Never Never (27 page)

F
iona held
Ciara tightly in her arms and felt the child shiver.

“Are ye hungry, lass?” Fiona whispered. Ciara shook her head.

It had only been a few minutes since Sarah left the cell and since then Nuala had collapsed into muted sobs. Frank and Catriona held each other with the baby Siobhan between them.

“I'm going to look,” Catriona said.

“Nay, don't!” Fiona said.

Catriona looked at her in surprise.

“You might distract her,” Fiona said. But that was a lie. The truth was, Fiona couldn't bear to hear that Sarah had fallen. She needed just a few more moments where she could pretend that the world wasn't ending in the most horrible, excruciatingly way possible, with every single person she loved in this world dying within hours of each other.

Suddenly Margo pulled open the dungeon door, and stood in the doorway a rifle slung over her shoulder.

“Tell that bitch to shut up,” she said nodding, toward Nuala, “if she knows what's good for her.”

“You monster!” Nuala shrieked as she wrapped her fingers around the bars of the cell. “For harming a child you should burn in the lowest level of hell!”

“Mrs. O'Connell,” Robby said, trying to pull her away from the bars, “Nuala, please.”

“Aye,
Mrs. O'Connell
,” Margot said tauntingly. “Keep it down in here. You're giving me a headache. It's no picnic standing out in that drafty hallway if you think it is.”

Margot glared at the faces staring back at her. When she turned to leave, she glanced into Fiona's cell and grinned. “So she tried it anyway, did she? She's got guts, I'll give her that. Mind you that's all she has about now.”

With a nasty laugh, she turned and left the room.

The minute she was gone Catriona walked to the window.

“Catriona, no!” Fiona said, scrambling to her feet.

But everyone in the adjoining cells pressed close to the bars to hear.

“Well?” Tommy said.

Catriona pulled back from the window, her face stricken. “I…I can't see her.”

There was a terrible silence and then Frank went to the window and looked out. Finally he turned away and spoke to everyone waiting.

“Aye, then. Time for Plan B.”

S
arah lunged
at the windowsill in terror and desperation. Both hands clawed at the stone, trying to correct the imbalance of her body's momentum outward. With no time to think, she fought to find even a half handhold to keep her from falling. Her fingers scrambled across the rock and her toes clenched in knots on the ledge.

Suddenly her hands felt the stone at the front of the windowsill. It was slightly raised all the way across. It was enough. She sheared off the skin on her fingertips clinging to it while halting the backward momentum of her body. Gently, slowly, she pulled herself forward to the front of the window.

No time for prayers of thanks. Her knees were shaking. She needed to get inside
now
.

In one swift motion, she pulled at the lip of the windowsill and felt her toes lift off the shelf and dig into the wall. Hand over hand, grabbing at whatever stone or piece of unfiled mortar there was in the vertical window, she felt her jeans rip at the knee as she crawled and hauled her body up and then over the windowsill.

She lay half in and half out of the window, her chest heaving with fear and disbelief. It took several long seconds before she could pull herself all the way in and look around. She was in some kind of storage room. But there were no copiers or stacks of toilet paper here. Clearly it was a room that hadn't been used in centuries and probably not visited in decades.

Sarah jumped to the floor and began looking through the piles of rubbish and useless office supplies in the room. She found something in a box that looked like a mace. It was clearly a reproduction with a blunt heavy head and a slender handle. Good for bashing over the head if she got close enough. Useless for stabbing or anything else but it would have to do. She jammed it into her belt.

She opened the room's heavy door and peered out into the hallway.

She had no idea where she was. This was not a part of the castle she'd ever visited. Thankful that she was barefoot against the floor of the stone hallway, she stepped out and held her breath to listen.

It was absolutely quiet.

Where would they take Damian?
Would they kill him in the kitchen like we do the chickens?
Just the thought made her want to vomit, but she turned in the direction of where she knew a stairwell must be. At least there would be people in the kitchen. She could hold one of them—threaten them with a knife to their throat—and force them to…now wasn't the time to think of all that.

Because when she thought it out, it all felt pretty hopeless.

She ran silently to the end of the hall to the stairs. She hesitated at the foot of the steps, hating the time it took and knowing it was necessary. She didn't hear any voices. She ran quickly up the stairs with her heart pounding so hard in her ears she was practically deaf.

At the top she recognized where she must be although she'd never been here. It looked just like the front of the castle only in reverse. This was where the castle people had lived before Mike and Sarah had come. This was where their bedrooms were.

That meant that down this hallway and down another set of stairs would take her to the courtyard—the only way to get to the great dining hall and the kitchen.

She had no idea how long she'd been gone. She only knew she couldn't waste time. She walked down the second level hallway mindful of the doors that led from it. They were all closed and no noises came from within.

Suddenly, she heard voices. She stopped in the hall and looked at the door next to her. Should she hide? She pulled out the mace and slowed but didn't stop.

Anybody I meet is an enemy. That's all I need to know.

Ava appeared from around the corner of the far stairwell and stepped into the hallway. She had been laughing. She held her daughter Keeva's hand. The minute Ava saw Sarah, her face froze in horror.

“No!” Ava gasped. She swiveled and dragged her daughter back down the hall toward the stairwell.

