Still, she was overjoyed to have it now, however it had gotten there.
Tweezing the blackened stub between thumb and forefinger, she picked it up and said a silent prayer that there was enough of Stubbins’ saliva left on it to activate the torch. If not, she was going to have to come up with some other way to free her brother.
Holding her breath, she pressed the chewed end of the stub to the bottom of the torch’s bottom. Nothing happened.
Well nothing is supposed to happen until you add your own DNA, Ari reminded herself nervously.
Licking her thumb, she pressed the small black button on the bottom of the torch, adding her own DNA as well. There was a momentary pause in which her heart started to sink…then the handle of the torch changed from red to blue, indicating that the tool had been designated to her.
Yes! Ari grabbed the torch triumphantly. What else? She still had the small socket wrench and the screwdriver from earlier but maybe she would need a bigger weapon? She hoped not but it was best to be prepared.
Finding the largest wrench she could—one as long as her forearm and incredibly heavy—she used the nico-stub to activate it and grabbed it as well. Then it was time to go and Ari ran as fast as she could while carrying the heavy tools.
Jak, here I come!
Lathe stood impatiently in the dim corridor just outside the Infirmary, making sure to keep his ID badge in view of the climate control’s system’s view-window. Behind the unbreakable plasti-glass a small red circle was spinning around and around, indicating that the system was scanning…scanning…scanning. Lathe just hoped it would stay in the loop he had programmed for it long enough for Ari to come back.
I shouldn’t have kissed her…and I shouldn’t have let her go alone!
But what choice did he have? The override wouldn’t work for any ID tag but his and since the tag had been surgically implanted in his skin, there was no getting it out. Not right now, anyway. He just had to hope and pray that his override would last long enough for Ari to get her brother and get back to safety.
I should have insisted that she come with me by herself—we could always come back and get her brother later.
But that was by no means a certainty. And even if it had been, he’d understood why Ari didn’t want to leave her brother behind. He wouldn’t have left Thonolan if he’d been in a similar situation.
Oh Thonolan…little brother, he thought, grief rising up in him suddenly. If only I could have saved you. If only I could avenge you…
Taking the Yonnites who ran this place to court and possibly shutting down or changing the management of the prison was a good and worthy task, but it wasn’t really the revenge Lathe craved. He wanted to kill the one who had murdered his brother—kill him with his own hands and fangs. Unfortunately, he had never been able to find out exactly what had happened to Thonolan, even after he came to BleakHall. His brother had simply been found dead in his cell one morning and his body had been burned before anyone could claim it.
At least that was what the official BleakHall report said—Lathe had his doubts.
The thought that he couldn’t even see his brother’s body tormented him. He felt that he had never truly had the chance to say goodbye. And he…
A soft sound in the shadows to his right caught his ear. Lathe turned his head, looking alertly for the source of the noise. Was Ari back already? Was she—
“Hello, Medic,” said a low, hissing voice. “What are you doing in the main part of the prizzon? I thought you and your little friend would be back in your zzell by now.”
Ari took a deep breath and stepped into the tunnel where the lashers were kenneled. She had been through here several times before but always during the day, when the huge, scaly beasts were asleep. Now it was night time and—
And they’re still asleep, Ari told herself firmly. Everything will be okay. Lathe will keep the cold air from blowing and waking them up. And even if they did somehow wake up, you’re protected by Lathe’s scent. Everything is going to be just fine. So get down to the hole and set Jak free.
She walked as quickly and quietly as she could, moving with increased confidence since she’d been through the tunnel before. But she soon found that this time wasn’t like the other trips she’d made to the hole.
All around her, she could hear stirring—the sliding of scales over scales, the restless movements of animals about to wake.
But it’s still warm down here, she thought desperately, even as she quickened her pace. Well, as warm as it ever seemed to get in the hole, anyway. Which to be honest, wasn’t all that warm. Maybe the lashers were stirring because their bodies knew it was almost time to wake?
