27
Breaking into or out of a prison isn’t easy. They were designed with hundreds of years of experience taken into account. Doors wouldn't magically open. Alarms would easily be set off. One wrong move could be catastrophic.
Paige was the only one with law enforcement experience, though she did not have much detention center experience. She had never been on prisoner escort duty. She couldn’t even say if this was a normal prison facility or if it had specifically been designed to house supernatural people.
Paige and her team managed to gain entrance into cellblock A, take control of the command area, and there were no alarms raised.
However, they quickly found their first obstacle within moments of having done so.
With the guards contained, Paige and her team went into the actual cellblock. There, several of the incarcerated supernatural people were already mingling, trying to figure out what was going on and what they needed to do in order to assist.
One of the women came up to Paige, her expression grim. "The collars are set to explode as soon as we leave the premises. We cannot leave with these on."
Well, Paige had known this wouldn't be easy. DoDO had to know that Paige and her people would make an attempt to free the wrongly incarcerated supernatural people. However, they would have no idea which one she planned to hit.
She also knew that, after this, there would be new measures put into place to make it harder. So, they had to make this count. "My daughter was able to open the collars using her lightning ability."
"Great," someone said from further back in the cellblock. "Where is she?"
From his tone, Paige got the distinct impression he was irritated with her for not bringing the solution to their problem. She could understand that. However… "I decided to keep my newborn baby out of prison and away from battle." She wasn't going to allow people to get upset with her for protecting her children. “Anyone else with electrical abilities?”
Another woman pushed her way to the front of the crowd, her grey uniform ripped in several places. She sported a black eye and several other bruises and abrasions. "Lydia has lightning abilities."
That was great news. Paige really didn't want to open a door to the library and bring her daughter into the prison. "Where do we find her?"
She got a few different reports about a secret portion of the prison where the more powerful people had been taken. There were rumors that these people were being experimented on and tortured.
Paige knew that it would be pretty easy to come up with these allegations. After all, they were incarcerated and were probably being treated poorly. By the looks of things, each of them had been beaten or tormented in their own way. Several looked as though they had lost considerable weight since they had been placed there.
Paige went up to the command center on the second floor—if one could call it a second floor. The ceilings were low, making the entire area feel constricted. However, from here, she had a full view of the entire cellblock without the benefit or necessity of any TVs and cameras.
One of the guards, Mike, offered to show her how to open the cell doors without raising the alarm.
“Traitor,” one of the other guards spat.
Mike ignored him, pushed a button, and led them out of the command center. He took them down several wide, empty, uncluttered halls. They passed several double doors until they located one single door that had no name to distinguish it from the rest.
He turned to Paige. "Brace yourself. This is the only reason I'm helping you. I think we've gone too far."
Paige had some idea of what to expect. She wasn't completely dumb to this situation. She’d been in bad situations with terrible people before.
There was a big, open space with several beds that had been segregated off by blue rolling curtained walls. Each compartment contained a bed or a chair. Each of those held a person who was tied down.
Each person was also hooked up to several pieces of medical equipment, monitoring their vitals.
However, no scientists were currently there.
That was certainly a red flag. Paige knew it shouldn't be this easy. For all that they had experienced a few scuffles, things were going a little too smoothly for her comfort. Something was about to happen. She just needed to know what.
She turned to the woman who had given her Lydia's name. "Where is she?"
The woman searched, scanning each of the faces. She shook her head, her eyes filling with tears. "She isn't here."
Paige scanned the area for another door. "Do you know of another way out of here?" she asked Mike.
He shook his head. "Honestly, this is as far as I've ever come."
"Let's free these people and see if we can find another way out of here." Paige went to the person closest to her—a man tied to a chair with sticks poking out of his fingertips. That was a form of torture that made her stomach queasy. "Do you know of another way out of here?"
As soon as one of his hands was free, he worked to pull the sticks out of his fingers, his face filling with pain and the monitor raising a few alarms of their own. He jerked his head toward the back. "They have a bunker. Heard them talking about it. It's well-fortified, or so they say."
But how fortified? She had a lot at her disposal. A lot of power. A lot of people.
She went to the back and searched for the door. She located it fairly easily. It was, of course locked, but there were no magical protections around it. At least none that she could see. She switched to witch vision and then to shifter vision. But still, she could see nothing.
If this was merely a physical door, she should be able to take it down.
The tortured man stood beside her, his fingers bleeding, but there were new things poking out of them. It looked a little like metallic claws. "I call dibs."
Great. They also had mutants. "Let's see if I can break in first."
She touched the door and felt it with her earth magick to see if there was anything special with the door. Just metal. She didn't even have to call on the other elements. She simply worked the hinges and the lock, humming them into different vibrations and frequencies, moving them the way she wanted. The pins of the hinges rose on the other side of the door, and the lock slipped out of place.
The door fell into the room.
