by K. N. Banet
“Go,” Eliphas ordered, then disappeared.
I didn’t say anything, turning back to grab Raphael and hauling ass.
“Who—”
“Don’t ask,” I whispered harshly as we turned around a corner. “Fuck.” We were staring at an elevator and stairwell access.
“Kaliya, I could—”
“Kaliya?” a giggling woman asked. “I’ve been looking for you.”
I shoved Raphael toward the stairwell, my heart pounding. I didn’t look back, didn’t want to.
“Run!” I yelled, knowing we were being hunted. “Now! Don’t fucking argue. Go!”
He pulled open the door to the stairwell and started running up, which was the right choice. Going down would have been a dead end. Up, I could work with.
“Don’t you want to play, Kaliya?” she asked behind me as I followed him. I knew who it was, an important reason I wasn’t looking back. It was also why I didn’t answer her. She was weaving charms into those words, a sweet trap she used to catch all of her victims. If I gave in and turned around, she would trap me in a living hell, then skin me alive. Knowing the outcome was the only reason I didn’t fall for it, feeling the tug of her magic as I ran up the stairs.
“Don’t turn around. Don’t tell her your name. I won’t say it, so if you don’t, you’ll be safe,” I told Raphael as we made it to the top. “Go, find a window. We can’t stop.”
“Okay.” He was short and simple with his response, and I was grateful for his focus. He held the door for me to run through, then slammed it closed. I found a hallway table and started pushing it over. He was able to move it in front of the door with ease. “Who is that?” he asked as we started running again.
“That fae princess I was telling you about,” I answered, my heart pounding as we ran through the halls. “Find a window. Keep an eye out for one we can jump out of,” I corrected, seeing one too small for Raphael to fit through. I could get through any of them and be okay with it, but I couldn’t leave him to find another way out. If one of the northern cell block inmates was out hunting, that meant more probably were.
“Isn’t there iron in this building that stops her from using magic?” he asked as we entered a guard lounge, panting together as we blocked one of the doors with couches before we stopped to rest in the back of the room.
“Yeah, mostly in the actual cell blocks. The fae guard need to be able to work everywhere else. With the magical defenses down, there’s really nothing stopping any of the prisoners from having most, if not all, of their powers. Except the werewolves. They have silver in their systems.”
“Are we going to get out of here alive?” he asked, and I felt the weight of the question.
“Yes,” I promised. “But first, let’s hope we lost her. Who knows who else we’ll run into.”
8
Chapter Eight
We took only a of couple minutes to catch our breath, but it was enough. The lounge had no windows, which meant we had to leave and go looking for one or find another staircase and get back to the ground floor. I gave Raphael a look over for injuries, but he was already healing nicely from the cuts and bruises. When he looked me over, I heard grumbling.
“You’ll have a mean knot on the back of your head tomorrow, but no bleeding. There are a lot of scrapes and bruises and cuts. How does the rest of you feel?” His hands were large and probing, touching different areas, from my shoulders and ribs to my thighs and calves. My shoulders and back were the worst of it. Nothing seemed to be broken, but they would be sore for a while as the bruising healed. He came back up, his fingers grazing my cheek and jaw. I didn’t move as he stared me down.
“I was punched in the face,” I said, shrugging a little. “We don’t have time to do this right now, not all of it. With any luck, we’ll get out, and I can treat the worst of it at home.”
“I don’t know how you’re still on your feet,” he mumbled, his eyes once again moving up and down my body.
“I trained for this. I learned how to move, even when my body wants to collapse. I learned how to focus while taking a physical beating. There are some things no one can just walk away from, like explosions going on right next to them, but a fight? That’s easy to walk away from.” I compartmentalized pain. Pain didn’t help me escape. Pain didn’t tell me much of anything. Hisao had trained me hard, and it was a valuable type of endurance training I recommended to every Executioner or whoever found themselves throwing punches against other supernaturals.
“I fucking hate this place,” I mumbled as we went back to the door. “Are you ready?”
“Whenever you are,” he said sharply, looking over me at the door, those pitch-black eyes giving away nothing. He was handling the situation well enough, better than me, but maybe that was because he didn’t know all the horrors that had been locked away.
