God of Destruction (5 page)

Upstairs, her roommates, Sarah and Charlotte,
were asleep in their beds, dreaming blissfully of dates and
celebrities while she was living what could only be a nightmare.
She wanted to go upstairs to her third floor room and sleep. At
least, there, she could pretend everything was normal. She could
call her parents and beg for advice. Of course, it would be
misguided and without prior experience, but she knew her mother’s
calm and determined voice would be soothing in itself.

“Miss?” the manager’s voice broke through her
thoughts.

She lightly shook her head, but found the
real world to be an unpleasant place. It was dark, and it tasted
like bile. “Ya?”

“Someone will be here to ask you some
questions in a little bit, but we were told to assure you that the
museum has
not
been robbed.”

Janie silently shook her head.
Ya,
right
.

The lights didn’t come back on for the rest
of the night. When the flash of the police cruiser appeared out the
window it was like the light of God. The manager had pried Janie
off the floor earlier and allowed her to lay on one of the
elaborate couches around the lobby. She heard, rather than saw, the
officer enter the building while she studied the pictures in her
hands with disgust. Sitting up, she pulled the blanket given to her
more tightly around her shoulders and waited for him to approach
her.

“She’s over there, sir,” the manager mumbled
from across the room.

“Thank you,” the gruff voice of another man
echoed back. “If you wouldn’t mind, sir, if you could move your
staff out of the lobby so I can ask her some questions, you’d be
making my job a hell of a lot easier.”

“Of course, officer.”

The echo of footsteps died away as the room
emptied, leaving her alone with the phantom officer. Janie pulled
her knees to her chest, hiding the photos in the folds of her
shirt. She couldn’t shake the feeling of impending malice as the
officer ominously kept up a steady rhythm of
step
…
step
…
step
.

The shadowy figure cleared his throat.
“Ma’am?”

She met his veiled face, silhouetted by the
bright flashing lights of his cruiser through the window. “Yes,
sir?”

“My name is Officer Smith. I just came from
the museum.”

She jumped up, standing in line with his
shoulder. “So you saw them?” she gasped.

“Ma’am, please sit down,” he muttered
forcefully. Reluctantly, she did. “Now, who did I see?”

Mouth agape, Janie whispered slowly, “The
bodies.”

He placed himself stealthily into the chair
before her. “What’s your name, Ma’am?”

“You didn’t see them?” she shrieked, bolting
to her feet. This time, the pictures came fluttering down from the
heavy wool blanket, skidding across the floor in every
direction.

He jumped up as they fell around his feet.
“What are those?” he demanded, stooping to pick one up.

Janie threw her body to the floor, rushing to
pick up her pictures while the officer struggled to see the image
in his hand. Without light, he was having difficulty.

“I didn’t mean to upset you, Miss…” he
trailed off, looking up over the photograph to study her face.

“Campbell,” she hissed, balling the pictures
in her fists. “
Janie
Campbell.”

“Miss Campbell. The museum is completely
fine. When we got the call from the hotel, we checked it out first
thing, nothing’s out of place and there weren’t any,”—he
coughed—“bodies.”

“That’s impossible! I saw th—”

Officer Smith held the picture up to light of
the window, illuminating the right half of his face. Janie suddenly
couldn’t breathe. Paranoia may have been behind the chills Janie
felt run up her spine, or the familiar face she saw in the light
from the window, but, whatever the reason, Janie didn’t trust the
man across from her. Her eyes burned, flickering around the room as
she realized that there was no one around to hear her if she
screamed, and there was nowhere to run.

Calling forth any prior experience, she tried
to think of a way out, though her options had drastically
decreased. She thought fast, pushing away all her doubts of the
things that could go wrong, just like everything else that
night.

While he was studying the picture in his
hand, Janie kept a firm grip on her photos and let her body crumple
to the floor in a heap. “Ouch!” she vowed, putting her fists to her
ankle. Weakly, she began to pull herself up by the arm of the couch
and swayed unsteadily on her feet. She made a show of limping and
falling back to the floor.