Several people in lab coats jumped, releasing various sounds of startlement.
All of them except for one. He was cool as a cucumber, with the face of a snake, and he held a gun to a woman's head.
The woman was strapped to a chair, with iron cuffs and a metallic crown of thorns.
The woman who had alerted Paige about Lydia stepped into the room with a choked sob.
"Jill, don't," the crowned woman said.
Well, at least now Paige had a name to go with the woman's face. Not that she was likely to remember it for very long. "Let her go." Paige didn’t release control of her magick. She kept it coiled within the center of her soul. She wasn't sure what she intended to do with it, but she did know that, whatever she attempted to do, she would not be faster than a speeding bullet, especially when the barrel was right next to the woman's head.
The man sneered his ugly face. "You played right into our hands. You gave us everything we needed."
A chill swept down her spine, but it was confirmation of what she’d feared. "Care to share with the class what you have planned?"
"We're going to allow you to leave." The ugly man sneered. "Take the ones you already have and simply walk out."
"Okay.” Paige clapped her hands and smiled happily at him. "Thank you so much."
He frowned.
That's right, motherfucker. "Yeah, I know. The collars go boom. That's the reason we’re here. You know and I know that electricity is capable of disengaging the collar. And that's the reason you’re holding Lydia hostage. Now, be a good villain and let her go so that you can live to see another day."
He gave her a disgusted look. "You think I’m the villain? You’re the villains. You and th
ese mutant powers. You threaten our every way of life."
"Oh, yeah. I can totally see that. We've been keeping you from going to work every day or buying your groceries or paying your rent or watching as much binge-worthy TV as you possibly can in one afternoon. We’ve been such an abominable threat for the past—oh, I don't know—thousands of years? We haven't been the ones killing people in the name of gods. We haven't been the ones dropping bombs on entire cities. We've just been sitting around licking our buttholes—because that's what shifters do in shifter form. They lick their buttholes—while living pretty unremarkable lives so we can stay under the radar so that people like you don't get afraid because we're living next to you."
He appeared taken off-guard.
Paige took a step closer as she spoke. She didn't know how she was going to get him to remove the gun from Lydia's head. But this woman was their surest way of getting out of there. At least, their surest way of determining what the next trap would be. The first one was obviously the collars, but what did DoDO have planned after that? "You haven't had to live in fear of being raped or murdered. Maybe an occasional bite? Sure. But that's no different than the average human killer. It's not like we're taking our guns and shooting schools and grocery stores and churches. What exactly are we scared of?"
The man narrowed his eyes. "Don't come any further."
His hand shook on the pistol grip. And his finger was on the trigger. That wasn't good.
"Are you scared that we're going to eradicate humans from the face of the planet? Are you scared that we're going to imprison you? Or strip away your rights? Perhaps, we’ll treat you like the cattle you apparently are. We’ll have fields of humans ripe for the slaughter. For vampires or werewolves who love human livers." She wasn't even sure if werewolves liked livers.
He pulled the gun away from Lydia's head and pointed it at Paige. "I said stop moving."
At least he had it pointed away from Lydia. That was something she could work with.
She raised her witch hand and knocked the gun away.
However, as soon as her magick hand began to move, he pulled the trigger. Time moved in slow motion. She saw the bullet coming toward her. In this small space, he really didn't have to aim. She tried to dodge, but she didn't have superhuman speed. The only reason she was able to slow this down was because she knew in that moment this was her last breath.
A dark cloud of smoke appeared in front of her and before it formed into a familiar face. The doctor was knocked to the ground and the bullet was shoved toward the ceiling.
Time sped back up again to the sound of people screaming. They weren't true screams. They were just short bursts of exclamation. Also, it was a little hard to hear over the ringing in her ears. Gunshots and small spaces were loud.
Bal looked at her like she was stupid and just shook his head. His lips moved, but she couldn’t hear him over the ringing in her ears.
She and a few of the other people behind her moved to secure the scientists and free Lydia.
Jill came forward and knelt beside the crowned woman, removing the metallic devices.
Slowly, Paige regained her ability to hear what people were saying. She pushed her way out of the bunker with Balnore by her side. Her demigod protector was handy, but if they were being recorded, she didn’t want the president knowing about him. She wanted him to be her secret weapon for as long as she could keep it that way. “We’re being recorded.”
“It’s not being transmitted,” he said, his low timber voice breaking through the ringing.
That was good news. “Then, we need to destroy the video. They can’t know what we’re capable of. If they do, we ruin any chance we have of saving anyone else.”
Bal nodded, his eyes going icy. “I’ll take care of it.”
Paige herded everyone else into Cell Block B, which was apparently the largest of the three.
Lydia said she had enough charge to send a cascading lightning bolt through everyone’s collars, disabling all of them.
And she did, but it was such an explosion that it also hit several of the people, including Paige.
