The scents of blood and fear followed us as we edged our way, yet again, down a broad hallway.  My eyes devoured our surroundings, and the hairs on my arms stood up like frigid children lost in an endless storm.  Every shadow was a murderer; every speck on the dirt-covered floor was a drop of blood.  And every time I looked at Coden, Rosalie, or Valarie, all I could see was them sprawled out on the floor in a pool of blood, just like Emily.

I hated being left to my own thoughts—especially here.  Nothing good ever came from it.

“Where are we, anyway?” Valarie asked.

This was the first time anyone had spoken in the past fifteen minutes or so.  Not even Coden had said a word as we maneuvered our way through the building.  He would use his eyes and hands instead of his mouth, his lips kept in a perfectly straight line.  Though he didn’t make it obvious, I could tell that this situation was beginning to wear him down, and that soon enough his fear would probably leak through the cracks of his façade.  I wanted to help him.  I really did.  But how could I help him when I couldn’t even help myself?

“I think we’re in a warehouse,” Coden replied, his voice stiff, collected. 

“But all of the rooms look like they belong to a house.”

I almost nodded but kept my head down, squinting through the darkness.  Rosalie clung to me, her feet shuffling as she struggled to keep up.  She was wearing Airwalk sneakers—the kind that I used to wear when I was her age.  Well, at least what I assumed was her age.  I kept forgetting that I’d only guessed how old my fellow captives were.

My eyes swept over Rosalie, Coden, and Valarie.  They were all so mundane-looking.  Rosalie, with her Total Girl T-shirt and short, frilly green skirt; Coden with his blue shirt and jeans; Valarie with her stolen, faded green pullover sweatshirt and jeans.  Everyone looked so normal.  And yet they didn’t.  Maybe it was the fear seemingly etched into Valarie’s and Rosalie’s faces, or maybe it was the way Coden held himself together.  Maybe it was something else entirely.  I honestly had no damn idea.

“Yeah, they do,” Coden agreed, his words ripping me away from my conflicted thoughts.  “But all of the hallways aren’t set up like a house at all.  I think it was renovated to look like a house.  I’m guessing it’s in case any of us escape.  They’d bank on the fact that we’d run away without looking back and then tell the police we’d been thrown into an abandoned home.  Or maybe it was for some other reason.  I don’t know.”

“Wow,” Valarie breathed.  “How the hell do you know all that?  Are you like in college for building buildings and stuff?”

“I’m not in college.”  Coden brought a hand through his hair.  “I’m in high school.  But my uncle is into this kind of stuff.”

My eyes shot over to Coden, and they widened.  I wasn’t quite sure why it shocked me that he was still in high school.  Maybe it was because he was handling this as though he was so much older than the rest of us.  “How old are you?” I asked softly.

Coden’s gaze shifted my way.  “I’m eighteen,” he replied.  “Recently.  You?”

“I’m seventeen.”  I sighed shakily.  “Almost eighteen.”

“I’m fourteen,” Valarie mumbled.  She glanced at Rosalie.  “How old are you?”

Rosalie seemed to cower further into me.  I could feel her shaking.  “I just turned twelve,” she whispered.

Valarie’s eyes widened and her mouth dropped.  “Holy hell,” she muttered.  She shot an angered look around us, completely seething now.  “What the hell is wrong with these people?  I thought it was demented when they kidnapped teenagers, but a twelve-year-old?  She’s not even thirteen!”

“Keep your voice down,” Coden warned.  I could detect an undertone in his voice that said he was resisting the urge to scream himself.  He was as pissed as the rest of us that someone could just pick up a twelve-year-old from the street without even caring.  And the fact that they planned on killing Rosalie only made this so much worse.

“S-Serenity,” Rosalie whimpered against me.  I looked down at her, biting my lip.  “D-do you think there are other twelve-year-olds here?  O-or am I the only one?”

“I don’t know, Rose,” I told her truthfully.  “Age doesn’t really matter here, though, does it?”  I paused as a sudden thought occurred to me.  “How did he get you?  Were you walking around by yourself?”

