Stones of Power- Hellstone & Maelstrom

by Jenna Grey

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Polly struggled up to her room, still clutching the duvet around her. For one mad moment, a heartbeat of insanity, she had the thought that Liam might be there, waiting for her. She laughed at the madness of it all. She dragged on a sweatshirt and jeans, not realising until after she’d done it that it was a survival response, a fight or flight response to her present situation. There was no security in a Winnie the Pooh nightdress. She pulled on her big furry Eskimo snugglies because her feet were cold – well, all of her was shivering cold, but she knew that was probably shock. She had some boiled sweets in her bag; she needed to get sugar into her bloodstream.

  Now she had time to get her head around the situation, it all seemed so obvious. She had been so bloody naïve and stupid. All of the clues had been there, but really would anyone have seen the truth? Superman had fooled Lois Lane for years, and all he did was take off his glasses and put some hair gel on.

  Then, inexplicably, she felt a sense of relief because she realised that perhaps she would be able to cope with this. Although it was terrible and she hated Finn and Bert for not telling her, she thought that it might be something she could live with, although how, God only knew. She did love Finn so much, and the thought of being without him was... well, unthinkable. She’d have to find a way to make it work, wouldn’t she?

  There was a gentle tap on the door, and it made Polly start.

  “Polly, are you awake? I need to talk to you, please – I need to know that you’re okay.”

  Polly hesitated. Did she really want to see him? She could pretend that she was asleep. She stood and padded over to the door.

  Finn was standing on the doorstep, looking like a lost soul.

  “Come in,” she said, motioning with her head. “You look as if you’re suffering cancer of the puppy. Just don’t push your luck – I haven’t forgiven you for not telling me the truth right up front, yet.”

  “I’m sorry, I really am. I’m a bloody coward.”

  Polly rolled her eyes.

  “Honestly, what am I going to do with you, you great lump? Where’s Bert?”

  “He went to bed. He’s seriously overdone it. I made him take a sleeping tablet and made him promise to get some rest.”

  Polly dragged him back to the bed, pushing him down on it. He sat there with his hands clamped between his knees, looking as if his world had come to an end.

  “You should have told me what was going on right from the start, Finn. Liam would never have been able to, well, things would have been a lot easier all round if I’d known.”

  She sat down next to him and slipped her hand over his; he took it gratefully.

  “Don’t you think I know that? I can never forgive myself, or him, for doing this to you. I promise, Liam will never hurt you again.”

  “You can’t promise that! You’ve got to sleep sometime, and when you do, he’ll be out. How can you protect me then?”

  Finn’s face tightened into a grimace and Polly could see real anger there.

  “I’ll lock him in our room, you’ll be safe then. After what he did to you he deserves a hell of a lot worse than house arrest.”

  Polly was still finding it very hard to get her head around the conversation. Finn was talking about locking himself in a room, to keep her safe from himself. She gave up trying to apply any kind of logic to it.

  “I do want to be with you, I really do,” she said. “You can understand why I’m freaking out, though, can’t you?”

  Finn slipped his arm around her and pulled her close to him.

  “Of course I bloody well do. I’m not sure I’d forgive me – but I love you so much. The thought of being without you...”

  Polly pressed her lips to his and kissed him, and he sank into it, kissing her for long seconds. He pulled back, and Polly knew he was gone.

  She shoved Liam as hard as she could, throwing him right off the bed and he landed on his back on the floor, stunned by her sudden assault. Finn had been awake, and yet Liam had somehow got out.

  “This isn’t my fault,” Liam called after her as she bolted for the door. “I didn’t do this, I swear, this isn’t my doing. I don’t know what’s happening. Please listen to me!”

  Polly half ran, and half fell down the stairs, and she could hear Liam hard behind her. He caught her before she’d got halfway across the living room, grabbing her arm from behind.

