Page 145 of Hurt

The building was the first they encountered in the Catacombs compound. It must serve as the Vega Cabals offices. She distinctly remembered a desk and shelves of books in the room they had first been held in. If the Vega Cabal used the Void as their main method of body disposal, then it would be more efficient to have it just below their offices.

Willow didn’t know what time it was. Would people be around the office? It didn’t matter. She had the element of surprise on her side.

Finding Kurt was her only priority. Find him and get out. Revenge could wait.

Her heart fluttered at the thought of freedom. Of seeing Roland again. She wanted the man to hold her against his broad chest, to smooth her hair, and listen as Willow told him everything. He wouldn’t say a word but the slight tremor in his hand or the twitch in his eyebrow would speak for him.

Those rings would clink together as he planned his vengeance. Even as his thoughts were filled with violence, he would lovingly touch Willow, fingers light and comforting.

It was a simple thing to be loved. So simple, yet Willow would do very complicated things to keep it.

Light spilled out from an arched doorway and she slowed down, crouching down on legs that screamed with exhaustion. Her muscles trembled with the effort of simply holding herself up. She waited. Long moments ticked by but no shadow darkened the doorway.

Cautiously, Willow looked around the doorway.

The silence was deafening. Straining to catch even the barest of sounds, she thought her ears might pop off with the intensity with which she was listening.

Crouched down low, she moved around the wall and shuffled to the office they had been held in before. The door was ajar, and Willow gently closed it behind her, twisting the knob so it didn’t click.

Without the presence of the Vega men the room seemed bigger than it had when she had been here last. It looked much like it had before: Stark and impersonal, like most of Catacombs. A small window was set high into the wall. Thick bars crossed over the glass, creating lined shadows oddly reminiscent of a jail cell on the far wall.

The desk was in the middle of the room. A heavy looking wood thing, it reminded Willow of the kind of desk nineteenth century oil tycoons would have in their office to intimidate their subordinates.

She set the bone down on top of the desk and began rifling through drawers. What she really needed was one of those oversize theme park maps with a big red ‘You are Here’ dot but she didn’t think she was going to get that lucky.

Most of the papers she found in the drawers were jibberish to her. Lines of numbers and accounts. Some legalese tossed in for spice. Maybe someone like Grant could understand them but they were incomprehensible to someone like Willow. They wouldn’t tell her where Kurt was.

Closing the last drawer, she pushed some of her muddy hair from her eyes and looked up. Above the wall full of Medieval weapons a small box was set into the structure of the room, right at the juncture where the wall met the ceiling. A red LED light blinked in a steady rhythm.

It wasn’t a camera. There was no lens. Willow cocked her head and got ready to investigate when she heard a thump from overhead.

Looking up at the ceiling, she sucked in a breath and waited. No other noises followed but someone was upstairs. She had no idea who it could be, but they would be able to tell her where Kurt was.

Collecting her bone, she slipped back into the hallway. The narrow stairway was claustrophobia-inducing. Her head brushed against the low ceiling, and if she didn’t pin her elbows to her ribs, she would scratch them against the wall.

Halfway up the stairs everything changed. Her bloody feet found themselves cushioned by soft carpeting. The ceiling opened up and the lights went from industrial bunker chic to ornate glass designs. Rather than giving the place a softer look it almost looked like a poor disguise—two cartoon kids in a trench coat pretending to be an adult kind of disguise. The attempts to make what amounted to a nuclear bunker homey was disconcerting. Willow would have preferred they just rolled with the Cold War aesthetic.

The carpet did make it easier to move silently. At the top of the stairs the hallway split off into two directions. Willow stopped to listen but there was only silence.

She could just pick a direction and hope it was the right one but walking in circles blindly meant there was a greater chance she could be recaptured. While she thought she could probably take Asher, if she encountered Tony she was screwed. The man would just pick her up by her neck and carry her like a kitten.

Glancing down to the bone in her hand she felt something stirring under her breastbone. Whether it was exhaustion or nerves raw from too much adrenalin, she listened to the stirring. Lifting her hand straight out she held the tibia loosely in fingers that were unwilling to part. Exhaling sharply, she opened her hand and let the bone fall.

As it fell the bone shifted, somehow twisting during the short fall so the sharp end was pointing in the opposite direction. It landed with a soft thud in the carpet, completely still. Willow huffed and shook her head.

“Thanks,” she whispered to the leg, picking it up and beginning down the hallway in the direction the bone indicated.

Thankfully there was nothing hanging on the bare cement walls. Willow didn’t think she could handle seeing Vega family photos looking down on her. What would they even look like? A Vega family vacation to the local human sacrifice? The Vega Cabal all gathered around the blood pit smiling while holding up a peace sign. Maybe someone in the family scrapbooks and there would be a little ‘Making Memories’ sticker on the bottom.

Willow shook her head. She really needed to get out of here.

A noise reached her. It was so faint that she was almost positive she imagined it until she heard it again. Giggles. Someone was giggling up ahead.

There was a door up to her left. It was the first she had seen in this long hallway and the laughter seemed to be coming from it.

Pressing her ear to the door she tried to recognize the voices coming from within. The laughter sounded feminine which was weird. As far as Willow knew there were no females in the Vega family. As if you needed another reason to hate them, they tended to be misogynistic. Wives and daughters were sent to live in another compound, away from where the business was conducted and not allowed in Catacombs.

A male voice filtered out of the room and Willow inhaled sharply.