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Where Decebal and I were going tonight wasn’t the sort of place I ever wanted Shatter to step foot in.
We parked before a daunting-looking building. It was out of the city and far from prying eyes, a place so isolated that everyone else could forget it existed.
That’s what everyone preferred to do with things like this—things that didn’t fit.
Hide them away and pretend they don’t exist.
Shut the doors and close your eyes…
It was mid-afternoon when we arrived, and the weather was miserable. Huge, angry waves smashed into the rocks and beach below, and the wind howled.
Appropriately ominous, I thought, as I looked at the huge building inset just a bit on the cliff edge. It looked like an old fortress, forest on one side, ocean on the other.
There was nowhere in that building where crashing waves couldn’t be heard, or the tang of ocean salt and washed-up seaweed wasn’t present in the air, strong enough to taste. Out here it blended with the damp earth and forest that stretched behind.
I knew that, and didn’t know that all at the same time. I had no memories, just a certainty that it was so.
I also knew the darkness within. The thick walls of stone. Cages of metal designed to keep alpha auras contained.
When we stepped up to the front doors, we were met by guards. I let Decebal deal with the formalities, instead staring up at the weathered walls.
We were made to sign a waiver, show our IDs, and given a long speech about safety and regulations that I tuned out entirely before we were accepted inside. I don’t know who Decebal was pretending we were. Probably should though, in case they asked. It was alright though, I could just act stupid and let Decebal do the talking.
Dusk had been with us when we’d come last, and he’d hated every moment. I’d found a strange solace here.
It was cold inside—no amount of heating could truly warm up the bones of a place like this. But cold was a sanctuary after the harshest of burns…
For Dusk, this place was the face of an old enemy.
For me it was an old friend.
Our footsteps echoed with strange familiarity as we entered a hallway with dim, flickering lights that looked out of place against the stone. Even the electricity in here struggled to contend with the atmosphere, with a building that was truly a living, breathing creature. The faint metallic smell of old metal bars and aged electrics that struggled to survive lurked in every inch of this place.
It wasn’t long before I heard the faint howling from within. Screams and cries; the sweet serenade of insanity. It was an old companion, a dream always just out of reach… I’d never quite been there, I didn’t think. Always yearning, yet never arriving. Not like some, whose world was washed away, and when the tide drew back the lines in the sand were gone, completely.
All payments.
All debts.
The immortal vice, unbound at last…
“You alright?” Decebal asked, glancing at me.
I realised I’d started humming.
“Yup.”
More than.
I did quite like it here, and I’d forgotten the comfort it offered. I’d never found that again—well, not until Shatter, anyway.
I smiled at the thought of Shatter, and the guard who was leading us into the gaping mouth of my oldest companion gave me a strange look—likely because I’d begun humming again.
He didn’t recognise me. Dusk and I were completely different people than we had been before, and Decebal had checked thestaff. They turned over guards far too often for that to be a concern.
He led us up some stairs and down a few more hallways, and all the while the howls and screams of prisoners grew. As we stepped through a colonnade, I peered down at a courtyard. It was empty right now, broad, with large metal structures, for exercise. And the gates on either end were barred. It was all made with the same metal. The kind that stopped even the strongest of alphas, auras and all.
What a cost it must have been, building a place like this. It’s why the prison was a fortress made of stone, I was sure. So they could minimise the amount of metal they needed.
