Tainted (The Soul Chronicles Book 1) Read online

  He hesitated.

  The men were ten feet away.

  “Help me find Dr. Latimer. He can cure me.”

  The first man reached them. Medium height, with brown hair combed to the side and a wide mustache. He was dressed in a white lab coat with a piece of paper tucked into the breast pocket. Kat vaguely recognized him as one of the scientists who worked for her father.

  Kat looked back at Stephen.

  Stephen grimaced. “I’m sorry.”

  She stared back, her mouth open. He might as well have shot her in the chest with his revolver.

  She was falling again, but not in that pleasant way like during her coach ride. This time she was falling into an abyss, an ever-gaping jaw from which she would never return.

  “Good job, Grey,” the first man said. “The police said you were the best at tracking people down.”

  She couldn’t move. She was too numb inside, too weak. Even the monster had no will to move.

  Stephen turned her toward the man, shifting his grip so he now held her wrists behind her back. Two other scientists joined the first.

  “This one is dangerous,” said the second man, a bit smaller than the first. “Probably the most dangerous person in all of World City. I’m surprised you were able to catch her.”

  Kat lifted foggy eyes to the man on the right. He held up a needle and syringe. The fog began to clear with the sudden rapid beat of her heart. “No, no!” She backed away, but Stephen’s hold gave her nowhere to go.

  “You’re not going to hurt her, right?” he said behind her.

  She arched her neck and screamed. “Please, help me! Somebody! Anybody!”

  “No.” The man brought the needle toward her neck. She watched with bulging eyes. “This will just put her to sleep.”

  Kat screamed and reared back, but Stephen held her in place.

  “It’s for your own good,” he whispered in her ear.

  He has no idea what he’s talking about!

  “I promise I will continue my hunt for Dr. Latimer. Until then . . .”

  The needle pierced her neck.

  Kat’s mouth flew open. Cold flooded her neck, rushing through her body. She slumped against Stephen. “You . . . shouldn’t have . . . done . . . ”

  A dark curtain fell across her vision and everything went black.

  29

  The man stepped back, the syringe empty in his hand. “There. That should keep her asleep until we can get her upstairs.”

  “Are you sure?” Stephen said, remembering Kat from that morning and the fleeting look across her face a minute ago. If she hadn’t kept herself under control . . . He frowned. Why had she?

  “Yes. And we will keep her sedated until Dr. Bloodmayne is ready to talk to her.”

  “You mean her father?”

  The man with the mustache looked up. “Yes.” He narrowed his eyes.

  Stephen glared back. “What does Dr. Bloodmayne plan on doing with her? Why isn’t she being taken to the precinct to be processed?”

  “That is none of your concern. Your job was to bring her in. We’ll take care of the rest.”

  The third man, a burly sort of fellow with arm muscles twice the size of Stephen’s, reached for Kat.

  He didn’t want to let her go. A cold hurricane raged inside his gut. He shouldn’t have done this. He shouldn’t have brought her here. But she lied to him! How could he help a woman who wouldn’t tell him the truth?

  The burly man grabbed Kat and threw her over his shoulder like a sack of flour.

  “Careful!” Stephen yelled and raised his hand.

  The brute ignored him and headed for the Tower.

  A bitter taste filled his mouth and he lowered his hand. He watched Kat’s head bounce with each step the man took, her dark hair, loose from the chignon, swaying back and forth.

  Kat would be safe here, right? She had to be. After all, the brightest minds in all of World City were here. Perhaps Dr. Latimer wasn’t the only one who could help her.

  But deep inside he knew it was all a lie. And yet he was letting the lie continue. How was he any different than Vanessa?

  “I will have your check delivered to your office in the morning,” the man with the mustache said, offering a handshake.

  Stephen grunted and turned away. He needed to leave. He told the driver his address and climbed back into the carriage. The cabin felt cold and empty.

  The carriage lurched forward and he let out a heavy sigh, scrubbing his hands over his face. When he had first gone into the bounty-hunting business, it had been hard at times. Not the actual hunt part; he enjoyed the thrill of the chase. And most of his bounties he knew without a doubt were guilty. But there were those occasional ones that left him feeling sick after he deposited them at the precinct.

  Like he felt now.

  Twenty minutes later the carriage reached his street. It was late, the time when decent people were already in bed, but then, Stephen felt anything but decent at the moment.

  Upstairs, he pulled off his boots and tossed them into the corner, then fell on his single bed. He pulled his pillow up beneath him and stared at the wall ahead.

  Vanessa. He hadn’t allowed his mind to dwell on her in almost two years. But ever since Kat had shown up in his life, Vanessa had been there, standing in the shadows of his thoughts.

  Yes, they were alike in some ways. Both women had long, dark hair and matching dark eyes. Pale skin, tinted pink when embarrassed or angry.

  But that is where the comparison ended.

  Stephen shifted to his side and stared out the small window that opened up into the alley. Hardly any light shone through the panes, leaving him in darkness.

  Vanessa had been a predator, feigning innocence when in reality she had been a tiger.

  But Kat . . .

