A Midsummer Night's Scream (The Dulcie O'Neil Series Book 7) (12 page)

I refused to look at Sam because I wanted to avoid the concern I knew I’d see in her eyes. Of course, she wanted me to fend for myself rather than act the hero to a prisoner; but I didn’t regard it the same way. Jax had come to us for protection; so it was up to me to provide it. The idea of turning tail and abandoning him to his doomed fate was something I would never consider doing.

“You know she’s right?” Jax asked. “You should save yourself.”

When I looked up, his gaze was already fixed on me. He didn’t say anything more, but gave me a sly smile, acting like he wasn’t as concerned with his predicament as I was. Well, good for him. Nice to know one of us wasn’t taking the whole thing seriously. However, when he didn’t loosen his hold on my hands, I sensed he wanted me there with him as much as my own sense of duty demanded.

“Why aren’t you worried about what’s going on?” I asked in exasperation.

He shrugged. “I can’t control fate. My destiny is whatever it was intended to be.”

“That’s really poetic, but it’s not much help,” I grumbled with a frown and then shook my head to let him know I refused to accept his answer. Still, I had bigger fish to fry than Jax and his apathy in improving his own destiny.

Eyeing Sam, I tried to figure out how Jax and I could make it across the hallway. Well, that was, as long as I could get him the hell out of his jail cell.

I glanced down again and noticed the floor was actually starting to break apart, and pieces of concrete now stuck out of the ground at various angles. Not only that, but the ground continued to rumble, moving the jagged pieces of concrete every which way.

But our escape route wasn’t my primary concern. The most important thing I could do right now was to get Jax out of his cell and then get as far away from it as we both could. But the whole
getting-Jax-out-of-his-cell
was the sticking point. There was still no sign of Elsie or Wally. And I couldn’t, in good conscience, save myself while leaving Jax to fare alone. Being confined behind bars, he had nowhere to go and no way to save himself. He was basically a sitting duck, just waiting for whatever was underneath us to make itself known.

That was when something occurred to me. “Are they coming for you?” I asked as I wondered if someone from Crossbones was responsible for this…attack. Maybe someone had found out where Jax was and was now sending some enormous creature to eat him, or something even worse.

“I don’t know,” he answered as he shrugged. He still appeared very stoic, or maybe that was just his way of dealing with his own fear. “But you should stop thinking about me and start thinking about you,” he finished as he released my hands.

“You know I won’t do that,” I replied. Shaking my head, I looked over at Sam, hoping to see Elsie and Wally beside her, but no such luck.

“Dulcie!” Sam yelled. “Please!” I couldn’t look at her any longer because of the fear I could see in her eyes. I just shook my head and took a deep breath before facing Jax again.

“The situation isn’t so bad that I’m going to give up on you,” I said, having to yell the words because the rumbling inside the room was so loud.

As soon as my eyes met Jax’s, the ground began to rock back and forth with renewed fervor. Once again, I could only cling to the bars of Jax’s cell in order to stay upright. The sound of huge boulders grinding against each other grew unbearably louder. Pretty soon, it became as deafening as thunder.

“Oh my God!” I breathed out as I watched the floor at the far end of Jax’s cell start to crumble away where it intersected with the walls. Pieces of the walls started to drop off into some sort of sinkhole.

“What the hell is going on?” I screamed as I gasped, watching more and more of the cement floor disappearing into the void and nothingness below. The blackness appeared to be consuming the ground, swallowing it, piece-by-piece. The brown soil of the earth and rocks appeared briefly beneath the floor before the earth simply collapsed into the deep tunnel.

“Dulcie, get out of there!” Sam yelled from the other side of the room with unbridled panic in her voice. “It looks like the floor is falling out!”

But I couldn’t pull my eyes away from what was happening inside Jax’s cell. I watched the small room descending into the ground, as if the darkness below were gorging itself on the floor. Chunk-by-chunk, the cement foundation fell into the black tunnel forming beneath us. I unwound my legs from the prison bars as I realized I had to make a choice—either get sucked down with Jax, or save myself.

There was still no sign of Elsie …

No sooner did my feet touch the ground when the floor shook uncontrollably in an up and down motion. As it rose up like a volcano, the floor inside Jax’s cell caved into myriad pieces of concrete. The broken pieces dropped down into the huge abyss beneath us, the sound so loud I wished I could cover my ears. The gaping hole inside Jax’s cell stretched beyond it, traveling all the way to where I clung to the bars.

