Part Eight

The security measures at Attendance Row were incredible. It was a fortress meant to hold the most wild of Night People, the most hysterical, those who could no longer hide or control their own strength. The walls were concrete reinforced with steel twelve feet thick. The floors were granite. The guards were all rabid ‘shifters who shot steroids and had arms like tree trunks, and the doctors were wiry witches who mixed brews so potent they bubbled.

Some of the patients were there by choice. Osprey knew them because of the "mail service," a now infamous note system by which the patients communicated. The guards found it amusing – they read all the notes, they knew all the gossip – and had facilitated the exchange by installing tiny slits in the door through which folds of paper could be pushed. They also provided notepads and crayons for the inmates they deemed sane enough to use them.

They gave out crayons because a lamia girl had managed to stake herself with a pencil once.

Attendance Row wasn’t a rehabilitation center. No one there met with psychiatrists or had group therapy or worked on their issues. The people who lived in Attendance Row were there because they endangered the Night World, threatening to expose it to the sunlight. They were buried beneath the earth because they posed a threat. It wasn’t a hospital so much as it was a prison.

Scotch said that Yared had shifted that morning and run through the woods, whistling so loudly he could be heard a mile away. Mount Aurora wasn’t terribly well-traveled, but the highway was nearby and hikers were fond of the area. If he were to run into one of them, the way he had with Coalise…

Galdwyn had decided it would be safer to send Yared to Attendance Row.

Each prisoner had a cell of his or her own, six by six feet and with no windows because the entire complex was hidden underground. Forget a game room, those who lived there never left their cells, not even for exercise, and some of the doorjambs had been unchanged for so long they were caked with dust. Food was thrown inside through the slots in the doors by guards holding wooden stakes or blow-torches, and those who were too far gone to know what their medication was when they saw it landing on the floor received none. The entrances were guarded with bank vault doors and equipped with motion-activated lasers.

Despite all of this, Osprey had no trouble getting inside.

He simply walked up to the front door, pressed the intercom button, and said, "My name is Osprey Worray, I’m a former patient here to see Dr. Eilye."

He could feel Thursy and Scotch starring at him. He dared a glance at Thursy and saw the shock in her face. Whatever she had seen in his mind, she hadn’t seen the time he’d spent in Dr. Eilye’s care.

He wondered what she had seen. He had no doubt that in exchange for the stunning memory of her life, he had given her a sling of mental dirt.

If Coalise hadn’t used the word "soulmate," that morning, maybe he wouldn’t have thought of it.

He meant to look away after a peek at her and couldn’t help but stare. Her face was paler that it had been that morning, the skin fresh and untanned, and it made her look smaller and softer than ever. And now, after their meshing of minds, familiar.

Her hand on his had brought down the sweet rush of a single perfect moment in her life. She had been lying on her back in cat form, sprawled out on the same tree stump where she had been brutally slain, but that night there was no danger and no fear. She couldn’t have been more than five or six; her parents were still alive and her father was still gentle with her when they wrestled.

The entire pack was in the courtyard that night. They had gathered to watch a meteor shower, and even Kiria was excited. Brandy was just a tiny kitten, so little that Thursy could pick her up by the loose skin on her neck and carry her around, playing the mother for a few minutes, and Yared and Scotch were chasing rabbits at the edge of the clearing.

The air was full of the scent of the buck roasting on a spit. Thursy’s parents were sprawled out on the ground with Gedmark and Kvyn and Ramble and Kiria’s mother, Kimber. There was laughter and juicy meat and Galdwyn’s voice as he tried to explain the scientific explanation of shooting stars, which no one cared about.

Thursy had lain on her back, batting at fireflies with one paw, and said nothing. She hadn’t needed to speak, not when Brandy was falling asleep on her stomach and the adults were speaking their boring but infinitely wise conversations and she could hear the hiss of Scotch and Yared whistling at each other. She hadn’t needed to say anything; all was well.

Osprey had never known anything like that. Even before his execution, his mother had been strange and distant. She was so wrapped up in herself that he had to look after himself. Never, ever, had he been overcome with the sense that if anything went wrong, she would be there for him.

He wasn’t jealous of Thursy, though. He just felt bad that she had lost so much, and he wanted to take care of her all the more for it.

