Otalia fic - Heroes and Friends, 9/?
I know, I've been bad about updating! *bends over for a good swift kick* All of you commenting though keep me coming back. Thank you!
Soooo...let's find out if Olivia made it or not. Dun dun dunnnn!!! LOL
Title: Heroes and Friends
Fandom: Otalia
Rating: Mostly PG-13, eventual NC-17 for sex and violence (Not between our girls though…the violence that is…promise. The other? Well…teehee).
Disclaimer: These wonderful ladies and the rest of the town belong to CBS, Telenext, and P&G. I’m just having some fun with them.
Spoilers: I don’t think so. This story picks up at the “no more waiting” gazebo scene and goes off canon.
Summary: Nat gets the shock of her life and it turns Liv’s world upside down.
Warning: Not beta’d so if it sucks, there’s only me to blame.
A/N: Sorry about the delay in getting this out. What little of a life I had has been consumed by a 2 year old and the virtual season.
Chapter 9
No sooner had the words slipped out then the spike gave way, the rope and hook clattering to the stone floor a few feet from Rafe. Josh dove across the ledge and made a desperate grab for her hand and ensnared her wrist instead. She fell against the hard wall with a solid thump.
“Frank! Grab my legs!” Josh was fighting to hold Olivia and also maintain his balance on his stomach. He knew he didn’t have much leverage in this position. “Frank, grab my belt and pull. I need to get to my knees.”
Frank scrambled to get a good grip on Josh and with a hard tug got him back away from the edge. A few more tugs and Josh was on his knees, still holding onto Olivia, but his hands were sweating from the exertion and she was slowly slipping. Suddenly, Frank was at his side and on his stomach.
“Swing her a little this way.”
“What?” Olivia gasped and Josh looked at him like he was crazy.
“Just do it!” Very carefully, Josh started her moving in a pendulum and Frank grabbed at her waist as she got closer. After a few passes, he caught the waistband of her jeans and started pulling up. Josh immediately felt the relief in his arms and stood for the extra leverage. As Josh pulled her up, Frank got to his knees and she took one of his hands in her free one.
When she cleared the ledge, all three fell against the wall, heaving.
Olivia looked at her exes on either side of her, “Let’s not do that again, okay?” She then patted them both on the shoulders and got up.
They looked at each other and shook their heads. Josh spoke first, “Maybe we should rest for a few minutes, Olivia.”
“Really, I’d love to, but we need to get Rafe out of here. Speaking of which, how ya doing, Rafe?”
He groaned and mumbled, “Tired…cold.”
“See?” She looked at the two men now on the other side of the basin from her. “Come on.”
They stood reluctantly and walked around to where she was standing. Frank put his hands on his hips, “Why are we all the way over here?”
“There’s more room to work here to get him up.” She looked over her shoulder and he followed her gaze down the large tunnel.
“Good point.”
She squatted down, “Hey Rafe, can you stand up?”
“I don’t know.”
“Come on, buddy. Try okay?”
“M’kay.” The shuffling of feet was heard and a long, deep groan of pain. He was trying hard to not let it show she could tell, but he had to be in excruciating pain. All the more reason why he had to move so his body wouldn’t shut down. “I’m up.”
“Good. The rope and hook fell next to you.” She shined her light on it for him to see, “Pick it up and bring it over here with you.”
He silently did what she asked, but when he bent over, she had to hold back the gasp. His right arm was covered from just below the elbow with blood and she caught sight of a flash of white poking through the skin.
“Jesus. Josh?”
“I saw.”
“Fuck!”
Rafe walked weakly over to the wall with the hook end of the rope in his hand. Olivia looked into his tired eyes and pale face, “Hey, this is going to be hard for you, but I need you to toss that hook up to us, okay?”
He slowly nodded and appeared to be gathering his strength. She could see him grit his teeth and give the hook a toss. It made it up the wall about twenty yards but not nearly enough for her to grab it.
“Okay, Rafe, that’s good. But this time, give it a really good, hard toss.” He did it again and this time grunted in pain and fell to his knees, but the hook cleared the ledge and Olivia caught it.
“You guys need to go. I can’t do this.”
“Yes you can, Rafe, and I’m not leaving here without taking you with me. There’s just no other option.”