“You need to get out of here!” Jax yelled at me.

Realizing he was right, I jumped down and turned around to get an idea of whether or not I could reach the area where Sam stood. After assessing the broken concrete slabs that blocked my path, I sincerely doubted I could climb over them. The entire floor was cracking and swaying apart. It shifted up and down like gigantic piano keys playing a quick symphony.

Another roar and the fault line that started between Jax’s cell and the rest of the room suddenly widened into a valley that was at least three feet wide. It continued to expand as the floor shook, leaving Jax and me basically stranded on an island. We were totally surrounded by the growing chasm.

There was only one way out of our predicament, and I held the answer. Fisting my right hand, I closed my eyes. As my magical dust filled my palm, I opened my eyes and, glancing behind me, I threw the particles at the pieces of broken concrete, which reminded me of old tombstones being tossed from the ground.

My magic didn’t go very far. All of the magical particles were immediately sucked down the chute of the black tunnel, disappearing from view before I ever got a chance to magick either of us out of this quandary.

“It’s too late to try to escape,” Jax called out, shaking his head. “If you try to reach your friend, you’ll get swallowed up,” he finished in a grave tone, apparently having witnessed my poor attempt to save us. “The only hope we have left now is to keep holding onto these prison bars. I’d take a lesson from them, because they aren’t going anywhere.”

When I looked at Sam again, there were tears in her eyes, which soon overflowed, rolling down her cheeks. “I’ll be okay, Sam,” I tried to reassure her, even though I didn’t mean it. At this point, I seriously doubted whether or not Jax and I were going to make it out of this … alive.

Regardless, Jax had a good point. The bars seemed to be the only things we could hold onto while the floor inside the cell rapidly disintegrated. The iron bars weren’t attached the floor, but to the walls, which, so far, seemed to be holding up pretty well. Wrapping my legs around the bars again, I now clung to them as if my life depended on it.

And it probably did.

“Oh, God,” I whispered when the cot, which was bolted to the floor, started to shake. The floor beneath it began to break apart into chunks of concrete, each one vanishing into the blackness below. The cot, half of which was now hanging in the chasm, began to whine and moan as the suction of the tunnel tried to rip it out of the wall. The bed linens were stripped right off and sucked down the chute, the mattress immediately following. In seconds, all that was left were the metal slats and wire mesh that comprised the base of the cot.

“Dulcie, hold on!” Sam yelled. In the din of the wind tunnel, her voice sounded very small, and far away.

As the floor inside Jax’s cell continued to fall into the void, the entire bottom of the cot was soon consumed. The upper half still whined while shifting this way and that. It was barely attached to the wall and appeared to be pulling itself free, taking with it the two enormous bolts that held it against the wall.

Meanwhile the floor continued to break apart, disappearing into the darkness below as if it had never been. In no time at all, more than one half of the floor in Jax’s cell was gone.

The cot strained and scraped the wall before suddenly being yanked away from it as pieces of drywall and two-by-fours disappeared into the wide gorge, along with what was remaining of the cot.

I could feel the force of the vacuum generated by the black hole because my hair started to get sucked forward, between the iron bars.

“The suction is too strong!” I yelled out to Jax as the full force of the greedy wind yanked at my clothes. I had to shut my eyes tightly to keep them from watering in the fierce air current.

“Yes, it is,” Jax responded, his voice devoid of any emotion. I opened my eyes immediately, just at the moment he let go of the prison bars. With his arms parallel to his body, he allowed himself to fall, dropping helplessly backwards, straight into the abyss.

“No!” I screamed, fear surging up inside me because this had to mean that Jax realized the futility of trying to resist the vacuum. And what did that mean for me?

“Dulcie, don’t you dare give up!” Sam yelled at me, but I couldn’t turn my face in her direction. The unending suction was suddenly positioned right beneath me. The pull of it was almost unbearable. I made the mistake of opening my eyes; and worse still, looked directly below me, where I couldn’t see anything except the inkiness of the expanding hole.

I held onto the bars with all of my strength, keeping my eyes shut tightly against the incessant grasp of the air. As one of my legs suddenly unwound itself from the bars, I watched my tennis shoe get sucked right off my foot. It was quickly followed by my sock. Feeling an intense tugging on my pants, I heard the sound of the seams ripping apart. Seconds later, half of my pants were swallowed by the darkness below me.

