“Why won’t you help me?” she raged, her gaze casting upward before shame fell over her much as the building had. “Sorry,” she muttered, closing her eyes. “But I could really use your help right now. An angel would be nice if you’re too busy to see to it personally.”
She huffed in another breath, found the center of calm that was nestled in the rage boiling through her veins. Yelling at God wasn’t going to get her anywhere. And as the old saying went, God helped those who helped themselves, and right now she wasn’t doing anything remotely helpful. Whining, wishing she’d died and constantly battling tears weren’t the hallmark of someone worthy of the gift of life. And yet, here she lay. So close to freedom while the others also lay close by, their souls already gone from this world.
She had a purpose. She thought it again. It bolstered her spirits and eased some of the fear eating away at her insides. Maybe everything up to now had merely been preparation for her true purpose instead of her having already found her purpose and serving it. She wasn’t going to find out if she didn’t get her ass out of here before the sun rose.
Turning off all the raging emotion building like a volcano about to erupt and refusing to acknowledge pain or the current limitations on her body, Honor attempted to turn again. This time she didn’t stop when the hideous scrape seared her legs or when her knee, so tender and swollen, screamed its protest of her movements. She refused to stop until finally both heels were planted on the floor, her feet and toes directed upward.
Her knee throbbed angrily, stretched by the new position and her leg lying flat and unbent. Hastily, she pushed herself upward until she leaned forward, palms planted amid the debris surrounding her.
Though her eyes had grown accustomed to having no light, it was impossible to see anything with detail with the entire area blanketed in suffocating darkness. Tentatively she reached down, feeling her way along her legs, her fingers lightly brushing over the obstacles that lay between her and freedom.
She swore when she encountered the heavy beam that she now remembered falling on her in the explosion. It had been what banged her knee up before she’d wound up facedown on the floor, the weight of half the building bearing down on her back. When the world had come crashing down on her, she’d fallen to her back but had instinctively rolled over, trying to protect herself in any way she could.
For a moment, she paused and dug her fingers sharply into her temples, pressing and rubbing in tight circles, digging in and applying firm pressure in hopes that she could make at least the dull drum in her head go away and clear the residue of murky fog that had stubbornly clung to her ever since she’d regained consciousness.
It was sheer will that had kept her from simply acquiescing and fading and giving in to the threat of darkness in her mind, the thought that if she just let go, then the pain and fear, everything would simply go . . . away. But the reminder that when or even if she awakened, she would face a nightmare worse than death, that she would be thrust into the very bowels of hell and once again lament the fact that she’d survived, kept her sharply focused on her task.
It was one thing for the regret over having lived to have insidiously crept through her mind in a moment where she’d opened her eyes to pain, deep sorrow and confusion and to have briefly succumbed to the shameful thought in a moment of weakness before she’d collected her wits and regained her iron resolve—something she’d always possessed—and quite another to be in a situation where she gave the cowards responsible for this massacre the satisfaction of hearing her beg for death.
That angered her as much as the senseless deaths of so many good and generous people. People who’d never hurt another living soul. Whose only purpose was the driving desire to help those in need who couldn’t help themselves.