God of Destruction (30 page)

Chapter Twenty-Six

Paris, France; June 30
^th
, 2012

“A phone?! I will
kill
you!” Natalia
shrieked, kicking the phone out of Alex’s hand. Alex heard the
crack
of splintering bone before she felt the pain, but even
that
was only temporary. She cried out when the agony set
in, cradling her injured hand against her chest. “Shut
up
,
you worthless girl!”

Alex glowered up at the assassin through
tears, wincing when she felt the throbbing radiate through her arm.
“Go to
hell
, Natalia!” she hissed through her clenched
teeth, biting the inside of her mouth.

Natalia only smiled, throwing her head back
in a barking laugh. Alex suppressed the overwhelming urge to smack
the condescending grin off her face, but she tested the limit of
the chains binding her ankle, nonetheless. Natalia finally let her
head hang, facing Alex once again.

“Oh, Alexandria,” she chuckled before her
face went serious. Alex fell back onto the floor when she felt the
woman’s heavy shoe hit her ribcage, rolling her over onto her side.
Over the sound of Alex’s hacking cough, she deadpanned, “I’m
already
in
hell.”

Alex felt the burning trails of saltwater run
down her face, but she kept quiet, her eyes squeezed tightly shut,
until she heard Natalia’s steps echo further away. She choked on a
whimper, her mind dancing with the switch between her hand and her
ribs. She bit her lip against the ache, finally opening her eyes to
assess the situation they’d gotten themselves into. Before she
could look, however, her sight was interrupted by a mud-caked leg,
curled up to support another, broken, one.

Scrambling to sit up, Alex leaned over the
unbound girl, resisting the urge to poke the girl to awareness. By
the state of her being, she couldn’t find an inch on her that she
thought would be safe to touch. And, upon closer inspection, Alex
found that the girl wasn’t asleep, as she had previously thought.
Her eyes were open, staring blindly at the wall while she breathed
evenly, in, out, in, out.

“Janie?” Alex whispered, getting as close to
the girl as she could without touching her.

The girl said nothing.

Clearing her throat, wincing when the sharp
breath made her ribs protest, Alex tried again. “Are you
Janie?”

Again, nothing.

“Taran’s Janie?” she continued.

The broken captive didn’t move. Alex was
losing hope that she would ever get a response, and, slowly, she
sank back to her place by the wall.

“You know Taran?” a hoarse voice croaked,
spurring Alex back into motion, though her body begged her not
to.

“Ya!” she exclaimed. Remembering where they
were and who could be watching, she lowered her voice. “He sent me
here.”

Janie carefully rolled onto her back,
groaning as she did. The slightest hint of excitement emerged in
her voice. “Why’d he do that?”

Alex’s smile faltered when she finally saw
the prisoner’s swollen face. “He wanted me to tell you
something.”

“What is it?” she pleaded. “Tell me!”

“He said he’s coming to get you.”

A grimace erupted on Janie’s face, the best
she could do with her face in its current state. “He is?” she
asked, her voice an octave higher.

Alex nodded fervently. “He’s on his way
now.”

Moisture gathered in Janie’s eyes, trailing
down her face. “I knew he’d come. I knew it. He promised.”

“He misses you,” Alex continued, loving the
life refilling the girl.

Janie smiled through another sob. “He
does?”

“Ya. And him and my boyfriend are coming to
get us right now. I’m Alex.”

“How are they gonna find us, Alex?” Janie
asked.

Alex said, “I called them and told them. But,
I need your help.”

Janie’s face abruptly went serious. “I don’t
know how much I can help. My leg’s broken. I’m really messed
up.”

Alex’s jaw clenched. “Janie, I need to get
out of this shackle. When the boys get here, there’s no way they’ll
be able to find us in the dark. The only way we’ll ever get out of
here is if I can somehow show them the way. Do you know how to get
out of here?”

Janie knit her brow, looking around the room
for any sign of sanctuary. She flinched when her eyes landed on the
back of Natalia’s head, remembering all the times they’d met; times
they would hopefully never have again. “All I can think is that, if
anyone’s got a key,
she
does. And there’s no
way
either of us can get it,” she whispered.

