Claire crossed her arms over her knees. “You don’t give me a choice,” she mumbled.
“What?”
Ryan’s acerbic tone lit Claire’s eyes. “You don’t give me a choice!”
“C’mon, guys,” I said. It was far too claustrophobic, even in the large cavern, for anyone to fight.
Ryan stood. “What kinda choice would you like? The one that includes you stalking me all day without us talking? Or the one where we get along?”
“We can get along without you trying to land the unattainable blonde!”
Ryan’s mouth fell open. “Is that what you think I’m trying to do?”
Claire stood, meeting his glare. “Just…back off.”
Ryan took a step forward. “I love you. I love you, and you act like I’m some random frat boy trying to get lucky.”
Jared sighed. “I should have packed ear plugs. I have nowhere to go.”
“You just….” Claire trailed off.
I knew she must care about him. She had bit her tongue to keep from hurting his feelings, which Claire never did.
Ryan took another step. He was only a few inches from her face. “Say it.”
“I’ve told you. A million times! It’s not going to happen.”
He shook his head. “No, say you don’t love me. Say you don’t see me in that way and I’m just a helpless human to you. Say you hate me! Say something! I’m tired of your vague excuses!”
“I don’t need excuses!” she yelled. “I don’t want that!” She pointed to us. “I don’t want a family like I had or they have! You want children! You want a normal life, Ryan. I’m not it!”
“I just want you! Whatever that is, I want it!”
Claire frowned. Her body shook with anger. She grabbed his collar with both fists. Ryan leaned away slightly and winced, waiting for her to land a punch on his face. Claire’s lips pursed together, and then she pulled him to her, pressing her lips against his, hard.
“Agh,” Jared said, turning.
Ryan paused in shock, and then his body melted against hers. He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her closer, and she wrapped her fingers around the back of his neck. The kiss was so intense that it looked nearly painful.
Bex giggled, but they didn’t hear him. After a minute or two, it was uncomfortable to watch, so we all meandered to the other side of the cavern. Jared seemed to be in a foul mood, which bothered me. Why he was so against Claire and Ryan was a mystery to me. They were perfect for each other, and clearly loved each other.
“I wonder if that will happen for me,” Bex said, glancing back.
“Don’t look. No telling what’s going on back there,” Jared said, picking up a rock and throwing it.
“It might,” I said, smiling. “Don’t listen to Jared. He knows I’m the best thing that ever happened to him.”
Jared grabbed my hand and squeezed. “Of course you are. Why would you believe I’ve thought otherwise?”
I shrugged. “You’re so against them.” I gestured behind us. “Like my mother was so against us. Because it makes things hard.”
Jared pulled me closer and wrapped his arms around my knees. “I just don’t like Ryan. It has nothing to do with you, or us.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Why don’t you like him?”
Jared shifted nervously. “Ryan is the closest I’ve come to losing the love of my life. That’s not something you get over.”
I touched his face. “I love you. Ryan loves Claire. Get over it.”
Jared laughed once, and looked to Bex. “I hope it happens for you. I really do.”
Bex rolled his eyes and stood, walking to the back of the tomb where the altar held the book. Kim spent a lot of time in that area, even slept there. Bex sat next to her, and their voices became a stream of quiet conversation.
I balanced on all fours trying to navigate my large body to a standing position. Just as I pushed myself from the rock floor, my stomach clenched, and I stumbled. Jared caught me, but I couldn’t stand straight up.
“Contraction?” he said, frowning.
“I don’t…I don’t know,” I said, breathing through the pain.
Bex and Claire were immediately at our side, with Kim and Ryan trailing behind.
“The baby?” Bex said. “Should I set up?”
“No,” Jared said. Let’s let her rest. See if it eases up.”
Claire nodded, and assisted Jared in helping me to our makeshift bed. My feet up and relaxed, I tried to think about something else other than whether that pain would return. Labor was going to be a nightmare if I had to look forward to hours of that. I had hoped that my new abilities would anesthetize the pain a bit, but if the previous encounter with contractions had been any indication, I was screwed.
