I can get out of here—I can go back for my guys like I’ve wanted to for so long.
I have to move quickly. As soon as any of the boss’s people find this bloodbath and realize I’m missing, they might warn the guardians that I’m on the loose. I’ll lose any element of surprise.
And I’m going to need every possible advantage if I’m going to break the boys out of the facility on my own.
My jaw clenches, my focus narrowing with the same cool detachment I bring to a fight, shutting out every consideration other than the job I have to get done.
First, I have to find a way out of this cage.
The guard who escorted me to the door lies at the edge of the ring where he’d stood waiting. Glancing away from the horror etched on his distorted face, I stretch my arm through the bars toward his hip.
I barely manage to hook my fingers inside his jeans pocket and snag the key ring. Breathing shallowly through my mouth, I push the key for the cage into the lock and twist it.
The door pops open. I’m free.
My limbs tense with the impulse to hurtle through the massacre to the exit, but I spot another object near the guard’s fractured thigh: a pistol.
I prefer to work with my claws, but I can’t deny that weapons would be an asset. Especially when I have no idea just how tightly secure the facility will be after our previous near escape.
The guys might not even be in that building anymore but moved to some place with additional protections.
I grab the gun and push myself onward through the deathly wreckage, scanning waists and hips and the items scattered in between, avoiding faces as well as I can.
There’s another pistol, and a switchblade, and a thin knife that looks perfect for throwing, wedged beneath someone’s contorted pelvis. My lips press flat as I yank it out.
It’s all just meat now. Nothing worse than a butcher shop.
If I tell myself that enough times, maybe all of me will believe it.
I consider a fallen phone, but electronic devices are easily tracked. I do snatch up the least bloody wallets I spot—because I’m going to need money sooner rather than later—as well as a couple of lighters, a few pieces of jewelry that look pawnable when the cash runs out, and a voluminous purse with only a few scarlet flecks on the leather to shove my haul in.
Don’t think about who this necklace or that bracelet once belonged to. Don’t think about whether they were as immoral as the people who ran the cage matches or just someone who happened to get caught up with the wrong crowd at the worst possible time.
Don’t think about how much they must have suffered, and who inflicted that suffering on them.
Jacob. Zian. Andreas. Dominic. All that matters is them. I’m finally coming for them.
By the time I’ve reached the exit, the one the audience arrives through that stands just beyond the boss’s chair, I’ve added three more guns and another blade to my collection. One firearm for each of us, if the ammo lasts that long.
I don’t know how many bullets they have in them, but I’m not lingering here to check.
My gaze flicks over to the boss’s chair. To the thick gold chains looped around his purpling neck.
I bet they’re worth plenty, but all of me recoils from the idea of taking anything of that man’s with me.
I shove past the door into a wide but short hall that leads to a flight of stairs. Three more disfigured corpses sprawl on the floor here.
I don’t want to think about the implications of that fact either. Or of the fact that the injuries I took in the fight aren’t so much as stinging anymore.
With that sudden memory, I glance down at myself. The cut on my shoulder has sealed up, leaving only a ruddy line. The same with the one on my hip, visible through the slit carved in my sweatpants.
I’ve always healed quickly—we all did. The guardians remarked on it more than once. But notthatfast. How—?
That doesn’t matter either. I don’t have to think about it. All that matters is there’s no one standing in my way when I race out into the night.
I find myself under a single dim security lamp at the edge of a parking lot packed with cars I don’t know how to hotwire or drive. All the things the guardians taught us, and they never bothered with that particular skill, the pricks.
I sling the strap of the purse over my shoulder cross-body and tighten it until the bag rests firmly against my back. After scanning the area for movement and seeing none, I extend my claws and sever my skin just below the scratch I made earlier tonight.