retreats.
“Long term, I want to win. And I will win, Kate. You’ll put up a good fight, but eventually you’ll be sleeping in my bed and fighting with me back to back. We’ll be good together. I promise you.”
“What part of no don’t you understand?”
“The part where I don’t get what I want. You need to be taught your place. It’s not at the Keep.”
Something inside me snapped. “And you’re going to teach me where my place is?”
“Yes.”
Time for a reality check, Hugh. “You have what you have only because my father mixed your blood with his. Everything you do and everything you are, you owe to someone else and when he’s done using you, he’ll toss you aside.”
Hugh’s eyebrows came together.
I kept going. “I’ve carved my own life out of this world. You try getting by without Roland’s help and then come back and lecture me. Oh wait, you did, and first I kicked your ass, then Curran broke your spine and threw you into a fire. How does that feel, Hugh? To know you’re second best?”
“You’re pushing it,” he told me.
“You’re hired help. You can’t even tell Roland no. So how about you shut up and go back to what you do best. Roland’s boots need cleaning.”
“Suit yourself.” He put his hands behind his head and smiled. “I have nothing but time.”
I jerked awake. The cold water washed over me. Ghastek stared at me, bleary-eyed.
“Curran will come for me,” I told him.
• • •
MY LEGS WERE cramping. The cramps came with sickening frequency, twisting me, so painful I would’ve screamed if I hadn’t been so weak. We had gone through four magic waves now. During the third, Ghastek spoke to the wall begging his mother not to die. We were on our fourth wave now and he had fallen silent hours ago.
I’d tried using power words, but none of them worked. They just bounced off the walls of the shaft. Hugh must’ve warded it.
I tried to sleep as much as I could. When I couldn’t, I counted the bricks. Lately they had turned blurry and out of focus, as if I were looking at them through hot air rising from the pavement. I was no longer Kate. I was a thing. Cold. Exhausted. Starving. Filthy.
I don’t want to die in this dark hole. I don’t want to die!
I just want to see the sun. I want to hug Julie one more time. I want to kiss Curran.
Maybe I was wrong.
Maybe he wouldn’t find me in time.
• • •
WARM. DRY. FOOD. Hugh.
“Five days in. It’s an anniversary. I thought I’d check on you. The offer is still open.”
“Fuck you.”
“Okay then.”
Cold, wet darkness. Ghastek convulsing in his restraints. Holding his head above water. Don’t die. We will make it. We have to make it.
• • •
THE WATER SPLASHES me. I no longer know if it’s warm or cold.
The wall of the shaft falls apart. Curran looks at me. I see him. I see his gray eyes. I hear his voice. “I’m coming, baby. Hold on. Just hold on for me.”
He’s come for me! He’s come to get me out. “I love you so much . . .”
I just want to touch him, but I can’t get through. Something is blocking me. He is right there. I can see him right there. I can’t . . .
“Kate! Kate!” Something is trying to hold me back, but I have to get to Curran. I have to get out.
“It’s not real.” Ghastek’s voice. “It’s not real. See?”
Curran fades. There are only the stones, the dark cold stones and smears of my blood, where I’d clawed at them.
• • •
SIX MAGIC WAVES. I float in a lake of blood. I’m hallucinating, but I can taste it on my lips, the salty hot flavor of a human life.
It will pass. It’s just the hunger.
Ghastek, blurry, his face out of focus, floating in the blood next to me. “I’m afraid.”
Have to keep him alive. “We’ll make it.”
“I just wanted life,” he whispers. “I watched my mother die. She suffered. She suffered so much. I can’t do that. I can’t. I’m too afraid. I did all this because I wanted the Builder’s gift. I wanted him to make me immortal.”
He stares at me with deranged eyes. He doesn’t really see me.
“Ghastek?”
“My name is Matthew.” His voice is a feverish whisper. “If the Builder cares about you, if he needs you, he’ll let you live forever. He won’t let you die.”
“I care about you, Matthew. Hold my hand. I won’t let you die.”
• • •
SEVEN MAGIC WAVES.