“Olivia, I can’t!”
“Yes, you can! You have your mother’s blood in you and her strength. She needs you. Now come on! Do it for her.”
He nodded his head, “Okay.”
“Good. Now, I know you only have one good hand, but I want you to wrap the rope around your waist and try to cinch it in a knot, okay?” Rafe struggled but finally got it looped around and tied off as best he could. “Great! Now, grab the rope and hold on tight, okay?”
Olivia, Josh, and Frank all took a section of the rope and began to slowly pull Rafe to the edge. When she saw his hand come over the side, she rushed to grab it.
“Come on, Rafe. I’ve got you.” After what seemed like an eternity, Rafe was up and over, lying flat out on his back. He looked like he had been hit by a bus and Olivia pushed back his thick black hair. It was softer than it looked and reminded her of Natalia’s. Angry tears came to her eyes seeing her injured son on the dirty ground.
She jumped up and stomped off, “Son of a bitch!”
Frank and Josh turned to her, knowing exactly where her mind was going right now. They had known her long enough to know she kicked herself when things went wrong.
Josh came up to her, “Don’t. Don’t do it.”
“Do what?”
“Blame yourself. That’s what you do. That’s what you always do, and honestly, Olivia, we don’t have time for your self-abusive crap. Somewhere in this castle is the woman you love and every second you waste beating yourself up is a second gone in trying to get to her. Now, do you think you can forget about yourself for a moment?”
She looked at him stunned and slowly blinked as the brutal honesty sank in. Eventually, she nodded and he went back over to Rafe. Scrounging around in his bag, he found what he was looking for. He pulled out some gauze and tape then a long needle and a small vial.
Frank pointed at the vial, “Is that…?”
Olivia jumped in, “How did you…?”
“Don’t ask. Really, it’s better you don’t know, especially you,” Josh looked pointedly at Frank.
“Right,” Frank nodded and turned away, pretending he saw and knew nothing.
Josh leaned over the young man, “Rafe? I have something here that’ll make you more comfortable, okay? There will be a sharp sting but then you’ll feel a lot better.” Rafe nodded weakly and jerked a little as Josh found the vein in his good arm.
After a few minutes, Josh checked Rafe’s pupils. He was out cold. He unrolled the bandages and loosely bound the broken arm to slow the bleeding. When he put away his supplies, he motioned to Frank to help him. They picked Rafe up carefully with his arms slung over each man’s shoulders. Since he was on the side of the broken arm, Josh was conscious of not putting undue pressure on the arm. Instead he looped his hand securely under Rafe’s belt and pulled him along.
“What are we going to do with him, Josh? We can’t just drag him through this whole thing. What if we run into Edmund?”
“I thought of that. If I recall on the map correctly, at the end of this tunnel is the entrance to the south side of the catacombs. The left hallway leads to the stairs up to the basement area and the next floor up is the main floor, but if we go to the right, that’s where the prisoner cells used to be. They ran all the way around to the other side.”
Olivia thought that sounded like a lot of cells, “How many prisoner cells do you think there are?”
“It’s a little hard to tell from the map, but a rough guess would be around fifty or sixty.”
“Wow!”
Frank paused to lift Rafe further up on his shoulders, “This place is huge. Do you really think we have a chance of finding Natalia in all of this?”
“I’d bet money on her being down in these catacombs, actually.”
Olivia smiled at the thought, “I guess we’ll find out soon enough. I can see some light so we can’t be far from the end.”
**************
As they reached the end of the corridor, the group could see the split where one hallway led to a stairwell and the other led into a long labyrinth of cells. It looked like all were the open cell kind seen in modern jails. Frank leaned against the wall as he tried to steady his grip on Rafe.
“Okay, so what do we do now? We can’t drag him any further.”
Josh inclined his head toward a doorless cell adjacent from their position, “There. I have an idea.”
Carefully, they angled their way into the cell and guided Rafe down to the corner closest to the wall where they had entered. Josh gestured for their supply bags and he pulled out a thick wool blanket. He draped it over Rafe’s head and shoulders, turning his head slightly so he could prop the blanket away from his face, giving him room to breathe. When Olivia saw Josh gathering the musty straw covering the floor and laying it over Rafe’s legs, she joined in.
