Silence: Part Two of Echoes & Silence (59 page)

“Sure you are,” said a very thin woman on the opposite side of the cell, crawling forward on her hands and knees, grubby and clearly weakened by what appeared to be years in darkness. “Go on then, so I can laugh when you fail,” she finished.

“Before I do, if you
must know
, I need information,” I stated, looking her square in the eye. “And the only way to get that is to bribe you all with your freedom.”

“What would you like to know?” a pale, spritely girl stood up, the fire of eagerness igniting her gaze.

“Taylor, sit down!”

“This could be a test,” said another.

“It’s no test,” I stated harshly, “and I don’t have time for games. Someone brought me here and chained me up. I need to know what happened to the baby they had with them.”

“We didn’t see a baby—”

“There was just a white-haired woman—”

“And she told us if we drank from you, Hans would be in charge of our torture this week,” said the spritely girl, not so spritely.

I gathered from the fear in her eyes that Hans was not a good thing. “Do you know where she went—when she left?”

“No.”

“Did she say she’d be back?”

“No.”

“Okay.” I clapped my hands once. “Then who’s up for a dramatic escape?”

Four more women rose from the shadows, their faces dirty and pale, slimmed by shadows and starvation. “Count us in,” they all said at the exact same time, and then laughed.

“It will most likely mean a fight,” I warned carefully, “especially if we run into the white-haired woman.”

“I’ll take her,” said a sweet-looking girl with a slight southern accent, bashing one fist into her palm.

“If it’s a choice between her or Hans,” said another, whose curls had clearly been neglected for ten years, “I’ll take the bitch.”

My mouth split into a wide grin. I
liked
these girls. “Okay then,” I said with an enthusiastic nod, looking around at my little backup team. “Let’s do this.”

“What about him?” a skinny vampire aimed a nod to the lifeless legs I’d stepped over earlier. “We can wake him and use him. I’ve seen some of the things he can do—when he fought Hans.”

“Leave him. He looks half dead, and I don’t have time to carry lost causes to freedom,” I said, “That bitch has my baby girl. I need to rescue her before…” I left it at that.

“
I’ll
carry him out then,” the loud woman said, her bare feet moving gracefully over the rocks and slime to the man’s side. “He suffered more than any of us.” She bent and looped his arm over her shoulder, heaving as she hoisted him off the ground, and as I turned to blast the lock open with a shot of Cerulean Light, the way his head flopped forward caught me off guard. The shot died in my hands as the outline of his face sunk in to mind.

“Oh my God!” I rushed over and lifted his head; his eyes were closed loosely, his jaw slack and hanging, his face completely expressionless, like the dead. “What happened to him?” I turned and looked around the wide stares. “I said, what happened to him!”

“Like Ericka just said, he had it worst,” the frail, crawling woman said quickly. “King Drake came for him himself most days—”

“We heard the screams late into the night.”

“And then the King delivered him back here, sweating and shaking, and healed him up the next morning before it started all over again.”

“That’s not possible.” I brushed his hair back off his face. “This man has the power to freeze a room of men with his mind. Why would he let Drake hurt him that way?” And why wouldn’t Drake tell me he had Arthur all this time?

“Hans,” two girls informed at once.

“There’s that name again,” I said, my head spinning a little with all the new names bouncing around the cell. “Who the hell is Hans?”

“He’s ancient—older than any of us here.”

“He’s got the power of the mind, too. But he’s stronger than anyone we know—”

“Even that boy,” the southern girl said, her wide eyes landing on another, both of them nodding in agreement.

“What boy?”

“The pretty boy. The Councilman’s brother—with the green eyes—”

That could only be… “You mean Jason?” I said.

“Yeah, and he was in here with us, too,” Taylor said, motioning around the cell. “For a while.”

“
Jason
was here?” I practically screeched, leaving Arthur hanging off Ericka’s shoulder. “Where is he now?”

“That white-haired freak told Hans to deliver him to the tower this morning.”

“The tower,” I said to myself, my eyes shrinking with thought. “Did she say why?”

“Something about using him as leverage.”

My teeth ground together so hard that I heard a crunch. “Right. Then you girls get Arthur somewhere safe. I’m going up for Jason.” It was a start. Chances were the witch would be in the tower with Jason.

But none of them moved as I took a step toward the door. I looked back and noticed all eyes on Arthur’s face.

“What?” I snapped. “What’s the big deal?”

“I
thought
that was him.”

“Arthur who?” a voice called from deeper in the cell.

“Arthur
Knight
?” The girl holding him looked at me for confirmation.

“Yes. Why?”

“Oh my God!” The crawling woman covered her mouth, shrinking back into the darkness she’d emerged from.

“I can’t believe I heard him scream like that.”

“I’ve never heard anything so horrific in all my centuries.” The woman’s eyes were so wide I could see the unusual turquoise colour, even in the dark. “And that was
Arthur Knight
all along?”

They all looked at each other then, and burst out laughing.

Ericka dropped him carelessly to the floor and stepped away. “He can stay here.”

“Yeah, stupid old bastard. May he rot in agony,” the southerner said, and spat on his bare feet.

“Hey!” I rushed over and wiped it off, cleaning my hand on my jeans after. “Don’t do that.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s my friend,” I said. “And he deserves respect.”

“Why? He’s nothing but a savage and conceited
ex
-council member.”

“
World
Council member,” I reminded her.

“Who cares? He sentenced me to six years of torture.” She motioned down her ragged, bloodied clothes as if to say ‘hence her appearance’.

