Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Luna groaned and rolled over onto her back. There was a splitting pain in her head that wouldn’t seem to stop, and for god’s sake, who was screaming?

She’d only suffered through a hangover like this once before in her life, and she had been certain she’d have to kill herself.

Holding her breath for a second, she let it out slowly through her teeth. Counting didn’t seem to help. Nor did touching a hand to her head because then she felt something rather wet and that made her even more nervous.

She was hungover... wasn’t she?

What else could have led to such pain in her skull, although the wetness there didn’t bode well. Wet could mean blood.

Luna sniffed her fingers and yes, there it was. The metallic scent of blood that she was certain wasn’t someone else’s because she couldn’t remember getting in a fight. Well, she couldn’t remember anything at all right now, and that terrified her. She always remembered things. Always.

Rolling onto her hands and knees, she tried to fumble her way through the dark. If she were in bed, then she’d have a light switch to the right of her, but she wasn’t in bed. Dirt underneath her hands made that very clear, although she wasn’t sure why there was dirt. Not yet. But her mind whirled with the possibilities, and that would only lead her to the truth.

Her fingers touched a wall, and she used that to prop herself up. Okay. Standing. Standing was good. That meant she could wander through the room until she felt something that might help her after all.

Luna put both her hands on the wall and slid them to her left. It was a shot in the dark, no pun intended, but she had to keep moving. She had to do something other than sit on the floor and wait for someone to help her. Not when there was screaming over her head and... and...

No, it wasn’t screaming. That was someone trying to sing, but the song was wrong and the voice was horrendous. Was this some kind of torture tactic? It was working; she supposed. She wanted to scratch her own ears off if that meant she wouldn’t have to listen to that horrible wailing any longer.

“Stop,” she wheezed. “You’ve sung quite enough for the day, I think. How about a little quiet while I figure out where the hell I am?”

The singing paused for a brief second before someone shouted over her head, “You can hear me?”

“Yes, I can hear you just fine. But I’m trying very hard to figure out where I am. So if you wouldn’t mind shutting up for a few moments, then I could figure this out and maybe we could have a conversation in the light.” Luna tried hard not to grumble the words with all the anger that radiated through her chest.

Whoever was singing obviously didn’t have all the marbles in their head or whatever the saying was. They didn’t care that she was in pain, nor did they seem to care who she was. The damned voice started singing all over again and Luna wanted to put a fork through an ear now.

Sighing, she kept going until her fingers bumped against a metal hook in the wall. Strange, she hadn’t thought to find that. Although it would make sense if she were in some kind of dungeon. A memory bloomed in her mind that said she was a thief. Thieves like her sometimes ended up in a dungeon, although there usually was some form of light.

“Am I blind?” she asked the voice that sang over her head. “Is that why I can’t see anything?”

The horrible sound paused for a moment before the voice replied, “I don’t think so? I wouldn’t know. You’re down there and I’m up here, so how would I know if you were blind or not?”

Down there? Was the person on a balcony over her head or something? Luna could hear the speaker crystal clear, so perhaps they were on some kind of viewing platform.

Not a dungeon, then.

“I’m going to say I’m not blinded,” she whispered. “So where are you if you’re up there?”

“Locked away, just like you, it seems. But you know, I once knew someone who was blind. They wore me anyway, although I liked them the most. They took me off their neck all the time to touch my edges. To stroke what they could not see even though they knew they loved me with all their heart.” The voice sighed. “They were a good owner.”

Owner?

It all came rushing back, then. She could hear the songs of gemstones and she’d been hunting a particular stone rumored to be owned by the Earl of Dead Man’s Crossing. A beast, that’s what people claimed he was, although she didn’t know why or how they could say such a thing.

Now she knew. Now she understood that this horrible monster of a man would throw a woman down into the pits of this dungeon and then he would leave her there to rot. Just because she’d tried to steal something from him.

Luna spat on the floor at the memory. “Prick. I’ll show him.”

She knew how to pick a lock, and now she had the reason to do so. She moved with more fervor now, sliding her hands along the wall and continuing to search through the room for a light switch or a candle or something that would help her see.

Her fingers bumped a small knob on the wall, and that was all she needed. With a pulse of glee that radiated through her entire body, Luna flicked the light switch on and shielded her eyes from the sudden blinding light.

It took nearly ten minutes for her eyes to get used to the light. But she had time. The stone singing over her head said it was still dark outside. Although she had no way of knowing if it was telling the truth. Still, it seemed confident, and she could only assume that it wouldn’t try to trick her.

She blinked her eyes through the haze of tears as she desperately tried to see through the sudden beams of light. “How long have you been with the Earl?”

