Stolen (2 page)

Wow.

She stole one last look at Cayne’s van, then closed her eyes. She was still sweating like a kid at fat camp, and her mind felt like it was wrapped in a wad of Bubble Yum. If she was going to be any good for Cayne or herself, she needed to calm down. To think strategically.

Nathan had said Cayne was going to be killed. He had made the accusations, too, but she’d worry about that later. For now she was rolling with her conviction: Cayne was good; she knew he was. Cayne was good to her, so she would fight for him.

Fighting for him involved playing every card right. It was hard to contain her emotions, but she’d faced harder. She endured the rest of the ride by looking at Cayne’s van and focusing her thoughts on him. She wondered again how he’d been captured, what state he was in now. Thinking about that gave her a clawing, hopeless feeling.

After a long time on the tiny road—a long time without houses, headlights, or any other sign of life—Cayne’s van turned into the woods, and hers followed. They rolled into a tunnel of limbs and leaves, and all was dark.

Chapter 2

In the darkness, she saw a speck of light. It ballooned as they drove closer, until finally it materialized, a serious-looking limestone sign that read “X Enterprises.”

Her mysterious prick of a tour guide turned around in his seat, lips pulling into a smug prick smile. “This is our North American base of operation.”

Base of operation?

“It’s just a front,” he said, blasé, like the universe hadn’t gone insane. Talking about the ‘base of operation’ made him sit a little straighter, talk a little louder. “The business is defense contracting. Basically, designing weapons.”

Julia blinked at him, unsure what to do with that information. Was she supposed to be impressed? Forget about Cayne and put on a Stained Pride t-shirt? Whatever the guy had expected, he must not have been getting it; he frowned and sat a little straighter still. “It’s a billion-dollar a year business, owned completely by the Brotherhood.”

Despite everything, Julia let out a
pfft
. Brotherhood. As if women had no part in anything. She hadn’t planned on speaking, but she couldn’t help herself. “And what exactly is the Brotherhood?”

Nathan, who had started driving again, glanced into the rear view. “You and I and the other Chosen.”

Chosen?
“I thought it was Stained.”

His lip curled. “We’re only called that by our enemies.”

Enemies like Cayne. She pushed the crazy thought away. “And what exactly are Chosen?”

He frowned into the mirror. “I understand you have questions, but I can’t answer all of them right now.”

“Can you answer any of them?” Her heart hammered her ribs. “I deserve to know why you took my…why you took my friend Cayne. You can’t just kidnap people without any evidence. It isn’t fair. And trust me, what you think you know about him is wrong.”

“It isn’t fair.” The words were sarcastic, and loaded with fury. “Did you hear that, Andrew?” Nathan said, glancing into the rear view, at the guy beside her. “What we’re doing to the Nephilim isn’t
fair
.”

Julia cut her eyes at Andrew the Englishman, but his face was carefully blank.
Kinda
like a solider during the changing of the guards or something. She filed the detail away for future dissection and pushed her tangled hair behind her shoulders. She fixed her eyes on Nathan’s in the mirror.

“Do you hate all Nephilim or just my friend? Because you don’t even know him. He was the one who got me to D.C. To find
you
.”

“Be quiet.
Now
.” The face in the mirror tightened; his breath puffed out, and Julia felt a sort of mental pressure. The sensation was similar to how she’d felt when Cayne tried to order her around, back when they’d first teamed up—except it was easier to shake off.

Nathan took another breath, probably noticing she didn’t succumb to his little voodoo act, and in an easier voice, he said, “Be patient. You’ll get your explanations.”

“When?”

He broke eye contact in the mirror, effectively dismissing her, and Julia pressed her lips together, suddenly struggling not to cry.

She was sending bad vibes toward the driver’s seat when they rounded a curve and her universe shifted. She saw a crystalline pyramid gleaming in the center of a moonlit field. The thing was enormous.
Gargantuan
. James Cameron big.

And yeah… she’d definitely
freakin
’ seen the thing before—in a
freakin
’
dream
. Her throat closed as she realized…she was really, truly, seriously having prophetic dreams. Visions.
Both
. Which meant two terrible things: a) she was even weirder than she’d thought before and b) all of this must mean something. Something that… Well, it probably wouldn’t lead her down a road that ended with her and Cayne living next door to each other in little brick apartments, walking to college classes together and…

She squeezed her eyes shut.

To have seen the Stained prick, Nathan, and also to have seen this huge glass pyramid…

She wrapped her arms around herself and wanted to wail—because suddenly she remembered she’d dreamed about other things, too.

She bit her lip, remembering a dream she’d had at the Peabody Hotel—the one where Cayne had been flying over the pyramid and the sun had melted him like a wax doll. There’d been the dream where
she’d
had wings. But they weren’t like Cayne’s. Hers had been white and
über
fluffy. More like angel’s wings. In that dream, the pyramid had stretched so high she couldn’t see its peak.

