Chapter 16 Maeve
MAEVE
The footsteps next door belonged to Mr. Skinny. I knew because his footsteps were lighter than Anton’s. Anton stepped heavily, his bulk and the subtle limp of his bad leg making a distinctive thud-drag on the stone floor of the rooms across the hall.
I closed my eyes and prayed Mr. Skinny would skip my room, that he would be half-assed, assume the rooms were empty since I’d left no trace.
But then the wooden door creaked again, and Mr. Skinny moved into the hallway before stepping into the room where I was hiding.
I held my breath as I caught the barely-there smudge of his figure, nothing more than the suggestion of a shadow moving in the darkness of the dank room.
He turned around and I caught the glitter of his eyes in the dark, gripped the bottle so tight I half expected it to break in my hands as he stepped toward me.
I thought he was looking right at me, but he must not have been because he walked calmly toward the door and pulled it to reveal my hiding place.
His eyes met mine, then dropped to the broken bottle in my hand, its jagged edge visible in the darkness.
Could I do this? Could I kill a man who was guilty of nothing more than following the orders of Ethan Todd?
I gripped the bottle tighter. Fuck yes I could.
But then Mr. Skinny’s gaze met mine again, and he held his index finger to his lips.
He took a step back, pushing the door toward the stone wall to better cover my hiding spot.
“Nothing in here,” he said, moving away from me.
“Not in here either,” Anton said. “Must have gone the other way.”
I exhaled the breath I’d been holding and lowered my hand, the bottle still clutched in my fingers.
Except on the way down, the bottle hit the iron rod sticking out of my pocket.
I saw it fall as if in slow motion, felt my brain trying to juggle competing directives: keep a hold of the bottle so it didn’t fall to the ground, stop the metal instrument from doing the same.
I didn’t figure it out in time. The piece of metal hit the stone floor with a clatter that sounded deafening in the tomb-like silence of the dungeon.
There was a split second of suspended silence: the beat before an indrawn breath, the moment before a thunder strike.
Then my body screamed run and I slipped out from behind the door and headed for the hall, the broken bottle still in my hand, the piece of metal left behind.
The iron rod fell out of the waistband of my leggings but there was no time to stop and grab it.
“She’s here!” Anton shouted.
I caught sight of his shadow as I exited the room and ran the other direction, down the part of the tunnel that I hadn’t yet explored.
Then I was running at full speed, no time to worry about objects that might be in my path or stone walls that might spring up out of nowhere.
But I should have been worried. I should have been worried because I’d probably been running for less than a minute when I spotted the stone wall right in front of me.
I tried to put on the brakes but only managed to lessen the blow of my body hitting the wall.
This was it. I was boxed in.
Trapped.
Anton’s footsteps fell slowly and heavily on the stone. If not for the wall, I could have outrun him, but there was nowhere else to go, and I held up the broken bottle, still miraculously in my hand, my fingers cramped from holding it so tightly.
Anton emerged from the shadows all at once, a lumbering, limping beast, his face twisted with fury. I barely managed to register the sheen of sweat on his face, his thinning hair plastered to his forehead, mouth twisted into a grimace, before he lunged at me.
It was so dark it was hard to make sense of the situation, but Mr. Skinny was nowhere in sight. I kicked toward Anton’s bad leg and felt a moment’s hope when he groaned in pain.
But it wasn’t enough. He grabbed ahold of my sweatshirt and pulled me closer and we both went down on the cold, slimy stone.
“Fucking bitch!” He climbed on top of me and got a vicious punch to my face.
I saw stars like some kind of cartoon character as I lashed out with the bottle still in my hand. I had no real sense of where I was pointing the thing, but I felt it make contact with something, felt the drag of it through something meaty and wet, felt the spray of hot blood on my face and chest.
Antone sputtered, clutching at his neck.
I dropped the bottle, gasping as the blood rained down on my nose and mouth, trying to push Anton off me, gagging at the metallic taste of his blood in my mouth.
I retched, panic blooming like an invasive species in my body.
And then, all at once, Anton’s weight disappeared and another figure, huge and menacing, with an elongated snout and horns, loomed over me like a beastly specter.
I rolled onto my stomach and belly-crawled away from the monster, sobs tearing from my throat.
“Maeve, Maeve, Maeve!”
I fought, kicking and thrashing as a viselike grip encircled my arm.
“It’s me! It’s me!”
I froze. I knew that voice.
“Bram?” The bone mask was suddenly more familiar than terrifying.
He lifted me into his arms. “It’s okay.” He held me close. “It’s okay, I’ve got you.”
I’d been found, but not by a monster.
By mine.