“Six years?” I blinked a few extra times, confused. “But David freed the prisoners—”

“Yeah, all but the
last
cell,” said another, folding her arms. “Then he left and never came back.”

Which was actually
my
fault, I realised, because I called him to return home when I found out I’d slept with Jason.

“Yeah, so leave his uncle here to rot like he did to us.” Ericka kicked some dirt up at Arthur and turned away, moving over to lean her back against the bars. “Are we getting out of here, or what?”

“Not without Arthur,” I said, standing up.

“Come back for him when you’ve rescued your baby,” said another. “He deserves everything bad he suffers.”

“And we won’t be the ones to drag his sorry ass out to freedom,” added a ghost on the sidelines.

I couldn’t understand their hatred for him, but then again, I’d never known the version of Arthur they had, so I at least understood that they probably did have a reason to hate him.

“Fine,” I rescinded. “I’ll come back for him later. Let’s go.”

I stepped over Arthur, and the girls cleared a path for me to the Lilithian Steel cage. This metal was made from the very blood that made me. It might hold vampires in, but it couldn’t hold a stone-melting Lilithian.

“Wait!” A woman appeared from the rear of the cell, and a small posse descended from the shadows behind her. “You can tear that door off, break the lock, set us all free, but at what cost?”

No one said a word; they all looked down at their feet.

“King Drake will hunt us all down. This doesn’t give us a full pardon,” she reasoned, pushing back her pink bangs. “This doesn’t do us any favours, except maybe to see our sentences doubled when we’re caught again.”

“And we will be caught,” said another from behind her, her voice weary and dejected. “It’s useless to run—you all know that.”

“Not anymore,” I said, turning back to face them all. “If you fight for me, I will see to your full pardon in Drake’s monarchy and in mine, and you will have the eternal gratitude of the Lilithian Queen, her King, and the Drakarian King—”

“No one speaks for King Drake,” a woman piped up. “And Christie is right. If we leave here, we’re toast.”

In my mind, I calculated how many guards might be out there. I knew Drake had recruited and turned a whole new army to fill out the gaps left in his old one after our first attack, and when I wandered these halls while I stayed here, I’d counted at least two guards on every corner. There were probably enough men out there to subdue me without too much effort, and without Drake’s say-so, who I was would not matter to them. I needed these girls. Probably
all
of them.

“Drake is my father,” I said quickly, as a few began to sit down.

They all paused mid-sit or mid-step away, and stood straight again, pretty much all wearing the same confused expression.

“Look at my eyes,” I offered, walking past each one and gazing right into their faces. “Look at the resemblance. I’m telling the truth.”

“Holy shit!” said the girl standing closest to me. “She looks just like him.”

“Even if you’re telling the truth,” the pink-haired Christie said, “How do we know we can trust you to protect us once we get free?”

“Go straight to the Island of Loslilian—find the King, or
any
of my men, if the King isn’t there. Tell them what happened here and tell him to bring the Knights. We will protect you, and when all this is over you’ll see that you don’t
need
protection. My father
will
pardon your crimes if you help me.”

“Then count me in.” An older woman at the back stood up. Four more followed, each stepping forward, their chins tilted high, ready for a fight.

“It will be my honour to serve you, your Majesty.” A woman bowed low, her straight hair falling just past her chin. “My name is Jennifer, I’m an old friend of Eric’s.”

I smiled widely at her. “How do you know that I know him?”

“I was here during your arrest and torture. Eric used to talk to me through the bars.”

“Have you seen him lately?”

“Not for over a year, I’m afraid,” she said. “He left, I’m told.”

“Well, in a few minutes, you will all be free to leave.” I looked out at the dark tunnel beyond the bars. “After we fight off these… highly trained Drakarian Warriors.” My voice teetered off at the end with uncertainty.

A few girls laughed, easing the tension in the room again.

“It won’t be easy.” A girl in quite modern jeans and a t-shirt stepped up and turned to face the others, walking backward until she stood at the head of them all. She clearly hadn’t been down here long. “A few tips, girls, before we get started—”

“Who are you?” one remarked sourly. “And what would
you
know?”

“I’m Jessica,” she stated assertively. “But you might have known me as Second Lieutenant Moody.”

I heard a whisper among the girls about Jessica having been one of Drake’s Warriors—arrested for desertion—and if anyone had been ready to throw another rude question at her, they all seemed to swallow it down, settling back respectfully to listen.

“First thing you need to know is that
anything
can be used a weapon.”

“I have a weapon!” A girl up the back said, presenting her unnaturally sharpened fingernails, angled at the top like spears. “Been working on these babies for two years!”

“That’s perfect. And for those that hadn’t thought of that—” Jessica held her hands out, wiggling her fingers. “These can rip a guard’s throat out. Just hook your fingertips in, like this—” She demonstrated, “—and yank. Don’t be afraid of hurting him, that’s the idea.”

“Eye-gouging works on our kind, too,” said another, moving to stand beside her.

“And you are?” Ericka asked sceptically, folding her arms.

“A highly trained police officer,” she stated, folding her arms in slowly as she moved her feet a half-step apart. “But you can call me
Detective
.”

“Or just Michelle,” the girl she’d been standing next to said timidly.

Michelle smiled warmly, unfolding her arms. I could see she played the stern authoritative officer well, but she was really a big softie at heart, which I found odd for a vampire.

“And you were saying?” someone said, by way of welcome into the circle of trust. “Eye-gouging?”