Alex sighed, pursuing her lips. “There’s
gotta be a way. Think! Our
lives
depend on it. And maybe
more.”

Determined to keep herself from the hopeless
pit she’d waded in for so long, Janie stared tirelessly at the
chain connecting Alex to the wall. After a long moment of silence,
her head finally whipped back into place. “Quick question!” she
gasped.

“What?”

“Was this place ever used as a prison?” she
demanded, eyeing the shackles.

Alex narrowed her eyes suspiciously, grabbing
the chain. “Obviously,” she mumbled, glancing pointedly at the
metal in her hand.

“Maybe not,” Janie challenged. “Maybe they
brought the shackles in just for us. You said you called your
boyfriend, where’s your phone?”

Quirking an eyebrow, Alex pointed to the
shattered phone a few feet from the other girl’s head. Gasping, she
let her arm fall. She didn’t have medical experience, but she
thought it was safe to assume her rib was broken. “Natalia,” she
breathed through the pain, “kicked it. It’s gotta be broken.”

Janie hesitantly rolled onto her less-painful
side and reached for the phone. “Maybe not,” she hissed, scraping
her long fingernails across the floor. “Maybe it still works.”

Alex didn’t understand what they needed the
phone for, but she couldn’t help but feel victorious when Janie
grabbed it. When the cellular was safely held in both of Janie’s
hands, she handed it to Alex. “Turn it on.”

“It’s not gonna work,” Alex insisted. “It’s
destroyed.”

“It’s our only
hope
. Just do it!”
Janie begged.

Alex pressed the button that would turn it
on, but she barely looked at it, knowing she would find no change.
To her surprise, light shone up into her face around a spider web
of cracks. “It worked!” she said, shock coloring her voice.

Janie finally breathed a sigh of relief.
“Thank God.”

Still skeptical, Alex kept still. “Ya, that’s
great. What do you want me to do with it, now? The cops’ll think
I’m nuts!”

“No,” Janie replied. “It’s not to make a
call. Go on Google. Look up if the Catacombs were ever used as a
prison.”

“Why?” Alex demanded.

Janie rolled her eyes. “’Cuz if the Catacombs
weren’t a prison, how are there shackles in here? And my guess is
that they’re not supposed to be here. These chains look
way
too clean to have been lying here for hundreds of years.”

Alex quickly typed her question into the
search engine and waited; she hid the phone under her when Natalia
looked over, casting flickering glances down at the massacred
screen until, finally, her answer popped up. “You’re right,” she
said. “It’s a burial place, not a prison. I assume you know a way
that this can help us?”

Janie nodded. “They would’ve needed to bolt
the chains into the ceiling, sometime recently. The catacombs are
hundreds
of years old, so there’s no
way
the
ceiling’s prepared to support the weight of heavy chains, a metal
bolt,
and
a human being.”

Alex’s wide eyes had been glazed over from
the beginning. “In English, please?” she sneered.

Janie pursed her lips. “Just pull on it.”

Alex gripped the chain in her hand and
tugged. A slight shower of dirt sprinkled over them, but she made
little to no leeway.

“Harder than that,” Janie ordered.

Ignoring the pain burning through her torso,
Alex readjusted her grip with both hands and, using all of her
weight, yanked the chain from the ceiling, along with the huge
chunks of dirt that had been packed around it. Janie covered her
face, but she still felt the dirt fall into her mouth while it was
cracked in a huge smile. “Go,” she pleaded, noticing when Natalia
turned to face the noise.

Alex stared dumbly at the chain in her hands,
barely hearing Janie’s plea while she contemplated her luck.

“You!” Natalia shrieked, approaching them
quickly.

“Alex, go!”

Realizing she had to move quickly, Alex
lurched to her feet, chain still gripped in her hand. Without
looking back, she ran into the tunnels, praying the way she was
going was the right one.

“Alex!” Natalia shrieked, following closely
behind her. “Do not make this harder than it has to be!”

The only responses Alex gave were her heavy
grunts of exertion.