Frank stood by confused, “What’s the point of this?”
Olivia and Josh continued to work and she talked, “We can’t carry him, but we can give him cover and protection. In this spot, he’s pretty much out of the light so he’s less likely to be seen by Edmund if he passes by, and the straw will merely give him extra coverage. The blanket though protects him from this dirty straw being directly on him.”
She stood up and brushed her hands off on her jeans, while Josh shuffled his feet around the cell trying to make it look like the flooring hadn’t been disturbed. He finished and turned to the bags, removing smaller plastic bags inside. Olivia opened her own supply bag and rummaged as well. He handed one of the small bags to Frank who realized immediately what it was.
“A gun?”
Josh pulled out a larger bagged item and began to unwrap it, exposing the barrel of a semi-automatic rifle, “You really don’t think Edmund’s hanging around here unarmed, do you, Frank?”
“Where the hell did you swipe that from? The Israeli Army?” Josh and Olivia smirked at each other and then spoke in unison.
“You don’t want to know.”
“Jesus!” Frank looked like he was about to be sick. He may have been a cop but he had never had to pull his gun on anyone, not in a sleepy town like Springfield. This was all new ground for him, and he wasn’t liking it one bit. There was little choice in the matter for him though. Rafe was already badly injured, and it was his fault so he had to do everything he could to make sure he got Rafe out of there alive.
Olivia saw the discomfort on Frank’s face and approached him, “You don’t have to do this. Maybe it would be best if you stayed with Rafe to make sure he’s okay.”
For a flicker of a second, the offer sounded appealing to Frank, but no matter what had happened between him and Natalia or the fact that things had changed between them, he knew he still loved her and wanted to look out for her and Rafe in any way he could.
“No, I want to do this.”
She nodded at his resolute look, “Okay…okay.” She turned back to Josh, “So, you think she could be down here somewhere?”
“It seems like a logical place.”
“Well, let’s get started.”
Josh led the way down the hallway of the cells away from the tunnel they had come through. On the main hall of cells, light from the full moon was plentiful since it was coming through openings high on the wall above them. These prisoner cells were obviously for the less serious or threatening criminals. As they rounded the corner though, the darkness became thicker and heavier as the floor sloped slightly and headed into the bowels of the castle. Eventually, there was no light at all and Josh flipped on his flashlight to help them maneuver.
The cells in this stretch were for the more hardened criminals. The worst of the worst. The heavy concrete doors were completely solid and there was nothing but a small slit at the bottom, probably used for food delivery, and a handle to open the door. Olivia coughed as the thick, putrid air gagged her. It was a smell she had never known before but it made her wonder if this was what death smelled like.
She tugged at the handle of a door but it didn’t budge, “Okay, how will we know if she’s here? We can’t tell what’s in these cells, if anything.”
Josh shrugged, “Call for her? Not too loud though. Sounds really echo in spaces like this. We don’t want to be heard.”
She nodded and started calling for Natalia in a low but urgent voice, “Natalia! Natalia, are you here?”
All three stood still, listening. Nothing. They walked a little further and Olivia called again. Again, silence.
“What if she can’t hear through these walls? Natural soundproofing.” Josh and Olivia turned to Frank, both showing surprise at his thought.
“Good point,” Josh commended. “Frank, take your flashlight and go to the far end. Let’s check each cell.”
“How?”
“If the doors don’t open, lift the food latch and call for her. You may even need to get down and look. If she’s passed out or asleep, she may not even hear us.”
He nodded and headed to the far end of the block. Josh looked at Olivia, “I’ll start over here. You take care of that side.”
“This is going to take forever with all these cells. It’s wasting time.”
“Got a better idea?”
“Yeah, find Edmund and then beat the shit out of him until he tells us where she’s at.” Josh smiled at her.
“Let’s try the nonviolent approach first.”
She rolled her eyes and got to her knees in front of the first cell, “This coming from a man with a really big gun.”
*****************
Olivia guessed that it had taken them about an hour to check each cell but eventually, they all met up in the middle of the hallway and figuratively right back where they had started with being no closer to Natalia than when they had started.
Olivia gave Josh a hard look, “Okay, so I was wrong. She has to be in this castle somewhere though.”
She ran her hands through her hair, “We have no choice then. We head upstairs and look for her there. She’s obviously not here.”
