Haelo Rising, page 25
“Your inadequate mother is probably in a hospital somewhere. Though I do hope she died in the bombing attack I leveled on your military, there’s always that chance the mistress of Fate saved her pathetic life.”
Hyacinth’s face blanched.
“Your father was hiding, like the coward he is, but he’s now in custody. Little Penelope is with him.” His smile deepened, and my fears for the Basileus and Princess Penelope increased dramatically.
“As for your brother”—with this, Massáude turned from Hyacinth to me—“and your husband, I must admit, I do not know where he hides. He’s probably abandoned you to save himself. I will find him, I assure you. It just might take a little more time. That’s okay with you, though, isn’t it?” he asked me, smiling again. “Griffin’s death would certainly give you an out to throw all of your love at that bodyguard of yours.”
My anger flared, heating my skin.
“But I must warn you,” Massáude said, pointing a finger at me. “Loving dead men will be a lonely, short life.”
I jumped at him. The Forçadores in the room pulled me back. One of them punched me in my broken rib, which caused me to bite my tongue. I fell to the floor in a shaft of green light, coughing. “If you hurt anyone else, I swear to Poseidon, I will snap your neck and enjoy it.”
He nudged my throbbing rib with his boot. I grunted, holding back a yelp. “I always did enjoy sparring with you,” he said. “Keeps me young.” He tilted his head in that way he always did. “Your green eyes look fascinating under the glow of this wretched cave.”
“What do you want?” Hyacinth asked him, rushing to my aid. The Forçadores backed away and allowed her to hunch over me.
“Yeah, why are you even in here?” I asked. I spit the small amount of blood pooling in my mouth. “Intimidation only works if I’m afraid of you.”
“Why am I here?” he asked, his nose crinkling with disgust. “Isn’t it obvious? I’m here to kill you.”
Hector jerked me up from the floor.
“No!” Hyacinth yelled. “Don’t touch her!” Raul grabbed her and held her back, muttering something in her ear. She gave up fighting and started to cry.
Massáude saw the exchange. “That’s right, Princess. You can’t stop it. Listen to your boyfriend.”
The agonized look on Raul’s face was the last thing I saw before Hector and two other mercenaries hauled me out of my suite.
We passed through the residential wing of the palace. Forçadores, some injured, some foul, were stationed throughout. The lower we got, the more I noticed the stale, rank smell of close-quartered men.
At the top of the stairs that led down to the Krypteia quarters and dungeons, Hector halted, jerking me back. “Your lover thought he blew this place to hell.”
“He’s not my lover.”
“Whatever you say.” He laughed. “So sorry for the delay. It took a few days for my men to clear out the rubble.”
“You mean Massáude’s men? I thought you were just another servant.”
He pushed me down the stairs.
I slammed against the wall where the stairs turned. I was pretty sure I’d broken another rib, but I almost didn’t care. They’d taken everything from me. Everything but my mind. I was still the master of my thoughts and my tongue, and no one would take control of that last stronghold of freedom.
Two Forçadores picked me up off the landing and dragged me down to the bottom level.
“Did you learn this cheap-shot brutality from your days losing triaden matches?” I felt a line of blood trickle from where I’d bitten the corner of my lip.
Hector smirked.
The vaulted corridor looked nothing like it had before. Most of the Pankyran stone bricks had been blown off the walls and arches, revealing the battered concrete that had been behind them. The floor had two enormous craters, which had filled with stagnant water. The power must have been damaged, because the only light came from burning torches.
They pushed me forward, my knees buckling, but I regained my posture, sighed, and put one foot in front of the other. Eventually, Hector turned us into the old dungeons. The door was missing and the palm scanner was hanging off the wall. The concrete door frame had mostly caved in, leaving only a jagged gap against the old door jamb. Hector pushed me through. I stumbled, but I didn’t trip.
Beyond the gap, the old dungeons had fared better than the corridor. Most of the iron bars of the cells were badly damaged or completely flung off, but the actual walls of the room were intact. At the far end, the doorway into the high security cell area was untouched.
