A Glimmer of Hope (The Avalon Chronicles #1)(104)

Layla glanced between Reyes and Elias. “I’m not going to help you after you kill Chloe. That’s never going to happen.”

Elias hurled a glass at the wall beside Chloe’s cage. “Look, you little shit, you either work with me or die.”

“Then I die. But at least I die knowing I didn’t help you do a damn thing.” Layla took a deep breath and felt a calmness flow through her body. She should have been scared. Terrified. But for some reason, she felt quite peaceful.

“Then everyone you know will die,” Reyes said with a smirk.

“We’ll die fighting then.”

Reyes stepped up to Layla and raised the butt of her rifle, ready to strike.

Layla put up a hand as if to stop the blow, but instead manipulated the metal of the rifle and forced it to fire. The bullet roared inside the chamber, and Reyes screamed as the blast damaged her ears. Layla was on her feet in an instant, taking hold of the rifle and pushing Reyes back toward the cage, before striking her in the face with the weapon, knocking her to the ground.

Layla spun toward Elias, aiming the rifle at him, ready to pull the trigger, but hoping it wouldn’t come to that. “Surrender,” she said.

“Shoot me,” he told her.

She paused.

“You can’t shoot me, can you? You’re not a killer. Not like those people you call friends. They’re trained to kill. You? You’re a university student and the daughter of a mass murderer. Even if you could find it in yourself to pull that trigger, you don’t actually want to.”

“On your knees, hands on your head.”

Elias laughed. “Pull the trigger.”

Layla’s finger quivered above the trigger. She’d practiced using firearms while staying at the mansion, and her father had trained her in their use when she was a child, but she’d never thought she’d actually have to use one against someone.

There was a noise behind Layla, and for a moment it sounded like Reyes was getting back to her feet. She moved so that she could keep both Elias and Reyes in her line of sight, but quickly discovered that it was Chloe, removing the keys from Reyes’s jeans and unlocking the cage.

The large metal lock fell to the floor and Chloe pushed open the cage door, stepping over Reyes, who was beginning to stir. She walked over to Layla and placed a hand on the barrel. “No one is expecting you to shoot anyone,” she told Layla. “It’s fine.”

Layla allowed Chloe to take the rifle from her, which Chloe quickly aimed at Elias and shot him twice in the chest. Elias collapsed to the ground, just before Reyes dove into Chloe, tackling her and knocking the rifle aside.

Before Layla could intervene, Elias was back on his feet. “Guess it takes a bit more than being shot to kill me.”

Reyes leaped back toward Elias with impossible agility.

“She’s an umbra too,” Chloe said.

“We don’t all get flashy powers,” Reyes snapped.

Chloe reached over and took Layla’s hand, squeezing it slightly.

“Ah, how sweet, the last moments of friendship,” Reyes said.

Chloe released Layla’s hand and blasted energy at the rock above the heads of Reyes and Elias. “Run!”

Layla didn’t need telling twice, and the pair of them sprinted past the collapsing roof and into the tunnel as Elias’s screams of anger echoed around them.





38

“Are they dead?” Layla asked after she and Chloe had been running down the tunnel for a few minutes.

“No idea. Don’t care.”

Layla was surprised that she also didn’t have a problem with it. She did not care if Elias was dead or alive. She felt like she should be ashamed of even thinking it, but Elias had murdered or tried to destroy everything and everyone she loved. The state of his health was not something she gave a crap about.

A huge explosion sounded behind them, spurring them on further into the snaking tunnel, until they found themselves in a cavernous chamber, several times larger than the one they’d been in. There were lamps on the wall, the electric cables joined to a generator in the corner.

“What is this place?” Chloe asked, looking around.

Layla took a step and the smell of meat struck her, but it was mixed with something else, something she couldn’t quite remember. A few seconds later the memory of being outside of the ogre’s cell hit her like a truck.

“We need to leave. Now,” she said, slightly panicked by this realization.

“Where are we?” Chloe asked.

“You’re in an ogre’s lair,” Elias said as he ran around the corner of the tunnel. His face was covered in blood, which had also drenched his normally white shirt. “The ogres aren’t here right now, but I think I could cripple you both and let you wait for them to come have their fun. They’ll probably be exhausted from killing your friends, so it might take you a few days to finally die.”

“I assume it’s just you now?” Chloe asked.

“Reyes died in the collapse. It’s not something I’ll waste tears over, but it is an annoyance. She could have cheered me on while I killed you both.”

Chloe cracked her fingers. “We’re not going to die in here. But you might.”

Elias laughed. “Come try.”

Chloe rushed toward Elias, with Layla just behind, and threw a punch, which Elias avoided, landing one of his own to Chloe’s ribs. He turned and kicked Layla in the stomach, knocking her to the ground, before punching Chloe in the side of the face, sending her to the dirt.