Blackbird (A Stepbrother Romance #1)(63)
Victor lets go, holds his hands apart in surrender.
Vitali pulls the rope loose and clambers up on all fours, gasping and rasping.
“Idiot,” Martin barks, and shoots him.
It comes so fast I don’t know how to process it. There’s a flash and a bang and a wad of Vitali’s head meat hits the books with a loud slap that I can somehow hear despite the gunshot. He flops down limp, and Martin aims the gun at Victor.
Then swings it over to me.
“I changed my mind. I will let you burn to death, you annoying little cunt. Make one move, Amsel, and I’ll put a bullet in her hip. Bad way to die.”
He backs through the door, and slams it closed. Victor is on his feet in an instant, smeared in blood from the huge dead Russian. He shoves the door open but it pushes back, and then there’s a loud whump and flames so hot they’re almost clear lick up under the door.
“They put gas on the f*cking door,” Victor bellows.
He rushes to my side and cradles my head in his hand. “Eve, Jesus, you’re bleeding.”
More whumps outside, and the sound of glass breaking.
I start to get up. “We have to get out of here.”
He nods, rushes up the ladder to the second level, to the door to the cupola. He throws his full weight against it, over and over, screaming each time.
“It’s boarded up or something. I can’t get it open.”
My head is bleeding. I clutch my hand to my scalp, trying to stop it. My other hand is throbbing, already swelling up. I think he broke something. There’s more smoke coming in, rising under the door like vengeful spirits, swirling. It’s starting to darken the air in the room. I cough.
“Victor, get down here,” I call out, “Smoke rises.”
“If we don’t get out of here, we’re both dead.”
He throws himself at the door again.
There’s something odd. The smoke is swirling, gathering around one of the bookcases. I blink a few times, trying to understand what I’m seeing. It’s flowing between the cracks between the bookcase frames, and there’s a little swirl like a whirlpool around the hole in the book from my wild shot.
“Victor! Get down here!”
“Damn it, I’ve almost got the door-“
“Victor, I think I found a way out.”
He looks over the railing and rushes down, sliding down the ladder. He stops next to me and stares, as I start coughing.
“Get down,” he says, almost pushing me to the floor. I breathe a little easier, take a deep breath. Victor sees it, too. He shoves his finger in the bullethole, then rips the book of the shelf, then more.
“Help me,” he says.
I lurch to my feet. With my blood-slick hand, I start wrenching books off the shelf, one after another after another, and pile them on the floor. Finally there’s only one left on the shelf. It doesn’t budge when I pull at it.
“What the hell?”
“The underground f*cking railroad,” Victor almost cheers. “Get ready. We have to run. When I open the door the air is going to feed the fire, it might get through the door. Wait.”
He runs to the other side of the room, yanks his father’s chair from the floor and smashes open the glass gun cabinet. He pulls out an old double barrel and a box of shells, and tosses another to me. I catch it against my chest. He yanks on the stuck book and it comes loose with a pop and a thunk behind the shelf. It falls open, and there is a solid boom behind us. Victor pushes me inside as the flames road around the door, just eat it, the sides folding in and turning to ash as the fire reaches through, hammering the wood with a burning fist. Victor slams the door shut behind us and braces his shoulder into it as the office lights up like a sunrise, flames rushing up the wall and flowering over the ceiling. It’s almost beautiful. The shock batters at the door and he coughs, hacks, coughs again.
We’re in some kind of tunnel. The stones are old, part of the structure of the house itself, but they’re getting hot and smoke is pouring in from the false bookcase door. Victor seizes my arm and almost holds me up as we run. The tunnel only goes a few feet to a tight spiral staircase that twists down through what must be one of the big columns outside. I stumble my way down, almost knocking him over when I hit the bottom. Victor pulls me along and we stoop through a narrow, low tunnel barely tall enough to stand in. I don’t know where it goes but I can feel the heat from the flames above. There’s a great crack and behind us stones and dust fall into the tunnel. The staircase folds with a loud groan, and we’re trapped. The only way out is through. Victor grabs my hand and pulls me along. My hand throbs but I don’t care.
The tunnel goes on, and on, and on. Finally there’s an end, but it’s just dirt. A horrid wave of panic hits me as I realize we’re trapped, we’ve just run from a fiery death into a grave. It might be ten feet of dirt over our heads, ready to collapse. Then Victor slams the butt of the shotgun against something over his head and there’s a sound of wood groaning and shearing and a sudden rush of cool, sweet air. Then Victor is lifting me up and I sit on the edge of a square cut stone pit and roll over the side, just as he pulls himself up beside me. He looks behind me, a look of naked agony on his face.
The house is burning. Flames lick up through the windows, pour out of the chimneys. The fiery tongues slice the ivy away in burning, charred strands. There is a crack and one of the columns holding up the roof over the terrace gives from the heat, and the whole thing folds and noses in. Victor just stares, the flames painting his face a bruised color, shining in his eyes.