Twilight Crook Page 27

  “Sorry,” Bow said, not looking as if he meant the apology all that much. “I just—I think that’s one of the guys who attacked Gisele.”

  “And payback was a bitch. Just remember the best payback will be getting the rest of our kind free before we cave in the rest of their skulls.”

  They both slipped back into the darkness. I hustled through a small change room, down a short hall on the other side, and burst through the next doorway into—a personal bowling alley?

  Victor Bane must take plenty of time for his recreational pursuits in between attempts to destroy all shadowkind.

  Three guards were just charging in from an entrance across the room. I ducked behind one of the bowling ball dispensers by the two lanes, the tang of wood polish saturating my lungs.

  Another shot rang out—and then a gasp and a fleshy ripping sound reached my ears. Maybe I should question my life choices when that sound was actually familiar at this point.

  I bobbed back up to see Laz twisting the neck of the third of the guards, gripping the man by the jaw so he could wrench his head off without touching the toxic metals of the man’s helmet. Two other headless figures already sprawled on the floor, leaking blood all over the gleaming boards.

  The troll, whose skin had deepened to a darker blue and who’d grown at least a foot in both height and width in his full shadowkind form, grinned to reveal two rows of uneven teeth and tossed the heads one by one down the lane. The first clanged into the pins helmet-first and scored him a strike.

  Ruse had reappeared. “Again,” he chided, “could we please be at least a tad more careful with the mortals? Spare one for me to do my work?”

  Laz grunted. “Either I go straight for the throat or the gut, or they bash me with their stupid weapons before I can do much. Fucking armor makes it pretty hard to be subtle. I don’t see you felling any of the pricks.”

  “Fair. Come on, let’s keep moving.”

  We came out into a wider hall at the base of a stairwell. Thorn appeared next to us a second later. “We’ve searched the entire basement. Wherever the cages are, they’re not down here.”

  I raised my chin, ignoring the increasingly frenetic beat of my heart. “Upward and onward it is, then.”

  Footsteps thundered toward us before we’d made it to the first landing where the staircase split in two. Thorn took one side and Laz the other, and a moment later two more gouged bodies tumbled down next to Ruse and me.

  “It’s raining corpses,” I said with a shudder.

  “As long as they’re not ours.” The incubus grasped my arm. “Better catch up before they tear through the entire population of this building.”

  We rounded the corner after Thorn, and Omen blinked into being at the top of the stairs. He’d kept his human-ish form, but traces of his hellish nature showed all over his body, from the orange blaze in his eyes to the mottled lava-gray and magma-glow twining across his skin.

  “This way,” he said with a jab of his hand, fangs glinting in his mouth. He sprang back into the shadows in the direction he’d pointed to.

  Racing after him, we found ourselves in a music room: a grand piano at one end, a circle of wing chairs at the other, books of music and a few other instruments propped along the wall. But we didn’t arrive alone. More guards dashed after us inside.

  As Thorn introduced his crystalline fists to two of their throats, I snatched up a violin by the neck. When I whirled around, the nearest guard was almost on me, brandishing one of those brilliant whips. My pulse hiccupped, I slashed out with my free hand, and he jolted backward with a flinch at the wave of heat I’d sent at him without thinking.

  I couldn’t care at this point whether Laz or any of the other gang members who might be watching from the shadows had noticed. Without missing a beat, I swung the violin at his helmet, knocking it to the floor and giving him a good wallop to the temple at the same time. The groaning of the violin as it cracked matched that of Thorn’s current opponent, who was crumpling at the warrior’s blow.

  The guard I was facing off with swayed but righted himself, just in time for me to land a kick that smacked the whip from his hand. I threw myself at him with all my weight to knock him to the floor. While I yanked at the clasps on the silver-and-iron vest, Ruse danced around me, wavering in and out of view as he alternately dodged other guards and attempted to prevent our allies from obliterating this one.

