CHAPTER FIFTEEN #2
“I mean, no. But I’ve seen it done on YouTube. I mean, how hard can it be if it’s on YouTube?”
Jenna looks at me like I’ve just suggested we flap our arms and fly out of here. “You’re basing our escape plan on some YouTube tutorials. And I’m not even going to ask why you were watching lock-picking videos.”
“For your information, I lost the key to my storage unit, and didn’t want to pay holiday rates for a locksmith to come out. So I watched some videos on it.”
“And you successfully opened it. I’m impressed.”
Well, no. But do you have a better idea?”
Jenna shakes her head and lets out a frustrated groan. “No, I don’t, which is deeply concerning for both of us.” She glances toward the hallway. “But first, we need to deal with the other problem.”
“The things in the corridor?”
“Exactly,” she confirms. “Whatever she keeps out there, they’re fast and they’re hungry. I’ve heard them, and sometimes I hear screaming.” Her face pales. “Then the screaming stops,” she whispers, her voice so soft I have to strain to hear her.
This is fine. Everything is fine. I’m just trapped in a magical prison with monsters in the corridor, and my only ally is a sarcastic maybe-demon with mystery wings.
“Okay,” I say, trying to channel every action movie I’ve ever seen. “Let’s say I can pick the lock—”
“With the impeccable skills you acquired from YouTube,” Jenna interjects.
“Do you want to escape or do you want to be snarky?” I snap. Lucky for her, I’m used to Salem and her quick, sarcastic wit. The two of them would probably get along famously, all the while annoying everyone they meet.
“I can multitask,” she says with a full-on smile.
Despite everything, I feel my lips twitch as I do my best not to laugh and add fuel to her fire. “Anyway, let’s just say I pick the lock. We’re going to need a way to deal with whatever’s out there.”
Jenna considers this. “Fire,” she says finally. “Most things don’t like fire.”
“We have one torch,” I correct by pointing out the obvious.
“Which is more than I had yesterday.” She looks at the makeshift torch she created. “I’ve been collecting materials for years. Roots that poke through the walls, scraps of fabric from… well, from anything really.”
I decide not to think too hard about that last part. “I thought you said you didn’t have any more roots?”
“No, I said I wasn’t going to start with the worst one and hope for the best. That,” she adds, pointing to our torch, “is the longest one I have. But I have others, sort of. I can make more torches,” she continues.
“Maybe three or four. If we move fast, stay close to the walls, we might be able to make it to the stairs before—”
“Before what?” I interrupt in a panic, which seems much more logical than letting her finish her statement.
“Before whatever is lurking in the corridor realizes we’re out there.” Her face is grim. “They’re not smart, but they’re persistent and loud. Which, I suppose we can use to our advantage. At least we’ll hear them coming.”
Her statement is anything but reassuring.
I’m not sure if being able to hear some creature hunting me is better or worse than if they just ate me in one silent mouthful.
I try to swallow down my growing trepidation about our plan, which seems to be the equivalent of run that way really fast and if something gets in your way… turn.
“How long do you think we have, you know, before they…rahhh,” I emphasize my statement by raising my hands above my head to look like claws and baring my teeth.
“Minutes, probably less.” She meets my eyes.
“And Kennedy, there’s no going back once we start this.
If we fail, if she catches us trying to escape, what she did to me will look merciful compared to what she’ll do to us both.
” Jenna pauses and looks at the ceiling as if suddenly realizing something important.
“Unless, of course, this is all just a giant trap that she’s orchestrated to get us both out of the cell, which is always a possibility. ”
I should be terrified. A rational person would be terrified. But instead, I feel something else, something akin to determination, or maybe spite. Either way, I don’t want to spend more time in the hellhole than I need to.
“Then we don’t fail,” I simply state.
Jenna studies me for a long moment, then nods slowly. “Then we need a plan. A real one. A well-thought-out one, and not just run and hope.”
“Agreed.” I acknowledge with a nod of my head before I make my way back to the wall to sit down, my mind already working through the logistics of what we have already come up with. “What do you know about the layout?”
