Tearing Down the Wall (13 page)

“The f—” Vin begins, his face a mask of shock and confusion.

Ryan is at my side immediately. He takes my borrowed
, craptastic knife from my hand and uses it to quickly cut the ropes still holding me down. When I’m free, my eyes still fixated on the mess at my feet, he runs his hands over me. I hear him hiss when he finds the cuts on the inside of my wrist.

I shake my head weakly
, dragging my eyes to his. “It’s nothing. It happened while I was cutting myself free.”

“
What about your leg? It’s wet with blood. How bad is it?”

“
The blood’s from my wrist, it’s fine.”

Ryan lifts my arm into the air
, hovering my bleeding hand above my head as he rips the sleeve off his shirt to apply pressure to my cut.

“
It’s not fine for your wrist to be bleeding like this. You might have nicked the artery.”

“
I’m still doing better than he is,” I mutter, looking around Ryan at Marlow.

Andy is sitting on top of him. His eyes are closed and his hands are pressed into the open wounds he dug into the man
’s body. I can hear a hum coming from his motionless mouth—a mouth still dripping with blood and tissue. He’s not even a little bit worried about the men surrounding him, staring at him, and he shouldn’t be. No one is moving. So far, Ryan and I are the only ones who have really spoken since it happened.

That won
’t last.

“
Vin!” I shout.

His eyes snap to mine for the briefest of seconds
, but it’s all he needs. He’s back in control of himself. He scans the room, his eyes lingering on Andy for one long moment, then he’s all action.

“
You’re leaving,” Vin tells Marlow’s men.

“
Is he…” one of the men begins before becoming lost. “Is Andy…?”

“
A cannibal, yes. And if you don’t want to become the second course to his dinner, you’ll get your ass out of here now. Let this be a warning to you all. The Hive is not welcome here. This is my house, aligned with the cannibals and run by my rules, and anyone who has a problem with that or thinks they have the balls to rip it from my cold dead hands is welcome to give it their best shot. Now get out!”

They run. They don
’t even hesitate, and I don’t blame them one bit. Two of Marlow’s closest men, his most trusted allies, just went biblical on his face. There is no loyalty anymore. Leadership is dead and when you find yourself on an every-man-for-himself-type basis in the middle of a room full of enemies, psychos, and traitors, running is the smart choice. I would applaud them if Ryan would let me lower my hand.

“
I’m not going to die,” I tell him irritably.

“
Not if I can help it, no.”

“
Everyone out now,” Vin says sharply, already ushering his Guard toward the back of the room. “We gotta move.”

“
Where are we going?” Ryan asks, helping me to my feet.

“
The showers. We need to get in the tunnels now.”

There
’s shouting from outside. Men come running from every corner of the property, all of them heading for the group of guys that just left.

Vin
points out the window. “That is not going to end well for us. Marlow came here with at least thirty men. They won’t be afraid of a traitor, a flesh eater, and a girl when it dawns on them that they have us seriously outnumbered. They’re shaken but they’re not idiots.”

“
Andy!” Ryan shouts.

Andy looks up calmly
, his eyes creepy crystal clear. “I’m right behind you.”

The swarm outside is growing. Several men are already running toward the door
, about to make it inside.

“
Then you’re already dead,” Vin replies darkly.

We run for the back of the building. I don
’t know if Andy is behind us, but I know Marlow’s men are. I hear the door crash open, barked orders, the thunder of too many feet on the floor—too many to fight, too many to run from, but we do it anyway because every one of us is a child of the wild. We don’t know how to quit.

Vin
leads the way through the back halls, down the stairs and straight to the very familiar, very troubled shower room. It’s seen a lot lately, but somehow I know I’ll never see it again. I’ll never come back here, no matter who is running the show. This place is tainted. It’s dead to me, and when Vin throws open one of the cupboards and yanks out what I recognize as homemade explosives, I feel cotton candy light and sweet at the sight of it.

“
What are you planning to do with that?” Ryan asks, scowling at the bundle in Vin’s hand.

“
Blow the exit behind us.”

“
You’ll kill us.”

“
I know what I’m doing.”

“
Obviously not. That much clay will level half the building.”

Vin
is on the floor by the drain, circling it with brown lumps of explosives linked by a wiry black fuse. Most of his men are gone down the hole, running for their lives. If we’re smart, we’ll be right behind them, but it looks like the guys want to cat fight for a minute first.

“
We don’t have time for this,” I warn them.

“
Then get moving,” Vin tells me.

Ryan shakes his head angrily.
“The tunnels will collapse on us. We can’t outrun what you’re about to do.”

“
Get her out of here, Hyperion!”

“
Don’t kill her, Vincent!” Ryan shouts back.

Vin
stops to glare up at Ryan, a rare moment when the curtain is clearly raised on his emotions. He’s livid. “I told you, I know wha—”

“
That’s too much clay,” Andy says calmly, appearing in the doorway. “You’ll kill us all.”

Vin
drops the explosives on the ground, making Ryan flinch. “Fine! You do it then. I’m getting out of here. Lower her down to me.”

