Tokens (After The Purge: Vendetta, Book 2) Read online

  She peered through the ever-widening opening, afraid to see what was on the other side and eager at the same time. She didn’t let go of the lever until the big slab of metal had opened halfway and she could take one—then another—step inside.

  Ana stopped dead in her tracks.

  There was a figure in the next room with its back to her.

  It was a man, and he was too busy with something to notice that she had opened the door behind him. He was crouched on the floor near the other side, holding something to his mouth. A bowl of some kind. The now-familiar ragged trench coat hung off broad shoulders, but the back of his head was exposed to her, a pieced-together balaclava lying crumpled nearby. He had short and dirty blond hair, and she only knew that because the color helped it to stand out from the darkness.

  A Raggedy Man.

  He was so consumed with the bowl (What’s in that thing?) that he didn’t turn around when Ana slowly leaned the shotgun against a nearby wall and took out Sullivan’s handgun from behind her waist. She glanced around her at the same time, noticing another metal door to her left, its smooth, black appearance making it easy to spot against all the grayness.

  Nothing about this place made any sense. Why were there so many rooms underneath a car salvage yard? What the hell had the previous owners been using this place for?

  She was lifting the gun and aiming it when the Raggedy Man finally turned his head. She glimpsed blue eyes and a pale white face just before the man dropped the bowl and its contents splashed the floor. The large figure bounced to his feet and raced across the room, moving with such surprising speed and ferocity that Ana was temporarily stunned.

  Snap out of it! Snap out of it!

  She pulled the trigger and was surprised by how hard the gun bucked in her hand. The thoughts, Dammit, should have used both hands! rushed through her head as the Raggedy Man’s forward momentum paused briefly as he twisted slightly at the bullet impact.

  She’d shot him in the shoulder, which wasn’t where she had been aiming. But that quickly took a backseat when she realized the gunshot was a little too loud even with the suppressor still attached to the barrel. She didn’t remember the suppressed gunshots being this loud when Sullivan had used the gun in the classroom, then later in the attic. Or was it her mind again, running on overtime and magnifying every little noise?

  Has to be that. God, I hope it’s that.

  The Raggedy Man had momentarily stopped his charge, but he didn’t stay that way. She wondered if he’d even noticed the bullet hole in his shoulder when he righted himself and kept coming.

  She put both hands on the gun and fired again, this time hitting him where she was aiming—in the chest. That slowed him down more than the first bullet. A second instead of just the half-second of the first shot.

  Jesus, did he even feel that?

  Then he was coming again, and Ana thought, How many is it going to take?, because she had been hoping to use as few bullets as possible. But now she’d already wasted two, and the man was still coming.

  Ana shot him a third time, once again striking him in the chest. This time the Raggedy Man collapsed to the floor, where his legs twitched and his hands slapped against the concrete, but (Thank God) he didn’t get back up.

  She hurried forward toward the fallen figure, praying she didn’t have to waste another bullet on just one Raggedy Man because the weapon was feeling noticeably lighter than before. She aimed the gun at the man’s face but didn’t pull the trigger.

  He was alive, if barely, and gasping as he stared up at her. His face was heavily covered in the same pulsing veins that she’d seen on all the others. Without the balaclava, it was clear now that the staggered lines went everywhere, across the cheeks and nose and forehead and vanished down the jawline where the man’s clothes covered them. She wondered how far they extended—maybe all the way down to his toes? More importantly, how had he gotten that way?

  Maybe it had something to do with the fresh, thin layer of blood covering the man’s mouth and dripping down his chin. He had been drinking blood. Viscous, dark blood that clung to his skin like thick molasses.

  “What are you?” she whispered.

  He didn’t answer, though his mouth did open and close like he wanted to say something but didn’t remember how, while blue eyes tracked her every movement. Blood bubbled from his chest where she’d shot him, but she looked past all that and saw…just a man. Young, maybe mid-twenties, and despite the unnatural veins that spidered across his face like glowing worms, he didn’t look anything like the monster she’d been thinking of him as. His hair was a mess, as if he’d hacked at it himself with a knife and without the aid of mirrors.

  A million questions raced through her head. How had he gotten this way? Was that really blood he had been drinking out of the bowl? Why was he drinking blood in the first place? Was that what caused those lines that covered his face and, likely, the rest of his body?

  “Who are you?” Ana whispered.

  He continued to stare up at her, those pale, blood-soaked lips moving, moving…

  “Say something,” Ana said. “Say—”

  Then he was gone, lifeless eyes drifting away from her face. She’d thought he looked young before, but somehow, he seemed even younger now in death.

  “What did you do to yourself?” she whispered as she crouched next to him and closed his eyes with her hand.

  Ana startled for a second. She swore the veins along his cheek might have pulsed slightly when she touched him, almost as if they really were worms coming alive at the skin-to-skin contact.

  But that could have just been her imagination.

  Yeah, let’s go with that.

  She stood back up and glanced at the door she’d come through. It was still partially open, what little light that had managed to sneak into the basement coming through and into this joined room. It would have been so easy to walk to it and get the hell out of here.

  So easy.