Then I spotted a table. I’d seen it once before, through Massáude’s eyes. The last time I’d seen it, my dead grandfather had been lying on top.
“Tie her to the table,” Hector ordered.
I elbowed one in the throat, then received a swift kick to the gut in return. While I was cradling my torso, they pushed me onto the table and strapped my wrists down. Hector came above my head and pulled the corded necklace with my wedding ring and my father’s talisman from my neck, pocketing it in his suit. I cursed his name.
The sound of the generator attached to the tabletop’s underside rumbled to life.
“I love the symmetry in this!” Hector yelled over the engine’s roar. “Did you know your grandfather got the same treatment?”
I kicked my legs in wild, angry fear until they strapped them down as well. I nailed one of them in the ribcage so hard I was pretty sure I broke one of his ribs as well. It was the same man I’d elbowed in the trachea. How’s that for symmetry. He dropped back, wincing, coughing.
Hector sighed. “I’m done talking.”
He flipped a lever on the generator and my entire body seized with electricity. It came from the straps, flowed up my arms and legs, and struck like lightning through every cell in my body. My vision blacked out—or whited out, I wasn’t sure. My ears filled with high-pitched alien sirens.
Then everything stopped. My heart spasmed. My entire body hurt, including my teeth, which felt as if they were on fire. I tried to speak. “You’re a dead man, Hector.” But I wasn’t sure if he could understand what came out of my mouth.
He and the less-injured Forçadoro unstrapped my wrists and ankles. I wanted to fight them, but there was nothing left in me. Hector pushed me off the table onto the cold, wet concrete floor and walked away.
“I thought you were supposed to kill me.” I swallowed back bile or blood.
“I am. Don’t you feel it?” He tapped on the stone above the exit, like a high school quarterback leaving the locker room. The two remaining men followed him, then rolled a large stone in front of the exit.
I closed my eyes. I panted back the pain. The blood in my veins flowed with electric ice and fire. I pulled a memory of my parents snuggling me on the beach out from the recesses of my mind and tried with everything I had left to hold on to that image and remain strong.
And then I sobbed.
20
Rise Against
“Miriam?”
A woman’s voice.
But I fell back into the abyss of sleep.
“Miriam, acorde agora.”
I tried to open my eyes, to swallow, to think. A dull glimmer of light glowed somewhere beyond me for a moment, and then nothing.
“Your Highness? Você está bem?”
A woman was whispering to me in Portuguese. Or maybe I was still dreaming of an underwater hovel with scrappy provisions hung on the walls and the vague impression of an older woman hovering somewhere above me.
“O que estou dizendo? Claro que você não está bem. Olhe para você.”
I groaned. My throat felt like sandpaper. My cheek lay against the damp grit of a concrete floor. I needed to cough, but I was terrified my ribs wouldn’t support it. I recognized the aura of the woman beside me. “Maria?”
Her aura jolted with surprise. Feeling the jolt made my headache worse. Something about my aura, my senses, seemed different. Off. Like they were still buzzing with the ghost of electricity from Hector’s table.
“You know my name?” Maria asked.
I opened my eyes. “Yes.”
“I glad you awake. I was scared you are dying.”
I scowled, cleared my throat, and winced. There was one torch in the room, which cast flickering shadows on the walls shiny with seeping water. “What. . . ? How long?”
She helped me sit up. “Shh, shh. I hold you. It is okay.” She tried to rock me, but stopped when I winced again. “How you know my name?”
“You’re Karch’s widow. And you have a son.”
She stilled.
“And I know that Massáude is looking for him.”
“You know a lot of things,” she whispered, a hint of an innocent chuckle in her tone.
“I do.”
She patted my matted hair back.
“Where have you been?” My throat still felt like I’d been breathing glass shards.
“Here. I was back there when they came in with you.” She tipped her head toward the door into the high-security area. “I am sorry I stay away. I could not watch.”
