Damaged Hope Read online

  She quickened her step for a full five minutes before the limping silhouette materialized from the darkness ahead of her. She crept from shadow to shadow and matched Limping Guy's pace, staying far enough behind to remain hidden.

  He headed vaguely in the direction of the Carmichael District. Kyra refused follow him there, but plenty of places stood between here and there where he might turn off. Turning southeast he trudged for several miles. When he turned toward the center of the Mire, Kyra proceeded with caution. They were four layers deep here—alarmingly close to where the Prowlers lived. Could this man be a Prowler?

  A noise from behind brought Kyra around. She stepped into the shadows and waited silently, listening to the rhythmic thud of her heartbeat. Nothing. Only silence. After a slow count of sixty, she moved on.

  Limping Guy made several turns and Kyra followed him at a distance. He moved from relatively well-lit alleys, where the signature red light of the Mire cast blond-tinged shades on the walls, to darker, more obscure passages Kyra was less familiar with. She registered mild surprise. Most Mirelings dropped into the first comfortable, well-concealed spot they found, and Limping Guy had passed several.

  Kyra froze in her tracks when another noise from somewhere behind reached her ears. She recognized it this time: the crackling grind of shoes on pavement. Yup, someone followed. One time might have been her imagination, or some random Mireling she happened to hear passing. But twice? No way. Not in the Mire.

  Kyra suppressed a sigh. Well, she'd have to leave off following Limping Guy. As she's suspected from the first, he hadn't proved particularly interesting. She still wanted to know more about him, but she needed to shake her follower first.

  Her stalker might be someone sent by Boss. The head of the Abstreuse mob told her his people would still keep an eye on her. Not Dellaire, who'd watched her before, but someone. If her follower did work for the mob, he didn't pose a threat to her. Just surveillance for Boss. Still, she couldn't be certain. She shouldn't risk it, in case her pursuer harbored more sinister intentions.

  Kyra moved forward again, Limping Guy still in her sights ahead. She resolved to turn at the next intersection of alleys and head back toward M Street. Once she wandered back into more familiar stretches, she'd have an easier time of giving her follower the slip.

  Two minutes later, she reached an intersection of alleys. Limping Guy had walked straight through it. Kyra meant to turn right. As she neared the intersection, though, she noticed something.

  Limping Guy had stopped up ahead. Kyra now stood much closer to him than she had since she began following him. Staying in the shadows, she peered into the darkness. She realized the alley he stood in dead-ended fifty feet ahead. He stood staring at the back wall of the dead end. Perhaps he planned to hunker down here for the night?

  Kyra watched him for several minutes, wondering why he simply stood there. The alley remained eerily silently. She peered back the way she'd come. She saw nothing, heard nothing of her pursuer.

  Up ahead, Limping Guy picked something up—Kyra couldn't tell what from this distance; perhaps a board or crate of some kind; it looked light against the dark wall behind it—and moved it to the right. He did this several times, shifting everything to the right. Kyra strained her eyes, trying to identify the action.

  He climbed up onto something on the alley wall. A platform of some kind. Then he vanished.

  Kyra blinked. What the hell? It looked the like the darkness simply swallowed him. An instant later, a scratching sound, and she swore the board moved back into place on its own. Kyra shook herself. The darkness must be playing tricks on her eyes. She needed to get closer to know the truth.

  Falling into a squat, she waited, running through possibilities in her head. The most obvious and likely possibility was that he'd entered some kind of hole or cavity in the wall. Limping Guy had crawled in there to sleep, pulling some kind of board or crate over the opening. Best not to disturb his little nest. No telling how dangerous he might be.

  And yet, Kyra couldn't shake the image of that dream. Something about this guy nagged at her, drew her like a magnet. She stayed put for a slow count of one hundred. She heard no sound, sensed no movement. Perhaps her follower had lost interest, though she certainly couldn’t count on it. More than likely he mirrored her, crouching in the shadows and waiting for movement.

