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

by H. P. Mallory

  “Dulcie! What’s happening?”

  Hearing Sam’s panicked voice, I glanced over my shoulder only to find her staring at me, open-mouthed. She stood in the doorway of the jail cell and she wasn’t grasping onto anything. She was also standing up straight, and it appeared as though the ground beneath her wasn’t rumbling or shaking. But how was that possible when it felt like Jax and I were adrift on an angry ocean?

  She took a couple of steps closer until I yelled at her. “Stay where you are!” I warned her. “Don’t come any closer!”

  As soon as the words left my mouth, my right foot slid off the bar. Then both of my feet landed on the floor again. As if reacting, the ground heaved upward and dropped down again, making me nearly knee myself in the chin before ramming my butt into the ground. Without even realizing what I was doing, I released the bars and plummeted to the floor.

  “Get up and wrap your hands around the bars again!” Jax yelled at me. “You have to keep yourself off the floor!”

  I nodded even though it was a Herculean effort to pick myself up and attempt to grip the bars again. Once I was able to right myself, I lurched forward, narrowly missing the bars and landed, face first on the ground, which surged up to meet me. Luckily I braced myself with the palms of my hands so my face didn’t crash into the cement.

  “Get up!” Jax yelled.

  I rolled onto my butt and then pushed myself up, all the while feeling like I was on a tiny boat in a rough ocean.

  “Give me your hand!” Jax ordered as he released one of the bars and then stretched his arm through the opening between it and the bar next to it. I hoisted myself forward and gripped his hand as hard as I could, even as the floor completely dropped at least a foot or so underneath me.

  But Jax’s hold on my hand was sure and strong and with one healthy tug, he pulled me right up to him.

  “Grab the bars!” he said as I wrapped my hands around them, straining to stay upright, and trying desperately to control my flailing legs. I made several attempts to get my feet up and onto the sides of the bars, but my arms by then were physically exhausted.

  “I can’t hold on,” I said, sounding defeated. “My arms are too tired.”

  “I will help you,” he answered with a quick nod as his eyes bored into mine. “Your only job is not to let go.”

  “I can try,” I said but there was no way I could continue holding on like he’d instructed me. Instead, I wrapped my legs around the bars as tightly as possible. Jax also helped ensure I wouldn’t fall off the bars by tightening his grip on my hands until his knuckles turned white.

  “Dulcie, hold on!” Sam yelled out and when I turned to face her, I noticed she’d taken a few steps back up the hallway, apparently heeding my warning and avoiding getting into the thick of it, thank God.

  “I heard something that sounded like an explosion! What’s going on?” Elsie called out as she appeared beside Sam. She visibly held herself back from entering the room once she saw me hanging from the cell bars while the ground continued to buckle and roll beneath me. She wore the same expression of horror that decorated Sam’s face.

  “Something’s beneath us! It’s moving the ground up and down,” I cried, figuring that was the only explanation that made any sense. And from what I could tell, whatever that something was, it was centered directly underneath Jax’s cell, which meant Jax was directly in the line of fire.

  I have to get him out, I thought to myself, even as I realized how futile my words were.

  Futile because the only key to open the cell was located on a chain, which was currently wrapped around Wally’s waist. And who the hell knew where Wally was? I would have attempted to open the cell with my magic, but the bars were reinforced with magical wards to make sure the only way to open them was with the key.

  At the sound of the floor heaving beneath us, I glanced down, only to find it rippling and buckling, the concrete breaking apart as if it were as frail as pastry crust.

  “Dulcie, get away from his cell!” Sam called back, her voice cracking. “Whatever is under the ground is directly beneath you both!”

  “I can’t leave him here by himself, Sam,” I countered, audibly conveying my frustration. Not waiting for Sam’s response, I addressed Elsie instead. “Elsie, get Wally! Tell him we need the key to the cell so we can get Jax out!” Elsie nodded at me before turning on her toes and running back up the hallway. I added, “And get back as quickly as you can!”

  I prayed and hoped she’d find Wally immediately because I had no idea how much time we had before whatever lay beneath us would make itself known. And that was one moment I really didn’t look forward to. Something that could burrow up through the ground and cause the floor to buckle and shake like it had only meant it was gargantuan in size …

  “Who knows how long it’ll take Elsie to find Wally?” Sam asked. The sound of dread in her voice was more pronounced when she added, “It may take more time than you have!”

  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.