Or maybe they’re just hungry, whispered a sinister little voice in her head. Ari shivered and tried not to listen to it.
I’m protected by Lathe’s scent, she reminded herself. They’re afraid of him so they should be afraid of me too—right? Or at the very least, it should make the huge creatures want to avoid her.
She hoped.
At last she reached the end of the tunnel and stepped out into the dim light of the hole. Going to her brother’s cell, she stood on tiptoes and whispered through the bars as loudly as she dared.
“Jak? Jak! Come on—wake up!”
Her answer was a loud snore and the sound of Jak turning over restlessly. Ari cursed silently to herself. Her brother always had been a sound sleeper.
“Jak!” she hissed again. Stooping, she found a few small stones on the floor and tossed them through the bars of his cell, hoping to hit him. “Jak, come on!”
At last she heard him rousing and after a long moment, his sleepy face appeared between the bars.
“Ari? What are you doing here in the middle of the night?” He blinked. “It is the middle of the night, right?” He frowned. “But it can’t be—why isn’t it cold?”
“It is the middle of the night but Lathe—Medic—is keeping the climate control system from blowing.”
She was already making her way to the gray electrical panel and pulling out her tools as she spoke. She’d been working on the wiring for the door locks for some time—there was only one small wire still unconnected but she’d been saving it, trying to make the job in the hole last so she could see Jak as much as possible.
Now Ari connected the wire and listened with satisfaction to the sliding click as the automatic locking mechanism on all the cell doors cycled, first locking, then unlocking the doors, then locking them again. She jiggled the wire once more and they unlocked. Now she only had to cut the heavy-duty padlock on the outside of his door and Jak would be free.
Her brother was still peering owlishly through the bars of his cell at her when she returned.
“Ari, what are you talking about? How can Medic keep the cold air from blowing? What’s going on?”
“What’s going on is we’re getting out of here tonight but we have to hurry,” Ari told him, priming the torch and putting on the safety goggles that were attached to it. “Stand back a minute and don’t look, Jak. I have to cut the lock off your cell and then we’re out of here.”
“I zzaid, what are you doing down here?” Mukluk demanded, coming out into the light. He had his pain-prod in one hand and was tapping it impatiently against his scaly palm.
Lathe froze. Whatever I do, I can’t let him move me! If the climate control stops scanning my prison ID, the cold air will start blowing. Have to stay right…here.
“Medic? I azked you a quezztion!” The head of the Horvath guards was sounding more agitated by the moment.
“I forgot something in the Infirmary,” Lathe told him, trying to sound bored and unconcerned, as though being out of his cell in a part of the prison where he didn’t belong after lights out was nothing out of the ordinary. “So I came down to get it.”
Mukluk’s slitted yellow eyes narrowed and his forked tongue lashed.
“Liar! You are up to zzomething. I know it!”
He hit Lathe in the back with his pain prod, giving
him an agonizing shock right in the kidneys.
Lathe roared with surprise and pain and went rigid as the electric current arced through his body.
Gods…the pain! It felt like a horse had kicked him in the back—a big one.
But he must not move. If he turned away, even for a second, the climate control system would finish its cycle and start blowing cold air to wake the lashers. He must hold still! Somehow he managed to keep his feet despite the pain and finally Mukluk removed the prod.
“What izz going on here? Why won’t you move?” The Horvath sounded both angry and bewildered.
There was nothing Lathe could say so he kept his mouth shut. His nerves were still singing with pain and his knees felt weak from the high voltage. Hurry, Ari! he thought desperately. I don’t know how much of this I can take.
“Anzzer me! What are you doing here?”
Mukluk shocked him again…and again.
Lathe’s jaw clamped shut and his muscles went rigid and hard, his body spasming as the charges zipped through him, causing agony so great he could barely breathe.
“How can you zztill be zztanding? I have never zzeen a male take zzo much,” Mukluk hissed as he withdrew the pain prod for the third time. “Not zzince that other male who also had fangzz.”