  She didn't have a gun because she'd been working for Josie. She pulled her knife from the sheath strapped to her thigh. As silently as possible, she crept forward. She hurried across the intersection, where she'd be most vulnerable, and into the darkness beyond. As she reached the wall where Limping Guy disappeared, she immediately understood better what she'd seen. It must be what she'd thought.

  Large pieces of wooden pallets leaned against the brick wall. When Kyra drew closer, she could tell they covered a hole of some kind. If not for her pursuer, Kyra might have taken out her phone and shone a light briefly toward the pallet. It held enough holes in it to see through, and an instant's flash of light would tell her what depth the cavity behind it reached. In the darkness, she couldn't tell if it burrowed two feet deep or two hundred.

  Yes, it might have awakened or startled Limping Guy if he lay curled up back there, but the pallet lay between them and she would have had a reasonable head start. But chances were her pursuer still sat somewhere behind her. She didn't dare risk the light.

  Kyra sighed, disappointed. Probably nothing important here. Not worth the risk of disturbing Limping Guy. She ought to head into more familiar, safer territory. She turned to go, and froze.

  Her back faced the pallet, and from that direction, a cool wind blew, hitting her neck. She turned silently back toward the pallet. A small cavity in a brick wall couldn't produce wind. So unless Limping Guy had an outlet and a fan in there…

  Kyra peered back the way she'd come. Still no sign of her pursuer. No way to know if he watched from the shadows.

  Making a decision, Kyra took two steps toward the pallet, and lifted it away from the hole. Though it was dark as a tomb and she couldn't make out details, this obviously wasn't a cavity at all. It was a tunnel.

  Kyra climbed into it, turning to carefully tug the splintery pallet across the opening. Now she had to risk the light. The pallet would mostly block it from prying eyes, and she had no idea what lay in this tunnel.

  The illumination from her phone blinded her. She only flashed it on for a second before shutting it off again. It illuminated an empty crawl space. Kyra stayed in a squat after climbing in. She could straighten her legs if she bent at the waist. It wasn't more than four feet in circumference. It stretched out for thirty feet in front of her before curving to the right.

  Kyra preferred to be on her feet rather than her knees, so she walked forward, bending forward at the waist to keep from hitting her head.

  She moved forward carefully, silently, knife in one hand and phone in the other. When she'd moved into the curve she turned her phone on again to see what lay ahead. The tunnel went another twenty feet or so before curing again.

  For ten minutes, Kyra followed the tunnel. She heard no sound ahead of or behind her. The sound of the pallet being moved never reached her ears. Perhaps her pursuer opted not to follower her in. Hopefully. One less worry.

  She moved forward cautiously, using her cell phone to light the way each time the tunnel took a new direction. As she moved, the tunnel moved through several buildings. Obviously built purposefully, at times, brick or concrete composed it. Other times, the ground beneath her feet softened into wood or sheet rock.

  Cool, fresh air alerted Kyra to the tunnel's end before it came into view. Kyra approached the opening cautiously, listening for any noise. She peered out from a jagged hole in a brick wall. Nothing covered this end, and she wondered why. When she reached the opening, and looked down, she understood.

  The opening sat twelve feet off the ground. Strange, she hadn't noticed the tunnel sloping upward, yet the place she'd entered had been easily accessible from
the ground floor. Sweeping her eyes right and left, she found a rung ladder build into the brick wall. How Limping Guy climbed down, no doubt. Kyra easily, silently swung out onto the rung ladder. She moved to climb down, then glanced upward. The ladder reached to the roof, only a few feet above.

  Deciding to check up there first, Kyra ascended the rung ladder and cautiously peeked over the roof. Nothing. Utterly vacant. Kyra climbed the rest of the way up. This building had to be condemned. She didn't dare climb fully onto the roof for fear of falling through it. She simply didn't trust the structural integrity.

  Above, a sliver of moon hung in the sky, not giving much light. The stars twinkled distantly.

  Kyra had no idea where she was. She hadn't come far enough to leave Abstreuse. Like all major cities in Nevada, Abstreuse stood alone in the middle of the desert anyway. If she'd reached the end of it, she would have seen open desert, not a condemned slum. Yet, this didn't look like the Mire anymore, either. And it certainly wasn't the "better" part of town. So where was she?