Curran stands on the grate above me and I talk to him. I say, I love you all. This is not the end. I won’t roll over and die.
I wish I had been a better person. I wish things had been different.
This place won’t kill me. I will survive. I won’t break.
Curran smiles at me. He’s holding his hand out. I know he’ll come for me.
He’ll come for me. He just might be too late.
• • •
NOISE. LOW RHYTHMIC noise, like the pounding of some giant heart.
It keeps getting louder.
It keeps coming.
I’m hallucinating again.
Pain.
My left hand is gripping the grate. There is a chunk of brick on the other side of the grate next to it.
There is a chunk of a brick.
My mind started working slowly, like a rusty engine trying to will itself back to life.
Thud! Something hit the wall above us.
Another brick bounced off the grate.
I reached over and shook Ghastek. He hung motionless in his restraints. I could barely move him.
Thud!
“Ghastek,” I whispered. “Ghastek . . .”
His eyes opened slowly.
Thud.
Bricks showered the grate. In the dim light of the electric lamps, the shaft wavered, blurry, but I saw the hole about twenty feet up. Another thud. More bricks plunged down, bouncing off the metal. Someone moved at the top of the hole, leaped, and landed on the grate. Gray eyes looked at me.
Curran.
Please let it be real.
He stared at me. His eyes were horrified. “Kate? Jesus Christ.”
My lips moved. “Please be real.”
He pulled a metal hacksaw out of his backpack and started slicing through the grate. “Stay with me, baby.”
This was a dream. Another hallucination. Or Hugh screwing with my head. I braced myself. I would wake up and he would disappear.
Two others landed on the grate. Jim. Thomas, the rat alpha.
Jim saw me and swore.
“Get me out,” Ghastek whispered. “Please.”
“I should leave you in there, you sonovabitch,” Curran snarled. “Cut him out.”
Jim pulled out another saw.
The blade sliced through the bars above me. Back and forth. Back and forth.
Please be real. I reached through the bars and touched his fingers in cutoff gloves. His hand was warm.
“Hold on, baby. I’ve got you.”
A creature tumbled out of the hole and landed on the grate. Hairless and muscled, it crouched on all fours as if it had never walked upright. Thick curved talons crowned the toes of its feet. Its chest was wide, its hindquarters muscled like those of a boxer dog. A bone ridge protruded from its spine. The massive jaws unhinged and finger-sized fangs pierced the air. Its eyes, deep set and bright red, burned with hunger.
A vampire. An ancient vampire, so old it sent a shiver down my spine.
Curran whipped around. The vamp leaped. Curran’s right hand closed on the vamp’s throat. He spun, oblivious to the talons ripping at his jacket, and drove the undead’s head into the wall. The vamp’s skull bounced off the brick. Curran bared his teeth and smashed it into the wall again and again, his face savage.
The bones cracked. Undead blood splashed the bricks. Curran ran the bloodsucker into the brick one last time, and twisted its head off like he was wringing out the laundry. The vamp body fell one way, the head went the other.
“Show-off,” I whispered.
“Hold on. Almost through.”
He gripped the grate. The skin of his fingers turned gray—the silver burning him. Curran strained. His legs shook under the pressure. The last two bars bent, and he pushed part of the grate aside like a lid on a can. He dropped to his knees and reached for me. I slid out of my restraints. Someone must’ve turned my legs to lead, because they pulled me down like an anchor. I sank. The water rose over my neck and my mouth . . . He grabbed my arm, pulled me up through the grate, out into the air, and hugged me to him.
He smelled like Curran. He felt like him. I buried my face in the bend of his neck. His skin was so hot, it burned.
“Don’t die on me.” He kissed my face, pulling off his jacket. “Don’t die on me.”
I couldn’t stand. I just slumped there on top of the grate, holding on to him.
He wrapped me in his jacket, closed his arms around me, and jumped. Then we were in a narrow hallway. He carried me through it.
“I love you,” I told him.
“I love you, too.” His voice was raw. “Stay alive, Kate.”
“Ghastek . . .”
“They’ll get him. Don’t worry. Stay with me.”