by T. S. Bishop
I rested my head on the wall, breathing heavily and trying not to panic. I was in a dark, damp place with no windows and no other kind of ventilation. My pants sounded like those of a frightened animal, and I forced myself to take long, shallow breaths. There was a faint smell of mold hanging in the air, as well as the musty scent I associated with basements.
But I could clearly feel the cold damp softness of earth under me. What kind of basement had an earthen floor in this day and age?
‘Don’t fucking panic,’ I told myself.
I wiggled forward, kicking out in front of me until I felt something solid. I tapped it with my toe. Yep, a wall, most probably. I shuffled along both sides in a little crab crawl that would have looked stupid as hell if anyone were around to see me.
As far as I could make out, I was in a room roughly the same size as the bathroom in my apartment.
“Hello,” I said experimentally.
‘Hello’ echoed eerily back at me.
“Hello,” said someone from the gloom, their voice sounding oddly unsubstantial.
“Who’s there?” I said sharply.
“Just me, cousin,” said the voice gloomily. I strained my eyes and was able to make out two pinpricks of light. A wispy shape floated toward me.
“Oh great,” I said, “A demon.”
“That’s hurtful,” the demon said, its translucent wings ruffling in apparent offense.
“Sorry,” I said quickly. “I don’t get to talk to demons a whole lot.”
“It’s all right,” the demon said mournfully, settling down next to me. “Nobody else who came here ever saw me, and they certainly didn’t speak to me. Where do people these days learn manners from, I wonder.”
“Yeah? Other people were here? What happened to them?”
“I believe they met somewhat unfortunate ends, for them anyway,” the demon said placidly, and held out a gnarled claw. Its body was hidden under wisps of cloth, and it was wearing something on its neck that looked suspiciously like a string of moth-eaten pearls. “My name is Araminta, cousin. What is your name?”
“I’m Sophia,” I said, warily. I tried to take her hand, but mine passed right through her claw—somehow, I felt that the demon was a she--leaving me with a faint trace of a sticky feeling on my hand. Yuck.
“They all died, you said? Wonderful.”
No way to run, no place to hide. Great.
“Hey Araminta, can you make yourself solid ever?”
“I’ve never tried,” she replied, rolling one eye in my direction. “Are you trying to escape? What a human thing to attempt, cousin.”
“Well, I am a human,” I pointed out, irritated. “And what are you doing here, anyway? They can’t imprison demons can they?”
“It’s the pain and the death that draws me to this place,” she said disconcertingly.
“That…was a more horrifying answer than I was expecting,” I said, putting my head in my hands.
Okay, so I was alone and without light, with a limited supply of air and no way out until a guard came by with food or once my captors decided to come get me. And when they did, I would have to move quickly. Despite having no shields, no protection and no weapons—
Wait. They’d taken my coat, emptied my pockets—I hope they enjoyed the lint and pennies—but hadn’t bothered taking my boots. And my braid was still intact, so my hairpins must still be there.
I twisted myself into a pretzel shape in an attempt to get my left boot close enough to my tied hands to unzip. Araminta watched me with interest, not offering to help—although to be fair, there wasn’t a lot that she could have done in her misty form.
I wiggled my sock clad foot out of the boot, and shook the boot upside down. Two things fell out: a swiss army knife, and a tiny box of matches.
“Jack pot,” I whispered, chest flooding with triumph.
I might be a paranoid weirdo, but you have to admit that I had reason to be. Let this be a lesson to you: never leave home without a trusty knife and a box of matches.
Honestly, I would have traded in my matches for a sturdy torch or rope, but you couldn’t have everything in life.
I went onto my knees, grabbed the knife in my cupped hands and started to saw at the ropes holding my wrists together. It was an inefficient process, because the ropes were thick and strong, and I had limited mobility with my hands so the knife was stabbing through the ropes instead of sawing at them.
