Chapter 11 Maeve
MAEVE
There was nothing to light my way: no red lights, no digital clock, no flashlight on my phone.
Once I ran past the sickly fluorescent lights outside my cell, I was surrounded by utter darkness.
I hadn’t expected it, and I stopped cold, edging toward the walls, feeling my way along the cold, slimy stone as my eyes adjusted. I hated losing the time, but falling would only make things worse.
And after a while, my eyes did adjust. Not enough to make everything clear, but enough that I could make out the tunnel complex stretched out in front of me. Enough that I could see a few feet in every direction.
I picked up my pace, sticking close to the wall in case I missed something in my path and stumbled.
The tunnels were different than the ones under Blackwell Falls. Both were made of stone, but the ones under Blackwell Falls had been built in the 1920s. The stone was cold but mostly dry.
This stone felt as old as time. My skin crawled when I brushed against the rough, slimy surface. The smell of rot was strong, and I half expected to stumble upon a dead body or ten.
Had Todd done this before with other women? Or did the smell come from something older?
I thought about the catacombs under Paris. I’d never been, but I’d read about them, and it was easy to imagine long-dead bodies buried in the dungeon around me.
I fought against the instinct to slow down, or better yet, to stop altogether.
I was terrified of running into something or stumbling over one of the aforementioned dead bodies, but I couldn’t afford to slow down.
I had no idea how much time had passed but I knew twenty minutes was going to pass all too quickly.
I was so busy looking ahead that I didn’t see the object in my path on the ground. I stumbled and went down hard enough to make my teeth ache, something sharp biting into my right palm.
A coiled shadow came into view on the floor, and I scooted quickly away as my mind went to snakes and other things that slithered in the dark.
But it wasn’t a snake: it was a chain. I’d tripped over a heavy metal chain like the ones used to chain girls to the walls in the tunnels under Blackwell Falls. Except this one was even older and bigger, even more rusted.
I used the wall to get to my feet, then wiped my bloody hand on my sweatshirt before bending to stretch the chain across the path in the tunnel.
The chain was too heavy to use as a weapon, but it might trip up Todd and his flunkies.
At the very least it would make some noise, alert me to their presence if I was still close enough to hear them hit the chain.
The rusted metal clanged against the stone floor, but I wasn’t worried about that. Even if Todd could hear me, he’d have no way of knowing where I was in the tunnel or what I was doing.
I moved past the chain quickly, unsure how much time I’d burned. Other chains lay on the stone floor, scattered along with milky broken bottles in different colors, and horrifyingly, bones that may or may not have been human.
I picked up one of the bottles, a small flask-shaped bottle made out of burgundy glass. The bottom third was shattered, leaving jagged shards of broken glass. I wrapped my hand around the undamaged spout and kept walking.
My cut hand burned, my fear overwhelming.
I was afraid if I stopped I would shut down completely, sit again the stone wall and accept my fate at the hands of Ethan Todd.
After what felt like an hour but might have been five minutes I came to the remnants of an iron door like the one that had kept me confined in my cell. It stood at the top of a narrow stone stairwell leading downward, and I hesitated at the top, trying to see into the darkness that lay below.
I only had two choices: go back the way I came or keep going. Going back toward my cell was an option — at least I knew there was an exit in that direction — but only if I could find somewhere to hide while Todd, Anton, and Mr. Skinny passed me by.
So far the tunnel had been a straight shot, which meant I had to keep moving.
It seemed impossible that I could travel any deeper underground — and I definitely didn’t want to — but there was nowhere else to go, so I descended the stairs even though every instinct in my body screamed for me to go back.
Back meant back toward Ethan Todd, back toward his twisted plan to put me to work with the other girls in his trafficking operation.
I didn’t know what forward meant. Escape? Death?
Maybe Todd and his flunkies would hurt themselves in the tunnels. Maybe I still believed the Butchers would come for me in time. All I knew was that if I let myself fall into Todd’s hands, I was screwed, and that meant I had to play his game.
The temperature dropped by ten degrees when I reached the bottom of the stairs, and I walked past the rusted skeleton of another iron gate. Whatever — or whoever — had been held in this lower level had been extra secure, locked in by the iron doors at both the top and bottom of the stairs.
It was darker down here, but I wasn’t afraid of the dark anymore. I thought about the first Hunt under Blackwell Falls, how the darkness had hit me like a physical thing, how it had almost immobilized me.
I wasn’t that girl anymore. I’d been hunted by three men who’d captured more than my body.
Three men who were the dark.
I’d been strung up, stripped by Ethan Todd, Anton, and Mr. Skinny.
I’d had my heart broken in ways I’d never thought possible, had it put back together again by a man most of the world would consider a monster.
I’d been kidnapped, taken somewhere far from my family and the life that had once been mine.
I’d been held prisoner underground, had been treated like an animal.
I wasn’t afraid of the dark anymore.
Now I claimed it as mine.
The tunnel continued at the bottom of the stairs, but I was only a few feet past the staircase when I spotted another coiled object on the floor.
At first I thought it was another chain, but when I bent to inspect it, I saw that it was a thick, heavy rope.
It was frayed and slimy, and I dragged it back to the stairs, looking for a way to string it across the treads.
It took me longer than I would have liked to tie it to the remnants of the iron gate at the bottom of the stairs, but in the process I noticed that one of the iron bars was loose.
I set down the glass bottle and maneuvered the bar back and forth, praying to anyone who would listen that it would break loose, then gasped with surprise when it came free in my hand.
Now I had three weapons.
I couldn’t find anything to secure the chain to the other side of the staircase, so I pulled it as tight as I could and left it there, hoping it would be enough to trip Todd or one of the other guys.
Then I picked up the glass bottle and the iron bar — heavier than it looked — and moved deeper into the tunnel at the bottom of the stairs.
Deeper into the dark that was mine.