Page 9

CHAPTER 9

Alice trembled in the grasp of her robotic captors as icy fear crept through her veins and dread pooled in her stomach.

She knew the king’s voice—it was familiar, it was horrible, and she’d heard it somewhere before. The answer danced along the edges of her consciousness, but she just couldn’t figure it out. Why couldn’t she place that voice?

Oh God, why can’t I remember ?

She swept her gaze around, searching for Shadow, for even a hint of him, but he was nowhere to be found.

Another pair of robots dragged Jor’calla up beside Alice. They had their arms looped around his, keeping his long, thin limbs pinned together. His legs kicked and scrabbled for purchase beneath him in vain; they were too weak to resist his captors.

“If I’d known she was here, I would’ve paid you a visit sooner, Jor’calla,” said the Red King. “I hope you didn’t run your mouth too much. Wouldn’t want you spoiling the fun.”

“Who are you?” Alice asked, barely keeping her voice steady.

“Here, I’m the king. Act accordingly.”

One of the robots placed a hand on the back of her neck and forced her to her knees with her head bowed. Alice gritted her teeth and pushed back against the robot’s hold, but it was useless.

“Perfect. Before long, you’ll learn to do it on your own.” He placed a finger beneath her chin and tipped it up once the robot removed its hand from the back of her neck. “And you’ll get on your knees often—any time I want my cock between those pretty lips.”

From somewhere nearby, there was a faint, nearly inaudible growl; Alice heard it only as a low rumbling, but it was somehow reminiscent of an agitated lion.

Pulling her chin away, Alice snapped her teeth at the king’s finger.

The king yanked his hand back, narrowly avoiding her chomping jaw. His features contorted in fury, eyebrows angling down and nostrils flaring. With a snarl, he grasped her hair and jerked her head back, brandishing that finger in front of her nose. “You’re going to pay for that, Alice. I’m not going to kill you, not right away. You’re going to suffer for a long, long time. People can survive a lot of punishment here, but they feel”—he trailed the back of his finger down her cheek—“ everything .

“Winters failed to condition you as I instructed, but that’s all right. I think I’ll enjoy breaking you. I’ll enjoy making you learn.”

Alice glared at him with her teeth clenched and lips pressed tightly together. Anger overrode her fear, and she didn’t bother to hide it.

The king yanked her head back farther, tugging hard on her hair, and she hissed at the flare of pain on her scalp.

“Like I said, girl, you’ll learn. One way or another. I guess if you don’t…you’ll just have to be part of the culling, won’t you? Just like our friend here.”

Releasing her, the king stepped back and turned toward Jor’calla, who was squirming in his captors’ restraining arms. “You’ve always been a nuisance, bug. Always caused issues. Because you knew there wasn’t anything we could really do about it. What do you know now, Jor’calla? What do you see?”

“The mandate,” Jor’calla rasped. “The culling. Death .”

“ True death.” The king reached forward and patted the side of Jor’calla’s face. “True death for any I choose. And you…well, time’s come for you to stop being a problem.” He swept aside his coat, revealing a knife strapped to his thigh, and wrapped his fingers around the grip.

Alice’s eyes widened, and she threw her weight forward. “Don’t! Leave him alone!”

The robots holding her didn’t move so much as an inch.

Jor’calla twisted his head to look at Alice. “He is deathless in Wonderland! End him beyond, only beyond!”

“Pull his head back,” the king spat.

The robots complied, forcing Jor’calla’s head up to expose the soft-looking skin of his throat. The alien’s mandibles twitched and writhed.

“The Red King knows the way,” Jor’calla cried. “He travels between worlds! He?—”

The king plunged his knife into Jor’calla’s throat, cutting off the alien’s words.

“No!” Alice’s stomach churned; she was sickened and horrified but unable to look away.

Settling his free hand over the butt of the knife, the king dragged the blade downward, opening a huge gash down Jor’calla’s chest. Thick, blue blood gushed from the wound, bathing the king’s hands.

Jor’calla spasmed, his mandibles flaring wide, and Alice watched in silent horror as the alien’s entrails spilled from the gaping wound.

The king pulled the knife free and plunged a hand into Jor’calla’s chest. He tugged on something inside; there was a wet, squelching sound, followed by a long, slowly fading hiss from Jor’calla. The alien sagged in the robots’ hold.

Stepping back, the king pulled something out of Jor’calla’s chest—a heart . He raised it high, like a grisly trophy, and grinned. “One less problem for the future.”

One of the robots walked forward, holding an open sack, the bottom of which was glistening and dripping with dark liquid that could only be blood. The king tossed the heart into the sack as if it were nothing more than a measly pebble and flicked droplets of blue blood off his fingertips.

Numbly, Alice turned her face back toward Jor’calla. Though she’d only just met him, she mourned his death. He must’ve suffered so much—both here and in reality—but, rather than beg for his life, he’d used his final breaths to try to tell her something. He’d been trying to help her. He hadn’t deserved this. She doubted any of the king’s victims deserved this.

The king stepped back over to Alice and took firm hold of her jaw, smearing warm, blue blood over her skin. He wagged the knife toward the robots, and they released her. The king took hold of her in their stead, wrapping his arm around her and drawing her close with seemingly as much strength as his mechanized minions. He pressed the flat of his blade along her spine.

Alice stiffened and forced herself to meet his gaze, narrowing her eyes as disgust, hatred, and anger rose in her throat like bile.