“What?” Lathe whipped his head to the right to stare at the Horvath’s scaly face. “What did you say?” he demanded.
“Oh, so now you zzpeak?” Mukluk’s forked tongue swiped up to swipe across one yellow eyeball.
“Yes, I fucking-well speak,” Lathe snarled. “Tell me what male you’re talking about! Did he look like me but with blond hair and pale blue eyes?”
Mukluk shrugged, his scaly shoulders rolling.
“All you humanoidzz look the zzame to me. All I know izz that he had fangzz like yourzz. He wazz trying to get the other prisonerzz to rebell—to rize up.”
That sounded like Thonolan. His younger brother had always been an idealist. He would have protested the unjust treatment at BleakHall—would have tried to get the other prisoners to stand with him. He had been charismatic too—Lathe was betting he might have convinced a fair number of the other inmates to rally around him which would have made him a threat to the Horvath guards and Mukluk in particular.
“What happened to him?” he demanded, standing rigidly still but turning his head so he was looking the big Horvath in the eye. “His name was Thonolan, what did you do to him?”
“Ah yezz, Thonolan,” Mukluk mused, licking his other eyeball. “Yezz, that wazz hizz name.”
“What did you do to him?” Lathe insisted again. “You bastard—tell me!”
Mukluk shrugged.
“He wazz cauzing trouble. Zzo I killed him—the zame way I’m going to kill you.”
He planted the end of his pain prod directly between Lathe’s shoulder blades and turned it up on full power.
Lathe gasped and clutched at his chest. It was as though a giant hand had reached in to grab his heart and squeezed it tight, constricting it so it couldn’t pump…tightening until his lungs couldn’t expand.
Can’t…breathe… he thought disjointedly. Heart…can’t…
Then everything went black and he slumped to the ground.
Forty-One
Ari felt the first blast of cold air swirling around her ankles just as she was cutting through the lock on Jak’s door.
Oh Goddess no—what’s going on? Did Lathe get tired of waiting and decide to leave us here? Or did his override fail?
But she didn’t have time to worry about that right now. She was halfway done with Jak’s lock and trying to concentrate on her work as the blue-hot flame of the welding torch cut slowly but surely through the tough, high-density metal.
Focus Ari—focus…just get it done, she told herself. But it would have been easier to concentrate if she didn’t feel like she was being watched. There was an itching sensation between her shoulder blades and she started to have a picture in her mind—an image of large, yellow eyes…hungry eyes—staring at her from the mouth of the tunnel, waiting to see what she would do next.
Between her shoulder blades wasn’t the only place she itched either. The small spot on the side of her neck, just under her left ear where Tapper’s knife had nicked her in the kitchen earlier, was also itching fiercely. Absentmindedly, Ari reached up to scratch the spot with one hand while she continued cutting with the other, holding the blow torch steady as she did.
But when she scratched the itchy spot, she cried out in pain and nearly dropped the torch. The place where the knife had poked her was incredibly tender and painful—almost as though it was somehow infected.
Ari yanked her hand away and looked at her fingers—they were bloody and she could feel something warm and wet flowing down the side of her neck.
Oh my Goddess, she thought numbly. Fresh blood. That’s not good—not good at all.
“Ari? Ari!” Jak’s voice from the bars above was hoarse with fear. “Ari, watch out—the lashers are waking up and there’s one right behind you!”
Ari heard a snuffling sound behind her and then a hungry-sounding growl. As the padlock on Jak’s cell at last gave way and fell off with a metallic clunk, she turned to see a huge lasher with yellow eyes standing not three feet from her.
It was an enormous beast—its head as high as hers though it stood on four legs instead of two. Or did it?
As it shifted a bit, its massive shoulders blocking the exit from the hole, Ari caught a glimpse at its haunches and saw with a shock that the short black fur that covered its front half gave way to broad, shimmering iridescent scales, as wide as her hand, on the lasher’s back half. Instead of paws tipped with long, razor sharp claws as it had in front, its body ended in a thick, muscular coil of tail with a spiked point on the end.
