Page 88 of (Mostly) Human Resources

Nic tried to fight against his roiling stomach. The nausea was truly endless.

“Put her over there.”

His eyes snapped open.

Someone dragged Alexys across the cavern, into Nic’s field of vision, and dumped her in a heap on the ground.

Nic couldn’t tell if she was alive. With or without his glasses, Alexys’s slumped position made it nearly impossible to tell if she was breathing. He knew, logically, that the cultists would have discarded her with the other corpses if she was dead, but that didn’t stop his heart from attempting to rip its way out of his ribcage.

He jerked his wrists against his bindings which earned him another firm smack to the head. Nic flinched, headache pounding. “Shouldn’t you be nicer to me? Wouldn’t want to kill me before the sacrifice,” Nic spat. “That has to go against some sort of standard practice of magic.”

Agnes growled above him. “Quiet! You talk too much.”

“I have a lot to say.”

She scoffed and disappeared from view.

His gaze immediately went back to Alexys. She still hadn’t moved.

“She’s alive, you don’t have to look so worried,” mocked another voice off to his right. “For now.” Someone snickered and the sound echoed off the walls.

Nic bit the inside of his cheek to keep the retorts at bay. He tried to think ofanythinghe could to get them out of this situation. First, he’d need to free himself, otherwise he had no way of saving Alexys.

Even as his brain rattled away, he knew that their odds of survival were slim to none. Worse still, no one knew they were there, not really. They were supposed to be several hours away, where Alexys was conducting her in-field evaluation. Even if Zach reported him missing, it’d be too late. And the chances of them tracking them here? Virtually impossible. Any trace of them would be long gone, their corpses disposed of.

Whatever was left of their corpses, that is.

Nic should have reported the situation the moment it happened. He should have blocked Alexys’s evaluation, reported Elliot. Hecould have saved them all had he not been so glory hungry. So selfish.

Guilt washed over him, but he didn’t have time to wallow. If there was any possibility of saving Alexys, he had to at least try. There had to be something he was missing, some clue or some random bit of knowledge he’d stowed away.

“Fetch the dagger,” one of the men called out. “We don’t have all night.”

Nic tried to focus on the situation at hand, despite his headache and blurry vision. There had to be a way out. It was simply another puzzle to solve. He’d survived every cryptid they’d encountered, and he wasn’t about to offer himself up easy to these deranged cultists.

He took a deep breath. Nic knew enough to know that if there was a ritual, there were rules. Magic wasn’t as strict in the Appalachian Mountains as it was in other places. Those mountains where the ground itself was imbued with unknown powers.

But human sacrifice wasn’t usually an area of magic that allowed for mistakes, not from the little reading he’d done. Especially sacrifices that relied on a lunar calendar and what Nic assumed was a ritual dagger. If Elliot had been killed on Friday, which, given the timeline of everything was very likely, that meant he was killed on the full moon. That implied a monthly ritual and rendered any new deaths obsolete.

So, why was he strapped to a blood-soaked altar?

Removal of witnesses, extra strength for the spell, or a multi-sacrifice ritual? He could take his pick of reasons, but Nic was willing to bet his guess on a single, full-moon sacrifice was correct, and that meant there was room for negotiating. He didn’t need to know the specifics; he only needed to convince them to let Alexys go.

She was unconscious. She barely saw the cultists and probably had no idea who they were. Her horrible sense of direction and inability to navigate the outdoors meant she could probably neverlocate the mine again, and it would take days for her to get back to the office and report it. There was a chance, a slim one, but still a chance, that their captors could let her go and never have to worry about repercussions.

Nic swallowed against the dread clogging his throat and tried to muster up the courage to face his decision. It should be an easy one, saving her. He certainly didn’t want to die, but he’d already bartered with her life, with Elliot’s, it was the price he’d have to pay to ensure her survival.

He ate up the sight of her, committed every feature to memory. The possibilities of what could have been would haunt him, he was sure of it. Until one of the cultists put that dagger in his chest, that is, but Nic would wonder at what they might have been until then. If he hadn’t been so stubborn, so arrogant, so closed off. What then?

His chest ached with possibility.

Had he taken her for granted? He’d kept so many people at arm’s length, content with building a career and chasing his monsters, and let the Archives become walls between himself and everything else. He’d seen Alexys for years, but had he ever reallyseenher? If he’d paid just a little more attention, given her even the slightest chance, maybe she would’ve been more receptive to his help, and they wouldn’t …

Alexys stirred, and Nic’s heart jolted.

He had to get her out.

CHAPTER 47