Rosalie shook her head.  “Mom and I were grocery shopping.  We were heading out to the car when Mom said she forgot her keys at the register.  I was waiting by the car when he—when he got me.”

“So your mom knows you’ve been kidnapped.”  Valarie nodded to herself.  “That’s good.  That means the police are looking for you—for all of us.”

“Y-y-y-you think?” Rosalie asked.

Valarie nodded again.  “Most definitely.”

That seemed to cheer Rosalie up, because a smile hinted at her lips.  However, it faded almost immediately.  “But they have no idea where we are,” she whimpered, her voice thick with tears.  “No idea at all.” 

“Not yet,” Valarie agreed.  “But they will.  Haven’t you seen Criminal Minds?  They’re professionals.”

“I’m not allowed to watch that show,” Rosalie said softly.  “Mom says it’s inappropriate for me.”

The urge to vomit returned.  Not because I saw blood (excluding the blood on Valarie), and not because I saw a mangled corpse.  These people—Samantha, Al, and Dan—had kidnapped a girl who wasn’t even old enough to watch a crime-fighting show.  Sure, twelve-year-olds watched PG-13 movies and shows all the time, but Rosalie clearly hadn’t.  She was too innocent, too fragile.

And now she was here.

I think that’s what disturbed me the most.  They didn’t care that they’d stolen a little girl away from her mother, didn’t care that this girl was still in Elementary school.  They had bloodlust, and they were going to quench their thirst no matter who they killed.

○

For what felt like hours, we slunk through the building and hid in various hiding places when we thought we heard the distant sounds of a captor finding its victim.  Scurry, hide, scurry hide.  Over and over again in an endless cycle.  And no matter how many halls we turned, no matter how many rooms we looked in, the door was nowhere in sight.

I was beginning to think that there wasn’t one at all.

Conversation long fell away.  I knew that not talking was for the best, but at the same time I loathed it.  Without speaking, I was left to my own internal battles instead of just fighting our external one.  I was left to think of my family, of the bodies that were probably piling up around the building.  I didn’t want to think.  But what else was there for me to do besides be afraid?

I could hear Valarie crying, and I knew that she was thinking about Emily again.  That only made me visualize my older sibling—Skylar, my brother—mangled on the floor like Emily had been.  That, or my younger sister, Angie.  The images would flip-flop, switching off in an endless cycle.  I considered myself (semi) lucky for not seeing Tommy or my parents’ bodies as well.  Seeing Skylar’s and Angie’s was enough to make me want to bawl my eyes out and hurl.

But for Valarie, the images in her head weren’t some sick nightmare.  They were real.  My family was safe.  Her sister was dead.  Dead.  If just the thought of losing any of my siblings was enough to threaten tears, I could only imagine how hard this must have been for her.  And she had to pretend to be strong, because that was the only way she might get out of this alive.

“My parents are going to hate me,” Valarie whispered suddenly.

Coden and I glanced at her.  “What do you mean?” I asked as Coden shook his head and said, “No they’re not, Valarie.”

“I killed Emily.”  Valarie’s voice shook.  “I killed her.  If it wasn’t for me—”

“You didn’t kill Emily,” Coden replied, his tone stern but soothing.  I wasn’t sure how he managed to combine the two tones together, but he did.  “Al did.”

At the mention of Al, my stomach twisted.  In an instant a series of images flashed before me, so swift that I almost reeled back and fell on my butt.  Al holding Coden down; Al swiping the knife across Coden’s cheeks; me stabbing Al in the neck.  Me stabbing Al in the neck.  Me stabbing Al in the neck.  Me stabbing Al in the neck.

All this time, I’d been able to block out what happened earlier because there was so much else going on.  But now, there seemed no way to escape it.  Because of me—and Coden—a man was no longer breathing.  Yes, that man was trying to kill us, and yes, I wasn’t upset that Al was no longer in this world.  But it was by my hand; at least, I’d helped.  I had blood on my hands.  I’d ended a life.

If I lived through the night, how was I supposed to deal with that?

“Yes, but I could have tried to help.”  Valarie wiped at her eyes, but the tears didn’t stop.  “My parents will look at me like the coward I am.  I let him kill her.  I just sat there.  I closed my eyes.  I wasn’t even brave enough to see Emily while she died.”

