Lauren’s eyes widened and then squinted. “Hey, what happened to your accent? You sound like a Yankee.”

Alexander entered the tunnel. “He is a Yankee.”

King took her by the shoulders and glared into her eyes. “Never mind who I am or where I’m from. You go do what you need to do to clear out that parking lot.”

“But I don’t understand. Why?”

“Because if you don’t it’s likely they’ll all die.”

A look of horror came over Lauren as she realized that King and Alexander knew a lot more about what was happening then they let on. She broke out in a run back to the bus, hoping that King and Alexander were crackpots, but somehow knowing they weren’t. And that terrified her. Because it meant there was something big, something evil, beneath Stonehenge that wanted to kill people.

And she was heading straight for it.

Chapter Forty-Nine

FORTY-EIGHT

Location Unknown

FIONA AWOKE, HER head throbbing. Though the dizziness that accompanied her last wake-up was missing, the pain she felt more than made up for the lack of disorientation. In fact, after a cursory glance around her new cell, she wished for some way to escape reality.

The cell was an eight-foot cube hollowed out of wet gray stone. There were no seams where floor met wall or wall met ceiling, though there were a few cracks. There was no entrance to speak of, only a four-foot-long, six-inch-tall horizontal slit that allowed fresh air and a small amount of light into the otherwise sealed space.

She lay on her back, the stone floor cold beneath her. They air itself was chilly, but bearable, even in her black pajamas, which were now covered in layers of dirt.

As she focused beyond the pulsing headache she became aware of the pain filling the rest of her body—stretched limbs and tight pressure. She looked down at her body and found her hands bound and tied to her feet. She’d been hog-tied and left.

As pain flooded her head again she lay back on the stone floor. Staring up at the vacant stone ceiling, she recalled the horrors she’d seen before being knocked unconscious. The walls came to life. With no place to go, the prisoners couldn’t hide. She saw some trampled underfoot, some crushed by stone fists, and others, like poor Elma, torn apart.

But for some reason, she’d been spared. One of the golems even moved to avoid her. Tears broke free and rolled down the sides of her face, dripping into her ears. The tickling of liquid striking earlobe annoyed her and turned her sadness to rage. She let out a scream, pulling on her bonds. Her scream ended quickly as a rush of pain struck. She was bound physically and emotionally.

Why, she thought. Why spare me? What made me different from all the people that were killed?

King.