Hell Bent

afraid of?”

Clara met her eyes and didn’t look away. Then she squared her shoulders and defiantly stuck out her chin, narrowing her own gaze in return. “Wha’s it to you?”

“I was just wondering what your real reason for showing up at the airport with your mom was. Care to enlighten us?”

“The truth is,” came another voice from behind Cassie, “she was runnin’ away an’ I caught up with ‘er at Heathrow.”

Cassie turned around to face Beatrice. But the woman wasn’t looking at her – she was staring at her daughter. Her expression was stern.

Dylan glanced from Beatrice to Clara and shifted on his feet. The kitchen was getting crowded. And hot.

“Thanks, mum.” Clara hissed softly.

“Was bound to come out eventually, Clara. An’ your father knew it the minute ‘e got the call to come get you. You think ‘e was born yesterday?”

That gave Clara pause. Dylan stared at her. They all did. She blinked. “Well, ‘e didn’t say anything, did ‘e?” she attempted.

Beatrice smiled a tight smile and then she, too, crossed her arms over her chest. “If I’m no’ mistaken – an’ I’m no’ – ‘e’s go’ other things on ‘is mind right now, doesn’t ‘e?” She said, her tone as tight as her smile. “Like keepin’ us all alive?”

Clara blinked, inhaling sharply.

“Bu’ don’t you worry, missy,” her mother continued. “I’m sure ‘e’ll be wantin’ to ‘ave a ri’ nice talk with you when this is all over.”

Clara swallowed what appeared to be a lump in her throat and blinked. Then she seemed to steel herself. She set her glass down on the counter with a smart bang and then pulled her gaze away from her mother’s and pushed past them all to leave the kitchen.

Dylan watched her go. He was conflicted. On the one hand, he was disappointed that their time alone together had been so ridiculously brief. On the other hand, as strange and utterly unexpected as it was, he suddenly found himself feeling just the tiniest bit sorry for Jack Thane.

“How far down do you think we are?” Annabelle asked. And then immediately regretted asking. How far underground they were was probably the last thing Jack wanted to contemplate at that moment. “Never mind.”

“Three levels,” Jack told her, his voice remarkably calm. The tunnel they were in had been undiscovered thus far because the only way to get to it was to go down from the tunnels already discovered by Columbia’s adventurous students. Brandt had said that a well-hidden trap door beneath Buell Hall provided access, along with the opening they’d just traversed. And that was about it, as far as he and the other members of RATS had been able to tell.

The third, lowest tunnel, was badly flooded, muddy and spotted with different forms of fungi and algae. Thirty feet below ground, it wasn’t as hot as the other tunnels were recognized to be. Annabelle figured that would be a boon in the summer months, however, right now, on a chilly May evening, the tunnel was dank, dark, and cold.

Even Annabelle was uncomfortable. Her boots were sturdy and resisted water fairly well, but they’d been purchased and water-proofed years ago, and these were unfair conditions. Her toes were wet and cold. The air had that cavern-like smell to it and she was afraid to touch any of the slimy, glossy walls.

She watched as Jack carefully lead the way down the dim, forgotten corridors, his flash light guiding them along a path not taken in seven years. She shook her head in admiration, wondering how the hell he kept it together so well. She sincerely wished she was able to do the same thing when it came to flying.

Never happen, she thought.

Up ahead, Jack stopped in his muddy tracks and shined the light left and right. The trail split, forming a “Y.” As if on autopilot, he checked for threats, and then glanced at her before continuing to the right.

“Just a bit further,” Annabelle said. “The chamber will be on your left. I think it’s in-between both arms of this ‘Y’.” Annabelle remembered the map’s drawing clearly. She’d paid special attention to this part, for some reason feeling it might be important.

Jack took them down another thirty feet or so, and then an opening appeared on the left. Though Annabelle knew it had to be well over a hundred years old, the stone masonry of the tunnel’s structural foundations was in impressively good shape. It didn’t look at all how she’d imagined it. She’d thought it would look like an abandoned mine, with a rail-road kind of track running through it.

Instead, it was like navigating an honest-to-god dungeon in a role playing game, carved, stone walls on both sides and above, and mud below. The rounded bricks that composed the walls had to have been carted down over hundreds, if not thousands, of trips – and each time, either through the trap door that Craig had talked of, or dropped through the crevasse in the cliff face above them.

Since no record of this tunnel existed in public knowledge, Annabelle couldn’t help but wonder who had built it, and for what purpose. She knew that Buell Hall had been part of an insane asylum before the other buildings had been dismantled to make way for Columbia University’s more celebrated architecture. Was the asylum the key to the tunnel’s existence?

She wondered whether anyone who worked at it, all those years ago, might have descendants who would know about the tunnel…

She shivered and hugged herself, wondering at the sudden chill that encompassed her. Steeling her nerves, she followed Jack around the corner into the chamber that Craig and Virginia had told them about.

It was a stone room, about twenty feet by thirty, with two doors. One door was the entryway they’d just come through. The other had been bricked up long ago, but its outline was still clear against the surrounding stone work.

“Freaky,” she muttered, drawing closer to Jack. Another chill rushed through her and Jack glanced down.

“You all right, luv?”

“Yeah. Fine.”

Jack’s gaze narrowed on her, but then he looked away and aimed the flash light on the East wall. “This way,” he told her softly, taking her hand and leading her to a spot on the wall where a small heart had been carved into one of the bricks. Inside the heart was the inscription, “C and V, some RATS do mate for life.”

“I guess as medical students, they would know that.” Annabelle’s tone reflected the strange sense of awe she felt at standing amidst so many different monuments of history. She was touched. And a little spooked.

Beside her, Jack pulled his gun out of his shoulder holster.

She looked up at him. He was watching the entrance to the chamber. He switched off the flash light and Annabelle went very, very still.

Dimly, a light flickered in the hall beyond the arched doorway. As muted as it was, it had to be quite a way down the tunnel’s path, but it was there, nonetheless.

They weren’t alone.

Sam pulled the cell phone out of his sports coat and flipped it open. “Price,” he spoke into the receiver.

As he listened to the voice on the other end, he watched Beatrice Hughes once again kick the tar out of Craig Brandt at chess. Virginia Meredith sat beside Brandt on the love seat. She patted his back consolingly, but barely checked a smile of amusement.

Clara Thane and Dylan Anderson sat across from each other at the kitchen table, talking softly. Cassie Reid was in one of the bedrooms, watching a re-run of Monk on USA.

At the moment, the world on his end of the spectrum was relatively calm. Which, of course meant that a storm would strike at any minute. Samuel Price had been around the block a few times.

His gaze narrowed on the Anderson kid when the voice on the other end stopped talking. “Fine, send it through.” He closed the phone and re-pocketed it. Then he left the living room to head down the hall, to the second bedroom on the left. There was a fax machine against one wall, along with a computer and a printer.

The fax machine was already whirring when he entered the room. He pulled the printed sheet out of its tray and read it over. Then he left the room and headed to the kitchen.