Wicked Ones {bxb}

{Chapter 49 : Ethereal - Part 1}

"Yeah, good job," he muttered inattentively. His thoughts were still on Kailan. Hell, his thoughts were always on Kailan.

For the past month, he had wished for anything but that—anything but for his thoughts to linger on Kailan. But of course, he was never so lucky. Kailan was the first voice in his head when he woke in the mornings, and the last breeze on his back when he slept at night. Kailan was the scent of his empty sheets, and the taste of every bottle he'd lost himself in the bottom of. Kailan had always been everything. 

He wanted to believe so badly that he was alive. 

"Change of plans," he said, slipping the phone into his pocket. "Gigi, stay in the car. Wait for the police to get here with Turner."

"Sure thing," Gigi scoffed, turning on her heels and complaining as she waded her way back to the lining of trees, "No fun for you, Gigi. You get to play with spiders all night, instead."

"The both of you, go find April," Vinny directed Jahni and Arlo, his eyes cast over them, commanding and intense.

Jahni cupped a large hand on Vinny's shoulder, and as Vincent looked up to him, he found a sort of pride in Jahni's smile. "It feels strange to take orders from you. But we will do our best."

Vinny smirked just faintly. It was the first time he'd experienced that—what it looked like to make someone proud. Letting his eyes fall distant to a patch of wild shrubs a ways away, he swallowed the nervous lump in his throat. "I'm going to find him."

Arlo had begun to make way for the door when he turned back to Vincent. "Go down. All of the Wickeds are held beneath ground level. Your friend is on the first floor."

As their figures faded into the building's inner shadows, Vinny examined the colossal size of the structure. His heart sped in his chest at the thought of seeing Kailan again, but he feared raising his hopes too high. He couldn't bear that kind of disappointment.

He'd know for sure as soon as he stepped through that door.

He counted to sixty and then Vincent himself slipped past the open entrance, stepping over bodies laid in the destructive path of April's wrath. As Arlo had suggested, he followed the railing to the lower floor. The staircase was long—in fact, it felt despairingly endless. But as he graduated down the last few steps, Vinny's eyes passed over the rows of cubic glass. At the first sight of these cells, he felt a cold shiver slither down and hide between his shoulder blades.

It was the largest room he'd ever seen. Circular and hollow—the focal point of the entire building. From the top of the staircase, he counted the glass cells. Ten in each row. Ten rows each.

He walked along the first row, but every cell was empty. Unlike the others, there was nothing in these cubes. Five walls of glass, and a tile floor that looked to be bleached on the regular. He passed by four more rows just the same, then there was a separation between cells—a large gap that seemed to isolated the oncoming cells. These ones were larger, with sparse accommodations for the withering bodies inside. Most cells were empty, but the few that he passed by made him flinch. Delicate, sickly looking people curled up in corners of their rooms, wheezing, crying, but more than anything—staring with curious, recessed eyes at the sight of him.

"Looking for something?" That was when her voice rang from the end of the hall—melodious and golden, confident and familiar. Vincent spun around, choking on the breath in his lungs as he recognized her. The only difference was the short cut of her hair, and the black of her clothes. She looked everything like Sage, and yet nothing at all like the woman he once knew. Still the name fell from his lips in disbelief.

"Sage?"

Two floors up, Jahni was following observantly in the footsteps of Arlo, who seemed rather skittish to be wandering into the unknown.