Chapter 18

He took them to an old warehouse by the distillery block. That should have been a red flag. She’d seen this horror movie before. This is exactly where the man with a hook for a hand or a chainsaw jumped out from a broken window in a decrepit building and swinging a weapon into their unsuspecting faces and chopped some limbs off in the process. But they were alone. There was nothing here but the sound of the wind passing between the old brick buildings.

They tried to turn the block into something of a tourist destination a few times, installing flea markets and Christmas markets and places in the summer. It never worked out. It smelled too much like the stale beer that had once been brewed and bottled here. It also had a bit too much of a known reputation as a meth house and place where drugs deals had gone down.

Now it was desolate and if it weren’t for the sounds of Los Angeles in the distance it would seem like some kind of dystopian film. They were the last three people on Earth. She didn’t know if that feeling was good or bad with all things considered. But she kept following after Diego who was walking in zigzags, seeming to be looking for something in the cracked concrete of the ground and the graffiti covered walls of the buildings around them.

“Here,” he said, pointing to a door that didn’t distinguish itself from any of the others but he seemed to know it.

He pointed to some carving at the top of the doorjamb. It was a symbol that Alessia did not recognize. It might have been a claw or it might be a flame. She wasn’t entirely sure. Erik, however, looked at it gravely. She wanted to ask him, but she couldn’t, not in front of Diego. And he seemed to consciously be avoiding her eyes as they stepped through the door that gave way for them easily.

“It’s been cleared out, just like I thought,” Diego said, stepping in and kicking an old chair out of the way. “But something might have been left behind. We don’t even know if this is where they took Tekkin, but, like I said. This is all I can offer you.”

Deigo seemed to be backing away, ready to leave. Alessia was going to let him. He’d done his part. They could comb this place for clues themselves and he could go back to whatever bar he normally hid in throughout the day. He was stepping away and we were moving towards the room, Alessia’s eyes already looking at a pile of papers on the floor that had been left and stepped over.

And then suddenly no one was going anywhere as the ground rushed up to smash Alessia right in the chest. How had she fallen on the ground? What was the weight on top of her? Someone was yelling. Several people were yelling. There were male voices all around her, Erik was cursing and yelling her name and she heard the sickening sound of something hitting flesh with a blunt head.

She didn’t have time to turn and see the men that had descended upon them before her world went black.

#

When she woke up things were cold and they were damp. She was one something hard. The floor. That was a floor. She could get that much out of the situation. It was dark. Or maybe that was just because her eyes seemed unable to open. Her head was throbbing. Every time she tried to open her eyes the muscles in her head protested and screamed and told her to stop.

But she needed to move. She needed to find Erik. He’d been crying out in pain the last time she saw him. She needed to make sure he was okay. But all she could offer was a groan as she rolled on the ground. She was on her back now. That was a start.

But sometime else was shuffling near by. That might be a problem. But it could be Erik. She really needed to open her eyes and do something about all this. The shuffling was getting closer and her eyes were still closed, her limns still felt heavy, everything around her felt bruised.

“Erik?” she called out in a weak voice, one strained with the pain in her throat but it was enough to be heard because whoever was in the cell with her chuckled. That couldn’t be a good sign.

“No quite,” the voice said and she recognized it immediately.

She forced her eyes open through the sharp blinding pain of doing so. There he was. Drake was standing next to her, clothed this time, though what he wore was ragged and torn. He looked tired and he had bruises in places she didn’t remember before but he seemed no worse for wear and like he might be feeling in much better shape than her.

“Drake?” she coughed out and he was at her side in a second, kneeling down next to her.

“Just take a minute,” he said. “You’ve been through a lot.”

Had she? She didn’t remember anything, just being knocked to the ground while hunting for clues. Clues that, apparently, found their way to her first because there Drake was, mostly unharmed.

“Where am I?” she asked.

He’d settled on the ground and pulled her head into his lap. He was running his fingers through her hair and offering a gentle massage at her scalp. She relaxed into it, hunting for the smell of him despite the clothes and the unfamiliar damp of the place they were in.

“We’re being held in a facility not far from the school,” he said.

“I take it these aren’t friends of yours?”

“No.”

She could hear the ominous grim tone in his voice from where she lay. They’d found drake, but the danger was nowhere close to being handled. It was just as well. At least they were together. For now, she could take that, with danger lying ahead.