by Gregory Colt
I heard ‘Ah, crap’ as the larger shadow rushed him and they fell out of sight, struggling. Several crashing noises later, a long horizontal shadow came into view in front of the window before smashing through the glass and rolling to a stop at the desk in front me.
“Adrian!” I screamed, standing to help him.
Before I made it, he was scrambling on hands and knees through the broken glass to the opposite side of Nick’s desk, reaching around and ripping out the top side drawer.
The large man put one hand on the broken window frame and used it for support as he jumped into the office, pausing to look us.
“Where is it?” Adrian yelled.
The large man charged me.
I shot him. I hadn’t even realized I’d raised the gun in my hands.
He stumbled, hit the corner of the desk, and grunted as he righted himself.
I shot him again. Twice.
The report was so loud my ears buzzed, and so close I felt the spray of blood from his chest on my face.
He stumbled backwards into the desk again as glass exploded over his head. He fell to the ground, struggling to stand, while Adrian stood over him with the broken handle of the coffee pot.
“Come on,” Adrian said, motioning toward the door.
“Adrian! What is going on?” I screamed, still holding the gun out.
I heard heavy footsteps again coming up the stairs over the buzzing noise in my ears.
“Someone is coming!” I shrieked at him.
“Cover your ears,” he said, taking my hands with caution and gently slipping the revolver from my hand.
He put his boot between the shoulder blades of the man on the floor and fired two rounds, point blank, into the back of his skull.
No less than three hundred different emotions flooded into me. I wanted to be horrified, but at the same time I was grateful, anxious, satisfied, terrified, thrilled, hysterical, and curious.
He grabbed my hand and led me out into the hall. Two large men, dressed in scrubs I now noticed, reached the top of the steps not fifteen feet from us. Terror won out.
“The elevator,” Adrian said, dragging me toward it.
He threw me inside and pulled the iron cage door closed as the two men reached us.
The first one grabbed the metal grated door with two hands and pulled so hard it bent the bar he held, breaking the latch. Adrian grabbed the lower bar to hold it shut as best he could. He wasn’t winning.
“The button. Hit the button, Claire! First floor!” Adrian yelled.
I jumped to the other side and hammered the first floor button.
The elevator shuddered to life as Adrian lost his grip, and the outer doors broke apart in the large man’s hands.
The elevator descended as the two men made to dive in with us. Adrian raised the revolver and fired, dissuading the first with a bullet to the chest.
I took a deep breath when they missed their chance to get in. I hadn’t even noticed I was holding it in.
Adrian leaned back against the side wall and slid down to the floor, wincing as he did, and panting. He began picking shards of glass out of his hands and knees. Blood streaked the wall behind him.
The elevator took its sweet time rumbling down the shaft. I watched the two men through the iron-grated ceiling crouch in the opening about a floor above us now.
“What do you think they’re doing?” I asked Adrian, pointing at the two men.
He looked, cocked his head for a second, closed his eyes and sighed, before erupting into a flurry of motion, kicking his feet around. He wrapped my legs with his own and pulled me down.
The world went sideways as I fell back onto Adrian’s chest, where he pinned my head onto his shoulder and locked my legs down with his.
“What the hell are you—” I started to yell, noticing movement through the grating above.
One of the large men jumped down the shaft, crashing onto the iron roof with a grunt of pain.
I screamed.
The elevator shuddered violently, making terrible screeching noises as sparks flew from metal on metal.
But, nothing happened. It continued to inch down while the large man on the roof howled in rage at the iron that kept him from his prey.
I heard, “Well, that was anticlima—” in my ear as the second man landed on the iron grate, snapping the cable in a horrible sound of ripping, screeching thunder.
I screamed again.
Then I was weightless.
Chapter Eleven
My lungs filled with fire as I tried to breathe. I tasted blood in my mouth. Dust hung in the air, stinging my eyes. With short, choking gasps, I tried to pull in as much air as I could, coughing violently. But I was breathing. There was nothing more terrifying than not being able to breathe, falling elevators aside.
I looked at the grated roof above. Well, what remained of it. The air was thick with dust, but I could see the criss-cross pattern of iron, now bent and going off in all directions. Several bits of metal were broken and hanging into the elevator above me. Above us.
“Adrian!” I panicked, kneeling to the floor where he lay on his side. Hadn’t he held me against him? I crawled to him and my hand slipped. On the floor, right in the middle where Adrian had held me, was a bright red circle now smeared under my hand.
I felt the back of Adrian’s head and my other hand came away bloody.
We must have bounced. That’s how I was thrown to the far side.
Oh my god. He knew it would fall so he pulled me down to shield me from the impact. He’d taken all of it.
“Adrian. Adrian, get up,” I said, rolling him over onto his back. I worried there could be spinal damage, but I needed to move him. We couldn’t stay here.
His eyes were open, and panicked. He convulsed, clutching his chest without a sound. He couldn’t breathe.
I pinched his nose shut, took a deep breath, which still burned, sealed my lips to his, and blew as hard as I could to fill his lungs.