  The jerk managed to clock me hard enough in the head that my thoughts scrambled, but I wrenched off his last piece of armor at the same time. Ruse dropped with his knees, pinning the man’s chest, and gazed intently into his startled eyes.

  “Hello, friend,” he said with the full force of his cubi charm. “You’re going to help us free the poor wounded creatures locked up somewhere in this place.”

  “Hopefully quickly,” Omen snapped. He’d shoved back a bookcase at the far end of the room to reveal a hidden door. His gaze snagged on me. “Let’s go, Disaster. It’s time for you to take the starring role.”

  I wished my gut hadn’t lurched so much at that statement. Wished this was one of my usual capers where it was just me vs. one minor asshole collector and not a mission where the fate of all shadowkind—of Snap, of Bow and Gisele’s friend, of the many other beings the Company might have captured and those they wished to destroy—hung in the balance. But here I was. I couldn’t even say I hadn’t signed up for it.

  Resolve swelled inside me as I met Omen’s eyes. “Ready when you are.”

  I skirted pools of blood and gore on my way across the room, the stench of ruined human flesh making my stomach churn even more than it already was from my nerves.

  Just focus on the doorway. Focus on the beings in need on the other side.

  In just a few more minutes, I might have Snap with me again.

  Ruse’s voice rose and fell in lilting tones as he and his increasingly charmed companion followed me. The doorway Omen had revealed led to a narrow flight of stairs down into a second, hidden basement.

  As I descended, cool air licked over my skin, raising goosebumps on my arms. A chemical scent tickled my nose.

  The room we emerged into had clearly been prepared in a rush. Crates and cardboard boxes had been shoved into stacks on one side somewhat haphazardly. The rest of the room was full of what looked like huge freestanding lockers, similar to the one the Company had brought to their hand-off with the collector. Their outsides gleamed stainless steel, but I’d be willing to stake my life and my love of curry on there being plenty of silver and pure iron embedded inside.

  They were locked with keycode panels on the right side of the doors. Those gleamed less severe shades of gray, the base of the pad silver and the keys iron. No one on this mission would be able to touch them except me—or our charmed guard.

  I jerked the guard over to one, my eyes watering in the glare of the overhead lights. Ruse came along too but with a grimace at the toxic vibes the metals must have been giving off around us.

  “Do you know the codes?” I demanded.

  “No,” the guard said. “None of us—they were so strict about that—but I believe—it should all be on the computers. I don’t know the password for that either—”

  He’d motioned to a flashy, high-tech set-up on a desk in a corner beyond the cells. “Rex!” Omen barked.

  The werewolf appeared a moment later with one of his lackeys at his side. “On it,” he said, and gave the guy a shove toward the computer.

  Thanks to his tech guy’s expertise, we shouldn’t need to run off with any equipment, only grab the data before destroying it—and hopefully the data on every computer in Bane’s network as well. The lackey dropped into the chair and launched his digital assault with a clatter of the keyboard.

  I turned back to Ruse and the guard. “They’ll figure out that we’re down here sooner rather than later, even with the doorway closed again. We should get this guy to divert the others—to say he’s seen us moving to a different part of the house.” Might as well make
as much use of the dude as we could.

  As Ruse cajoled the guard into giving frantic commands over his radio, the guy at the computer raised his hands with a brief whoop. “And we’re in! Codes for the cages, where are you…?” His fingers resumed their clattering.

  Omen frowned at the blank steel sides of the cells. “How will we know which code is for which cage? They don’t appear to be conveniently numbered.” He snapped his fingers toward Ruse. “Get that man back over here.”

  Ruse nudged the guard toward us. The man drew in a shaky breath. “How can I help?”

  Omen’s fiery eyes had simmered down now that we’d reached our goal, but they lit with a new glint that might have been partly amused at the guard’s cooperative attitude. “These metal boxes have got to be labeled somehow. How do you tell which is which?”

  The guard’s head bobbed in eager agreement. “There are dots on the sides of the keypads. Blue first and then red.”

