"You're gonna like what's next even less, I'm afraid." He jerks hard, tripping me up the stairs.
"Rush…" I whisper, fighting tears of fear and confusion. "What's going on?"
He ignores my question, hauling me to the doors. The guards ignore him as he shoves open the fifteen-foot-tall doors, which may well be a thousand years old. Beyond, the floor is a black-and-white checkerboard. A heavy round table is centered beneath a candle chandelier that looks every bit as authentically ancient as the doors…and the suits of armor that flank the curved staircase…and the vases on pedestals covered by thick glass cloches.
There's not a sound…until the heavy doors slam closed with a shuddering echo that shivers down my spine with an awful finality.
"Rush? Where are we?"
“The belly of the beast," he murmurs, his voice barely audible, scratchy and ragged and freighted with darkness. “The mouth of hell. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."
That sounds really fucking bad.
Footsteps echo, growing closer. A trim, thin man with white hair slicked back approaches us—he's wearing a tuxedo, an earpiece wire trailing down behind his left ear. “Welcome, Rush and…guest." His voice is crisp, arch, and faintly French-accented. "Monsieur Pugli will be with you in a moment."
"Pugli?" I repeat. "I've heard that name."
Rush doesn't move. Doesn't speak. I don't think he's even breathing. There's more life in the suits of armor on the wall.
The butler or whoever he is leaves us, returning the way he came, touching his ear and murmuring in French into his left sleeve.
Minutes pass.
Abruptly, Rush speaks. "I can't do this."
I swallow hard, look at him. "What?"
He whirls to face me, shaking and trembling. "I can't do this. I can't fucking do this."
"Do what?" I ask. "Rush, talk to me."
The haze of horror clouding his face clears. Resolve turns his eyes the color of cold steel. "I'll ask you this only once, Bryn, and I know I’ve no right to ask, considering where we are and what I've done. But…" he takes my hands in his, crush-gripping me until the pain brings smarting tears to my eyes. "Do you trust me?"
I have roughly a quintillion questions. But it's not the time—I sense that as clearly as I sense the awful miasma of evil in this place.
I hold his eyes, search him. I see guilt, fury, self-loathing, horror, rage, confusion.
And above all?
Guilt, guilt, guilt.
"Obviously I've made a terrible mistake in trusting you this far," I whisper. "But as they say, in for a penny, in for a pound. Yes, Rush. I will choose to trust you."
He barks a laugh. “God, you're mad, aren't you?" He shakes his head, amused—or perhaps bemused is the better word; his expression sobers, then. "Stay with me. Do as I say when I say without fucking hesitating. And just…be ready. Shit's about to pop off."
Footsteps again. Distant, measured. Unhurried. I didn't know mere footsteps could drip with malignant arrogance, but somehow, these do.
I notice Rush's right hand moving. Stealing behind his back and secreting his gun into his jacket pocket.
"When I say run," he breathes, leaning close so his lips brush my ear, "you fucking run like the devil himself is on your heels, because he fucking is."
"Which way?"
"Outside. I'll be behind you." He grabs my hand and presses his knife into my hand. "If by some chance you get captured, take as many out as you can and then cut your wrists."
I stare at him. "What the fuck, Rush?"
His gaze is humorless—deadly serious. "This cunt you're about to meet is the evilest human being I've ever met, and trust me when I say I've met some really fuckin’ evil people. He gets his hands on you, you'll beg for death. But it won't come."
