Wicked Hunt (Dark Hearts Book 3) (15 page)

“Enough?”

“Yeah. Why don’t you go get her ready? I want her strapped up and hanging from her hands over there.” He jerked his head and I spotted a dangling chain.

This could be my chance. Maybe my only chance. Once I acted, they’d know how I’d killed so many.

Johann glanced at me and grinned. “Be careful Rudy. She looks too eager.”

“I will.”

He trundled over to me, Johann’s little helper. What would he do? What could I do? If I attacked him, that gun would be out. I doubted the woman had the strength to hurt Johann enough. Rudy brought the chain with him. He locked one end to a nearby table leg then threaded the other end through the bars, along with a padlock.

“Give me your neck. Lean up close.”

I hesitated and Johann spoke up. “Now, girl! Or I drive this in deeper. Want me to stick this in, swizzle it around and make your boyfriend like a pithed frog, brain dead?”

Fuck. I wasn’t sure that needle could do that, but the threat was still real. I jammed my neck against the cage door and Rudy wormed in the chain, attached it and locked it on.

Slowly, he opened the door, beckoned. “Out. Be good and you stay intact.”

He had no weapon. I guessed he was being careful. They knew I was dangerous, just not how I did it. With my wrists still fastened behind me my moves were limited, but not zero. There were things I could do, if not for that gun...

I emerged and straightened; though the chain ran through the cage mesh, it was long enough to let me do that.

The power went out, everything humming down. The darkness became near absolute due to the moonless night.

Being smart, I’d marked my target.

This might be dumb though...

I leaned back onto the cage and kicked out at nearly head height, praying Rudy hadn’t moved. The chain between my ankles whipped around his neck. I dropped my legs to the floor, taking him down with them as I stood, all in one motion, with my butt the pivot point. Then I grabbed the cage again with my hands, and hung on tight while he bucked under me.

The chain circled his neck. Caught like a fish. He lurched about.

I did two quick stomps with my heels, where I judged his throat must be and his gasping grew far worse. Though my legs were scratched and hammered at first, that blow had done it, crushed his larynx, fucked him for good. Even with a full team of ER personnel at hand, they’d have a great time keeping him alive. Tracheotomy, intubation, resuscitation. Poor Rudy had none of those. I counted his dying seconds.

The last of his gurgles faded and I realized Johann hadn’t shot or come close. He wouldn’t see where to aim. Maybe he did want me alive after all. Maybe he was worried I’d kill him too if he came over to see better? Maybe the man was a coward.

A generator chugged to life. Back up.
Shit.
I swallowed. The chain at my neck still held me in place. The lights came back on.

Johann was a coward. He looked agitated, shaky. Sweat glistened on his face and the pistol was out and aimed my way. I could see him assessing everything – the chain, Rudy lying dead and tangled in my manacle chain, me stuck where I was. If he shot me, I couldn’t dodge at all. I felt so vulnerable but I kept up my rage, had to. He was all number of fucking bad names.

“You bitch,” he muttered. “Bitch! Rudy was my friend. So many years.”

I stayed mute while he rambled on. Talking might get me shot.

For a minute, he stared at me, then around the room, seemingly stymied and unable to decide on his move. I waited, praying it’d be a wrong one.
Come over here, asshole.
He hefted the pistol.

Put it down so my friend can get it.

But he holstered it.

Killing Rudy had been spur of the moment. I’d done it well, but it’d been a dumb move. I only had one more good card to play.

The girl stayed where she was, unaware. One chance – that might be all I had with her.

Johann shifted sideways to the fridge and drew out a new box, took out a bottle. He found a syringe, a needle, and began to draw up some of the drug.

Grimm was snoring, still on his stomach, with the CSF needle sticking up from his neck. A cap seemed to be in the end.

Uneasy at where Johann was heading, I flexed my wrists. Nothing gave. The links were secure. The lock on my neck seemed so also. If he gave Grimm another drug, what might it do?

Instead he bent and rolled the syringe to me. It skittered across the floor and came to a stop against Rudy’s body.

“Pick that up and stick it in your thigh. Let me see the needle is in you, then inject. Do any of this wrong,
anything
, do it so I’m not sure you’ve got it in you, and I will shoot your leg. This is a 44 Magnum, so I promise you it will do you damage. I’m not a great shot. I might get you higher. I might kill you outright.”

I believed him. He had the desperate look of a man so angry or scared that the smallest thing might set him off. The barrel of the gun shook and wavered and I could hear his ragged breathing.

I unwrapped my legs from Rudy’s neck.

Stick a needle in myself? This drug would likely incapacitate me. I glanced at Grimm, torn by this decision, but I had no choice.

“Now!”

I lowered myself, slowly, and retrieved the needle by maneuvering backward and squatting. With my hands behind my back, I had to do this blind. I took off the cap.