Frank shook his head and rubbed at his aching back, “Then we risk the chance of Edmund catching us.”
Olivia held up her gun, “And we’ll be ready for him.”
They walked back to the beginning of the cells where Rafe was still quietly resting. Olivia went in to check on him. His heartbeat was still strong but a fine layer of cold sweat had broken out over his face. She felt his forehead. He was burning up.
“We have to hurry. He has a fever.”
Josh believed her but came over to check for himself, “Great! This is not good. Come on.”
He broke into a half jog as he made his way to the other hallway and the stairwell leading up to the basement. Olivia and Frank followed behind. When Josh came to the door at the top of the stairs, he put his ear against the heavy wooden door in hopes of hearing any movement on the other side. When he heard nothing, he eased the door open and peeked his head around.
The basement was practically empty except for a few boxes against a far wall and enough cobwebs to make the worst horror movie envious. He stepped further in and motioned for Olivia and Frank to follow. With caution, they checked the entire basement to ensure they didn’t miss a secret passage or room, something old castles were notorious for having.
They found no sign of Natalia or even that anyone was there. Josh sighed, “Nothing here. Let’s keep going.”
Josh led the way again up the next set of stairs that came out at the main floor. He listened again but heard nothing so he eased the door open. A loud creak made all of them cringe but Josh pushed on. Seeing no sign of Natalia or Edmund, they all exited the stairwell. The main floor was a faded relic of the once extravagant foyer. Olivia held her breathe. In spite of its current condition, she could still see the glittering chandelier that used to hang from the ceiling and hear the sultry music that had played that night at the ball. It was like being back in time and she felt a wave of sadness pass over her. So much had been lost here yet all of it had happened in a way that brought her back full circle. Here she was again over twenty years later. A young girl who had gone out on her own against her mother’s wishes looking for love had come back today a woman still seeking that one true love.
“The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
“Indeed.” Three heads swung around at the voice and caught a glimpse of a smirking Edmund as he took off down the hallway behind him.
“Son of a bitch!” Olivia took off after him.
“Olivia!” Josh called after her and tried to follow but they were both gone in the darkness of the castle in a matter of seconds. “Damn it!”
Soooo...let's find out if Olivia made it or not. Dun dun dunnnn!!! LOL
Title: Heroes and Friends
Fandom: Otalia
Rating: Mostly PG-13, eventual NC-17 for sex and violence (Not between our girls though…the violence that is…promise. The other? Well…teehee).
Disclaimer: These wonderful ladies and the rest of the town belong to CBS, Telenext, and P&G. I’m just having some fun with them.
Spoilers: I don’t think so. This story picks up at the “no more waiting” gazebo scene and goes off canon.
Summary: Nat gets the shock of her life and it turns Liv’s world upside down.
Warning: Not beta’d so if it sucks, there’s only me to blame.
A/N: Sorry about the delay in getting this out. What little of a life I had has been consumed by a 2 year old and the virtual season.
Chapter 9
No sooner had the words slipped out then the spike gave way, the rope and hook clattering to the stone floor a few feet from Rafe. Josh dove across the ledge and made a desperate grab for her hand and ensnared her wrist instead. She fell against the hard wall with a solid thump.
“Frank! Grab my legs!” Josh was fighting to hold Olivia and also maintain his balance on his stomach. He knew he didn’t have much leverage in this position. “Frank, grab my belt and pull. I need to get to my knees.”
Frank scrambled to get a good grip on Josh and with a hard tug got him back away from the edge. A few more tugs and Josh was on his knees, still holding onto Olivia, but his hands were sweating from the exertion and she was slowly slipping. Suddenly, Frank was at his side and on his stomach.
“Swing her a little this way.”
“What?” Olivia gasped and Josh looked at him like he was crazy.
“Just do it!” Very carefully, Josh started her moving in a pendulum and Frank grabbed at her waist as she got closer. After a few passes, he caught the waistband of her jeans and started pulling up. Josh immediately felt the relief in his arms and stood for the extra leverage. As Josh pulled her up, Frank got to his knees and she took one of his hands in her free one.
When she cleared the ledge, all three fell against the wall, heaving.