Vin
smoothly drops himself down the hole before the guys can respond. I turn to look at them, to tell them to forget the explosives, but I hesitate when I see Andy.

“
What’s in your hand?”

“
A heart.”

“
No.”

“
Marlow’s?” Ryan asks, eyeing Andy warily.

“
Yes.”

“
Why?” I demand.

“
For the ceremony.”

“
What ceremony?”

“
Do you really want to know?”

“
No,” I groan, feeling sick to my stomach.

“
Kitten!” Vin cries from the darkness at our feet. “Now or never!”

He
’s not kidding. The building is filled with the sounds of footsteps and shouts. They don’t know exactly where we are, but it won’t be long until they find us. If we’re leaving, we need to go now.

I look at Ryan.
“You’ll come down right behind me, right?”

“
On your heels.”

“
Kitten!”

“
Ryan.”

“
Go, Joss,” he tells me firmly. “Go to Crenshaw. I’ll meet you there.”

I lower my legs down into the hole. I do my best to not panic the second
Vin grabs them. My first instinct is to kick the hell out of him until he lets go, maybe because he’s kind of pissing me off lately, but also because I don’t like being touched by someone I can’t see. That’s how zombies get you: in the dark when your guard is down.

Ryan takes hold of my right hand
, my good one, and helps to lower me down into Vin’s arms. It feels weird. It feels wrong. When he lets go of my hand, his face disappearing from the circle of light above me, it feels like goodbye.

“
Come on.”

Vin
doesn’t hesitate to grab my hand and yank me forward. Once we’re running at a sprint he lets go so we can both run our hands along the walls of the tunnel for guidance. I want to yell at him that we need to wait for Ryan, but I know it’s better to get out of the way. Back there I’m a liability. With me gone he can concentrate on the dangerous, stupid, necessary thing he’s about to do.

“
Do these tunnels branch out?” Vin asks me.

I nod even though he can
’t see it in the pitch black we’ve dropped into. “Yeah, they do. A lot.”

“
Do you remember how to get out?”

“
Not really.”

“
Great. So somewhere down here your buddy Trent led all two hundred of my people into a maze he doesn’t know how to get out of?”

“
Trent can get out,” I assure him, grunting as I stumble on something in the dark.

I can feel
Vin backtrack, coming into my space. “You okay?”

“
Yeah, I’m fine.”

“
This is pointless,” he says bitterly. “We’ll never find our way out of here in the dark.”

“
Do you think we’re far enough away from the blast they’re about to set off?”

“
No.”

“
Oh.”

Vin
curses under his breath. I hear his feet shuffle through the water as he feels around the tunnel, looking for God knows what. The cannibals keep torches in the tunnels they use but they said they’d never been this far north before, and if they left one from their visit, we passed it back at the drain. No way I’m going back looking for that.

“
We should keep moving,” Vin says, taking my hand again.

I pull it back.
“And go where? Deeper into the tunnels with no clue where we’re going? We could accidentally circle back and end up right under the MOHAI again.”

“
We’re still under it now,” he says impatiently. “We haven’t run very far.”

“
We need to wait for Ryan and Andy.”

“
He told us to go. Besides, does your boy know how to get out of here? Can he see in the dark?”

“
No, but Andy can. He’s a cannibal. He knows the tunnels.”

Vin
chuckles darkly. “That son of a bitch. Don’t think I’m taking him out the second I get the chance.”

“
Take him out how?”

“
Not on a date, that’s for sure.”

“
You’re going to kill him?” I ask in amazement. “Why? He killed Marlow for you!”

“
He didn’t do it for me.”

“
It’s still done.”

“
Not the way I planned.”

“
Oh no!” I cry sarcastically. “Vin didn’t get his way. Poor baby.”

“
It makes a big difference how he did it. The difference between me taking over The Hive and The Hive chasing me into the sewers like a friggin’ rat.”

“
How would you ever have taken hold of The Hive?”

“
It doesn’t matter,” he replies with his signature composed calm. Whatever he’s mad about, he’s stowing it. For now. “It’s done. It’s all jacked, and now every member of my Pod is lost somewhere under the city.”

“
I told you, Trent can find his way out. You’ll get your precious followers back. Which reminds me.”

I take a swing at him. I
’m not aiming for his face, but I’m not worried if I hit it. When my fist connects with something solid and slightly meaty, I’m pretty sure I’ve hit him in the chest.

“
Ow!” he cries. “You punched me in the boob!”

“
You were going to let Marlow have me, you ass!”

“
Oh come on. No matter what, he wasn’t making it out of that building alive.”

“
Ass.”

“
Whatever. Be mad, but while we’re talking about betrayal, how did you know Andy was a cannibal?”

“
He ate Marlow, genius.”

“
Drop it. You knew before then, didn’t you?”

I take a slow
, silent step back from him. “Yes.”

“
How?”

“
How do you think? I came here with the cannibals. I met him in the underground where they live and I’d seen him in The Hive when I went to Marlow with your ring. I put two and two together.”

I take another step back.

“Where are you going?”

I freeze.
“Away from you. I don’t want to get punched in the boob.”