“Where are we?” I muttered, trying best to collect myself as I unbuckled my seatbelt.
Russell didn’t answer.
I staggered toward the backend, clearly seeing now that none of the other vans were there. Amid the burning in my veins, I couldn’t mistake the hot release of a rune igniting on my arm. I was in trouble. Russell wrapped his beefy mitts around my wrist, yanking me down to the ground. The only reason I didn’t eat a mouthful of grass blades was because he kept my arm suspended up, once again threatening to tear my shoulder out of its socket.
I’d barely managed to regain my footing when he started dragging me around the van. The vehicle was still turned on, its headlights cascading across the desolate field. Up ahead, I noticed the ground gave way. It was a hole.
I slammed my feet into the uneven soil, but it didn’t slow us down. It only made Russell pull harder. “What are we doing out here?”
“Cleaning up the mess your boyfriend made.” He gave me one last commanding yank, throwing me out in front of him. I caught my balance not more than a foot from the gaping hole in the ground. Again, Blaine was right. Mr. Reynolds had issued my death warrant, and Russell was about to make good on it.
I turned around, the headlights blaring into my eyes. The outline of his shadowed figure was unmistakable, particularly the long blade wielded in his hands. “Why didn’t you just kill me in the van?” I surprised myself saying that, but it wasn’t worth keeping up pretenses anymore. We both knew the score.
“Why bother having to tow your body when I can just make you walk here?” he retorted so matter-of-factly, nodding to the hole. “Plus, it saves on clean up. Blood would be hard to wash out of the van. And it seems wrong to stain the grass.”
Well, that was a lovely sentiment.
Thunder shook the earth beneath our feet just before a bolt of lightning struck a nearby tree. We both jumped as the sky suddenly exploded with a flash as if a miniature bomb had gone off. The electrical bolt raged for just a second, somehow reflecting bright blue, hot pink, and fiery red all in one short swoop. The tree split in two, the unstructured half crashing to the ground as flames still tickled the charred lumber.
Unsure if I had really been responsible for it, I still used the distraction to my advantage. Lurching sideways, I dashed around the hole, away from the light.
A peculiar feeling suddenly washed over me. I couldn’t explain it. It was as if I’d been here before, as if I knew what I needed to do. I took a step back and dropped out of sight, right into the cavern.
My stomach, as well as everything else, lurched as adrenalin kicked in from the freefall. The drop was a good fifteen, maybe twenty, feet down. Once again I crashed onto the soot-covered floor. Lightning struck again, highlighting the damp room. All the skeletons, all the remains. Hellhounds turned to ash when they were killed, meaning only one thing. These were Changelings, people who posed a threat to the order. This was where the innocent really went when they “disappeared.”
Russell’s head peeked out from atop of the hole, and I all-out screamed, scrambling out of sight as the trigger pulled. The singular sound of a gun blast exploded across the hollow space, leaving a high-pitched ringing in my ears. I could hear Russell curse as I faced the shadows of the three passageways. A swallowing draft kicked up the ash around me from the center opening, just as it did in the vision. This time though, I didn’t hear footsteps.
Instinct told me to leap away, but that meant placing me back into the line of fire from up above. There wasn’t a chance in hell I was going down that passage. Instead, I darted into the corridor to my left. I made it a whole ten feet in before the stench burned my nose, practically knocking me backward. I didn’t need to see it for myself to know what putrefaction lay ahead in the dead, stagnant air. Something, or more like someone, was decomposing. I ran back out to try the last passage when I noticed the same foul odor right at the mouth of the opening. I had no choice. If I stayed, I was dead.
Up top, it had gone quiet. The bodies down here had been moved, which meant there was a way to get out. And a way for Russell to get in. If I had any chance of beating him to wherever this came out, I had to move. Fast.
Feeling my way through the center passage, I could smell the fresh fragrance of evergreens coming from up ahead, but blindly stumbling over the rough terrain didn’t exactly help me on time efficiency. The path seemed never-ending, and I still couldn’t hear anything above the low roar of thunder.
The slightest hint of light poked out at last around the dank bend. The moon still shone through the stormy sky, helping illuminate the landscape. An overgrowth of moss and fern clung to everything nearby, from the rocks to the tree lines. The mouth of the cave sat on an incline, the ground sloping dangerously down to a small pond.