My attorney took off his glasses to rub the top of his nose. “Listen, here’s the deal.” He put his glasses back on. “I spend a lot of time avoiding the Warriors. You guys are like an entity unto yourselves.”
I had no idea what that meant and opened my mouth to ask him, but he cut me off as he kept talking. In any case, I thought it wasn’t a compliment.
“They assigned me to this case because it has been a long time since I’ve done any work defending someone. Mostly, I deal with agricultural contracts gone awry.”
Great. They’d sent me the farm lawyer. So if I was a cow, I’d be fine, but as a human I was royally screwed.
“I can’t believe what’s happening out there. Almost every second of the day, there is something on the news channels calling you a traitor. They’ve done everything but call you a devil spawn. I don’t know what I expected to find when I came in here but it wasn’t you. Cute little redhead with freckles. You look like my daughter did at the same age.” He cleared his throat. “Young lady, you have very powerful enemies.”
He wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t know. I was completely in over my head and this man—this lawyer who dealt with contracts involving pigs and ducks—was my only weapon. I needed an adult to help me, and he was it. That meant I was going to have to get him focused.
“The Icahns are out to get me. They have been since the moment my father let their daughter die on a mission Upwards.”
He shook his head. “I don’t want to hear this.”
I touched his hand and he gasped. I might too if I were in his shoes. After all, he thought I was bad, that I’d done those things they accused me of doing.
“I know you don’t.” I made him look me in the eyes. “I get it. You need to go to Keith Endover and to Patrick Lyons.”
“I can’t go wandering around the Warrior town.”
“You can.” I clenched my hand in my lap. Someway, somehow, I had to keep cool about this. I needed him to see me as a little girl—as his daughter at the same age. He had to feel paternal about me in a way my own father—and Jason’s father—clearly didn’t. “No one will hurt you in Warrior town.”
I felt like I was talking to a small child. “How are they explaining my arrival with all those people? How are they explaining that they knew I was coming to begin with?”
“The newspapers are reporting that they managed to escape and that you were pursuing them.”
“Uh-huh.” I tapped my foot on the ground. I needed to move, and so the tapping was going to have to suffice for right now. “What are the people themselves saying? What about Frank who took me in?”
“The people are being sequestered because of health concerns, and the Warriors have a gag order. They can’t talk to the press.”
“Please, Teddy.” I shook my head. “None of that is true. Find a way to get to the people I brought here. Talk to Deacon Evans. He’ll tell you what happened. Someone. Please. I’m stuck here,” the sob in my voice wasn’t forced. “And I left someone out there, someone who is counting on me to get back to him. I need you to get me out. Talk to Icahn. Tell him I’ll leave. I’ll never come back. He can banish me. Something. Please.”
“Rachel,” Teddy’s voice was gruff. Clearly, the tears I’d wanted to avoid but hadn’t were having an effect on him. I didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. “I’m afraid you’re not going to live through tonight.”
I put my head in my hands. “Me too, Teddy, me too.”
***
I couldn’t sleep. It was nighttime. The jailor had told me it was when he dropped the food off for me to eat. Later, he’d come back to pick it up. He ‘suggested’ I go to bed and then ‘suggested’ he would give me a pill if I couldn’t. I’d politely declined. I kind of thought I’d never wake up from that particular pill.
So I paced instead. Back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth. The jail cell was about the size of my bedroom in my father’s house. It took me ten steps to get from one end to the other. Not enough time to handle all my nervous energy.
An attack would happen soon. They’d never let me live to tell my story to anyone who could help me. Teddy was nice, but useless.
I had no weapons unless I could find an interesting way to use my pillowcase or the mattress on the floor. Maybe I could barricade myself in…
The door opened and closed as I was making one of my crosses around the room. With my back turned, I couldn’t see who it was. I didn’t turn to look.
“Make it fast, okay? There’s no need to cause me a lot of pain.”
I imagined that I sounded tough, but the truth was I probably sounded pretty pathetic and frightened. It didn’t matter. I’d be dead; I wouldn’t be around to hear the stories of my cowardice.
“I would think you would try harder to live than that.”
Keith stood outside my cell. I turned around fast and darted toward him. My hands shook as I looked at a person I’d never thought to see again. Was he real, or a figment of my imagination?
“Keith?”
He looked behind him. “Patrick knocked out the guard with a little potion we whipped up. He’s guarding the other door to make sure no one comes in.”
I rubbed my nose, suddenly feeling more tired than I ever had before in my life. Was I sixteen or sixty? I couldn’t tell anymore.
“I have to tell you what happened, Keith. I have to tell you before they kill me.”
“We are doing everything we can to stop that from happening. You have to believe me. It’s insane out there.” His voice shook. “Ah…hell, Rachel. I thought you were dead. We all were sure you were dead.” He closed his eyes and laid his forehead against the bars. “When you didn’t come back, Micah and Chad broke the rules and tracked you to the Outpost. They found the body and saw the wolf tracks. Then they lost the tracks. We all thought for sure you were gone. Tia went into such a depression, she hasn’t eaten or slept. I think it aged all of us. We lose people all the time but you, you’re special. I think you know that.”