It looks like something out of mythology, Ari thought wonderingly. Half feline, half serpent. How the hell can something like that even exist?
But exist it did. The lasher took another step towards her, dragging its scaly, muscular back half on the metal floor with a sound like dry leaves rustling together. It sniffed the air, its muzzle wrinkling as though it wasn’t sure it liked what it was smelling.
And what is it smelling? Ari thought wildly. Partly Lathe’s scent on me—that’s for sure. His scent would probably be enough to make it leave me alone if not for the blood.
The blood. She could feel it trickling freely down her neck now. She pressed one hand just under her ear, hoping to stem the flow but the pressure of her own touch was so painful she couldn’t stand it.
“Ow!” She yanked her hand away instinctively, scattering blood droplets over the dirty metal floor.
“Ari?” Jak’s voice behind her sounded panicky. “Ari, what are you doing? Don’t you know these damn things are attracted to the scent of blood?”
“I didn’t do it on purpose,” Ari snapped. “I didn’t know I was hurt until I scratched under my ear. I’m sorry.”
“I thought Medic was supposed to keep the cold air from blowing so the lashers would stay asleep!” Jak snarled.
“He’s supposed to be trying,” Ari kept her eyes on the lasher as she spoke. “But he said that his override might fail. That must be what happened.”
She hoped that was what had happened, anyway. She hoped Lathe hadn’t simply decided to go without her. He wouldn’t do that…would he?
Ari wasn’t sure.
The lasher sniffed at one of the droplets and lapped it up with a long, black tongue. Then it made a rumbling sound in its throat—a hungry sound, Ari thought—and took another step towards her.
Oh Goddess, I’ve made it worse, she thought numbly. So much worse. Chilly air was rushing from the vents along the floor, freezing her feet and ankles but she barely noticed it. Her legs felt like they were made of pudding and her heart was pounding in her ears so loudly it was difficult to hear herself think. She wondered if this particular lasher was the one who had tried to get into Lathe’s cell—the one that had been sta
lking her.
“Ari, I’m going to open the cell door and you run in.” Jak’s voice was soft but intense. “The cell doors open outward—that thing can’t reach you in here with me.”
“And then what?” Ari demanded in a shaky voice. “We’re both trapped in the cell together? No, Jak—we have to get past it. We have to get out or we’ll be stuck here until it’s too late to go!”
“Then I’m coming out to help you fight it,” he said, his voice steady and low.
“No—you’ll only get yourself killed,” Ari said sharply. “I have weapons.” She held up the torch and nodded at her tool belt. “But you can’t touch them because they’re designated to me. Stay in the cell, Jak.”
“But—” he began.
“Let me help.”
The new voice yanked her attention away from the monstrous lasher for just a moment. Cutting her eyes to the right, Ari saw the Beast standing with his face pressed to the bars of his cell.
“Let me help you fight them…and take me with you,” he said urgently. His mismatched eyes flashed gold and green in the dim lighting. “Cut the lock on my cell,” he urged Ari. “I can help you.”
“Don’t listen to him, Ari!” Jak exclaimed. “He’s a fucking murderer and sociopath—he’s only out for himself.”
“I may be a convict and a murderer but I have a sense of honor, little girl.” The Beast’s voice was low and serious and he looked gravely at Ari. “Let me out and I give you my oath as a Kindred I’ll either help you fight your way out or die trying.”
Ari looked at him more fully, her eyes going wide.
“You…you’re a Kindred? But I thought you said you were a hybrid.”
“I am a hybrid—half Beast Kindred and Half Blood Kindred. That’s how I came by my name…and my fangs.” He grinned, showing his fangs, shorter than Lathe’s but no less deadly for all of that.
“Ari, don’t listen to him,” Jak insisted but Ari was staring at the big convict, her heart slamming against her ribs. She was remembering everything Lathe had told her—how the Kindred revered and honored women…how they always kept their word.