Falling Darkness: The second book in the Falling Awake Series (31 page)

“Don’t leave me here,” I shouted. But it was too late the door was closed and I was left alone. Before I had time to try and free myself, my mind was filled with the image of me sitting in the hut, tied up and blindfolded and I thrashed around wildly in my chair when thousands of spiders seeped in through the cracks in the wooden structure of this hell hole and filled the sodden floor in seconds, scuttling up and over every surface that was there. I could feel the wiry legs crawling over my denim covered legs and up over my bare arms, scurrying into my ears and rustling through my hair. I was screaming so loud, I thought my throat must be bleeding and then, they were in my mouth.

***

I don’t know when I blacked out but I did, and when I came back around, all I could see was the darkness from the blindfold. A sea of goose bumps spread all over my body when I remembered the spiders and I started to writhe and twist in the chair, again. I stopped when I heard the door creak open.

“Sabre?” I said, but my voice was hoarse and raspy from the screaming, barely leaving a sound. Footsteps padded over the soft earth and the rotting floorboards, seeming to walk straight past me.

“Sabre,” I said again. My heart rate was speeding up under the silent tension and I never thought I would want to hear his voice as much as I did now. Anything was better than this, not knowing what was coming next. “I know you’re here,” I said. “I hear you. I hear you breathing.” At my words, the breathing became less pronounced and I felt alone again, but I knew that was hardly the case. Someone else was in here and I found it ironic that I hoped it was Sabre and not something else.

I laughed at the thought, and it left my throat feeling raw and a lot like sandpaper. As I sat there, hoping that whatever else was in here with me, stayed where it was and didn’t come anywhere near me, I felt the searing pain burning from my wrists that were bound behind the chair. I couldn’t move them they were wound so tight, but I was sure they must be broken, they hurt so bad.

With a new thought that made me sit up a little straighter in my chair, I said, “Mellissa, is that you?” No one answered and I dropped my head forward. I had lost all track of time. I didn’t know if it was morning or night, and I had no idea how long I had been sitting in this chair, but I could no longer feel my butt, that was for sure.

“Who’s out there?” I tried again.

Nothing. No sound, no movement. I wasn’t even sure that whatever came in here was still here. I never heard anyone leave. But I couldn’t hear anyone now, either.

This time, heavy footsteps pounded towards the cabin and I stiffened. When the footsteps reached the cabin, another voice that wasn’t Sabre’s, said. “Touch her just once, and I’ll send you right back to Hell, where
this time
, you won’t come back.”

“Caleb,” I croaked out. Caleb was here?

“You mean like this,” I heard Sabre reply and my mind was filled with the image of spiders, overtaking the hut, scurrying their way towards me. There was so many of them, the rattling noise bounced around the cabin, drowning out my screams. The image was quickly snatched away but my rough screams were harder to dispel.

“You’ve got some nerve coming here. Alone.” Sabre sounded cocky and full of enjoyment.

“I brought along a little insurance.” Caleb replied, showing no emotion in his voice. I could just imagine him sitting there, so sure of himself and scared of nothing. I was so relieved he was here, I would be bridesmaid at his and Tamara’s wedding if he asked me to.

“He’s got Melissa,” I shouted out to Caleb. “You need to find her.” She could be dead now. He needed to move fast.

“Don’t listen to her,” Sabre said. “She’s delusional.”

“What do you want with the lance?” Caleb asked Sabre. So he knew about that.

“Afraid I can’t tell you. Can’t have you running my plans can I?”

Sabre’s booted feet pounded over to me and the rag was ripped from over my eyes. I scrunched them up when murky daylight flooded in through the opened doorway, like a window into a foggy dimension. I blinked twice and turned to see Caleb sitting on a window seat to the far right of the hut. His presence alone was enough to steady my beating heart to a normal pace. He had been the one sitting there this whole time. Why didn’t he say anything? He knew how frightened I was. I was pretty sure my fear was there in my shaking voice.

“Take a look at him, before I kill him,” Sabre said, shoving my face in Caleb’s direction. His fingers dug into the back of my head and Caleb watched me with cool eyes. He didn’t even flinch.

“I want to show you something first.” Caleb stood up.