You’re not going to make it, Dulcie,
I told myself, realization dawning on me.

NO!
I screamed back at myself.
This can’t be the way I go!

But it looked like this was going to be the way I was going to die because there was no way in hell that I could save myself. The suction was like nothing I’d ever experienced. My other shoe and sock were suddenly ripped off as soon as my leg dropped from around the bars. It was just a matter of time before the other half of my pants would follow.

“Sam, I love you!” I screamed out as loudly as I could. Turning my head, I faced her, even though it took all my will power to do so. She stood there, crying so hard, she was unable to speak. All she could manage to do was shake her head before gallons of tears fell from her eyes. “Tell Knight I love him!” I added before the roar of the wind tunnel overcame me. I knew I didn’t have enough strength left to fight it any longer.

I released my fingers one-by-one, before fully allowing the suction to envelop me in its darkness and condemn me to the tunnel and my fate.

SEVEN

With no idea what to expect, I released myself to the dark void beneath Jax’s cell. At first, I thought I’d be killed as soon as the inky darkness enveloped me, but that wasn’t what happened at all. My pounding heart proved I was very much alive. And I could feel the coldness of the air rushing past me, as well as the intense suction that relentlessly pulled me downward, taking me God only knew where.

I couldn’t say if seconds or minutes ticked by as I fell through the darkness or maybe I was in a vacuum where time stood still. Either way, I couldn’t see anything at all. I briefly wondered if I’d inadvertently closed my eyes because the rushing air made them water. But my eyes weren’t closed, or I wouldn’t have been able to see a faint light in the distance. It appeared to be coming from the bottom of the wind tunnel I was trapped inside. It was difficult to focus on the light, since I was still falling, and my body kept twisting and turning upside down.

When I found myself facing what I thought was downward, I noticed the light again. It started as a speck, but soon began to grow brighter and larger, the longer I stared at it. Several seconds later, I rotated around until I no longer could see the faint light, just the tunnel’s darkness once again. I figured I had to have fallen pretty far down the wind tunnel, since I couldn’t see Jax’s cell at all anymore, not even the slightest flicker of light that might have hinted at its location.

I tried to swim back around again, hoping to face the tiny light. I assumed it was at the end of the tunnel, but trying to perceive it wasn’t easy. Maybe it was due to how rapidly I was falling, or maybe it was the greedy suction that drew me through the tunnel, but for some reason, I couldn’t seem to flip myself around.

As soon as I gave up on seeing the wavering glow again, it seemed like someone had turned on a light switch, because I was suddenly bathed in fluorescence. I immediately used my hands to shield my eyes from the harsh intensity of the blinding light. When that failed to relieve the stinging in my eyes, I slammed them closed. My eyelashes barely dusted my cheeks before I felt myself landing. I touched down on something that was too soft to be the ground and, yet, I still managed to land hard enough for the wind to get knocked right out of me. When I felt the pressure of hands on my back and under my legs, I realized I was in someone’s arms.

“And that was a perfect catch on my part!”

I heard Jax’s voice and blinked my eyes open while sucking in a few shallow breaths. I no longer had to shield my eyes because the light surrounding us was nowhere near as oppressive as it had been. Instead, it surrounded me in shades of light blue, almost like it was dawn or dusk.

“What happened?” I asked, feeling shell-shocked.

Jax shrugged like the answer should have been obvious. “A wormhole.”

“A wormhole?” I repeated, frowning at him all the while. Although I’d never experienced a wormhole prior to this one, I vaguely knew what they were. They were similar to portals in that they would connect you from place A to place B. The only difference between the two being that wormholes were usually created with the express purpose of kidnapping someone …

I glanced up at Jax’s smiling face and then looked down again to see I was cradled in his large arms. And I was sans pants.

Yes, my missing pants concerned me, but not as much as the realization that I was here with Jax. Jax was a wanted man, both by the ANC and his own people which meant we could be in hostile territory, surrounded by both of our enemies. I immediately checked the area in front of me before doing the same behind me to ensure that I was aware of any possible threats.

“We’re here alone, hot cheeks,” Jax announced in a tone of voice that I found much too familiar for my liking.