The ringing in her ears wasn’t the only thing she had to worry about now. One of the bolts of electricity had hit her squarely in her chest, and she was having a hard time breathing.
She turned to one of the Blackman witches and nodded. It was time, but she held up one finger. They needed to test drive this with one door and one person to see if there were any other booby traps.
The woman nodded and opened a door.
Paige reached for the first available person, not caring who it was. She asked him if he was okay going through.
He didn’t answer. He just jumped through the door.
Paige sighed heavily, glad she was able to take in a deep breath, even though it hurt a little, and poked her head through. He seemed to be okay. “Make sure he’s not bugged,” she said to one of the people there.
One of the Eastwood witches stepped up and did a sweep with her hands while Tuck used a police-issued wand.
He nodded and mouthed something she couldn’t read because his mustache and beard hid his lips.
“He’s clean?”
He nodded again.
Great. She stepped back into the prison, raised a hand, and made a circling gesture. “We’re clear.”
With that, the Blackmans opened several doors, and the inmates streamed through.
The captured guards and scientists who were bound were led to the doors.
Paige stopped Margo. “What are we doing?”
“Taking them with us.” Margo’s words were like arrows piercing the ringing in Paige’s ears. “We’re not leaving them behind.”
“Our resources are already stretched.”
Margo shrugged, her scar pinching her eye. “I’m okay with killing them. Are you?”
Paige wasn’t.
Margo raised a dark eyebrow and proceeded to guide her captured scientist through the door closest to her.
Bal appeared beside her. “We need to leave quickly.”
“What did you do?”
He gave her an expectant look. “We’re destroying the evidence.”
“By?”
He gave her a grim smile and pushed her toward the closest door.
As explosions sounded.
“Quickly, now,” he told the witches holding the door.
The door sealed behind the last witch as the jail exploded into a fiery ruin.
28
That had certainly gone better than Paige had expected. What did that say about this war? About the president? About her? Was the president weak? Were Paige and her people strong?
Paige’s brain kicked into work mode by the time she made it back to town, and she was grateful she didn’t have to worry about lugging the twins around, even though that didn’t stop her from worrying about their excessive growth. She just had too much to do. There were a lot of people to check in on and to make sure were okay.
Paige needed to be frank with herself. She could hope they’d find a peaceful solution, but the fact of the matter was that the president was obviously not interested. Did Paige really need more proof?
No. She didn’t. They were at war.
She helped get the ex-prisoners a place to stay. The town was running low on easy places to put people.
It wasn't that they were running out of houses or rooms to put them. They were running out of houses and apartments to give people without sharing. The newcomers didn't seem to mind, as long as it was a house and they had some semblance of freedom.
“Willow,” Paige called from the mayor’s conference room.
“Yeah?” Willow asked, walking in with a stack of paperwork.
“Can you see if we have a caseworker of some sort? We need someone who can help everyone assimilate the best, deal with things they need help with, show them resources.”
“On it.” Willow frowned and handed her one of the files. “We do have a bit of a situation, though. Some of the peo
ple you freed had kids who were taken from them.”
Of course they did. How was Paige going to find them and get them returned?
The dryads? They’d been able to find the prisons. “Let me make a few calls.”
Willow nodded and disappeared, leaving the folder with names and contact information—their new addresses because none of them had phones.
So, Paige devoted a considerable bit of time working with the dryads to see what they could do to find a location on a site that held the kids. Paige was a failed mother who’d had her daughter taken from her, and she knew that was one reason she reacted the way she did about her kids, why she’d ignored Dexx’s request to leave the kids in Troutdale. As the person who’d lost her kids, she couldn’t stand by and let these people lose theirs too.
The dryads were still working on that when Paige was hit with a wave of fatigue. She needed to go home and see her own kids.
Paige and Leslie spent the night with the kids, but there was a note of worry that ate at Paige and didn’t let her sleep. She wanted to know how the twins were doing, and she knew that the newly freed parents were probably crazy with worry over their own kids’ location and safety as well. She felt guilty being with Bobby and Leah while they still had no idea where the other kids were and if they were okay.
The next morning, Leah was full of ideas, and Paige couldn’t get that girl to settle down or complete a thought, so she took her kids into town with her.
She shifted into a bear because Bobby said he wanted to ride a bear. Horses were faster, but she preferred the bear to the horse anyway. The eyes were in the right place.
Everyone was pretty used to seeing bears by now, so there weren’t any freak-outs.
She made it to the mayor’s building and shifted, letting both kids slide down her back. She was probably going to be a horse next time, to see if that worked better. She almost wished she could shift into a dragon. That would be neat, but try as she might, she couldn’t quite make that one work. She could turn into dinosaurs, but not into a unicorn, Pegasus, or a dragon. Why was that?
Whiskey Storm (Whiskey Witches Midnight Rising Book 1) Page 26