The pain crept up again, like a wave swallowing me whole.
“Breathe, sweetheart.”
I sucked in through my nose and blew out from my mouth, but it didn’t help the pain. A large fist had gripped my uterus and was digging in its fingers while I suffered the worst case of food poisoning ever recorded — that was what I felt.
“Should we set up?” Bex said again.
“No,” Jared said firmly. “We’re just timing them now.”
We waited several minutes, and then I felt another contraction, but it wasn’t nearly as painful. They became less frequent painful before stopping all together. Everyone in the room breathed a collective sigh of relief when Jared deemed the event a false alarm. He wouldn’t allow me to sit up, though, or even leave the bed after that. He or Claire would walk me to the hole in the floor if I needed to relieve myself. It was half-humiliating, half-frightening. My body hadn’t felt like my own for quite a while, but now there was no control over the situation.
We had no idea what went on in the world aboveground. I wondered what Beth and Chad were doing, if they worried about us, and about Cynthia and Lillian. If they leaned on each other for support, waiting to hear their grandchild had been born and that all of their children were alive. Even though I knew I needed to stay positive in those last difficult days, lying bed with nothing to do but read the same magazines, or think, my mind effortlessly traveled to less trivial things.
Checkers and chess were no longer entertaining. Even watching the others play cards irritated me. We were nearing the end of July, and I was so large I could barely maneuver. I had to let my mind wander to get away from the darkness of the tomb, from the fact that we were living in a tomb at all, and the dripping. For the love of all things holy, the dripping. That sound alone nearly pushed me out of my mind.
I would close my eyes, and pretend I was at Brown on the Main Green, lying with Jared while the summer air weaved through the trees. I blocked out the echoing and murmuring inside the tomb, and replaced it with laughing and jovial sounds of flag football on warm days, and the wonderful smells coming wafting from the Gate. Even my dorm room at Andrews was an escape. Mostly, I concentrated on our oak tree, and the loft. I still mourned our first home, but in my mind, it was untouched. Recalling every memory of every place I’d spent with Jared was the only thing that kept me sane at that point. That, and watching Claire and Ryan fall in love. Their sweet conversations, and the way they reveled every moment with each other kept me away from the darkness.
As the first of August came and went, my memories became harder to enjoy. They just mocked me. Us. Our faces had all grew pale, begging to see the sun again. Not even the promise of safety was worth this. Quiet times with Jared were something I had always wanted, but not in this prison. Not in this tomb, where I already felt dead.
A small twinge in my stomach made me hold my breath. It went away, but soon another came, and then another. They were stronger, and the more I hoped they would go away, the quicker and more intense they came.
I tried to breathe, but the air was so stale. When I tried to concentrate on my breathing through the pain, all I could hear was the water dripping. Always dripping. It was maddening. I was in labor, and going to give birt
h inside a drippy, cold hole in the ground.
“No,” I whispered.
Jared read a book a few feet from the mattress, noticeably waiting for me to tell him I was uncomfortable. I didn’t want to say it. Speaking the words made it real. There would be movement towards the supplies, and the unpacking of all the medical paraphernalia I didn’t want to see.
Before another contraction came, I pushed myself out of bed. “I have to get out of here.”
Jared put down his worn copy of The Catcher in the Rye, and turned to face me. When he saw I was standing, he stood, too. “Nina, you have to lay down.”
“I can’t,” I shook my head. “It’s enough, Jared. I can’t stay here, anymore. We need to find somewhere else.”
“There is nowhere else.”
I bent my knees and awkwardly bent over to pick up a few of my things lying around the bed. “Well, we can’t stay here. I can’t…I can’t have my baby here.”
Jared sighed. “Nina, stop. You’re being irrational.”
“Okay, so I’m irrational. But I’m going to be irrational outside, where I can breathe.”
Jared tried to touch my hand, but I pulled away. “You know you can’t,” he said. “I can, and I’m going.”
