Bonded to the Rakian Berserker (Rakian Warrior Mates #3) - Elin Wyn Page 0,62

was the thick hatch that had sealed her away from Gavin.

So close.

“It should, this is how you escaped last time, Diahann” he snarled, forcing her down the rest of the short staircase at his side. “After you attacked me in the lab.”

Memories bubbled up, a glimpse of someone emerging out of the hatch during one of the hazy, painful sessions in the chair, the struggle to understand what it meant through the agony, waiting for her chance, until a careless assistant had left a long metal tool within reach.

Until Braydon, so convinced she’d been broken, had turned his attention away to one of the tables of blinking lights, just long enough for her to strike him down.

The visions came so quickly she stumbled on the narrow metal platform, clutched at the low railing to keep her balance, the sound of water below deafening.

“You owe me, Diahnne,” Braydon chuckled. “I thought your disappearance was the low point of my research. Now I understand it was for a reason.”

Oh, Lady.

“The river,” she whispered, “I didn’t escape, not the way you think.”

Memory refused to release her from the past.

It was as if she fell all over again.

The crash of water as it pushed her down below the surface, sucking her with the invisible current, battering against the hard sides of some strange artificial riverbed, crashing from one hard metal surface to the next.

Diahann hadn’t escaped.

She’d died, drowned in the river.

A new girl, who’d been named Esme by those who found her, took up the pieces of her life.

But now the river was back.

“What is this place?” she whimpered.

“Power has to come from somewhere,” Brayden tugged her further down the platform. “When the city was first built, they dammed the river, set the generator here. Only one turbine is still working, but it’s enough for what I need, for now.”

The words made no sense, gave her nothing she could work with.

And his mind was too lost to madness for her to even touch.

“Quit stalling, show me how you got out of here!” he demanded.

“I didn’t,” she insisted, pointing over the edge of the railing. “I fell!”

“You’re lying!” he shouted, wrapping his hand around her hair and jerking her head backwards, the point of the weapon now against the underside of her chin. “I have work to do, and I don’t plan for this little interruption to last long.”

He couldn’t hear her over his own plans, Esme realized.

There wasn’t going to be a way for her to get out.

Not this time.

But maybe she could still do some good.

“Fine,” she sobbed, “down that platform,” she said, “there was a hidden door.”

His eyes narrowed. “I’ve searched there already. There was nothing.” Jerking her hair until her head was craned back painfully, he smiled. “Let’s be clear what happens if you’re lying to me.” He moved the weapon, just enough that the bolt of lightning only scorched the side of her cheek. “Are you sure that’s how you got out?”

“Yes, yes,” Esme babbled, her terror unfeigned, even as she desperately tried to come up with a plan. “You couldn’t find it because you need to use the Gifts to see it!”

That made no sense, but he didn’t notice, so caught up in his own plans, his need to escape, to return to his work.

There was no way out.

And he’d know that as soon as they got to the next platform, saw there was no door

But maybe she could delay him enough for Gavin to find Layla and the children.

Maybe she could repay Nettie’s faith in her.

Make some recompense for all those years of waiting, of being abandoned, forgotten.

Esme swallowed hard, throat tight. “It’s this way, I promise.”

She could do this.

One step onto the shaky narrow catwalk that connected the two platforms.

Then another.

She refused to look down, to let her eyes be drawn into the dark torrent below.

Then she ducked as a terrible noise split the air, the scream of twisted metal echoing all around her.

“Let her go!” Gavin roared from the gash he’d torn into the plated ceiling next to the hatch, forcing it further apart until he could squeeze through.

“Get away!” Braden shrieked, spinning to fire wildly where Gavin hung from the ceiling.

“No!”

Esme flung herself at the arm holding the strange weapon, dragging it down, to the side, anywhere so that the deadly blast couldn’t reach Gavin.

“You bitch!” Braydon screamed. “I should have killed you as soon as I had you back!”

“Probably,” she gasped, struggling against him, trying to get her arms around his chest as he