I didn’t. I had no idea what to say. I felt about two feet tall, humbled by their support of me, shocked at the lengths they’d gone to try to recover me, and ashamed of myself more than I’d ever been before.
I’d thought I could leave. I had wanted to run off with Jason and what? Let them think I was gone? How cruel and small a person, was I?
“Keith, please, I have to tell you what happened.”
He opened his eyes. “Tell me while we still have the time.”
“I left here and I was almost killed by a Vampire. I was so pathetic. I stopped and talked to it.”
He raised an eyebrow before he grinned. “All the training goes out the window on day one. It comes back later when you’re grounded.”
I nodded. “That’s what I found.”
“Go on.”
“These three wolves showed up. They saved me.”
“Werewolves saved you? Did you hit your head?” He reached for me and touched the scar on my face. “Did the Vampire do this to you?”
“Not that one, but yes a Vampire did it.” I cleared my throat. “I continued on to the Outpost and found a dead Warrior there. I don’t know what happened to the others. I almost went blind from the sun. The wolves knocked me out and brought me to their camp.”
“I feel like you’re leaving out details here.”
I nodded. “For the sake of time. I promise nothing important.”
This was hard. So much harder than I’d imagined it would be to talk about. All of this stuff, the things that had happened to me, it was really personal. It was hard to share it with anyone. I wanted it to be mine.
“Okay, I trust you. Go on.”
“When I woke up I was with their wolf pack. They’d come to find a Warrior. The Alpha of their pack wanted to show us something. He didn’t know of a better way to do it although he was upset to see I was so young. It turns out he’d ‘woken up’ one day ten years ago from what felt like a trance and all of his pack had woke
n up, too.”
I explained more and more of what I had gathered had happened to Andon’s pack, how they were now, how they had been then. Keith fisted his hands. I could tell this was hard for him to take, based on the lines that appeared by his mouth and around his eyes. This was a man who had spent his life fighting the monsters, and I was giving him new information he might have preferred never to know. To his credit, he let me talk until I got to the point where I had to tell him about Jason.
“Rachel, did you fall in love with this wolf? Did he do something to you?”
I shook my head. “He’s sweet and kind.”
“I’m going to have to take your word for that. I’m having a hard time imagining it of a Werewolf. I think it’s more likely you were manipulated.”
I pounded on the bar. “No. He loves me, too.”
“Okay.” He nodded. “I can’t debate emotional attachments with you. When did you get struck by the Vampire?”
The rest of the story came fast. When I finished up with the rescue in the warehouse Keith’s eyes got huge.
“You did that? All by yourself?”
“Yes,” I sniffed. “Andon left me there.”
“Rachel, I can promise you this, whatever it is between you and this wolf person, Jason, his father has his own agenda. No one who really wanted to take care of their son’s girlfriend would let them stay behind to fight monsters by themselves.”
I swallowed as I tried to smile. “I know. I kind of figured that out.”
“Patrick is sending someone to get the newly found humans out of captivity. One way or another.”
“Good,” I exhaled. “Whatever else happens, Keith, you have to promise me to be careful of these underground lairs, and you have to know that Icahn is not who we think he is. He’s leading the monsters. He has been since the beginning. I saw his picture on their wall.”
He took a step back. “You’re serious?”
At my nod, he swore. “So that is what this is about. It makes sense now. How could this happen? How could we be following him for so long and not know this about him? I need to speak to Patrick right now.”
He turned to leave. “He’s dangerous, Keith. You have to understand just how evil he is.”
“We’ve pretty much known that since you left but this takes it to a whole other level.”
My heartbeat sped up. “Then you believe me?”
“Of course I do.”
I can’t describe the feeling. What it felt like to know that I’d told someone what I knew and they had accepted it. Well, almost all of it. He still held skepticism about Jason. I couldn’t blame him. I was hardly a beauty to steal the heart of a Werewolf. It wasn’t like there were men around here begging to date me.
Keith continued speaking. “I’ve known you since you were a child. I’d like to think I had some role in shaping who you were. If you told me the mountain caps of my homeland had turned orange, I would believe you.”
I closed my eyes. “Thank you, Keith.”
When I opened my lids, it felt like I could breathe again. For the first time since I’d been taken into custody, I could breathe.
“Don’t thank me. I’m so glad to see you alive. Tiffani was ready to break down the wall herself to get you out.”
“Please tell her hello.”
He smiled. “I will. And we’re going to get you out of here. Leave it to us. We will figure out how to handle this now.”
“There are more humans underground being kept to work for the monsters. Being, um, bred for more laborers and a blood supply. The Vamps down there, they don’t know how to fight. It’s like they’ve lost the ability from too many years of not having to.”
“We’ll find all these people. We’ll get them up. You’ll show us.”