“Don’t be sorry.” I sat up a bit more. “Have you been here the whole time?”
She leaned away from me and let me sit up on my own. “Yes.”
“Has Hector. . . .”
“Tortured me as he tortured you? No. But he threatens me. Hits me.”
I could see a yellowing bruise on her cheekbone. “And you haven’t told Massáude where your son is?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Do you know where your son is?”
She sighed, then, “No.” Her eyes misted.
I believed her. “Why does Massáude want to hurt you?”
Her glassy eyes stared deep into mine. “He asks for secrets, but I not have what he’s looking for. Now, he hurts the widow of the man that betrayed him.”
“When your husband helped Dagger escape Massáude’s captivity? That betrayal?”
“Yes. And no.”
We both lurched at the sound of a feline purr. A frumpled-looking orange cat slipped along the edge of the wall and jumped into my lap. To say it shocked me would be an understatement. The cat nuzzled my neck, then reached over and licked my grungy hand.
“Where in the world did you come from?” I caressed its head. “Mortimer!” I whispered, my throat sizzling. “Jade!”
“You know this animal?” Maria said as she ran her hand down Mortimer’s back.
“Yes. He’s a cat.” What I didn’t tell her was that my father had created a permanent bond with this cat after his soul shredded, and there was a big chance he was watching me now, through the cat’s eyes. “I’m here,” I said, scratching behind Mortimer’s ears. He nuzzled me again, purring softly into my hair. “I’m okay. I’m alive and I’m okay.” My eyes watered.
Bits of dried blood marred Mortimer’s fur when he pulled back from my hair, which made him look sinister in the dark, flickering light. My leggings had a tear down one calf and my shirt looked like it had been in a fight with a chimney sweep. “I’m a bit of a mess, but I’m here.”
“Are you talking to the cat?”
I smiled. “I guess so.”
“Do cats talk back?”
“Nope.” I smiled again. “But this one’s family.”
Two days went by without any food, water, or news from Massáude. There was a small leak in the floor in the corner of one of the busted cells where seawater puddled. We’d lay our palms in it to stay hydrated. Mortimer left a few times, but always came back with food scraps—he fit somehow through a tiny crack between the exit and the giant stone blocking it. I’d tried my best to kick aside the stone, or push it out of the way, but it wouldn’t budge. I couldn’t dismantle the generator of Hector’s electric torture table either; he’d taken the generator with him.
I dreamed over and over of an underwater hovel. But it wasn’t really a dream; it was Dagger. He was alive, and critically injured. I could feel it. I could see it through his eyes. His left arm was wrapped in bandages, which covered the grotesque wounds I could see peeking out from beneath. What had happened? Where was he? Why had our long-distance connection returned?
I tried not to linger in his head, to invade his mind, but it happened during my dreams. Did he feel me? I prayed for him. I hoped he knew.
Another time, when I was thinking of Griffin, I gathered up a memory of his aura, the way it rolled with tiny grains of light fueled by responsibility. I took solace in the memory of that aura and the way it lined up with mine. Our two auras felt like someone had intentionally assembled them to match each other. Together, it was missing in passion, yet it felt right. That small moment led to a daydream of an urban port, like I was seeing through the eyes of someone walking the dock. Instinctually, I knew it was Griffin. He stopped walking and looked out across rows of docks to the horizon. He said something, but I couldn’t understand it.
It hadn’t really been a daydream. I’d connected to him, just like I had with Dagger. I could feel it. Griffin was out there searching for answers. A way in. A way out. A way to defeat Massáude.
On the second day in the dungeons, the torch went out. If I’d correctly calculated the date, then it was Neo’s birthday. With an aching chuckle, I pretended he’d been the one to blow out the torch like a birthday candle and make a wish. Pray for me, Neo.
On the third day, Hector came back. He brought with him three men and torches so bright they hurt my eyes. Or maybe I’d just grown used to black.