She met his gaze with forest green eyes that recognized him in a way they hadn’t that morning, and the corner of her mouth turned up. She was so beautiful, and so unjaded, and she was looking at him. He felt himself smile back, then a crackling voice said over the intercom, "Enter."

The entry hall was a concrete cube with a door on the outside, and guard and stairwell on the inside. It sat a hundred yards off the highway, tilted slightly backward like a cinderblock that had been dropped accidentally. No address and no driveway marked it.

"Stay close," Osprey told Scotch and Thursy, as the door inside was unbolted.

Two vampires dressed in black let them in. The ceiling was low and the room had no windows, only a hologen lamp on the table where the security cameras were monitored. One of the vampires, whose mind Osprey sensed was strong enough to knock most patients unconscious, said, "Dr. Eilye is waiting for you downstairs."

He nodded. The spiral staircase with narrow to the point of danger and had no railing. Walking down the yards of steps made even him dizzy; some patients were simply thrown to the bottom. Thursy and Scotch followed him reluctantly.

Dr. Mary Eilye was standing at the bottom of the steps, where they landed in a long, low hallway made of more unpainted concrete. Every thirty feet the hallway was interrupted with a massive steel cell door. Guards carrying flame throwers and wooden staffs paced silently.

There was no sound, not even the whistle of an air-conditioner. No rolling trays, no chatting nurses.

Dr. Eilye was a rabbit ‘shifter in her late seventies, and her age was only beginning to show. She wore jeans and a black sweater with a torn elbow, her brown hair was just beginning to turn gray, and she stood straight and tall. Her eyes didn’t warm when they saw Osprey, but they didn’t cool either.

She wordlessly held out her hand, and Osprey shook it. "Doctor, this is Rafe Glidden and Allesandra Joushoun. Rafe, Alley, this is Doctor Mary Eilye."

Scotch glanced at him, but Thursy didn’t pause when she reached out to take Dr. Eilye’s hand. "Can I help you?" she asked.

"We’re hoping to see a patient."

Dr. Eilye considered him thoughtfully. She was not a woman of many words. "Who?"

"Yared West. He was brought in this morning, I believe."

She nodded. "He is incoherent."

Thursy and Scotch didn’t pick up on it as a refusal, but Osprey did. "I understand. But Alley and Rafe are very close friends of his, and it’s important to them that they see him safely settled."

Dr. Eilye stared at him again. Her gaze trickled over his outline as if she were reading his aura. Finally she shook her head and turned away.

Thursy looked at Osprey, and he acted without thinking. His mind slung out like a fist being thrown and wrapped around Dr. Eilye. She suddenly stopped walking and hunched over as if in pain.

Very slowly, she straightened and took a ring of keys out of her pocket. Handing them to a guard, she said, "Lock them in West’s cell."

Osprey mouthed the words with her. His heart was beating fast from the concentration. Forcing a person’s will felt like nothing so much as forcing a flame to bend, pressing at something hot and intangible with his fingertips.

"Osprey?" Thursy whispered.

"This way," a woman with wild white eyes said to them. She had an iron-bladed machete in one hand.

Osprey had to let go of Dr. Eilye in order to walk after the guard. She heaved a great sigh and then slowly sat down on the floor. Another guard asked if she was all right and she nodded vaguely. Even she didn’t know what had happened, and her mind would be too confused for a few hours to guess.

Meanwhile, the guard led Osprey, Thursy, and Scotch down the hall, around a turn, and into another row of cells. More stone-faced guards ignored them as they reached the far end and the woman used Dr. Eilye’s keys to unlock the door, then pressed a code into an electronic key panel, removed the crossbar, and rolled the combination in.

Finally, the door opened.

"Fifteen minutes," she said. "No more, no less."

Yared’s cell was exactly like Osprey’s had been. Thirty-six square feet. A toilet, a sink, a mattress on the floor. Cement walls, ceiling, and floor without paint. A dim corner light bulb that was never shut off hidden behind a panel of unbreakable glass. Even the pilled gray sheets looked familiar.

He recognized Yared from Thursy’s childhood memory, although he was years older now. His hair was brown with streaks of natural maroon and even a few highlights of Thursy’s auburn, and his eyes were a dark, stormy gray. He was taller than Scotch and better built.