  “Get away from me!” Polly hissed, rounding on him and bringing her knee up and aiming for his groin. His arm blocked her, and she almost toppled. He grabbed the top of her arms, pinning her just too far away for her to get a good kick in.

  “I’m not going to hurt you, I swear – before, that was an accident. I never meant for that to happen. I just suddenly found myself there, in bed with you. I didn’t rape you...”

  “Oh you mean your cock accidentally slipped inside me? I don’t believe I’m hearing this. Just get away from me, I can’t even bear to look at you! I want Finn back!”

  “I swear, I suddenly found myself there with you, just a second before you realised it was me. I never raped you, I wouldn’t do that. I love you. Just give me a chance, give us both a chance. We can work it out somehow.”

  He released his hold momentarily, and Polly lashed out, kicking him hard in the shins and downing him. She expected him to run after her again, but he didn’t, and she bolted down the stairs and into the shop, going out of the back door and fleeing for her sanity.

  Polly had no idea where to go, what to do now. She’d left everything behind, her possessions, her money, her savings account book. All she had to her name was what she was wearing – a skimpy sweatshirt, jeans and those stupid Eskimo boots; it wasn’t enough to keep out the cold night air. If she didn’t find somewhere to shelter she’d die from hypothermia. She found herself in the heart of the village on the tiny village green, which was nothing more than one tree and a bench set on a circle of paving. She dropped down onto the bench, and just sat there for what seemed an eternity, staring out into the darkness. The village was deserted; the clock said it was 2.35. She looked down at her silly Eskimo boots and began to cry.

  She must have dozed because the sound of the village clock striking four woke her. She was shivering violently and rubbing her arms to try and warm herself, but it didn’t seem to do any good at all. She seemed to remember that you needed to worry when you stopped shivering because that was when you were close to death. She did her best to keep shivering.

  So what to do.

  If she could hold on until morning she could go and see Mr Argeli and tell him what had happened, beg him to let her borrow some money until she could find some help from somewhere. He’d help her, she was sure he would, but it would be unimaginably dangerous to go there. He was too close to Gaunt House and her uncle. Perhaps she could telephone him and ask him to meet her somewhere. No, she couldn’t involve him, not after what had happened before – she had already put him in danger, she couldn’t do that to him again. Perhaps she could go back and see Bert – he’d done nothing wrong, not really, but then, neither had Finn. She could even understand why they hadn’t told her sooner, so much had been happening. She kept thinking back to what Liam had said, that he hadn’t meant for that to happen, that he’d suddenly just found himself in bed with her a second or two before she realised there had been a switch. She thought that could have been the truth because she was sure she would have noticed if he’d been there all along. Had she done him an injustice? She suddenly realised that she might never see Finn again and she almost started to cry again. Sod it, she couldn’t lose him, she couldn’t. She stood and turned to run back... home, because it was home now, despite everything. Wherever Finn was, that was home.

  Then a hand came over her mouth, and there was a terrible smell as something was pressed over her face, and then there was nothing.

  Polly opened her eyes and stared into darkness, but not complete darkness; she could see featureless shapes in the obscuration. As her eyes grew more
accustomed to the lack of light, she realised that she was in a cellar of some kind. There was the dreadful smell of mould and cloying decay, which brought her senses back with startling clarity. Her back felt damp, and she was so cold. She tried to move, but found that her hands were zipped-tied in front of her and her feet tied together with a carabiniere. Shock set in, and in a heart-stopping instant, she understood what had happened.

  “Oh bugger,” was all she managed to get out between her chattering teeth. Her head felt as if someone was trying to liquidise it – her brain smooshing around inside her skull. She just blinked into the darkness, trying to make out where she was, but not recognising it at all.

  “Okay, you’re not dead yet, and if you’re here, they need you for something. You’ve still got time to get out of this. Just don’t panic.” But her words were falling on deaf ears – she couldn’t push back the terror.