Ryan crossed his arms. “Then go.”
“What?” Jared seethed.
“She’s stronger than all of us. If she doesn’t want to stay, we can’t make her.”
“See?” I said to Jared, pointing to Ryan. “He listens to me. You’re not listening!”
“Sweetheart,” Jared said, holding his hands in front of him. “You know what’s waiting up there for us. We’ll be attacked the second we breach the stairs.”
“Just for a minute,” I said, trying to nonchalantly slide by him. I grabbed my stomach and hunched over a bit, trying to casually weather another contraction.
Ryan touched Jared’s arm. “Jared, we got through an entire city of shells. If she wants to breathe some fresh air after nearly sixty days in a cave, I say let her.”
“You don’t have a say, so shut up,” Jared said through his teeth.
“I don’t either?” I said. I hobbled toward the entrance slowly, but Jared matched every step.
“Of course you do,” he said. “Just…just let me think for a minute.”
I closed my eyes tight. They twitched every time the drops of water slid from the rock wall to the ground. “That’s the problem. I can’t think in here. I can’t breathe. I can’t sleep. I feel like I’m dying!”
“Jared,” Ryan began.
“Shut the hell up!”
“Maybe we all need some fresh air,” Bex said.
With wide eyes, both Jared and Claire craned their necks at their little brother.
Jared’s jaws worked under his skin, and he struggled to relax enough to speak to me in a calm voice. “Nina, for all we know the devil is up there. They will stop at nothing now.”
Ryan shrugged. “Sometimes you gotta dance with the devil to get out of Hell.”
The further we got to the entrance, the darker it became. Bex had set up twin-head industrial light stands around the perimeter, so bright that at first, when they were all lit, it felt like day. Now the shadows they cast were just another reminder of our prison.
I moved quickly to the doorway, and Claire grabbed my wrist. “Maybe we should sedate her?”
I yanked my arm back, easily shouldering past her. “You’re not keeping me here against my will! I know I sound crazy! I feel crazy! This place is making me crazy! I don’t want to leave forever. I just…I just want a couple of minutes of sunshine. Just a moment to feel alive again.”
Ryan appeared in front of me, holding up his hands. “Whoa, buddy. You’re getting yourself all worked up,” he said. He spoke through nervous laughter, trying to lighten the mood. “You need to take a minute to think about this. No one is making you stay, but maybe if you think about this a little more, you’ll reconsider.”
Jared looked to me with hope in his eyes.
“I thought you were on my side,” I said.
“I am, Nigh. I’ve always been on your side.”
“No one’s on my side. No one hears me.”
Ryan relaxed a bit. “Just try to clear your head and think about it. You’re not a prisoner here. You’re here to keep the baby safe until it’s born.”
I nodded. “Okay, I’ve thought about it. I can’t stand it anymore. Who wants to have their baby in a tomb? Not me. This was a bad idea. I just need to go. I have to go.”
I made my way to the entrance that led to the stairs, but Jared stood in my way, his fingers digging into my shoulders. “I can’t let you go, sweetheart. If you go upstairs, they’ll kill you.”
“But, we…you…you need to get me out of here, okay? I don’t want to be here any more.”
Jared nodded, his voice low and calm. “I understand. As soon as the baby comes, we’ll leave. I promise.”
I shook my head, the tears cascading down my cheeks. I took a step back. “No. No, I don’t want to have the baby here. I can’t stay here another night. Not another second.”
“That’s a prize-winning freakout, right there,” Kim said without emotion.
Jared grimaced. “You’re not helping, Kim. Listen,” he said, returning his attention to me.
My body shook. I was in control of nothing. Not my body, not where I slept. I couldn’t even go to the bathroom alone or take a walk. It was too much. Too much.
“You can’t make me stay here. I can leave when I want.”
“You’re right. You can leave when you want, but…I want you to stay. The second you’re aboveground, Nina, you’ll regret your choice. Just…trust me? Please? Just a little bit longer. Can you stay with me a little bit longer?”
