Kiera backed away from the frozen dead until her shoulders struck another rail and the hanging canthor halves bumped against her from both sides like grotesque, icy curtains.
She barely bit back a scream–she had to get out. Had to.
Because if Higgs came back and found her still here…if he dragged her out of this freezing maze and smiled that ugly smile at her again and got his hands on her…
No. Kiera refused to let herself think about it–refused to speculate on her horrible fate if that happened.
She began forcing her numb fingers against the ropes at her wrists again, sawing and twisting and pulling as hard as she could. Her skin was already rubbed raw from her earlier attempts, but she barely felt it now.
“C-come on,” she muttered through chattering teeth. “Come on, d-d-damn you—move!”
But it didn’t work–the rope only tightened, and her hands had gotten so stiff she could hardly make them work at all.
A sob rose in her throat. She swallowed it down.
Think–there had to be something sharp in here. A hook edge, a broken metal shard, something she could cut the rope on.
Kiera turned in a slow circle, forcing herself to really look this time and ignore the dead bodies. She saw metal rails overhead…hooks…frozen puddles…and a low butchering platform in the next aisle over.
Yes! She started toward it, shivering so hard her whole body jerked with each step. The cold had gone past painful now and into a weird woolly numbness that frightened her almost as much as the bodies had. Her thoughts felt slower…her eyelids were getting heavy.
But isn’t that how people die in the cold? she thought again wildly. They get tired. They just want to rest.
Well, that wasn’t going to happen to her, she told herself fiercely. Not today, Satan. She was going to keep going.
She rounded the last row of hanging carcasses and came into a lower work area with a steel table, a blood channel carved into the floor, and–oh, thank sweet baby Jesus–several racks of tools hanging on the wall.
She saw knives, hooks, bone saws and several other sharp instruments.
Hope flared in her chest, bright and hot…and then she heard it.
The metallic clang of the outer warehouse door opening.
Kiera froze where she stood.
A gust of slightly less freezing air swept through the aisles. Then came the heavy tread of boots–slow and unhurried but utterly relentless.
Higgs was back and he was looking for her.
Her blood seemed to freeze in her veins. For one panicked instant she didn’t know whether to run, hide, or scream.
Then she heard his voice drift through the aisles in a rough, ugly sing—song.
“Girly? You still kickin’ in here? You feeling like you want to be sweet on old Higgs now? I can warm you up, real nice–I promise.”
Kiera clapped both bound hands over her mouth, hardly daring to breathe.
The footsteps kept coming–closer and closer.
She was trapped in the butchering room, with nowhere to go and only a few seconds left to decide whether she was going to fight for her life—or die in the dark among Higgs’ frozen dead.
30
BRUX
Brux brought the shuttle down so hard and fast that the landing struts hit the ground with a jarring metallic slam. He barely remembered cutting the engines…barely remembered the hatch cycling open.
One moment he was in the cockpit with his hands white—knuckled on the controls and the next he was out on the rolling silver—threaded hills in front of Kiera’s home-dome, the wind of Plo’nix hitting his face and the pale lavender sky stretching over him like a lid.
