If she fled without killing Samael, he’d only return for her. But in this darkness, how could she be sure to kill him? She’d have to slay him on the first stroke, before he awoke. The last buckle clicked loose, and the straps drooped atop her throbbing ankles. Careful not to let any buckles ring against the edge of the gurney, Donna drew the blankets away and flexed her legs.
The air was frigid. At least the straps had kept her warm. She swung her legs over the side of the gurney. Pain shot through her. Blood ran through aching knees and swelled her stiff ankles. Standing was agony. The dark chamber flared bright and whirled around her. Still, she stood.
She couldn’t fight in a state like this. She certainly couldn’t win. Instead, she had to run away – climb out of this living sarcophagus. Get to safety. Send someone else down into the spider hole.
She staggered away from the gurney, only then feeling the tug of the IVs in both arms. Snarling quietly, she peeled back tape, yanked needles and tubes free, and flung them away to dribble onto the cold floor. One hand groped at the darkness ahead while the other cradled her belly and the bullet wounds in it. She couldn’t see. The doorway was simply a dark gray rectangle hovering in blackness. Who knew what traps the killer might have set along the way? Taking short, painful steps, Donna slid her feet along. There weren’t even cobwebs down here, the place was so deep. Five more long, slow breaths, and she was at the threshold. Beyond was a square chamber with no ceiling – the base of a deep shaft. She looked up into the darkness, only just making out a ladder of thin iron bars sticking out of one cement wall. There were no windows anywhere in the shaft, but a diffuse light seeped down from above. Beside the ladder was the ruin of an old cable-and-pulley elevator. Its counterweight lay loose on broken cement.
“Up,” she told herself wearily, shaking the pins and needles from her limbs. Walking had been hard enough, but this?
She grabbed the ladder and began to climb. The first rung shifted under her weight and made a tooth-grinding sound. No time to wait. Hauling hard on the next rung, she rose. A third rung, and a fourth. Soon, she was climbing hand-over-hand and foot-over-foot. The going was hard, and her breath puffed out steam into the cold gray air, but she was escaping. Then, twenty feet into the air, a third of the way up the shaft, the next rung cracked free in her hand. She lurched backward and let the bar go. It fell along with chunks of loose cement, which clattered and thunked against the floor.
Holding her breath, Donna listened.
Samael was moving in the room.
Letting her breath out in a quiet hiss, Donna climbed again. There was no reason to wait. If he was awake -
“Donna?” came a low, plaintive voice below. Mother of God. She hauled herself past the gap where the rung had torn free. Halfway to the top, to its hopeful gray glow. The bottom of the shaft was only blackness, a murky well. Then, tepid light jagged out of darkness. It flickered across the wall of the shaft, rose rung by rung up the ladder, and caught in its glow a small cascade of grit coming from the wall. The light slashed up at her.
“Donna!” Beside the light, a ghostly face gazed angrily upward. Mother of God! Her hands couldn’t grab rungs fast enough. Cold cement and colder metal bit into her fingers, leaving rusty abrasions. Another glance down. “I don’t want to hurt you!” Samael shouted. Just then, flame exploded beside his face.
The crack and boom of the pistol resounded through the shaft. Sparks leaped blue from the concrete wall. Chips of mortar smacked into Donna. Heedless, she climbed.
Two thirds of the way. Twenty more feet. If she could just keep from being shot…
Another explosion. Angry heat gripped her thigh. Her leg slipped, ramming against a rung. It went numb, wedged between the ladder and the wall. Cursing, Donna struggled to pull her wounded leg free. An empty clack of steel sounded, then another. He had run out of bullets. Now he would climb.
“God damn it!” Donna hissed. She tore her wounded leg free of the rung, lacerating her skin. It didn’t matter. Growling, she hauled herself higher.
She thought of the baby – of the tidy hospital room and the sleeping baby.
“The name is Leland. Yes, I had an appointment for an inducement? Yes, I’ll wait.” Donna Leland stood in the bright, clean reception area of Froedtert Hospital, waiting patiently as the gray-haired volunteer dialed up to maternity, asking about her.
Donna never would have imagined it would end this way. Inducement. After courtroom confessions and car accidents, after poisoning and abduction and bullet wounds, after the arms and legs of the baby’s father – of Azra, of Samael – had, one by one, been fished from the Chicago River, this child would have to be induced?
She had imagined only an emergency C-section for the Son of the Son of Samael. Instead, the baby was three weeks overdue.
Already, he has broken all ties with his tempestuous father.
“The doctor will be down,” said the old woman. The suspicion was gone from her features, replaced by a smile. “So, you’re going to have a baby today?”
“Yes,” Donna replied, rubbing her belly, “my first.”
“Do you need me to call the father?” the volunteer asked indiscreetly.
Donna shook her head and looked toward the elevator, where her doctor appeared. “No, thank you. The father’s dead.”
Samael was climbing rapidly behind her. How could a one-handed man climb a ladder so quickly? There was no time to wonder. Samael had already reached the spot where the rung had come loose. He sprung across the gap with lizardlike ease.
Donna scrabbled higher. The ladder was slick with her blood. Rust prickled her palms. She flung herself upward, toward the hopeful light. Three rungs, five rungs, eight rungs…
“I don’t want to hurt you, Donna. Come back. You’re tearing open your wounds!”
Donna reached the top of the ladder. She crawled out onto a small flat landing strewn with cement rubble. A stout wooden door stood in the wall at the back of the niche. Beneath the door came a ribbon of light, the loveliest sight she had ever seen.
Donna panted for a moment on the rubble-strewn landing, and then rose and grabbed the doorknob. It turned loosely, but the door only rattled in its frame, locked.
Samael’s face topped the ladder.
Donna kicked cement rubble at him.
He cried out as grit sprayed into his eyes. Fist-sized stones struck his face. He lost his grip and tumbled back. His legs caught around a rung, and he hung upside down.
Donna clutched a jagged stone and smashed it against the corroded doorknob. It broke off. The knob clattered to the cracked cement floor. Three quick kicks only rattled the door again. With a roar, she smashed the rock against the top hinge. The old metal shattered. The other two hinges cracked as easily. The door creaked toward her. She pried it back and it fell with a baroom. Samael’s bloody fingers clasped the edge of the landing. He clawed upward. Beyond the ruined door, Donna staggered into another shaft. On the far side of it, a set of steep, wooden stairs zigzagged up a gaunt tower of metal L-beams. It looked like an old fire tower – rotten wood, rusted steel, shorn bolts, and a crumbling wall of cement.
“You can’t escape. The door above is locked, too.”
Donna rushed the stairs and clambered upward. The planks creaked beneath her feet but held. As she rounded the first switchback, the larger bullet wound in her stomach began to throb. By the second turn, it felt like a hot poker impaling her.
I should’ve brought the morphine.
Below, Samael stomped across the fallen door. It boomed like a timpani drum. He bounded up the stairs.
Donna rounded the third landing. A warm trickle of blood ran from her side. One foot was slick with it.
“I won’t kill you,” Samael hissed between breaths. “I love you. I’ll never kill you. As long as I’m your angel of death, you’ll live forever.”