“A long time,” the gem replied. “Too long. No one in his family likes to wear jewelry all that much. Even his mother, and she wasn’t one like him. His mother had once worn me to the opera, and I saw the most wonderful singer there.”

“What happened?” Luna started to see vague, dark shapes in front of her. Good. “Did someone try to rob her while she was wearing you?”

“Yes,” the diamond sighed. And it could only be the diamond. “They did. Then she wouldn’t wear me anymore.”

Luna probably wouldn’t have either. If someone robbed her for what she wore, it seemed the easiest thing to do was take off the item that people wanted to rob. And everyone knew about the Crestfall Diamond. Everyone wanted to get their hands on something that would sell for an entire lifetime’s worth of work.

Blinking one last time, she cleared her vision of the last bit of fog and then felt all the air in her lungs whoosh out in one horrified sound.

Where the hell had he put her?

This was a torture chamber. She was certain of it. The psychopath had an entire chamber full of torture devices. A giant table in front of her had bars for the hands and feet. It laid flat next to what looked like a saw and something else she couldn’t name. The back of the room, though, that was what caught her attention the most.

Chains hung from the walls, floor, and ceiling. They dangled, limp and unmoving, while they were connected to heavier circles that would connect them to a person’s hands and wrists. But there were so many of them. These were chains that were never meant to be escaped from, and she couldn’t imagine why he would have them.

“What is this place?” she whispered.

Though the gemstone shouldn’t have heard her, the diamond still replied, “It’s the Earl’s home, my dear. Don’t you know where you are?”

Apparently not. No one had told her that the Earl was a man who had very particular tastes in how to punish people and if she really thought about it, all this made sense. No one wanted to even travel to Dead Man’s Crossing. She’d never heard of any other nobility visiting here or even thinking about going to this horrible little town.

Now she knew why. The leader of these people was a sick and twisted man who liked to string people up with chains around their wrists. For what? Sexual pleasure, perhaps?

Considering how attractive the man had been without a shirt, she had no doubt he could tempt many women into the darkness. They wouldn’t even know what he wanted to do to them until it was too late.

She looked back at the flat table with the bindings at the wrists and ankles. Damn the man for trapping her down here and damn Crowley for even putting her in this mess in the first place. How dare either of these men put her in this situation?

Luna didn’t take kindly to men like that. She stomped over to the table and slammed her fist into the wood. A low snarl of rage echoed through her chest before she started looking for a weapon. She’d need something heavier than her fists, because the Earl was a very strong man. She’d give him that, at least. But he would underestimate her like all the others.

He had to.

A prodding iron rested near the table, leaning against the wall with three buckets and other metal items she didn’t want to entertain the use for. Luna picked up the iron bar, weighing it in her hands to see if she could swing it appropriately.

She could. It wasn’t weighted like a sword or even the hammer she so dearly wished she’d brought, but it was a blunt force object and it would bash through a skull with a hand that knew how to do something like that.

And Luna did. As much as she wasn’t proud of that truth, she knew how to aim this deadly weapon so that it would kill upon impact. Just one hit was all it took for her to bring a man to his knees, and it didn’t take that much power behind the swing. If it came to that.

She leaned down and pulled out the pin that held the bucket’s handle in place. The long, thin metal would do nicely for picking the lock if she had the time to finish. And if the Earl didn’t return until the morning, then that ought to give her enough time to pick the lock. She’d be gone before he got back.

Better bring the iron just in case, though. If she wasn’t very speedy, then she’d end up doing what she hated doing.

“You have a plan, don’t you?” the gemstone sang through the floorboards. “You already know how you’re going to get out of there and then you’re going to save me!”

Save it? No. She shook her head and started in the direction where she’d woken up. There had to be stairs hidden in the shadows. “No, I’m not going to save you. I’m going to steal you and that’s a very different thing altogether.”

“You’re going to steal me,” it repeated, the words a little too sing-song for it to understand what she meant. “And then you’re going to wear me! I bet you have a lovely neck.”

Luna didn’t. The stone would be wasted hanging around her throat, anyway. All it would do was babble as people walked by, and Luna would tell it to hush because people were staring. No one like her should wear something of that value.

They’d be robbed the moment she stepped outside.

Sighing, she poked her way around the stairs and started up them. It would take a while, that much was true. Beatrix was better at picking locks, even when they were children and learning the trick. Beatrix had those tiny little fingers. They helped.

Luna set her iron down at the top of the stairs and eyed the brand new lock. “Well, you aren’t what I was expecting.”

She’d hoped the door would be some ancient structure from an age when men regularly kidnapped women and put them in their basement. Not this modern contraption that would be impossible to pick.

“Damn it,” she muttered, rubbing a hand over her mouth before getting to work. “You’re going to take me all night, now aren’t you?”

She could only hope the Earl didn’t return before she finished.