The scraping sound got louder.
Jenna yanked at her bindings harder, ignoring how much it hurt. Her mind tormented her, showing her images of a gigantic monster dragging itself across the rough floor, it’s horny carapace gouging grooves into the stone as it came toward her.
Blood ran down her arms. The bindings were cutting into her skin as she struggled, but she didn’t care. Something was out there, and it was coming this way, and she definitely didn’t want to be here when it arrived. The thought of being attacked while still tied to this post made her stomach twist into knots.
There was a crunching sound from somewhere nearby, quickly followed by a soft clatter, like pebbles hitting the ground—or bone fragments falling out of some horrible creature’s mouth as it chewed. She stifled a sob at the thought and fought even harder to free herself.
She stared into the darkness around her as she tried to escape, willing her eyes to work better, to reveal the creature coming her way, to let her see those teeth at least once before they locked down on her body. But nothing came except tears.
“Jenna, what’s wrong?” a familiar voice said suddenly from only inches away. “It’s just me. Calm down. You’re okay.”
The adrenaline drained from Jenna’s body so fast that it felt like she was a balloon that had sprung a leak. She collapsed back against the post behind her, feeling dizzy from the relief.
“Hale!” she finally managed to say, the words barely making it out through all her gasping and wheezing. “Why didn’t you say who you were sooner? And what the hell was all that noise? I thought you were a frigging monster coming to eat me!”
Bright beams from two flashlights suddenly flared in her face, overwhelming her eyes that had become completely accustomed to the pitch-black void of the cave she’d been left in for what felt like hours, and she blinked.
“Sorry about that,” Hale whispered as he sliced the bindings around her arms with his claws. “I guess we made more noise digging our way in here than we realized.”
Jenna looked around for Trevor, but instead, she found Mike, Owen, and Maya. And behind them, barely visible in the glow of Maya’s flashlight, were four ghouls, crouching down on their haunches like a bunch of little kids. She fell back on her butt and crab walked in reverse to get away, expecting the ghouls to come charging straight at her. But theymerely stayed where they were, tilting their heads and staring at her curiously.
“Relax,” Hale said, kneeling down by her side. “These ghouls are friends of Hannah’s. They’re part of her resistance movement. They’re the ones who dug the tunnel so we could get in. They’re helping get you and all the other captives out.”
Jenna’s head spun, attempting to unpack all the crap Hale had unloaded on her. “Ghouls…Hannah resistance? Wait…what?”
“I’d love to explain it all in exquisite detail, but we don’t have time.” Mike leaned over his teammate to tell her. “I have no idea why the ghouls left you staked out here in the middle of the cave like this, but it can’t be for any good reason. We need to go—now. Where are Esme, Isaac, and the rest of the prisoners?”
Jenna still had a hundred questions of her own but accepted that they’d have to wait. “They’re back in that direction,” she said, pointing the way she thought the creatures had brought her. “The ghouls are holding everyone in a kind of prison carved into the side of one of the larger caverns. They pulled me out of the cell and brought me here, but I think everyone else is still back there.”
“That’s good,” Hale said.
Taking Jenna’s hand, he helped her to her feet, then guided her in the opposite direction she’d pointed out a few seconds ago. She stumbled a fewtimes since the only light they had to see by came from Owen’s and Maya’s flashlights, and they were already a dozen yards ahead of them.
“Where’s Trevor, Connor, and Hannah?” she asked worriedly.
“They headed for the holding pens near the center of the clan territory along with Hannah’s ghoul buddies while the rest of us came in through the back door,” Hale told her. “If the bad ghouls heard them, we figured they’d take the prisoners and run this direction, where we’d be waiting for them.”
Jenna didn’t consider herself any kind of master strategist, but even she could see about a dozen ways that plan could have gone wrong. Apparently, it had since she was the only one who had been rescued by the scheme, while everyone else was still trapped in the holding cells.
“Okay, but why are we heading this way?” she asked. “Shouldn’t we go toward the holding cells so we can help Trevor and everyone else?”
“Not right now,” Hale said. “Trevor would want us to get you out of here first. Then we’ll come back to help him, Connor, and Hannah.”
That was a stupid idea if she’d ever heard one.
Jenna stopped in her tracks, turning to tell Hale exactly that, but before she could unload on him, some rocks clattered to the floor of the tunnel not more than twenty feet ahead of them.
She and everyone else froze…ghouls included.
“What was that?” Owen whispered even as the ghouls looked back and forth among themselves, soft grunts creeping out from deep in their chests.
She would have asked them what was wrong, except for the obvious language barrier. Still, even without having a clue what they were muttering about, she knew it had to be something bad. More rocks started falling all around them, and her stomach clenched as she remembered the cave in which they’d been trapped in a couple of days ago. Crap, they were going to bring the entire ceiling down on their heads.
“The entrance to the tunnel we came in is right ahead of us,” Mike yelled, shoving both Maya and Owen into motion. “We need to move!”
Jenna didn’t want to leave without Trevor, her siblings, and everyone else who could very well still be trapped in the other tunnel, but more rocks falling from the ceiling convinced her. They definitely couldn’t stay here.
But she’d gone barely more than a single step before it seemed like the whole world was falling apart around her. Chunks of rocks were dropping all around them, hitting the floor and shattering, the noise incredible. Then amid the falling chaos came larger shapes that fell to the ground with no sound at all.