  Except she had to know. She just had to know.

  Twenty-Four

  The smell hit her first. It was also present in the previous room, but it wasn’t nearly as strong or pungent. The stench overwhelmed her senses and refused to let go, and it took Ana a few seconds—Five? Ten?—to find a way to breathe through her mouth without choking.

  She sucked it up and kept moving forward, but did leave the door slightly ajar behind her so she could find it again. It was a beacon, beckoning her to take it, telling her to abandon this insane journey she was putting herself through unnecessarily and run, run away, and live!

  But she couldn’t. God help her, she couldn’t.

  It was so dark that she could barely make out the barrel of the shotgun in front of her, or the solid concrete floor below and around her. Dark, old patches of blood led from the door and expanded in every direction, and all Ana could think about was the blood the Raggedy Man she’d killed in the next room over was feasting on. Not all the blood in this room was old and dry, and the blood that wasn’t stuck to the soles of her boots as she moved across the floor.

  A clink in the darkness.

  Ana stopped, lifted the shotgun, and pointed it in the direction of the sound. Or, at least, where she thought the noise had come from. For all she knew, she was facing the wrong direction—

  “Help me.” A female voice. Soft. Barely audible. Whispering. “Oh God, please help me.”

  Chris?

  Ana hurried forward—and almost stepped on something lying on the floor.

  It was an arm, and her boot was raised over it, about to come down. She took one step back, lowering her leg slowly, silently. She had forgotten how to breathe all of a sudden and had to relearn.

  There.

  In and out.

  In and out…

  It was a Raggedy Man, and he lay on the floor on his back. At first, she thought he was dead—the way his arms were splayed at his sides and the lack of movement contributed to that initial diagnosis—but then she saw the very deliberat
e rise and fall of his chest underneath his raggedy coat.

  He was very much alive, just asleep.

  This is bad. This is so, so bad.

  Ana looked around her as parts of the room began to slowly, very slowly reveal itself to her. It was so much worse than what she had imagined. So, so much worse.

  Turn around and run, the voice said from the back of her mind. This is it. This is your last chance. Turn around and run and don’t look back, or you’re never going to see Emily again.

  But she didn’t.

  God help her, she didn’t.

  Instead, she allowed her eyes to continue to adjust even as she breathed in the stale air around her. It was thick with blood and urine and feces and God knew what else that she couldn’t see, and she was glad that she couldn’t.

  It was some kind of lair. She had stepped right into a room full of Raggedy Men as they lay sleeping on the floor. There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to where they were laid out, as far as she could tell. There had to be more than two dozen of them spread out across the room. Or, at least, more than two dozen that she could see.

  And it was a large room, too. Much larger than the first one. There was a Raggedy Man in front of her and another one—no, two—after him. When she turned to her right, a fourth figure greeted her barely five feet from where she stood. The closest one on her left was farther away at about ten feet.

  The only thing keeping her from instantly fleeing was the way they slept. Serene, like men who were dead to the world. The ones she could see were still wearing their frayed clothing, and boots covered their feet, and old, cracked, and stained bowls were scattered around their sleeping forms.

  Her heartbeat increased, the beats coming so hard and fast that she was afraid the peaceful figures around her could hear them. Small clouds formed in front of her with every breath that managed to squeeze out between her slightly quivering lips.

  Get control of yourself.

  That was easier said than done. She’d stumbled into a nest of Raggedy Men. This was where they hid when they weren’t out there attacking and killing and abducting people. They came back here and slept and…drank.

  Blood. They’re drinking blood. Why are they drinking blood?

  “Please.” The same voice as before, and it was just as soft and desperate. “Please help me. Please…”

  Ana looked across the room, past the sleeping Raggedy Men, and allowed her eyes to slowly, slowly make out metal bars as they began forming some kind of square near the back. The grayness of the concrete wall helped her mind to fill in the blanks.

  It was a metal cage.

  And there was someone inside it.

  “Please,” the figure whispered. “Don’t leave me…”

  It was a girl, but Ana couldn’t tell if it was Chris or not. Did it matter if it wasn’t Chris? No, it didn’t. She’d come here looking for the teenager, hoping to answer once and for all if the girl was even still alive, but instead had found this, whatever this was.

  She picked her way around the first Raggedy Man, then the two after him. Slowly, more of them came into view, like ghosts appearing out of the shadows. She had guessed two dozen or so before, but maybe she had underestimated it. These were just the ones that she could see. How many more were inside the room that she couldn’t see? That would depend on how big the place was. If it was even half the size of the warehouse above, then the answer was big.

  But she couldn’t worry about what she couldn’t see or confirm. She only had to concentrate on what she could hear, and that was the girl’s voice pulling her forward as she navigated her way around a fourth Raggedy Man, telling him not to wake up, don’t you fucking wake up!

  She couldn’t see their faces, just the parts of them that weren’t covered by their balaclavas, but they looked as if they were in deep REM sleep. She might have thought they were in comas if she didn’t know any better. They didn’t move, didn’t even twitch in their sleep, and except for the rise and fall of their chests—and even those were tiny tremors compared to how “normal” people breathed while they slept—she might think they were all dead.

