Page 12 of Lost and Bound
I had another twenty-four hours, at the outside, tomakeit mean something.
Escaping was the obvious way. Get out, redeem myself. Do something with my life. I rolled my eyes at myself, because that obviously wasn’t fucking happening.
And then my eyes popped open again.
Why the fuck not? What did I—what did either of us—have to lose? The guards were sloppy, not even checking on prisoners who might or might not be dead. They weren’t watching the inside of the cell, which meant anything we did to prepare for them would go unobserved.
Alone, I hadn’t stood a chance. But with him? I doubted their tasers would have any goddamn effect on him at all. And he’d overpowered me without the slightest difficulty. The guards were stronger than I was—but not stronger than him. If I could lure one into his reach, the guard would go down. I was sure of it. And if another came running, surely I could tackle him, get him into my cellmate’s range too. Even if I got tased, so what? I’d recover from it pretty quickly. I always had before. One of the guards might have a key to the collar and chain.
It was worth a shot.
And it was the only chance we’d ever get.
The tiniest flare of hope, like a flicker of a candle in the darkness…more than I’d had for longer than I could think about.
I rolled over onto my back. My cellmate had taken up his usual position, sitting with his back to the wall and his legs stretched out in front of him. I pushed myself up on my elbows.
After a moment, he turned and looked at me.
“Will you tell me your name?” I asked. It wasn’t what I’d meant to say, but—I needed to know. I needed at least that much of a connection.
“No.”
“Why not? What’s wrong with me knowing? It’s not like I have anyone to tell.”
“No,” he repeated, in a tone of complete finality.
He regarded me steadily, unblinkingly, out of those unsettling, glowing pale eyes.
I cleared my throat. “Okay. Fine. Keep your anonymity. You should have some sunglasses and a hat.” He didn’t even crack a smile, and my attempt at one died on my lips. Jesus, tough crowd. Not that I’d had much of a reputation for being hilarious even before I got myself landed in this hellhole. “Look,” I started again. And then stopped. How would I ease into the idea? “We should try to escape tomorrow,” I blurted out. Yep. Very smooth.
A pause. He stared at me. “No.”
What the fuck did he mean, just…no? A proposal like that merited at least something! “Did someone steal your vocabulary when I wasn’t looking?”
That earned me the faintest, most barely-there upwards tick of one corner of his mouth. “No.”
Dammit. I sat up all the way, leaning in toward him in a way that was probably suicidal. “We can escape,” I said urgently. “Together. I can get them into your reach, lure them, distract them somehow. You can take them down. Right? Don’t try to tell me you couldn’t. That’s why they have you chained out of reach of the door.”
He sighed, and said, in the tone of someone humoring an idiot, “Yes. And I’d still be chained out of reach of the door. And without me, you’d never get out of here alive. That plan leaves us both fucked. It’s not going to happen.”
“But there has to be a key to—”
“The fucking warlocks have it,” he growled, his eyes flashing. Yeah, he hated them at least as much as I did.
“Are you sure?”
He glared at me. That glare, out of those glowing eyes and over that ferocious nose, could’ve terrified a much braver man than me. It was a testament to how desperate I was that it didn’t even faze me.
“Yes. I’m sure. One of them always comes along to unlock the collar from the chain when they bring me out of here. It’s opened with a key and with magic.”
I dropped back on my hands, tipping my head up to stare at the ceiling. Well, fuck.
I tipped my head back again to look at him. “Have you ever tried to break the chain?” The look he gave me after that little bit of stupidity could’ve melted the concrete floor. “Okay,” I mumbled. “Obviously you have. But what if you…” I swallowed. I had one more idea. One more stupid, fucked-up idea I shouldn’t even consider, but that still sounded better than lying down again and waiting for him to lose control and kill me. He’d been starved, and whatever they’d done to him to make him what he was, he needed food and he needed blood. Lots of both, probably. And he’d had nothing. The fact that I was still alive was a testament to his self-control, but that would have a limit; he’d admitted it.
I forced myself to go on. “What if you took my blood? Most of it. Not—all of it. Enough that I’d still have a chance. You said my blood made you stronger. Maybe strong enough to break—”
“No.”
