The Dawn of Dae (Dae Portals Book 1) (22 page)

He left me alone in the basement, and not long after he disappeared, the lights went out.

The ruins of the staircase smoldered, but it didn’t take long for the dim glow to fade. Thin slivers of light showed through the deteriorating floor above. Wood creaked overhead, and I heard Arthur snap curses.

A soft murmur of voices answered him.

Logically, I knew the basement lights did nothing to change the temperature, but in the darkness, my shivering intensified to a teeth-chattering shake. The blanket did nothing to ward away the chill.

“Stupid,” I mumbled.

I should have at least pretended to cooperate so I could plan another escape. Instead, I had confirmed my death sentence.

“Honesty is the best policy, my ass.”

My voice remained a hoarse whisper, and judging from the way the conversation continued overhead, no one heard my outburst.

I stared in the direction of the stairwell. I wasn’t exactly a short woman, but in my condition, I had no chance of escaping the basement. Even if I could reach the door, I wouldn’t be able to pull myself up. My abused hands wouldn’t support my weight, not after tearing up my fingertips scaling the warehouse wall.

A single plank of wood, a rusty nail, and ash didn’t leave me with a whole lot of options. How long would I last before I cracked or I died?

All I knew was one thing: I wasn’t going to let anyone take away my freedom to decide my fate for myself, no one—not Kenneth, not Rob, and certainly not the dae upstairs.

I would choose to die long before I agreed to sacrifice everything I had worked so hard to build for myself.

I didn’t need much. My plank of wood with its rusty nail was enough.

Pain woke me from a dream where I slithered on the ground as a snake before taking to the air as a bird. I had a dim recollection of something dealing with a cat, too, but I couldn’t remember exactly what. I drifted, not quite awake but not quite asleep, either.

My nose itched, and while I longed to scratch it, I couldn’t move. The sensation spread and secured me to consciousness, and as I gathered my wits, I realized I had a talent for failure. I lived, which meant my efforts to scratch open my wrists hadn’t been enthusiastic enough or Arthur had figured out something was wrong before I could die. It didn’t matter; I had survived.

Disappointment and relief waged a brief war with each other, and neither emerged the victor.

I had to concentrate to pinpoint what was wrong with me; my ribs and chest throbbed, although I had no memory of what I had done to myself. Shouldn’t my wrists have hurt the most? I had cut them open—or I had tried to. Had I dreamed of trying to kill myself?

Hypothermia did strange things to people, and I remembered shivering on the basement’s damp, concrete floor. Was it cold enough for hypothermia to set in? Was I cold enough I no longer thought I was freezing?

I’d seen it before in winter. In the fringe, there were too many who ventured out in the night insufficiently dressed. Someone would find them in the morning, lying in some gutter. Sometimes they stripped themselves of their clothes, leaving them scattered around their bodies.

If I was suffering from the cold, I was still coherent, which put me ahead in the game. Heat smothered me and made it difficult to breathe, but my teeth weren’t chattering, nor was I shaking helplessly. I didn’t have any urges to throw off my clothes, either.

Was I even wearing clothes? I considered checking, but I doubted I’d like the answer and had no reason to believe Arthur would have dressed me after going through the effort of getting rid of my things. The itching, which had intensified, robbed me of my ability to distinguish much from feel alone.

The only way to learn where I was would be to open my eyes, which I deemed as too much effort. I didn’t need to take inventory of where I was quite yet; I had other things to worry about first.

I thought it through, resisting the urge to sigh as I considered each possibility in turn. I remembered attempting suicide to rob Arthur of what he had planned for me, which led me back to the two most-likely scenarios.

Arthur had likely checked on me after I had lost consciousness and stopped the bleeding, or I hadn’t done a thorough enough job.

If I had failed to gouge open my wrists, I could guess why. My trembling had probably been my downfall. A steady hand was needed for success, and while the rest of me had been more than ready, my body had betrayed me once again.

One day, I’d catch a break. One day, I’d make a plan, execute it, and have it work as intended. I had done well enough in the warehouse, although Arthur had ruined my efforts.

The dae was really pissing me off. I wanted to strangle the life out of him as payback for what he was putting me through. Before him, my life had been tolerable, unpleasant in some regards, but well within my ability to manage.

By kidnapping me, Arthur had quite probably ruined everything I had built. Allowing me to die would have been the merciful thing to do.

Even if I escaped, I’d likely be a fugitive, and Kenneth would delight in using my downfall to his benefit. My best bet would be to make a strategic retreat to his place to recover. To do that, I needed to retrieve
something
from Terry Moore, which meant I had to free myself from Arthur and finish my job.

Kenneth didn’t give out free meal tickets, and he could find another bitch to replace me. Total failure was unacceptable, and unless I had something for him, he’d throw me on the streets—or make me commit to a losing proposition. If I brought back something good enough, he’d allow me to lie low in one of the safe rooms hidden away in his basement until I recovered enough to do more work for him.

If he believed he had a chance to keep me as one of his pets, he’d probably even smooth the way for me to slip back into the system so I could continue to sniff for him.

I wouldn’t like it, but I could find another way to earn my freedom and obtain a life worth living.

Why couldn’t I be like other people? They were capable of being satisfied with where they were, content to let life happen to them. Me? No, I had to always be thinking ahead. I couldn’t be happy with the fact I was still alive. If I had been content with my lot in life, a lot of things would be different.