  In her mind, Kyra called up a map of the city and ran through every turn she'd taken, trying to wrap her head around the geographic location.

  Dilapidated buildings covered the landscape. She couldn't make out anything except half-ruined roofs. Yet, unlike the Mire, they seemed shorter, smaller, and like they were all ready to topple.

  Twisting at the waist, Kyra peered in the direction she'd come from through the tunnel. In the distance, a red glow haloed the city. The Mire lay in that direction. So this must be….

  It clicked, and a chill ran up her spin. This was Old Abstreuse. She must be more than seven layers deep here. She stood inside the domain of the prowlers. The tunnel must be some kind of secret entrance. Kyra gazed down at the cityscape with foreboding.

  A small wasteland—not more than two or three miles’ square—East of the Slip Mire, it stood where the original Abstreuse City sprang up in the 1930s. A western ghost town in the middle of the Nevada desert. She'd read about it some while doing research on the city before coming to Abstreuse, but didn't focus on it because she didn't plan to spend time here. Her focus would be the Mire. Now she couldn’t call up many helpful details.

  Condemned and fenced off for decades now, the place felt emptier than the Carmichael District. The tunnel had been hidden. Mirelings probably didn't realize it hid there. Only Prowlers. Kyra shivered.

  The police never came here. They'd be targets, with little hope of making it out alive. The Prowlers were violent. They sometimes ventured into the Mire at night to loot and victimize unsuspecting Mirelings. Kyra knew little else about them. She got the feeling few people did.

  She should go back. Back through the tunnel and away from this place. And yet….

  Other than the red light—notably absent here—it didn't seem that different from the Mire. It lay still and silent. Silence didn't necessarily mean emptiness, though. Such stillness in a place like this could be deceiving. After all, the warehouse in the Carmichael District had seemed still, and heaven knew it wasn't.

  Movement in the periphery of her vision snatched her attention. On her right, down in the street. She squinted her eyes and focused on the movement for twenty seconds before it became solidified for her: someone walking away from her, with a limp.

  Kyra chewed her lip. She should go back. She felt the pull again. Who was this guy? Where was he going? Could it be so bad to simply follow him up the street?

  Heart pounding, Kyra climbed down the rung ladder, vowing not to follow him more than a few blocks from the tunnel, and to turn back if anything more dangerous revealed itself.

  Her feet hit the ground and she walked quickly to catch up. Soon he came into view ahead, still limping, but moving along at a brisk gait nonetheless. As before, Kyra kept her distance, clinging to the shadows.

  She followed him for some way, seeing and hearing no one else. The street they walked opened up into what might have been a city square once upon a time. In the center stood a large, circular area. Jagged pieces of wood stuck up at intervals along the perimeter. The ruins of a building. So perhaps not a square after all. Rather, a space where a large building once stood. She wondered what happened to it and why more debris didn't litter the area around it.

  Limping Guy stood at the perimeter of the circular area, looking down. Kyra wondered what he saw there. He moved down into the circular area. From behind, he seemed to sink, by degrees, into the ground. The circular area must slope downward.

  Kyra once again counted to sixty before moving forward. When she reached the circular area, she peered downward and raised an eyebrow.

  What a strange place. It reminded Kyra of a crater. As though a bomb had leveled this one spot, leaving the rest of the block intact.

  And yet, it wasn't truly a crater either. The sides sloped down at a steep, smooth angle, like an amphitheater. Did the building simply slide into oblivion? She couldn't tell how far down it went. It might not have been far, but the darkness obscured everything farther than twenty feet down. The light from the moon above glittered on shiny objects covering the slopes. Broken glass and used needles, she thought. She shivered.

  Nope. She was out. Not going down there. Some places posed too much of a risk, even for her. Aside from the obvious dangers, perching on the edge of this place made her shudder. She couldn't have said why specifically, but her hands trembled, and not from the cold.