Diabetics did this all the time. I’d manage, had to, even though it scared me. Funny that. What scared me more was not knowing what was in the syringe.

I gritted my teeth, and found it funny and terrifying how much I was shaking. The tip scratched the back of my thigh. At the last millisecond, I firmed my grip and pushed it through my skin. The pain throbbed, ebbed. I turned and showed him my leg.

“Take your hand away so I can see it’s in you.”

I did so, wincing, my lip curling up.

“Okay. Inject it while I watch. Don’t turn away.”

I put pressure on the syringe and felt the plunger descend, felt the liquid expand in my flesh.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
I held my breath until it was all in. Then I showed him the needle was still in me, panting through the nasty pain. “See it? See it?”

“Yeah.” This time he smiled. “I see it. Hope it fucking hurts. You can pull it out. Now stay where you are. On the floor.”

We waited, together. Within a few minutes I felt the strangeness begin to leech into me. Soon I was floating a little. Then the room was gently spinning. My eyes wanted to close and I let them.

The phone on the body at my feet rang for a while. Then another one rang.

I heard Johann answer and smiled. Someone wanted Rudy and they were angry when Johann explained why he couldn’t talk. Someone couldn’t have him because he was dead.

I was happy.

Johann didn’t know.

What he didn’t know...was what I’d done while I waited. I’d reached out and...and...

The words drifted.

My head drooped to my chest. My chin touched. Sounds went far away.

When something rolled up, grating over the floor, I was awake enough to comprehend the noise of a wheelbarrow. There were scraping noises and bumps, groans as if someone worked hard then, through my fuzziness, I recognized that someone lifted me.

My hands and feet were played with, my eyes were squashed and wrapped, I was slid into the wheelbarrow on top of something soft, and the thing was wheeled away.

The strangest thing accompanied my jolting, rocking, rolling journey – whistling, long drawn-out, happy whistling.

Through the slit between my eyelids and whatever covered them, I saw that it was dark and we were outside. Trees swam overhead.

The barrow stopped and I was pushed until I rolled to the side in a heap, my arms all messy. Moving them took too much effort. The soft thing was dragged from beneath me. My head fell out and so did half my body, until all of me was tucked into the barrow again. The cloth over my eyes was pulled back into place.

Luckily the bits of me had stayed together.

Talking started.

“There you go, Rudy. You sit there and watch. Tonight I’ll do everything. The controls. There. Rifle. There.”

More whistling. Then a motor started. Metal clanged.

The wheel barrow moved again and when it stopped I was hauled out.

With my eyes covered, I only saw black.

I wanted to sleep but instead I was rolled and rolled until under me was hardness. Flat hardness.

“You’re a pretty girl. Sexy. He’s going to like you. You’re going to wish I’d fucked you instead. You’re too dangerous, though. Way too nasty. Make sure you scream, a lot.”

The man laughed. Something ripped and cut at my clothes and they were pulled away. This piece, that piece. The surface on which I lay began to rise, to swing, and then it dropped in short jerks...

Down...down...down.

The last I recalled before I went away was Grimm with that needle poking up out of his neck.

Zorie

Sounds penetrated my darkness. Bird noises. Clanking. The throaty snarl of an animal, prowling. The talking began, though I couldn’t decipher words, not at first.

The words would stop then start again.

I recognized my name and stirred, trying to lift my heavy head. The prowling creature snarled louder. Whatever I lay on shook, vibrating as something banged on it.

“Zorie. Zorie. Wakey, wakey. Rise and shine. Open your eyes and see the present.” That voice seemed crackly, broken up, as if...on an intercom.

Bad voice.

Johann.

I coughed up the glue in my throat, swallowed, and pulled off a blindfold, my hand having to try several times before I succeeded in dragging it off my head. My hair fell in front of my eyes. Past it, I saw the thing. Shiny eyes, blotches of pale skin where the dim, irregular light fell.

I focused better. Bars of metal separated me from it...him.

He was human, just disgustingly dirty and stinking. When the light caught his hair, I saw how long, knotted, and clumped it was – sticking out from his head like a mop used to clean a monkey exhibit too many times. Twigs, paper, unidentified stuff was trapped in that mop, as well as in the beard that straggled from his chin.

The cage was on floor level and in the middle of some huge space I could only glimpse.

The light strengthened and poured down from far above, blinding me if I looked straight up. The man-thing leaped away, dodging the worst of the light.

I was free of his attention and trapped wherever Johann had left me. Something sat atop the cage. I squinted. A deck chair? Cloth, then a shoe on a leg, formed from the colors and shadows.

I gasped and scrambled away to the cage corner.

Rudy was above me, strapped to a chair.

A chuckle let me narrow down where the walkie-talkie must be – on Rudy.

