NightWhere (34 page)

Rae flexed her steel-clad fingers and smiled down at Mark’s face.

“You always said you’d give your life for me,” she said, her voice a playful whisper. “Well, honey…now I
want
it.”

Chapter Forty-Three

Breaking Dawn

Mark looked back and forth between the sigil-covered demon-woman, Yvonna, and his blood-spattered, demonically grinning wife. He wasn’t sure how she could even be kneeling upright with all of her wounds. He could see the pink coils of her intestines through the slit in her belly. Yet she was not only upright, she was menacing. Rae reached down with her forefinger and drew its blade across his chest. She didn’t press, yet instantly a line of crimson welled on his skin.

“I won’t take too long, I promise,” she grinned, moving her legs to straddle him, getting in position for the fuck of his life. And death.

Mark made a sudden lunge with his hip, knocking Rae off balance. She gave out a cry of pain as her wounds gaped open. She fell to her side. As the Watchers were distracted for a second by Rae’s fall, he yanked his right hand out of the grip that held it, slamming the Watcher hard against the edge of the table with his sudden pull.

As the Watchers grabbed at his arm to restrain him again, Mark wrapped his fingers around the dagger that he’d used on Rae. He swung it in an arc across the side of the table, slicing arms and hands that reached for him. Rae grabbed him around the neck, trying to pull him down. Mark looked up once at her eyes, and saw a woman that he had never seen before.

She looked hateful. Murderous. The love that he had once imagined in her face was completely gone. She only wanted him for one thing.

Mark was willing to sacrifice a lot for Rae. He’d already given more than he thought possible. But he didn’t intend to give her his life.

He stabbed her in the chest with the knife, and she screamed in anger, falling back. Then he sliced the wrist of the Watcher holding his other hand, and leapt forward off the table right at the two who held his feet.

After two quick stabs, they released him and Mark didn’t waste a second. He ran for the door without looking back.

He sprinted down the long corridor, past the rooms of pain and degradation, and darted through an open arch to a small foyer where dozens of candles burned. Noise grew behind him. Mark yanked open the heavy wooden door and then pulled it shut behind him.

He recognized the room as soon as he stepped into it.

The Blue Room. He’d managed to get back to the front facade of the club. He now knew that this was just a false face—the real NightWhere was behind the medieval doors. In The Red and The Black.
The Red
seemed to be just another word for hell. Mark did not want to find out what The Black was. Though Rae seemed determined to get there.

The outer room of the club was alive with people still. They danced in a half-clad bacchanal to the gothic tones of the band, and a handful of people were lined up to get drinks from Sin-D’s bar. The bartendress looked up as he took stock of the club, and her eyes widened when she saw him.

Mark didn’t waste time. He bolted to the front door, pushing aside the ever-present doorman as the pale man’s long fingers grabbed futilely at his shoulder.

“You can’t go out now,” Tailor insisted, but Mark threw himself against the door and forced his way through.

“I have to,” Mark said.

“Wait!” someone screamed from the club, but Mark pulled the door shut. Then he turned around and looked at where he’d ended up.

Instead of leading outside, the exit from NightWhere had put him in another room. This one had a large window on one side, and a desk and rolling chair on the other. It appeared to be someone’s office. Only, the chair lay on its side, and the window was so dirty you could barely see outside. It didn’t look like a place that had been used in a long, long time.

Mark ran to the door on the other side and turned the knob, but it wouldn’t open. And the lock appeared to be on the other side. There was no button to press or knob to twist to unlock it from within.

Behind him, the door opened up and Tailor stepped out. “You can’t leave,” the doorman said. “Come back inside.”

Mark laughed. “No fuckin’ way.”

He grabbed a paperweight from the desk and threw it as hard as he could. It caught Tailor right in the forehead, and the doorman collapsed with a grunt to his knees.

Mark grabbed the chair from beneath the desk and lifted it over his head. With a yell of anger, he flung it against the window. The glass exploded and a cool draught of dawn rushed into the room. The doorman was getting to his feet, and Mark righted the chair from where it had fallen sideways on the floor. Then he stepped up on the chair and jumped like a diver to arc through the window.

He landed with a
whoof
of expelled breath on a patio paved in red brick. His shoulder felt raw, but he didn’t slow to look at the damage. Already he saw a half-dozen Watchers reaching through the broken window a few feet above. He ran away from the window as somebody leapt out behind him. He realized absently that he’d fallen into a courtyard. On the far side, he could see the dark opening of an alcove and he ran to duck through it. Behind him he heard the slap of feet against the pavement.

Mark threw himself into the dark alcove, praying that there would be a door to the outside.

“Over here,” a voice called from his left. “Hurry.”

He looked in the direction of the voice and saw a figure standing there at a doorway. One hand was on the knob while her other motioned him closer. “They’ll catch you if you don’t come now.”

Mark only took a millisecond to realize that whether this was a trap or not, it was his only option. There was no other exit from the alcove and the Watchers were right behind him. Damia ran in the middle of a crowd of six black-robed Watchers. The white of her skin stood out against the night and the robes. And as Mark turned, they entered the alcove with him. He launched himself to the door as hands grabbed for his waist.

Mark swung his fists backwards at his pursuers as he ran forward, thwarting the grabbing hands with punches. He threw himself through the door, landing off balance on the floor just inside. It slammed shut behind him and he heard the metallic click of a lock setting just before the air was filled with the hammering thuds of fists pounding on the outside of the door.

“Shit,” he gasped, raising himself to a crouch. “Thanks.”

Then he squinted in the dark, trying to make out the face of his savior. The place was too dark, but hands slipped gently around his shoulders and helped him back to his feet.

“Come on,” a feminine voice said. “The lock won’t hold them for long.”

