A little while later, the ghouls stopped in their tracks so suddenly that she stumbled. She expected the creatures to help keep her on her feet like before, but instead, they let her fall to her knees. She put out her hands to catch her fall, wincing as the rough ground dug into her palms.
Jenna braced herself, expecting one of the creatures to yank her back up, but when none of them did, her already-racing heart began beating like a jackhammer. Being held captive in their grip was scary for sure, but being on the hard floor and at their mercy when she couldn’t see a damn thing was even worse. She stayed there on her hands and knees on the cold stone, looking left and right, trying to figure out where the ghouls had gone and what they were up to.
She tensed, waiting for claws to slash through the air and tear her apart or for a foot to slam into her back. Waiting for it to happen was the worst damn part.
Tears ran down her face. She didn’t want to die. She wanted to live more than anything, if for no other reason than the simple fact that she didn’t want to leave Trevor alone. She thought about the last time she’d seen him. She’d told him that she wanted to be with him regardless of the fact that he was a werewolf, but she hadn’t told him why—because she loved him.
Now, she would never get the chance.
She cried out as a clawed hand roughly grasped her shoulder.
“Please don’t hurt me,” Jenna begged.
This time, she didn’t wait for an answer but instead started fighting like her life depended on it—because it did. Whatever her fists came into contact with was as hard as stone, making her hands hurt like hell, but she kept swinging, kicking, and screaming anyway. She couldn’t let it end like this.
The ghouls barely seemed to notice her heroic efforts. They simply dragged her to a sitting position and pulled her backward a few feet until something hard slammed into her spine. She only had a second to figure out it was some kind of vertical post set into the floor of the cave before they yanked her arms behind her and tied her to the thing.
Still, Jenna kept struggling, kicking with her feet in any direction she could reach. Her tennis shoes came into contact with the creatures a few times but didn’t do much. Within seconds, she was tied to the post so tightly that her fingers were already beginning to tingle. While it hurt, she was more concerned about her inability to stop whatever was about to happen next.
Breath coming so fast she was hyperventilating, Jenna squirmed against the bindings around her wrists and arms. Since she couldn’t see anything in the darkness, she closed her eyes and held her breath, thinking that might help her hear something—anything—that would let her know where the ghouls were.
Long moments passed before it struck her that she couldn’t hear anything at all. In fact, it was utterly silent. The kind of eerie silence that came only when you were completely alone.
Her breath came out in a rush, but her relief was short-lived as she realized that being abandoned in this desolate section of tunnel might not be a good thing. Why would the ghouls leave her out here like this, staked down to the ground like some kind of offering?
Then she heard it.
A scraping sound somewhere far off in the tunnels.
The noise echoed off the walls so she had no idea which direction it was coming from. Butwhatever it was, it was definitely something heavy being dragged across stone.
And it was getting closer.
Jenna froze, fresh fear gripping her.
The ghouls had left her tied up here for some other kind of monster.
Like a sacrifice.
CHAPTER 22
It was stunning how fast a handful of ghouls could dig through solid stone. Actually, it was terrifying, because it meant that if they didn’t get Jenna and the others back before the clan started its migration, then his soul mate and her friends could be a hundred miles away in a few days.
Trevor couldn’t let that happen.
But unfortunately, he wasn’t sure what he was going to do to stop it. Even with Hannah’s intel on the network of caves and tunnels under the city and the help of the ghouls within her resistance movement, they were still facing incredible odds. Worse, they had no idea if Jenna or anyone else was even still alive.
Panic spread through Trevor’s chest, the pain so intense it was like someone had plunged a knife into his heart. Since finding Jenna and accepting that she was his soul mate, he’d started to subconsciously construct a vision of what his life might be like in the future. Every one of those visions had included Jenna. To even imagine that it might not happen, that Jenna might not be there with him, was the most crushing thing he’d ever experienced.
Refusing to let his mind dwell on that possibility,he turned his attention back to Hannah’s ghoul friends (and yeah, even in his head, he realized how weird that sounded), watching as they excavated a four-foot-high tunnel ahead of him. He glanced behind him to see Connor, Hannah, and Madeleine all standing together, the latter two holding flashlights. Tension—and in the case of Madeleine, fear—rolling off their bodies as they waited for the ghouls to do their part in this plan. Madeleine’s flashlight was shaking like a leaf, making the beam of light bounce all over the place.
Hannah had been right about the Umdar clan collapsing every passage leading into their territory, which was why they had to create another way in. Two ways in, actually. Hale and Mike—along with Owen and Maya—were leading a second team of ghouls that would come in from a completely different direction. The idea was that if the clan suddenly tried to move Jenna and the other captives, coming in from two directions would double their chances of stopping them. Admittedly, not knowing exactly where Jenna and everyone else were being held—if they were even still here at all—it wasn’t much of a plan. But it was the best they had. Hannah hadn’t heard anything new from her sources inside the clan, so they were running under information that was hours out of date. Anything could have happened since then.
Trevor turned back around to watch the ghoulswork. Three of them were digging while the other six were busy moving the resultant piles of rubble to the side, creating smaller closet-like alcoves to the left and right of the main path where they stowed the material, somehow compressing it down to occupy less space than it originally had. He didn’t understand how they were even doing that. It probably shouldn’t have been possible to fit the huge amount of debris into such a small space. Ultimately, he supposed it didn’t matter how the ghouls did it. They were getting closer to Jenna and the others with every passing second. That was the only thing that mattered.
Suddenly, all the ghouls stopped what they were doing almost as one, though none of them had made a sound or even a gesture that he could see. Then one turned and started making soft grunting and coughing noises. The sound made Trevor think of a cat hacking up a fur ball.
“He said we’re here,” Hannah translated, stepping past Trevor to make several grunting sounds of her own at the ghoul that he assumed was the boss of the digging operation. It was unreal that a person could speak their language.