“See him? I thought Rudy might like a ringside seat for once in his life. Ahahaha. Make that death. You might’ve killed him, bitch, but he gets to see you die too. I hope. If Wolfie doesn’t drag you off into the shadows.”

“Fuck you,” I whispered.

“The cage has a remotely operated lock. We used to have fun teasing Wolfe. He knows the sound of it opening now, so expect a visitor soon after you hear the buzz then a little click as it releases.”

Swallowing, nervous as to where this Wolfe might now be, I checked the periphery. He’d stayed on the side of the door, if twenty yards back – on the very edge of the brightest light.

My head was clearing fast. I stood and let my wobbly legs reacquaint themselves with gravity.

“I’m gonna turn down the light soon, let him sneeeak closer. This is a disused missile silo by the way. You’re ten stories down with smooth concrete walls. You won’t climb out. Unless you can climb ten stories of chain or rope. Hahaha.”

His laugh echoed.

I hated the idea of sitting here doing nothing. Ignoring the pounding of my heart and the gibbering in the back of my mind, I checked out Rudy. I reached up through the bars and pulled, yanking the chair over onto its side. The knots fastening the top of the chair to ropes were tight but I started working at them. Then the butt of a knife shone in reflected light. Rudy, the good man, had one sheathed at his hip.

“What are you doing? Playing with Rudy? Stupid bitch. He’s no fucking use. You can’t fuck him.” The slur in his words and all the laughter finally made sense. Johann was pissed as a newt.

The light wavered, dimmed, shot up bright again.

“Woooh! Look-it that. It does tricks. You just wait. Let me get my lil infra-red drone down there and we can have a party!”

I had no idea how much time that would take but maybe not long.

I dragged the knife loose, pulled loops of rope through into the cage, and sawed at the ropes until they parted. Now he couldn’t retrieve the body.

I had a knife. A four-inch knife. And rope. A brilliant idea popped into being. I dragged through more rope and cut off two lengths. Then I went to the cage door and tied the door in two places. It wasn’t that thick a rope, but I hoped it’d hold a while, hoped the guy out there was too far gone to understand knots.

So what now? Wait forever? When daylight came, Johann might get tired of waiting and pour gasoline down here, or pull it back up and shoot me while this cage hung in mid-air, if I simply sat here. Or I’d starve, die of thirst – take my pick.

My ferocious groupie snarled again. Or he would figure out how to poke me with sticks...rocks. Whatever leftover stuff was in this place. I was a potential piñata sitting in the cage.

Rudy, my dead supply merchant, might have a gun.

Hope kindled and I cuddled it to me as I approached his body again.

Stupid Johann had been too mired in grief and alcohol to empty Rudy’s pockets. The body was wet with urine but I forged onward and managed to reach all his pockets. Belt with the knife sheath, wallet, LED flashlight, phone. I flicked on the flashlight and found it bright enough to blind me for a few seconds.

A bang made me squeak and leap sideways. Wolfe was at the door. When I aimed the light at his eyes, he only made one attempt to reach me through the bars before baring his teeth then running off.

“Fucker.” I pressed my hand to my heart.

The light shook. Awesome. I had Parkinson’s now. I pressed the on-off switch and my light died. Already it’d seemed weaker.

Calm down
. After some deep breaths, I managed to stop trembling.

The walkie-talkie would be short range. I doubted I could contact anyone except the asshole above. I had everything useful except the chair itself. Though lion tamers seemed to like them, I didn’t think the man out there in the darkness would do more than bat it aside.

I buckled on the belt, sheathed the knife then went for more rope only to discover it’d been hauled up a few feet and was out of reach.

“You know...” Johann started up again. “He doesn’t just screw the women we give him, he makes them disappear. We figured he was eating them.”

Crap.

The buzz of a small motor made my stomach twist and cold run up my body.

The light above paled. I could see but it may as well be a bedside nightlight.

The phone? By the time I reached anyone, whoever it might be, it’d be too late. No one could get here that fast, even if I could find the number for the police. If I had to, I could use it as a flashlight.

I’m prepared. I am. I’ll wait this out, stab him through the bars.

I kept the knife in its sheath for the moment, didn’t want to lose it if I panicked.

He slammed into the cage with all the force of a small train, tipping it up on one side before it banged back down. His shoulders were immense. I could see that when he shoulder-rammed the cage. The door didn’t bend. The bars stayed as they were.

Thank god.

But Johann had said they’d done this before, so it made sense the cage must be strong enough to withstand this man.

I crouched in the middle, afraid to get too close to him. Naked as he was, his muscles were on display. He was pared down to nothing but a hunting machine. Starved, insane, a restless thing. I could picture him stalking the corridors, alone, relentless, tracking rats to eat...and people. He reminded me, sadly, of Grimm. This might be what he was turning into.

