I felt the warlock’s boot nudge my thigh. “Hey, is this one supposed to be here? She doesn’t have a jumpsuit.”
“How should I know? One of the boys probably stole her from upstairs and snuck her past intake to have some fun with her in the Happy House. It’s happened before.”
My insides curled in disgust, but I refused to allow myself to move, because if I evenbreathedand these guys saw it, I was dead.
“Take your pick of the bodies,” the rookie guard joked. “They aren’t going to fight back.”
“Back to your old ways, huh. That already got you in trouble the last time.”
The rookie guard was quiet. “If she’s from upstairs, we should probably get rid of her first, before Captain finds out… unless this is some sort of trick.”
“What do you think’s going to happen? She’ll jump up and dance like a zombie? Double-check, if you’re so scared she’s not dead.”
I heard the withdrawal of some sort of blade— probably a military knife. My heart stopped, and I held in a frantic breath as I realized what the guard was about to do. I didn’t know if I needed to move, to defend myself, or stay still.
I wasn’t able to make a decision in time, and I heard the bladewhooshthrough the air. I gritted my teeth, expecting it to land in the back of my chest and pierce through my heart.
I heard the knife sink into flesh, and felt a pool of warm blood ooze out underneath my thighs, but there was no pain. I realized the guard had stabbed his knife into my calf, where I didn’t have any feeling.
Ha. Losers.
“She’s dead, all right. Nobody alive would be able to take that with a straight face,” the warlock replied as he withdrew the knife.
“Then quit standing around talking about it. It’s best if this girl disappears. We don’t want her parents, if the poor bitch has got any, poking around down here,” the merman demanded.
“Yes, sir.” The guard reached out to lift me into his arms. I did a good show of playing dead as he began to carry me down the hallway, and his supervisor returned to the base of the Happy House.
We were almost at the end of the hallway, and I thought I was getting out of here, when I heard the warlock catch his breath as he looked down. “Hey, wait a minute—”
Fuck! He’d felt the warm blood coming out of my leg. I felt the guard go to drop me. I swung one arm up, wrapping it around his shoulders so I could support myself, then did what I had to do as I took the shiv and stabbed it into the warlock’s neck. I used as much force as I possibly could, aiming for the area Charlie had told me to— the impression where the artery was located. I drove the razor blade in, cutting into the neck before I stabbed the area where I knew his vocal cords had to be.
The warlock fell to the floor, and I dropped with him. He tried to let out a scream, but blood was spilling from his throat, and he couldn’t speak. I watched him grasp his neck, attempting to fumble to hold in the blood while the other hand reached for me. It wrapped around my throat, squeezing tight, and I immediately felt my air supply cut off. I saw stars, and my chest tightened in pain as I struggled to receive air. I tried to push him off, but he was far stronger than I was, and I couldn’t break his grip on me.
Go for the eyes, I heard Charlie say, so that’s what I did. I stabbed the shiv into the warlock’s left eye, then the right. I stuck the shiv so far into that one that I wasn’t able to pull it back out. He immediately let go of me, clawing at his face as I took in a desperate amount of air.
The warlock’s body slumped to the side, into a pool of his own blood. He’d finally bled out. His body twitched, throat rasping for a moment or two.
A distant chill writhed down the top of my spine. I’d killed people before… but with my magic. Not like this. Violence always seemed something distant, not up close and personal.
My father had done terrible things during the Hawkei Civil War— I was sure he did. He’d never told me about them, but there’d been rumors of things he was forced to do during battle. My mother had also committed terrible things while fighting for her people. I was of their blood. If they could do things like this to protect the ones they loved, I wouldn’t hesitate, either. It was my life, or theirs, and I damn well wasn’t going to die down here.
Charlie would do it. I’dseenhim do it. He’d taken lives with his bare hands right in front of me and hadn’t even flinched. If he could murder so carelessly, I would, too. I had to be like him, because I knew he was still down here somewhere, surviving. It’s what he knew how to do best. I’d taught him how to live, and he’d taught me how to survive. Taking on my twin flame’s mentality was the only way I was getting myself out of Cellblock 9.
The warlock rasped again, but I thought of Charlie again… he could turn his emotions off. So that’s what I did, too. I just… turned them off. Because I knew they weren’t going to serve me down here.
I didn’t stick around to watch the guard die. While he was breathing his last breath, I rifled through his pockets for anything of use, and I found a security keycard.
I tried to get the shiv back out of his eye, but it was stuck in there, so I decided to leave it behind. Now covered in blood, I left a trail of red dragging behind me as I pulled myself down the rest of the hallway and to the door Coyote had mentioned. Above me was a box that acted as an entry system, one that was only accessible to a guard with a pass.
Ancestors, I hope nobody comes down this way.If one of the guards found a body, I was so fucked, because I’d left a trail that would lead them right to me.
I reached up to press the keycard against the entry system to the door. It unlocked, and I dragged myself inside. Hope stuttered within me as I realized that this was the room where they kept the things guards had taken off inmates. My wheelchair was in a corner of the room, along with my compass, but my journal wasn’t here. The Warden must’ve kept it for himself. I hefted myself into my wheelchair with shaking arms, and grasped the compass in my hand as I searched for other things here I could use.
There wasn’t much— a lot of drugs, mostly. I didn’t find any weapons, just a bunch of junk that would be useless down here. I held my compass in my hands, watching the needle spin. The compass would guide me to what I needed the most, and right now, I needed my friends more than anyone.
“Please,” I begged. “I need you guys. If you can reach me through the broken boundary, you have to tell me where my friends are.”
I wasn’t sure if Lindsey or Miranda would have the ability to reach the compass from the Ancestral Lands now that the divide was formed, but the needle suddenly stopped spinning. It pointed toward the door, and I held my breath as I rolled toward it.