“Now that I’ve concluded my business with Jor’calla, I have some time to spare for you,” he said, brushing his finger over her bottom lip in a way that, like his voice, was frustratingly familiar and unsettling—but which she could not place. “Shall we begin your lessons?”

His mouth descended upon hers.

Though the Red King was not nearly as predictable as the Hatter, he had certain habits that Shadow had learned to recognize and exploit—the most interesting of which was, perhaps, his tendency to make unnecessary displays of force.

No one was quite sure where the king’s army of automatons had come from; nobody was quite sure where anything in Wonderland came from, in fact, but there was nothing else in the whole world quite like the king’s minions. There’d always been something familiar about the faceless, unfeeling soldiers that Shadow couldn’t place, but he never let himself dwell upon that notion for long.

All that mattered was that he knew how to take advantage of their weaknesses.

He’d gone outside ahead of Alice and Jor’calla to deal with the black-armored machines, knowing they’d pose the greatest threat in this situation—the king alone was easy enough for Shadow to handle. The automatons’ eyes—or sensors, or whatever it was they were called—had always had difficulty detecting Shadow, especially when he didn’t want to be seen; that allowed him more than enough space to work.

True to form, the king had arranged his guards along both sides of the path, ten in each line, with ten more having marched into Jor’calla’s home.

Nothing sounded more entertaining to Shadow in that moment than the thought of the king ordering his soldiers to attack only for all of them to simultaneously malfunction. The king’s face would turn a shade of red that by itself would’ve been enough to justify his most commonly used moniker.

All it would take was a few disconnected wires where each automaton’s neck met its head…

Shadow had only made it through the first line when the other automatons emerged from the building, dragging Alice and Jor’calla along with them.

Alice struggled against her captors like a cornered animal, displaying a ferocity that Shadow hadn’t yet seen from her—he was equal parts proud and aroused. But those feelings quickly vanished when he realized why she was struggling.

The Red King had no intention of being nice to her. The Red King wasn’t nice to anyone . He wanted something from Alice—likely wanted Alice herself—and he wasn’t the sort to stop before getting what he desired.

Neither was Shadow.

Shadow hurried along the second line of automatons, working as quickly as he could. Leaving the machines fully functional would only complicate his escape with Alice; even if they couldn’t do much to harm him, they could certainly harm her.

But his frantic pace wasn’t enough to keep him from hearing what the king said to Alice—about making her take him with her mouth. Jealousy and rage roared to life within Shadow. He clenched his fists, digging his claws into his palms, and involuntarily released a low growl that nearly revealed him to his foe.

When the king sliced open Jor’calla—a decent person, even if he was sometimes quite rude—only a minute later, Shadow knew he was out of time. There was no more room for elaborate plans, no matter how entertaining they’d be.

The threat to Alice was too great.

Shadow was creeping around the machine soldiers, meaning to sneak up behind his foe, when the king pulled Alice against him and kissed her.

Kissed her.

He kissed her!

Shadow’s rage grew into something powerful and primal, sweeping through him from head to toe to the tip of his tail. It was heavy; it was fiery; it was raw . For as long as he could remember, he’d played his games with the denizens of Wonderland because those games were fun . And those people had looked at him like he was a freak, had called him the Grinning Ghost, the Faceless One, the Slinking Shadow. And he’d never hated any of them—not even the ones who’d been angry at him, who’d tried to kill him. It had all been too amusing.

But there was nothing amusing about this. There was no fun to be had here.

Even after witnessing the Red King’s cruelty over an unfathomable length of time, even after countless games—most of which culminated in violence—between Shadow and this man who called himself the ruler of Wonderland, Shadow had never hated the king.

Until now.

Shadow had planned to toy with the king for a little while before escaping with Alice. He’d planned to taunt and tease, and he’d been in a good enough mood that he probably wouldn’t have killed the man before going.

That was no longer the case.

Because the Red King had kissed Alice. Shadow ’ s Alice.

Snarling, he darted behind the king, sank his claws into the man’s scalp, yanked the man’s head back, and drew the gun from the king’s hip.

“Fuck!” The king released Alice and lifted his arm as though to reach back and stab Shadow.

“No more games,” Shadow growled as he jabbed the barrel of the gun just behind the king’s ear and pulled the trigger.

The boom of the gunshot echoed through the trees, followed a moment later by the light, splattering sounds of chunks of the king’s brain and skull raining on the forest floor nearby. Using his grip on the king’s hair, Shadow thrust the limp corpse backward.

“Shadow,” Alice rasped, her big blue eyes bright against her pale skin. An instant later, she lunged toward him, throwing herself into his arms.

He caught her in an embrace, but his attention was focused on the automatons beyond her.

The machines along the sides of the road snapped their heads toward him. Sparks flew from their necks, and small explosions blasted their heads apart in rapid, irregular succession. But the ten on the path—the ones who’d captured Alice and Jor’calla—just stared at Shadow with their glowing red eyes and lifted their weapons.

“Didn’t get them all, we’ll talk soon,” Shadow said quickly, lifting Alice off her feet and spinning her around so he was shielding her from the robots with his body.

She released a startled cry; when she repeated his name, it was with alarm.

Shadow darted forward, willing himself somewhere, anywhere , but right here.

At least half a dozen guns boomed behind him.

His foot came down on… nothing .