Unhidden (The Gatekeeper Chronicles Book 1) (25 page)

I forced the hallucination away, unwilling to experience it in Connor’s presence and certainly not wanting to tell him about it. A new vision replaced it.

“I see Zane again, but he looks different, terrified. He’s yelling something to me, but I don’t hear him. There is smoke and fire everywhere. He holds his hands up to me, and … there’s light and pain … then nothing.”

I opened my eyes, panting and exhausted. I was feeling confused and unfocused from the drugs, having a hard time comprehending what I had just experienced. When I looked up at Connor, he seemed genuinely pleased for the first time.

“Emma, I knew you had it in you and my approach would bring it out.” He stepped up to me and placed a cool hand to my forehead, almost gently caressing the clammy skin and brushing back strings of damp hair. “I know you must be drained from your experience, but we can’t stop now. We have had a breakthrough. If we push just a bit harder, imagine what we might be able to uncover.” He stood and turned to the medical attendant who had been monitoring my vitals. “Give her another dose then shock her.”

T
he days passed, and I didn’t have any further revelations. The sessions began to decrease in frequency and duration. Connor appeared distracted. From the occasional cell phone conversations he took in front of me, I had guessed he was in the middle of dealing with some work-related crisis that took precedence over me. It must have been a doozy to be more critical to homeland security than I was, but I was grateful for the reprieve. It allowed me to recover a bit. My head cleared from the drugs, the bruises and swelling on my face and body were healing, and I wasn’t bleeding anymore.

To their credit, the soldiers did their jobs well. They made sure I was always bound and my door was always locked and guarded. So, even though I was feeling stronger, I still had no hope of escape. I was able to get one of them to slip and tell me I had been in their custody for six days. I was surprised it had been such a brief time. I would have sworn a month had passed.

On the sixth night—at least I think it was night—I awoke from a restless sleep, slumped in my folding chair still chained to the floor. I strained my ears, trying to catch the noise that had awoken me. Then I heard it—the faint sound of a thump followed by a muffled groan and the gentle rattle of metal on metal. A soft click sounded from the direction of my door, and it swung open silently. A sliver of faint light from the hallway spilled in, blinding me. My eyes had seen nothing other than darkness for a week.

I blinked rapidly, trying to clear away the stinging tears. A broad figure knelt in front of me, but even at this close range, I couldn’t get my eyes to focus.

“Emma, I’m going to get you out of here.” I almost melted in relief at the sound of those words.

“Alex, I knew you’d come.” The figure stiffened and realization dawned that it wasn’t Alex’s voice I had heard. I jerked sharply, trying to move away from the figure, but only accomplished tightening my chains further, cutting even more deeply into my already raw wrists.

“I know you have no reason to trust me, but I swear to you, I am here to help,” Zane said, trying to sound reassuring.

“I’m not going from the frying pan into the fire,” I croaked. “I would rather be tortured by the enemy I know.”

“I’m not going to hurt you. I will explain everything once we’re out of here, but there’s no time now. We have to move.”

My eyes were finally starting to focus, and I very clearly saw him pull a foot-long knife from his boot. I sucked in a breath, expecting to feel it pierce my gut at any moment; instead, he placed the blade into one of the chain links close to my wrist and wrenched. When the link snapped, he did the same for the rest of the chains. Finally, for the first time in six days, I was able to move my limbs more than a few inches.

As blood flowed back into my numb extremities, the pain was excruciating, and I bit back a whimper. Zane put a muscled arm around my waist, helping me stand then take a few steps until I felt like I could move on my own. Yet, even when I told him I was mobile, he didn’t release me, and I didn’t argue.

“What are you doing here, and why are you helping me?” I asked in a whisper, close to his ear.

“Alex asked for my help. Like I said, I’ll explain everything when we get out of here.”

“And how are we going to do that? This place is crawling with highly-trained and heavily-armed Black Ops soldiers.”

“I have some … friends … that I have called in to help.”

The only “friends” I had ever seen Zane with were …

”No! You can’t do that. If you plan to bring in more creatures to help us fight our way out, you are putting them in danger. You don’t know what the government is doing to non-humans in this place. It’s horrific. I wouldn’t subject even the worst of them to that kind of fate.”

“It’s a risk they are willing to take. You are more important.” At that moment, alarms began blaring throughout the building, and the glow of flashing red security lights came from the hallway.

“We don’t have time to argue. That’s our signal.” He pulled me toward the door, and I had no choice except to move with him. When we reached the doorway, he re-sheathed the knife and pulled his mage’s staff from a sling across his back while I peered into the empty hallway.

With Zane taking the lead, we ran down the empty corridor as fast as I was able to move my weakened body. The elevators that would take us to the lobby were right ahead when, from around the corner, just past them, came a dozen soldiers with their semi-automatics pointed at us. Zane and I tried to stop our forward momentum, but the distance to the soldiers was too short. We both went down in a baseball slide, and Zane lifted his staff, throwing up a shield right as the first trigger was pulled.

“Go!” he screamed at me as we both scrambled to our feet.

I turned and ran back down the hall toward my torture room. Zane was a few feet behind me, trying to run and maintain the shield at the same time. When the soldiers advanced past the elevator, the doors slid open and three massive creatures lunged out, bowling into them.

