Victor narrowed his eyes when his gaze suddenly strayed past Cain and a grin spread over his face.
Cain turned his head and saw Lee, one of the guards on the porch, tilting his head toward the side of the palace where the plantation kitchen was located. Cain ground his teeth in displeasure.
“It appears somebody has spotted my errant clan members,” Victor said pointedly and marched past Cain. “Shall we see where they’re hiding?”
Not having a choice now, Cain followed Victor, his eyes silently communicating with Gabriel to cover him. Confidently Victor walked to the enclosed walkway that connected the plantation kitchen with the main house and opened the door.
“May I?” Victor asked almost politely.
Cain sensed the other men as well as his own guards follow him. “After you.”
“Well, let’s see who we have—” Victor marched into the kitchen.
42
“This way,” Faye whispered to David and Kathryn as she ushered them through the corridor and cast a look over her shoulder to verify that the two vampires were remaining close to her.
In a few moments they would be at her suite, and from there she could smuggle the two out of the palace and get them to safety by using the tunnels. Cain would be furious for revealing the location of the tunnels to strangers, but she didn’t feel that she had a choice. She’d seen the delegates of the Mississippi clan through the windows. They’d been heavily armed, and she was sure they wouldn’t give up until they’d recaptured the two unfortunate defanged vampires. And with their fangs still not having fully grown back, the two would fare poorly in a fight with their clansmen.
At the next bend of the corridor, she stopped and peered around the corner. Her breath caught in her throat. Abel came running and ripped the door to her suite open, storming inside without looking left or right. What did he want in her room? And he hadn’t even knocked! This wasn’t good.
She couldn’t bring David and Kathryn to her rooms now to use the entrance there. Abel couldn’t know about the tunnels. After everything that had happened and all the things Abel had done to keep her and Cain apart, she knew instinctively he couldn’t be trusted. What was she going to do now? If the Mississippians found the two defanged vampires, they would imprison and torture them. Death would be certain to follow.
Faye turned to them, pressing a finger to her lips to command them to remain silent, when a thought pierced her mind. The prison cells. Cain had escaped from there via the tunnels. She knew which cell he and Robert had been in. It couldn’t be too hard to find the entrance to the secret tunnel.
She motioned David and Kathryn to follow her as she rushed in the other direction, away from her suite. Since nobody was currently locked up in the cellblock, she didn’t expect any guard to be on duty there. Besides, they would all be upstairs, trying to hold off the Mississippians.#p#分页标题#e#
Careful not to make a sound, Faye turned the next corner and reached the entrance to the cellblock. She peeked inside. It was empty. A sigh of relief came over her lips.
“Come.”
David and Kathryn hesitated when they saw what they were entering. Kathryn froze.
“Don’t be afraid. There’s an exit through there.” Faye pointed to the cell that Robert had occupied. “Trust me.” She walked to the open door and took a step inside, nearly tripping at the threshold. She looked down and saw that the wood had worn down over time and was loose, creating a tripping hazard.
Faye glanced back. The doors to the other two cells were open, too, and behind the last one was another small room the guards used for supplies. She entered the cell fully and looked over her shoulder.
Hesitantly, David and Kathryn followed her to the entrance of the cell and waited there, clearly afraid to step inside the dim interior. Faye didn’t press them immediately. After all, she had to find the entry point to the tunnel first anyway, and there was no need for the two to wait inside the cell they so clearly feared until she’d managed to locate the tunnel entrance.
“Wait there,” she instructed them and went to work.
Methodically, her hands swept over the walls of the prison cell, feeling every indentation, every groove, testing them, before moving on to the next section. She knew what she was looking for: a series of indentations that would fit her fingers, allowing a certain sequence of pressure which would unlock the mechanism to open the secret passage. She knew both the doors in her and in the king’s suite were opened that way, and she had no reason to believe that this one functioned any different.
Inhaling the stale air in the room, she tried to remain calm. Rushing would only lead to her not noticing the indentations she needed to find.