02 Seekers (32 page)

Seekers. It was difficult to reach, but not impossible. Many bruised elbows, knees, and knuckles later, I managed to pull the knife from my boot. I breathed a sigh of relief when I felt the cold steel against my hands and pulled it to chest level. I opened it quickly and started jabbing the knife into the pinprick of a hole that was my freedom. The knife didn’t do as much damage

against the stone as I would have liked, but I kept digging anyways. I figured if I dug long enough the stone would be forced to bend to my will; even a slightly bigger hole would mean more freedom to breathe freely. If I couldn’t dig myself out at least I could give myself more time. I hoped Alex would come searching for me, finding me like she always found me. I knew she wouldn’t let me down – not when it mattered.

Millimeter by precious millimeter, I etched away my prison. I had to rest occasionally, but I always stopped with my face close to the hole in order to catch the air, which smelled damp and thick. During one such rest, I heard the sound of hard boots on uneven stone. I focused on the sound, adrenaline rushing through me. Was it my captors back to finish the job? Or was it

someone who could help me? If I didn’t yell out, would I lose my only chance for survival? If I did, would they open my prison and finish the job?

I would take my chance. “Help!” I called in a whisper, my throat raspy and dry. I tried again.

“Help!!” The second time was better, louder. I heard the boots stop, then come closer. My

precious light from the hole was blocked for a couple of seconds that felt like an eternity. Then light, glorious grey light filtering through the storm clouds overhead, lit my prison. Or was it a tomb?

I scrambled out of the stone slab realizing I hadn’t been alone. My body had crushed some of the bones I had shared the tomb with, but others had survived. A hand had been near my leg, the remainder of a skull near my head. I shivered at the sight and looked away from the remains. Tall tombs of white and grey were opposite me in long lines. The stone coffin I had crawled from was only one tomb in a marching row of similar tombs. I had been left to die in a cemetery. I would have found it darkly fitting had I not been so terrified.

I clutched at the edge of the tomb, my head spinning, feeling weak and oxygen deprived. In such a state, it took me a moment to realize I wasn’t alone. In my desire to be free I had ignored my rescuer. It was a wonder I could have ignored him at all.

Frozen as he held the top of the stone coffin he had removed – his green eyes gloriously wide and surprised – was Daniel. His hair was shorter, and his face was tense, full of restless burning emotion I wasn’t sure he was aware of, but there was no mistaking him. He stared at me for a long time, his lips searching for words.

“Are you a ghost?” he finally asked.

I started laughing, unable to help it. His voice was so child-like and full of superstitious belief.

“Don’t be ridiculous. There’s no such thing as ghosts.”

“We
are
in a cemetery,” he replied in a defensive tone.

“I noticed,” I replied.

He finally released the heavy slab of stone and took a step closer. “You’re dead,” he told me seriously.

“Am not. Well, not yet,” I said.

His face lost some of the hardened emotion, and he brought me in close for a fierce hug. I clutched at him, all the worry and fear of the past weeks transferring through our touch.

“How? I mean, what? I mean…” he searched for words to express his confusion.

“Where am I?” I asked ignoring his confusion.

“A cemetery,” he said unhelpfully.

“I was down in the sewers and I stumbled into this room, then I was caught and everything went dark and I woke up here…Why didn’t they kill me?”

“The Seekers have learned to be creative in the ways we kill,” Daniel said darkly. “Killing indirectly keeps more from turning into a Nightstalker. Management likes to control who turns and when.”

“I’m usually a fan of creativity, but I think I’ll make an exception in this case,” I said eyeing the grave I had risen from.

He held me at arm’s length for a moment. His face told a story of apology. “I didn’t know it was you. I just heard them talking about putting another human here, and I came when I was free to do so. How long were you here?” His eyes were terrified at my answer.

“I don’t know…” I told him honestly.

He shook his head and looked behind him for a moment. I sensed him searching out the future, the tension in his body telling a story of caution. When he turned back to me, he had found the present again – and all the consequent worries we faced. “We have to go. They have to think you’re still here, or they’ll get suspicious.”