Olivia looked at her exes on either side of her, “Let’s not do that again, okay?” She then patted them both on the shoulders and got up.
They looked at each other and shook their heads. Josh spoke first, “Maybe we should rest for a few minutes, Olivia.”
“Really, I’d love to, but we need to get Rafe out of here. Speaking of which, how ya doing, Rafe?”
He groaned and mumbled, “Tired…cold.”
“See?” She looked at the two men now on the other side of the basin from her. “Come on.”
They stood reluctantly and walked around to where she was standing. Frank put his hands on his hips, “Why are we all the way over here?”
“There’s more room to work here to get him up.” She looked over her shoulder and he followed her gaze down the large tunnel.
“Good point.”
She squatted down, “Hey Rafe, can you stand up?”
“I don’t know.”
“Come on, buddy. Try okay?”
“M’kay.” The shuffling of feet was heard and a long, deep groan of pain. He was trying hard to not let it show she could tell, but he had to be in excruciating pain. All the more reason why he had to move so his body wouldn’t shut down. “I’m up.”
“Good. The rope and hook fell next to you.” She shined her light on it for him to see, “Pick it up and bring it over here with you.”
He silently did what she asked, but when he bent over, she had to hold back the gasp. His right arm was covered from just below the elbow with blood and she caught sight of a flash of white poking through the skin.
“Jesus. Josh?”
“I saw.”
“Fuck!”
Rafe walked weakly over to the wall with the hook end of the rope in his hand. Olivia looked into his tired eyes and pale face, “Hey, this is going to be hard for you, but I need you to toss that hook up to us, okay?”
He slowly nodded and appeared to be gathering his strength. She could see him grit his teeth and give the hook a toss. It made it up the wall about twenty yards but not nearly enough for her to grab it.
“Okay, Rafe, that’s good. But this time, give it a really good, hard toss.” He did it again and this time grunted in pain and fell to his knees, but the hook cleared the ledge and Olivia caught it.
“You guys need to go. I can’t do this.”
“Yes you can, Rafe, and I’m not leaving here without taking you with me. There’s just no other option.”
“Olivia, I can’t!”
“Yes, you can! You have your mother’s blood in you and her strength. She needs you. Now come on! Do it for her.”
He nodded his head, “Okay.”
“Good. Now, I know you only have one good hand, but I want you to wrap the rope around your waist and try to cinch it in a knot, okay?” Rafe struggled but finally got it looped around and tied off as best he could. “Great! Now, grab the rope and hold on tight, okay?”
Olivia, Josh, and Frank all took a section of the rope and began to slowly pull Rafe to the edge. When she saw his hand come over the side, she rushed to grab it.
“Come on, Rafe. I’ve got you.” After what seemed like an eternity, Rafe was up and over, lying flat out on his back. He looked like he had been hit by a bus and Olivia pushed back his thick black hair. It was softer than it looked and reminded her of Natalia’s. Angry tears came to her eyes seeing her injured son on the dirty ground.
She jumped up and stomped off, “Son of a bitch!”
Frank and Josh turned to her, knowing exactly where her mind was going right now. They had known her long enough to know she kicked herself when things went wrong.
Josh came up to her, “Don’t. Don’t do it.”
“Do what?”
“Blame yourself. That’s what you do. That’s what you always do, and honestly, Olivia, we don’t have time for your self-abusive crap. Somewhere in this castle is the woman you love and every second you waste beating yourself up is a second gone in trying to get to her. Now, do you think you can forget about yourself for a moment?”
She looked at him stunned and slowly blinked as the brutal honesty sank in. Eventually, she nodded and he went back over to Rafe. Scrounging around in his bag, he found what he was looking for. He pulled out some gauze and tape then a long needle and a small vial.
Frank pointed at the vial, “Is that…?”
Olivia jumped in, “How did you…?”
“Don’t ask. Really, it’s better you don’t know, especially you,” Josh looked pointedly at Frank.
“Right,” Frank nodded and turned away, pretending he saw and knew nothing.
Josh leaned over the young man, “Rafe? I have something here that’ll make you more comfortable, okay? There will be a sharp sting but then you’ll feel a lot better.” Rafe nodded weakly and jerked a little as Josh found the vein in his good arm.
