Page 103 of The Hunter
“That’s our domain,” someone said. “We’ll find ’im down there, and we’ll fetch Miss LeCour. She’ll be back on that stage in no time, you’ll see.”
“Do whatever you can to save her.” Argent pushed open the gate and strode through the milling crowd of gaping gentry that parted in the wake of his wrath. “But Charles Dorshaw ismine.”
***
Millie had been afraid before in her lifetime, for many reasons. She’d portrayed fear and terror on stage a myriad of times. She’d run from imaginary villains, and a few real ones in her day. But until this moment, Millie realized she’d never truly experienced fear in its raw, terrible, uncomplicated entirety. She’d heard all the analogies: weak with fear. Paralyzed by it. While they provided apt description of the condition, she didn’t think the Bard, himself, could have found words for what she currently experienced. Because she very much doubted any existed. Her entirebodywas afraid. Her heart and head throbbed with it. Her limbs trembled with such force, she was almost grateful for the iron chains holding her arms above her head, as her legs threatened to give out at any moment. Her stomach churned with bile. Her mouth felt dry, and she couldn’t seem to swallow around her heavy tongue.
Where was she?
An ancient-looking iron gate interrupted bleak stone walls and a close, moldy ceiling. She could hear the trickle of water somewhere in the distance, but it sounded more like rain hitting cobblestones than the rush of a river. Two lanterns sputtered on short wicks and Millie stared at them, willing them to stay lit, her immediate fear being the dark. The thick, heavy chains from which she was suspended were bolted to the stone and mortar maybe three feet above her head on each side.
She was alone for now, but for a rickety wooden chair and a long, sturdy table. Strange, grimy stains settled into the wood of that table and dripped from its legs, fueling her certainty that people had died in this room. Many people.
And there was no doubt in her mind that she was next.
This was a place for demons, maybe underground. A place that never saw the sun and was hidden from heaven. All those lost to this place were abandoned to their cruel fate.
Millie thought of Andromeda offered to the monster to appease jealous gods. Where was her Perseus? Did Christopher know she was missing?
Would he even look for her?
Her chains scraped against the stone as she struggled against them, trying to wrench her wrists this way and that, hoping to make them small enough to slip from the manacles. It didn’t work, of course, but she couldn’t help herself. The air seemed too thin, and she gasped for it, hating the desperate little noises escaping her throat. It smelled like death in here, like rot and age, and fear. Stone dust peppered the dirt floor with more of the same.
How had this happened? One moment she was searching for Jakub with the jolly and capable Murdoch, and then a familiar tall man with dark hair thrust a knife in Murdoch’s belly and promised her in the loveliest voice that if she didn’t come with him, he’d dismember her child.
She’d agreed, of course, but he’d hit her anyway, so hard that she’d seen stars dance behind her eyelids, and the time it had taken him to drag her underground was lost in a haze of dizziness and pain.
“Jakub?” she croaked around a growing lump in her throat. “Jakub, are you here?” She couldn’t see through the darkness past the iron gate, and her greatest fear was that Jakub was out there in the shadows somewhere. Afraid. Alone. Or worse,notalone.
What if the monster was with him?
Renewing her fruitless struggle, she cried his name. “Answer me. Anyone? I’m here, come and find me!”
She called to whoever lurked out there in the darkness. To another hostage, to a would-be rescuer, to Charles Dorshaw, she didn’t care. If he was in here with her, then he wasn’t with Jakub. He wasn’t harming her son.
The darkness answered her with terrifying, soul-crushing silence. She couldn’t stand still and listen to it. While she still had breath left in her body, she had fire in her soul, and she would do whatever she could to escape. Which, at the moment… was nothing. The manacles held her fast, the stones revealed no weaknesses, and the door was on the other side of the cell.
Drat and blast and bloody hell.
Her growl of frustration echoed back at her as she jerked and yanked on her chains, pulling with all her strength. Which, admittedly, was far less than impressive, but she had to try. Dust spilled on the ground beside her. Especially the right side. What if that bolt were loose? The chamber seemed old enough, and if enough people had been held here, as desperate as her, struggling just as hard…
She tried not to think of that.
Leaning to the left, she levered her weight against the wall as much as she possibly could, and pulled on the chain with a grunt of effort. More dust fell. Encouraged, she leaned to the right, trying to get a different angle, and tried again. Shards of mortar joined the dust on the ground.
Her heart lifted. Trying different angles, she pulled and strained, training her eyes on the loosening bolt. Her wrists ached, the skin threatening to break. In tiny increments, the plate held by the two bolts separated from where it had been driven deep into the wall. If she could just keep going, she might get a hand free.
And then what?
She paused to gasp in a few breaths, shortened from exertion and fear. The flat iron plate the bolts secured for the chain could make a good weapon, there was that. And if she got one hand free, there was hope for the other.
Then she could worry about the gate. Studying the chains there, she knew a padlock of some kind held them in place. Millie had a few lock-picking skills gleaned from her brother Anzelm, before he left for America. Maybe she could find something—
The shadows shifted beyond the gate. Someone was out there. Was it her Perseus? Or the monster?
She knew the answer before the key turned in the ancient iron lock. It reached to her through the darkness on a wave of malevolent, maniacal evil.
Charles Dorshaw, he had come for her.