They moved on all fours and were massive, larger than a full grown bear. Heavily corded muscles shifted under gray skin that had the hard, course look of stone. Curling horns protruded from their thick brows, and their faces were deeply lined with a mouthful of wicked teeth. Large wings were folded along their hunched backs, the tight space not allowing them to be unfurled. They were terrifying and magnificent at the same time.

Several soldiers were thrown into the opposite wall with the crack of shattered bones. Others had their throats ripped out by sharp teeth, and still others were gutted by razor claws, their entrails splayed across the now slick floors.

Gunfire stopped and screams died when the men did. One of the creatures was dead, riddled with bullet holes. The other two were wounded yet still standing. They turned their shaggy heads toward me and Zane, and I was sure we were dead, especially when Zane dropped the shield, but the creatures only stood aside, allowing us access to the elevators.

Zane grabbed my arm and pulled me toward them. I couldn’t help balking as we got closer, though Zane increased his pace in response. I couldn’t take my eyes off them as we moved past and into the elevator. While they kept their gazes steady on mine, instead of seeing mindless, frenzied animals, I saw something that could be described as intelligence or at least awareness in their eyes.

Before the elevator doors slid closed, I said to them softly, “Thank you.” And I could have sworn one of the creatures slightly inclined its head in acknowledgment.

Zane leaned forward to press the L button for the Lobby, but I grabbed his wrist before he depressed it.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Zane, I can’t leave without Daniel. I have to find him and get him out of here.”

He hesitated, looking torn. “Where are they keeping him?”

“Um…I don’t know.”

“Emma, this place is huge. We just don’t have the time to search the entire building for Daniel. For all we know, he may not even be here anymore. We have to get the hell out of here.”

I knew Zane was right, but I couldn’t just give up on Daniel. Knowing Zane wasn’t going to budge easily, I took a different tack. “We should go after Sharur. I know where it is. After tonight, they’ll move it to an even more secure location, and we may never find it again. This is our best chance to get it.” I knew I was grasping at straws, but we might find Daniel as we made our way to the axe. And if we actually managed to retrieve Sharur, that would be a bonus.

Zane put his hands on his hips and took a few steps away from me, groaning in exasperation. Then he turned and came back. With a growl, he said, “Fine. Let’s make this quick.”

I hit the B button, and we descended to the basement.

We stood on opposite sides of the elevator doors as they slid open, which protected us from the initial barrage of bullets.

I shouted to Zane over the sounds of metal slamming into metal. “The bullets will pierce the elevator walls soon.”

He nodded and held his hand palm-up in front of him. A swirling ball of orange and red flame grew in his cupped hand until it was the size of a softball. While keeping his body hidden behind the elevator wall, he pitched the ball into the soldiers. Pained wails came first, followed by a wave of suffocating heat.

The gun fire stopped, and I peered through the doors to see men engulfed in flames, trying in vain to extinguish them by rolling on the floor.

The building’s fire suppression system was triggered, setting off the overhead sprinklers, but it was too late. By the time the flames were doused, there was nothing left except the charred and smoldering corpses of four soldiers.

I looked at Zane in fear and awe; however, he either didn’t notice or didn’t care. “Where to?” he asked.

I moved into the hallway, quickly becoming soaked with the cold water, and was soon shivering. Zane followed closely behind until we reached room B13. They had replaced the blown out retinal scanner with a keypad. I had no idea what to do with it. I could start randomly pushing buttons, but we could be here forever until I found the right combination, or I could set off some kind of security measure if I entered the wrong code a certain number of times.

I turned to Zane. “So, do you have a magic trick that can reveal a pass code?”

He frowned at the keypad. “No, but I do know who might be able to help.” He reached into a pouch tied to his belt, felt around for a few seconds with a look of concentration on his face, and pulled out a stone the size and shape of a marble. It was deep black in color with a rough texture. It looked as solid as a stone, but he put the object to his lips, whispering something under his breath, and easily crushed it between two fingers. When he did, a wisp of smoke escaped and faded into the air.

I waited for something dramatic to happen, like maybe a monstrous beast would come crashing down the hallway and ram the door down, but nothing happened. I leaned against the wall and looked at Zane with a raised eyebrow.

“A few more seconds,” he said.

He was good to his word. The temperature in the hallway dropped about twenty degrees, and the overhead lights dimmed to less than half their prior power. Then I felt the familiar presence of a shadow demon. Ice crept up my spine and filled my heart. The specter of death filled me until I thought I would suffocate.

Zane appeared completely unaffected. He and the creature simply looked at each other in silence before the shadow demon turned toward the door, inspecting it with a scrape of talons across metal. It found the hairline gap between the wall and the door and moved into it, it’s incorporeal body slowly seeping through the crack until it disappeared behind the door.

Even in the shadow demon’s absence, the cold it left behind caused my shivering to increase until I was shaking violently and turning blue. Zane moved close, wrapping his arms around me. He rubbed my arms and back briskly, trying to create friction to keep me warm. I was grateful for the contact. It not only helped to keep me warm, but it also kept me grounded. Being this close to Zane filled me with a sense of safety, as if I had nothing to fear from the shadow demon as long as Zane’s arms were around me. My brain must have been as frozen as my body because, before I could stop myself, I leaned into him and rested my forehead against his chest. He placed his chin on top of my head and enfolded me in his strong embrace.