Hell Bent

by Heather Killough-Walden

  He nodded. He’d expected as much. He’d thought a lot about it, and as much as he hated Jack Thane, he wasn’t sure that staying in the country was wise for any of them at this point. England was as good a country to defect to as any.

  “Miss Drake’s not gonna be too happy about that,” he muttered, making conversation. He was a little surprised at the slight thrill of satisfaction he got in thinking about the fit Annabelle would throw when Thane gave her the news.

  Clara cocked her head to one side and narrowed her gaze thoughtfully. “Yeah, I noticed tha’.” She chewed on her cheek for a moment and moved further into the kitchen, pulling a glass down from one cabinet and filling it with water at the sink. “Wha’s ‘er damage wi’ tha’, anyway?” She asked, as she turned back around to face him.

  “Her damage,” Cassie said, as she stepped into the kitchen to join them, “is that everyone is afraid of something.” She stopped at the first counter and leaned her hip against it, crossing her arms over her chest. Her gaze zeroed in on Clara, who nervously looked away.

  “That’s true,” Dylan said, as if trying to defend Annabelle. “I have an irrational fear of sharks.” He had since he was a child. He’d read enough about them to earn a degree in sharkology, and he wasn’t naïve. He knew they were over-hunted and misunderstood and endangered. Still, you would never catch him swimming in water that didn’t have chlorine in it.

  Cassie smiled at him and then her gaze cut back to Clara. “And what about you, Miss Thane? What are you 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.

  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.

  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.