  I squinted at the edge of the panel and made out the little flecks of paint now that I knew to look for them. “This one is 3-5 then.” There had to be close to twenty of the things in this space. I glanced toward the computer guy. “Do you have those codes for us yet?”

  “Working on it, working on it.” He tapped vigorously, sucking his lower lip under his teeth. The spines that poked from his hair at the nape of his neck quivered.

  Thorn and Rex both vanished into the shadows, I assumed to fend off any guards who headed this way despite our efforts. I paced, my chest constricting.

  Omen cast me a baleful look. “Too much excitement for you, mortal?”

  “No,” I said. “I just want us—all of us—out of here.” He should know as well as I did that every passing second might mean fewer shadowkind freed—might mean our plan failed altogether. Last time we’d only managed to get him out before we’d had to run for our lives.

  “There!” the computer guy said with obvious relief. “Okay, I’m going to start the virus uploading while I read out the numbers. The code for cage 3-5 is 6-9-0-2.”

  I braced myself as I typed in the code. Omen had already moved to the next cell, dragging the guard with him. He bent close, flinching just at being close to the toxic metals, and read off the number on the keypad there. The metals in the keys would have burned him—or any of our other shadowkind companions—too badly for him to use them, but at least we could free the captives twice as fast if the guard was punching in codes too.

  As the lock thudded and the cell door in front of me swung open, Ruse stepped up to peer inside with one of his warmest smiles but wary eyes. Shadowkind didn’t tend to be in a friendly state when they’d been locked away for who knew how long.

  Even starker light filled the inner space from a panel up above. A streak of darkness quivered in the center of that light where the captive being had drawn its least substantial form in on itself. I couldn’t make out any of its features, but somehow just looking at it, I knew we hadn’t found Snap—not yet, anyway.

  “Please, my friend, make your escape,” Ruse said, extending his hand. “We’re getting all of you out of here. And feel free to enact a little revenge on your captors as you flee.”

  The patch of shadow hesitated and then sprang from its confines with a shudder of knobby haunches and a clicking of scales. I didn’t wait to see how it would react to its newfound freedom—I was already rushing to the next cell.

  Omen and I volleyed numbers back and forth with the tech guy, and one by one the cell doors gaped open. After the first, I leapt to the next the moment the lock clicked over, not waiting to see who might be inside, as much as I might have wanted to.

  A couple of the freed beings lingered in the room, watching our progress: an emaciated fae man hunched by the stack of boxes, shivering, and a shifter woman with cat-like irises prowled back and forth with darted looks toward the staircase as if she wasn’t convinced it was actually any safer up there than down here. The others vanished straight into the shadows.

  “Don’t hang around here too long,” Ruse called to them. “Take a few jabs on your way out if you like, but don’t give these bastards a chance to snare you again.”

  We were down to the last few cells when voices crackled from the charmed guard’s radio loud enough for me to hear. “The east basement! All units head there now!”

  Shit. They’d realized we’d made it this far. “The rest of the numbers, fast!” I shouted, darting to another cell.

  As the computer guy rattled the digits off, my fingers flew over the keypad. There were only two cells left. The guard hesitated as Omen urged him to open the cell they were at, and the hellhound shifter snarled.

  “Type in the fucking code!”

  Panic flashed across the guard’s face. Ruse dashed over, seeing his magical influence fracturing.

  I waved the computer guy on. “I can do the rest. Hurry!”

  Despite the cool air, sweat trickled down my back as I jabbed in the last two codes, not even waiting to make sure they worked first. “That’s it!” the computer guy shouted to me after the final one, and mashed at the keyboard a little more. “I’ve downloaded all the other data I can, and the virus is in the network. Should I activate it?”

  “Yes, yes, get on with it!” Omen said. “We’re going to burn this whole place down… in every possible way.”

  He shot a meaningful glance at me. At least this part I could do by regular means, no worries about uncertain powers or witnesses.

  “Everyone out, now!” I hollered, just as the first figures in the new wave of guards barreled down the stairs.

