The Dark and Hollow Places (5 page)

Before I can regain my balance he’s standing over me and he lashes out, kicking my hip. Pain erupts through me, making me suck in a deep breath as the horrible throbbing stabs
reverberate with every beat of my heart. I crumple to my hands and knees, dropping the knife as I splay my hands to break my fall. He grabs my shoulder and flips me onto my back so hard that all the air in the world leaves my body. I buck, trying to inhale, but he places his knee on my chest, crushing me.

This is it, I realize. This is the end of me. This man might choose to kill me or keep me alive but either way, who I am is done. A sadness begins to seep through me, a deep regret for all the time I kept my gaze focused on the ground rather than the sky.

But then an acid burns up the back of my throat, a rage coursing through me. I’m not willing to give up that easily. If I were I’d have died years ago.

Blood trails from the man’s shoulder and I focus on that, watch it darken the sleeve covering his arm and spiral over his wrist. I beat at his leg with my fists, trying to find the tender spot between muscles that will make him stop. Trying to breathe. Spots sparkle around me, bright flashes of light that scream in my head.

“Can we sell her?” I hear one of the other men ask. “Is she worth anything?” He walks toward us, hovers over me.

The man with his knee on my chest takes my chin in his hands, turning my face into the light. I bare my teeth. “She’s got a good fight in her,” he says. “And I’m sure we can find someone who’ll want to add to those scars.”

I turn my head fast and catch the man’s thumb in my mouth, sinking my teeth into his flesh as hard as I can. Tasting blood. He rears back, the pressure on my chest lessening as he yanks his hand free.

I roll away just as he swings and his fist brushes my cheek
before slamming into the roof below us. He’s about to lunge for me when we both hear something that doesn’t fit in with our desperate surroundings.

Singing. Three figures, a man with a woman under each arm, stumble toward us over one of the bridges that creaks and sways under their combined weight. The man’s belting out an off-key tune, his words interrupted by hiccups, and the women move their lips, trying to sing along, but their words are nothing more than slurred mumblings.

I open my mouth to scream for help but one of my attackers clamps his hand over my face before I can get the words out. He pulls a dagger from his side and pushes it against my ribs and I stop struggling. Slowly, he drags me back from the edge of the roof, toward the darker shadows cast by the storage shed.

The threesome lurches across the bridge from the neighboring building, the women almost falling and the man having to pull them up, laughing loudly at their uncoordination as they weave toward us. I’m desperate to catch his eye, hoping that he isn’t too drunk to understand what’s going on. Isn’t too out of sorts to help me. Or to care.

But his gaze only lands briefly on each of the men, not even noticing me standing here enraged and in desperate pain. The women hardly glance up, stringy hair covering their faces. The large man who pinned me down steps toward the group, blood glistening on his fingertips.

The drunk women both stumble again, and the man holds them tight against him, pressing their faces to his shoulders as his voice booms over us. “Don’t suppose one of you’s looking for a woman tonight?”

The women tug at him and he careens across the roof,
closer to the men blocking me. He laughs, head thrown back and neck exposed to the bare light of the moon. When he’s done catching his breath, he leers at the thugs. “I seem to have more than I can handle here,” he says with a wink. “I’m only one man, and I’ve perhaps celebrated a bit too much tonight, if you catch my drift.” He laughs again, swaying as the women tug at him.

The thugs glance at each other and I feel the one holding me hesitate, feel him pull his blade away from my ribs ever so slightly, and at just that moment, the drunk man’s eyes hit mine so sharp and clear that I have to keep myself from catching my breath in surprise.

He mouths one word:
Run
.

I blink and the man’s back to being drunk. He lets his head loll around on his shoulders and stumbles again. “You see, I’m a sharing man. That’s my motto. Share the love,” he says.

And as the thugs stand there, clearly confused, the man shoves the women toward them. One of the women falls into the arms of the big guy who pinned me down and he catches her instinctively. She looks up at him and opens her mouth and then a clear bright moan slips from her throat as she sinks her teeth into the man’s flesh.

T
he large man screams and reels away and the other two men rear back in panic. But it’s too late. The Unconsecrated women smell their blood and are after the kill. One of the women snags another man’s coat and tugs, dragging him down and falling on top of him.

I lunge toward my knife, wrapping my fingers around the handle just as the drunk man grabs my arm and pulls me to the fire escape at the edge of the roof, shoving me down the steps. The only sounds shattering the night are the men screaming above me, the women moaning and the drunk man telling me to run as my feet pound down the rusty stairs.

An alarm begins to ring out and I hear other people shouting as they pour out of buildings with weapons bared.

I hit the ground and the man grabs my free hand, jerking me out of the alley and down another street. Chaos erupts all around us and the stranger keeps us hidden in the shadows, where the crumbling walls block the moon.

He asks only once if I’m okay to keep running and I nod, cold air searing my lungs as I try to catch my breath.

His hand grasps my own tightly, pressing me back when we approach intersections to make sure the way forward is clear. More alarm bells start to ring, the night growing crowded with shouting.

Ahead of us a group of Recruiters rounds the corner, shoulders set and gazes intent. They’re wound tight, weapons flashing, and I try to tug my hand from the stranger’s. I need to get away from their advance.

But the man doesn’t release his grip, which causes my own internal alarms to spike. He saved me on the roof, he’s protecting me even now in the streets, but he’s still a stranger.

“This way,” he says, pushing me down an alley. I dig my heels into the ground, protesting. I’m not sure I should follow him, not sure I can trust him, but the Recruiters are nearing and the sound of moans echoes down the street and so finally I relent.

