Page 60 of The Reveal
Yet when I got back from a very hot shower to chase away another rough night on a bloody mountain, they were waiting for me in a neat pile on my desk. Right next to the guns I cleaned and oiled before bed.
“Panic” isn’t the right word to describe howthatfelt. It’s not the wrong word either.
I’ve stopped throwing the deck at things.
Now, as I walk through these dark underground corridors that I’ll never find my way out of—either to see my brother at last or possibly meet my own death—it occurs to me that I’ve turned out like everyone else in my family after all.
I spent all these years certain that if they just decided they wanted it enough, they could kick these addictions of theirs. These compulsions. The drugs, the cards.
Yet here I am, covered in a vampire’s mark and jonesing for the very same deck of cards I always thought Gran was unreasonably attached to.
Not quite the moral high ground I’m used to inhabiting.
The vampire turns abruptly and pushes through an archway hung with what I decide to believe is fabric. Though what I think itmight actually be is skin. Once I clear the skin curtain and manage not to scream, I look in both directions. To one side, I see another long, cavernous hall like the one we came from. To the other, I can see figures moving in the distance, as if they are coming together for a grand old subterranean vampire party.
“You can go that way if you like,” says the woman in her arch, unpleasant voice. “I’m sure that they would love nothing more than to treat you like a buffet.”
I swallow down the response I’d like to make—because the time for unwise moves seems past—and smile at her. Guilelessly, I can only hope.
She sniffs, then jerks her head in a demand to follow her as she leads me to a door that looks exactly the way anyone who’s ever seen a scary movie would expect a dungeon door to look, only this one is real. I hear her murmur a few words in a language I don’t understand at all, and the door swings open.
I follow her down a set of stairs, when I would have said it was impossible to go any deeper. The steps themselves are roughly hewn stone. The walls are cold and damp.
Colderanddamper, that is.
When we get to the bottom of the stairs, I see that she’s taken me to a row of cells.
I immediately expect her to laugh and toss me into one, and I wonder if that was Ariel’s plan all along. Maybe I really am a fool who fell for age-old vampire tricks, just like everyone else. After all, why wouldn’t I? I’m nothing special. I’m just a twenty-five-year-old barista who somehow didn’t die three years ago like most of the people in this valley.
How could I possibly stand a chance next to vampires and werewolves andsorceresses? And everything else that goes bump in the night—or any other time of day they damn well please.
I brace myself for getting flung behind bars, which is at least notimmediatedeath. Anything that’s notimmediatedeath is a chance to fight. I tell myself that once or twice or maybe twenty-five times, but she makes no move toward me.
She leads me down the row of cells, and I dart anxious glances into each one as we pass. The first two look empty, but when we pass the third and I see a hint of movement, I realize that probably, the people—or creatures—are pressed back against the farthest wall, where the shadows are deepest.
There’s the sound of moaning. The air is thick with despair and the scent of something foul beneath it. As we pass the fourth cell, I see that the moaning is coming from one of the Kind. It’s chained to one of the near walls, a huge being that looks half beetle and half man and is covered in a green goo that it takes me a second to realize is probably its own blood.
It makes me feel like a monster that I look away.
I don’t look back at the cells again as we pass a few more. I can’t bear it.
But then, at the end of the row, my vampire guide abruptly stops.
She sniffs at me. It occurs to me that she’s literally taking in my scent, and Ariel’s mark, which must come with some kind of instructions, because she wheels around again and starts walking back the way she came.
And it takes me what feels like a vast, inordinate amount of time to turn my head and look inside the cell in front of me. So long that I have what feels like several eternities to understand how terrified I am to see what might be waiting for me there.
I pivot slowly.
I can’t breathe.
And I see him.
It’s Augie. It’s really Augie.
An earthquake of relief rattles through me, shaking my bones and the teeth inside my head and making my eyeballs hurt.
Only now that I’m looking at him right here in front of me do I let myself think about how long it’s been since I last laid eyes on him. This has been the longest stretch yet. And here, in this dank and vile place, I can admit to myself that it’s been brutal.
