My throat tightened, choking the scream off as we fell.
I kicked, my body thrashing in the hail of leaves and dirt that swirled around us, spinning and twirling as the ground slid closed above us.
There’s no way we can survive this, I thought.
Then icy water engulfed me, feet first, swallowing me in one frigid gulp.
I should’ve been glad that it wasn’t concrete, but the cold wiped my mind clean. My lungs contracted in my chest, and I opened my eyes, catching only bubbles and chaos in the blue light.
When I broke the surface, Logan was next to me. The fear slipped from his face as he saw me, and he nodded once, a question. I nodded back. I was fine.
We were in a circular cavern with metal walls, at least six stories high. A metal catwalk and railing lined the water’s edge. The red-haired girl—she looked about seventeen—climbed up a rickety metal ladder.
“You can stay in there and get hypothermia,” she said, reaching the catwalk and wringing water from her hair. “But I’d prefer you get out, because fishing bodies out of this thing is a bitch.”
The dirt and leaves finally caught up to us, falling like rain on the water’s surface. I blinked, trying to keep the dirt out of my eyes. “Where are we?” I asked, struggling to tread water with my sweats and shoes weighing me down.
The girl turned. “An abandoned coal mine. Specifically, the reserve water tank designed to put out fires when said abandoned coal mine was in operation.”
A door opened, and a man with dark skin walked in. I stopped treading water and slipped under the surface, coughing as I came back up.
It was Ajit, my mysterious slip pill dealer.
“Are you okay?” Logan whispered.
Ajit handed the girl a towel. “Looks like you might reconsider the ‘I don’t need backup,’ attitude next time, Margaret?” he asked, turning to the girl.
“That’s rich, considering I still have the three slugs I had to fish out of your thigh in Mombasa,” she spat, drying herself off.
Ajit smiled, keeping his eyes trained on Logan and me. “Are you going to get out?” he asked, humor slipping into his words as he met my eyes. “I promise you, it only gets colder. And a hell of a lot harder to find your way around once we leave this room and turn off the light.”
Logan and I looked at each other, knowing that we didn’t really have a choice.
Ajit handed us towels as we climbed up the ladder, and I snatched mine from him.
“What is this? What are you doing here?” I asked.
Logan drew the towel down his face. “Wait. You know him?”
Ajit cocked an eyebrow. “Oh, we’re old friends,” he said, reaching out to inspect the welt I felt blooming above my right eyebrow.
“Answer the question, Ajit,” I whispered. My mind was racing. Was this a drug-running base? I yanked my chin back, and he rolled his eyes before looking at the slight cut on Logan’s cheekbone.
“Don’t touch me,” Logan warned.
“Ajit is the only doctor you’ve got right now, boyo,” Margaret said, kicking her wet boots off and picking them up by two fingers.
“Okay, I have no idea what’s going on here, but I’m pretty sure you can cut the ‘boyo’ crap, magically delicious, because you look like you’re about twelve,” I bit out.
She looked to Ajit before jerking her head toward the door. He nodded.
“He wants to see them,” Ajit said lowly.
“Who wants to see us? Who are you?” I asked.
Margaret adjusted the collar of her jacket, and everything in me seized up with fear. An emblem was pressed onto her collar, just small enough that I would’ve missed it in different lighting. A skeleton, from the shoulders up. Not like the Gravediggers, which had only the classic skull and crossbones. This emblem had the arms crossed above the head, fists clenched.
Margaret saw me notice it, and her smile widened. She motioned for Logan and me to follow.
“Let me do the talking here,” I said, fighting the panic in the back of my throat.
For once, Logan listened. Because he’d seen the emblem, too, and he knew where we were.
I wanted to say it was impossible, but I knew it wasn’t. The more I thought about it, the more the pit in my stomach made sense.
The Haunt for Jackals was in the middle of the nowhere woods of North Carolina.