After a few minutes, Josh checked Rafe’s pupils. He was out cold. He unrolled the bandages and loosely bound the broken arm to slow the bleeding. When he put away his supplies, he motioned to Frank to help him. They picked Rafe up carefully with his arms slung over each man’s shoulders. Since he was on the side of the broken arm, Josh was conscious of not putting undue pressure on the arm. Instead he looped his hand securely under Rafe’s belt and pulled him along.
“What are we going to do with him, Josh? We can’t just drag him through this whole thing. What if we run into Edmund?”
“I thought of that. If I recall on the map correctly, at the end of this tunnel is the entrance to the south side of the catacombs. The left hallway leads to the stairs up to the basement area and the next floor up is the main floor, but if we go to the right, that’s where the prisoner cells used to be. They ran all the way around to the other side.”
Olivia thought that sounded like a lot of cells, “How many prisoner cells do you think there are?”
“It’s a little hard to tell from the map, but a rough guess would be around fifty or sixty.”
“Wow!”
Frank paused to lift Rafe further up on his shoulders, “This place is huge. Do you really think we have a chance of finding Natalia in all of this?”
“I’d bet money on her being down in these catacombs, actually.”
Olivia smiled at the thought, “I guess we’ll find out soon enough. I can see some light so we can’t be far from the end.”
**************
As they reached the end of the corridor, the group could see the split where one hallway led to a stairwell and the other led into a long labyrinth of cells. It looked like all were the open cell kind seen in modern jails. Frank leaned against the wall as he tried to steady his grip on Rafe.
“Okay, so what do we do now? We can’t drag him any further.”
Josh inclined his head toward a doorless cell adjacent from their position, “There. I have an idea.”
Carefully, they angled their way into the cell and guided Rafe down to the corner closest to the wall where they had entered. Josh gestured for their supply bags and he pulled out a thick wool blanket. He draped it over Rafe’s head and shoulders, turning his head slightly so he could prop the blanket away from his face, giving him room to breathe. When Olivia saw Josh gathering the musty straw covering the floor and laying it over Rafe’s legs, she joined in.
Frank stood by confused, “What’s the point of this?”
Olivia and Josh continued to work and she talked, “We can’t carry him, but we can give him cover and protection. In this spot, he’s pretty much out of the light so he’s less likely to be seen by Edmund if he passes by, and the straw will merely give him extra coverage. The blanket though protects him from this dirty straw being directly on him.”
She stood up and brushed her hands off on her jeans, while Josh shuffled his feet around the cell trying to make it look like the flooring hadn’t been disturbed. He finished and turned to the bags, removing smaller plastic bags inside. Olivia opened her own supply bag and rummaged as well. He handed one of the small bags to Frank who realized immediately what it was.
“A gun?”
Josh pulled out a larger bagged item and began to unwrap it, exposing the barrel of a semi-automatic rifle, “You really don’t think Edmund’s hanging around here unarmed, do you, Frank?”
“Where the hell did you swipe that from? The Israeli Army?” Josh and Olivia smirked at each other and then spoke in unison.
“You don’t want to know.”
“Jesus!” Frank looked like he was about to be sick. He may have been a cop but he had never had to pull his gun on anyone, not in a sleepy town like Springfield. This was all new ground for him, and he wasn’t liking it one bit. There was little choice in the matter for him though. Rafe was already badly injured, and it was his fault so he had to do everything he could to make sure he got Rafe out of there alive.
Olivia saw the discomfort on Frank’s face and approached him, “You don’t have to do this. Maybe it would be best if you stayed with Rafe to make sure he’s okay.”
For a flicker of a second, the offer sounded appealing to Frank, but no matter what had happened between him and Natalia or the fact that things had changed between them, he knew he still loved her and wanted to look out for her and Rafe in any way he could.
“No, I want to do this.”
She nodded at his resolute look, “Okay…okay.” She turned back to Josh, “So, you think she could be down here somewhere?”
“It seems like a logical place.”
“Well, let’s get started.”
Josh led the way down the hallway of the cells away from the tunnel they had come through. On the main hall of cells, light from the full moon was plentiful since it was coming through openings high on the wall above them. These prisoner cells were obviously for the less serious or threatening criminals. As they rounded the corner though, the darkness became thicker and heavier as the floor sloped slightly and headed into the bowels of the castle. Eventually, there was no light at all and Josh flipped on his flashlight to help them maneuver.
