Page 30 of Hellfire to Come
“We need to get her out,” I said, my voice roughened by more than exhaustion. “Somewhere clean. Somewhere untouched by this cursed stone. We need to purge whatever he did to her before it consumes her completely.”
“We will,” Dominic said with quiet certainty. “But we can’t help her from inside a crypt.”
The moment we breached the upper tunnel—a dirt-walled corridor that reeked of damp moss and old blood—I felt a sliver of relief. Not safety. Not yet. But something close to breath.
The servant tunnels were narrow, the ceiling so low that Dominic was forced to stoop, and the walls were lined with brittle wooden beams and clawed-up stones. Roots had broken through the earth, curling along the walls, twisting deeper into the tunnel, splitting stone and wood as they went.
It felt like crawling through a corpse.
I pressed Alice closer, shielding her as best I could from the dripping ceiling and the grasping tendrils of the forest. Her fevered skin seared against mine, and I gritted my teeth to keep walking. Every instinct I had was screaming to stop. To set her down. To fix it. But we couldn’t stop. Not here. Not yet.
Behind us, the mansion groaned. The sound rolled like thunder down the passage: a low, lingering wail of ancient wood and crumbling stone. The sound moved through the corridor in waves, low and thunderous, as if the very bones of the estate were cracking under the weight of its sins. It wasn’t just decay we heard, it was despair. Centuries of blood-soaked rituals and suffering compressed into one final, echoing lament.
A house in mourning.
A predator denied its kill.
And still, I did not look back.
That place had already carved too much from our souls, each wall steeped in echoes, each step haunted by ghosts we hadn’t yet named. Whatever power lingered there was ancient, bitter, and patient. If I turned, I feared it would remember my name.
We pressed forward, the air thick with dust and old wine. At last, we emerged into what remained of the mansion’s lowest cellar, the remnants of the wine vault Chester had spoken of in a breathless hush back in the tunnels. Time had not been kind to it. Most of the vault had caved in, the collapse opening a gaping maw of broken stone and exposed dirt.
And there, beyond the wreckage, was salvation.
An earthen tunnel stretched outward like a lifeline, carved from desperation or divine mercy, I didn’t care which. At its far end, thin daylight filtered in, a single silver ribbon smeared across the packed earth. It was a ghost of a promise. A breath of freedom.
Faint. Remote.
But real.
And it was enough.
“Almost there,” Chester said, his voice hoarse as he extinguished the flame in his hand.
“Don’t slow down now,” I urged, shifting Alice again. She groaned softly, her lashes fluttering.
“Brooklyn…” she whispered, barely audible.
“I’m here,” I said as my throat tightened. “You’re safe. I’ve got you.”
But even as the words left my mouth, I wasn’t sure they were true. Because safety was an illusion. And war was only beginning.
Frederic hadn’t let us go because we’d beaten him.
He’d let us go because now he knew exactly how far we would go for each other.
And he would use that.
He would exploit it.
And I would kill him for it.
With no hesitation. No mercy.
No looking back.
Chapter Twelve