  She looked down at the flexi ties and tried to focus. Her wrists were painful where the ties were cutting into her skin, and she wanted them off – a ridiculous vanity because even if she had her hands free, she had little chance of defending herself from whoever, or whatever, had been assigned to guard her. The best she could hope for was that it would make her feel a little less vulnerable. She suddenly remembered something, a flash of memory that managed somehow to cut through the fog that clouded her brain. It was a wonderful moment of clarity, an apocalypse, showing her the way out.

  “YouTube, I’ll never moan about the ads again,” she said.

  She raised her bound hands above her head and yanked downwards and outwards, snapping the plastic tie easily. She stared down at the broken tie, amazed that it had worked. She couldn’t even remember how and why she’d watched the video, but she was so bloody glad she had.

  She unfastened the carabiniere from around her ankles, but only after a considerable struggle – the knots were impossibly tight. She stood shakily and almost toppled. The feeling had gone from her legs, leaving them as tingling stumps of useless flesh and bone. She pressed her toes into the floor, trying to get the circulation back in her legs and after a few minutes, they began to buzz as the feeling returned to them.

  She took a more considered look around her prison, although she didn’t expect any good news. The walls were solid, the door even more so, a dirt floor over what looked like brick. This place was old, the air of decay adding a good century to its age. She moved to the door and tested it cautiously, pushing against it, but then realised that the hinges were on this side of the door and it swung inwards. There was no door handle on this side of the solid iron door, just a large keyhole. The lock was one of the old kind, which was a minor positive amongst a whole shit load of negatives. These old locks were far easier to pick with a piece of sturdy wire and some time. She looked around in the hope of seeing something she’d missed on the first scan, any piece of detritus that would be of use. Nothing – the room was empty. There was a window above the door, crusted with dirt and without any way of opening as far as she could see – she couldn’t reach it anyway. Through it the meagre stream of light filtered, casting a pale parallelogram of white across the middle of the floor.

  She sat back down against the wall and tried not to cry. What in God’s name had possessed her to leave the shop, when it was almost guaranteed that her uncle was having it watched? She was only surprised they hadn’t picked her up sooner. She was such an idiot. She did start to cry then, furious with herself for being so bloody stupid.

  “Stop this, stop this right now!” she ordered. She had to pull herself together and stop wallowing in self-pity. There was a way out of here; she just had to find it. The door seemed to be the only possible avenue of escape, as hopeless as it appeared. She knelt in front of it and peered through the keyhole; she could see nothing through it, no glimmer of light. It was blocked with something. She daren’t hope that it was the key. There wasn’t a school kid in the land that didn’t know how to get a key out of the other side of a keyhole; all she needed was a piece of newspaper and a small stick. And she had neither. She crouched down further to examine the gap under the door. It had a good inch clearance to the floor – there had to be something she could use to get that key out of the lock. She sat back down and mulled it over, listening all the while for sounds outside the door; all she could hear was the blood pounding in her ears.

  Okay, logic. What would Nancy Drew do? What was there in this room that was flat and could be pushed under the door. Nothing... except…

  Her sweatshirt.

  She could slide it under the door, and the key would drop into that, then she could pull it back through.

  If she had something to poke it through with.

  She groaned and banged her head back against the wall.

  She needed a stick or piece of wire. She growled her frustration, almost giving way to tears again, although this time they were tears of anger: anger at her uncle for ruining her life, anger at Winchard for making her feel vulnerable, anger at herself for being so, so stupid.

  She sat for some time, cold and uncomfortable, just wanting to get her hands on her uncle and throttle the life out of him.

  “Oh you prat,” she said, suddenly assaulted by the startlingly obvious solution to the key problem. She laughed at her own stupidity.