The skin had been scraped off the knuckles of his smooth, strong hands and blood had seeped into his gray nightgown across the chest. His lips trembled as if he were trying to speak.

"Yared?" Thursy asked, throwing herself to the floor next to the mattress where the guards had dumped him. Scotch crouched beside her as Osprey stepped fully into the cell and the door rolled shut behind him. The clunk of the locks rolling shut had the sound of an old ritual.

Yared appeared to recognize Thursy. His gaze was distracted constantly by something he thought was behind him, but he pressed her head to his shoulder and wouldn’t let go. One hand clenched around Scotch’s wrist.

"He looks exhausted," Scotch said. Yared, wherever he was, couldn’t hear him. Osprey got the impression that Scotch and Thursy were appearing as ghosts that had walked into his on-going hallucination.

"How do we get him out?" Thursy asked. She had to force his arm to release her so that she could sit up and then twined her fingers with his.

Osprey glanced around. During the time he had spent in Attendance Row, he had sometimes wondered how long it would take him to escape. There was no doubt he could do it, but he had been there by choice and never tried.

Now he saw that having three others with him complicated the equation considerably. "I’m going to bust through the ceiling," he said.

"We’re at least ten feet underground," Scotch pointed out.

"Closer to twenty, and most of it is concrete. But I can dig through that. The problem is doing it and getting all of you out before the guards come in."

He let his eyes wander over the ceiling until a thought came to him. "Stand Yared up, and let’s put the mattress in the center of the room. That way the concrete hitting the floor won’t make as much noise. One of you keep Yared calm while the other rolls the chunks of ceiling onto the floor."

The walls were thick, but the guards weren’t human. Osprey wasn’t sure how long it would take them to realize that there was an escape in progress.

No one had escaped from Attendance Row. Ever. No one had ever even made it out of their cell.

Thursy guided Yared to a corner of the room while Scotch and Osprey moved the mattress. Osprey climbed onto the rim of the sink, balancing precariously, and used one fist to break the smooth ceiling. A handful of cement broke away and landed silently on the mattress.

This time Osprey hit harder. The cement crumbled and his hand went into the rock up to the elbow. He grabbed the edge of the hole and pulled down.

Half the ceiling fell away. Thursy yelped and Yared began moaning. Osprey straightened up, looking at the jagged widening of the hole above him, and climbed off the sink. Scotch saw him kicking the rocks off the mattress and unfroze enough to help him.

"This is the tricky part. I have to climb into the ceiling, making a hole as I go. Thursy, cover Yared’s face so nothing get in his eyes."

She turned him so that he could press his face against her neck and clamped her own eyes shut.

Osprey stood directly under the crater and looked up. "This is like the original Super Mario Brothers game," Scotch said, distracting him. "They’re always jumping up and smashing bricks."

Osprey shrugged and jumped. His fists hit the stone even before he reached the high of his arch and he kept pummeling until his feet were almost to the floor again.

Scotch swore as the shower of dust and pebbles cleared. A hole two feet wide and a foot deep had been dug into the ceiling.

Osprey jumped again, and this time he found a handhold in the mouth of the hole. Pulling himself up with one arm, he used the other to dig at a frantic speed above his head.

It would have been impossible for a human. Even a strong shapeshifter couldn’t have held the position for more than half a minute.

But Osprey was able to hang on until he had dug two feet deeper into the ceiling before finding another handhold with his free arm and switching.

His fist hit the rocks, over and over. Bones broke in his hand, his fingers, his wrist and healed before the next blow. His flesh parted around the cement ridges and resealed when he jerked his arm back.

The rocks began to pile up on the mattress and as Osprey fit his entire torso into the tunnel, the debris began to clog. He squirmed around and another deposit feel into the cell.

Between ten and twenty feet before he reached the surface. His arms had begun to tire by the time he was deep enough into the ceiling to stand with his feet wedged on the side of the tunnel. Forcing Dr. Eilye’s mind had taken the edge off his strength, and he was throwing everything he had into the digging.