He convulsed, kicking and flailing, and I pulled back as he sat up. He reached out to my face, his eyes darting back and forth everywhere.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
I laughed and choked and cried at the same time, nodding my head.
“Can you stand?” I asked.
“I think I’m good right here for the moment,” he said, trying to grin. It came across more like a pained grimace.
One of the broken metal bars above us fell inside with a loud clang. I looked into the metal grating and could see better now. One of the bodies hung half inside the elevator through a broken section. His face was lacerated and burned. The cable must have struck him when it snapped.
Something stirred behind him. The other man was trying to get up.
“Adrian, we need to go. Now,” I said.
He grabbed my hand and pulled himself up.
The man with the lacerated face jerked and coughed.
“After you, Dr. Spurling,” Adrian gestured out the broken cage into the lobby.
I stepped past him into the lobby and stopped.
The front door was shattered, answering the question of the broken glass I’d heard earlier.
There was moaning on the ground in the glass. Another man, smaller than the others, had a pool of blood under his face that rippled with his breathing. How many of these men were there? How were we going to get past him?
I turned a questioning look to Adrian.
He wasn’t next to me. He was still staggering across the lobby. That wasn’t good.
“Him?” he said, pointing to the man in the broken glass. “Don’t mind him,” he said, grinning with a mouth full of blood.
Adrian walked over, trying to move faster. I ran back, put his arm around my shoulders, and let him lean more weight on me. I wasn’t strong enough to pull him along, but he did seem to move easier.
“Keep going,” he said when I slowed by the shattered door.
I stepped around the man on the floor and—
&nb
sp; “Stop,” Adrian said, sending my heart rate climbing again.
He leaned down and grabbed a set of keys from the man on the floor’s hand.
“You’re welcome,” he smirked.
There was a crash from behind us as more dust smoked out of the elevator. Oh my god they were still coming after us.
I moved faster once we were out on the sidewalk. Adrian winced, but didn’t complain. The temperature had dropped a good ten degrees and the wind from earlier had died down to nothing.
“One of these days you are going to explain to me how it is we are still alive,” I said as we got to his car.
He took his arm off my shoulders and opened the passenger door for me.
“I’m just that aweso—” he threw up all over the sidewalk as the sounds coming from inside the lobby grew louder and more violent.
I led Adrian around the door and shoved him, as gently as I could, into the passenger seat and shut the door. Thunder rumbled in the distance over the nighttime sounds of the city.
I ran to the driver’s side and hopped in, started the engine, and took off.
There was the man, the smaller one that had been lying in the doorway, standing just inside as we drove by. His face was a glistening mask of red.
“Interstate 87. Get over to I-87 and head north,” Adrian said.
“What are you talking about? You need a hospital, Adrian. I don’t know how much blood you’ve lost, or if anything is broken. I’m almost positive you have a concussion. I’m taking you to a doctor,” I said.
“I don’t know who was after us,” he said. “And I don’t know how they knew where to look.”
“What did they want? Does this have to do with the museum?” I asked, attempting to stay focused on the here and now, and not what had almost happened.
“They were after you, Claire,” he said.
“They were? Why? How do you know?” I shivered.
“I met them outside the building. Said to kill me. Knew there was someone else inside. A girl. To kill her too. I don’t know about the museum, but since that’s why you were there to begin with, since that’s the only connection, I mean unless you have something else going on the side I should know about.” he said.
“Don’t be ridiculous. Nothing is more important than this,” I said.
It must be related to Henry and George’s murder. But how? Why? How did they know where to find me?
I looked at Adrian sitting next to me, leaning his head over on the doorframe. He knew where I was. He was my connection to the museum, to the artifacts, to Henry and George, to Nick’s office.
I noticed a fresh dark stain on the headrest behind him. His jacket and jeans were shredded and torn. His hands looked like…I didn’t even want to think about it.
No one would do that to themselves as a ruse. Don’t get that paranoid, Claire. He just saved your life.
That meant it could be anyone though. Someone I had called? Someone who tracked my cell phone? But they were all friends. At the least colleagues of a sort. Would they betray me? Could one of Adrian’s have wanted to betray him? I would need to ask. And I needed to take care of Adrian. And I needed to call the police when I got home.
Home. Could I even go home? Was it safe?
“My home. It’s safe,” Adrian said without stirring.
How did he always seem to answer my thoughts? “How do you know? How can you know anything about what is going on?” I asked.
“No one knows where I live. Everything is unlisted and nothing is in my name. And I have—if someone was checking it out I would have heard about it,” he said.
I stopped the car on the curb.
“But you don’t know it’s safe, do you? You can’t be certain about anything? Not after this evening. You need to go to the emergency room!” I said.
“I don’t know! I don’t know who they were. I don’t know what they wanted other than to kill us. I don’t know what they know. I don’t know how they found us,” Adrian screamed, before closing his eyes and grabbing his head.
“Adrian—”
“My place is as secure as any other we could find in the city, and more than your apartment, or the hospital, or anywhere else. You have to trust me. We will figure this out tomorrow and you can make any other arrangements you want, but I need to get home. Now,” he said, recovering from the pain of his outburst. His breathing became less ragged, but he kept glancing to the backseat and muttering to himself.
