He wouldn’t risk a bullet ricocheting off the steel walls, so Jaxton drew out a pair of bolas from one of the pockets on his chest and swung them around a few times before letting them fly. They hit the mark and wrapped around the gun with enough force to knock it to the floor with a clatter.
With the tranquilizer gun out of the way, Jaxton gave a unique whistle that signaled to the others that he was going to engage. After years of working missions together, he trusted his team to cover his back and protect the two rescued AMT prisoners on the ground.
He charged at the two guards blocking the corner. The first guard threw a punch, but Jaxton ducked the swing and danced to the right before punching the man in the soft area of the kidney. The man groaned, and Jaxton took advantage of the opening. He stepped back to the left and smashed his fist into the side of the man’s face.
The man went down with a thud.
When the female guard glanced down at her fallen co-worker, Jaxton rushed toward her.
She noticed the movement and reached for something on her belt, but Jaxton was quicker. He used his weight to topple the woman off balance and they tumbled to the ground, rolling until Jaxton gained the upper hand and pinned the woman’s shoulders to the ground with one arm.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her hand inch toward her belt. Jaxton leaned more of his weight onto the woman’s shoulders, took a hold of her wrist, and squeezed. The guard winced and Jaxton plucked the object that looked like a stun gun from her utility belt and tossed it out of reach.
Marco’s call of attack echoed down the hallway. Jaxton rolled away just in time to see a stream of water encircle the guard’s lower body before freezing around the woman’s legs, trapping her without doing the woman any lasting harm.
Sometimes having friends with elemental magic came in handy.
With his two targets out of the way, Jaxton jumped to his feet to check on the others.
His men were unharmed, as were the woman and his brother, but while all ten of the AMT guards were unconscious on the ground, there were at least two hundred guards inside this particular AMT compound and more could arrive at any minute.
They needed to get the hell out of here.
As if reading his mind, Darius had already tossed Jaxton’s brother over his shoulder, so Jaxton scooped up the unconscious female inmate into his arms and started running.
A quick check assured him that the woman’s heart rate was a little slow, but not dangerous, and that the wound on her arm had clotted thanks to the pressure of the other one against it. After all the trouble he’d gone through to get her out of the AMT, she had better bloody well not die en route. Neena must have plans for her, and what Neena wanted, she got.
He heard some kind of commotion behind them just as they reached the tunnel entrance, where jagged rocks bent and twisted with the steel of the AMT walls. Darius ducked inside the tunnel first, and Jaxton followed suit. Marco and Taka would cover their retreat.
Of course, escaping the tunnel was the easy part; getting off the mountain was going to be tricky. After the amount of energy his men had already used confronting the guards, Jaxton hoped Darius would be able to concentrate long enough for their final trick.
Once they walked out onto the snow-covered mountain ledge, goosebumps rose on the woman’s skin. Jaxton hugged her close against his chest as he moved to stand next to Darius. He glanced down to check; while cold, the woman was still alive.
Marco emerged from the tunnel and stepped to the side just as Taka slowly backed out of the hole, moving the earth as he went until the tunnel was sealed.
Since they were standing on a mountain ledge thousands of feet above sea level, the only way the guards could reach them now was from the sky.
Marco and Taka came over and took positions facing Jaxton and Darius, the four of them making a tight-knit square. Jaxton nodded at Darius to begin.
Darius kept one hand on Garrett’s back, but raised the other to the east—the direction of elemental wind—and soon wind began to swirl around them, increasing in speed with each pass.
Jaxton’s stomach did a little flip. He knew what was coming. But no matter how many times they’d done this before, he would never get used to traveling via elemental wind.
Category Five winds swirled around them, and soon a piece of the rock ledge cracked and the ground jolted under their feet. Yet because of training and practice, the men maintained their balance even as the section of rock was lifted into the air. The woman in his arms shivered, and Jaxton nearly crushed her against his body in an attempt to warm her. The trip across the chasm wouldn’t last long, but he just hoped she’d survive the cold.
Chapter Three
Kiarra blinked a few times and tried to ascertain if she was still dreaming, but when the unfamiliar surroundings stayed constant, she knew that the men in black had managed to escape the AMT.
After fifteen years in prison, she was finally free.
Part of her wanted to laugh at the highly improbable situation, while the other half wanted to cry tears of joy at finally escaping. Her future was far from certain, but, at least for now, no one was going to die simply because she was still alive.
And while she didn’t want to get her hopes up, there was a small chance that she might not have to die.
Tears started to form, but Kiarra took a deep breath to help get her emotions under control. She couldn’t afford to fall apart right now, so she forced herself to rely on her most effective weapon: her logic.
She looked around the room, hoping to find something that would not only help her better understand her kidnappers, but maybe help her think of a way to escape.
The room was a small, mostly blue bedroom with a plush chair in the corner, two windows off to the side, and a mirror above a dresser. There were also framed pictures of far-off places scattered across the walls. The room was the opposite of her sterile, cold cell. One could almost call it homey.
But the most important difference from the AMT was that instead of fluorescent lights, sunlight streamed through the windows. Kiarra stretched her neck until she could see the clear blue sky through the windows, and longed to feel the warmth of the sun on her cheeks.
