Page 27

I step into Antonio’s office at Bow & Arrow. The man sits behind his desk, glasses perched on his nose. His attention is fixed on a stack of papers in front of him, one held up so he doesn’t have to lean forward.

His gaze cuts to me, but his expression doesn’t change.

The man has a poker face, that’s for sure.

“Mind if I sit?” I point to the chair across from him.

He inclines his chin, which I take for a yes. I pull it out and drop into it, kicking my legs out and crossing my ankles.

He goes back to reading. His skin is paler than I’d seen previously, although I don’t have a ton of experience with the man.

The hair on his head is more silver than brown, his goatee the same.

Everything is trim and proper about him, except that his button-up shirt seems a size too big, and he occasionally presses his palm to his side.

He stabbed himself to save Artemis.

If that isn’t love, I don’t know what is.

After a long few moments of silence, he sets the paper down.

“So,” he says, “I presume you have a reason for visiting.”

I sigh.

Artemis ran out of the house like her ass was on fire. Saint chased her. When they didn’t come back, Kade tried to make conversation.

Then he got a text, and he made some excuse to leave in a hurry.

And now… well, I wasn’t going to sit home alone.

“Have you seen her?”

His expression is blank, blank, blank.

I wave my hand toward her office door, which is closed up tight. No light emanates from underneath it. She hasn’t been here, that’s for sure. But when she isn’t at home, I kind of assumed she was with Antonio.

Now, I’m doubting that.

“You tried to save her.” I will his facade to crack. Just a little. “Luckily, it didn’t cost you your life. But… it could’ve. And she lost consciousness thinking you killed yourself. She thought —and now she’s avoiding you?”

“Did you come here to press on my wounds, boy?”

“Yeah, maybe I did.” I lean forward. “What you did was foolish.”

“I’d do it again,” he swears. “She’s my family. As surely as I’d sacrifice myself to save my wife or children, I would do anything to protect Artemis.”

“I believe you,” I say. “But… she’s not doing well.”

“I gathered as much. I came here hoping she would show up.” He tilts his computer screen toward me, revealing the rows of camera feeds. “Barry is keeping an eye out for her at the front door. The servers know to alert me if she appears in the club.”

“Why would she bypass you to go into the club?”

He lifts one shoulder, then winces. “I’m not at a hundred percent. Getting out the door this evening was a fight with my wife. She’s currently down the hall, supervising the restaurant closing for the night.”

“Smart of her to keep you in one spot.”

He cracks a smile. “That’s my Vittoria. Smart as a whip.”

I stand. “I’ll leave you to… this.”

“Off to search for Artemis?”

“Something like that.”

Not really, though. Once I leave Antonio, I descend to the ground floor, then continue down to the giant metal doors of Terror.

There was an elevator entrance once upon a time for the clients, although even searching Bow & Arrow didn’t locate it.

It makes me think Artemis had it bricked over in her rebuild.

The hinges squeal when I yank the door open, and I hurry to close it behind me. In the complete darkness, panic constricts me.

I’m okay , I tell myself.

I use my phone’s flashlight to navigate down the hall. Everything about this place sucks. It’s creepy and old, the air stale and sour. The farther in I walk, the more guilt presses in on me. It’s almost as old as this place. My guilt is suffocating and hot, pressing down on my shoulders.

At one door, I stop.

It resembles a doctor’s office but beyond disrepair. A reclining examination chair is on its side, broken glass littered across the tile. I step into the room and crouch in front of one of the bottle labels. It’s legible after I swipe the dust and dirt off, and wince at the tiny print.

Ketamine .

I take myself out of my experience and put myself in Tem’s shoes. Being brought here, maybe even dragged through the same doors I just came down.

Drugged.

This place was no stranger to needles. To using whatever methods they could in order to elicit the desired response. Whether that was enthusiasm or complacency or lust… maybe some combination of the three.

I straighten and go to the chair. There are straps on the arms. One big band hanging loose from the middle of the chair, half disintegrated or eaten by rats. There’s another cuff on one of the stirrups that remains attached. The other lies across the room.

