Chain of Souls (Salem VI) (30 page)

"Open it," he insisted.

She let go of his arm, took a deep breath as if she feared that something terrible might come flying out at her, turned the handle, and pushed the door inward. Then, when nothing came hurtling out the door at her, she reached inside, felt around for a light, and turned it on. The room was empty, just consisting of shelving on two walls and a sink on the third wall. Several buckets stood in a line on two of the shelves, but rather than giving him a sense of normalcy, John recalled the buckets in the prison rooms in the Coven's catacombs beneath Salem and felt a fresh chill.

The door to the next room was different than the previous door. Strong bolt locks on the top and bottom of the thick door panel told him exactly what the room had been used for. If he'd had any question about it, he had none when he spotted the small hatch at the bottom of the door that would allow one of the buckets from the storage room next door to be shoved inside to a prisoner.

"Open it," John said when they came even with the door.

Sarah threw the bolts back and with the same obvious reluctance, shoved open the heavy door. There seemed to be no light switches inside, but the light that leaked into the room from the hallway lights illuminated the cell well enough for John and Sarah to see that the room was empty, but also the filthy blanket in one corner and the overturned bucket beside the door.

Sarah let out a gasp as she made mental connections. "Are these . . ."

"Yes," John said. "They're cells for keeping prisoners."

Sarah looked down the hallway at two more identical doors that followed the one they were looking into. "Did you know these would be here?" she asked.

John nodded. "They never put you in one?"

"No, I'm sure I would have remembered, but . . . oh my God. Who would they have kept here?"

"The people they sacrificed."

"What?"

"I'll explain later. Just keep going."

They continued down the hall, pushing open both of the other cell doors, but finding them as empty as the first, each one holding only an identical filthy blanket and bucket.

Up ahead of them was the last door that opened off to the side and then a final door at the end of the hallway that John guessed had to lead to a staircase that would take them up to the first floor. When he stopped outside that door, Sarah looked at him, but when she saw the determination in his eyes, she turned the knob and pushed it open.

The first thing John saw was the white tile on the floor, and it made his heart freeze. "Turn on a light," he said in a choked voice as he looked through the dimness at what looked like a dark shape against one wall.

Sarah felt around the inside wall near the door and John heard a click. Then he saw what he had been dreading, and when Sarah saw it, she screamed and backed out of the room in horror.

It was Amy, naked, her body chained to the wall and savagely tortured. Blood pooled at her feet. John felt dizzy, and he gripped the wall to try and stay upright as he felt his knees turn to water. It was only when he heard Amy let out a groan that he found the strength to stay on his feet and even take a few steps toward her.

"Amy," he whispered. "Oh, God, what have they done to you?"

Hearing his voice, Amy managed to raise her head. "John," she said, her voice so ephemeral it was barely audible. "I'm . . . so sorry."

"For what?" he said, his voice breaking as he took in the nearly unimaginable damage, the cuts up and down her legs, on her abdomen, her viscera peeking out in several places. He forced himself to swallow and tried to shove down the anguish he felt. "Don't talk," he said, looking around for a key to the shackles that held her. "We're going to get you out of here."

"No," Amy said, her voice strengthening slightly. Her eyes locked with his for a second and then her gaze drifted away over his shoulder. She finally brought her eyes back to his. "Love you," she said.

John nodded, his eyes blurring with tears.

Amy mumbled something else he could barely understand, and then her head dropped on her chest. John reached a hand out to touch her neck, desperate to find a pulse. There was nothing. He started to crumple, but felt Sarah's arms come around his chest, holding him up.

The next minutes and hours were a blur as they stumbled up the stairs to the first floor, finding the large house now strangely empty of the servants that had always seemed to bustle around in the background. John reacted like a man too numb to think or act as Sarah took him out into the driveway and pushed him in to the passenger seat of a Bent-ley that still had the keys in the ignition.

She told him to stay there and went back into the house, returning a few minutes later with her passport and wallet. He looked at her blankly then shook his head, trying to form coherent thoughts. "The passport? How did they get it? How did you know?" he asked.

Sarah started the car and looked in the rearview mirror as she backed up and maneuvered away from the other cars. She shook her head. "I don't know. I just knew it was there."

John moved a numb hand down to his own trouser pocket, and he patted his leg and felt his own passport where he always kept it. They could go home, he thought. But home to what?

John watched the countryside go past in a blur as they drove out the gates of Jessica Lodge's estate and turned left, away from Lands' End and toward the rest of Great Britain. They came to a roundabout and Sarah headed north and east and kept in that general direction and after a time they saw signs for London and then signs for Heathrow.

Sarah parked the car in long-term parking, helped John out, and then went back and like a career criminal she wiped the wheel and all the surfaces to erase any fingerprints they might have left. She led her father to the bus and from there to the terminal where they bought two tickets on a flight to Boston.

John followed her through security and sat beside her in the waiting area, feeling like a terribly old man, a man who had been utterly used up by some terribly violent and intense experience. His mind was blank, too stunned and exhausted for rational thought, but underneath the empty white noise of random thoughts he felt an unspeakable pain welling up like a knife in his heart. Amy, he thought, she had kept things from him but only because she was trying to save him. Why couldn't he have understood and accepted that and at least let their last few days and hours together be something he could look back on with anything but bitter regret?

He turned his head because he felt Sarah's gaze.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

"I don't know," he told her.

"I'm so sorry about Amy."

He nodded. "Thank you."

"What was it she said to you at the very end?"

He closed his eyes and tried to recall those last words she had spoken, words so soft he had hardly been able to make them out. Words that even now left him wondering if he had heard correctly. Amy had looked past him, toward Sarah just before she said it.

"I think she said, 'I'm sorry because I was too late.'"

"I wonder what she meant by that?"

He looked at her, his daughter, the one surviving person in his life after the Coven had murdered both of the other women he had loved, and he tried to shove down the fear that nibbled at the corners of his exhausted mind. Things would get better, he told himself. Things would definitely get better because they had to, didn't they?

"I don't know what she meant, not exactly," he told Sarah. And he hoped it was true.