“Jesus Christ!” he yelled, rushing to stand
over her. “Are you alright?”

“My ankle—” she began, but halted as she
recognized that the cold face from her pictures was now in line
with hers.

She gasped for breath through the new
obstruction in her lungs but resolved to get out of his grasp at
any cost. Janie bit the inside of her mouth, scowling into the eyes
of “Officer Smith.” Smith wasn’t looking back; he was reaching out
for her “twisted” ankle when she leaned backward a few inches and
cracked
her head swiftly, but violently, into the man’s
nose.

The ‘cop’ fell to the floor with a cry,
holding his nose and blinking away the sudden moisture in his eyes.
Janie ran, but she didn’t know where to go. The thieves had the
police in their back pocket! Who else would try to hurt her if she
told? She didn’t have time to think on it, as a roar behind her
hinted strongly that the man was getting up, and he was out for
blood. Hers.

By the time her assailant had peeled himself
off the floor, Janie’s legs were carrying her faster than ever
before toward the stairs. She didn’t know where the hotel staff had
migrated to, but the whole building seemed to be abandoned. Fatigue
had already stolen her edge, but she pushed herself to the third
floor, knowing that her roommates would still be there. Despite her
speed, she could hear, loud and clear, the unmistakable sound of a
wooden chair smashing against the step just below her foot. She
stumbled once when she felt the splinters become lodged in her
thinly-clad calf. Nevertheless, a shriek of fear was her only
clever remark in the face of danger.

The photos were crushed in the palm of her
hands. Breathing heavily, she reminded herself to hide them once
she’d gotten to safety;
if
she could get to safety. As she
watched her room approaching, she pushed harder against the floor,
ignoring the hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach from
emptiness and unadulterated terror. She slid on the carpet when she
finally allowed herself to stop before the door, pounding her fists
against the thin barrier with a volume that could’ve woken the
entire corridor.

“Let me in! Charlotte! Sarah! Somebody,
please, help me!” she sobbed into the wood of the door, repeatedly
beating her only gateway to salvation. She waited for one of the
girls to allow her entrance, but neither did. “Help me!” she
repeated, unclenching her fists.

The pictures fluttered to the ground in the
dark, and she fell to the floor to save her only lifeline. Three
found her fingertips, but the last evaded her. As she backed away
from the door, hoping to find the lost photo, her back hit another
potted plant. The footfalls of the man in the hall echoed through
her head, coming ever closer. She desperately shoved the pictures
into the pot and grabbed for the other. Relief spread through her
blood like a potent drug when her fingers met paper, but she had no
time to seek out the pot again. Concluding that she’d run out of
options, she shoved the photo down her shirt and pulled herself to
her feet, shaky from the adrenaline. In a last ditch effort, she
flattened herself against the wall, praying to God that the
darkness would save her. Maybe he wouldn’t see her…. Maybe he would
pass her….

Janie’s head was screaming. Around her, the
occupants of the other rooms began to stir from the noise. The hall
was too dark for her to see when the man caught up to her, she only
felt it when he grabbed her and pushed her up against the wall, her
feet dangling limply below her as she meet his full height. “Where
are the pictures?” he snarled, wrapping one hand around her neck
and slamming her skull into the wall once, then twice. Precious
oxygen left her deprived lungs.

Her head swam; she couldn’t put together a
coherent sentence. “Pictures—” she mumbled in answer. Her eyes
began to roll back into her head, but he shook her out of her
daze.

“Where are the pictures you took at the
museum?” he demanded, shaking her harder by her hair.

She shrieked in protest. “No pictures,” she
finally gasped, pulling her head away from him, though it only hurt
her worse when his hand held tight. “Only one.” She was aware of
how bad a defense she was making, but she said nothing else. She
couldn’t see a way out of this. He hit her again and the taste of
blood filled her mouth as he split something. Her first idea was to
give up the photos before she came to a disturbing epiphany:

This man would kill her. Her only chance at
surviving rested with the bargaining chips she held.

