The right shoulder of Aaron’s favorite black leather jacket was shredded, claw marks ripping all the way through his shirt beneath, blood stains darkening the white material. But at least his arm was put back together, thanks to Jamie. In the last attack, none of them had gotten by unscathed. Even Heather, who had told them she hardly ever got injured by the bastards anymore, had been bitten pretty badly. Luckily, Jamie’s healing powers worked on Hybrid’s, too. She’d been astounded at how quickly and completely he could mend her shattered hand without even touching her.
“They’re getting stronger, more intense,” Elliott noted as they all took refuge in one of the tunnel openings. It was the safest place to be. They could still see the center area where they’d found the spike, and they should be able to make it back out there when they heard the whooshing sound of the portal opening so that they could note which of the tunnels was active, but staying in the opening itself had proven dangerous. Elliott was right. Whatever controlled this place didn’t want them there. But it didn’t want them to utilize the portal openings either. It wanted them dead.
He’d had to order everyone to turn their phones off after the last round of texts had come through. Reading Cadence’s words had been uplifting, but they were all bound to run out of power soon enough. Brandon had a portable charger. That was something. They’d decided that his phone would be the one they’d communicate with for now, so when Aaron had sent a text back to Cadence, he’d told her only to text Brandon and to tell the others not to bother sending texts to the rest of the Guardians because all of them would be keeping their phones completely off until Brandon’s died. Then, they’d switch to someone else’s phone if they were still in there. Brandon had about 68 percent left on his battery, not good, but better than Dax’s which had been down to 5 when the kid had turned it off.
“So... if we number the tunnels, counting this one as number one since it went off first,” Alex was thinking aloud, “then the next portal opening occurred at eighteen. This most recent opening was at six. I would guess, then, that the next portal to open shall be twenty-four.” He gestured around the corner of the opening at the tunnel he was referring to.
“But they all shift,” Dax reminded him. “Are you taking that into consideration?”
“Yes,” Alex assured him. “They seem to move in position, but not order. An entire tunnel isn’t moving overtop of another one.”
“How do you know that?” Elliott asked. “Can you discern them that well by the openings?”
“I believe so.” Alex seemed confident.
“It’s too bad we can’t number them,” Jamie said from his position at the opening of the tunnel, across from Aaron.
“I didn’t think to bring any chalk with me—this time,” Elliott joked.
“We could use blood.” It wasn’t the first time Aaron had made a suggestion that had all eyes staring at him like he was crazy. “I mean, we know from earlier we can see it, and we have enough of it.”
“You volunteerin’?” Heather asked.
“Sure.” He’d go through a little pain if it meant he’d get back to Cadence faster.
“You want us to slice you open so you can paint a number on each of the tunnel openings?” Elliott had to look around Heather to meet his eyes.
“No. I’ll do it myself.” He was already up, drawing Van’s knife out of his jacket before the thought of what he was doing made him too nauseous to follow through. His hand had already been cut open, and so had his shoulder. He was no stranger to pain, but inflicting it upon himself was another matter entirely. Still, standing outside of the tunnel with the razor sharp knife in his hand, he didn’t hesitate. He sliced into his finger as deep as he could without cutting it in half, thinking that would be the easiest way to write.
“Damn, you’re thorough,” Jamie joked, standing beside him, likely to heal him as soon as he was done. There were a lot of tunnels; this would take a while—and a lot of blood.
Aaron formed the number one as quickly and as small as he could so that it could still be read before moving on to the next tunnel opening, trying to keep the numbers in about the same place and just inside the tunnel openings so that if the passages shifted, the numbers would go with them. His finger was bleeding pretty profusely, but he didn’t know how long that would last before it started to congeal, and he really hoped he didn’t have to cut it open again. Unfortunately, by the time he’d gotten to tunnel number seven, there was no longer enough blood to write the number, and he had to cut open a different finger. “This is going to take forever,” he muttered, not exactly to Jamie, but he knew his friend overheard him.
“Just be careful,” Jamie said, glancing around over his shoulder as they moved to the next tunnel. “The closer we get to the dark part of the area, the louder the howls are.”
Aaron worked as fast as he could, but he had to slice his fingers open a few more times, and by the time he got to number thirty, he was feeling lightheaded. He didn’t even hear Elliott behind him until he said, “All right, showoff. My turn.” He took the knife out of Aaron’s hand with little resistance, and Jamie immediately clapped his hands down on the Guardian Leader’s shoulders, making him feel reenergized again.
“Holy hell,” Elliott shouted as he cut into his own hand. “How have you done this a dozen times? This really hurts!”
“Yeah, well, you just gotta want it,” Aaron replied, not sure that even made any sense. He had a feeling Elliott wasn’t in as much pain as he let on. Luckily, the big man made it all the way back around the circle before drying up. His numbers weren’t as neat or as evenly placed as Aaron’s, but they would do.
“Well, I hope that little experiment ends up being worth it,” Alex said from his sentinel position near the opening of the tunnel where the others were sitting.
“Me, too,” Elliott agreed as Jamie healed him, and he handed Aaron Van’s knife back. “This takes, ‘Charlie bit my finger,’ to a whole ‘nother level.”
Dax and Brandon snickered, and Brandon tossed out there, “You’re so lame, Dad. That’s the oldest meme around.”
“It’s not a meme. It’s a YouTube video,” Elliott replied, sinking down onto the ground next to his son.
“Yeah, it’s also a meme. A meme can be a video,” Dax explained.
“No, a meme is just one of those pictures with the words written on top of it,” Elliott disagreed.
Aaron had no interest whatsoever in hearing the end of the discussion. He was ready for the portal to open again, to shift if it was going to, to test Alex’s theory as to which tunnel would open next. If it wasn’t quite as predictable as possible, this would take a lot longer than he’d hoped. He was ready to go home.
He wondered what Cadence was doing. He had no way of knowing what time it was there—night or day. He thought the portal had opened three times since they’d arrived. So if that was every six hours, as Heather had mentioned someone had told her before they shoved her in here, then that meant it was sometime between 6:00 PM and midnight. But he didn’t know for certain. Even though the texts came through with time stamps, he had no way of knowing if any of them were accurate. They were all over the place from one text to another, and they could’ve been the times the texts were sent for all he knew. How their phones were working at all was beyond him. All he knew was that it felt like it had been a lot longer than one day since he’d arrived.
The howling and hissing started to pick up again, and he heard Alex swear under his breath. “I think we’re in for it again,” he muttered, drawing out his long rifle from his back.
“Great,” Aaron replied standing. He checked his Glock and saw that he had half a clip left there and only one more in his pocket. His other Glock was loaded but with no extra clips. They needed to get out of there before they all ran out of ammo. How Heather had survived in here for a hundred years was beyond him.
