Ties That Bind: a New Adult Fantasy Novel (The Spire Chronicles Book 2) (13 page)

I knelt by the opening and conjured up three ghost lights, watching them hover around me before sucking it up and crawling into the depths. At first, I was glad to get off my feet – the world swirled around less when I was on all fours – but after a few minutes of crawling, an ache formed at the base of my spine that made me want to curl up and die. Suddenly, trekking through the wilderness didn’t seem so bad.

Chills ran up my hands and knees as I inched along the loamy earth. The hum of magic was weaker here but grew in intensity the farther I crawled. I felt like a rat in a maze, being led by the tiny wisps bobbing around me. I tried to ignore how many horror movie laws I was breaking: splitting up, wandering into dark, creepy tunnels, and refusing to go back for help. Screw the Lucifer and Michael sitcom, a movie of what I was doing now could break the box office.

There didn’t seem to be an end in sight. My anticipation grew with every turn that didn’t lead to an exit, but instead another dark tunnel to continue crawling through. The path would slope down every once in a while, leading to some heart-stopping moments when I slid down.

Guess I should get used to it. I mean, there was at least an eighty percent chance I was going to Hell.

The tunnels were too narrow for a werewolf or lion to fit through, but an average sized human could crawl through easily. Normally, fighting in such close quarters would be uncomfortable but doable. With my energy drained this much, however – especially against a being with magic resistance – a fight probably wouldn’t end well for me. I hoped none of them could sense my magic, though that was unlikely. Even if they, by some miracle, didn’t pick up on my magic, there was no way they wouldn’t be able to smell the sweaty, bleeding human sneaking around their…whatever these tunnels were. It occurred to me that I had no idea.

Maybe they could give me the “Biggest Idiot Ever” award before they ate me. Y’know, as a consolation prize.

Everything seemed to be closing in around me, and I had to stop a few times to find my center. Sweat lined my forehead and slid down my face. Despite the humid atmosphere, it was still cold. Currents of wind would come through, eliciting a sneeze when they grazed my moist skin. I chose to focus on the positive: the air was a sign I was getting close to the end. Twice, I considered going back for Alex, but I’d gone too far to make going back an expedient journey. Taking a deep breath, I cast the tracking spell again. The glimmers led further ahead, so I knew I was going the right way. If only the spell told me how much farther it was.

Not much, it seemed. The tunnels opened up into a small, square room just a few minutes later. The walls were made of clay and there were torches casting harsh, blocky edges along the things inside. I placed a hand on a nearby crate to hold myself steady as the blood rushed through my now unbent limbs. Ugh, being vertical was so overrated. I’d happily curl up on the floor again if my back didn’t start screaming the second I even began to hunch over.

I appeared to be in a storage room; dried goods were hanging from rafters in the ceiling and the crate I was leaning on was filled with bags of rice. So, either I just discovered mole people, or I was inside the wolf’s den. I didn’t have a preference.

I wiped the sweat from my brow and crept towards the doorway. The sound of footsteps was absent, but I wasn’t foolish enough to believe I was safe. Still, there were no other people wandering around as I explored the underground rooms. It was kind of amazing how there was potential for another world down here. If they wanted – or had – to, the tribe could live here for a good while.

I fumbled around for my phone to call Alex, but was unable to get reception, which was another reason I preferred the city. Worry overwhelmed me as I thought of him. Was he safe? He had to be.
Please, let him be safe
. I didn’t know who I was speaking to, but I hope they heard me.

The clanging of chains drew my attention east. I followed the sound to discover a larger room with stairs leading up. When I tried the door at the top, however, it was sealed. Magically sealed. I wouldn’t be able to break through it. Seriously, what was even the point of me having magic? Maybe when this was over, I could ask the tribe to teach me some of theirs. I abandoned the door and continued toward the sounds, my pace slowing as voices began drifting through the halls.

“–you!” a hoarse, broken male voice cried out. It sounded like he was saying something else, but the words quickly dissolved into a scream.

Shadows danced around the walls as I approached. One of the shadows moved strangely, and I stepped closer to investigate, forming a barrier just in case. But I was too tired, too slow, and I couldn’t muster up the energy to do anything more than turn around just in time to catch the shape of a person. Something grabbed the back of my neck and the wall sped towards me, followed by a loud cracking sound. Pain spread from my temple and nose as blood filled my mouth.

Then, the world went dark.

I woke up with a headache that kicked the last one’s ass. It was nice to know that no matter how bad things were, they could always get worse. Somewhere to the left were torches emitting a warm orange glow, but they didn’t reach far enough to illuminate all the way over here. I was hanging from the ceiling. My wrists were tied over my head and the heavy weight of chains around my ankles pulled me down, leaving me with a burning ache in my shoulders as I swung around.

Unlike the rest of the underground rooms, this area smelled of dirt, sweat, feces, and blood, all of which was underpinned by the stale scent of pure damp that would’ve made me hurl if I’d eaten within the last two hours. Suddenly, I didn’t regret only nibbling on a few pieces of bacon for breakfast.

My arms were numb, but when I tried to adjust myself into a more comfortable position, pins and needles shot through them. Everything was pure pain. I couldn’t even string a coherent thought together, much less a spell to get me out of here. I strained my ears, but the only sounds were the chains when I moved.

I remembered getting my head slammed against the wall. These guys didn’t hold back. Then again, maybe they did, since my skull wasn’t completely smashed in. Though being strung up like a piece of meat, along with the screaming I heard earlier, told me I would rather be dead by the time they were finished with me.

It took me a few more minutes, but I could finally blink without feeling like someone was shoving an ice pick through my eye. I still couldn’t cast anything. Maybe a small, unfocused burst of something from my fingertips, though I’d have to be physically touching my target; anything that needed concentration was out of the question.