“Consider it your last dying wish,” Sabre said sarcastically. A dark smile ripped into the side of Caleb’s mouth and he crossed his arms over his chest. “It’s outside, and if you don’t mind, I’d really like Pria to be there.”

The first ever look of doubt I had seen, flitted over Sabre’s expression and the hard features in his face sharpened into a deep frown. “You go first. Pria comes with me.”

Caleb nodded and walked past us out of the cabin. Sabre leaned over me to untie my wrists. “If he tries anything, you are dead. Remember that.”

“What about the lance,” I asked, knowing he was never going to kill me before he got what he wanted.

“Shut up,” he hissed. He was frustrated. The stench of it was all over his tense body and his voice was thick with it. He wasn’t his normal, self-absorbed self and it gave me a little bit of hope that Caleb had something that might be able to get me out of this.

Caleb stood waiting in the drizzle of the unyielding fog. When Sabre stepped out of the cabin with the barrel of a gun pressed tightly to my head, Caleb’s eyes flicked down to me briefly before settling back on Sabre. Caleb had given Sabre one tiny reaction, but it was enough and I knew Sabre was smiling, again.

“This guns just for effect,” he said, pressing it harder into the side of my head. I pressed my eyes closed, sucking in my howl of pain. “I can kill her with my bare hands. Don’t do anything stupid,” he warned Caleb. “But just in case you do, it’s loaded and I’ll shoot you last, after I slowly dissect this one, slowly right in front of your eyes that will be glued open so you don’t miss a moment of it. Understand?”

Caleb said nothing and put his back to us.

We walked around to the back of the cabin and Sabre sighed in irritation when there was nothing there but the forest. “What the fuck is this?” He shouted to Caleb. “Get the fuck back inside, now. I’ve had enough of this shit. MOVE,” he bellowed, removing the gun from my temple and shooting it up into the air. I ducked when the bullet escaped sending a thunderous explosion into the trees. Sabre marched me back around to the front of the cabin, this time with the gun pointed at the back of Caleb’s head. I knew he couldn’t kill Caleb, but he could wound him enough to put him out of action for a while. What was Caleb playing at, pulling something like that? He was wasting everybody’s time. Mellissa was out there, somewhere and she could be dead for all I knew. And he was pulling stupid crap like this? I didn’t understand it. I was scowling when Sabre shoved me back into the cabin with his hand wrapped around the top of my arm. The pain from my wrists was so bad, I could no longer feel anything from my shoulders, downwards.

“Surprise,” Caleb said, who was already inside. His eyes were gleaming, and I looked behind him to see the witch doctor with a gag over his mouth, being held by Ressler. The witch doctor was supposed to be dead from the crushed cave and here he was, solid and here in the same room as me. Two ghosts back from the dead in one night.

“There’s a knife, millimeters from puncturing his skin, so if you hurt Pria, your immortality is dead and so are you.” Ressler said calmly to Sabre.

“I will kill her first,” Sabre threatened and the gun reappeared against the back of my head. “I will blow her brains out right now. Don’t you dare threaten me,” he roared. “You
do not
threaten me.”

“What do you want with the lance?” Caleb asked him.

The witch doctor whimpered and stumbled forwards. “Oops,” Ressler said. “My hand slipped.” He switched the blade to his other hand and wiped red blooded fingers over his jeans. “So the lance?” he said. “You were just about to tell us what you want with it before I accidently plunged this knife into your friend’s back, and almost killed him. And you.”

I was glad I couldn’t see Sabre’s expression. They were pissing him off and I could very well be the one he takes his anger out on.

“You are both fools,” Sabre said. “There will be hell on earth before you stop me.”

“The lance?” Caleb said, stepping closer to us.

“Do you have any idea what great power comes with the holy spear? It is the greatest mystery on earth, and the most overlooked and underestimated. I want the power that comes with it. There, happy?” Sabre snickered behind me. “You two know nothing.”

“No one knows where the lance is,” Caleb said. “What makes you think Pria knows where to find it? She’s just a girl.”

“Her mother knew. She was the keeper.”

I pictured my mom with the black and gold spear, raising it high above her head and it shattering to pieces. I heard the footsteps charging through the Cape trail. She was being hunted for the lance, and now so was I. I might die for something I had no knowledge of. “I don’t know where it is,” I heard myself whisper. “I swear.”