Sarah bolted after them with visions of holding the mace over Keeva's head unfolding vividly in her mind. Could she really threaten the child in order to get Ava to unlock the dungeon cells?

Hell yes.

The two had disappeared in the stairwell before Sarah reached it. Before she could race after them, an unholy scream erupted from the stairwell and echoed down the hallway.

A child's scream of unmitigated terror.

Damian.

F
iona stood by the window
, numb with horror.

Everyone was talking at once, crying at once, screaming at once. All three cells were a roiling cacophony of terror.

The door flew open again and Margot stormed into the room. This time she aimed her rifle at the cells.

Nuala continued to scream.

“I told you lot to shut up!” Margo said, running from cell to cell and pointing her rifle. “And now you'll bloody well have something to cry about!”

“No, missus!” Frank yelled. “Robby, get her under control, can't you? Everyone stop and think of the children!”

Margo nodded at Frank.

“Keep this up and we might make an exception for you. It would do Shaun good to have a little competition around here. What do ye say, handsome? Think you could handle this many hens?”

Frank opened his mouth to speak and Catriona set her foot down heavily on his instep. He swallowed.

Good girl, Cat
, Fiona thought.
No sense in letting your man get himself killed
.
Sure that's all any of them are keen to do at the end of the day. No matter how old, they're all the same that way.

In many ways, Fiona thought, the drama inside the cells—the people crying and railing, the threats by the sociopath Margo, the weeping terrified children, and the guarantee of imminent death—it all felt like it was happening a long way away and to different people.

When Fiona looked out the window she couldn't see the ocean from where she stood but she could see the clouds over the sea.

And she could imagine that somewhere in the world it was a beautiful day that anyone would be grateful for.

T
he scream came
from the first room off the hall closest to the stairwell. Sarah was at the door in three strides. She wrenched the door open.

Inside Saoirse was kneeling on a bed with an hysterical Damian cowering beneath her his hands covering his face.

Saoirse turned to face Sarah. In her hand she held a large field dressing knife. Her mouth was open in surprise.

If Sarah knew one thing about Saoirse, she knew talking was a waste of time. She ran into the room swinging the mace over her head and screaming the most ear-splitting rebel yell she could manage.

Saoirse watched her come in apparent shock until Sarah hit the bed and slashed out with the mace. Saoirse ducked and the top of the mace swung past her head. Damian tumbled to the floor as Saoirse leapt to her feet with her knife held high in the air.

“How the feck did you get out?” Saoirse snarled. Without waiting for an answer, she lunged at Sarah. Sarah staggered backward and felt the blade slice through her shirt and the top layer of skin on her stomach in one agonizing swipe.

Sarah punched out hard with her own weapon, and again Saoirse twisted away from contact with it before bringing her arm up in a wicked arc heading straight down onto Sarah's chest. At that moment, a clap of thunder boomed and lightning flashed outside the bedroom window.

Using the split second of distraction Sarah brought her mace up in front of her to deflect the oncoming blow. Saoirse hit the mace's handle, snapping it into two pieces in Sarah's hands. The look of triumph on Saoirse's face vanished as Sarah dropped one piece and drove the jagged end of the other as hard as she could into Saoirse's stomach.

Another lighting flash coincided with the sound of Saoirse's butcher knife clattering to the stone floor. Saoirse's eyes bulged as she clawed at the handle embedded deep in her midriff.

A third lightning flash made Saoirse's fall from the bed look like an old-time movie reel stuttering and stopping as she toppled to the floor. Her life's blood gushed out of her in a steady stream.

Damian sat on the floor in shock,

“Hey, buddy,” Sarah said, as she wiped a spattering of Saoirse's blood from her face. “Let's get out of here, okay?”

She watched the boy's eyes turn to terror as he looked over her shoulder at the doorway.

“
What have you done
?” an agonized voice croaked.

Sarah turned to see Shaun standing in the room, a gun in his hand, staring at his sister's bloody body.

“
I
'm waiting
, handsome,” Margo said. She stood with her rifle resting in her arms, smiling at Frank where he stood next to Catriona. “Just say the word and you're outta there. I'll keep you well fed and well ridden.”

“Sorry, love,” Frank said sadly to Catriona before turning to Margo, “but I'd rather screw a greased pig.”

Fiona's heart squeezed at the expression on Margo's face as she hoisted the gun to her shoulder.

“Wrong answer, arsehole,” she said, her voice dripping venom.

“You're a monster!” Nuala screamed. “You'll burn for all eternity for killing children!
Eternity
!”

“Shut up!” Margo screamed over her shoulder and focused back on Frank.

Robby and Kevin began shouting. Fiona saw Robby grab the top bar of his cell ceiling and pull himself up to slam his feet against the lock. The impact jarred all three cages.

Tommy was in the middle cell and did likewise while the women screamed and the children cried.

“Stop it! Stop it all of ye,” Margo screamed, running back to the cell with Nuala in it. “I swear I'll fecking mow all of ye down!”

“I've got mine loose!” Tommy screamed and Margo turned to him.

Now Frank was kicking at the lock on his cell while Catriona hugged Siobhan and covered the child's face with her hand at the back of the cell.

Margo ran to Nuala's cell, and shot into it, once, twice, three times. The women screamed and Margo pivoted, her eyes glazed with madness, to the middle cell and opened fire on that one too.

Blood exploded into the air as people screamed.