All at once, he remembered that wind. That terrible, howling wind. More than the snow or the cold, those gusts were going to make it impossible for Luchas to stay on his feet.
“What
the fuck is he doing?” Qhuinn looked at Blay with panic. “I don’t get this.”
When his mate just stared back at him, those blue eyes held an answer that didn’t bear translating.
“No.” Qhuinn shook his head. “That’s not what happened.”
* * *
It was a parade.
Or… more like a funeral march.
As Blay followed Qhuinn down the training center’s tunnel, they were not alone. Everyone who had been in the Pit had joined them, but the Brotherhood was hanging back by a good forty or fifty feet. They seemed to sense what Blay knew for sure. Later, when whatever was happening had actually happened, Qhuinn would be grateful for his Brothers’ support—but at the moment, you couldn’t crowd him.
Blay himself was waiting to be asked to leave. And yet… not yet.
With every step he took, he thought of what he’d seen on V’s computer screen, Luchas walking where they were now, God only knew what on the male’s mind. But he must have known what he was doing. He hadn’t hesitated to open the portal, hadn’t looked back as he’d stepped through, had closed things up in his wake as if he never intended to return.
And in fact, he had not come back.
Twenty-four hours in the freezing cold? Much less that storm?
As they came to the end of the tunnel, Qhuinn stopped in front of the escape hatch. Putting his hands on his hips, he looked down at his feet.
“Let’s put these on.” Blay took two parkas off the hooks. “Come on.”
He expected an argument. He didn’t get one—which was a bad sign. Instead, he was allowed to dress Qhuinn like he would one of the young, helping arms into sleeves, pulling the body of the jacket into place. He even zipped it up the front.
He did not make the move to put the passcode into the reader. He just drew his own jacket on and waited.
Qhuinn opening the portal and following in his blooded brother’s footsteps was inevitable. But there was no avoiding the outcome as soon as they did so. Frankly, there was no avoiding it now.
Yet there was comfort in the in between. A sliver of illogical hope.
When Qhuinn finally reached forward, the keypad let out a series of tones as the proper sequence of numbers was entered, the little tune culminating in a hollow clank, the dead bolt on the hatch retracting. Or maybe there were more than one. Who knew how V had fortified this exit—but Luchas had clearly known the code.
Then again, he hadn’t been a prisoner.
As Qhuinn pulled the heavy steel free of its jambs, there was a breath of subzero, outside air. When the male looked back, Blay put his palms up.
“Whatever you want,” he said. “I don’t have to join you if you’d rather—”
“I need you. But only you.”
“Then we go together.”
Qhuinn walked through first, and Blay took a second to put his palms out to the Brotherhood, to make sure they didn’t follow. The lineup of males nodded and stayed frozen where they were. Except for V. He took out his cell phone and no doubt called up the exterior camera feed so he could monitor the search.
It was the same feed that had shown, in footage recorded twenty-four hours before, a lone black-robed figure weaving out into the storm and disappearing into the blizzard.
Blay took a deep breath… and went out as well.
On the far side of the hatch, there was a shallow parking area that had a high-riding Chevy Tahoe and a couple of snowmobiles. A camouflage drape covered up the forest entrance to the cave, and pulling it aside, he entered the night.
In the security footage, Luchas had drifted in a westerly direction, but he’d only stayed visible for ten or fifteen yards. After that?