She pulled on the guard’s hat before crouching down, groping around for a discarded gun. “I’m ready. Just keep your eyes down.” A fragment of wood still propped the door open, and she pushed it.
The alarm continued to blare, and red lights flashed from the ceiling, pulsing over iron walls that stretched far into the distance. This corridor covered nearly half a mile beneath Cambridge’s streets—a dizzyingly long line of cells, each filled with a monster—or, so she’d once thought. Now, she knew ordinary people like Tammi were locked in here, too.
“You’re walking like you’re injured,” whispered Caine.
“I am injured, no thanks to you.”
She had to mask her pain, or the guards would see it in her limping walk and rasping breath. Josiah had promised to break her body, and he wasn’t far off. She felt as if she was breathing through a tiny straw, and pain ripped through her limbs.
She was out of the cell, but not ready to celebrate just yet. She was fairly certain several of her ribs were broken. She had a bruised tailbone, a wrist fracture, and she remained stuck in the bowels of an institution that wanted to torture her to death.
She swallowed hard, trying to block out the pain as they drew closer to the corridor’s end. What hellish torments had the Brotherhood unleashed behind those doors in the name of humanity?
Miranda, Tammi, and Aurora were just a few feet away from them right now, but there was nothing she could do about it. It wasn’t like she could break through six inches of metal door without getting caught; even Caine couldn’t do that.
At last, they reached the end of the hall. Two guards flanked another set of metal doors, and Rosalind slowed, letting Caine take the lead. She couldn’t let the guards see her face. Even if they didn’t recognize her features, the raw pain written in her eyes would spook them.
A tall, dark-haired man nodded at Caine. “What’s going on with the traitor?”
“Interrogation got messy.” Caine kept his eyes down and mimicked Josiah’s voice. “It’s still going on, but the others are handling it. Lux in tenebris lucet.”
The blond guard pushed a button, opening the metal doors. “You get your hands on that bitch? I want a turn on her when they’re—”
Fury rushed through Rosalind, and before she could stop herself, her leg swung up, and her boot connected with the man’s face. His neck snapped back, hitting the wall, and a fraction of a second later Caine slammed his elbow into the other guard’s skull. The two men slumped to the ground.
“Unconscious,” Caine said. “At your request.”
“Thanks.” She gripped her ribs, suppressing a moan.
The door had swung open into the older part of the chambers—a brick hall that opened into a stairwell leading to the ground floor.
“We’re almost out,” she said through labored breaths, climbing the stairs. She tried to catch her breath, her lungs still burning. She held on to the rails, gasping for air. What she really needed was a goddamn hospital. Caine glanced at her before slipping an arm around her waist.
“Are you okay?” he asked quietly.
“I’m alive.”
At the top of the stairs stood another set of doors. While these doors required scans to get in, there was nothing to stop them from leaving. Rosalind pushed open the door, trying to project an air of confidence as she strode past the guards into the central hall. A sigh slid from her. They were now clear of the maximum security part of the Chambers, and they just had to make it through the lobby and onto Oxford Street. She cast a quick glance around at the lobby’s towering ivory columns, the busts of famous Hunters, and the crimson walls lined with portraits of the Brotherhood’s most illustrious members: King James I, Cotton Mather, and England’s witchfinder General. This had felt like her home once.
Was it only a week ago that she’d strode through here, certain that her future was secure in this building, that she’d one day lecture to a crowd of students in the Chambers’ old Mather hall?
Her heels clacked over the marble floor as they crossed the lobby, striding past the wooden security desk to the glass doors, illuminated by streetlights outside. So close to freedom, her heart pounded harder.
Still, guilt tightened her throat. She was leaving Tammi and the others at the hands of the psychopaths.
With a final glance at Caine, she pushed on a glass door, but it didn’t budge. What the hell?
Caine pushed another door, with the same result.
Locked.
The security guard’s voice broke the silence. “You gotta use the scanner. When the alarms are going off, no one can leave without scanning.”
Chapter 28
“Of course.” Caine kept his voice even when he spoke to the guard. “The scanners.”
Any minute now, they’d be found out. She couldn’t let herself imagine the torture they’d endure after an escape attempt that left a trail of bodies.