But as far as I could tell, Jax was correct—it seemed there was no one else around, just us. And we appeared to be surrounded by numerous, and unusually tall … pine trees? It was no surprise to me when I began panting. My heart was pounding so hard, I half wondered if I might suffer a heart attack. I had to take a few deep breaths before facing Jax again.

“Wh … where are we?” I started before shaking my head as I wondered if I
had
just died, because this scenery didn’t make any sense. I closed my eyes and opened them again, half hoping or expecting the environment to change, but it didn’t.

“No can say,” Jax responded with a shrug. I wasn’t sure if he didn’t know where we were or if he just wasn’t interested in sharing. But I also didn’t push the subject because I already knew I wouldn’t get far.

“Great,” I muttered as I took a deep breath and reminded myself that at least I was alive. Things could have been a hell of a lot worse. Only then did I remember he was still holding me and then I realized one of his hands was perched securely beneath my ass. “Put me down!”

“Okay,” he replied before releasing me from the cradle of his arms. He took no precautions about placing me carefully onto my feet. Instead, he simply let go and I landed, butt first, on the ground below which was littered with pine needles.

“Ouch!” I yelled as I glared up at him and rubbed one of my offended cheeks.

“What? You ordered me to put you down!” he replied with a shrug while holding his hands up in mock surrender. “A simple thank you would have sufficed.”

“For what?” I snapped. “I should thank you for dropping me right on my ass?” I stood up to brush the impaled needles from my butt.

“No! Thank me for catching you when you plummeted out of the wormhole!” Jax answered. “That was practically a superhuman accomplishment!”

“Well, as a Loki, you’re not exactly human to begin with, are you?” I grumbled. After inspecting my sore butt one more time, I also remembered I was nearly naked from the waist down, except for my panties. And Hallelujah for those. Jax was more than enjoying my predicament by narrowing his eyes on my ass, and then my crotch, until I slammed one hand in front of my thighs and used the other to cover my cheeks. He just laughed at me.

“No, I’m not a human,” he replied before taking several calculated steps to the side so he could more easily observe my backside. I muttered something under my breath that was so unintelligible, even I couldn’t understand it. Then I moved to the side to prohibit him from further glimpses of my family assets.

“I have to admit, I was very pleasantly surprised to find myself up close and personal with that great ass of yours,” he jibed with a shrug. He continued to skirt around me as I continued to thwart all his attempts to improve his view.

“Probably not as surprised as I was,” I muttered.

“At least there was one good thing to come out of that bumpy as hell wormhole,” he commented while eyeing my butt again as if to enact a charade of just what that
one good thing
was.

“You’re so predictable, you’re beginning to bore me,” I said with my nose in the air.

“Leave the next twenty minutes up to me and we’ll see how bored you are.”

I just looked at him blankly before expelling an exasperated sigh. “Ugh, you’re a pain in my butt whether you’re locked up or free, you know that?”

“Baby, I would like nothing more than to be a pain in your butt,” Jax retorted with a more lascivious glint in his eyes. “A very large pain in your butt, I might add.”

I chose to ignore the whole
large
comment. Instead, I focused on the fact that our most recent exchange was pretty much my fault. “Yeah, stupid me,” I grumbled with a brief nod. “I set myself up for that one,” I finished while backing up into a tree, thus preventing Jax’s eyes from feasting on my rear any longer.

“Tell me something, has that boyfriend of yours ever had the privilege of …” he started to ask, but I immediately held my hand up. With my palm facing him, I tacitly told him he could talk to the hand because the rest of me refused any part of this conversation. “Well?” he asked, obviously not able to understand sign language.

“We are absolutely not discussing anything else personal now or ever!” I responded, spearing him with my piercing gaze. I then wondered if my magic would work here, wherever
here
happened to be.

“Okay, okay,” he finally relented. Holding his hands up, he smiled down at me. “May I just finish by saying that your ass felt every bit as tight and round as I imagined it would?”

“No.”

“You know, I think you have single-handedly turned me into an ass man!” he continued, nodding and seeming excited over the fact. “I used to be exclusively a breast man, as I told you, but now I’m thinking better of it.”

“Great, I’m happy for you,” I grumbled. All the while I hoped and prayed my magic would work now, because if it didn’t, there wasn’t much more I could do about my current state of undress. And that was a subject which deeply worried me.

