Hotbloods 5: Traitors

“We’ve got to get them inside!” Navan urged, plucking an ID device from one of the guard’s pockets. He swiped it over the entrance panel, and the blast door slid open with a wheeze of heavy machinery. Beyond, a small foyer branched into two hallways, both curving to make either half of the spinning circle.

Navan took one of the guards while Ronad took the other. They dragged the two men down a wide, bright corridor into what looked like a holding pen, where prisoners were undoubtedly kept when they first arrived at the facility. After throwing the guards inside, Navan swiped the ID device over another glowing panel. The door swung shut, the lock sliding into place. They wouldn’t be bothering us for a while.

“Do you know where your father is?” I asked.

Navan shook his head. “No, but I’ve got a feeling this will tell me where the bastard is hiding.” He walked over to a screen on the wall and swiped the guard’s ID device across it, before typing in his father’s name. A moment later, it bleeped, revealing the whereabouts of Jareth Idrax. “This way!” he yelled, tearing down the hallway to the left.

From what I could tell, the slowly turning structure had four floors, and though the outer edge of the circle was made of glass, the interior circle was chrome, with the occasional glass panel. It meant the corridors would be blinding in the daytime, and fiercely hot, with the piercing light glancing from the metal into the cells that ran around the far side. I supposed it was some sort of punishment, the light and heat making it as uncomfortable as possible. Right now, the dark of night had made it cold, though strip lights illuminated the facility.

As we hurried down the hallway, I couldn’t quite see into the jail cells lining the wall to my left. A pane of frosted, reinforced glass separated the corridor from the prisoners, so all I could discern were shapes moving around inside. Occasionally, someone would bang on the pane, startling me, a muffled voice crying out for help. A shiver of unease ran up my spine.

We passed a few guards patrolling the floors, but they didn’t pay us much attention. Since we’d managed to get through the main doors and no alarms had gone off, I guessed they figured we were permitted visitors.

Ten minutes of jogging later, we arrived outside a cell on the top floor of the spinning prison. A strange figure was moving around inside, the frosted pane distorting the prisoner. Navan swiped his device across the control panel and pressed one of the flashing buttons that appeared. The frosted glass sheered out until it was entirely transparent.

Jareth Idrax turned in surprise, coming up to the pane of glass. “Have you come to break me out of here, my dear boy?” he asked, without a hint of sarcasm.

Navan glowered at his father. “You can turn to ash in this place, for all I care!” he snapped. “Why did you agree to annul the betrothal contract between me and Seraphina?”

“Why do you care?” Jareth countered, his hopeful expression quickly morphing into a sneer. “You never wanted to marry her. I did you a favor. You should be thanking me, not causing a scene.”

Ronad stepped forward, resting a comforting hand on Navan’s arm. “We thought you’d want to see your son married to a woman like Seraphina, regardless of his actual feelings toward her. Let’s not pretend that love has anything to do with marriage on this planet.”

“Ah, I see you brought the abomination with you,” Jareth remarked sourly. “I suppose you know, more than anyone, how things end when ‘love’—as you call it—gets brought into the equation.”

This time, it was Navan who had to hold Ronad back. “She wouldn’t have died if you hadn’t gotten involved! If you had left us alone, she’d still be alive right now.”

“Yes, but she’d be married to you,” Jareth spat. “I am not certain that is preferable.”

As Ronad lunged for the glass pane, I raised my voice. “We know about your plans with Aurelius. We know the two of you are working together!”

Everyone froze, turning to look at me.

“What did you say?” Jareth hissed.

“I said, we know about you and Aurelius. We know everything.”

He snorted. “You don’t know a thing, Riley. I will not be fooled by your trickery.”

I walked right up to the glass. “No tricks, Jareth. We unlocked your comm device—the one you got so pissed about. I might’ve told you to erase everything on it, so the queen wouldn’t find out the extent of your betrayal, but I read all of it—all of those sweet little poems you and Aurelius sent to each other. Something about twin blades… or was it a snake with two heads?”

He held my gaze through the pane, daring me to look away. I refused, standing my ground, letting him squirm. For once, we held the upper hand. At last, he stepped back, letting out a resentful sigh.

“Fine. Aurelius agreed to get me out of jail and back in Queen Gianne’s favor, in exchange for Seraphina,” he admitted begrudgingly. “He asked me to sign the document, knowing Gianne had forgotten to remove me from her appointed jury. I had no choice.”

I narrowed my eyes at him and reached under my skirt for the gun strapped to my thigh. “Open the door,” I instructed. “You had a choice, Jareth. You just made the wrong one.”

“You’re not going in without me,” Navan said, moving up to the control panel. “If he’s going to die, I want it to be by my hand.”

Ronad shoved Navan, knocking him to one side. “Neither of you is going in there!” he shouted. “Believe me, I have more reason than anyone to want him dead, but those who exact revenge always suffer a worse fate than the ones who receive it. I won’t see that happen to you. Let him rot—let that be his punishment.”

“But he won’t rot,” Navan spat. “He’ll worm his way out of it, same as he always does.”

“Maybe, but he’ll know to keep one eye looking over his shoulder because, if he slips up again, there’ll be no stopping us then,” Ronad assured him.

Navan slammed a fist against the glass. “You haven’t gotten away with this, Father. We will be watching,” he said. “And next time, Ronad might not be here to talk sense into me.”

Jareth chuckled. “I would never have expected you to be the one who saved my neck, Ronad.”

“Yeah, well, it’s a one-time thing,” Ronad replied. “Come on, we should probably get out of this place before those guards wake up.”

I took Navan by the hand and pulled him away from the glass, but it seemed Jareth wasn’t quite done.

“I have to say, Ronad, my daughter always knew what was best for her,” he said with surprising softness. “She knew far better than I did. It was a sixth sense that she had about people. Sometimes, she’d look at me as if she could see right through me, but I never dared ask what she saw.”

Ronad smiled tightly. “I imagine she saw exactly what you see in the mirror.”

With that, he turned and walked down the hallway, brushing past Navan and me. There was nothing in this universe that could patch up the damage between Ronad and Jareth. But hearing Jareth say that made me wonder if maybe, just maybe, he was finally acknowledging the fact that Ronad had loved Naya as much as he had—a tiny step in the right direction, from a man who could never fully make amends.

We’d just reached the holding pen where we’d left the two guards when I saw a weird version of Navan shoot out of a nearby door and hurtle around the bend, heading for the exit. Pools of pink flesh oozed through holes in his body.

“Mort!” I yelled.

The figure staggered to a halt. “Riley?”

“What are you doing here?” I asked, trying really hard not to look at the folds of skin poking through gaps in his disguise, in particularly unfortunate places. Not that his face was much better—the whole thing was slipping and sliding all over the place, with one eyeball down by his cheek and most of his nose creeping toward his jawline.

“And why do you look like me?” Navan barked, his expression horrified.

Mort shook his head, causing his lips to fall off. He caught them and tried to shove them back onto his face, though he missed his mouth by a good four inches. “Can’t talk now. I’ll explain everything in a bit. Right now, we need to get out of here!” he said, the words coming out garbled.