Wicked Soul (Ancient Blood #1)(98)

I was both disturbed and comforted by that fact. But the skinwalkers had left us no choice. If there’d been any other way, I would’ve been the first to champion it. It wasn’t like I hadn’t defied Warin before, and even Aleric, who at times was so much more terrifying than his brother was.

But they’d tried to kill me, over and over again, and now they had my friends—true innocents in this fight. It had to end here. Now. After what they’d done to me, I was almost sorry I couldn’t be a part of it.

Or maybe I could. Not that I wanted to be in the middle of the actual fray, but…

I unbuckled my seatbelt and leaned forward. “A massacre sounds like a pretty effective distraction, doesn’t it?”

Roy narrowed his eyes at me over his shoulder. “What are you on about?”

“I mean…” I nibbled my lip again. “I mean that if the Guard is busy fighting the skinwalkers, and the skinwalkers are busy fighting the Guard, then maybe we could sneak in and free the coven. Get them out of harm’s way.”

He stared. “Have you lost your mind? Do you know what Warin would do to me if you got hurt—if he came back to this car and so much as a hair on your pretty little head were out of place? No, Liv. It’s a bad idea. Too much could go wrong. I can’t promise I’d be able to protect you, and since that’s my job…”

I opened my door before he could lock it, squirming out of reach as he lunged for me. Roy was big and strong, but I had agility on my side.

“Hey!” he barked at a stage whisper. “Get back here!”

“I’m going,” I told him through the open car door. “One way or the other. Either you’ll be there to protect me as best you can, or you won’t.”

I slammed the door shut before Roy could sputter a reply. Halfway up the back stairs, I heard gravel crunching behind me, as well as a low, furious grumbling about how maybe it was time for him to retire and settle down.

The door was already open. The Guard had seen to that. Carefully, I opened it, and was overwhelmed by the stench of decaying meat.

I gagged, hard, pressing a hand to my mouth and nose. Roy put his hands on my shoulders and said into my ear, “If you’re gonna do this, you’re gonna have to be prepared to see and smell a lot worse.”

I swallowed the next urge to retch and nodded weakly. Then I pressed through the door, puddles of standing water tinged with blood sloshing beneath my feet as Roy and I crept into the dark.

We began our journey in the chamber I’d visited before, the one where the slaughterhouse workers hung and bled the dead animals. Several carcasses were dangling from meathooks still, abandoned for other pursuits, it seemed. I pulled the collar of my shirt up over my nose, content to inhale the scent of my own fear, rather than the stench of old death around me. If Roy was bothered by it, he showed no signs except to pull his gun from the back of his pants and click the safety off.

A low, eerie hum echoed around us. So did every one of our footsteps. And, at least in my own ears, my heartbeat.

“Let me go first into the next room,” Roy demanded as we approached the hall. I nodded to him. I’d let him take point. Even though I could feel my magic thrumming beneath my skin, you could never go wrong hiding behind a man with a gun.

We didn’t have to go far, though. As Roy scanned the offices for signs of life, a weak, rhythmic thumping drew my attention to the boiler room.

I tugged on Roy’s sleeve and pointed. He listened, then pushed ahead of me, wrapped his hand around the knob, and tugged it free from the door as easily as I might pull a ticket for the deli counter.

The door swung out. Two familiar faces, and three unknown, stared up at us, eyes wide.

Raven stopped kicking the wall. Behind a silver swath of duct tape, she said something that might have been my name.

“We’ve got you,” I promised at a whisper, eyes filling with tears of relief as I stooped to begin seeing to the witches’ bondage. Their wrists were all cinched tight with two layers of zip-ties. Joanna’s fingers were a deep purple at their tips. “Roy—do you have a knife?”

“Do I have a knife?” he snorted, as if the question were absurd. He plucked one from his jacket pocket, flicked it open, and—

The wall outside the boiler room exploded in a cloud of plaster. An inhuman howl went up from inside the new hole a skinwalker had made in it, followed by a wet gurgle.

My jaw hung slack. Roy shrugged and said, “One down, too goddamn many to go.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said to my friends as I tore the duct tape from their mouths. In the meantime, Roy set about freeing their hands, though he eyed them warily each time he did so.

Raven winced when the tape pulled, then wiggled her nose. “Shit, it could be worse. I needed an upper lip wax, anyway.”

Another crash, this one more distant, blew debris down the hall. An animal snarl rippled in reply. Roy abandoned Joana’s hands to peek out past the door frame.

“They’re takin’ the fight out into the hall,” he said grimly. “The skinwalkers are on the retreat.”

“Good,” Raven hissed, spitting on the ground for emphasis. “Bastards.”

“We gotta hurry,” Roy continued. “C’mon, let’s—”

A hot lance of pain tore through my shoulder, and for a moment, I thought I’d been shot. I screamed, clutching at an invisible wound somewhere deep in my bones. My vision blurred as a second wave of agony rolled up my spine, and I doubled on myself, one arm hanging uselessly at my side.