  Kyra moved back the way she'd come, intending to go back to the tunnel passage and into the Mire. Who would have thought she'd ever consider the Mire the more comfortable, familiar place?

  Kyra left the crater behind and moved from the open area, back onto the street she'd followed Limping Guy down.

  A black silhouette leapt out in front of her. Kyra jumped back with a gasp. A man, she thought, stood in front her, gyrating back and forth with continual movement, like a predator trying to gauge how to best pounce upon their prey. A prowler, no doubt.

  Kyra brandished her knife, making sure the moon glittered off its surface. It didn't seem to intimidate the prowler in the least. He only looked marginally larger than her. Kyra knew she'd be able to hold her own against him. A fast runner, all she needed to do was get out ahead of him. If she could make it past—

  Strong arms locked around her from behind, a hand gripping her mouth, and something bit into the back of her tricep: the stinging sensation of a needle. A burning sensation burrowed into her veins. Kyra cried out, though it sounded more like a guttural moan than anything else. Her vision instantly blurred and she felt sluggish. Her limbs grew so heavy, she couldn't move them. She fell heavily against whoever held her from behind.

  A voice whispered in her ear. "Why do you follow me, Chameleon?" Chills stampeded Kyra's spine. The man from the warehouse, who'd stood over her and whispered in her ear. Shit. What were the chances?

  He lowered her gently to the ground.

  From the flat of her back, she gaped up at her attacker. She distinguished a mop of shaggy hair, not terribly dark in color. Not blond either. Nothing else. Her eyes distorted his features too much for her to make them out.

  He cupped her chin with surprising gentleness, his thumb against one cheek and index finger on the other. “Such a strange, intriguing creature,” he whispered. “Why did you have to be so curious?”

  Kyra fought to move. Her limbs felt like lead. They also buzzed like insects. The burning sensation from her neck tunneled toward her chest and stomach. Like someone lit a stick of dynamite and the fire burnt along a fuse through her insides. Her arms barely stirred.

  She spoke. Mewling, gurgling sounds—nothing like words—escaped her lips. Her captor didn’t seem to notice. Leaving her on the ground, he walked past her, toward the Prowler who first blocked her way.

  He moved with a limp.

  The connections came lightning-fast in her head. The man with the limp was the same one who'd stood over her in the Carmichael District. Who'd called her Chameleon.

  He moved out of her line o
f sight. His voice grated against her ears again, obviously not addressing her. "You did well. Now go."

  The sound of swiftly-retreating footsteps faded into the night. Limping Guy appeared above her again.

  Kyra fought panic. She fought to move. Her limbs didn't budge.

  "Not many people can follow me without me knowing, Chameleon," he whispered. "You gave yourself away by peering over the edge of the Dictim. I'm glad you're here. I want to show you something."

  He lifted her with apparent ease. Surprising, given the limp. Kyra's panic intensified the farther he carried her from the tunnel that led back to the Mire. Her brain felt mushy and her limbs, hanging toward the ground as he carried her, felt like they had weights attached. She was utterly helpless. Couldn't run. Couldn't fight back. What did this man plan to do to her?

  She fought to move her arms. Her fingers twitched weakly.

  They moved into the shadow of a building. Kyra stared glassily up at a sign above a door. In letters large enough to look fuzzy, while remaining distinct was written, The Purple Valentine.

  They passed through a doorway. A rotting ceiling replaced the distance stars. The smell of putrefaction strangled the clear, outdoor air. Shifting her eyes from side to side, she could tell they were in a spacious room. Her blurry vision didn't reveal much else. Limping Guy set her down against something hard that kept her in an upright, sitting position. Despite being inside, the floor seemed to be desert dirt.

  She studied Limping Guy's face, but saw only a round blur. It hovered not six inches from hers as he sat her up, even angling her head in a particular way as it rested against the hard surface.

  "I have work to do," his voice grated. "Thought you might want to watch."

  He straightened and moved away from her. Kyra swept her eyes around the room as best she could without moving her head. Mounds of dirt rose all around her at regular intervals, like tiny rolling hills inside the building.