Page 81 of Such a Feral Little Lamb
“What about him?” Dane asks. He searches the faces around us. After a moment, he shakes his head. “He’s gone, too, isn’t he?”
I nod. I can’t trust myself to speak, and Dane sees that. He presses his lips together and turns his head away.
“You didn’t see him?” Nia asks. Impatience crackles around her like lightning, but I can see she’s trying to remain understanding.
“No. Just Otto and Autumn. I kept thinking—” Dane’s breath catches, and he looks at me, Blake, and Rae. “I kept thinking we’d all end up down there. We’d die down there.”
“How did you get away?” I ask. Maybe Mason can too. Whoever took Dane has to have taken him. And I don’t think the people here would hurt Mason; he’s one of them, after all.
“I was tied up. Managed to loosen the bindings after he killed Otto. He wasn’t watching me so closely. But then he brought Autumn, and—” Dane shakes his head. “I wanted to get her out. I tried. She distracted him and I ran.”
Rae makes a sound that I think is a sob. When I look at her, her eyes are shining.
“I know. I’m sorry. I should have tried to get her out,” Dane says. He looks miserable. “I fucked up.”
“We’ll go search,” Nia says to Rae. “There are only so many places they can be underground. We’ll find them.”
Rae nods. She clearly has no intention of staying behind, and neither do I.
But when I get to my feet, Dane tugs at my trousers. “Don’t leave,” he says, and Blake throws me a disgusted look as he tries to give Dane the protein bar he’s found. “Please.”
I look at Nia and Rae helplessly. “We’ll search everywhere,” Nia says.
I shove my hand through my curls, frustrated. We don’t have much time. The train will be here in a few hours, and if we’re not all on it—
“We’ll find them,” Rae says. She knows the deadline as well as I do.
“Yeah, okay.”
I watch them file out of the room, all of them a little more determined, while I just feel distressed. If Dane was there, and Otto and Autumn were there, but Mason wasn’t… Where could he be?
Dane eats and Blake takes him to clean up, and I pace the room we’re staying in for the next half hour or so. If I leave now, I could still catch up. The sewer system can only go so far.
“The train will be here in a few hours,” Blake says as he and Dane come back into the room. He has Dane’s dirty clothes balled up in his hands, and he drops them next to Dane’s pack.
“We have to hope they get back in time,” Dane says.
“Rae, at least,” Blake says and at least has the courtesy to pull a face when I look sharply at him. “Fuck knows what’s happened to Autumn by now.”
“Why did he kill Otto?” I ask.
Dane misses a step.
Blake scowls at me, furious. “Why would you ask—”
“Just… I don’t know. You were taken first. He’s not getting rid of you all one by one.” I shake my head. “Why did he even take you all in the first place?”
“We saw the stuff,” Blake hisses. He turns to Dane. “It was someone from the town, right? The necromancer? I bet they’re working with the people here. If that magic shit is even rea—”
He stops mid-word.
He has to stop mid-word.
He has to stop mid-word because Dane shoves a knife into his throat, then grabs Blake’s shoulder and twists the blade, uncaring of the blood that spurts from the wound and all over the room.
Adrenaline surges through my system and I lift my bat. “What the f—”
“You don’t want to do that, Isaac,” Dane says. He pulls the knife out and lets go of Blake. He topples to the floor, and from the way he falls, I know he’s already dead.