Barely any light reached the depths of the tunnel. He threw his fist blindly at the rock above him and felt it shudder. He must have hit a steel reinforcement. Osprey paused to wonder, and then shrugged and tore the beam in half. He busted through the rock behind it and twisted the steel ends back.

Four feet deeper he hit another reinforcement. This one was thicker and took more strength, and as he folded the ends against the tunnel sides to allow him past, the entire ceiling shifted.

He lost his footing and kicked. A section of concrete nine feet deep and with the perimeter of a washing machine broke out of the ceiling and fell to the cell floor.

The sound it made was like the eruption of a volcano. The entire building shook against its earthen walls.

"Oh, fuck," Osprey whispered. He could already hear guards yelling. Below him, Yared had begun moaning and Thursy was struggling to keep hold of him. Scotch had thrown himself into the corner; a few inches closer and he could have been crushed.

Osprey turned back to the ceiling and pulled himself up. He began working wildly now, hitting and tearing and ripping at the stone with complete abandon. Guards were shouting to each other, footsteps echoed in the hall outside.

"Which cell?" somebody shouted.

"Thursy," Osprey called, and dropped out of the hole onto the mattress, which was now buried under four feet of rubble.

She was coated in white dust. "I need you to dig," he told her.

She shook her head. "I can’t-"

"You can. I have to stop the guards from coming in, and I can’t control their minds and dig at the same time. Hurry."

In the hall, a man said, "There were three people to see the West kid. They must have set off some kind of explosive."

Thursy climbed uncertainly to her feet and pried Yared’s hands out of her hair. Scotch reached for him without being asked, and Osprey gestured for Thursy to stand next to him.

"I’m going to hoist you up," he said. "Just grab onto any bit of stone that’s sticking out and climb up from there."

"I’m not strong enough," she told him, wiping the dust out of her eyes.

"Yes, you are." He put his hands on her waist and they slid under her sweater without his intention. Their skin brushed and he felt himself go hot all over.

"Yes, you are," he said again. "This is what it means, Thursy. This is the upside of being what we are."

He launched her into the ceiling.

Metal scraped metal as a key was jammed into one of the locks in the door. Thursy kicked and scrambled, but managed to hold onto the tunnel walls, and Osprey saw her climbing inside.

"Get Yared ready," he told Scotch, and closed his eyes.

Three, four, five people outside. He felt for the inexplicable electronic pulse that kept their hearts beating and grabbed it as though trying to reshape the flames of a forest fire.

Too many people. Too much heat, scorching him while he beat at it. He let go of all but the man holding the key, and while those he released stumbled backwards, trying to regain themselves, he helped the one man still in his grasp twist the key into uselessness.

It felt like his hands were on fire. He collapsed back into the room, falling onto the pile of rubble, and when his head rolled back it was just in time to see a shaft of sunlight as Thursy broke the surface.

"Osprey?" she called. "I’m through. There were only a few more inches of cement, the rest was dirt."

Dirt, yes. It was all over his face and his clothes. "Climb out," he told her hoarsely, forcing himself to sit up.

Scotch dragged Yared over to him, and as he stood up he felt the weakness in his chest, threatening to spread out and infect the rest of his body. He grabbed Yared around the waist and ignored the boy’s backhand blows to the head as he shoved him into the crater in the ceiling.

Yared fought. He didn’t know what was going on and he kicked and work d against Osprey until Thursy crawled partway back inside and caught his hands. Then he went flying outside, and Osprey turned to Scotch.

He could hear people in the hallway talking again as he watched Scotch squirm into the hole. Someone was coming with another set of keys, and the door would be opened in less than a minute. Time was running out…

The weakness in his chest took over his stomach and his hips, then straight down into his knees, which buckled. He landed on his back on the rubble pile and slid down until he was sitting on the floor, watching the room melt and reshape itself.

"Osprey!" Thursy called from a long way away.

The first lock rolled.

"Osprey, get up!"

The second. Someone lifted the cross bar.

He grew seasick and had to close his eyes. He didn’t even have the energy to tell Thursy to run, that if he was captured they would probably just stick him in another cell and he could wait a few days before trying to escape again.

She dropped to the floor in front of him, like a puma landing as it jumped off the side of a mountain. He opened his eyes at the sound and saw the light in her eyes that came from realizing her own power. He began to smile and then passed out.