James smirked as he picked up a heavy torch from the floor and flicked it on. “This is just a hole in the ground. It’s no creepier than a rock or a hollowed-out log. Anakim, though? Once they’ve done here for a while, they forget to pretend they’re human. Down in the deep tunnels, you carved out mansions for boyars who sit in the excretion of their own salts for years without moving. Between Waring and them are all sorts of monsters.”
He led the way down a side tunnel, the stone walls shod with rusty layers of metal. It wouldn’t be enough to stop Madoc if he’d wanted to sneak in, but it would have slowed him down.
A titter of excitement eddied down the tunnel as the light pierced the darkness. In the first cell, a narrow, wrinkled-scarred face appeared and spat thick, greasy sputum at Madoc. A Hunter they’d kept alive to get information from but who’d killed too many to ever walk free. Farther down, a dark arm laced with pink scars stretched out to claw at the air with stubbed fingers, the first joint taken off for a ritual the rapist had never explained and everyone had eventually decided not to care about.
The Biters had filled a lot of these cells.
“Madoc,” a voice hissed. “The Bastard Cardinal.”
Another cell picked it up and then another. The tunnel echoed with hatred and pleas for clemency. The din of it rocked Madoc back on his heels, the assault on his sensitive ears almost physical.
“Underestimated your popularity,” James muttered as he pulled a remote from his pocket. He held it up and roared, “Arms in the goddamned cells!”
Everyone recoiled, the arm was dragged back inside hastily, and James hit a button. Steel doors snapped down in every single doorway and clicked into place as they locked. The only one that didn’t was the one they had stopped in front of.
James tucked the remote away again and pulled out a key. “Here you go,” he said as he wrestled the heavy tumblers, designed for vampire usage, around in the lock. “Dominic Waring. Alive for now.”
There was a single cot in the room, pulled up in front of the small fireplace, and a bookshelf against the far wall. As prisons went, Madoc had seen worse, but misery rarely made for an untroublesome population.
Waring lay on the cot. Framed in stark whites—the walls, his prison smock, the harsh spray of light from the ceiling—Waring looked vivid. He reminded Madoc of a pet fox he’d seen in a Russian Anakim’s palace once, the same color and the same wildness in his eyes—not tame, just collared.
“These two are here to talk to you,” James said. “You don’t get a choice about listening, but you want to piss on the dark one’s boots, I’ll shed no tears.”
Waring didn’t laugh at the joke, but a shred of the wire-taut tension loosened in his shoulders. He sat up on the bed and folded his legs under him. Nearly two years under The Salt had made him seem oddly younger. The harsh-featured man, all stark bones and greasy skin, had faded back into the boy with the heavy glasses and a YouTube account where he spouted juvenile bigotry to the world. His Salted pallor made the birthmark over one green eye look crimson.
He stared at them, blank as a doll, as James let them in. The only signs of emotion were the white-knuckled fists he twisted in his smock.
“You’ve got half an hour,” James said. He closed and locked the door. “If he isn’t in the same condition when I come back for you… well, I don’t have to open this door. Understood?”
He left. Madoc dragged a chair from the corner of the room to the end of Waring’s bed and sat down. They stared at each other, and Madoc wondered how hard you’d have to push to break that shell. It could be done—anything could be done—but it would take a concerted effort to drill back down to anything human.
“Nora Aron is alive,” Took said. “We found her.”
A desperate, reluctant joy bloomed on Waring’s face as he stared at Took. Tears swam in his eyes and he dragged his glasses off so he could wipe them away.
“Son of a bitch,” Madoc said precisely. There was too much purity in that unguarded moment, an innocence that he’d never have attributed to the boy in the videos, never mind a killer. “He’s right. You didn’t do this, did you?”
Chapter Fifteen
SOMETIMES ALLit took was one crack to bring the whole facade down. It worked with suspects and witnesses who’d been less isolated than Waring had been these last months. They walled up their secrets and sat there, alone with them, until they were actually desperate to talk. All it needed was one crack in it and they could just let go.
That’s why Took had led with Nora, the one child whose fate Waring didn’t know. Relieved she’d survived or disappointed, either way, they’d get a reaction. That had worked, but now Waring had tucked in the corners of himself and huddled under it.
Setter-red hair hung over his face as he stared at his bony knees in gray prison leggings. It moved with his breath every time Took edged closer to something that the boy held close. His fingers were twisted in the hem of his smock and his knuckles whitened when he wanted Took to change the subject.
He didn’tneedto talk to tell them what they wanted to know. It would just have been quicker.
“We tracked down Annabelle,” Took said. He watched as Waring’s fingers tightened, bones sharp under his skin, but the flicker of his eyes up and away was contemptuous. He knew they hadn’t, because…. Took didn’t know that exactly yet, but Annabelle was significant enough that she’d have changed everything that VINE did. “Or where she was anyhow. Appleberg. Such a small town for such big secrets.”
Closer. That was something Waring wasn’t so confident about. The taste of fear cut through the salt. How did anyone lie to a vampire? Took didn’t know why Madoc didn’t just do these interviews. Maybe Took was there to keep the living in the Senate, and the Anakim born or made since the Accord was signed happy that their evidence wasn’t based in magic.
“We don’t know everything yet,” Took admitted. He slid down the wall until he was on the floor, legs folded to mirror Waring’s. The honesty seasoned the mix, a touch of comfort amid the panic. “But we think it all started with Annabelle.”
Waring looked up. His eyes were almost black, and Took leaned forward as he met them.
“Or maybe with their mission?”
TOOK KNEWtime had passed. He was used to the glitch in his brain, the hiccup of missed minutes. He rolled with it as he registered the blood in his mouth—his own from the taste—and the odd ache in his brain. There were slivers of something in there, caught on old mental scars like a cat’s fur on barbed wire. He filed it away for later as a hand grabbed his collar and yanked on it.