Alex could hear that Natalia was quickly
gaining, even in the less than practical shoes she wore. Dread
filled her as she realized it was more than likely she would be
caught soon, especially since she had no idea where she was going
and the metal constricting her ankle was weighing her down so
heavily. She pushed herself harder, but it was far from a surprise
when she felt herself being torn backward.

Fueled by the hand fisted in the fabric of
her shirt, Alex’s body soared through the air before it finally
landed with a harsh
thud
against the ground.

She stared up the ceiling for a moment,
trying to catch her breath. Unfortunately, in the gap between
action, Natalia was suddenly upon her, the barrel of a gun even
closer still. Alex didn’t bother to breathe and, slowly, she lifted
her hands, her bindings clasped tightly in her hand.

“Woah,” Alex breathed, tilting her chin up
and away from the weapon. “Just…just take it easy.”

Natalia chuckled, letting the barrel rest
against the flesh of Alex’s neck, a threatening reminder. “No,
Alexandria,
you
take it easy. We are going back to that room
now, where you are going to
behave
yourself, or I will put a
bullet in your head. Understood?”

Alex nodded, but, internally, desperation
roiled inside her. She couldn’t go back there. She couldn’t.

Natalia hauled her newest captive to her
feet, shoving her back where they’d come from while she thrust the
gun back into her waistband. Hearing the click of Natalia’s
designer slacks snapping into place around her waist, Alex took a
deep breath, prepared to run again.

She couldn’t go back.

Slowly, inconspicuously, she swung the chain
and, turning, let it fly into Natalia’s face.

“
Der’mo
!” she shrieked, grasping at
her face as it rapidly turned red with blood from her broken nose.
She fell with a heavy crash against the floor, both hands grasping
at her nose and mouth. An imprint already began to show in her
normally flawless face from the patterns of the chain, but Alex
sent the heavy metal down again, crashing against Natalia’s eyes
with a strength that made her go still.

Alex knew she shouldn’t care, but she studied
Natalia’s body for a moment, just long enough to notice the even
rise and fall of her chest. As she looked, however, she noticed the
gun’s handle protruding from the assassin’s clothes. Seizing the
opportunity, Alex grabbed the gun and sprinted headlong down the
tunnels, screaming, “James!”

Her echo answered back.

“James!” she repeated.

After some time, she was graced with the
voice of an angel.

“Alex?” his voice called back.

“Over here!” she begged, blind in the dark.
“James, I’m over here.”

Suddenly, he turned the corner of one of the
tunnel walls, nearly smacking into her, Taran and Kierlan in tow.
Noticing the other, despite the lack of light, the couple embraced
tightly. “Thank God,” he whispered into her hair, rubbing his hand
up and down her back. “Thank God.”

Alex leaned away from him, urgently pointing
down the tunnel behind her with the gun. “I know where they are!
C’mon!”

James nodded, running down the hall after
her. Taran and Kierlan followed closely behind, wordless; the air
between them was still tense from their recent spat. Alex led them
through the underground, pausing only momentarily to step over
Natalia when they neared the room. Kierlan hung back while the
others ran ahead, stooping down next to Natalia, searching for
something that could help him. Knowingly, he pushed up one of the
legs of her pants, displaying the top of her boot, and the gun
handle emerging from it.

Grinning, he grabbed it. “Thanks, Petrov,” he
whispered, continuing through the dark to join his party.

Alex was the first to see the light, picking
up the pace when she recalled the way Mainyu had held her friend,
barely conscious and caught up in some kind of trance. As she
passed over the threshold separating the circular room from the
rest of the underground, her eyes flickered to the mortal men
posted around the perimeter, watching Mainyu rape Claire’s mind
with his powers. Janie seemed to be the only one aware of her
presence, a smile on her face.

Alex kept silent, studying the gun for
anything that could go wrong.

Taran almost fell into the room in his haste,
head shooting in every direction while he searched for one person
in particular. He kept quiet as well, noting the guns strapped to
each of the men in the room. His eyes fell on Janie only after hers
fell on him. Ecstatic beyond any feeling she’d ever had in her
life, Janie’s jaw dropped.