26. Mina #2
She smiled and turned off the light on her phone, tucking it back into her skirt pocket and pushing the door open. It deposited her in an empty hall above a staircase leading downward, and she shoved the door closed and straightened her mask.
Louna took a few shallow breaths and descended the stairs in a rush, letting her skirts billow behind her. “Hello?” she called, forcing a note of tension into her words. “Hello? Is there anyone down here?”
A man’s voice echoed up from the lower level. “Stop,” he shouted in Romanian. “You can’t be here.”
“There’s a gas leak,” Louna said in English, hurrying down the last few stairs and waving frantically toward the low ceiling. “Everybody needs to leave.”
“Gas leak?” one man repeated.
Louna tripped around a curve in the staircase and caught herself against the wall on a landing, where three men stood with uncertain expressions on their faces.
“I’ve been going through the castle,” she said breathlessly. “Hurry, we have to get out!”
One guard, a tall boy who looked to be about twenty, glanced at the others. “What about the American?” he asked in Romanian.
“The German said we might kill him at midnight,” put in another. “We can let the gas do it.”
“Wait,” said the third. “How do we know she’s telling the truth?”
The men looked at her, and she twisted her hands together. “I don’t know what you’re saying. Is there a problem? The man who owns the castle said we all need to—”
There was a low rumble of thunder, faint in the depths of the cellar, and Louna pointed at the ceiling. “Did you hear that?”
“Just thunder,” said the third man in English.
“Which means there’s also lightning,” Louna said. “Do you know what will happen if lightning strikes where there’s a gas leak?”
That did it. The men exchanged uncomfortable looks before the first spoke in Romanian again. “Just leave him. He can’t go anywhere. If he burns, that’s one less thing for us to worry about.”
They walked toward her, and Louna stepped aside to let them pass.
She followed them up the stairs, hurrying them along, and then left them where the hallway branched and said she needed to check the towers.
They grunted responses and continued toward the main hall, and Louna waited until they were out of sight before turning back and flying down the stairs.
She found the cellar-turned-dungeon and crouched before the only closed door. It was solid wood, with no bars or window to see inside, but Louna didn’t waste time verifying. She pulled her lock picks from her pocket and eased them into the lock, and in moments, the mechanism clicked.
She stepped back to fold her picks into her pocket, and Lindsey opened the door.
The light in the cellar was dim—electric, but outdated, casting a light that seemed anachronistic and washed-out over the stone walls.
But even that was enough to see the bruises on Lindsey’s face, the grubby, stained material of his prison clothes, and the smile on his lips.
“Mina,” he said, holding out his cuffed hands. “Tom Sawyer. Nice to meet you.”
“You were meant to be Van Helsing,” she sighed, picking the cuffs and tossing them back into the cell. “Tennyson has your costume. It would have looked magnificent on you.”
Lindsey grinned. “Then let’s go get it.”
She let him pull her up the stairs, but when he paused at the top, she nudged him down the hall which would lead them to the hidden door Tennyson had found. “Lindsey’s out,” she said, in case the others hadn’t heard. “We’re headed for the southern door.”
“We’re in the van,” Philippe reported. “Waiting to exit the parking lot. Your Dracula has everybody organized into sections to keep from jamming—it’s impressive.”
“No sign of Hartmann’s goons,” Jean-Claude added.
“That’s because they’re all busy,” Lindsey said. “Tenny, care to check in?”
“Almost done,” he said.
“We’re at the door,” Louna said, pulling Lindsey into a closet and depressing the wooden paneling at the back of the room. It swung open, and he moved her gently by her shoulders so he could enter first. “Meet us at the van.”
Louna closed the closet door behind her and stepped over the lip of the paneling. Lindsey made room for her, and she handed him her phone as she pulled the wall shut.
“This is the weirdest kidnapping I’ve ever been a part of,” he murmured, flattening himself against the wall to give her space. His broad shoulders took up most of the gap between the narrow walls, and he had to stoop to keep his head from grazing the ceiling.
She patted his bulging arm sympathetically. “You get used to it.”
“Oh?” he said, allowing her to turn him around so he could lead rather than squashing himself into a crepe against the wall to let her pass.