The cells in this stretch were for the more hardened criminals. The worst of the worst. The heavy concrete doors were completely solid and there was nothing but a small slit at the bottom, probably used for food delivery, and a handle to open the door. Olivia coughed as the thick, putrid air gagged her. It was a smell she had never known before but it made her wonder if this was what death smelled like.
She tugged at the handle of a door but it didn’t budge, “Okay, how will we know if she’s here? We can’t tell what’s in these cells, if anything.”
Josh shrugged, “Call for her? Not too loud though. Sounds really echo in spaces like this. We don’t want to be heard.”
She nodded and started calling for Natalia in a low but urgent voice, “Natalia! Natalia, are you here?”
All three stood still, listening. Nothing. They walked a little further and Olivia called again. Again, silence.
“What if she can’t hear through these walls? Natural soundproofing.” Josh and Olivia turned to Frank, both showing surprise at his thought.
“Good point,” Josh commended. “Frank, take your flashlight and go to the far end. Let’s check each cell.”
“How?”
“If the doors don’t open, lift the food latch and call for her. You may even need to get down and look. If she’s passed out or asleep, she may not even hear us.”
He nodded and headed to the far end of the block. Josh looked at Olivia, “I’ll start over here. You take care of that side.”
“This is going to take forever with all these cells. It’s wasting time.”
“Got a better idea?”
“Yeah, find Edmund and then beat the shit out of him until he tells us where she’s at.” Josh smiled at her.
“Let’s try the nonviolent approach first.”
She rolled her eyes and got to her knees in front of the first cell, “This coming from a man with a really big gun.”
*****************
Olivia guessed that it had taken them about an hour to check each cell but eventually, they all met up in the middle of the hallway and figuratively right back where they had started with being no closer to Natalia than when they had started.
Olivia gave Josh a hard look, “Okay, so I was wrong. She has to be in this castle somewhere though.”
She ran her hands through her hair, “We have no choice then. We head upstairs and look for her there. She’s obviously not here.”
Frank shook his head and rubbed at his aching back, “Then we risk the chance of Edmund catching us.”
Olivia held up her gun, “And we’ll be ready for him.”
They walked back to the beginning of the cells where Rafe was still quietly resting. Olivia went in to check on him. His heartbeat was still strong but a fine layer of cold sweat had broken out over his face. She felt his forehead. He was burning up.
“We have to hurry. He has a fever.”
Josh believed her but came over to check for himself, “Great! This is not good. Come on.”
He broke into a half jog as he made his way to the other hallway and the stairwell leading up to the basement. Olivia and Frank followed behind. When Josh came to the door at the top of the stairs, he put his ear against the heavy wooden door in hopes of hearing any movement on the other side. When he heard nothing, he eased the door open and peeked his head around.
The basement was practically empty except for a few boxes against a far wall and enough cobwebs to make the worst horror movie envious. He stepped further in and motioned for Olivia and Frank to follow. With caution, they checked the entire basement to ensure they didn’t miss a secret passage or room, something old castles were notorious for having.
They found no sign of Natalia or even that anyone was there. Josh sighed, “Nothing here. Let’s keep going.”
Josh led the way again up the next set of stairs that came out at the main floor. He listened again but heard nothing so he eased the door open. A loud creak made all of them cringe but Josh pushed on. Seeing no sign of Natalia or Edmund, they all exited the stairwell. The main floor was a faded relic of the once extravagant foyer. Olivia held her breathe. In spite of its current condition, she could still see the glittering chandelier that used to hang from the ceiling and hear the sultry music that had played that night at the ball. It was like being back in time and she felt a wave of sadness pass over her. So much had been lost here yet all of it had happened in a way that brought her back full circle. Here she was again over twenty years later. A young girl who had gone out on her own against her mother’s wishes looking for love had come back today a woman still seeking that one true love.
“The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
“Indeed.” Three heads swung around at the voice and caught a glimpse of a smirking Edmund as he took off down the hallway behind him.
“Son of a bitch!” Olivia took off after him.
“Olivia!” Josh called after her and tried to follow but they were both gone in the darkness of the castle in a matter of seconds. “Damn it!”