“They’re not going to blame you for that.”  Coden placed a hand on her shoulder.  “Valarie, your parents will understand what kind of situation you were in.  They’ll just be happy that you’re okay.”

“Yeah,” Valarie muttered bitterly.  “If I even make it out of here.  If any of us make it out of here.”

Coden seemed about ready to answer, but the sudden sound of pounding footsteps made his words die in his throat.  He tossed me a wide-eyed look before gesturing back the way we’d come.  “Come on,” he whispered.  “We need to move—now.”

He barely got the words out before two figures appeared at the far end of the hall.  Coden and I cursed under our breaths before each taking either Valarie’s or Rosalie’s arms and shoving them into the nearest room.  We didn’t even have enough time to hurry into the room behind them before Dan and the boy he was chasing spotted us.  The boy gestured madly for us to run, and that’s exactly what we did, rushing away from them and back the way we’d come. 

With frantic hands, I grabbed onto my scissors.  They were slippery in my sweating hands, but I gripped them as tightly as I could anyway.  Though the thought of using them again made me sick to my stomach, I felt safer with them in my hand.  And when Coden pulled out Al’s old knife, I knew he felt the same way.

We were only running for a few moments before I slipped and fell in a small puddle of blood.  I wanted to scream at the pain that shot up my back, but what did my pain matter?  There was a man chasing us with a gun.  A gun.

And I’d just tripped.  Of course I did.  Of course.

I struggled to get up, and Coden reached down to help me, but it was too late.  The other boy slid to a stop, and Dan was right behind him.  We’d been caught.

And it was my fault.

“Dammit,” I hissed, panicked tears burning in my eyes.  I scrambled up and moved to start running again, but Dan’s voice stopped me where I stood.

“Stay where you are or I’ll shoot.”

Coden and I twisted around and stared as Dan held the boy up by the neck of his shirt and pressed the gun against his head.  It was the boy with baggy pants that I’d seen earlier.  His hat was no longer on top of his head, and was replaced with a rat’s nest of blond curls.  His blue eyes were wide with fear as he silently begged Coden and I not to move, not to indirectly end his life.

We stayed where we were.

“Put your hands in the air.”

When Coden and I hesitated, Dan moved the gun and shot the boy in the leg.  The guy screeched in pain as blood oozed down his leg.  In an instant my hands were flying into the air, and so were Coden’s. 

“Put the knife and the scissors on the floor—now.”

Coden and I obeyed.  I could tell that having to ditch the weapons was paining Coden as much as it was paining me.  The anger on his face said it all.

If Coden had a plan, I would love to know what it was.  But Dan didn’t give us any way to relay a message.  If we moved even an inch, the boy would be dead.  And though I didn’t know him, I wasn’t about to get him killed if I could help it.  And I knew Coden wouldn’t either.

“Why don’t you just shoot us?” the boy demanded, blood dripping down the side of his chin.  It was then that I noticed the cut on the side of his head.  “That’s your plan, isn’t it?  To kill us all?  How sadistic are you?”

All of the fear that was previously in the boy’s eyes seemed to evaporate.  It was still there, of course, but hidden by rage.  The boy knew he was going to die and wanted to spend his last moments acting bravely.  I’d seen it before (in the movies), and I recognized the tactic immediately.  However, unlike in Hollywood, where the idea seemed heroic and all around badass, here I wanted to slap the kid for being such an idiot.

“You think I’m sadistic?” Dan spat.  “You should see Al or Samantha.  They would cut you apart.  I’m merciful compared to them.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen Al.  He’s crumbled on the floor of some room, dead.”

All eyes shot to the boy.  Of course Coden and I knew that Al was dead, but the fact that word was spreading was shocking.  “What?” Dan snarled.

“He’s dead.”  The boy sneered.  “And I bet whoever killed him can kill you, too.”

I wanted to tell him that whoever killed Al would not be able to kill Dan because their muscles were beginning to feel like stone, but I kept my mouth shut.  Dan’s eyes were clouding with fury, and I knew if I admitted to having a huge hand in Al’s demise, I’d be the next one on the floor in a pool of blood.  All I could do was pray that Dan didn’t recognize the knife on the floor as Al’s.

