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It’s now or never.
Just before we cross into the unknown of the corridor, I slip one wrist out from the cuffs and sling the heavy metal against his head, as hard as my shaking hands can muster. There’s a sickening crack, and then I’m falling. Falling out of his arms and away from his musty smell and hot breath. I hit the concrete awkwardly, my ankle twisting in on itself, but I ignore the searing pain and run.
I don’t know where I’m running to, only who I’m running from. The brick tunnel turns and twists into another one, and then another, all identical to the last. A blur of dripping ceilings and harsh strip lighting and the throbbing pain in my leg. Then the adrenaline starts to fade, replaced by the realization that I have no idea where I am, or where I’m going.
“Poppy!”
My name echoes off the brickwork, loud and angry. My lungs are burning and my legs are turning to jelly but I refuse to stop.
“Poppy!” The voice is furious now, chasing me through the tunnels as I take a hard right. A new tunnel. The strip lighting stops halfway down it before plunging into darkness, but I still half-run, half-limp down it. My boots splash into murky puddles and mud splatters up my calves, but I keep running.
Then my body slams into a brick wall.
Fuck. A dead end.
“Poppy.” The voice is closer now and it’s growling my name.
There’s no other option but to turn back on myself, back into the light, and hope I can get out of this tunnel and into another one before the owner of the voice catches up with me. My lungs are burning as I retrace my steps back into the previous tunnel.
“Poppy!”
The voice is so close now that it makes me flinch. I whip around to chase it, and see my father standing at the mouth of the tunnel.
Holding a gun.
“Don’t take another step,” he growls, raising it towards me. “I mean it, Pop.”
But I learned a long time ago not to trust my father. I haven’t trusted him since I was nine and saw him slit Cedric O’Sullivan’s throat in his study. And I sure as hell wasn’t going to trust him now.
I turn on my heels and run, even faster than before.
My name rips from his lips one last time, followed by another noise. This one is deafening and within a fraction of a second, it hits me. The white, hot heat rips through my body, starting at my thigh and crawling across my skin like a million tiny spiders. Blood. Lots of it and all coming from me. It seeps over the damp concrete floor, staining my dress, entwining itself in the crevices of my hand.
Footsteps. This time they are fading, and so is the shouting. More voices now, in a quiet, angry chorus a million miles from me.
I was nine when I realized my father was a bad man.
I was nineteen when I realized he was the real Devil.
Lorcan
“The Tunnels?” I roar, slamming the barrel of my gun into Cillian’s temple. He swerves across the road and I grab the steering wheel to steady it. Despite wanting to blow Cillian’s brains out, I can’t save Poppy if I’m tangled up in a road accident downtown.
“It’d be a lot easier to drive if you weren’t pointing a gun at my head,” he says sourly, his eyes trained on the road ahead.
“How do I know I can trust you?”
He shrugs with a calmness that would suggest he wasn’t driving a hundred miles an hour in a twenty-five zone. “You know I just saved your life, right?”
I grab hold of the steering wheelbeforeI hit him again this time. “Why the Tunnels?” I growl.
“My suggestion. Because you’d never look there. You’d never expect for this shit to be happening right under your nose. But really, I know you know the Tunnels like the back of your hand.”
Even I have to admit, if he’s telling me the truth, it’s smart.
My cell buzzes and I answer in the first ring.
“What’s going on? I’m waiting on your instruction,” Donnacha growls down the line.