“It’s been so long since I’ve left this cell, but I’ve listened. There are stairs at the end of the corridor—two, maybe three hundred feet. The things in the corridor stay hidden deep in the shadows and away from the cells and the stairs.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Maybe there are runes there too, keeping them contained in a specific area.” She shrugs. “Or maybe they’re territorial, and that’s their hunting ground.”
“Comforting.” I think through this. “So, if we’re fast enough, we might be able to get past them before they react.”
“Or we might run right into them in the dark.”
“Would you describe yourself as a glass-half-empty person? Because that’s the vibe I’m getting,” I snap, once again pointing out Jenna’s doom-and-gloom mentality.
“I’d describe myself as a person who’s been trapped in Hell for ten years, so yes, my optimism is slightly impaired.”
“Fair point.” I huff. “What about after the stairs?” I ask. “Do you know where they go?”
“They go up.” She laughs. “What? You don’t find that funny? Ghostbusters, ‘Where do these stairs go? They go up.’ … Nothing?” She is still laughing at her own joke.
“I don’t get it,” I deadpan.
“Ugh, never mind. They lead up and out of this level, that’s all I know about them.” She pauses. “But even if we make it up the stairs, we’re still in her domain. This entire place bends to her will.”
“She’s a Horseman, right? Pestilence?” I try to remember what Salem and Michael told me about the supernatural hierarchy. “Doesn’t that mean there are rules? Cosmic balance, checks and balances, that kind of thing?”
“Rules? Yeah, I don’t think she subscribes to that newsletter.
I think she’s more of a rules-are-meant-to-be-bent kind of person.
Especially by someone who’s been playing this game as long as she has.
” Jenna’s voice is quiet. “She’s old, Kennedy, older than civilization, probably older than the concept of mercy.
I’m talking about the old creation. Something humans can’t even grasp the concept of. ”
“But she wants something she doesn’t have,” I counter. “Reaver, Heaven, whatever her endgame is. Which means she’s not all-powerful.”
“No. But she’s powerful enough.”
We sit in silence for a moment, both processing the enormity of what we’re considering. “You mentioned Gabriel,” I say finally. “Before, when you were talking about Archangels being difficult to collect. Who is he?”
Jenna’s entire body tenses. “You don’t know?”
“Should I?”
“Gabriel is...” She trails off, and I see something flash across her face. Pain? Longing? Love? “He’s the reason I’m here. He was the first of them to have fallen. He… he eradicated mankind for her.”
“So, she’s jealous of you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” The word is barely a whisper.
“Is he… I mean, was he your —” I don’t know how to finish the question without being insensitive.
“It’s complicated,” Jenna says, echoing my earlier words about Reaver.
“When isn’t it complicated with Angels?” I echo her words back, and she gives me a small, sad smile.
“Gabriel was—is—different. Powerful, yes, but also broken. He made a mistake, a terrible one, and he’s been paying for it ever since.
” She wraps her arms around herself. “Pesta used him, used his love for her against him, made him do terrible things to prove his love. When he realized what he had done, it was too late. Pesta dragged me from the river Styx, half dead, maybe all dead, I don’t know.
When I woke up, I was here. The last thing I remember was grasping for Gabriel’s hand and then nothing. ”
“So, you’re also leverage or bait?”
“Something like that.” Her voice hardens. “He doesn’t even know I’m here. He probably thinks I’m dead.”
An idea starts forming in my mind. A terrible, probably-going-to-get-us-killed idea. “What if we find him?”
Jenna’s head snaps toward me. “What?”
“Gabriel. What if we escape and then go find him? Michael or Asher must know him. Maybe they know where he is. If Pestilence wants Reaver, and she has history with Gabriel, maybe—” I’m thinking out loud now, pieces clicking together.
“Maybe we can use that. Create chaos. At least disrupt her plans enough to buy us some time.”
“That’s…” Jenna trails off.
“Insane?”
“I was going to say bold. But insane works too.” She looks at me with something that might be respect. “You don’t think small, do you?”
“I’m a Colebrook. We’re genetically predisposed to poor decision-making and overconfidence.” I stand up, energy coursing through me now. “Besides, what’s she going to do, lock us in a cell? Already done.”
