Which made her afraid as well. He had been running as if the devil, himself, was at his back. And now Annabelle wondered if that might actually be true. There they were, as far down as humans really went, and how far down did you have to go before the elevator doors opened up on Hell?
A chill assaulted her, but unlike the initial chills she’d felt upon entering the large underground chamber, this one stayed within her, freezing her from the inside out.
And then, suddenly, he stopped. She lost her balance, falling against him. He righted her and she went as still as he had gone, terror instinctively turning her form into a statue. They stood at another Y intersection, only this was not the same intersection they’d gone down before. Annabelle would have recognized it. She was good at that kind of thing. She was a detail person. She could pick out which wine glass was hers by recognizing a miniscule deformation in the stem of the glass. Puzzles were a cinch for her because she somehow just simply saw the patterns connecting, in her mind’s eye.
And she may not have any clue where she was going, but she always, always knew where she had been. She had never been down this tunnel.
Where the hell were they going?
And then a sound reverberated down the corridor to their left. It was a sort of banging-scraping sound. It was followed by more silence.
She desperately wanted to ask what it was. But she knew better than to speak. If Jack needed her to be quiet, it was for a good reason. She knew him well enough to know that, at least.
Without another word, his grip tightened on her wrist again and he started down the left corridor, in the direction of the sound. At the same time, he re-holstered the gun he’d been holding in his right hand and, in one step, bent and pulled a dagger from a sheath that had been hidden beneath his jeans, just above his boots. She hadn’t even known it was there. And, though she was half-numb with real apprehension for what lay ahead, she was simultaneously impressed with his apparent weapon proficiency. Then again, just because he carried it didn’t mean he knew how to use it.
Yes it does. With Jack, it does.
She gripped her own weapon more tightly and thought about the rounds she’d already fired. If Jack was preparing for another fight and had put away his gun, that meant he was out of bullets. That was surprising. She knew how well prepared he normally was. He always carried bullets to spare.
Was she out of bullets? She was pretty sure she’d fired five times. How she knew that, she had no idea. But she somehow remembered squeezing the trigger five times. One bullet had been wasted. Four had been fired in, at least, the right direction. That left her one bullet in the gun. One more shot.
One bullet was better than none any day.
In front of her, Jack Thane was contemplating death. Not his. Not Annabelle’s.
Sam’s.
Because as soon as he could manage it, Jack was going to wrap his gloved hands around his mentor’s neck and squeeze until the breath left Samuel Price’s lungs for good.
Up ahead, a light split through the dim of the dank, forgotten corridors. It highlighted the tunnel and the channels that connected to it like tributaries. Two more connecting hallways were passed up, and then they turned to the right to find themselves faced with a brick wall that dead ended a particularly long tunnel.
This tunnel, however, was well lit, because near the end of the tunnel, a trap door had been opened into a level above them. The highly rotted wooden door had come fully away from its hinges when tampered with and was now lying on the ground directly beneath the opening.
Jack made sure his body was in front of Annabelle’s and once more went entirely still.
Annabelle held her breath and swallowed down the bile rising in her throat.
Up ahead, a pair of legs appeared over the lip of the opening, and then a man dressed in black lowered himself through the cavity, landing solidly on bent legs. The discarded trap door splintered beneath his weight. He glanced down at the sound.
Jack took the opportunity and rushed forward, moving with a speed that Annabelle had never before witnessed.
She stood transfixed, watching as his blurred form was suddenly beside the other man, who was a good six or seven inches shorter than Jack. Jack’s thick, leather-clad arm snaked around the newcomer’s head and face, at once pulling him off balance and choking off his air supply. With another quick movement, Jack swiped the dagger’s blade across the man’s exposed throat and blood splashed against the corridor’s opposite wall.
Jack pulled the gun out of the dying man’s shoulder holster as he went limp in Jack’s arms. Then he let the man drop and pointed his newly acquired weapon at the opening above him. In a few seconds, a face appeared over the edge. Jack hesitated only long enough to study the face, and then he pulled the trigger.
Annabelle wasn’t aware of it, but her entire body flinched with each pull of the trigger as Jack proceeded to shoot and kill another of their unwelcome visitors. There was a scramble above them as whoever was left on the other side of the trap door decided to attempt to scurry away rather than face Thane and whoever else might be with him.
Jack wasn’t about to let them get away, though. As if driven by a demon, Jack leapt up, the dead man’s gun still in his right hand, and even though the grip should have been tentative, at best, he as able to grab hold of the edges of the trap door’s frame and hoist himself into the space above them.
Annabelle stayed where she was, frozen in place, as Jack disappeared.
There were several more shots fired, in quick succession. And then he re-appeared in the opening, his blonde hair haloed in the light from the room beyond.
“Annabelle, come here and give me your hands.”
She didn’t move. From her right, in the corridors they’d left behind, came the growing sound of boots splashing through mud.
“Bella, you need to move, now!” Jack yelled at her.
Still, she didn’t move. She couldn’t move. It was like the blood on the wall was a similarly-charged magnet, repelling her. She only managed to stay where she was, instead of retreat.
Jack cursed under his breath and jumped back down through the hole, deftly managing not to come near the body of the man he’d slain. He raced toward Annabelle and had her in his arms just as quickly as he’d overcome the bad guys. He jerked her over to the opening and then turned and captured her face in-between his hands.
“Bella, I’m going to lift you and you have to climb through, do you hear me?”
She blinked.
“If you don’t, we’ll be stuck here, without bullets, when Osborne’s hired guns come around the corner. If we aren’t killed out-right, we’ll be tortured first.”
She blinked again. Nausea roiled in her belly. Her mouth was dry.
“I’m going to lift you up now, do you understand?” His tone was urgent and his expression entreating, his blue eyes boring into hers as if mining for some small sign of intact sanity.
She parted her lips and inhaled a very shaky breath. “I…” Her voice trailed off and then came back. “I think I’m going to ralph.”
“Do it upstairs.” He grabbed hold of her waist then, and lifted her through the opening. She had no time to argue or think or do anything but act, and she acted by grabbing the sides until her hip bones were banging against the edge and she could slide the rest of the way in. It seemed like the most difficult thing she’d ever done to bend her right leg and pull it up and through until the tread of her boot was against the cement of the ground beneath her. But she managed it, using the solid grip to push herself the rest of the way through. She fell, side-ways, just inside, and then rolled away from the hole.