AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The gratitude I felt for these people scraped against my skin, not liking the emotion it stirred, leaving me speechless.
Scarlet got up like she sensed my struggle, speaking instead.
“You don’t know how much your kindness—” Her shoulders stiffened, instantly pooling anxiety into my gut, when her attention went to the window. I didn’t even have time to ask her what was wrong when I heard the motion from the road.
Crappy magic-adapted car engines whined noisily as they hit the gravel. Vasile darted for the window, peeking out of the curtain, and I could see two familiar old jeeps filled with border officers bouncing down the road for the farmhouse.
They found us.
“Dracu!”Vasile hissed, whipping around to us.
“Do you have a back door out of here?” Anxiety pitched my voice as I moved for Scarlet. From what I had seen, there was only the front door, and all the windows were too small to climb out of.
The brakes on the jeeps squealed as they came to a stop in front of the house, dosing my veins in terror.
“Anca…” He and his wife shared a look, and she nodded.
“Come with me.” She waved me to follow. “Hurry.”
Nudging Scarlet, we darted after her. The sound of engines turning off, car doors slamming, and men’s voices pierced the back of my spine. We followed her back into the room we stayed in. Anca yanked back the rug I ended up not sleeping on, showing a hidden door in the wood boards. Yanking it open, stale dank air laced with smells of grain and dirt hit my nose. It looked like an old storage to keep things cool, an ancient refrigerator before electricity.
A pounding hit the front door while I heard men’s voices circling the house. They were ready for someone to come leaping out the window.
“Go,” I ordered Scarlet, shoving the wrapped food into her hands while I grabbed our bags, not wanting to leave any remnants behind.
“Graba!”Hurry. Anca muttered desperately over and over as another knock rattled the entrance, a voice demanding entry.
Crawling into the small dark space after Scarlet, I had to tuck in tight against her. Anca’s fearful eyes met ours as she lowered the hatch, shutting it. I heard her shuffling, placing the rug back over the crawl space, sealing us in.
Boots hit the wood floor from the living room, and strong, muffled voices knocked against my pounding pulse. I could easily pick out Vasile’s timbre compared to the others, but I struggled to hear exactly what they were saying, my panic hazing my senses.
Fingers laced through mine, squeezing tightly, calming my erratic heartbeat. I exhaled at Scarlet’s touch, focusing on my other senses, picking up on their words.
“You sure you haven’t seen or heard anything out of the ordinary?” The guard’s voice was booming with intimidation. It was the one from the other night, Captain Dumitru. “Nothing in your barn?”
“No,” Vasile responded. “Me and my wife here. We went to bed early, and as you see, we just had breakfast.”
“Just you and your wife, huh?” Slow and methodical, boots thudded across the room. “That’s a lot of plates and silverware for two people.” Scarlet’s hand crunched down on mine. “Looks to me you had guests.”
“We were so tired, I didn’t clean up the dishes from last night.” Anca’s voice had a slight tremble in it.
There were heavy footsteps and then the echo of skin being slapped.
“Don’t touch my wife,” Vasile yelled, sounding strained, like he was being held back.
“Your wife has no manners. She clearly has not been properly trained. She should speak only when spoken to,” Dumitru barked.“Cauta în casa!” Search the house!he ordered his men.
The reverberation of feet moving, the clatter of dishes crashing and breaking, and furniture being knocked over swelled to a crescendo. The guards moved through each room, purposely destroying what little these people had.
The door to our room squeaked open, air holding in my lungs, my body ready to react. The floor creaked overhead.
“Bed’s been slept in,” one muttered as metal squealed over the floor. I heard the bed frame being flipped over, shaking the space below it.
My pulse stuck in my throat. All it would take was one kicking the rug just enough to see the outline of the hatch. To open it and look. We’d have nowhere to go or hide from gunfire. We’d be killed in seconds.
Anxiety cut each breath like a scalpel, dotting my vision. I gripped Scarlet’s hand tighter when I realized she was shaking violently. And somehow I knew, like the night before, it wasn’t in fear. Her body was withering against the goblin metal, instincts demanding her magic to rise and protect her while the poison curbed her from doing so. Convulsing, her spine hit against the foundation, a low growl in her throat.
Fuck.