I sent up prayers of gratitude that Mortimer had just left for scraps. Jade couldn’t see this. Maria backed herself against the wall, shaking and crying while Hector and his men repeated the electric shock torture they’d inflicted two days before.
I told myself I was better prepared for it this time.
But it was a lie.
I was weaker. More broken.
But I didn’t shatter.
An odd sort of power came from knowing that I’d survived it again. My senses buzzed with that power, both too weak and too amped. Completely drained, my body shivered with the energy that still sizzled through me.
On the fourth day, I woke up to Mortimer’s frantic meowing. “Gross, Mort.” His tongue was cleaning my face. I wanted to tell him I was okay, but I was out of energy for words. My body felt like it would die the minute I gave it permission.
I tried to pet the cat, but I couldn’t lift my arms off the dungeon floor. The singed cuffs of my shirt revealed the markings of electrocution on my wrists.
I closed my eyes again to rest.
Mort continued, still too loud in his meowing and too intimate in his face licking. “Where’s Maria?” I ground out. I had no energy to sense auras, and even if I did, the way my senses were trembling had me worried. He didn’t leave me, but kept licking my face, my arms. I opened my eyes. “Maria? Maria!”
Yelling, I tremulously pushed myself to a sitting position, swayed, and then fell. Mortimer hissed and jumped on top of my back. “Maria, get up!” I shook off the cat and got up on my knees on the hard floors. I crawled hand-over-shaking-hand to the electric table, and with a yell, pulled myself upright. Once my vision steadied, I stumbled to Maria’s crumpled, bruised body—curled up where one of the cells used to be—as fast as my buckling legs would carry me.
“Maria, wake up,” I demanded, patting her face. I inhaled, my lungs screaming, and gathered my senses. Her aura was still there, barely. “Maria, your son needs you. You need to wake up.”
She opened her eyes. “He does not need me anymore.” Her voice rattled with a thick liquid. “He’s free of La Família.”
“Let’s sit you up.”
She weakly shook her head once. “You look like her.”
“Like who?”
“Olesa. Your aunt.” My mind flashed with my last memory of Olesa: her limp, auraless body slumped over in a bullet-riddled helicopter.
“Maria, stay with me, please? Keep your eyes open.” Her aura faded with each passing second. “Who did this to you? Was it Hector?”
“We were friends, Olesa and me. We did not see the devil until too late.”
“Maria, where is your son? I can help him.”
She smiled softly. “You look like her.”
“Maria!”
“My son,” she said, her voice getting fainter. “Massáude doesn’t want my son.”
“Maria, I don’t understand. Then why is Massáude looking for him?”
“My son, Lucas, is with your cousin.”
“I don’t have a cousin.”
“Olesa . . . and Massáude’s . . . daughter. Ana. Almost your age.” She smiled. I came in closer to hear the words she didn’t have the strength to say. “Ana raises Lucas,” she said so softly I had to read her lips to understand. “Karch saved our son. Sent Lucas to Ana.”
“Where is Ana?”
Maria’s eyes glazed over.
“Maria, where is Ana? Where did Karch take your son?”
Then I remembered the truth that flickered in her aura when she told me days ago that she didn’t know where her son was.
Her husband had never told her. The only person still alive who knew was Ana.
“Tell me where they are and I’ll make sure Massáude never finds them.” But she didn’t hear me. The memories in her aura couldn’t tell me either. Because she was already gone.
Mortimer’s rolling tail caught my eye. He was staring at Maria. Which meant Jade had heard every word she said. “Dad,” I whispered, my throat tight. “Don’t do anything stupid. Please.”
Because my father was the type of person to use this information to get me out. In the stupidest way possible.
Maria’s body grew colder in my arms. I laid her down, fixed her rumpled clothing and smoothed her hair, then moved away.
Soon, or maybe not so soon—the passage of time wasn’t something I could map anymore—the stone outside the dungeon room ripped away, crashing against the distant wall beyond my concrete box.