“No.” I shook my head. I had to finish. “One of two things will happen now.”
He put his hands across his chest. “And what would they be?”
“I will either die…”
He started to interrupt me and I stopped him. “And, please don’t get me wrong, I don’t want that. I’m not asking for it, but at least if that happens, I know I’ve done something important with my life. I’ve saved those humans. You crossed an ocean to be a great Warrior, that’s something. Now I’ve done something. Maybe this was my path and I’ve fulfilled it.”
“Rachel, you’re sixteen years old.” He touched my scarred cheek again. “You have lots of things left you can do. Lots of destinies to fulfill. Don’t give up on us. We didn’t protect you last week; we won’t fail you now.”
“Keith, if I do get out of here in the next week, I have to go to Jason. I have to.”
He put his head back on the bars. “Have they cast a spell over you?”
“You were in love with Tiffani five minutes after you got here.”
“I was in my thirties, and she is human. It’s not the same thing.”
I sighed. “I know you don’t want it to be.”
“What about Micah? You’ve been in love with him since you were ten.”
I took a step back. “You knew about that?”
“Everyone knows. Even Micah knows.”
I sunk down to the floor. “Oh God. How will I face him?”
“The same way you always did.” He looked at me pointedly. “But what about him? You’re over Micah? You’ve replaced him with the wolf?”
I hated the way Keith said the wolf with so much disdain, but I supposed I wasn’t going to be able to undo a lifetime of hate towards a creature with one conversation. I’m only sixteen, and it had taken me days to trust him.
I thought about Micah’s chocolate brown eyes. The flutter that usually presented itself any time I was faced with thoughts of Micah didn’t come.
“I think Micah was from before.”
“I don’t understand. From before?”
“From before I went Upwards. Now, I’m different. Even if it’s only been a few days, I feel different like the world shifted one way and I went with it. I can’t be the Rachel I was before. I don’t even look like her anymore.”
I rubbed my cheek at the thought.
“You’re still that Rachel.” He banged his head on the bars. “You should never have gone up alone. None of this would have happened if you’d had a normal starting point. You’d be with the other Ones and Twos. They’d help you with the psychological onslaught of an Upwards journey, of seeing all of those creatures. Obviously, you would not now think you were in love with one of them.”
I laughed. “I promise you my feelings for Jason are not part of a nervous breakdown.”
“Kind of convenient for him, isn’t it?”
“What is?”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear whatever it was he was about to say.
“He gets to fool around with you. Then, he gets to be drugged so he can’t wake up while his father escorts you to what should have been certain doom.”
When I could speak, and it took a long time until I could, my voice sounded rough to my own ears. “No. I can’t believe that of him. You don’t know him.”
“No, but I know you. I know all about your big heart and how you want to be part of a family—even though you are and you don’t realize it—and I know that a sob story about wolves in the wilderness, so misunderstood, so abused, would make your heart melt.”
“Keith…”
This time he didn’t let me interrupt. “I have to tell you about your father, Rachel. I notice you haven’t asked about him, and I can’t blame you.”
I hadn’t. Oh God, once again I needed to be beat up for my total lack of thought of anyone but myself.
“What is it? What did he do?”
“After you were pronounced dead, he went Upwards. No one has seen or heard from his since.”
“My dad hasn’t been up there in sixteen years.”
Keith nodded. “I know.”
Just one more reason for me to get out of here. I now had to recover my Dad. But not before I got to Jason and made the li
ngering doubts Keith’s words had given me go away.
Chapter Seventeen
I thought I bided my time pretty well, considering I only obsessed about Jason every minute of the day instead of every other second. I wished I’d taken the time to learn meditation considering I had zero control over my own mind.
How long had I been in the cell? I had no idea. When I’d woken up in the morning, or at least what I thought was morning, the jailor hadn’t come. I was growing concerned. Maybe they were trying to starve me to death.
Maybe the whole world was dead and I would perish, alone, in this cell with no one to talk to ever again.
I sighed and leaned up against the wall. Keith’s words had bothered me more than they should have. What did that say about my heart that I could be so easily persuaded to doubt Jason?
Was I so predictable that the wolves had been able to manipulate me into doing what they wanted? Had Jason been playing a game with my feelings?
Tell the girl you love her, and she’ll follow your father into a trap? Only it hadn’t been a trap, despite what Keith insinuated. The Vampires had barely been able to raise a hand to me.
But he hadn’t stayed with me to help, and how likely was it that Jason could get drugged asleep? Wouldn’t he have heard his father enter the room? I also wondered how the Vampires had found their way into the wolf tent to begin with.
I groaned and closed my eyes. That was when I heard the first roar. Jumping up, I looked around.
“What’s going on?”
The sound of my own voice startled me. I had been quiet for a really long time. The sound reverberated through the room again, and I whirled around. Nothing happened in the cell, which meant that whatever I heard was happening outside.
What could possibly be making that much noise? Maybe they were having a parade in honor of my soon-to-be-dead body.