I wanted something more than heeling at Kenneth’s call.

But what could I do? For the moment, my best bet was to play dead, rest, and bide my time until I could act. My first task was to escape or die trying. If Arthur thought I was going to cooperate, I’d show him the error of his ways. I defied Kenneth whenever possible, and Arthur would learn I’d fight him until my last breath to spite his attempt to change me.

I wasn’t broken.

I didn’t want anyone trying to fix me, not Kenneth, not Arthur—not anyone, for that matter. I wasn’t property, either, especially not Rob’s, no matter how many times the dae insisted I belonged to him.

Once again, the thought of Rob stoked my anger. I had unfinished business with him. Why did he annoy me so much? Was it the fact he was a man worth taking a second look at?

Why did all the men in my life have to turn out to be insufferable assholes?

I hadn’t run into the dae often, but he had somehow earned his place as my top annoyance, with Kenneth coming a close second.

I didn’t belong to anyone.

I resented Arthur, I hated Kenneth, but Rob infuriated me as no one else had in a long time. I considered my options once more and rearranged my priorities.

First, I needed to get away from Arthur. Assuming I survived, I needed to find somewhere to hole up, rest, and heal. I’d steal what I needed from Kenneth’s stores; if my boss noticed, I’d deal with him later. One way or another, I’d have to handle the problem of Terry Moore so Kenneth wouldn’t have even more reasons to want to kill me. As long as Arthur wasn’t another one of Kenneth’s hounds, I would even the scales between us.

With a little luck, I could resume my studies, if I could convince the elite I had no part of Arthur’s schemes. If I couldn’t, I’d find another way to rise above my need to do my boss’s dirty work to survive.

In the meantime, if I did become a fugitive, I needed another goal. Rob was it. I’d make him regret his declarations; and the thought of having my revenge for treating me like property intrigued me.

I needed a challenge so I could get on with my life, and he would do.

I had no idea how long I drifted as a prisoner in my own body, but the quiet hum of conversation nearby helped me focus on the present instead of my meandering plans, none of which I could execute until after I escaped.

My right wrist throbbed, and as I became aware of it, the rest of my body reported in. There was definitely something wrong with my ribs and chest. When I breathed, it hurt. I didn’t think anything was broken, which left bone-deep bruises, likely from when Arthur had slammed me to the street.

A faint constriction around my throat alarmed me; it wasn’t quite the same as the suffocating reaction to Arthur’s touch, but it disconcerted me enough I cracked open an eye.

Wherever I was, it wasn’t the basement. The ceiling was painted white, and to mimic the elite, someone had attempted to apply stucco, resulting in a chaotic mess of plaster. It peeled away to reveal gray and black splotches of mold. While there was a light fixture mounted overhead, the dusty ruins of a broken bulb remained in the socket.

Instead, someone used a floor lamp for light, and they had left it on even though daylight streamed in through the room’s small window.

I was alone, which was perfect for my needs. Clenching my teeth so I wouldn’t make any sound, I eased my way upright. Maybe my ribs weren’t broken, but the movement hurt like hell.

I regarded the bandages wrapped around my chest and stomach with an arched brow. Did it count as naked if I wore bandages as a set of clothes? I ran my hand over my ribs and grimaced.

They were definitely bruised, maybe broken, but there wasn’t a whole lot I could do about it. It’d be days, if not weeks, before I recovered enough to do anything without wincing, especially if I couldn’t take advantage of the health care provided for those of the upper castes. If I had broken something, I’d probably be able to sneak into one of the fringe hospitals. Sometimes they asked for identification, but usually, no one cared.

I was tempted to use that to my advantage, except I figured the hospitals would be the first place the police checked for suspects, myself included. In other circumstances, I never would have considered turning myself in as a strategy, but for a change, I was truly innocent. The problem was proving it.

It wouldn’t matter if I proved to the elite I wasn’t involved in Arthur’s attack on the college. If I didn’t sniff out Terry Moore’s drug stash or recover Kenneth’s money, I wouldn’t live long enough for my innocence to matter. Careful to be as quiet as possible, I freed myself from the blanket.

Boxers didn’t count as usual attire for me, but I’d take them over completely naked any day of the week. While unorthodox, the bandages wrapped around my chest kept my breasts covered, which was good enough for me.

I didn’t need to worry about clothes, although I’d regret the lack of layers once I was on the streets. Autumn in Baltimore was a fickle mistress, and if my misfortune held, she’d prove it to me by inflicting snow on the city.

Having been in the basement, the condition of the floors worried me; in the best case scenario, they’d creak and moan beneath my weight, alerting everyone I was awake and on the move.

However, the ongoing conversation somewhere beyond the closed door of my room tempted me. I didn’t doubt Arthur’s desire to rescue the kids, but I knew nothing of what had happened after I had been kidnapped.

Eavesdropping was a good way to learn things people didn’t want me to know.

There was a trick to walking across crappy floors without either falling through or making the abused boards creak and moan like they were being tortured. It was slow, it was tedious, but I gingerly eased my feet to the floor and forced myself to remain patient. I began with a toe on each foot, settling my weight until I could stand. I rose, tensing from the fear of making noise.