He moved the slab to cover the tomb and handed me the knife I had dropped when I’d escaped. I tucked it carefully in my boot, promising myself I would never go anywhere without it again, and he grabbed my hand to lead me down the rows of tombs. Fuzzy sounds, overwhelming pain, and thoughts closed in on my aching head, but I didn’t let it show. I was just glad it was his hand I was grasping instead of someone else’s, and that neither of us had died. Outside the rows of stone and marble of the cemetery was a street. It was uneven with cobblestone and only vaguely familiar. We had traveled farther than I had thought.

Daniel tugged on my hand to make me hurry. I stumbled after him until we came to streets I had come to know too well. Sharp turn after sharp turn left me dizzy and disoriented – I hoped it did the same for anyone else who might be curious about our rushed passing. He finally stopped pulling me along and ducked in a hidden alcove. He pressed me against the wall, to keep me hidden, while he checked the roads beyond us to make sure we weren’t followed.

“I don’t have long,” he said. “I have to be back by dark.”

I looked up at the grey sky where boiling clouds rolled in an endless stream. There was no sun to let me know of the time. “When is that?”

“Soon,” he replied.

“Don’t go back,” I begged.

He put his hand on my face. “I’m terrified that if I go back you’ll disappear, and this will have been some sort of awful dream to give me false hope but…”

I already saw the truth in his eyes. “You’re close to the truth.”

“Damian, the leader of the nest down here…”

“We met,” I said.

“I’ve gained his trust. He’s starting to let me on secrets…on missions he does personally for Marcus. I am close to finding out what Marcus is up to.”

“That doesn’t matter if you’re dead.”

“It matters,” he said. “More than you know…”

His eyes turned distant, and his sense of urgency increased at whatever he saw in the future. His hand moved to his stomach and inky black circled around in his eyes. He took long calming

breaths to stymie the darkness, but I saw how close it was to the surface. It was taking all his willpower to keep it at bay. His hand lingered at his stomach as he found his calm again. “If I don’t leave now they’ll find us here and that won’t be good for anyone. Meet me tomorrow, at noon, at the St. Louis church. You know where that is?”

He meant the church I had met Serenity in. Why did everyone want to keep meeting me there?

“Yes…”

“We’ll talk then,” he said.

“You promise you’ll be there?” I asked.

“Nothing could keep me,” he said.

I pulled the rock he had left me at the hotel from my pocket and forced it into his hand as a reminder. “Don’t forget,” I said.

He held the rock up to eye level. “I won’t,” he promised. He leaned forward and kissed me. It was a kiss that left me breathless, not only because it was amazing to kiss him after so many weeks apart, but because of the tumultuous, conflicting, emotions I felt through our touch. It was not a kiss of peace. He rested his forehead on mine for a minute, communicating his love through our touch then he pushed off the wall, rock in hand, and disappeared down the street.

He was gone before I could figure out what had just happened.

Chapter 17

I wasn’t aware of giving him plenty of time to disappear before stepping out from our little hiding place, but some part of my brain told me it was a good idea. It gave me time to catch up to the situation. It gave me time to realize I had actually touched him again, felt his skin on mine, his lips; had felt what it meant to be held by him again. It felt so surreal and much too temporary.

Was I still really in the tomb and was dreaming all this? I pinched my skin to be sure. It hurt enough to let me know I wasn’t dreaming. And surely if I were dreaming, I would feel much

better about seeing him? The knots in my stomach felt entirely too realistic.

The weirdness of his sudden departure and our abrupt meeting sunk in. I understood that he felt obligated to find out what Marcus was up to, and that he wanted to stop the killing, but why was he so passionate about staying? We could have left and started over in another city – together.

There were other options – there were always other options. I remembered Serenity and her

words to me in the church. I had forgotten them around the panic of being locked in the tomb, but they flooded back in horrible detail. Was he hiding something else from me? And how would I tell him about Margaret and Jackson when I saw him again?

