Daegelus | Book 1

Chapter Twenty-Three | Tornto Park

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As he followed behind his companions, Elijah grunted quietly. His arm was healing, but his injury wasn't the cause of the grimace on his face. The smell lingering in the dark, wet tunnels they traversed was revolting, and he was pretty sure that they were actually in a sewer.

"How did they find us?" Zoe asked quietly, looking over her shoulder.

"I don't know," Elijah muttered.

"We not safe," Enid panicked, holding Zoe's arm tightly.

"What's the plan?" Zoe asked, still looking at Elijah.

Elijah focused his senses, and as far as he could tell despite the awfully distracting smell, the detainers fell for his diversion and took the ladder up instead of down. "We follow this tunnel as far as we can," he answered, glancing at a sign on the wall which said they were under Florence Street. "We can't risk resurfacing in the city; there are cameras everywhere, and it's likely that Lyca Corp. have the police on their side."

Zoe frowned and said, "The police? They work for Lyca Corp.?"

"No, but it isn't hard to forge warrants and charges in their system; Lyca Corp. would have forged warrants for all of your arrests by now," Elijah told them, glancing down at his arm. "They got me on Nefastus' most wanted list just a few days after I escaped the lab."

"Police?" Enid asked, looking back at Elijah and then up at Zoe with a frantic motion. "Safe? Help us?"

"Not here, Enid," Zoe said, shaking her head. "The police think that we're the bad people."

Enid shook her head, too. "No, we not bad people!"

"Calm down," Elijah snapped and focused his senses again, but the kid's outburst didn't snatch the detainers' attention. "We need to get to the edge of the city and work out where to go from there."

Zoe held Enid's hand firmly. "We'll be okay. We'll still get you to your family."

"Family. Safe."

"Yeah." The girl then looked over her shoulder once more at Elijah. "Do you want me and Jake to take those bags so your arm can heal faster?"

"No," he mumbled.

She stared ahead again, and when they reached the end of the tunnel, they turned right, left, and right again, emerging into another long, straight passage.

"You're kinda quiet," Zoe said to Jake, who was indeed extremely quiet. "Everything okay?"

"What?" the pardus replied as if snapped from a deep thought. "Yeah. I'm just a little shaken is all. We've almost died how many times now? I'm starting to think we just hand this all over to your dads; they can keep us safe, and they could help find Haru."

"No," Zoe snapped irritably.

Elijah wasn't fond of Jake's suggestion, either. He didn't trust the Nosferatu, and he didn't know Zoe's dads. For all he knew, there were moles in the Nosferatu, and he wasn't about to give them a chance to hand him back over to Lyca Corp. "We're not handing anything over to anyone. Shut up and keep moving," he muttered.

They continued onwards in silence, following the tunnels beneath St. George Street, Ridgby Road, West End, and Albert Street. When they got to the end of the next passage, it forked, and they stopped, trying to decide which way to head.

"If we wanna get out of the city, I think we should keep going in this direction," Zoe said, pointing to the tunnel ahead.

"Yeah, but what about the kid?" Jake asked, nodding at Enid. "Are we dropping her off at Hannah's or—"