“I have to take you back,” he says. “You know I do.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Yeah, I do,” he says. “Bruce gave the order.”
“Let me guess. He’s going to kill me?”
“He’s going to let Victor do it,” Harley says. “Victor wants to reject you publicly.”
“Yeah. I’m sure he does. But I have places to be.”
Harley sighs. “Don’t make me hurt you,” he says. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You want me to come quietly to my death?”
“It can be easy for you or it can be hard.”
“Or it can be hard foryou,” I say, dancing back a few steps, out of his grasp. “It’s not happening, Harley. Tell Jess you gave it your best shot but that you were no match for me.”
He lunges, grabbing for me, but I’m already whirling away, shifting as I go. I feel my clothes shred around me and curse inwardly, but my backpack stays snug around my chest. I’ve lost an outfit, but I can replace it. I have more.
Behind me, I hear a yell— “She’s over here! She’s going this way!”
Damn it!He’s not alone, and now they’re going to be chasing me.
And I know—because my body’s been screaming the signs at me—that Victor himself is somewhere close by. If he’s the one who finds me next, there won’t be any stopping to talk about ways and means. He won’t try to capture me and bring me back to the pack for someone else’s benefit. He’ll rip my throat out where I stand.
Suddenly I’m really, really wishing that I hadn’t left Nate behind. He’s a bastard, but at the moment, I could really use a bastard on my side.
I hear the sounds of running wolves behind me. I hear the panting, the snarling and snapping.
They’ll kill me if they catch me.
I’m fast. But I can’t outrun them forever. And I can’t hope to hide, not while they’re this close.
What I need is somewhere I can go that they can’t—or won’t—follow
The idea comes to me, and in a heartbeat, I wheel about and leap down the stairs that lead to the city’s old public transit tunnel.
Chapter 19
EMLYN
Thepublictransittunnelis like another world.
I’ve never been down here before, obviously. I’ve never actually seen it firsthand. I’ve only heard the stories. But every wolf avoids this place like the plague because this is where the Ravagers have their hives.
I know Harley and the others from my pack won’t follow me this way. No one from the Moon Hunters has ever been underground before.
Which makes it insane that I’m doing it now.
Maybe Nate was right about me. Maybe I am crazy.
Would it be worse to die at the hands of my pack or at the hands of Ravagers? If I had to pick a way to go…
No. I’m not going to give up. There’s a chance I could get out of this. I just have to make it to the next tunnel exit.
I know how the public transit system works, vaguely. I’ve seen it from the street level, even though I’ve never been down here before. Before the Lunar Reversal, trains used to run down here, taking people all over the city. The trains are dead now, of course, just like everything else, but the tunnels are still here. And there are entrances and exits to this underground system at intervals.