“If you knew what was best for you,” Dan muttered darkly, “you’d shut up, boy.”

“What’s the point?” the boy asked.  “I’m already bleeding out.  Why not torture you a bit before I go?”

Dan growled and shoved the boy roughly into the wall.  “I’m going to kill you,” he hissed. 

All at once, Coden was in motion.  One minute he was next to me, and the next he was elbowing Dan as hard as he could in the neck.  Dan howled and spun around, gun at the ready.  I found myself screaming and bringing a hand to my mouth as a shot rang out.  Oh god, oh god, oh god.

The shot missed.

I felt myself sag with relief as the bullet dug itself into the wall, missing Coden by barely an inch.  Coden kicked upward, successfully knocking the gun out of Dan’s reach.  “Run now!” he hollered to the injured boy.  “Go!”

In an instant the boy was gone, hobbling down the hallway and disappearing out of sight.  He was dragging his injured leg, and for a short moment I felt concerned for him.  He was going to bleed out and die if he didn’t get that bandaged right away.  What if…?

My thoughts about the boy fell away as Dan grabbed at the gun.  Without even really thinking about it, I crouched down, grabbed the knife and the scissors, and stabbed Dan’s hand as hard as I could. 

Dan roared, a wild look in his eyes as he glowered at me.  “You—”

“Serenity, run!”

My head shot up, and my eyes met Coden’s.  They were wide, and for a moment I could have sworn I saw fear in his eyes.  The look caught me off guard, and I hesitated.  However, when Coden sighed exasperatedly and grabbed onto my hand, dragging me down the hall, I snapped out of it.  I could hear Dan cursing behind us, but I tried not to concentrate on that.  Instead I set my mind on moving my feet faster, faster, faster—on getting away from Dan before he could pick up his gun and put bullets straight through our heads.

At that moment, we didn’t think about the fact that Samantha could be anywhere.  At that moment we didn’t think about being cut apart.  All that mattered to us was getting away.  Get away from the man with the gun, my mind screamed.  Get away, get away, get away!

We reached a set of stairs and pelted down them.  We rushed down another hall.

And then suddenly Coden shoved me into a room on the left.  My mouth almost dropped.  It wasn’t the lack of furniture that caught my attention, no. 

It was the closet with the door.

“They forgot one,” I whispered, breathing rapidly.

“Hurry.”  Coden pushed me toward the closet.  “Come on, he’ll catch up any second.”

In an instant we were throwing ourselves into the closet.  I almost cried with relief as Coden shut the door behind us and locked it.  Not only had they forgotten a door, but they’d forgotten a door with a lock.  And even though I probably should have been thinking something along the lines of, “This is too good to be true,” I couldn’t bring myself to.  We were safe.  Dan couldn’t get us in here.  The most he could do was shoot at the door.

“Get down,” Coden whispered.  I felt his hand in mine, and he suddenly tugged me toward the floor, his arms wrapping securely around me.  It reminded me of the first time I’d hidden with Coden, the time when he’d covered my mouth with his hand because I couldn’t handle the close proximity to our attackers.  That seemed like centuries ago.

I breathed deeply, letting my head fall back on his shoulder as I closed my eyes.  I tried to force myself to calm down, to let my breathing slow, but I couldn’t.  The adrenaline was still there, pumping through my veins.  Even though I felt safe, my subconscious obviously did not.

“Oh god,” I whispered, eyes opening.  “Rose and Valarie.”

“I know,” Coden replied, his voice just as soft.

“What if they get caught?” I demanded, my voice shaking.  “What if they weren’t hidden well enough?”

“I don’t know.”  Coden sighed deeply.  I could feel the air through my hair.  “We’ll find them.”

He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to.  What if, by the time we got out of here, there would be no one to find?

“Okay,” Coden muttered, and I could feel him nod.  He let out another long breath of air onto my neck.  “Okay.  In a little bit we’ll leave the closet and go find the others.  And then we’ll come back to the closet and talk about what to do next.  Okay?”

I nodded.  “Okay.”