It’d been fifteen years since she’d last seen the sky or felt the sun on her face. The AMT had stolen those years from her, and while she’d never get them back, she would make the most of the freedom she had now.
Of course, how long her freedom would last depended entirely on her kidnappers.
She still wasn’t sure what had prodded her to warn the men about the tranquilizer guns. But when it had come down to it, her gut had told her that taking her chances with the intruders had been the better of the two options. Time would tell if she’d made the right decision.
She tried to sit up, but material dug into her wrists and ankles, preventing her from moving off the bed. Considering her attacks on the man in her cell, coupled with her attempts to stab herself, it didn’t surprise her that they’d put restraints on her arms and legs. At least they were material and not metal, like the ones inside the AMT examination rooms.
Thinking of the AMT brought back the researchers’ conversation about using her blood for tests on other inmates. Were the men here going to do the same thing? To be honest, she had no idea why else they would want her. Ransom was useless since Kiarra’s family had disowned her years ago, and the AMT would simply send enforcers to retrieve her rather than try to negotiate for her return.
Her only real concern was that the men might hurt her. Especially now that she didn’t have any special protections like she’d had inside the AMT, and there was nothing to stop them from beating—let alone raping—her.
Fear started to grip her belly again, so Kiarra inhaled deeply and willed her mind to push aside the fear and approach the situation rationally. After years of waking up in strange examination rooms, and being poked and prodded for days on end, finding herself in restraints was no big deal. While she knew almost nothing about the men w
ho’d broken into the AMT, freaking out about what they’d do to her would serve no purpose.
She needed to take advantage of the time she had now, alone in this room, to try and plan escape routes. Especially since the longer she stayed here, the greater the chance that the AMT enforcers would find her.
Just as Kiarra started to calculate how far off the ground she was based on the height of the trees outside her window, someone knocked and opened the door, revealing the tall, lean frame of the green-eyed man who had broken into her cell. He was dressed in a new set of black clothes, with a nude-colored bandage wrapped around his left bicep.
She was going to pay for that.
The man noticed her gaze, looked down at his arm, and then back up again. “Take a good look at your handiwork, because I assure you it won’t happen again.”
His voice was deep and slightly lilting. She wanted to know what country he was from, but that was low on her list of priorities. If she were going to chance asking a question, she would think of something more useful.
The man continued to stare at her as if he was waiting for her to say something. Fine. He hadn’t been rough with her back inside her cell, but she wondered if he would smack or verbally abuse her as the AMT staff had done in the past, when she hadn’t follow the rules or been complacent.
There was only one way to find out.
Kiarra gathered her courage and tried to keep her voice even. “You aren’t the first to underestimate me.”
She waited for him to strike her, like the AMT guards would’ve done, but he kept his distance and said, “What’s your name?’
It looked like he wasn’t going to hit her, at least for now. She answered, “F-839.”
“Not your bloody serial number,” he growled. “What’s your name?”
Kiarra blinked and looked away. Each AMT prisoner was given a serial number and learned to respond to it. She couldn’t remember the last time someone had used her actual name, and after so long, she wasn’t sure if she wanted this stranger to be the first one to call her by it. The act seemed intimate, as if the use of her name would transform her from a prisoner to a person with rights and opinions, and she wasn’t sure if that were a good idea. She didn’t know what the man wanted with her, and hope was a dangerous emotion for any AMT prisoner.
Kiarra had learned that lesson the hard way.
She looked back at the man, his eyes trained on her face, and resisted a shiver. He wasn’t looking at her with cool disinterest, as if she were nothing more than an experiment subject to be discarded when things went wrong. No, it was almost as if he acknowledged that she was a person, not something to be cataloged with a serial number.
The man maintained eye contact as he took a step toward her. Kiarra’s heart raced as she battled her nerves to stay calm. Inside the AMT, people had only come near her to punish her or to experiment on her, which had conditioned her to hate it, and she didn’t have adrenaline or a life-and-death situation to override her fear.
And her commitment to logic only went so far.
The man was now only a few feet away and Kiarra clenched her jaw to keep from tugging at her restraints, determined not to let the man see how his closeness affected her. If she could keep herself calm during her experiment sessions, she could force herself stay calm now too.
Jaxton saw a brief flash of fear in the woman’s eyes and stopped moving. He didn’t want to trigger panic in the woman and repeat the last hour he’d just spent with his brother. While this woman might be afraid, at least she wasn’t screaming and thrashing about like Garrett had done when he’d first woken up. No matter what Jaxton had tried, Garrett hadn’t calmed down until Jaxton had drugged him unconscious.
Between this woman’s attempted suicide and his brother’s behavior, Jaxton was starting to believe the rumors he’d heard of late. Something was going on inside the AMT, something they desperately wanted to keep secret from the Feiru public.
Taka had suggested that Jaxton question the first-born female and see what he could learn. Especially since Jaxton had, in effect, rescued the woman, which gave him a slight edge over someone like Taka, or even Darius, since they were complete strangers.
However, he wouldn’t learn anything as long as the woman continued to fear him. She wouldn’t even disclose something as simple as her bloody name. He needed to fix that.