This felt like it was going to take forever. I shouted in pain as I accidentally stabbed the meat of my palm instead of the ropes.
“You’re a more entertaining prisoner than the last one,” Araminta said approvingly. She floated closer and drew in an appreciative breath. “Ah, pain,” she said, “What a tasty feeling.”
“Okay,” I said through gritted teeth, “Can you do me a favor and go through the wall and tell me when you see someone coming? I promise to kill them slowly, so it’ll be like an all you can eat shrimp buffet in Vegas.”
“I see what you’re doing,” she sniffed. “You’re using me for your own gain. But it’s been so long since I tasted someone’s death throes,” she added wistfully, and floated through the wall before I could reply.
I bit my lip and tasted blood as I determinedly sawed through the ropes. All in all, this had been kind of a pathetic kidnapping attempt. They hadn’t bothered to check me thoroughly for weapons and they’d left me alone with nobody watching me.
It was kind of insulting, because that meant that they thought I would just sit here weeping until someone came along to kill me or threaten me, or whatever their ultimate plan was.
Hell no to that.
The only thing they’d done right was leaving me in this room. It had only one exit, and the door wasn’t the kind that a teenager with below-average strength could break down.
Snap! One of the ropes gave way. I heaved a sigh of relief. All right, only…four more knots to go.
I was partway through the last one, when Araminta floated through the wall.
“Everything all right?” I asked, distracted.
“Oh no,” she answered serenely. “There’s a man on his way. The promise of violence hangs over him like a shadow.”
“Could have led with that fact,” I pointed out. I let the knife fall from my hand, and pulled my wrists apart with difficulty. The last rope snapped.
“Thank god,” I said, rubbing my aching wrists. They were red and scraped bloody from rope abrasions, but there was nothing I could do now.
“All right, I’m ready. Small girl armed with puny knife ready to take on giant assassin,” I told myself.
I crouched on the floor, hiding my hands between my abdomen and my lap so he wouldn’t immediately be able to tell that I had managed to free myself. Too late, I realized that I hadn’t remembered to put on my other boot. That was going to look suspicious, if he bothered to pay attention.
Right on time, he burst through the door. It was the same guy who had kidnapped me. I recognized his face from the fleeting glimpse I got before he knocked me out. My blood was boiling with rage and the desire to do violence, but I forced my body to keep still.
“I was beginning to think you’d forgotten about me,” I said with false sweetness.
He just smirked.
“Just deciding what to do with you,” he said nonchalantly, as though he discussed murder every day with his equally-murderous coworkers. Which he actually might have done, I didn’t know his life.
“Kill you fast, kill you slow…some tough decisions.”
“Why don’t you untie me, and I can make that decision for you,” I said, smirking back at him. I was playing the part, but it was tough—the toughest thing I’d ever done, to pretend not to know that the man holding the gun was prepared to use it on me without a second thought. I could feel a bead of nervous sweat trickling down the side of my face.
“You know,” he said coming closer, “You’re almost tempting me to let you.”
His was leaning over me, holdi
ng my gaze. His hand was hanging loosely at his side, not even twitching toward his gun in its holster.
Quick as a flash, I was on him. I sprang up, letting the top of my head hit his nose and chin. It was a strong headbutt, I’d put all of my rage into it. He fell back, swearing and reaching for his gun, but blinded by pain which made him slow and stupid.
I leaped towards him, which made him stumble back further but this time with the gun in his hand. It went off with a loud report, deafening me at such close range. That was stupid of him. Now he was blind and deaf, while I was just deaf and could see him stumbling around just fine.
I stepped close to him, avoiding his flailing limbs and kicked him hard in the crotch once, but not without wincing inwardly first. He fell to his knees, too distracted by pain to notice that I’d taken his gun away.
The ringing in my eyes slowly stopped, and I could hear the man’s sobbing breaths. I had his gun trained on him. I’d never used a gun before in my life, its weight felt deadly and wrong in my hand, but even I wouldn’t be able to miss a target this big at this distance.
