Nobody who wasn’t sentenced to be here was willing to stay long.
The latest Senate representative, who governed the prison during the daylight hours and therefore got to cope with the Hunter hit squads and boyar groupies who tried to force an entry, was James Tac. Madoc realized, with a flicker of surprise and jealousy as the other man walked toward them, that it looked like Took knew him.
“Bennett,” James said as he stalked up to the gate. He was one of those tall men, who, from a distance, looked short with the amount of muscle they carried. He was handsome enough to make Madoc’s jealousy hook deeper, with cool brown skin over elegant bones and cropped hair so black it had blue highlights. “You look like hell. Who are you eating, lepers?”
That startled Madoc into a laugh. Most of the agents who came from the Nations and worked for VINE were leery of the Anakim. From Egypt to Ireland, the Anakim existed in one form or another, although no one knew if they were native to those regions or had just roamed there long enough ago that it was the same difference. Until they had arrived here by boat, there had been none of them in the Americas.
Or in Australia, reportedly, but Madoc had never hated himself enough to venture there. The native gods were unfriendly enough here. There, they made the poisonous fauna look hospitable.
“I blame the heat,” Took said. He smiled crookedly through the diamond wire. “I haven’t seen you since your last stint at the Academy. I certainly didn’t expect to see you out here.”
James scowled and rubbed his left shoulder. “I broke my shoulder in an incident up in the mountains,” he said. “Since I was off active duty, when the last warden made for the hills, the boss tapped me in.”
“What happened?” Madoc asked.
James’s eyes were like chips of dark granite, hard and pointedly empty as he glanced away from Took. Whatever tolerance he would give Took obviously didn’t extend to Madoc. It was almost reassuring.
“Nations business,” he said. “None of the East’s.”
“Or the West’s,” Madoc pointed out. He gave James a smile that was as empty as the other man’s eyes. “Technically.”
“We like them better, though,” James said. Then he held up his thumb and forefinger, pinched close enough to touch. “A bit. What brings a red cardinal all the way to The Salt, Agent Madoc? Want to make sure your boyar is still with us?”
Madoc grinned back, enough to flash his eyeteeth, even unextended. “We’d all know if Elizabeth had shucked the Salt,” he said. “I’ll pay my respects while I’m here, but it’s someone else we’ve come for.”
He held his hand out. After a second, Took dropped the letter of invitation into his palm.
“Dominic Waring,” Madoc said as he tucked the letter into the crack of the gate and left it. “The Storm Warning of the Hunters.”
James plucked the letter free and unfolded it. He read it thoroughly, top to bottom, despite the sweat that beaded his hairline and flushed his throat. When he finished, he grunted and keyed in the code to unlock the door.
“He won’t talk to you,” he said as he waved them through. “But this letter gives you full authority to talk to him.”
“Do you think he’s guilty?” Took asked as they walked toward the jeep. The driver, young and lobster pink under his uniform, stared at Madoc with nervous, fever-bright eyes. “Waring?”
James snorted as he swung up into the passenger seat. “I knew who you meant,” he said. “I don’t know. Boy’s done something bad, you can see that in his eyes, but I’m not looking forward to executing him. Some of them, the ones we can kill, that come through here? I can’t wait to put them in the ground, get rid of them. Not Waring. Maybe that’s just because he’s quiet, though. It’s easier to like someone who’s not howling slurs at you.”
“I can sympathize,” Madoc said dryly as he scrambled into the hard bench seat in back.
“No,” James said as he slapped the dashboard to get the driver to throw the car into reverse. “You can’t. I appreciate the effort, though.”
That was a lie, but Madoc didn’t bother to call him on it as they bumped toward the outpost that stuck up out of the desert like a thumb. If something went wrong down there, they would need the warden onside.
It took five minutes to get to the tower and another sixty to descend the roughly chipped steps that corkscrewed down under the sand. The driver had been left above, so only one of them had to breathe. It pettily annoyed Madoc that James didn’t even sound out of breath as they climbed down.
“They say you can take the air whenever you want,” James remarked. His voice echoed up the shaft. “After a few climbs, though, you can hardly be bothered. Most months, unless we get a new resident or supplies, we only go topside once or twice. Some of the Anakim lot, not even that often. The biggest problem? Agoraphobia. You’d think it’d be the other way around, but you get used to being down here.”
The warmth leached away as they went down, sucked away into the rock until the only source of heat seeped from James. It was hard not to pull closer to him, steal the warmth from his back, and draw it from his throat.
He made a point to keep himself between Took and James. The respect of personal space hadn’t been written into the Accord, but people either liked the undead in their personal space or loathed it. Madoc didn’t approve of either option when Took was involved.
“Someone got to your driver,” Madoc noted as they took the last flight of steps. “He’s bloodstruck. You can see it in his eyes.
“I know,” James said as they reached the bottom. “That’s why he’s upstairs and we’re down here. It’s not far now. I kept Waring close by. It gets creepy farther in.”
Madoc could taste the salt in his throat, the scratch of tiny crystals, and feel the weight of the ground above pressing down on him. Salt inhibited the boyars’ gifts—and compared to them, Madoc’s ability to sidestep the world was a party trick—and being deep underground made them sluggish. It was instinct.
“It’s already fairly creepy,” Took said. “I read about The Salt, but this is the first time I’ve been so close.”