Horrible.

My gut turns, and I shine the light around again. Some of the glass comes from the broken medicine cabinets, but the cloudy shards seem to be remnants of fluorescent tube lighting. There would’ve been no hiding here, under glaringly bright lights.

But it wasn’t just Artemis who was here.

Gabriel existed in this space, too.

Terror formed him.

Do any records exist?

I leave the sham of a doctor’s office behind. The amphitheater is just down the hall, but I don’t care to revisit the pools of blood Artemis and Antonio left behind on the stage. I went there the last time. I found the bomb left by… Gabriel?

We assumed it was him. But with Kade in the mix of Cyclopes, and them knowing each other… anything is possible. They tried to blow up the Hell Hounds. They’ve been killing informants. Well, two informants who were loyal to Tem’s brother and his friends.

Jace King.

Wolfe James.

Apollo Madden.

They’re not in Sterling Falls. It was my task—my favor —that sent them to Emerald Cove. It seems, in hindsight, like a manipulation. But it was in earnest. There’s someone there I met, who I care about, who is trapped .

Standing in Terror, I seem to be filling my well of empathy for caged individuals.

Gabriel, Artemis…

I go to one of the cells and step inside. Imagine the door shut. The thin, horizontal window at the top of the far wall has been boarded over, but perhaps it wasn’t always that way… Besides the window, there’s a single bulb in the middle of the ceiling.

My stomach turns.

Why am I down here?

This is stupid.

And yet, I can’t stop. I continue past the amphitheater and almost breeze past a door hidden in a recess. I hadn’t noticed it before, when we were carting Artemis and Antonio out of here as fast as we could.

Or before, when I took a moment to remember the horrible feelings I held every time we came here. I just wanted to understand it, and Tem’s reaction to seeing me for the first time in nearly a decade. But instead, if left me more confused.

The door is stuck. I kick at it until the hinges fail with a loud crack , and a cloud of dust puffs out of the room.

It’s a storage closet, from the looks of it. Small, cramped, dark. There are boxes stacked pretty much everywhere, leaving only a narrow space to step into the room.

Which I do, because I am the cat that curiosity will no doubt kill one day. But Kade used to say I had nine lives. A few are surely gone after a harrowing deployment, though. And now the recent interactions with Gabriel.

I shiver.

It’s not cold down here by any means, but… I don’t want to think about where Gabriel made me go. While I was in an in-between state.

Instead, I flip one of the lids off a box and pull out the first folder my fingers brush. I steady my light, aiming it at the first page. There are two photos—one professional shot of a young woman, some sort of portrait. The other, she’s naked.

My throat closes, and nausea rolls through me.

It’s a personal record on the first page. Age, weight, height… hair color, eye color. Address. Even her parents. Behind it are handwritten notes.

Patient 52Y presents as a virgin. Hymen is intact. Patient required sedation for further examination…

I snap it closed, then grab another file.

Another woman, then another. Finally, I just… I stop.

There’s got to be fifty folders in this one box.

And there are a dozen more boxes.

My stomach cramps. I stumble out of the room, just barely rounding the corner when my dinner reemerges. Onto the floor.

I can’t even remember the last time I puked, but I do now remember why I try to avoid it at all costs.

Except for the horror my imagination is creating and running away with, it’s hard not to stay hunched. I wait for the second wave of nausea to roll through me, and I swallow sharply a few times.

They’re just boxes.

Even if they contain ghosts… we’re compartmentalizing.

Boxes.

Paper, cardboard, dust.

I carry them out three at a time, my muscles straining. I put them in the bed of my truck, parked in Artemis’ usual spot. I didn’t want to drive her car again and incite the Hell Hounds. That Malikai is one angry fella…

No, thanks.

I make four more trips, filling the truck bed completely. I roll the cover across it and grimace. It will protect the pages, and the sky overhead is clear. The stars glitter brightly, all signs of the sun long gone. There’s no chance of rain, although wind could do a number on it.

