Chapter 11: The Belly of the Earth
The silence that followed the gunfire was heavier than the rock pressing down on Chloe’s spine. It was a dense, suffocating quiet, broken only by the ringing in her ears and the distant, agitated whining of the hounds. In the pitch black of the fissure, time ceased to exist. Chloe didn't know if she lay there for ten minutes or ten hours. Her hands were clamped so tightly over her mouth that she could taste the iron of her own blood where her fingernails bit into her cheeks.
If you love me, you live.
Lilith’s final words echoed in the claustrophobic space. Chloe forced herself to move. The rock walls tore at her jacket, scraping the skin from her shoulders. She dragged herself forward on her elbows and knees, the waterproof flashlight gripped tightly in her jaw. The air grew colder, smelling of ancient mud and wet limestone. Panic clawed at her throat with every inch. What if the crack narrowed? What if she got stuck down here, entombed in the dark while Julian’s men hunted for her mother’s remains? She army-crawled through the dirt, her tears long dried, replaced by a hollow, freezing shock. After what felt like an eternity of bruising stone and breathless terror, the ground slanted downward. The muffled sound of rushing water reached her ears. She pushed through a final, jagged bottleneck and tumbled out into the freezing night air, splashing into the shallow mud of a riverbank. She was out. But she was entirely alone.
