Page 105 of The Collector
Cyndi turned her head, just barely. Her eyes met Mynx's, and for a moment, everything else fell away. Her baby sister blinked her eyes at her as if to say goodbye.
"No, I won't say goodbye," Mynx sobbed, her voice splintering as the sedative clawed at her mind. "Cyndi, don't give up. I love you—"
The words fractured, jagged with grief. Her throat burned. Her body trembled. But she fought to stay, to speak, to leave something behind that Stoker couldn't erase.
"Raven will come," she whispered, slurred and fading. "He'll come for us…"
Her head lolled, the restraints biting into her wrists as the blackness surged. Cyndi's face blurred. Mynx reached for her with everything she had left, with her voice.
Then the void took her.
Chapter 29
Raven
Raven's heart pounded as he pushed open the mausoleum door. It resisted as he tried, heavy on its old hinges, then finally gave way with a groan that echoed like a warning into the dark recesses of the room. He peered into the darkness, allowing his eyes to adjust momentarily. Thin shafts of light pierced through the darkness, slanting down from the skylights as the clouds outside cleared their obstruction of the sun.
The room seemed empty, save for the vines that clung to the stone walls and tombs like dying memories. Some hung brittle and gray, flaking with age, while others still pulsed with damp life, stretching upward as if desperate to escape. Mice skittered through its shadows, their sudden movement sending Raven's pulse into a staccato rhythm. The beams of their flashlights crisscrossed the chamber, slicing through dust and silence. Each sweep revealed more of the same: collapsed mounds of tiny skeletons, brittle with age, crunched underfoot with every step.
"Who the fuck hides people in a cemetery?" Tommy snapped. "This place gives me the creeps."
Raven's breath quickened—shallow, sharp. The air felt used up, like the crypt had exhaled once and never inhaled again. Rot clung to the walls, but it ran deeper. It lived in the bones of the place, in the memories buried beneath the stone.
"The kind who knows cemeteries don't ask questions," Jeremy said. "They bring you here to erase you. Not just your body—your story, your scent, your shadow. Everything."
Raven turned and glared at him. His patience frayed. He didn't need these two goons spelling out what he already knew—Mynx was in danger, and every second counted.
"Sorry, boss, I'm just saying, that's all."
"Why don't you fucking worry about helping me find her instead of stating the obvious, Jeremy?"
"On it, boss." The rest of the men filtered past Raven, searching for any indication of where Mynx might be.
Raven scanned the room. He didn't see her. No movement, no voice, no trace she'd ever been there.
Names marked the rear wall of the crypt, grief hardened into concrete. But time had scraped the stone thin—like even sorrow wasn't meant to last. Wouldn't be forgotten by time. Mynx didn't belong here. She was his. And he refused to let even a flicker of Tommy's words take shape—refused to let them breathe, speak, or become real.
He buried them before they could surface.
Because if they lived, they'd fracture everything.
He glanced at the screen of his phone again, as if hoping the signal might flicker back to life. It didn't. It wouldn't. Not here.Mynx, where the hell are you?
The staleness of the room's air hit him as he reached its center, wet, sour, thick with the decay of old soil. It clung to the back of his throat, made him swallow hard. His fingers curled around his now useless phone, its black screen reflected at him. He'd lost signal completely. There was nothing to see.
Come on, Butterfly, be alive, please.The words repeated over and over in Raven's head like a mantra as he scanned the dark room.
"Everyone, look around. There has to be something we're missing." The words echoed back at Raven as he spoke to them.
"Over here," San called. "I found a security panel; it looks like it needs a fingerprint to work."
"Let me see," Stoker said, "Hacking into these types of systems used to be my specialty." He pushed Sandiego and Raven to the side as he wedged in to examine the box. He knelt in front of the panel, his breath fogging the glass as he studied the interface. The screen was slick with dust and something else, possibly oil or the residue of a previous attempt at use. He traced the area. His fingers moved with practiced precision, tracing the seams, testing the casing before pulling it from the wall.
"This isn't just biometric," he muttered. "It's layered. Fingerprint, heat signature, maybe even pulse detection. Someone didn't want this opened by accident."
Raven crouched beside him, eyes scanning the room again.
"Can you bypass it?" Raven asked as the system deactivated and a panel in the floor slid back. "What the hell? How did you do that so quickly?"