“So I got a little peek at your lower assets but you’ve still given me nothing regarding your upper ones,” he continued with a shrug. “How’s about you take that shirt off and show me what you’re working with upstairs?”

“How’s about you give it a freaking rest!” I yelled while shaking my head. “Oh my God, you are beyond frustrating!” I closed my eyes and fisted my hand, starting to shake it in order to conjure up my magical dust but Jax’s grating voice interrupted me.

“You probably didn’t notice it when I caught you, but I copped a generous feel,” he confessed, clearly ignoring my last comment. Actually, it was probably fair to say that Jax, in general, ignored nearly everything that came out of my mouth. He was exasperating to say the least.

“Yeah, I noticed,” I admitted, opening my eyes to glare at him.

“You did and yet I didn’t get a complaint?” he asked, smiling with true mirth. “Interesting. Should I take that to mean that you enjoyed being felt up?”

“No!” I railed back at him. “In general, it’s safe to say that anything having to do with you and sex leaves me nothing but maddened, disgusted and ready to pull my own hair out.”

“You say that,” he continued, eyeing me narrowly. “And yet, I can’t help but wonder why you didn’t discourage me much earlier, if my roaming hands really bothered you that much.” His eyebrows reached for the tops of the trees as he shook my head. “Methinks the truth is more along the lines of you wanting me as much as I want you.”

“No,” I insisted immediately. “The truth is more along the lines of me being so shocked by everything that I’d just gone through that I wasn’t paying enough attention to you and your attempts to molest me. Had I been completely coherent, your hand would now be broken.”

“Well, that, or we’d be pursuing other, more pleasurable activities,” he purred with a look of unrestrained hunger again.

But I wasn’t paying him any attention because I was too busy trying to magick myself a pair of pants. Closing my eyes again, I silently prayed my magic would work as I shook my right hand. A few seconds later, I felt a mound of my dust materialize in my palm.
Things were looking up …

I opened my eyes when I threw the magical particles directly over my head. As I watched the glittery specks sprinkling down on top of me, I imagined a pair of jeans covering my lower half. Seconds later, I smiled to see I was no longer naked from the waist down, but clad in my favorite Levis.

“And just when I was beginning to really appreciate the view,” Jax said with a frown while shaking his head and acting overly disappointed.

“Okay! That’s enough,” I sniped back at him. Taking a deep breath, I tried to figure out a plan, something to keep me moving forward. First of all, however, I needed to understand what had just happened to us over the last ten minutes or so.

“I’m not sure which is worse—grabbing a healthy feel of your ass, or never having had the opportunity in the first place,” he lamented in dramatic soliloquy.

“I don’t care.”

“I know the answer,” he continued, nodding. “It’s worse now that I’ve had the opportunity,” he finished, obviously ignoring my comment. He might as well have been having the conversation with himself. “Only because now I can’t stop thinking about getting another feel.”

“Oh, my God, you are so exhausting,” I replied with my hands on my hips as I shook my head in pure desperation. “I have no energy left to deal with you anymore.”

“You don’t know the half of how exhausting I can be, baby girl,” he answered with a wink that made me want to vomit.

“I don’t want to know the half of it! I don’t want to know a third of it! I don’t want to know any of it!” I barked, taking a deep breath before entering the more important conversation that we still needed to have. “What I do want to know, however, is what happened back there?”

“What happened back … where?”

My heartrate increased again, but this time, out of growing frustration. “Oh, I don’t know, for starters, how about us both disappearing into the wormhole?”

He shrugged. “Sounds like you summed the whole thing up fairly well. What more would you like to know?”

“Don’t screw around with me, Jax!” I yelled at him finally, feeling my temper starting to fray. “I’m not in the mood for it!” Then I inhaled deeply three times because I was suddenly feeling faint.

“I would never try to screw around with you, Dulcie,” he answered, that pesky smile of his in full effect.

My heartbeat started to pound through my chest again; and despite some more deep breaths to slow it down, it persisted. I felt like I was on overload at the moment. I had no clue what had happened to me, much less where I was. Furthermore, I wondered if there was any way back—was I even still traveling on an Earthly plane? I figured I must have been because my magic worked here; and it didn’t in the Netherworld. Throwing Jax into the mix was just one more question mark and one more answer I didn’t have.