Chapter 3 Fall

I gasped, my eyes flying open, but all I saw was darkness and the swaying ground far below me. My head was hanging upside down. The blood rushed to my skull, making my vision pulse with black spots.

I wasn't walking. I was being carried.

Someone had me thrown over their shoulder like a sack of concrete.

"Put me down!" I croaked. My voice was a broken rasp, barely audible over the clanking noise that surrounded us.

I tried to kick, to thrash, but my limbs felt like they were made of lead. The cold had seeped into my muscles, stiffening them. My left arm, the one the Butcher had slashed, was a rod of burning agony. Every step the giant carrying me took sent a fresh spike of fire radiating from the wound.

"Quiet," a voice rumbled. It vibrated through the metal plating pressed against my cheek. "Or I’ll break your legs to stop the squirming."

I froze.

I blinked hard, trying to clear the dizziness. I looked at the thing carrying me.

It was a suit of armor. Black, matte, and terrifyingly massive. I was draped over a pauldron that felt like a block of ice. I couldn't see a face, just the dark metal and the red glow reflecting off the polished surfaces.

Where am I?

I lifted my head, fighting the nausea.

We weren't in the subway tunnel. We weren't in the alley.

We were walking down a corridor that belonged in a nightmare.

The walls were carved from black stone, rising fifty feet high to a vaulted ceiling lost in shadow. Torches flickered in iron sconces along the walls, but they didn't burn with orange fire. They burned crimson. The light they cast was bloody and thick, making the shadows seem to writhe and stretch.

It was freezing. I could see my own breath puffing out in white clouds every time I exhaled.

"Please," I whispered, the terror clawing at my throat. "I need a doctor. I'm bleeding."

"We know," a second voice said from behind us.

I craned my neck. Another armored figure was walking three paces back. His helmet was down, the V-shaped visor glowing with a faint, internal red light. He was carrying my bag, my cheap canvas tote with my keys and my granola bars dangling from one clawed gauntlet.

He lifted his head, sniffing the air.

"You're leaking," he said. "It's making us… restless."

"What are you?" I sobbed. "Where are you taking me?"

"To the kennels," the one carrying me grunted. "Where stray dogs go."

He turned a corner sharply, and my hip slammed against the stone wall. I cried out, the impact jarring my teeth. He didn't even stumble. He was impossibly strong, carrying my weight as if I were nothing more than a jacket.

We passed an archway, and for a split second, I saw out into a courtyard.

The red moon was there. Huge. Hanging low over a landscape of jagged black spires and snow that looked like crushed rubies.

This wasn't Ashwick. This wasn't Earth.

I'm hallucinating, I told myself, squeezing my eyes shut. The knife had poison on it. Or I hit my head in the tunnel. I'm lying in a puddle of dirty water in the subway, bleeding out, and my brain is firing off its last, crazy neurons.

But the pain was too real. The smell was too sharp.

The guard carrying me stopped.

We were in front of a massive iron door. It looked heavy enough to hold back a tank.

"Open," he commanded.

The door groaned. It swung inward on rusted hinges as if pushed by an invisible hand.

The smell that rolled out hit me.

It was the smell of rot. Of damp straw and unwashed bodies. Of fear that had soured and turned stale.

"No," I whimpered, thrashing again. "No, please, not in there!"

The guard ignored me. He marched into the dark.

We were descending now. The stairs were steep and slick with moisture. I could hear water dripping somewhere in the distance.

The temperature dropped even further. It was a damp, bone-eating cold that made my teeth chatter violently.

"Put me down!" I screamed, panic finally overriding the shock. I hammered my fist against the guard's backplate. It hurt my hand more than it hurt him. "Let me go!"

He stopped.

He didn't set me down gently.

He leaned forward and shrugged his shoulder.

I fell.

I hit the ground hard. It was stone, covered in a thin layer of filthy straw. The impact knocked the wind out of me. I rolled, gasping, curling into a ball to protect my injured arm.

I looked up.

We were in a cell. It was small, damp, and barred on three sides with thick iron rods. The fourth wall was solid rock.

The guard stood over me, looming like a tower of black steel. He reached up and slid his visor open.

His face was pale. His eyes were solid red orbs. He smiled, and I saw the fangs again. They were too long. Too sharp.

"Enjoy the hospitality, meat," he sneered.

He turned and walked out.

The iron gate slammed shut.

"Wait!" I scrambled to the bars, gripping the cold iron. "You can't leave me here! I haven't done anything!"

The guards didn't look back. They marched away, their footsteps fading into the gloom.

I was alone.

I slid down the bars until I hit the floor. I pulled my knees to my chest, burying my face in my arms.

"Wake up," I whispered to myself, rocking back and forth. "Just wake up, Victoria. Wake up in your bed. Pickles is hungry. You have a shift at six."

But I didn't wake up.

I sat there for what felt like hours. The silence of the dungeon was heavy, broken only by the dripping water and the sound of my own ragged breathing.

My arm was throbbing with a dull, sickening heat. I peeled back the sleeve of my jacket, hissing as the fabric stuck to the dried blood.

The cut was deep. The edges were angry and red. It needed stitches. It needed antibiotics.

I looked around the cell. It was empty save for a bucket in the corner that smelled heinous and a pile of damp straw that was likely infested with things I didn't want to think about.

I wasn't the only one here.

I could feel it. The same prickling sensation I had felt in the alleyway before the Butcher appeared.

I crawled to the bars on the side of the cell, peering into the adjacent cage.

It was dark, but I could make out a shape huddled in the corner.