Tiny twin rivers dripped from my jaw onto my dirty shirt. I closed my eyes, but all I could hear was the dripping. The damn dripping. It wouldn’t stop.
“No,” I whispered. I ran for the door, and Claire and Jared grabbed my arms. With my full strength, I took one step after another, slowly but surely making my way to the doorway.
Claire grunted against my strength. “Nina, stop!”
Bex joined his siblings, grabbing both of my ankles and wrapping his feet around them. I could have broken free, but I didn’t want to hurt him. I didn’t want to hurt any of them, I just needed to be aboveground, to breathe fresh air and feel the sun on my skin. To hear my voice — just one time — without an echo behind it.
“Nina, look at me! Look at me!” Jared said, positioning his face in front of mine. “You have to stop. You’re going to get yourself killed, and the baby will die. Do you hear me? We’ll all die!”
I stopped struggling, and my body went limp as I sobbed on the ground against my husband. My focus on survival, irrational or not, had become a monster.
Claire and Bex took a step back with labored breath. I’d given all three of them a run for their money.
Jared stood and pulled me with him. “Okay?”
I nodded, watching him walk into the tomb. “I’m sorry.”
Chapter Twenty
Legion
I bolted for the top of the stairs, shoving the altar out of the way. I crawled out of the hole, squinting against the bright sun filtering in through the rotunda.
I took a deep breath, letting the warm, fresh air fill my lungs. I bathed in it, taking in every bit before Jared dragged me back underground. After a few seconds, the warm air went away, and the cold, dark feeling of the tomb surrounded me. Jared had barely let me take an entire breath before he’d forced me to return.
I opened my eyes and realized I was still in the Sepulchre. The room was full of shells, poised to pounce. I could hear Jared crawling up the stairs, yelling my name, but immediately I was attacked. I fought off one, and then two and three at a time. By the time Jared reached the top, I had already taken out half the shells in a fury of moves I didn’t even have to think about. A small woman threw herself at me, her arms flailing about. Jared incapaci
tated her with a single blow. Claire and Ryan reached the top, quickly followed by Bex, and the mob inside the Sepulchre quickly thinned. More filed in, though, and we were running out of room.
“Back up!” Jared commanded. “Back downstairs!”
The walls shook, and two large, dark forms squeezed their misshapen bodies into the entrance of the Sepulchre. They weren’t shells, but demons, large demons with gray skin and mouths full of teeth under moist snouts.
The one on the right grabbed Jared while the other took my shirt in one hand, and slammed my back against the opposite wall.
“Hey!” Kim yelled from the mouth of the stairway. “Get the hell out of here!” Even though the monsters stood two heads taller than her, she didn’t seem nervous in the slightest. The demons wailed at her, shielding themselves with their shoulders, but they didn’t retreat.
The demon that Jared fought barked at the black-eyed minions filing into the room, and before anyone could react, a half-dozen of the shells dove at Kim, pushing her down the stairway. Her scream faded as she rolled further underground.
Bex leapt in after her, and Claire and Ryan went to work on Jared’s demon.
I tried to rip my shirt to escape the grip of the brute, but his hands were gigantic, and I couldn’t break free. A shell in military fatigues slipped into the room, walked to me without hesitation, and held a pistol to my temple.
The demon holding me signaled his partner, capturing Jared, Claire and Ryan’s attention as well. In a move so fast I could barely follow, Jared pulled his sidearm from his belt and held it on the shell. The entire room froze.
“Don’t. Move,” Jared said.
I nodded. I was sure he was furious with me. His eyes glossed over, and his teeth clenched.
The shell spoke. “We’re taking her out of this place. Do not follow, or we’ll cut the child from her in the street.”
Jared held his gun on the shell, his entire body shaking with rage. Finally he lowered his weapon a little. “I love you,” he said, immediately tensing his arms again.
I smiled. “It’s okay. You’ll just save me like you always do, right?”
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