Wolfe wrapped both hands around the cage door near the open lock, and heaved. The ropes, stretched. He wrenched again and they stretched then snapped.

A scream escaped me. I heard cackling from Johann then cheering, as I sprang as far from the door as possible.

Wolfe leaned in and smiled at me, showing his teeth. His eyes were reddened, watering, and squinting convulsively. On hands and knees, he crawled in then rose until the back of his neck was bent under, and pressing on, the cage’s roof.

Those dirty teeth...the man hadn’t brushed in decades, clearly.

“Go. Away,” I whispered, forcing courage on myself. “Find yourself a dental hygienist.”

I would never know for certain if this would be Grimm’s fate – to turn into
this
. Knife in one hand, flashlight in the other, I decided to do what I had to. I thrust the light at his face and screamed again.

He flung his hand over his face and backpedaled, banging his head on the metal as he exited. Still shielding his eyes, he circled the cage.

When he was on the opposite side to the door, I knew it was crunch time.

Do or die. Staying where I was, that was death.

I ran out, waving my light, and I kept running, into the hallway that opened up before me.

Running, fucking running, my feet bamming and slapping down on whatever littered the corridors of this place after so many years. Dust, dirt, rotted papers, plastic cups, forks, bones.

Human bones.

My bare soles felt it all. I was spiked, pricked, punctured, but I kept going. Fear makes pain a straw dog, a thing without fangs. It numbs and makes you run faster and faster, and sometimes dumber. I had nowhere to go but the darkness. He knew this place.

Oh god oh god. He was coming after me.

I fled into the dark, wishing for a map.

Stay on this floor. If there’s a door out, it’ll be here.

And fuckface behind me, the one roaring his displeasure, had never worked out how to open it?

A fire extinguisher’s dusty redness shone then the light carved out the square outlines of a plan on a wall. I couldn’t stop to read.

Remember it. Maybe I can backtrack.

Doors went by, dozens of doors, but no windows.

What did I expect? This was underground.

I finally chanced it and did a skidding right-angle turn and flew sideways into a room whose walls were so distant the light barely hinted at their existence.

Tables and chairs were stacked like replicas of buildings, then fallen stacks, plates. A cafeteria?

I tripped on some obstacle and sprawled face-first in the dust and muck, whacking my forehead on something, tearing a gouge, feeling several sharp somethings pierce my foot and... blacking out.

It might’ve been seconds later that I remembered I was running from a monster. I scrabbled around to get hold of the flashlight but found nothing. I shoved my back against a convenient wall. The flashlight had turned off when I fell. Desperate, I searched blindly.

Ah-hah. Got it.

Pros and cons of having a flashlight shining while being chased in the dark.

A light meant I could stay brave. Blackness was the unknown.

My foot seemed weighed down by something and it ached. I fumbled to find the button, hearing noises and something moving the debris. Sounds would echo, carry, wouldn’t they?

Light meant I was less likely to trip. Funny that. And...it showed my surroundings.

Holding my breath, I pressed the switch. My foot. Fuck. A great bloody piece of glass sparkled in the light, going all the way through.

There was something out there. Off with the flashlight.

I held my breath, held every muscle still, because the slightest movement might topple something I couldn’t see.

The blood bumped in my arteries and I clutched the flashlight so tightly my fingers began to tingle and grow cold. I shivered. No one here to help me and I was far underground. No way out except up that unclimbable shaft. I had to stay tough.

A sob almost tore from my throat and my hands began to tremble. I gritted my teeth and tried to stop myself shaking.

I would die here.

My plan was stupid. The girl would never do it right. Grimm would be still on the table. He’d be waiting with that needle in him, after Johann saw me eaten and fucked, and wandered back to his experiment.

I’d done all this, made it happen with my idiotic idea of curing Grimm.

The bones out there, though I’d barely glimpsed them as I ran, they’d been human. A femur was a femur.

Being eaten would be worse if you were alive. I imagined some poor girl—

My stomach churned at that thought then pain roared to life and exploded in my foot. I hissed, clutching my leg.

God. Fucking dammit. Don’t do this. No more fucking about imagining shit.

I mustn’t.

Get a grip.

I swallowed my fears, though they were a big unsavory chunk to swallow, and I listened.

Whatever was out there could move in the dark.

Feet shifted in the debris in the hallway I’d run through. Things were crunched and made small popping sounds.

A second, sweeping flash showed the double-doored entryway and him storming in at an angle, grunting, sliding and sending chairs skittering over the floor.

I screeched involuntarily then fumbled and found the butt of the knife, drew it from the sheath.

I couldn’t run.

Now it was me and him and this tiny blade.

If I stuck him he’d just get angrier. The walls, his eyeballs, and his arms reflected light, as he ran to the left.