But what should I cast? Any fire I conjured now would heat the chains up and burn through the skin they were wrapped around. There was no way I was going to melt through my wrists just to get free. It would heal, sure, but I had never actually mutilated myself in that way, and I wasn’t in a hurry to find out what it’d be like. Ice would give me full-on frostbite and electricity would do nothing. Force magic would work if I could focus enough power, which I couldn’t at the moment, but it would probably shatter every bone in my wrist. Another handful of layers on a cake of shitty options. Just
one
good choice. Is that too much to ask?

Coming here alone was a mistake I was long past admitting, though it did earn a place in my Hall of Fail. I wanted Alex to be with me. Actually, no, I didn’t want him to be chained up, too. We should be at my place, in my bed, curled up in a buttload of blankets. Not here, where my childhood pains were coming back to haunt me and my head got bounced off walls.

“Hey,” a male voice whispered. “You awake?”

It took a few tries before I managed to form something more than some raspy pants.

“Yeah,” I whispered back, my throat burning with each word. “Are we alone?”

“Technically,” he said in a voice that was even scratchier than mine. “There aren’t any guards patrolling around, but Garou are fast.”

Awesome. After meeting Marshall, I wasn’t hopeful about getting the shifters on our side, but it didn’t seem like the werewolves were going to be friendly, either. Then again, I did sneak onto their territory, so maybe this was all just a big misunderstanding.

Yeah. Totally.

“How long have I been out?” I asked.

“A guy came in and interrupted his friend’s ‘questioning’ of me to announce he caught you. That was about two hours ago.”

Two hours. If it’s been that long, I may have recovered more energy than I thought. “How long have you been here?”

“No idea. Three days, maybe? Did Wright send you?” he asked before groaning in pain. “Not exactly the rescue squad I was hoping for.”

“Wright?”

“Wallace. Shit, don’t tell me you’re a civilian. How’d you get caught up in this?”

The thought that this was some sort of trap – a soft interrogation from the werewolves – crossed my mind, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. What did I have to hide?

“I’m a hunter,” I said. “I know who Wright is, I just don’t get what he has to do with anything. Sullivan sent me.”
Technically
. “I tracked one of the missing hunters here and ended up getting knocked out.”

“Wright’s the one who– Never mind, all that shit they’re doing is taking its toll on me. How’d you track us?”

“Magic. I’m a witch.”

“How much juice you got left?”

“What’s zero minus zero?”

He let out a breathy laugh that descended into coughs followed by another pained groan. “I’m hoping there’s some fancy math loophole that makes it one hundred.”

“It might. I suck at math,” I said. “Where’s the rest of your group?”

“The last guy – girl, actually – died this morning, so I guess you found the only hunter left.”

“It may not sound like it,” I said unenthusiastically, “but I’m glad.”

“Hi, Glad. I’m Tom.”

I snorted out a laugh, whining at the pain that shot through my chest. “Thanks, now I know how that feels.”

“Sorry, um…”

“Morgan.”

“Nice to meet ya.”

I tilted my head back in an attempt to alleviate the crick in my neck. “Likewise. Why’d they take you?”

“‘Cause they’re batshit?”

“If that was it, you’d have been killed on sight. There has to be more to it.”

“There isn’t,” he insisted. “We were in the woods. They caught us and decided playing ‘torture the humans’ would be a fun weekend game.”

Considering he’d been tortured by werewolves for days, Tom was sure to be biased against them. I didn’t buy his words, but I wasn’t familiar enough with anything here to throw them out the window. Why would the Garou take a bunch of humans to torture for no reason? Marshall mentioned karma and said the hunters were dead. But he was a shifter – why would the Garou tell the people they were supposedly going to war with anything? Is everyone going mad? Forget it, all this thinking made my head hurt even more. I could figure it all out after we escaped.

If we escaped.

“Did they say anything?” I asked. “Did they mention the murders or shifters?”

“No, man. I told you, they just wanted to fuck us up. Are you sure you’ve got nothing left? You’re the only hope we’ve got of getting out of here.”

No pressure, right? I did feel a little more rested, which upgraded me from dead roadkill to slightly less dead roadkill. Baby steps. With the mother of all migraines, having drained most of my magic, and now regretting only eating those few pieces of bacon for breakfast, I’d trust a five-year-old to produce better results.

But I didn’t want to stick around and get tortured, and I definitely didn’t want to die. I wiggled a hand around to see if I could get it loose. The pain was unbearable – seriously, fuck gravity – but I managed to form a small gap between my wrists and the chain. This was going to hurt like hell, but it’s not like I had a better choice. I buried my face into my shoulder to muffle the scream and focused on forming a small orb of pure force in the gap I made. My eyes were squeezed shut in concentration, but the pain didn’t even register over my flashflood headache. A second later, the headache lost out to the agony that blasted through me as I blew the orb up, shattering both the chains and my wrists.

My body hit the ground with a deafening thud, my shoulder muffling what would have been an ear piercing scream. Everything burned like an army of pissed off fire ants decided to make a buffet of my body. My head, torso, arms, wrists – especially wrists – all throbbed in tandem. My back hunched, curling me into a ball as the blood flowed through my previously blocked off joints, sending a million acid dipped needles over my arms. This was literally the worst idea, and it was still the best one I had.

“Are you okay?” Tom asked.

I gave him a low whine. The tears that fell down my face should have been hot, but with the way I was burning up, they were a cool relief against my skin. It took some additional maneuvering, and by that I meant wiggling around and trying not to sob like a baby, but I managed to get into the fetal position to touch the chain around my ankles.

“Can you carry me out?” I groaned out.

“Get us out of here and I’ll marry you.”