  Stephen sat up and placed his feet on the floor. He gripped his face in his hands. Kat wasn’t Vanessa. She had an innocence about her, and a hidden strength. Or was that stubbornness? A small smile crept across his lips. Just when he thought he had her figured out, she would surprise him. Like last night, when she reached for him and kissed him.

  He swallowed, his heart thudding inside his chest.

  Then she surprised him again this morning. The other Kat.

  “God, what do I do?” he whispered, then pressed his lips shut. He had no right to talk to God. He had left God behind a long time ago.

  Instead, he rubbed his face and lay down. Eventually he fell into a fitful sleep. Kat’s face appeared in his dreams, first smiling, then sad, then . . .

  They were standing on the stairway again inside the inn at Covenshire.

  “Stephen, I don’t want to be alone.” She looked into his face, her dark eyes wide, her mouth slightly open.

  “Kat.” He drew his head down, closer, closer . . .

  The scene melted away into darkness. The darkness morphed into a gloomy green. He blinked and found himself in a laboratory. Long, narrow metal tables lined the side walls. The green came from mining lamps set up at the head of each table. At the end of the room, a form lay on the metal table to the left.

  Stephen walked between the metal beds. His hair rose along his arms and neck. There was no sound, no smell. Just him and the metal tables, green lights, and . . .

  She lay on the long, metal table in the sickly green light, dressed in a simple white gown, her eyes shut.

  “Kat?” Stephen approached. There were tubes and long, thin metal cylinders sticking out from her arms, chest, and legs.

  Slowly she opened her eyes. They were empty, like all the life had been sucked from them.

  “Kat?” he said again, a shiver running through his entire body.

  Her mouth opened and she spoke. “I don’t want to be alone.” Emotionless, automaton-like. “I don’t want to be alone. I don’t
want to be—”

  Stephen woke with a gasp and sat up. It was still dark outside, but the faintest light of morning seeped into the alley outside his window. He ran a hand through his damp hair and sucked in another breath of air.

  That place in his dream, he knew where it was from: Kat’s story about her father’s secret laboratory. He had never been in the actual Tower himself, just the bottom floor, but it was exactly how he had pictured it when Kat had described it.

  He stared at the window, his eyes wide. “I shouldn’t have left her there.”

  Stephen ran down the hall toward his office, morning light spilling across the wooden floor from the window behind him. His stomach knotted up inside, every time he thought about last night. He should have looked more closely at the warrant. Everything about it was wrong. Murderers, no matter what, were to be taken directly to the precinct. There was no reason Kat should have been delivered to the Tower. None, unless there was more going on. And his instincts were screaming there was more.

  But instead of listening to instinct, he had let his past grievances warp his mind. Then he had assuaged his conscience by convincing himself she would find help for her condition. That the Tower wanted her for benevolent reasons.

  He ran a hand across his face. Now his only hope was to undo what he had done and free Kat.

  He reached for his office door. There was information about the Tower that his assistant Jerod kept in one of the filing cabinets—

  Someone was here.

  Stephen paused and listened. Yes, there was someone in his office. And it was too early for Jerod to be here. He pulled out his revolver and soundlessly checked the cartridge. Barely breathing, he reached for the doorknob with his other hand and turned it without a sound.

  He led with the revolver, his finger near the trigger, but not on it. He slipped between the gap and did a one-eighty of the room. The front room was still dark except for where a bit of light filtered through the shades near Jerod’s desk.

  Stephen paused.

  A form slouched in Jerod’s chair.

  On second glance, Stephen realized it was Jerod. With blood stained across his front.

  “Jerod!” Stephen holstered his revolver and rushed into the room.

  Jerod looked up and blinked, his glasses missing from his face. “Stephen? What are you doing here?”

  “Never mind that, what happened to you?” Stephen went around the desk and pulled the shades up, then back to Jerod’s side and yanked open his vest.

  Jerod gave a cry of pain and hunched forward.

  “Sorry. How bad is it?”

  Jerod panted. “I—I think the bullet missed anything vital. But I’ve lost a lot of blood.”

  “I can tell.” Jerod’s face was pale and glistening with sweat. Stephen eased him back and pulled away the vest again, only more gently this time. He found a hole in Jerod’s side but no exit wound. “Who shot you?”

  “Don’t know. I went to investigate the rumors I’d heard about the Tower.”

  “Because of last night?”

  Jerod glanced up. “Yes. I went to St. Lucias to investigate the grave robberies.”

  Stephen looked around, spotted one of Jerod’s handkerchiefs peeking out of the top drawer, and pulled it out. “I take it you found something.”

  “Yes.”

  Stephen folded the handkerchief and placed it over the wound. “Hold this.”

  Jerod lifted his hand and placed it on the spot.

  Leaving Jerod to put pressure on the wound, Stephen dashed across the room and grabbed a scarf from the coatrack. “I’m going to wrap your scarf around to hold the handkerchief in place. Then we need to get you to a doctor.”

  Jerod grabbed his arm. “It’s not safe out there. That’s why I came here.”

  “You’ll die here.” Stephen wrapped the scarf around Jerod’s body and pulled it tight.