“Yes,” she said in a light tone. “I’ve done pirates, spies, arms dealers, Aztec temples, monasteries, underwater caves, Yakuza hideouts. This isn’t even my first castle.”
Lindsey twisted to look at her over his shoulder and almost wedged himself between the walls. “I can’t tell if you’re joking.”
“My interests take me many places,” she said, shrugging.
“You mean your thefts?”
“Alleged thefts.”
“Lucky for me,” Lindsey said, shuffling sideways to keep his shoulders free.
They went as quickly as he could manage, listening to periodic updates from the Verdier brothers as the lot emptied.
Louna hadn’t been to this part of the castle yet, and she ran her hand along the wall to make sure she wouldn’t miss the door.
They were on the side of the keep now, and she could hear the wind buffeting the walls and the thunder roaring overhead.
She pulled her mask free and rolled it into an inner pocket beside Cristian’s, but she doubted it would be salvageable after the hike they would have to make through the rain.
She’d intended their cloaks to be a layer of protection against the cold, but hers was still in the coatroom, and Lindsey’s was in Tennyson’s bag.
Still, cold was better than dead.
Lindsey stopped, his hand flat against the wall. “I found it.”
Louna ducked under his elbow to see the wooden door set into the stone. He handed her phone back to her, and she turned off the light and returned it to her pocket.
“Ready?” he asked.
She backed away, and he opened the door to admit a torrent of icy rain into the passage.
Lindsey stepped out intrepidly and moved aside, offering his hand.
Her boots slid on the combination of hard-packed snow and mud, and she was grateful for his support as he picked his way from the door.
She was drenched in moments, and the driving rain and darkness combined to keep her almost blind, so she couldn’t see where the cliff dropped away or how much room they had between the castle and the edge.
“We’re out,” Lindsey said, nearly shouting over the storm. “We’ll be there in a—”
Fingers tore at Louna’s shoulder, dragging her backwards and ripping her hand free of Lindsey’s. She spun, snapping her arm up to break the hold the way Ilya had taught her. She jumped back in the same motion, but Lindsey had stopped when she had, and she stumbled into him.
A high flash of lightning gave her a glimpse of her attacker, and she swallowed the cry building in her throat. Hartmann. She was sure he’d focus on stopping Tennyson if he managed to free himself, but he’d come after her instead.
She tried to turn, but he caught her arm and wrenched it behind her back, the handcuffs still swinging from his wrist. “Your time is up,” he said, pulling her against his chest. “And I am here to collect.”
She stomped down on his instep, and then Lindsey was there, tearing her from Hartmann’s grip and shoving her away. “Go,” he said. “I’ll catch up.”
She backed up to give him room, listening hard for the sounds of their fight.
Another lightning strike showed the two of them grappling, neither overpowering the other.
Lindsey was taller and heavier, but he’d also been beaten and underfed, and the blink of light had showed an expression of open hatred on Hartmann’s face.
Another flash—Lindsey threw a punch that knocked Hartmann back a step—Lindsey had closed the distance and was forcing him against the wall—Hartmann stumbled, went down on one knee—
A gun went off.
She hadn’t seen him draw it. In one flicker of light, Hartmann was down, and the next, he was standing over Lindsey with a pistol in his hand, leveling it to fire again.
Louna slid her hairpin free and launched herself at Hartmann as the gun went off. She’d intended to stab his neck, but he must have heard or seen her, because he reeled and spoiled her aim. Her hairpin pierced the junction between neck and shoulder, and he bellowed and threw her into the wall.
Her head rapped against the stones. She fell to her knees in a daze, blinking tears and rain from her eyes, gasping.
When she looked up again, she found the faint outline of Hartmann silhouetted against the sky, the gun barrel catching a reflection of lightning leaping through the clouds.
Then another figure hurtled through the darkness, tackling Hartmann as he aimed.
The gun went off, and a bullet chipped the stone a few inches from Louna’s head, but she barely noticed it in her strained attempt to see through the darkness.
Nothing—nothing—then finally a streak of lightning, and Louna exhaled at the sight of the cloak billowing around the men.
Her Harker had come to the rescue.