  Thorn, Laz, and other shadowkind I couldn’t recognize from a glimpse shot in and out of the shadows between them, mashing a skull into the wall here, cracking a spine in half there. The less combat-inclined beings hurtled past them. I caught sight of smoke streaming from open wounds on Thorn’s back and stiffened against the urge to run to him. I had other work to do.

  I splashed the kerosene from the pouch at my hip across the crates and boxes and lit them up with a flick of my lighter.

  I’d gotten too used to the struggle of using my power for the same purpose. The flames roared up faster than I was prepared for. I yanked myself backwards, slapping at a few sparks that singed my hair, and bolted for the stairs my shadowkind allies were just clearing.

  My foot slipped on a smear of blood, and then Thorn was whipping me up into his arms. He barged up the stairs with me over his shoulder, smashing past another guard who’d just appeared at the top. But as he tore through the music room, a man he hadn’t seen sprang from behind the piano and hurled a huge net at my warrior.

  It didn’t quite cover Thorn’s hulking form, but it fell over enough of him that his muscles locked up with a spasm of pain. I wrenched at the silver-and-iron cords, shoving them off him as quickly as I could. More smoke poured from the fresh wounds on his back and face that would add to his collection of scars. He fell to his knees, and my feet hit the ground too.

  As I hauled the net the rest of the way off the warrior, Omen leapt from the shadows to slash a claw across our attacker’s throat. “Out the front!” he shouted at us, and flashed out of sight again.

  Thorn staggered upright. We ran out into the hall together, his hand clutching mine as tightly as I was clutching him. With the amount of essence billowing out of him, I wasn’t sure he could have carried me now if he’d wanted to.

  “Did you see—” he said roughly. “Was Snap—?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, but the hollow in my stomach didn’t hold much hope. If Snap had been in one of those cells, surely he’d have stayed long enough to show himself and reunite with us properly?

  If we didn’t get the hell out of here, there’d be none of us left to reunite with him, wherever he was. Silver and iron glinted everywhere I looked—armor, nets, knives. The remaining guards were converging on us.

  I wasn’t finished with this place, though. We’d meant to see the whole building burn. The thick cement walls in the secret basemen
t wouldn’t let the fire seep from below into the rest of the mansion.

  I grasped at my bottle of kerosene—and it slid from my hasty fingers to rattle across the rug and under a hall table behind us. Behind us, where a dozen or so guards were currently storming our way. Sayonara to that one.

  We burst into a grand entrance room with woven tapestries hanging from the walls and an actual red carpet slashing down the middle of the marble floor. Ahead of us, the double doors hung open to the night, but another dozen guards stood between us and that escape.

  In seconds, we’d be surrounded. I spun around, a searing heat mingling with the burst of panic in my chest.

  These assholes had destroyed who knew how many beings, had tormented Omen, had nearly killed Gisele, and if they’d gotten their hands on Snap…

  My jaw clenched as the heat flared into a surge of fury. They had no idea who they were dealing with. I could clear our way this time, and I didn’t need so much as a match to do it.

  I flung out my arms and hurled all the searing rage inside me at our attackers.

  The carpet and the tapestries went up in a blaze. So did most of the bodies between us and the door. The guards stumbled, toppled, or flailed with shrieks of agony as the flames ate across every part of them not made of metal.

  A horrified lump clogged my throat, but this was what I’d wanted. It wasn’t anywhere near as horrifying as the genocide they’d planned to enact.

  If I’d been thinking clearer, I might have been a little more careful. Flames raged across the entire room around us, cutting off our escape as well. I tightened my grip on Thorn’s hand. He squeezed mine back with a curt nod.

  “And so we dance into the fire,” I muttered, and threw myself toward the doors.

  The flames snagged on my sleeves and the pouch at my hip. As I soared through the doorway, I let go of Thorn so I could flip into a roll. The cool blades of the lawn’s grass snuffed out the hungry tufts of fire.