“Colebrook? Your last name is Colebrook?” she asks.
“Yeah, Kennedy Colebrook at your service,” I say with a bit of a theatrical bow. “Why?”
Jenna pauses, in what I’m beginning to recognize as trying to remember something from a lifetime ago. Something that through her trauma, she’s forgotten, or at least buried. “I don’t know, but Colebrook sounds familiar to me. I don’t know why.
“It will come to you, eventually, once we’re out,” I reassure her.
With a shake of her head, Jenna is back to our current situation. “She could do a lot to us. You understand that, right? There are things far, far worse than death.”
“Then we’ll deal with it. Together.” I hold out my hand, and Jenna looks at it for a long moment, then reaches out and clasps it. Her skin is cold, almost unnaturally so, and I feel a tingle of power where we touch.
“Together,” she agrees. “But if we’re doing this—if we’re really doing this—we need to be smart about it and patient.”
“How patient are we talking?” I inquire because I refuse to be a decade’s worth of patient.
“We wait for her to visit again. She’ll come back to gloat, to remind us we’re helpless. That’s when we make our move—when she thinks she’s already won.”
I don’t love the idea of waiting, and I certainly don’t love the idea of seeing Pesta again, or of sitting here while Reaver potentially walks into a trap. But Jenna’s right—rushing out now, unprepared, will be suicide, and I’m nowhere near ready to die.
“Okay,” I reluctantly agree. “We wait, we prepare, and then we run like hell.”
“Literally,” Jenna adds with a dark smile.
“How long do you think before she comes back?” I hate asking the question because from what I gathered from Jenna, Pesta isn’t one for visiting her captives. But if I’ve learned anything about those with narcissistic personalities, they all like to gloat and remind you about how perfect they are.
“Hours. Maybe a day. She likes to let fear simmer before she stirs the pot.” Jenna moves to the corner where I saw her collecting materials earlier. “In the meantime, I’ll make torches. You…” she looks me over. “You should rest, get your strength up. You’re going to need it.”
“Rest, sure. I’ll just take a nice relaxing nap in this hellish prison cell while monsters patrol outside and my maybe-boyfriend prepares to trade Heaven for my rescue.” I laugh, a slightly manic sound. “No problem. You wouldn’t happen to have a Xanax down here, would you?”
Jenna chuckles. “Sorry, fresh out.”
But despite my sarcasm, exhaustion is pulling at me.
The adrenaline that’s been keeping me upright is starting to fade, and my body is reminding me that I’ve been through significant distress in a very short period.
Reluctantly, I climb back onto the makeshift cot, pull my knees up against my chest, and hug them tightly.
From this angle, I can watch both the corridor and Jenna as she works.
“Jenna?” I say after a moment.
“Mm?”
“Thank you. For agreeing to this. I know you don’t owe me anything.”
She pauses in her work, not looking at me. “You gave me something I haven’t had in ten years.”
“What’s that?”
“Hope.” She glances over, and in the torchlight, I see the glimmer of tears in her eyes. “Even if it’s a foolish hope, even if we fail. You gave me a reason to fight instead of just surviving.”
My throat tightens. “I know in my heart we’re not going to fail.”
“You can’t promise that.”
“No. But I can promise I’m going to try my damnedest. And if we do fail, at least we’ll go down swinging.”
“Or screaming,” Jenna adds.
I let out a tired laugh. “Or screaming,” I agree. “But probably both.”
She returns to her work, and I let my eyes close just for a moment, just to rest them.
In the darkness behind my eyelids, I see Reaver’s face.
The way he looked at me that first night, when he saved me from my stalker patient.
The way his wings had folded around me like a shield.
The way he’d kissed me like I was the only solid thing in a dissolving world.
Hold on, I think, not sure if I’m talking to him or myself.
Just hold on a little longer. We’re coming, and when we get out of here, when we find Gabriel and turn Pestilence’s plan on its head, I’m going to tell Reaver exactly what I think about Archangels who disappear for a year and then brood dramatically across the street.
But first, we have to survive.