What about the dream where Cayne had been—
oh, shit
—nailed up on a billboard?

She stared at the pyramid with dread, willing it to be imagined, to disappear, and suddenly…it did.

Julia blinked twice and realized they were approaching a wall—a big wall, right in front of them, blocking her view of everything but the pyramid’s gleaming tip. It was easily two stories tall and made of some kind of cement. The van slowed next to a thin metal security tower with a keypad, and she watched Nathan’s arm stretch out the window, his fingers press a glowing blue screen the size of a Kindle. Then a red light flashed and the wall ripped open. Like,
ripped
open—Hollywood-style.

The moment they shot through, the wall slammed shut with earthquake-like force, shaking the van and jarring Julia to her ribs.
     
They drove through a thick metal gate and cleared a wire fence that flickered with electricity. They passed a checkpoint guarded by burly men and strong-looking women in black jumpers. Then the pyramid was visible again, out to her left, standing alone in the middle of a field that overlooked a valley, where three mini skyscrapers rose from the grassy ground.
 
    
She glanced out at the path in front of them and realized she no longer saw the van that carried Cayne.

Before she had a chance to freak out over that, her van hooked around a big, square parking lot and rolled onto a worn grass path that led toward the pyramid. Looking at it straight on, she could see how enormous it really was. Twenty stories? Thirty? A little gasp escaped her lips, and Nathan turned around in his seat.

He smiled. “Welcome home.”
     

Home. What a freaking joke. For a long second, Julia considered lunging out of her seat and slapping him. But she had Cayne to think about, and assuming Cayne was in the other van and it was still around here somewhere, she might need the douchebag Stained to help her get to him. The realization made her feel like hurling, but there it was. She folded her hands and bit her tongue, feeling eerily like a child on a group home field trip.
Put your finger over your mouth and sit still until we get out of the bus.

The path was maybe half a mile long, and it led into a cement tunnel that clearly went beneath the pyramid. Darkness fell over the van, quickly replaced by flashing amber lights that normally would have made Julia feel dizzy and claustrophobic. As it was, her mind was getting used to the knowledge that
these
people were Stained and Cayne had been
stolen
.

She’d meant to hold her tongue a little longer—to play it cool and brainstorm as they drove—but all of a sudden panic was on her and she couldn’t take it any longer.

“Where are we going?” she asked Nathan, shrilly, “and where did you come from earlier? Why were you there?” Had they been following her or Cayne—or both? Or neither? “I want to know where Cayne is.” She’d never needed him so much.

Nathan’s eyes flicked over hers, then returned to the creepy cement tunnel road. “The half-demon is being taken to a holding cell, where he will—”

“Like a
prison
?”

Nathan shrugged. “If that’s what you want to call it.”

“Do you have a…jury?” It was a desperate question, and it didn’t even warrant a glance from the van’s driver, who simply tightened his hands on the wheel and shifted the van down a gear.

They began a slow, steep trek down the levels of the underground parking garage, and Julia swallowed tears. She wished with all her might that she could rewind time and tell herself not go to Washington. Or to do
something
when they kidnapped her, other than just let herself and Cayne be taken to this place.

She remembered his words from back on that bench in Salt Lake City. She’d been freaking out; he’d been holding her hands.
I’ve heard about a meeting place for your kind. I’ll keep you safe till we find it.

Oh, God.
Cayne
—her Cayne. He didn’t deserve this—this penalty for helping her.

Fear for him threatened to overwhelm her; it let up only for a clawing nervousness too horrible to name. A horrid doubt. One she shoved away because she couldn’t take it—and there wasn’t any reason to. She
knew
Cayne. Knew him like she
didn’t
know these people. These…Stained.

Too soon, the one named Nathan was parking. Englishman Andrew threaded his hand through her arm, and her legs were moving her out of the van like she intended to go with these strange people, and she
was
going with them. Through a pair of metal doors guarded by what had to have been an African man, with a tattoo on his eye and a piercing in his cheek. Past a tall woman with a tight brown bun holding a machine gun. To a huge steel elevator whose doors jerked shut behind her.

Alone with Nathan and the guy who had her arm.

“I’m Andrew,” he said, almost polite.

She shifted her shock-dulled gaze to Nathan, and he rolled his eyes. “Unbelievable.” His disgust was evident in every syllable.

“What?” she heard herself say.

“It’s vile,” he said. “That you’re actually worried for him.”

She stood there a second, thinking it had been a long time since they got on the elevator and how deep was it going and was Cayne down there. Her brain caught up a half a second later and brought rage with it.

“Do you have any friends?”

He looked surprised, and then defensive. “That’s not your business.”

“I thought so.” It was her turn to be smug—to
pretend
to be smug. “And you’re wrong about him, by the way. He has no problem with
St
— Chosen. He would never hurt them.”

“I’m not wrong.” He said it with some swagger, but she could sense his anger. Quiet anger.

Clearly he believed what he said.