“What’s going on out there?” another voice
yelled through the dark. “Who’s there?”

Janie didn’t know the voice; it had to be
another patron of the hotel. “Help me!” she pleaded. Her voice came
out low; a hand was still pressing against her windpipe.

“Shit,” her attacker cursed, moving his hand
away from her throat to wrap around her waist. As he lifted her
into his side, he was already running headlong back to the
staircase. Other patrons of the hotel stepped out into the hall to
investigate but they were easily pushed to the side with Janie’s
body. Kierlan wasn’t happy to be going against the plan he’d
created when he first intercepted the girl’s call; he’d planned on
killing her then going to pick up his payment for the job at the
museum. All of that was shot to hell, now. He could only hope that
their mission could be salvaged by Natalia’s…irrefutable…methods of
persuasion.

The next few minutes passed in a blur for
Janie before a purposeful collision between her head and the wall
drowned her in painless sleep.

The officer, who’d arrived on the scene the
previous night, woke at dawn on the sidewalk, stripped of his
uniform and his car missing.

Chapter Five

Location Unknown; December
22
^nd
, 2011

It had to be the splitting headache that woke
Janie an immeasurable time later to blackness and the stench of
human excrement. For a moment, she assumed she was lying in bed
back at the hotel, until she rolled over to get up and felt only
cement beneath her. Feeling along the floor as she crawled, she
found that the room was completely empty, aside from a single hole
in the floor, the use of which was apparent from the smell. The
room was large enough for her to stretch out completely on the
floor, her five-foot-six putting her palms flat against one wall
and the soles of her sneakers against the opposite. As her eyes
adjusted to the dark, she noticed that the room lacked windows, and
the only way out was through a locked, steel door.

The silence was loud. There was no clock on
the wall or the glare of sunlight into the room; Janie couldn’t
tell if she’d been there already for hours or days, but the fierce
growl of her stomach hinted that she needed to get out as soon as
possible. Every cut and bruise on her body and face hurt tenfold
with each shiver of her body against the frigid ground, and the
ensemble she wore offered no protection. The pounding of her head
threatened to push her eyes out of their sockets, and her hunger
had become physically painful. Nevertheless, she pushed herself to
her feet and grabbed for the door.

It didn’t budge. “Hello?” she called, hoping
for an answer, but regretting her outburst almost immediately. “Is
anybody else here? Hello?” The silence stretched on.

She slid to the floor in the corner, head
spinning from the smell of human waste in the hole across the room
and the need to sleep again. It was difficult to decide whether or
not she was hungry when her appetite was quickly waning,
substituted by her need to vomit. Sweat beaded up on her forehead
around bloodshot eyes as the minutes ticked on with no sign of her
captors. For a long time, the only sound was the gurgle of her
empty stomach. She dozed in and out of sleep.

The shriek of metal on metal woke Janie again
from a dreamless sleep. Dazed, she looked around for the noise, but
her eyes failed to adjust before a thick cloth sack was shoved over
her head. Immediately thrashing against the arms binding her, she
managed to elbow a soft piece of bared flesh and the arms around
her fell away. Frantically, she threw the sack away from her,
glancing over her shoulder at the unfamiliar man with his hands
around his throat, gasping for air. Then, she was running again
with a fervor she didn’t know a person could possess.

The halls of this unknown place were lit by
naked bulbs, but they were the only objects in the room. At the end
of the short corridor, there was one door, aside from the one she’d
been stolen from, and a metal staircase. She went to the door
first, hoping it would lead to the outside world, but it was only
another prison. Looking back, though every fiber of her being
begged her not to, she caught a glimpse of the man she hit
staggering to his feet. With a yelp, she scaled the stairs and
threw herself into another diving sprint toward unknown
territory.