Apparently satisfied, Griff walked off to resume his eternal job of wiping glasses. Tan helped himself to the new drinks while Roman used his arms as a pillow. Weariness overwhelmed him, and he felt himself slipping out of consciousness.
“You stay here and rest,” he heard Caleb say. “I’m going to go find a lead on Candle.”
“Where are you going to look?” Roman mumbled.
“I’ll start questioning my old mercenary contacts. I’ll crack some skulls until somebody tells me something.”
Roman was barely listening. He closed his eyes and fell asleep.
24
Ruby walked a step behind Higgs and kept the knife firmly digging into his back. One quick push and it would slide between his ribs and into his heart. She was almost looking forward to doing it.
Higgs kept his hands on his head as he led them through the compound. Blood poured freely from both of wounds, running down his back and arms before washing away in the rain. He stumbled, blood loss quickly taking its toll. Ruby didn’t help him, instead pushed the knife in harder. Higgs found his footing again and moved on.
From somewhere behind them, Ruby heard yelling. She couldn’t make out the words, but the tone was clear: they had discovered her escape.
The buildings around them didn’t look familiar. Although, every building here looked identicaclass="underline" grey, square and half collapsed. The floodlights spread around the compound were still off — a fact she was grateful for.
Was it just her imagination, or was the shouting behind her getting closer? More voices were joining in the mix. Ruby glanced behind her. The rain washed away most of the trail of blood that Higgs left, and, in the dark, it would be hard to spot what was left. But still… it would be possible, and it would lead straight to her.
“How much further?” she demanded anxiously.
“Not… far,” Higgs said between heavy breaths.
Ruby was tempted to just kill Higgs now and search for Gavin’s weaponry herself. She was impatient to get her hands on a bow. Once she had one, she could stop fleeing, and start hunting down Gavin. All she needed was one shot. In this darkness, he wouldn’t even see her coming.
The voices were coming closer.
“Down here.” Higgs turned to a side alleyway, his steps getting more unstable with each stride.
Ruby stared, uncertain, at the entrance of the alley. Her instincts told her it was a trap. But the voices behind her were close enough she could make out their insults and threats and taunts. At least the alley would get her out of sight. She pushed Higgs in first.
It was too dark to see more than five paces ahead. Ruby’s pulse pounded in her ears as she scanned the shadows for any sign of a trap.
Higgs stumbled again, but this time he didn’t catch himself and he collapsed, hitting the ground face first. He wasn’t going any further in this state. Cautiously, Ruby knelt beside him and sliced the blade across his neck. He died with a sickening gurgling sound. Ruby fought the urge to retch, quickly moving away from the corpse as if it might explode.
The shouts grew louder. Much louder.
“This way!”
“We’ve got her!”
Ruby swore, running deeper into the alley. She prayed for a door, somewhere to hide, but the walls were void of anything other than cracks. She sprinted around a corner and into a dead end.
Ruby kicked the wall in frustration. Why the hell did the Ancients build an alleyway that led nowhere? She looked for a way to climb up to the roof, but it was impossible. She turned and ran back the way she had come.
A large silhouette was framed in the mouth of the alley. The glint of steel alerted Ruby to an axe in her opponent’s hands. Her own knife felt like an awfully pathetic weapon in comparison. Breath catching in her throat, Ruby stopped, crouching low. She was hidden in the shadows, for now.
Ten yards away, the thug chuckled. “You think you can hide? I’m gonna—”
Ruby dashed forward. The thug saw her and fell into a defensive pose, pulling the axe back and preparing to swing. As she entered his reach, Ruby ducked and the axe sliced just above her head, hitting the wall with a sharp clunk. She darted to the side and thrust the knife into the thug’s chest.
He howled as blood poured from the wound and onto Ruby’s fingers. She tried to pull the knife out for another strike, but it caught on his rib and wouldn’t budge.
The axe came around for a second swing. Ruby let go of the knife, barely spinning away from the blow. She ducked past the thug and sprinted out of the alleyway.
She looked left and saw two more thugs rushing towards her. Both had nail-studded clubs. She turned and fled the other way. The thugs hurled threats as they chased her.
Terror washed over Ruby as she ran. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a third thug run out of a different alley and charge at her. She took a right and sprinted through the Haven, not knowing where she was heading. Unarmed and outnumbered, her only hope was to get the hell out of here.
Adrenaline kept her going. She glanced over her shoulder at her pursuers; there were four of them now. The closest was barely twelve yards away.
Her foot caught in a pothole and she tripped, hands and knees scraping on the concrete. She gritted her teeth, ignoring the stinging pain as she leapt back to her feet. The footsteps from behind were terrifyingly close now. She didn’t dare turn around and check how much of her lead she had lost.
She skidded around a corner. A hundred yards ahead stood the pit fighting hall. Its doors hung open. Inside, the relative safety of darkness. And weapons — Gavin wouldn’t have had time to recover the equipment from his men who’d died in there tonight.
Ruby sprinted for the door, eighty yards away. Fifty yards. Thirty. She was going to make it!
Movement to her right. Someone was rushing to cut her off. Gavin. He held a long knife, grinning as he moved between Ruby and the door.
She didn’t stop.
Gavin charged.
Ruby dived forward, twisting as she fell. She hit the ground shoulder first and threw herself into a roll. Water splashed onto her face as she spun. An ice-cold pain tore into her left leg as sharpened steel split her skin. Back on her feet, she was past Gavin, almost at the door. She glanced down to see blood spilling from a cut across her calf. No time to worry about that. A pair of bodies lay at the entrance of the hall and she leapt over them and into the dark interior.
She stumbled over what could only be more corpses. The floor was wet and slippery; she knew it wasn’t from the rain. She ran over the bodies without hesitation or reverence, not stopping until she was in complete darkness.
Gasping for breath that couldn’t come fast enough, Ruby turned around. Gavin’s silhouette stood just inside the doorway. Behind him, a half dozen other thugs. None of them followed her inside.
“Congratulations, but the games over,” Gavin called. “Now come out before I get… frustrated.”
“Go fuck yourself.” Ruby crouched down and blindly searched the bodies nearest her for a weapon, or anything she could use. Her fingers came back sticky with blood as she ran them over broken limbs. Nothing. She moved onto another set of corpses.
“Why’d you even try escape?” Gavin asked conversationally. “You didn’t trust Roman to save you?”
Ruby didn’t answer. Her search became frantic as she moved from body to body. The throbbing pain in her leg wasn’t going away. She quickly ran her hand over the cut. She was lucky; it wasn’t deep.
Gavin gave an exaggerated sigh. “Ready to come out yet?”