Mark of Betrayal (Dark Secrets #3)(43)
Author: A.M. Hudson

Several seconds passed, counted out by the thump in my chest.

“Mike?” I slowly pushed up on my hands and turned my head to the dark space he’d been standing before. He was gone. “No.” A small cry of panic quivered in the back of my throat. I reached forward, my hands trembling so viciously my elbows shook, and felt for a wall or the bars—anything. But all I found was cold dirt.

The panic rose again; I shuffled back further into the cell, tucking my knees to my chest, seeing that dead woman in my thoughts as my eyes scanned the darkness.

“Oh, my God,” I whispered, my gut expanding then shrinking quickly back in when I saw a silhouette in the corridor; it stood there, three feet high, still as death—looking right at me.

A bubble of dread burst open in the middle of my chest.

“What do you want?” I asked in a small voice.

The thing stepped forward, its slow steps clipped, forced, a raspy, grating sound coming from its throat.

I jumped to my feet, squealing like a small child, and cupped the edge of the iron door, swinging it closed. The twang of metal echoed down the tunnel and its small hand shot in through the bars, the horrid creature spitting and growling at me like it was some kind of rabid beast. It pressed its cheeks against the cage, the skin on its face pulling its eyes into tiny slits, showing bared, bloodied teeth and a long tongue, licking the iron.

The ground stayed under my feet as I took a few slow steps backward, finding the wall with flat palms. But as I stopped, the child pulled back, turning its head slowly to look across from me, then disappeared.

I couldn’t take it anymore. I rolled my chin upward, pressing the base of my head into the stone wall, and let myself cry for a moment. Mike was gone. Who knew if he made it out to get help or if they bludgeoned him before he reached the end of the tunnel? Who knew if some of the Damned had escaped and were ravishing the manor as I stood here, crying tears of self-pity?

I wished I’d just waited. I wasn’t going to open that damn door. I was just trying to make a point, and the worst part was, I couldn’t even remember what point I was trying to make in the first place. I wasn’t even sure it mattered. Well, I guess it didn’t matter now. I looked around the thick darkness, hardly able to see the red chipped paint on the bars, and certainly blind to the corners and deeper depths of this cell.

I wiped my face and ran forward, grabbing the bars, and shook them. But the door was stuck fast, trapping me in this cage with partially decomposed bodies, the scent enough to make me want to stick my fingers down my throat just be sure I hadn’t swallowed any vestiges of rotten flesh. And somewhere under my fear of what was real, what was right outside this door, dangerous enough to rip me apart, I also wondered if the troubled ghosts of those who’d been killed so violently here haunted these cells.

But another thought occurred to me then; even if I did get this door open, how was I to know if the damned weren’t just waiting for me—hoping I’d be smart enough to escape, so they could chase me, warm my blood with fear, then tear off my clothes too, and drink my blood. And maybe I wouldn’t die from that; maybe I could be regenerated, but I wasn’t too excited about being ripped apart.

Weighing options up in my thoughts, I paid no mind to the sound of a soft breeze, until it started to take shape, form into what I thought were words. I stopped thinking, my whole body going still as I listened. But the noise stopped, too.

Maybe it was just the wind. I had no way of knowing which sounds were normal down here, and which weren’t. It made me think more about the Damned—how frightening it must be for new children to come here, be thrown away, out of sight, out of mind, never to be seen or heard of again.

I stopped thinking, my ears pricked; the sound of the whisper spreading through the darkness. I tried to focus on it, make out words, but it stopped. After a few seconds of silence, I walked slowly forward, seeing what I thought was an outline of a rock on the floor, and sunk to my knees in front of the bars. There hadn’t been any rocks out there in corridor before. I wondered what that was, and as I looked closer, the object sharpened into a boot. A big, heavy, black boot. Mike’s boot.

The sound of my shock echoed around me in a breathy gasp; I covered my mouth, trying not to squeal, but the air came back into my throat in a quivering, high-pitched whimper. “Mike?”

I reached through the bars, my pale white arm stretching as far as it would go, yet not far enough.

“Mike?” I said again, yanking my hand back, checking the space outside the bars for a small hand or set of teeth that might grab me.

All was still. Nothing moved. Nothing made a sound. But I could feel things around me—feel eyes on me, prickling the hairs on the back of my neck. It didn’t matter, though. Even if the Damned grabbed my hand and ripped my arm off as soon as I reached for Mike again, I still had to try—to see if I could wake him. Right now, with them out there and me in here, Mike was kind of my only hope.

After another few breaths, each one building confidence, I reached out slowly through the bars again, my shoulder pressing past the limits, my chin going with it, making my fingers longer. I held my breath, biting my teeth together, and finally touched the tip of his boot, celebrating a quiet moment of victory before getting up on my knees a little more. I sent my hand back out into enemy territory, the top of my arm sore, burning from the force of the metal, and this time, my nails caught the sole of his boot. I tugged a little, but my fingers slipped, falling to the ground as the shoe disappeared, leaving a trail behind in the dirt where something dragged Mike’s body deeper into the darkness.

I jerked my hand back, tucking it into my ribs as I landed against the wall, squeaking to myself. They were out there; the damned were out in the world, and they had Mike. I couldn’t see him, or hear him breathing—tried to listen for the sound of vampires feeding, but it was like they’d just disappeared, locked me in and thrown away the key.

I rubbed a flat palm across my hairline, then looked up, eyes bright with new hope. That’s it. The key. Maybe it was still in the lock.

I got to my knees and sifted around in the dirt before heading to the door. It had to be there.

But my swift movement stirred something, woke something that had clearly been sleeping—something still in the cage, with me. It groaned, becoming a solid figure as it creeped out of the shadows, moving by its hands, like a dog with no legs, dragging them loosely behind it.

I sat very still, covering my mouth to block the scent of fresh vampire blood and urine coming off its body like heat.