“No, we stay together.” Jacob looked at me and I nodded.

We watched Cates reach down and yank Bernard up a second time. “Okay, I will!” he screamed. “Please don’t hurt me anymore.” He broke down sobbing like a small child. He slid back down to the floor and crawled over to the corner to our right, on hands and knees, crying with his head hanging. He got up on his knees, using the wall to support himself, then pulled back one of the inset stones. “The stairs that go up go to Angelica’s private quarters. The ones that go down will take you to three tunnels. There are many places to get lost past the torture…” he paused.

“Why don’t you just open it and show us the way,” Garvin said, shocking me. “We’ll need a guide.”

“Please, I don’t want to go down there. I beg you, I will do anything.” Bernard grabbed the bottom of Garvin’s jacket and pulled as he begged. Garvin slapped him.

Bernard released his grip on Garvin’s jacket and like a wet puppy, scooted back into the corner and stuck his hand into the opening. A loud clank rang out as chains rubbed together and the wall lifted into the unknown.

Chapter Twenty Nine

              “Should I go check on him?”

              “No, Tanda, he will be fine. Besides, he cannot go anywhere that we cannot go,” Martin smiled at her.

              “Do you think they’re okay? I wish I could have gone with them.”

              “You are very fond of this Derek, are you not?”

              “I love him very much, Martin. To look at us we resemble the same age, but I am so much older in here.” Tanda touched her chest over her heart. “I believe that does not matter, but I often wonder if it will.”

              “Love cares not for any of the same things that we do in life, my child. It can only feel; it has no eyes to see age or color or deeds. Love knows only the heart that it touches and that touches it back. For when the two become one, this thing that beats in here,” Martin laid his hand over Tanda’s, “is finally free.”

              “Then why, when I look at him, do I feel more hunger than I ever did in Yvette’s hands? Why do I feel like I am in a cage with no door when he walks into a room and I dare not say how I feel when he touches me?” She blushed, lowering her eyes and moving around the desk.

              “He is your first love and the first is always an experience that you will never forget. Cherish every moment that you have with young Derek, love him with all that you have, Tanda. You both have my blessing,” Martin leaned back in the desk chair. “But, I fear if you do not try to stop him from doing this crazed madness that your first may well be your last.”

              Tanda walked over to the closed entrance to her entrapment and lightly touched it. “You are a good mentor and teacher,” she turned and looked at him. “But, and I mean no disrespect, are you as good at being a student?”

              “No offence taken, young one.”

              “Martin, I smell smoke and this stone is very warm.”

              Martin rushed to the stone entrance and got down on his hands and knees putting his face close to the floor. “They’ve set my home on fire. We have to get to the tunnels.” ***

              A light wind blew a swirl of dust around our feet as the door lifted into the walls above us. Bernard stood with his back to the rising wall with his hands out toward us, begging to be left in the stone hall. He stepped away the higher the wall went up but couldn’t go far with us pressing in, urging him to move back into dark abyss that only he knew and seemed to fear with great prejudice. Two decaying arms shot out with more speed than I had seen from death, grabbed Bernard and pulled him, screaming and kicking into the darkness. Seconds later his screams were cut off abruptly.

              “Monroe left, Cates right,” Jacob commanded as he took the middle. The rest of us stepped in behind them and waited for whatever was going to come out of that blackness. What came out was not what I was expecting. Bernard’s crumpled and bloodied body was thrown at us with great force, knocking us down like twigs before he burst into ash. Cates and Monroe were helping us up, when the thing dragged itself into our torchlight.

              I screamed and back peddled on hand and heels toward the hall that we had come in from, now knowing why Bernard was scared to death to go down. It was hideous, whatever it was. It resembled Fala in some ways, with its massive snout full of teeth, only it had no hair and it smelt of pure death. Its arms were dripping gore from bone and tissue that looked as if would pop at any moment. It stomped on backward feet and twisted legs, opening its mouth while it shook its head, slinging Bernard’s blood and gore everywhere.

              “Kill it!” Tammy yelled as it towered over her, its mangled genitals swinging grossly between its legs. She held her arm up, not to ward off its bite, but to block the horror that was dripping from its rotting, dead flesh. “Get it away from me!”

              Derek made a move to swing his blade at it, but it knocked him into the wall like he was nothing but a speck of dust. I couldn’t understand how it could be so strong if it was barely held together with decayed bits.

              “Jacob, his leg,” Monroe called out, readying his own weapon toward the thing. “Wolf beast, his snout!” Fala ignored Monroe and continued to give Derek aid.

              “Fala, we need you!” Jacob yelled.

              “Get it off of me!” Tammy screamed.

              “Fala!” I screamed.

              Fala threw back his wolf head and let out a sound that put chills over my entire body and made me very grateful he was on our side. He turned as he stood, stormed over and latched his forearm around the thing’s huge snout and clamped it shut.

              “Cates, take the back of the neck until you remove the head. Jacob, on the count of three. One…”

              “No! Wait! Not over me,” Tammy cried out.

              “Two, three!”

              Jacob, Monroe, and Cates swung their blades in unison and the beast fell where it had been standing. Garvin grabbed one of Tammy’s feet and Sydney the other, pulling her free right before the thing hit the ground. Cates stepped over its severed legs and finished what he had started by removing its head. “There is always a first time for everything, yes, Master Jacob?”

              “Yes, Master Cates. That is indeed one for our journals.”

              “What the hell was that thing?” I asked, sliding back into the room from the hall.

              “Now you join the fun,” Jacob raised one brow.

              “I was…just watching our backs from the other way. Yeah, it scared the crap out of me and I was getting out of the way, so there. Tammy, you okay?”

              “And she changes the subject,” Derek laughed.

              “Hey, whose side are you on anyway?” I bumped him as I walked by.

              “I do not think it wise to go down,” Fala said in his gruff voice. “Even the cats have disappeared.”

              “That’s right, where did Lane and Luther go?”

              “They are not a violent being and more than likely went home,” Monroe said.

              “If that’s true, then why did you and your buddy kill their friends?” Derek asked, pushing the thing's arm away from him with his foot, while holding his own arm where he had made contact with the wall.

              “Reed had no stopping point. Two slices with his blade and it was too late, the other two barely got away before I could stop him.”

              “You know, why is everyone, all of the sudden, supposed to just trust you anyway? You may be his long lost brother and all, but maybe that’s the card these elder people are playing. Have any of you even thought about that?” Derek looked around the room. “How did he know how to kill this walking dead wolf?”