Lies That Bind Us(84)

I have landed headfirst against the bend in the stairwell, my feet above me, and as I fight to right myself, my injuries crying out in protest, I think of only one thing.

No. Please. Not Marcus . . .

I claw my way back up the stairs, my hot, swollen left hand tight and useless against my breasts, snatching at the door handle and pulling at it with my right. The door shakes in its frame, but it isn’t going to open that way. I slam at it with the heel of my right hand, the echoes drowning out my moaning sobs, drowning out everything but Mel’s sudden shout.

“No!” she yells. I stop, though I know instinctively that she isn’t talking to me. “Not with that! It has to look like an accident.”

“It’s too late for that.” Simon’s voice, still distorted into that slow rolling creep-show Darth Vader sound. Before it had frightened me. Now it just makes me angry, outraged.

“It’s not,” Mel says, calmer now. “We can fix it. Stick to what we said we were going to do. You deal with her, and I’ll get the generator running.”

“What about him?”

“Look at him. He’s not going anywhere.”

So Marcus has been hit harder than I thought. He is unconscious, or close to it, and Melissa is going to finish the job.

While Simon comes for me.

I let go of the door handle like it’s hot and turn back down the stairs. It’s pitch black again, but I am almost used to that now, and my feet feel the edges of the stone steps, guiding me as I scamper down.

You’re leaving Marcus. They are going to kill him, and you are running away.

I have no choice. I will go back for him. I swear I will. But I have to survive the next few minutes first and find a way to get past Simon. I reach the foot of the stairs and turn, arms spread, fingers splayed, toes feeling. I’m back in the labyrinth, in the darkness of the tunnels, and the Minotaur is coming.

I move faster than I should for safety, but there is no time to waste. My feet sweep the stone floor for anything I might use as a weapon, but they find only the rails I had thought were train tracks. They orient me, but I hesitate, hating the idea of moving back toward the dank cell that was my prison and that I worked so hard to escape.

But there is nowhere else to go, and before I have made the decision, I hear the door to the stairwell and know he’s coming.

I pace the tracks lightly, silently, my mind working twice as fast, trying to think of something, anything that might work to my advantage. His footsteps echo in the stairwell, and as I half turn toward them I see the shifting pale bleed of light from the bottom. He has a lantern. Shadows loom and flicker, showing the rough texture of the walls, and then I’m turning away and almost running to the empty cell where I was chained in the dark.

I don’t choose it. It chooses me because it is the only place that feels familiar down here in the dark with the monster at my heels, and before I can think through what I am doing, I have ducked inside. Almost immediately I see the arched passageway come to life in the yellow glow of his lantern. Thoughtless, despairing, I move as far away from it as I can, huddling in the far corner, dropping into a childish crouch, left arm hugging my knees, right hand slamming splayed against the floor.

There’s something under my right heel. Something small and slender. As if in a dream, I grope for it, remembering the sound it made as it rolled away from my grip when I was still chained.

A nail. Rusty, but solid, long as nails go, maybe five inches, and with a broad striking head. I snatch it up, watching the light brightening through the doorway, listening to Simon’s shuffling steps and labored breathing.

“You can’t run, little Jannie,” says the singsong monster voice. “There’s nowhere to go.”

He’s right, but I don’t care. The cell reminds me of what he did, what he’s going to do, and I am suddenly full of a bright and glistening rage, hard and sharp as a sword. I stand up and move soundlessly to the door, squeezing into the shadows beside it, back to the wall, arms raised and ready.

The lantern is a mistake. It shows me exactly where he is. The scuba mask is another mistake. It kills his peripheral vision, so he has to lean all the way into the cell and turn before he can see me, and by then it’s too late. My left arm goes round the back of his head and locks under his chin. I jerk him back, and my right hand punches the nail through the wet suit over his ear. I push, feeling the tip probe for the space at the center, guiding it with my fingers like a surgeon.

Simon stills with sudden horror, feeling the nail tip entering his ear. His body goes limp and he stops fighting to get out of my grasp. The lantern is fixed to his belt, and his hands are both holding the pickax out in front of him, but they too have gone still with dread at what I am about to do.

“Jan . . . ,” he begins.

“Don’t speak,” I say. My fingers have pressed the nail tip as far as it will go before drawing blood. If I slam the heel of my hand hard against the nailhead, it will go straight through the eardrum and the temporal bone of the skull into the brain. He may not know that, but his body senses it.

Death is two inches away.

His eyes are wide under the diving mask. He does not move. All my fear and horror have become his. His life is in my hands.

I am Theseus, come to purge the labyrinth.

I draw back my hand, then smash it against the side of his head with all the force I can manage.

I don’t hit the nail. I go higher. His unresisting head slams back against the doorjamb, and he slumps to the ground, the pick sliding from his hands to the floor. I doubt that I have long, but I don’t need much time. Not for him. I’ve already seen by the lamplight the dull, ancient brown metal of the key. I snatch it from the ring and pull him roughly to the concrete bed stand.