Chapter 12
TWELVE
JACK
“Help! She needs help!”
Jack pounded on the thick door providing the only entrance and exit to their room. Their plan was risky at best, but what other options did they have? Staying as a prisoner wasn’t an option.
Jack slammed his curled fist against the door over and over again. “She’s choking, someone help us!”
A heavy click met his ears as someone on the opposite side released the lock.
“Stand away from the door!” a rough male voice ordered.
Jack obeyed, positioning himself away from the door. He took a place next to one of the two beds in the room.
A second later, two soldiers entered. They both wore the black-and-grey uniform of New Hope. Both of them were also clearly part of the Vampire Project. Their skin was an unnatural pale white, their eyes pigmented with a hint of red.
“Here, here.” Jack pointed to the bed where Abigail lay in a crumpled ball. “Help her, she’s choking on something.”
Both soldiers rushed to the bedside, looking down on a pile of pillows stuffed under the blankets to take the shape of a person.
At once, Abigail removed herself from her hiding position between the wall and the open door.
Jack had slowly made his way to the unlocked door as the two guards ran to take a look at the supposed choking victim.
Then, Jack ran at an all-out sprint. He knew he had a second, maybe two, before the guards understood what was happening and moved to block their escape.
Abigail was already through the door when Jack reached it, but the new vampire soldiers were too fast. He could feel hands grabbing at his shirt as he crested the threshold of the door.
Fear of being dragged back into the room seized at his heart.
The dreaded sensation of panic overwhelmed his rational thought.
Pure desperation forced him to keep moving despite the hands grabbing his shirt.
With a loud rip, Jack was into the hall, and Abigail slammed the door behind him, throwing the bolt in place in one fluid motion.
Jack stopped his forward momentum just in time to avoid slamming into the wall.
His pounding heart matched the beating of the door that had been their prison seconds before.
The two guards in the room were yelling and hammering with abandon.
Despite their strength, the door held. Apparently, Leah Noble had thought of everything.
The sounds echoed through the hall.
“We need to get out of here.” Abigail grabbed Jack’s hand. “Let’s go.”
Jack allowed himself to be led. Still shaken by their narrow escape, something tickled the back of his mind. Thus far, their getaway had been perfect, too perfect, like it had been planned on both ends. But that was crazy. Why would they be permitted to escape?
“Jack! Jack are you listening to me?” Abigail stopped at the end of the hall where two paths intersected. Neither one of them led up; one was a hall to the right, the other a closed door on the left. “Which way?”
“I don’t know.” Jack reached for the power inside that separated him as a wizard.
The familiar warm feeling appeared like a long-lost friend.
Whatever wards Leah Noble had put in place had been contained to the room where they had been held captive.
Jack summoned a green flame of magic in his right hand and focused on the way out.
Nothing entered into his mind but the idea of escape and the need to find the correct path.
The fire in his hand didn’t move either way. Leah Noble was right. Jack’s powers were infantile compared to her own. His magic had been curated for a single purpose: to track and capture paranormal creatures in the Outland.
“I don’t know.” Jack lowered his hand in frustration. The green flame extinguished. “I can’t tell.”
“The hall, then.” Abigail didn’t hesitate. “We need to keep moving.”
Jack took off at a run behind Abigail, not for the first time admiring her decisive nature.
The hall they followed twisted around a corner. A staircase appeared in front of them, leading up to the main floor of the palace.
“This feels wrong.” Jack jogged to keep up with Abigail as they began climbing the staircase. “Why was it so easy to escape? Why aren’t there more guards patrolling the area? Why did this staircase appear exactly when we needed one?”
Abigail came to a halt. Both wizard and the warrior-in-training took a moment to think on the validity of Jack’s words. The winding staircase that one moment held so much hope for their escape, now seemed sinister, almost begging them to crest the next step.
“You’re right.” Abigail placed her hands on top of her head. She interlaced her fingers, trying to regain her breath. “But what are we supposed to do? We have to go forward. We can’t go back.”
Jack looked around the still room. Stonewalls met the stone stairs, mage lights burned in outlets along the wall. Long banisters that fell from the ceiling sported the queen’s sigil: a black bat in front of two crossed steel swords.
“What are we supposed to do?” Jack repeated Abigail’s words out loud. The hair rose on the back of his neck as a shiver ran through him.
At once, a cold breeze snuffed out the mage lights that had burned so diligently a moment before. Jack and Abigail were lost to stumble in the utter darkness.
“I wonder, I wonder … why a little sorcerer and a little warrior would think escaping from a prison I put them in would be so easy.” Leah Noble’s voice drifted up to them from somewhere below.
“There will never be escape for you two. I will send my vampire soldiers to hunt you down and bring you, or your bodies, back to me.”
“Run,” Jack whispered as he fumbled for Abigail’s hand in the darkness. Once his palm touched hers, he grabbed onto it as if both their lives depended on the grip.
Abigail interlaced her fingers in his as they stumbled their way to the top of the staircase. More than once they fell, but when one went down, the other was there to pull him or her up and spur them forward.
Jack’s knee slammed into a hard stone step in front of him, and a shock of dull pain rushed over his wound. Hot, fresh blood poured over the new laceration.
“You’re making my job too easy.” Leah was so close somewhere behind them in the dark, they could hear her heavy breaths. “A fresh blood trail to follow? How have you two survived this long on your own?”
Jack slammed face-first into a door he couldn’t see. More blood gushed from his nose. Water filled his eyes, not that he could see, anyway. Both Jack and Abigail maneuvered their hands over the door in the darkness in a panicked state.
Abigail found the latch, throwing open the door. The light of the recently risen sun blinded them both. Falling over one another, they ran to their freedom.
“Run, run while you still have legs!” Leah Noble’s voice filled the space behind them. “When I get my hands on you, I’m going to make you wish you had never been born.”