  You wish.

  The cage grew in size in front of her, and Ana started to make out the girl inside it. At first, she thought the girl was crouching, but the truth was she had no choice—the cage was too small even for an average height human teenager to stand inside it.

  “Please don’t leave me,” the girl whispered. She clearly knew what was in the room with them and kept her voice as low as possible while still being heard.

  Smart girl.

  Ana hurried the last ten or so feet between them. She crouched in front of the cage and got her best look at the girl.

  She was wearing panties and a bra, but nothing else. Her hands clung to the metal bars with thin fingers. Everything about her was scrawny, as if she hadn’t eaten or drank anything in days, which couldn’t have been possible, because then she wouldn’t be alive.

  If you call this being alive…

  She focused on the girl, on those deep blue eyes that stared back at her, and lips that quivered uncontrollably. Ana put a forefinger to her lips and the girl nodded, convincing Ana that she did understand the dire situation.

  Definitely a smart girl.

  Ana spent a few seconds getting a really good look at the cage. There was a metal padlock over the door, coated in old blood. A lock. How the hell was she going to open a lock?

  Then something else caught her eye. Ana turned to her right and saw a second cage about ten feet away. She wasn’t sure how she had missed it the first time, because it had always been there.

  She was standing up when the girl whispered, “No, no, please, don’t leave.”

  Ana looked back at her and whispered, “I’m not leaving. I promise.”

  The girl shook her head. “No, no, please…”

  “I’ll be back,” Ana whispered. “I promise.”

  The girl may or may not have believed her, but Ana was already up and moving carefully over to the second cage. She kept her footsteps as quiet as possible while glancing around her to make sure the Raggedy Men were still asleep. They were. The large lumps, encased in their rags and masks, hadn’t moved an inch. And the ones that she couldn’t really see but could just barely glimpse the outlines of, also remained still.

  There’s so many of them. If just one wakes up…

  Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it!

  She forced herself to think good thoughts as she approached the second cage, wondering how many of them there were that she couldn’t yet see in the darkness. How many kids had the Raggedy Men abducted? And what were they being used for?

  She thought about the bloody scarring across the floors, along the walls, the “stains” in the bowls…

  “Hey,” Ana whispered when she crouched next to the second cage.

  There was no answer, even though there was someone in there. It was a boy—a teenager, wearing boxers and nothing else. He lay on the floor on his side and on one cheek. His eyes were open, and he was looking in her direction but he wasn’t seeing her. She wasn’t sure if he could see anything at all. He didn’t seem to be breathing, but she didn’t think he was dead. He was close, so close, but he wasn’t there quite yet.

  “Hey,” Ana whispered again. “Can you hear me?”

  The same silence, accompanied by the same unwavering stare.

  It took Ana a few seconds before she saw them, but the longer she stared, the clearer they became. There were cuts all across the boy’s arms and legs and chest. Most had scabbed over, but some were still recent, and thin trickles of blood dripped from them.

  Fresh memories of the Raggedy Man in the next room, drinking from his bowl, flashed across her mind’s eye.

  They’re bleeding him. They’ve been bleeding and drinking his blood.

  Ana instead reached through the cage and touched the boy’s arm. His skin was cold and clammy, and the boy’s eyes remained fixed on a random spot in the room and
never strayed.

  “Can you hear me?” Ana whispered. “Wake up. Can you hear me?”

  But the boy didn’t wake up or acknowledge her. And yet, he wasn’t dead. She was sure of that. He was breathing, even if it did seem to take a lot of effort. He was still alive…somehow. How long had they been bleeding him? How long had he been down here? How much longer could someone last in this condition? How—

  “Ana?” a voice whispered.

  She looked up and to her right as a figure rose from the floor. Unlike the caged girl and the boy, this one looked free.

  That voice!

  Ana hurried over to the third figure. “Chris?”

  “Ana!” Chris had whispered the name, but it was still too loud, and Ana flinched and glanced around her to see if anyone else but her had heard it.

  There was no movement around her except for the gradual rise and fall of chests…

  Thank God. Thank God.

  She turned back and crouched next to Chris. The girl wasn’t as free as Ana had thought. She wasn’t in a cage, but her arms were bound behind her, a chain linking them to a metal spike that had been driven into the floor nearby. Chris still had her clothes on, and she looked terrified and bruised, but wasn’t in the same shape as the caged girl or, even worse, the boy. Her eyes were wide and still filled with life as she clung to Ana’s arms.

  “You came for me,” Chris whispered. “You came for me!”

  “Of course I did.” Ana smiled.

  “I thought you wouldn’t…”

  “Now you know better.”

  The kid nodded, pursing her lips, and looked very much on the verge of crying. “This place, Ana. This place…”

  “I know,” Ana said. “I know.”

  She leaned in closer to get a better look at Chris’s bindings. The “rope” was metal, but the cuffs that bound her wrists were brown leather. It looked like some kind of bondage gear, and it was either too tight or the teenager had been fighting them, because Ana could see traces of blood along her arms. They looked strong enough that Chris hadn’t been able to break free, and the small padlock linking them probably didn’t help.