My moments in the tomb replayed in my head as a light rain started. It had been more

frightening than almost dying when I had been shot. I wasn’t much one for irrational fears, but I had just found a rationale for claustrophobia. Goosebumps that had nothing to do with the rain erupted down my spine at the thought. I certainly didn’t want to see a closed in space again…

ever.

My feet started their slow way back to Alex, figuring she would be worried, though my brain was trapped in the alcove we had said ‘goodbye’ in. With my slow pace, it took me a while to find the theater. When I saw the green awning and white building I was relieved, more relieved than I had thought I would be. The theater had turned into a safe haven, somewhere the bad guys couldn’t find me. I felt almost as if were my fortress against the world, my interim ‘castle in the woods’. Three steps up the metal stairs, someone called my name from behind me.

“Clare!” Spider and Ethan ran over, their faces full of concern. Spider’s face was stretched tight in his worry, and his eyes actually burned with fear. Ethan was at a more reasonable level of concern, though he too was deeply worried.

Spider caught me staring at him – the burning look in his eyes way too familiar – and arranged his face carefully. “You look like hell,” he told me. “Where have you been? Alex is frantic.”

“Crap. Was I gone that long?” I asked.

“Almost six hours,” Ethan confirmed.

“Is she here?” I asked them.

“Yeah, her and Eli came back to see if you were here. I think they are about to head out again.

Cora, Sprint and Twitch are out looking for you in a different part of town. I should probably go get them…” Spider said. His whole body was a study in uncomfortable. He shifted and twitched almost as much as Twitch did when he thought someone was going to talk to him. I tried to listen to Spider’s thoughts, but he kept me out with technical, computer stuff I couldn’t even begin to translate. “I’ll catch up with you later,” he added.

“Okay…”

He spun around and left again. I looked at Ethan for an explanation but Ethan was equally

puzzled. He shrugged at my unasked question and made a face of confusion.

“How come Alex was frantic?” I asked Ethan as we started up the stairs.

Had she been close to turning at my near death experience?

“She said she just had a bad feeling in her stomach, and knew something was wrong. Eli trusted her feeling and asked us to go look for you.”

“Oh.”

“What happened? Where did you go?” Ethan asked.

“Alex will be pissed if she hears my story second,” I told him.

“She’s going to be pissed either way,” Ethan muttered.

He held the heavy door open for me, and followed me in to the dark hall. We were silent as we crossed the threshold of the hall and made our careful way down the creaky, dark stairs. I heard him thinking about my disappearance, trying again to work out why I was so weird, and why it mattered. He kept his questions to himself, though, and I didn’t try to answer his unspoken questions. I was too exhausted and much too worried.

At the door to the stage I knew I was in trouble. I could tell from the expression on Alex’s face and the way she paced from stage left to stage right like a lonely player in a particularly restless, upsetting play. She had an audience of one to the madness of her play, but it wasn’t the sort of audience that appreciated the drama. Eli sat out of her way on the second row back.

When I walked in, I sensed they had just stopped talking about something. Alex noticed me

immediately. She saw the added dirt and ripped clothes, perhaps even some of the blood from the people in the garbage shoot. Her eyes widened then narrowed dangerously. She crossed her arms and one eyebrow rose to her hairline as she waited for an explanation. She didn’t have to say anything; what she wanted was written large in Times New Roman on her forehead.

“If anyone wants to leave, now would be the time,” I said to Ethan and Eli.

Neither moved, but they both eyed Alex’s change of expression in trepidation. They only knew the half of how deadly her glare could get. I almost felt sorry for them, almost as sorry as I felt for myself.

“Beginning to end. Complete story,” she said in clipped tones when it was obvious they weren’t leaving.

I took a deep breath, knowing how useless it would be to try and avoid her questions. Alex had a way of finding the truth. She would get her way. I gave her the full story, editing some for Ethan’s sake – he didn’t need to know about the unburied dead or the hopelessness of the people in the tunnels. While it was something I would never forget, he didn’t need the same burden burned into his memories. I watched Alex’s face as the story progressed, noticing how it shifted from irritated worry to downright rage.

As my voice trailed away she found hers. “You had no right – no right! – to run off and do that!