Order Restored (Excerpt)

THREE

“That’s… not good.” He shook his head. “You should go.”

“I know, but…” I let out a choked laugh. “I don’t know the way out… So you see, I have to wait for Spânu.”

“In that case…” Jesse raised his voice, “You can come in now… She’s not going anywhere!”

I looked back and saw Spânu’s tall frame darkening the entrance. He hesitated at first, but then walked quietly over the rocky floor.

“Let’s get it over with so I can think clearly for a couple of minutes,” Jesse said, the excitement in his voice being hard to miss.

Spânu kneeled by his other side, and I looked away so I wouldn’t have to see the double pair of fangs sinking into Jesse’s flesh. Turning my upper body slightly, I arched my left arm. I had a perfect shot at Spânu’s back. If he indulged for too long in the delicacies of human blood, my stake had good chances to find his heart.

He didn’t. He pulled back a few seconds later and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. Then he ran his palm along the blade of the yatagan he still carried attached to his belt. The blood that gathered in his palm he let drip on the fresh wound that decorated Jesse’s neck.

Jesse groaned, and his eyes snapped open, suddenly alert.

“You have to get her out of here,” he told Spânu in a commanding voice.

The big man straightened himself up. “Can’t. They want to see her.”

“You can’t take her to them!” Jesse protested loudly, startling a few of the prisoners in his vicinity.

The knot in the pit of my stomach tightened. Finally, I was going to meet with the brains behind this mass murder operation. Max had shared his suspicions and told me a little bit about everyone involved, since they wanted to talk to me and I needed to be prepared, but we had no confirmation that he was right on all accounts.

“It’s all right,” I said, placing a hand on Jesse’s shoulder to keep him calm. “That’s what I’m here for, to negotiate the release of—” I gestured around the place “—all of these people.” And among them, him too.

“Liana…” Jesse’s hand covered mine. “I don’t think it’s worth it. They’re too far gone… You can’t save them.”

It didn’t sound like him at all—this was the venom, pain, and despair talking. He hadn’t been able to save his sister, and now he knew what she had gone through. He was giving up. It had taken them only a week to break him. They had to have known it would have this effect on him. One more thing to make them pay for.

“It doesn’t mean I’ll stop trying,” I said coldly and got up. “Take me to them,” I asked Spânu in a confident voice, as if we were still at home and he was under my command.

“Liana—” Jesse outstretched his arm, but I was already out of his reach.

“Don’t worry, I’ll come back for you.” To anyone listening in, it would sound like I was referring to everyone around. Thank God for the lack of difference between the plural and the singular in the English language. To Jesse it would mean something else.

“Worry…” He slumped back, but his eyes kept staring at me. “What happened to you?” he asked, and this time he wasn’t talking about my face.

I had hoped he’d miss that, but he knew me too well. He was freezing, and I hadn’t asked Spânu to bring one of the radiators closer to Jesse or give him his jacket which the new breed didn’t need anyway. I couldn’t fake such indifference in front of Jesse, unless something had happened. Well, it had.

“I did what I had to do,” I muttered. I didn’t like what Max had done to me, and I hated the way it made me feel inside. However, given the circumstances, the only way to save Jesse was to set everyone else free.

Jesse nodded in understanding, and it broke my heart to see he still trusted me. My anguish had no outside manifestation, though the idea of leaving him here unprotected was killing me. The compulsion held.

I gave him a small nod and started for the exit. Following my lead, Spânu walked ahead with a steady pace in the corridor. He didn’t fear me, but he did fear something, because he whispered in Romanian, “Don’t try anything.”

Whether he worried about me or them, it was hard to tell. But the cards hadn’t been dealt yet. We could still change something, so I held back a grin.

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Author's note: Thank you for reading, everyone! If the story caught your interest, please stop by my website at http://ioanavisan.zxq.net to see where you can purchase Order Restored, the third novella in The Impaler Legacy series.