“Why are you helping me?” he asked.

She put an arm around his waist and walked him quickly down a dark hall.

“Because you tried to save her,” she said. “That was a really loving, selfless act. But you could never have saved her. Those who have chosen The Black…are already damned. But you…you still have a chance. I want to help you get clear of all this.”

She pulled him forward, pressing against his back as they navigated the shadowed hall. It was as if they were racing through a tunnel, with a light of salvation at the far end. A few yards ahead, Mark could now just make out the outline of a door. The grey light of dawn filtered in through its small window. As they got closer, Mark could finally see a little bit of his surroundings. He looked up at the woman who guided him and instantly knew her familiar pale-white face. She was almost albino. Beauty in shades of cream.

Her eyes were filled with fear.

“Hurry,” Selena said.

“I am,” he said.

“If they catch us, they will kill both of us.”

Selena pulled him through the door. Mark looked around, disoriented for a moment. For the first time in hours his world wasn’t masked in shadows and dimly lit by bloodred light. He was able to see his surroundings clearly. The first rays of the morning crept over the horizon and reflected off the quiet rush of the canal nearby. He looked back at the building they’d just exited and knew exactly where they were. The abandoned fuel refinery on Kedzie. He used to pass this on the way to work each day. They were at the edge of Blue Island. Behind the door stretched an office building and beyond that was a steel castle of tanks and towers that belched white smoke into the crisp air.

“Come on,” he said. “We need to follow the canal up to town.”

They broke into a run along the sidewalk. Behind them, Mark heard the slap of other feet on the pavement. They rounded the office building and Mark led the way left, towards the gate in the complex’s perimeter fence. He pointed as they ran. “There are some businesses just a few blocks away. We can get help there.”

Selena followed him through the gate, and they had only gone a few yards down the sidewalk outside the refinery when Mark realized the sounds of pursuit had died away. He darted a look behind them and saw nothing but fence and empty asphalt. He slowed his run to a walk.

“Where did they go?”

“It’s dawn,” she said. “They need to close the club. There’s no point in drawing attention to this with a crowd of half-naked people running down the city streets. They know how to find you. They can always find you. They’ll be back.”

Mark shrugged. “Then I guess I’d better get ready.”

Selena looked him up and down once. “I’d suggest that first you’d better get some clothes.”

Chapter Forty-Four

Breaking Down

Rae cried. But every tear hurt. Her body was racked with pain so extreme she couldn’t move. She curled up on the stone table and called for Kharon. After Mark had run, the room had emptied, all except for Rae. As her face pressed against the cold stone, she felt her heart pumping louder in her chest. Struggling.

Her breath came in short, hard gasps.

While Kharon had been in the room, she’d felt electrified with power. Now she could feel her life slipping away. It was hard to keep her eyes open, and when she stared at the blood-drenched walls, her vision fuzzed and faded.

She blinked and forced herself to breathe.

A burning hand stroked her hair, drawing the sweating, bloodied strands away from her eyes.

Rae looked into the black eyes of Yvonna. The Night Mother smiled faintly at her, with blackened lips. Then she leaned down to kiss Rae.

As the strange woman’s lips touched her own, Rae felt her pain and fears melt away. A heat built in her mouth and bled like a wave of honey down the back of her throat. The excruciating pain in her abdomen slowly turned to a pleasant burn; at the same time the acid-hot burning in her crotch and across her back where the skin had been ripped away faded to a pleasant hum of feeling.

Rae felt adrift on a buzz of pain and pleasure, mixed up and cross-wired. She sighed as Yvonna’s face pulled away.

“I’m dying,” Rae whispered.

“Not yet,” Yvonna promised. She pressed two black fingertips, each one emblazoned with a tiny snake, to Rae’s eyelids, nudging them closed.

“Sleep,” she whispered.

Chapter Forty-Five

A New Plan

The dumpster top was bulging; clearly pickup day was near. Mark threw the lid back and looked for something he could use. Cars were beginning to pass by on the street out front; he could hear the quiet rush of the occasional vehicle echo through the alley. Selena stood like a sentinel nearby, clad only in a black robe.

But Mark was clad in nothing, and he needed to remedy that so that they could find a way back to his house. Just a few blocks from the refinery was a strip mall that held a pizza joint, a 7-Eleven, a tailor and a cleaners. He was betting on some refuse from the latter two to cover at least some of his skin.

He leaned against the cold green metal of the dumpster and shivered. He hated to touch the garbage bin with his bare skin, but what choice did he have? He pushed aside some boxes and a plastic garbage bag. Something smelled bad as he pushed the refuse around inside, and he prayed that he’d find some scrap of cloth or discarded pants before he found the reason for the stench.

Bingo!

Just behind a coffee carton, he saw a bundle of dark blue. Mark hung over the side of the dumpster and fished it out. He tossed it on the pavement and then went back in for more. There were several balled-up bits of clothing.

He separated them on the ground and found that he had a woman’s sundress, drenched in something wet and foul, a fat man’s pants (the reason for the disposal was obvious—the seam of the rear end was completely ripped out) and a handful of stained or otherwise unwearably damaged business shirts.

Mark shook out the fat pants and a blue striped shirt with a long yellow stain down the front, and pulled them on. He hated to think about the last thing to touch the material, but…he couldn’t walk naked down First Street during morning rush hour. Or ever, really.

“What do you think?” he asked, pivoting briefly for Selena. He’d tucked the shirt into the pants, but to keep them up, he had to hold a six-inch bunch of the waist with his left hand.

Selena smiled faintly. “You look like you’ve lost some weight,” she quipped.

“Uh-huh,” he said. “Now we just need to find a way across town so that I can get some real clothes. And I’m guessing you’ll want more than a black silk robe eventually.”