The Countdown (The Taking #3)(38)

When I looked over my shoulder at Griffin, her face was cast in an eerie veil of shadows. She held her position, straining to decide if she had heard it or not. Maybe, her expression told me. I don’t know . . .

Keep moving, I answered with a head nod and this time she followed because she wanted to know too.

Then she grabbed my arm.

We were close. The whimpering sound was on us all at once, louder, and clear enough to leave no question. Griffin shifted the beam of light so it scaled the walls. She used it to search for a doorway, a window, some means of access. Then she let it hover over piles of garbage while I kicked at them, looking for an animal caught in the wreckage of this place.

Whatever was making the sounds was nearby. So nearby it should be right here, where we were standing. Yet . . .

There was nothing. Just Griffin and me and rubble for as far as we could see.

I kept moving, thinking we’d misheard, miscalculated. It was farther down. But after several steps the sound faded, got more muted, and I realized we’d passed it.

Even before I said anything, Griffin had already turned to go back.

“Here,” she said, stopping at the same spot we’d been in before. She secured the flashlight under her arm as she used her fingertips to explore the wall. “We must’ve missed it.”

While she probed, I pounded, thinking I might dislodge a hidden door or something.

The sound came again. We were in the right place, and the thing, whatever it was, wanted to be found. It grew louder, more insistent.

“No, Griff. Christ. It’s right here.”

That’s when we realized there was a hatch of some sort cut into the floor itself. A trapdoor. The handle was flush with the ground, making it almost unnoticeable in the dark. If it hadn’t been for the sounds coming from below us, we’d have missed the damn thing entirely.

“You sure about this?” Griffin asked, when a long keening moan reached up to us.

“Of course not. But we’ve come this far, haven’t we?”

The hatch screeched when I lifted it—the kind of nails-on-a-chalkboard sound that made your skin prickle.

Griffin aimed the light from the flashlight into the hole. It was darker down there, infinitely more sinister. The stairs going down looked as if they’d been hand carved into the dank earth itself—hard-packed and uneven, a death trap waiting for one misstep.

“Ladies first,” I proposed breathily.

But Griffin was Griffin and no way would she back down from a challenge, joke or not. When she started toward the steps I grabbed her arm.

“Stop. I’ll do it. You stay here and . . .” I tried to think of a good excuse that didn’t sound like I cared what happened to her one way or the other. Finally, I ended with, “Just stay here.”

But Griffin . . . Christ, she was stubborn, and she was right at my back the entire way down the steps.

“Watch it!” I grumbled, when she almost shoved me over.

She didn’t apologize or back off, and although I wouldn’t tell her so, I was glad I didn’t have to face what was down there alone.

Her flashlight slashed through the darkness, landing just about everywhere in spastic fits, combing the carved ground. Until it landed on the thing responsible for bringing us down there to begin with—the demanding mewls that had turned to full-blown wails, still muffled but unrelenting.

“Willow!”

A wave of emotions slammed into me, leaving me speechless and stunned and horrified.

Willow was here. Willow was alive. Willow had a rag stuffed in her mouth, and her hands and feet were bound.

But Willow was . . . here of all places. Buried in the hollow depths of this abandoned pile of rubble. And if we hadn’t heard her, if we hadn’t come to investigate . . . I shuddered. I didn’t want to think about it.

She didn’t look too bad, all things considered. She didn’t have a bullet hole in the center of her forehead, and right now, that was a major triumph.

In fact, she looked completely uninjured, the way any Returned should. That didn’t mean she hadn’t been hurt, it just meant enough time had passed that she’d already healed, and that was good enough for me.

Good enough because we’d found her. Somehow we’d found her.

“Jesus. Willow . . . ,” I repeated, yanking the gag out of her mouth. “What happened? Who did this to you? How long have you been down here?”

In the surreal light from Griffin’s flashlight, Willow grinned. She freaking grinned! “Good to see you too.”

I’d have hugged her—really, I considered it—but I liked my face the way it was, and Willow wasn’t what anyone would call the hugging type.

“Griffin,” Willow said, nodding toward the one person she’d always believed was responsible for getting her kicked out of Blackwater all those years ago. “Thanks for coming.” There wasn’t a trace of sarcasm in her voice.

Griffin was even less comfortable with displays of affection than Willow. “A little light deprivation and some gentle torture, and you go all soft on us?”

Willow shot Griffin a tolerant look—huge for Willow. If I didn’t know better, and if we weren’t holed up in some grimy underground dungeon, I’d swear I smelled a friendship brewing.

“We gotta get outta here before she comes back,” Willow insisted, when I finally managed to free her from the archaic straps that had held together long enough to restrain her.