Caleb took another step closer. “Let her go and you won’t go back to hell. Not today at least. We both know it’s no fun down there. Not even for you.”

The pressure of the gun eased itself and I didn’t waste any time in running forward, hitting Caleb’s chest. His arms came up around me and I took a breath of relief.

I was still alive.

“Leave now,” Caleb instructed. “The witch comes with us, until we are off this land.”

“We will meet again,” Sabre said, and a chill seeped up from the floor, wrapping itself around me and I knew that he was doing it. He was trying to scare me, and it worked every time. I would always be afraid of him. “And next time, you will lose.”

“Until then,” Caleb said, ushering Ressler forward. Ressler moved quickly with the knife still pressed against the Witch doctors skin and left the hut. Caleb moved with me still buried into his chest and we were outside. I never looked up, but I knew that Sabre hadn’t followed us. He knew better than that. As much as he wanted me for himself, he would never give up his own life for it. He wanted too much and he would never reap any benefits of his cruel deeds if he was dead.

We moved quickly through the forest, the witch doctor being urged forward with the tip of Ressler’s blade. He walked surprisingly fast considering he was barefoot. The sky blackened overhead and thunder ripped free from the sky.

“Sabre,” Caleb mumbled.

A bolt of lightning lit up the forest, cracking loudly. A fir tree further ahead fell victim and a loud creaking and moaning sound filled my ears. It was going to drop down right in front of us. Caleb broke into a run, sweeping me up off my feet and bolted under the collapsing tree just before it crashed into the ground with a deafening thump behind us. An earth shattering roar bellowed through the storm and I pictured Sabre seething in the hut. He was going to make us pay for this. Of that, I was certain.

Caleb broke out of the forest, right behind Ressler and the witch doctor and sped through the monsoon that was going on around us. The foggy and drizzly morning had turned into a battering from the heavens. When we rounded the corner, leaving the forest at a safe distance, we were on the marina and as we neared the docks I saw Sully’s boat suffering the attack from the heavy rain. I was surprised it could even stand it. The drops were so large and heavy they splashed holes into the sea every time one landed. Then I realized, we were leaving. We were leaving and we didn’t have Mellissa.

“Wait,” I pleaded with Caleb. “Mellissa. We need to find Mellissa.” When Caleb didn’t answer me, just kept his head ducked against the onslaught of rain that had now turned into hale, I thumped on his chest, hard, crying out in pain. We stopped at one of the slips, and I could see the inn from here. What if she was still in there somewhere? We couldn’t just leave. “Caleb,” I screamed.

We reached the boat, and the motor was already going, churning up the water. Just as it was about to pull away, Caleb jumped onto the ladder that hung over the side and the next thing, Drake was grabbing hold of me from inside the boat.

I was crying uncontrollably. “We can’t leave,” I said to him. I knew he would understand when no one else seemed to be listening. “Mellissa…”

“She’s here,” he said, wrapping his jacket around me. “She was at the inn, unconscious on the balcony. But she’s gonna be okay.”

“Oh my god.”

“It’s a tiny head wound. Sabre just wanted you to think he had her, so he could get you.”

I hung my head in relief that she was here, and the tears came thick and fast.

“Hey come on,” Drake whispered in my ear. “She’s gonna be fine.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “If I never brought her here… this is all my fault.”

“Save that for Caleb.” Drake smiled at me. “I’m gonna go check on Mellissa.

I watched Caleb standing by the railing of the boat with Ressler. The Marina was nothing more than a tiny spec of land from here, we were going so fast, and right there, in front of me, Ressler hurled the witch doctor over the edge and into the thrashing waves. His pleas were heard by no one but us and he vanished under the rush of water that was spat out by the boat. I wasn’t sorry to see him go but my eyes widened in shock, anyway. Caleb turned in my direction. To say he didn’t look happy would be understatement of the year. Ressler, picking up on his foul mood, left us alone. I wondered how long we would stand out here on the deck staring each other down in the howling storm, when he came over to me and wrapped his arm around my waist, taking me downstairs and into a cramped lounge and kitchen area.