  Jerod groaned. “But—”

  “I know a doctor down in Southbrook. I trust him.” He helped Jerod out of the chair. “Come on. Let’s get you out of here.”

  “I was right.”

  “About?” Stephen asked, wrenching the door open and propping it with his foot as he maneuvered Jerod through.

  Jerod sucked in a breath through his teeth, his face clenched in pain. “The Tower is involved in grave robbery.”

  The sick feeling in Stephen’s gut solidified further. “How do you know it was the Tower you saw last night?” They stepped out into the hallway. Morning light streamed in through the windows on either end of the hallway.

  Jerod gasped and hunched over. “I—I followed them. And I saw Dr. Bloodmayne.”

  Stephen froze. Kat’s words came rushing back. There are things you don’t know about my father, things he has done in the name of science.

  Then it was true. The Tower was involved, and probably not in just grave robberies, but in the missing people. And more than the Tower. It couldn’t accomplish all of this by itself. The World City council had to be involved as well. And if the World City council, then also the police force at the highest level in order to cover up anything that came to light.

  He swayed and his vision darkened. But why? What was their ultimate purpose? And what did Kat have to do with all this?

  There could only be one answer. Her power. And—he swallowed—he had handed her right to them.

  Outside, Jerod gripped his arm, his eyes wide. “You didn’t take Miss Bloodmayne there, did you? Please say you didn’t take her to the Tower.”

  Stephen looked away. He hardly ever made mistakes. But this one was by far his worst.

  “You need to get her back. Stephen, you need to get her back!”

  “I know!” He grabbed Jerod’s shoulder and looked down at his sweat-bathed face. “I know.”

  Stephen hailed a cab at the corner and paid the driver extra for his discretion. He didn’t have time to take Jerod down to Southbrook himself, not if he was going to rescue Kat.

  He watched the cab pull away, then raced back into the building.

  Everything pointed back to Dr. Bloodmayne: Kat’s condition, Aunt Milly’s death, the bounty. And he had turned Kat over to her father. The cold hurricane inside his chest returned.

  What a fool I’ve been!

  He hurried back into his office and went straight for the filing cabinets along the wall to the right. Jerod was a very precise man, one reason he had hired him. He kept information filed on every district in World City just in case Stephen ever needed something for a mission.

  His fingers brushed the T tab, and he yanked out the thick folder on the Tower. Flipping through it, he found what he sought: blueprints.

  He shuffled past the plans for the auxiliary buildings: the academy classrooms, the libraries, the dorms. There. The main building, an eight-story behemoth that encompassed an entire block. The Tower got its name from the tower that protruded from the eighth floor at the front of the building, a rectangular citadel rising another five stories, with a steep, sharp roof at the top, like the turret of a castle.

  He scanned the plans. Getting in wouldn’t be too hard. There were multiple entrances besides the main one in the front, which he planned to avoid. Smaller doors around the perimeter allowed scientists working in the other buildings to cross the street and enter instead of having to use the front entrance. He doubted they were guarded, at least he hadn’t seen any guards the few times he’d had business at the Tower.

  Even then, getting past guards wouldn’t be an issue. He would just flash his badge—the one given to him by the police for bounty purposes—and walk inside.

  The real question was where would Kat be?

  Stephen pulled on the hair beneath his lip, his eyes darting across the schematics. His gaze hovered on the top floors. Kat said her father’s private laboratories were at the top, along with his office. Most likely
that was where she was being held.

  Or worse.

  He clamped his jaw shut. Leaving the mess of papers on Jerod’s desk, he went to his own, pulled out the drawer to the right, and reached for the wooden box in the back. Hopefully he wouldn’t find himself in a gunfight, but he would be ready if it came to that.

  After reloading both revolvers and stashing more rounds in his pockets, he placed the box back in the drawer and closed it. He had his way in, but getting out would be harder. By the time he reached Kat, the Tower would know he was there. His mind tore through every contact he had in World City. Who could help him? Who wasn’t in any way connected to the council or police force?

  Captain Robert Grim. Robert said he would be stopping in World City before taking the Lancelot across the strait to Austrium. It was a long shot; Robert might have already left the city. But if he was still here, Robert might just be the man to get him and Kat away from the Tower.

  Stephen holstered the weapons, drew his duster closed, and pulled the brim of his hat down across his forehead. Telegraph Grim. Head to the Tower.

  And right a wrong.

  30

  Kat blinked and groaned. She sat up and brushed her hair away from her face. She lay in a single bed inside a small room, with a table nearby and a window in the wall across from her. The walls were painted a dull gray, and the air held a clinical clean smell, the way her classrooms smelled in the morning after a thorough washing by the janitorial staff.

  She looked around again. Nothing but walls and the table. A blanket lay across her lower body. She still wore the blouse and skirt she had been wearing all week, but her corset had been removed, along with her boots.

  Kat looked over the edge of the bed, then back at the table. Where was her stuff? And where am I? Wait . . .

  Her heart dropped. She threw back the blanket and staggered across the cold floor toward the window. Down below she could see World City: thousands of smokestacks and rooftops, the Meandre River to the right, and familiar buildings surrounding the one she was in. If she was this high up, it meant that she was in the main building. The Tower itself.