Lost Ones-Veil 3 by Christopher Golden Read Free Book Online

paused. Further along, just past the next splash of torchlight, a dim blue glow emanated from the grate in a cell door. She hadn’t noticed it before because of the illumination from the sconce. It reminded her of the light from a television, seen through the window of someone else’s home.
    “There!” a voice bellowed behind them.
    “No,” Collette whispered.
    Julianna glanced back to see guards filling the archway at the bottom of the stairs. There had to be half a dozen of them, and she felt sure most would be Atlantean. The Yucatazcan had gone up and brought back help. They should have taken the time to lock him in. Collette should have kicked him harder. So many should-haves, but they had no time for self-recrimination.
    Despite the chill, heat flushed her skin as she and Collette began to run. Footfalls like a stampede followed them. Julianna and Collette hadn’t been diligent about exercise the way Oliver had. They were exhausted and malnourished. Their flight was a headlong lunge, barely controlled.
    As they passed through that next pool of torchlight, she saw that ice had formed on the stone walls.
    “That’s enough,” a voice rumbled close behind them. Julianna felt the pressure of the guard’s presence.
    A hand grasped at her hair and she shrieked, tugging herself away. Collette glanced back, reaching out to pull her along.
    Then Julianna began to slip. She felt the loss of traction an instant before she realized that the stones laid into the floor had also been covered with ice. Julianna pinwheeled her arms, trying not to fall, but then her feet went out from under her.
    Powerful hands caught her, clutching her tightly.
    She stared up into the face of an Atlantean guard. His touch felt clammy and repulsive.
    “Jules!” Collette shouted. She lunged at the guard, but others swarmed around them, and then they had her as well.
    So close. They knew where Frost was, now, but would never reach him.
    Despite herself, Julianna forced a smile. “Thanks for that. Slippery when wet. You guys should put up a sign.”
    The Atlantean snarled and tightened his grip, twining his fingers in her hair so that Julianna let out a cry of pain.
    Then he swung her by her hair, smashing her head into the icy stone wall. Pain blossomed into fireworks in her mind, and she began slipping down into darkness.
    Down and down, and then she was alone in the shadows of her soul, and cold. So very cold.
             
    The smell of blood filled Oliver’s nostrils. He sat on the floor, back against the stone wall of his cell, and tried to clear his throat. Even that hurt. His left eye had swollen shut, and the cheek below felt like it had been tenderized. Once the Atlanteans had gotten hold of him, they’d given him the beating he’d known was coming. Knowing didn’t make it any easier. The scent of blood in the cell might have come from the guard he’d killed, but he had a feeling it was his own, soaked into his shirt and still trickling both on his face and inside his mouth.
    “Fuck,” he rasped, wishing his face would stop throbbing or that the pressure around his swollen eye would go away. He reached up and gingerly pressed his fingers against his cheek, then hissed in pain.
    What was it about people that they had to do that—probe their injuries to see just how bad the damage was? Foolish didn’t begin to describe it. But the temptation was too great to resist.
    Another guard had come to let out the two Atlanteans that Julianna had locked in here with him. They’d left Oliver behind, along with the Yucatazcan he’d killed. The corpse lay on the ground, cooling, and he tried to avoid looking at it.
    Wincing, he put one hand against the wall and rose. A sharp pain in his side reminded him of the single blow he’d taken to the ribs, and he wondered if any were cracked or broken.
    Oliver shuffled over to the cell door, dragging his boot heels to wipe off the dead guard’s blood. In the back of his mind, he felt the dim