It’s a narrow alley, almost pitch-black except where the moon glints off shards of glass still stuck in broken windows. “A dead end,” I whisper as a wall rises in front of us. Dread starts to leak through my system.

“You trapped me,” I growl, spinning toward him and raising my knife, ready to fight.

The Recruiters hover at the mouth of the alley, calling for us. I start to back away from the stranger, looking for any means of escape. More moans sound in the distance.

A streak of flame lights the sky several blocks away, illuminating the alley, and I see the stranger hunched over a pair of metal doors set flush with the ground. He’s prying at a chain wrapped around the handles and finally he tugs it free, throwing open the doors.

There’s nothing but darkness beyond, the gleam of the first few steps of a staircase leading down and down. I refuse to move.

The stranger takes the steps, his legs disappearing into blackness. I stare at him. The old subway tunnels aren’t safe and it would be stupid to follow him. I glance at the buildings crouching over the alley but none has a fire escape. My choices are to follow him or take my chance with the Recruiters, already shouting as they race toward us.

The stranger holds out his hand, urging me into the darkness. One choice is a known danger, the other unknown. I hesitate, trying to figure out a third option, but there is none.

Cursing under my breath for getting into this mess, I start down the stairs, tucking the knife into my pocket so I can press my hands against the wall to guide me. The stranger pulls the doors shut behind us, sealing us together in the emptiness. For a heartbeat we stand there, silent and still. And then the Recruiters beat against the doors, and without waiting I race down the stairs, the stranger not far behind.

A sharp pain radiates along my hip where the man kicked me on the roof and my throat feels raw from running through the cold night. It’s pitch-black, and even though I strain my ears, all I can hear is the echo of our pounding steps and the clamoring of my heart.

At the bottom I hit a set of metal bars blocking the entrance to the old station, but I find a gap, wiggle through and keep running until the darkness is too much. Eventually, his steps slow to a stop behind me and I push on a little longer, putting some distance between us as I try to figure out who this person is and how I can stay in control of what’s going on.

I try to swallow the fear that flooded my veins as I was being chased, but the dark is closing in on me and it starts to
suffocate my mind. I begin imagining other sounds than the scraping of our breaths, squeaks and moans and the grating of flesh over concrete. I can’t figure out what’s born of fright and what’s reality, and I shake my head to clear it.

The blackness is a living thing that whispers in my ear as it strokes my arms and brushes over my hair. It tries to wrap itself around my body, tries to drag me down to the ground and bury me, and I fight against it, waving my arms until I find a wall.

It’s not safe down here. Back before the Recruiter Rebellion, the Protectorate tried to keep the subway tunnels clear—tried to patrol them and chase out those who used the underground network for black-market goods between the Neverlands and the Dark City. But even the Protectorate couldn’t monitor the entire grid of crisscrossing passages, and it’s always been rumored that there are caved-in sections. Sections still filled with plague rats, downed until they sense human flesh.

I shiver, the air damp and colder than outside, the walls slick with half-frozen condensation. There’s an almost imperceptible draft flitting across my cheeks. And in the distance water drips into a puddle, every drop creating a distinct ping that echoes over and over. The stranger’s breathing slows to normal even though I’m still gulping at the air, little hiccups shuddering through my chest. I hear him step toward me, feel him coming near and I throw up a hand, ready to ward him off.

I still don’t understand what happened back on the roof. How he was able to walk so casually with those two Unconsecrated women.

Why he bothered to save me.
Me
.

“Who are you?” I ask, my voice strained and overly loud as it bounces sharply off the tiled walls.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he says. He sounds too close
and I take a few steps away, putting distance between us. It’s impossible to see anything down here—the darkness is absolute—but my other senses kick in. I can smell him, the tang of his sweat with an undercurrent of fear and adrenaline. I can hear the sound of each inhalation, the way he holds his breaths and exhales slow and long.

I can feel the heat of him.

“Who are you?” I ask again, trying to sound hard and unafraid.

He shifts, the sound of fabric sliding along the wall. “My name’s Catcher,” he says, his voice nearer than it was before. I take rapid steps away until I hit another set of bars with my back. I sidestep, stumbling over something that clatters in the blackness, metal against metal.

“Are you okay?” he asks. “Did they hurt you?” There’s anger in his voice and he’s moving toward me again.

I think about the large man kicking me, swinging at me, kneeling on me.
Yes
, I want to tell him.
Yes, they terrified me. They made me feel small and weak and I’m not used to that
. I despise those feelings.

“No, it feels good being kicked,” I say instead, infusing the statement with as much sarcasm as possible. Slowly I slip my hand into my pocket, hoping he can’t hear me shift. I slide the knife out. Simply holding the familiar handle bolsters my courage, makes my breathing come easier. I’m finally in more control of this situation.

I hear his sharp inhalations, feel his exhalations across my skin. He’s close, too close, and I raise the knife in front of me. “Back off,” I tell him.

“It’s okay, Annah,” he says.

He holds his breath as mine comes out in a loud whoosh. He knows my name. How does this stranger know my name?
And suddenly I realize that my instincts were right and I may be in more danger here than I was aboveground. Here I’m trapped.

I keep the knife in front of me, running my other hand behind me along the bars until I find a gap I can slip through. I swallow, trying to steady my erratic heart.

“I’m not going to hurt you, Annah,” he says. “You don’t have to be afraid of me.”

I laugh at him. “Why should I believe you?” I ask, swiping my arms out in front of me until I find the cool tile of the wall again. I fumble along it, sliding my feet over the ground as silently as possible. It falls away beneath me and I teeter for a moment before I regain my balance. My heart thunders in my ears, making it impossible to hear if he’s following me.