He took a step back and leaned against the dresser, waiting to see how the woman would respond. When she relaxed a little, the increased space having a positive effect, Jaxton jumped on the change and decided to give a little tit-for-tat to get the woman talking. “Let’s try this again. My name’s Jaxton. Care to tell me yours, pet?”
The woman stared at him a minute before nodding to herself and asking, “Why do you call me ‘pet’?”
“Would you prefer ducky? Or princess? Until you tell me your name, I’ll have to get creative.” She didn’t so much as smile. He would have to try a different approach. “How about this: I remove your restraints and then you tell me your name.”
She raised her chin a notch and nodded. Jaxton uncrossed his arms and took a step toward her, but this time, the woman didn’t flinch.
He made it to her bedside, turned down the duvet, and reached for the ankle restraints. But the instant his fingers brushed her cool skin, her muscles tensed. Just like with his brother, this woman didn’t like being touched.
The question was: why? While the most likely answer was that the AMT staff had abused them, Jaxton secretly hoped that wasn’t the case. The last thing he needed was the woman constantly afraid that he was going to hurt her.
Not wanting to scare the poor chick any more than necessary, Jaxton managed to keep his anger at the AMT from showing on his face, just barely.
As he unbuckled the straps, he decided to distract her and encourage her to open up to him. “Considering your stature, you packed one hell of a headbutt earlier. Where’d you learn to do that?”
He glanced up at her face, but her expression remained blank. Where had the tigress from the AMT gone? He needed to find a way to draw her out again.
After pulling the blanket back over her feet, Jaxton moved up to her arm restraints and stopped just short of frowning at the frailty of her wrists. Clearly the AMT bastards hadn’t fed her enough.
He undid the last buckle, took a few steps back, and waited. The dampers in the room would prevent the use of elemental magic, but judging from the woman’s current emotional state, Jaxton didn’t think he had anything to worry about.
The woman had her eyes closed and was doing some sort of rhythmic breathing, probably trying to fight some kind of meltdown. While he was afraid that she might close in on herself and be unable to answer any of his questions, he needed to follow his own rule of successful interrogation: give a person time.
Once she finally stopped her deep breathing, she stretched her arms up over her head and opened her eyes. She rubbed her freed wrists and touched the bandage on her arm before she said, “Kiarra. My name is Kiarra.”
Kiarra. The name suited her. While her accent was American, she defied the blond-haired, blue-eyed stereotype with her short black hair, dark eyes, and olive skin. Most Feiru in America were a hotchpotch of ethnicities, and Kiarra looked to be no exception.
“Well, Kiarra, now the question is, if I leave you unrestrained, will you promise not to try offing yourself again? Blood is a bugger to clean out of the carpet.”
Kiarra sat up slowly, wincing once or twice in the process. He remained silent, wanting to give her a chance to adjust, and watched as she pulled the blanket around her shoulders and wrapped it tight around her body before she whispered, “I don’t want to die.”
Well now, that statement only birthed more questions.
But before he could ask her to clarify, there was a knock on the door and Darius peeked into the room. “Jax, someone’s here to see you.”
“Unless someone is dying or the world’s about to end, tell them to sod off.”
Dar
ius opened the door a few inches more and said, “But she wants to see you.” He waved in Kiarra’s direction. “And talk to her.”
Bloody hell. There was only one woman who earned both an emphasized “she” and had the ability to locate an undisclosed safe house.
They were about to receive an unsolicited visit from his boss, Neena Chatterjee.
Right on cue, her voice echoed up the stairs. “Jaxy darling, I’m tired of waiting. Ready or not, here I come.”
Kiarra drew the blanket tighter around her body and wished that the soft fabric would shield her from the world and give her a few minutes of privacy. Between the pounding in her head and the flitting caresses of Jaxton’s fingers against her skin, Kiarra was close to a meltdown; she wasn’t sure if she could handle meeting or touching another person.
As it was, Jaxton merely touching her feet and wrists had brought back memories of one of the AMT researchers and what he’d done to her. Luckily, one of her coping techniques—deep breathing with her eyes closed—had allowed her to focus back on the present.
She watched as the tall man with dark skin and warm brown eyes moved aside to let in a small woman with barely restrained curly black hair and golden brown skin. The woman strutted into the room like she owned it, with a dark red duffel bag slung over her shoulder.
The woman stopped next to Jaxton and started to speak, her accent more singsong than Jaxton’s. “Jaxy, I’m a bit disappointed in your welcoming party.” She gave a fake pout. “No cakes, no balloons, not even any gifts? Poor Kiarra deserves all of that and more.”
Kiarra did a double take at the sound of her name and looked at the mirror above the dresser. It looked like a regular mirror, not like the two-way ones used in the AMT examination rooms. How does this woman know my name?
She wanted to ask, but hesitated. Jaxton hadn’t struck her when she’d refused to answer him earlier, so maybe this woman would allow her to ask questions too.
Gripping the inside of the blanket, she looked at the curly-haired woman and forced herself to ask, “How do you know my name? Were you listening in?”
Blaze of Secrets (Asylums for Magical Threats) Page 2