Hell Bent

Clara laughed softly at something that Dylan had said and leaned in to reply. Sam stepped up to the table before she could do so.

Both kids looked up at him.

“You probably wanna see this, son,” Sam said, holding the sheet out for Dylan to take. “Jack pulled some strings. Got a copy of it for you. It’s your father’s suicide note.”

“Grab the vial, quick,” Jack turned and whispered to Annabelle. She nodded and turned back to the wall just as he clicked on the small pen light. It shined on the carved heart and Annabelle began pulling on the marked brick. The mortar crumbled a little around the brick, but the stone stayed.

“It’s stuck,” she whispered. Outside, the light drew closer, and now they could hear the splashing of boots in the mud. She shoved back out of the way and pulled her gun. Behind her, Jack re-holstered his and used both hands to pull on the brick.

Annabelle readied her weapon at the opening of the chamber. Her heart was beating against the inside of her ribcage so hard that she thought it might bruise itself. Her feet were numb, and she wasn’t sure it was due to the damp and cold. Jesus, she thought, he was right. I’m watching his back, after all…

Outside, the light became suddenly brighter and the splashing sounds were no longer muffled by distance and wall. They were in the hall.

Jack pulled on the brick with all of his strength. Years of freezing winters had caused the damp mortar to swell and shift. Jack knew that if he didn’t get it out now, when their visitors came around the corner, Annabelle would be left to fend them off by herself. The brick shifted beneath his strength and mortar crumbled to the ground.

Outside, the splashing stopped, and the light switched off.

Annabelle held her breath.

“We know you’re in there, Thane! There’s no other way for you to get outta here, so just listen up!”

Jack ignored the voice. “Bella, keep your gun up and ready,” he whispered. He almost had the brick out.

“We can shoot it out and someone might get hurt!” The voice continued. Annabelle didn’t recognize it, but she was certain that whoever he was, he worked for the Colonel.

“Or you can hand over the vial and we’ve got orders to let Miss Drake live!”

Annabelle’s eyes widened. They were going to shoot at Jack, either way? Didn’t sound like much of a deal to her.

The brick finally came away in Jack’s hands. He shined the light in the hole and it reflected off of metal. He reached in and pulled out a steel canister.

Ah, bloody hell, he thought. “She hid it in a time capsule,” he muttered, more to himself than to Annabelle. He’d been planning on shattering the vial at once. The time capsule was sealed with a combination lock. Destroying the vial would have to wait.

“You’ve got five seconds, Thane!” The voice shouted again.

Suddenly, Jack was beside Annabelle, his gun drawn again. “Get behind me, Bella.”

“No way,” Annabelle told him, awed at herself, even as she spoke the words. “I’ve got the bullet-proof clothes on, remember?” And the bad guys were planning on trying their best to kill Jack, no matter what. She didn’t like that one bit.

But Jack apparently didn’t appreciate her opinion on the matter, because he was shoving her behind him with one gloved hand even as the Colonel’s men came around the corner, guns blasting.

Time really does seem to slow down when life enters a traumatic experience. Annabelle had always had her theories on why this happened. Perhaps it was so that, later, a victim would be able to recall every last vital detail of a rape, identifying the rapist to the authorities. Or a witness would be able to accurately draw a mugger’s face. Or directions could be mapped out to wherever it was that someone had been lost in the woods.

Whatever the reason, when the Colonel’s men stepped around the corner, shining their lights in Jack’s and Annabelle’s eyes, the seconds became minutes. She found herself moving around Jack to aim her weapon. She was sure she screamed as she pulled her own trigger, but she couldn’t hear it. Sound seemed to slip away, blurring with the rest of reality, until Annabelle felt that she was in, well, a tunnel.

Everything became more focused and more chaotic at once. She felt something slam into her right thigh, but because her legs had gone numb, she was able to completely ignore the pain she knew she should be feeling. She felt the same tremendous impact in her right shoulder, and her gun arm leapt up of its own accord. She wasted a bullet, but quickly re-focused and aimed again. Since she was blinded by the lights the bad guys were using, she decided to aim at the lights, themselves.

She squeezed the trigger again and again, and when the lights all seemed to either shatter or drop toward the ground, Jack was pulling her toward the chamber’s entrance. Her legs would barely move. He ended up dragging her part way, until she was able to gather her footing and follow him out of the room.

She made herself not look down. She didn’t want to see the men laying on the ground and didn’t care to know whether they were there because of her or Jack. Her hand still caught tight in his, Annabelle just followed Jack down the tunnel, focusing on his leather-clad back as her guide.

Chapter Twenty-seven

Somewhere in the sloshing run down the mud-filled tunnels, Jack had taken a wrong turn. At least, that’s what it seemed like to Annabelle. Nothing looked familiar and they hadn’t yet come to the rock face where the third-level tunnel began. It had been ages since the shoot out in the chamber where the vial had been hidden.

Centuries.

So, where was the opening for them to climb back up and out of?

She tripped and Jack lifted her back up, barely pausing long enough for her to get her feet underneath her once more. Now his grip was on her wrist, and he was no longer leading her so much as dragging her down the mucky corridors.

“Jack, what-”

“Quiet, Bella. Don’t speak!” He turned and hissed the order at her, but there was no vehemence in his tone. Only fear.

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.