Page 95 of Elanie & the Empath
Disentangling his elbow from my grip, Maximus hissed, “Then you’d best get to work. I’ll take care of Mal.” His wink did nothing to set me at ease. “This will all be over before you know it.”
“Are you sure?” I peered over Maximus’s shoulder at the door to the not-maintenance closet. Mal had opened a panelon his wrist and was industriously using some tool that had emerged to pick the lock. “He seems distraught.”
When I looked at Maximus again, he was distraught too, his face as white as a sheet while he clenched his chest.
I grasped his shoulders, holding him up. “Are you seriously having a heart attack right now?—”
“Well, well, well.” The deep chuckle behind me sent my stomach through the ground. “What have we here?”
Warmth crept up the back of my neck, cinnamon and vanilla flooding my senses. And as I slowly turned around, I knew it was my own heart I needed to worry about.
36.SEM
“Elanie,”I choked out, something inside my chest swelling, then turning to ice and shattering.
Gol’s massive body blocked the tunnel. He held Elanie’s neck in one hand while Lars’s cattle prod crackled in the other.
“I’m so…sorry.” Her voice strained against Gol’s grip.
“Let her go,” I begged while Maximus collapsed to the ground, coughing and wheezing, crawling away from us down the hall. “I’ll do anything. Just please let her go.”
Laughing at my desperation, Gol thrust Elanie forward and shook her like a doll. “You are not the smartest organic I’ve ever met, Dr. Semson.” Peering down at Maximus as the old man’s body jerked with each wet, rattling cough, Gol said, “The smartest I knew lost his mind years ago.” His green eyes snapped back to mine. “But I thought even you were smarter than this. Did you not think I had spies down here? Did you honestly think I’d kept this place a secret all these years by accident? You should not have crossed me.” His voice darkened to a rumble. “You should have known your place.”
The click of a lock releasing echoed through the tunnel behind us, a door creaking open, that hum swelling to a deafening crescendo.
“Ah.” Gol’s mouth pulled into a cruel, mocking grin. “Mal is about to learn his place. He is about to learn all the truths that my kindness and generosity have been protecting him from.”
“You’re a liar,” Elanie ground out, scratching at Gol’s fingers, trying to pry them from her throat. “You are not kind or generous. You are a hypocrite. You treat Mal just like they treat us.”
“At least I’m not fucking one of them,” Gol snarled. “At least I’m not so stupid to think that one of us would ever mean anything to one of them.” He pulled her in, drawing her face to his. “Bionics like you disgust me.”
“Fuck you,Ralph,” I spat, feeling a little smug at the momentary break in his composure. “You’re wrong. Elanie means everything to me.”
A moan tore through the tunnel. And even though there was no misery or pain to drown out my senses, I felt the agony in it anyway.
“It’s your turn, Mal,” Gol roared past me. “You worthless, traitorous hunk of metal. It’s time for you to finally join your family.”
Elanie sobbed as her feet scrabbled in the dirt.
I didn’t know what to do. With every step I tried to take toward Elanie, Gol’s fingers cinched more tightly around her neck, his prod rising. Fear like I’d never known engulfed me.
“What are you gonna do with them, Lord Gol?” Lars sniveled, rounding the corner into the tunnel with Mina right behind him. “They’re traitors. They aren’t good underworlders. And Sem has never done his fair share of cleanup after meals.”
“What?” I barked. “That’s bullshit. I was the only one who did any dishes at all the other night.”
Rolling his eyes, Gol muttered, “I am surrounded by morons.” When Mal wailed again, he said, “I don’t know what I will do with them yet. But while I decide, this will be a fitting prison.”
Gol thrust the cattle prod toward me, and I lurched away. He pushed me down the tunnel, through the door, and into the not-maintenance closet until the backs of my legs hit something cold and hard.
I threw out my arms as Gol hurled Elanie into the room. Catching her, pulling her tightly against my chest, I made a vow right then and there that no matter what, I would never let her go again.
“Stay,” Gol warned. Then he frowned down at Maximus, curled in on himself in the far corner of the room. “I believe your services might finally be of need, Dr. Semson.” His voice softened. “Although you may already be too late.”
On his way out, Gol passed his cattle prod back to Lars. The Gorbie pointed it at my face, then he slapped it against his palm before slamming the metal door shut with one of his lower hands, a heavy lock sliding into place behind him.
There were things happening around me. Mal was still moaning. Maximus could be dead for all I knew. The resonant buzzing throbbed between my ears. But Elanie was here. She was in my arms. Nothing else mattered.
I brushed her hair from her face. “Are you hurt? Did he hurt you? Tell me where, and I’ll make it all better.”