  She peeled her sweatshirt over her head and took off her bra, her eyes fixed on the door, her ears straining for any sound of movement outside. She suddenly felt so vulnerable, sitting here in this terrible place, the top half of her naked. Her hands were shaking so much she could barely hold the bra steady to tease out the underwire. She wriggled the end through the fabric and eventually got it out, then quickly put her bra back on. She felt a wave of relief as she pulled her sweatshirt back on and a comforting warmth spread over her body again. She sat back against the wall to try and straighten the wire out. It was hard because the damn thing kept insisting on springing back into a semi-circle, but eventually, it straightened out into a reasonably long, straight piece.

  She crouched down, trying to see if she could see anything under the door. There was just darkness; she couldn’t hear any sounds at all. She slid her sweatshirt under the door, her heart beating wildly, dizzy from dragging in too much oxygen. She found that there was just room to slide her fingers right under to push the fabric out far enough.

  “Nana, if you’re watching over me, this would be a good time to pull a miracle out of the bag.”

  Her heart was trying to smash its way out of her rib cage, and for a moment all she could see was pink mist; she was shaking so much that the wire was doing a frantic dance in her hand. She closed one hand over the other to steady herself and poked the wire into the lock, pushing cautiously at first and then harder. She could feel the wire bending inside, and the key, if it was a key, wouldn’t budge. She kept at it for five minutes and realised she was wasting her time; whatever the obstruction was, it wasn’t going anywhere.

  Then it gave, and she heard something drop down onto the sweatshirt.

  She said a prayer of thanks to anyone who was listening and eased it back through. There was the key, just lying there. Polly closed her hand over the huge iron key, the sort that hadn’t been used for decades, pushed it into the lock and turned. It grated in the lock, the metal old and rusty, but after a struggle, it did turn. She knelt and slipped her hands under the door to pull it open. It rattled, but didn’t budge. She could only think that it must have been bolted as well, an old fashioned deadbolt. All that for nothing.

  “Fuckbuckets.” She slumped back down against the wall, furious and despairing. “Fuck, fuck, fuck fuck!” She gave way to another round of tears, wallowing in her misery for a few minutes until she could sniff herself quiet again. Then she just sat in quiet desperation praying that Bert and Finn would find her in time.

  The door opened, and the bare bulb that hung from the frayed wire on the ceiling burst into life, blinding her for a moment, even though it was a feeble bulb. The corners of the room were still hidden in deep s
hadow, as if the bulb didn’t want to shed light there for fear of what it might reveal. She tried to focus through the haze of light and looked up to see Elias Gaunt, the uncle from Hell, walking through the door. A huge man, as wide as he was tall, dressed in combat gear, stepped through after him. Closing the door, the guard stood in front of it, a wall of solid bone and muscle that Polly would have had no chance of evading.

  Her uncle just stood a few feet away from her, grimacing a smile down at her.

  “Ah, so you’re awake,” he said. Polly glared at him, struggling to her feet.

  “I’m guessing not for long,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady.

  Her uncle laughed, a genuine good-humoured laugh.

  “I knew it,” he said. “I had a bet with Winchard. He said that your first question would be ‘Where am I?’but I knew that you wouldn’t go for something so obvious. You didn’t let me down.”

  “I’m so glad I didn’t disappoint you, Uncle,” Polly said through clenched teeth.

  Her uncle tittered.

  “You’re really quite honoured, my dear; your death will bring about great things.”

  “Oh, be still my beating heart,” Polly said, her voice as sweet as ripe cherries. “I feel so privileged. My life suddenly has meaning.” She gave him a look that would have sheared through steel.

  Gaunt tutted and waved a finger at her.

  “Now, now, that is beneath you. In some ways, I’m quite sorry that it has to be you. I’ve always liked you, believe it or not. You’ve shown real courage, and I’ve been very impressed by the way you’ve conducted yourself over the last few days. Who would ever have guessed that you had so much power and such strength of character? I am truly sorry about what happened with Winchard, by the way; what he tried to do was unconscionable, and I did punish him for it. I know all that’s happened recently has been very hard for you.”

  Polly snarled at him, baring her teeth.