I looked and didn’t see anything.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“Nothing. It’s nothing. Just drive. 87 North,” he said.
I sat for a moment breathing deep and thinking. I wasn’t sure I trusted him, but the idea of spending the night alone in my apartment was terrifying.
I reached over to put the car back in gear.
“Adrian?” I asked in a quieter voice.
“Hmmm?” he mumbled, lying back down again with his eyes closed.
“What happened to the top of your gear shifter?” I asked.
Half an hour later we arrived. I threw the car door open and hit the gravel, running hard the second the car stopped, and it had nothing to do with the shifting winds or falling mist. I flew up the half-rotted porch steps, reaching out for one of the huge iron knockers, and hammered it several times.
Soundless lightning overhead illuminated the massive wolf’s head devouring my hand. I jerked back, more on reflex than fear, but jumped when the thunder rolled over.
I saw Adrian grabbing his face and rocking back and forth still in the passenger seat. I was almost in a panic over—and more than a little scared of—him.
He needed help, but insisted on being home as soon as possible.
The wind picked up as I turned to knock on the door again.
I gasped.
The door was open and a tall black man stood inside wearing black pants, a long sleeved white shirt, with a black vest covered in gold scrollwork, and a matching fedora.
“Can I help you, miss?” he asked in a clear accent that I couldn’t place. Polite, but still standing in the doorway, and obviously not inviting me in despite the coming storm.
I shook myself and let it out in a rush.
“I’m sorry. You startled me. Yes, I need help. I mean it’s Adrian. Adrian needs help. He needs to go to the hospital, but insisted on coming straight home and then he went back and forth between screaming at the backseat, and then going into fits of crying, and apologizing over and over. Sometimes he was talking to me. Other times I think he was talking to someone else, and I didn’t know what to do and…”
I had the man’s full attention when I said Adrian’s name. Before I was finished speaking, he ran to the car and opened the passenger door, kneeling to speak with Adrian, who seemed to recognize him.
The man grabbed Adrian’s arm and threw it over his shoulder, pulling him out of the car. Adrian couldn’t stand, and the man bore his full weight, having a hard time of it with the storm building and wind getting heavier. I ran down and grabbed his other arm, and together we brought him up the steps of the porch and into the dark house.
“I have him, miss,” the man said, kicking the door shut. He lifted Adrian in both hands, under his neck and knees, like a child. “Thank you,” he said.
I heard heavy footsteps ascend creaky stairs as he took Adrian to the second floor. I couldn’t see anything without the lightning.
I took one last look outside as lightning flashed through the vine-covered glass beside the door. Dust and leaves and other debris whipped around furiously obscuring everything beyond the porch. I hadn’t paid much attention to where I was going on the frantic trip here, and hoped to see something. Maybe lights from a town or a neighbor’s house. There was nothing.
I turned back to the room to get my bearings as images flashed into view with flickers of lightning through the tattered curtains. What I couldn’t see was supplanted with what I could smell in a way that reminded me of old libraries and stale courthous
e basements.
If you were ever dared to break into an old abandoned house thinking it was haunted when you were a teenager, and once inside not being so sure of yourself, with every step remembering all the things that terrified you about the dark when you were young, well, I felt like that.
I didn’t know Adrian Knight at all. I should have died an hour ago. Someone wanted to kill me. Someone had betrayed me. I didn’t think it was Adrian, but I didn’t know anything. Not for certain.
I was being hunted; I didn't know why, and I didn't know by whom. I was hiding in a long dead house, as much in the middle of nowhere as you could get outside the city, with two men I knew next to nothing about. What I did know was little comfort, thinking of the album in Roarke’s office. Or remembering how easy, how calm, he killed…no, executed…the man in the office. I had shot him too. I didn’t remember deciding to shoot him. I just had. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. If I had to do it a second time I…I don’t know. It was very unnatural to me. That was what unnerved me about Adrian. How natural it looked for him. How many lives did you have to personally extinguish to get that way?
I didn’t want to think about it, but I did.
Adrian Knight was a killer. That didn’t make him evil. In fact, that part of him had saved my life. Being alive was something I thought I would like to keep doing for a while. I was grateful. However, the little girl deep inside would not forget that I was in a dark, old, scary manor at night, with a coming storm, and a killer upstairs.
Then there was our flight from the office. Something was very wrong with him. He had screamed and argued and laughed and cried and I never could tell who or what he was addressing. He scared me. He saved my life. My mind had raced in circles since we left the office, and now that everything was slowing down…
Goosebumps ran along my skin as I shivered from the cold leeching through the warps and cracks around the front windows. Walking helped keep my warmth up though. I paced around the front room until I became more accustomed with the layout the lightning showed me. Mismatched furniture under dusty sheets sat along peeling walls as I paced around the room. I wandered farther out into one of the adjoining hallways along the front of the house, lit in flashes of lightning, and through two open little rooms in similar states of decay. Here the mismatched furniture gave way to replicas of statues and paintings, some of which I thought I may have recognized. I glided through a long bolt of lightning to a vase whose cover sheet had slipped. There was something familiar about it.