“You said you’d do it,” Araminta said, watching us both hungrily. “It’s been so long since I felt someone’s life force drain out.”
I shuddered. I couldn’t believe that I was working with a demon—but wasn’t it this guy’s fault in the first place? I’d done it out of desperation.
But the excuse felt hollow.
“I can’t do it,” I admitted, lowering my arm.
I went to the door and peered outside warily. I couldn’t hear anyone or any alarmed shouting. Apparently nobody had become aware of what I’d done, so I was safe…for now.
I looked back at the man who’d almost killed me and felt a stirring of pity. He was doubled over on the floor, moaning in pain. I could see the glint of blood on his face from when I’d (probably) broken his nose. He looked like he was still seeing stars, and that booted foot to the crotch…well, let’s just say that he wasn’t going to be able to kidnap any more girls for a good long while.
“Goodbye,” I told Araminta, who flicked a glance at me.
“Oh go away,” she said, watching the guy in a fascinated way. “He’s just started to go over his painful childhood memories. Don’t interrupt.”
“Right,” I said, and stepped out, pulling the door to the cell closed behind me. I bolted it firmly shut.
I was sure that one of the ugly guy’s accomplices would notice he hadn’t showed up for his post-torture sandwich or whatever and would come look in on him. He definitely wasn’t going to starve to death in there, I thought bitterly.
The place was like a maze. It was clearly underground or at the basement level, judging by the lack of windows and awful fluorescent lighting. The white walls, drip-drip of leaking pipes and cement floor were all giving me major prison vibes.
Should I have been impressed by these guys’ commitment to villainy that they bothered having their HQ in an actual, swear-to-god dungeon? I didn’t know a lot about rental prices in Chicago but it couldn’t have been cheap which told me two things: a) these guys loved their villainous clichés and were willing to play the part, and b) they had some serious money.
The second point was more worrying, because it meant that they would just pay some more guys to come after me. And the next time they would be sure to get the serious guys, the ones who carried shovels in the trunks of their cars to ‘take care of the evidence’.
I shuddered and forced myself to focus on the problem at hand: escaping this place.
There were no signs of life, and no convenient maps so after a few minutes of running around I realized that I might have just been going in circles.
“Goddammit,” I said out loud.
Just then, I heard raised voices coming from up ahead. Shit! They must have found out that I left, or they were suspicious that the first guy hadn’t checked in with them in a while. I looked around frantically, but there was nowhere to hide. I started to run in the opposite direction from the voices. Maybe if I turned the corner, they would go in a different direction and not spot me, I thought desperately.
The voices were getting closer. If I was moving fast, they were definitely moving faster.
Damn. I thought I’d have more time. At this rate, I was going to end up in exactly the same place I was at the start: tied up in a creepy dungeon. Only this time, I would have some extra pissed off thugs looking in on me.
My heart felt strange—it must have been fluttering rabbit-fast but everything had slowed down around me. It felt like I was trapped in honey. I turned the corner.
I was grabbed by the back of my shirt, and thrown against a muscled chest.
I was pressed up against the stranger, from hip to chest. My face was pressed against his neck, I could feel his pulse, slow and steady. Somehow reassuring, even though he was going to kill me.
“Don’t move if you want to live,” said a voice at my ear.
Chapter 6
The voices were coming closer. I struggled desperately, like a rat in a trap, but the arms held me like a vice, and a hand came up to stop me from screaming.
“Quiet,” muttered a husky voice in my ear. “I’ll explain everything later.”
“Explain what?” I tried to say, but my voice was muffled by his hand. He ignored me anyway.
“She must have come down this way,” said the man’s voice. Footsteps were coming closer. It was definitely more than one person—maybe three or four.
“Damn Miller, couldn’t follow orders if his life depended on it. A double tap, that’s all it takes,” one of the men grumbled.