The last thing I need is to lose this miraculously found evidence of Terror.

On the way home, I’m rerouted. Road closures near the center of town, with firetrucks lining the sides of the street. I coast through an intersection and look left toward the university. Just beyond my vantage point, smoke catches a familiar orange-and-yellow glow of flames.

Someone in a high-vis orange vest spots me and heads in my direction.

I roll down the window. “What’s up, man?”

“House fire,” he explains. He has a tattoo on his face. A black X marking out one of his eyes. “There’s some worry about the gas line, so the trucks have been ordered back.”

A slither of unease worms through me.

“Okay.” I motion in the direction I need to go, which luckily is far away from here. “I didn’t mean to rubberneck.”

The guy breaks out into a smile. “Nah, man. Totally fine. It’s quite the show.”

Right.

I wave and raise my window, letting my foot off the brake. For a second, I imagine him darting in front of my truck. But instead, he takes a few quick steps back and watches me continue down the dark, nearly empty road.

Something isn’t right—but I don’t have the capacity to deal with it.

My phone beeps. It’s a special noise that I reserve for the reminder I set up on new numbers, and I sigh.

One hand on the wheel, with the other I dial the familiar, memorized number. I’ve been reciting it from heart since I was a kid.

The call goes through, and I pull over outside of Tem’s building. The last thing I need is for the call to drop when I go into the garage.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Mom.” I force a smile, knowing it’ll translate into my tone. “How are you?”

“Reese?”

I sigh. “Pretty sure I’m your only kid?”

“You missed our last call.”

Oh . Guilt rattles me, and I run my hand down my face. “I was in the hospital. I’m sorry I didn’t call.”

“You’re okay now?”

“Totally fine,” I lie. “You know they’ve got experts on staff.”

She hums. “The military usually informs us when our son is injured.”

“I told them not to. It laid me up for a few days, is all. I wanted to let you know that we’ve got new orders, so I might not be around for a while.”

“I don’t suppose you can tell your dear old mom about it?”

I settle in. This guilt is normal—I’ve been lying to her for years. So I tell her a story from when I actually was deployed, a mission laid out by command and painted to be a totally normal, run-of-the-mill day.

It wasn’t quite that peaceful, but I give it the same coloring our superiors did. A two-day transport, there and back, on a road that’s already been carefully monitored and swept by a different team.

Eventually, the clock ticks over to a new hour, and I groan. “I’m sorry, Mom, I’ve got to head out.”

“I appreciate you calling,” she tells me. “It’s late here. I was on my way to bed.”

I time it that way. Doesn’t mean I feel good about it, though. “Okay, I’ll let you go. Love you.”

“Love you, too, Reese.”

The line goes dead, and I throw the phone onto the passenger seat.

I hate my mother.

I hate her with as much love in my heart that I can muster, because she is just as much at fault for my shame that my father is. I tried abandoning her, but I couldn’t do it. At the end of the day, she’s the only family I have.

My father was written off a long, long time ago. Almost five years ago, he left Mom and moved straight into the house he bought for his twenty-year-old mistress. I only found out when Mom called me crying after he had already gone.

He’s the real piece of shit, and not just for cheating on my mother and then leaving her for a younger woman. The girl is younger than me —something that causes no shortage of revulsion. But he was also heavily invested in Terror. And that, really, was the end of our relationship.

I park next to Tem’s car in the garage and head up.

My phone rings almost as soon as I step out of the elevator. I have a new number—not that I need to hide from anyone, really, it’s just ingrained habit. I contemplate not answering. Who would be calling? Tem’s cell is programmed in, as is Saint’s. And, grudgingly, Kade’s.

Well.

Only way to solve the mystery is to answer it.

“Hello?”

“Reese.” Antonio’s voice fills my ear. Recognizable even though my conversations with the man have been limited. “I can’t get ahold of anyone else. I need you to come back to Bow & Arrow. Hurry. ”

“What’s happening?”

He makes a strangled noise. Then, “Cyclopes.”

The line goes dead.