I could hear their shoes squeaking against the floor. They were turning the corner. My eyes were pressed into the cloth of my captor’s jacket so I couldn’t see anything. He smelled like pine and winter, which was oddly comforting.
Stop getting distracted, I told myself annoyed. It doesn’t matter how good he smells if he’s trying to kill you!
“You said she came this way, John?”
“Yeah, I could’ve sworn she did. She must be hiding somewhere.”
“Hiding where? It’s a blank stretch of wall man,” said the first voice, sounding exasperated. A couple of the other men snickered quietly.
What was going on? Why wasn’t my captor letting them know he’d caught me? Unless…he was trying to keep us from getting caught, which meant he wasn’t on their side at all.
More importantly, why the hell couldn’t they see us? We were large as life and twice as natural, maybe a couple of feet from where they were standing judging by the volume of their voices.
“She came this way,” ‘John’ said stubbornly. “I swear, I saw her Eli.”
“John’s been dipping into the witchwood leaves again,” one of the men said.
“I’m starting to agree with that assessment,” the leader—Eli—said coldly.
His tone sent a shiver down my spine. I pitied John and Miller, by screwing up they’d set themselves on the path for a world of pain from Eli, and judging from his tone he wasn’t feeling very merciful.
“All right, let’s move. We’ll tell the boss we lost her—I’ll give you the honors, John.”
“But boss!” John said, sounding truly frightened, “It wasn’t—I mean, we know she’s a witch!”
I snorted quietly. Everyone these days seemed to be under the impression that I was some kind of powerful witch. They thought I could use some kind of witchy power to escape? Well, joke was on them. I could see demons and spirits, which put me on the lowest possible rung on the ladder of power, and I could do basically nothing else.
“The boss doesn’t take kindly to failure,” Eli said, voice and footsteps fading as they left. “I hate to think how disappointed he’s going to be in you, John.”
“Poor John,” I whispered.
Then I realized that we were relatively safe, and shoved my captor away. His chest was like unyielding stone, and he caught my wrist easily mid-shove. I raised my eyes, intending to give him the tongue l
ashing of the decade, when my voice died in my throat.
“Y—you!” I said, outraged.
It was Adrian. My captor was the same good-looking, flirty guy from the coffee shop. Same devastatingly clear blue eyes, same playful smile, and those goddamn cheekbones. If I had any doubt that I had imagined his good looks in a delusional episode, he was here to prove me wrong.
He had the kind of clean-cut good looks that would have made him an A-list star, and the kind of charisma that a politician would kill for.
In one word, he was dangerous. To my body and mind.
But most importantly, he was the right height. The top of my head reached his chin and not his nose, like the fake-Adrian of yesterday.
“Me,” he agreed, letting my wrist go. “So…this must be a surprise.”
“Oh no,” I said, “Random stalkers save me from my kidnappers on Tuesday afternoons all the time! Friday nights are when it gets really wild.”
He laughed. It transformed his face, turning him from a figure of sculpted marble to something…touchable. Human. I wanted to bite the dimple that formed in his cheek.
Dear god, I was a mess.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I said fiercely. “I thought you were going to show up yesterday? Were you just laying a trap for me to get caught by these creeps?”
“I’m not with them, I swear,” he said, smile dying. “I came here once you missed our rendezvous. I thought you might have just changed your mind, but the barista asked me if I just really liked the place, ‘because you’re here twice in one day!’ Obviously, then we realized someone had impersonated me just like I’d feared. I tracked you to this place. I would have broken you out of that cell, but—well, you did it yourself.”
He smiled again, with a hint of pride this time. I didn’t smile back.
“What do you mean you ‘tracked me here’?” I asked slowly. “Have you been following me?”
“No!” he said, shocked. “Well, ‘following’ is such a strong word. I’ve only known you were alive for a couple of weeks now, so I was just...keeping tabs on you.”