I opened the door and went out first this time since I knew who our possible enemies could be. This time, I noticed the quiet. Everyone was probably pulled to the cell blocks and the yard by the breach, leaving the living quarters eerie.
“Okay, we’ve been getting turned around. Head west, pick a big window—” I was turning to look back at him as we walked slowly, whispering, but just beyond him, I saw her walk around a corner, and our eyes met.
“There you are,” she crooned, smiling viciously. “Kaliya.”
Her eyes were a pretty grass green, innocent, and large, doe-like, her hair wheat blonde and curly. She was tall and lithe, a view of perfection as many of the royal fae were. There was not a single thing wrong with her except her mental state.
I was paralyzed in her gaze as the charms wrapped around me and held me still.
Inside, I was screaming.
Raphael turned quickly, realizing something was wrong. With a flick of her wrist, the fae used shadow bindings to send him into a wall and cleared her path to me.
“I’ve wanted to do this for so long,” she whispered into my ear. A hand skimmed over my stomach and up, eventually caressing my face. “I’m going to see what’s so special about you that you could woo one of my nephews. A dirty, scaly thing like you had no right to touch something so perfect. You aren’t the type of person I normally want to kill, too dirty to touch, but sometimes, an exception must be made.”
I tried to move my eyes to Raphael, who had hit the wall hard enough he went down to the floor and stopped moving. He was out of sight, and all I could hope for was he got moving.
Get up. Raphael, please get up. You need to get her to stop looking at me. Please.
A nail grew sharp on my face and started to cut in at my jawline, very slowly cutting a line. Horror grew in my chest as I realized she was going to start right now. I couldn’t even blink as my mind screamed for freedom. I tried to twitch even a finger, thinking of my iron knife in my hand. I couldn’t scream as the pain grew, and her nail dug deeper as it went toward the center of my throat.
I heard the rustle of clothing, then a black fist flew across my vision and hit the bitch square in the jaw. The moment her eyes were off mine, the charm snapped. I took my chance and brought the knife up into her ribs, hearing her scream as it slid between bones into a lung. Before she could try any magic, I shoved it into her again and kept stabbing into her chest as she fell to the floor. I didn’t realize I was screaming until Raphael grabbed the back of my shirt and pulled me off her, forcing me to his chest.
“She’s dead. She’s dead, Kaliya,” he whispered urgently.
I was shaking as I pulled away from him, looking down at my bloody hands.
“Yeah, I know,” I finally replied, shoving the knife back into my boot. I unsheathed my talwar instead, hoping for better weaponry for the next fight if there was one. My family had given it to me, and for a moment, I let that comfort me.
She’s dead, and I’m still here with my skin attached. That’s a win. She won’t be doing that to anyone ever again. That’s a win.
It took several deep breaths to be ready to move again.
; “Let’s get back down the stairs and get the fuck out of here,” I ordered, forcing my feet to move.
“Kaliya—”
“We’ll talk in the car,” I said with more snap than necessary.
I started jogging, deep, unsettling fear forcing me to move faster and faster until I was flat out running, Raphael barely able to keep up.
I liked to think of myself as powerful and capable, but there was only so much one person could handle in a day. With the amount of powerful, dangerous people kept in the prison, I knew this was a losing battle on my own. Korey was right. Eliphas was right. I needed to get the hell out and onto my own turf. I needed to organize the other Executioners on the outside to help clean this up. There was no way in hell I was going to be able to take them all down on my own.
Hopefully, she was the only one hunting for me. Hopefully, none of them were as smart as her to find a place where she was able to use her magic. Incredibly unlikely but fucking hopefully.
I found the stairs again and went down, three steps at a time, and burst through the door. Without slowing, I ran through the halls, and this time, I found the exit. I didn’t bother stopping to check with the two guards standing there or stop to consider the dead bodies lining the hall. The guards stepped out of the way, and that was all I needed.
I struggled to get my keys out of my pocket, looking back to make sure Raphael was there as I unlocked the BMW. He jumped into the passenger’s seat as I got behind the wheel.
“What’s next?” he asked seriously. “Korey said Code Black. Who do you need me to call?”
“We need to get out of the prison’s territory before either of our phones work.” I appreciated his enthusiasm to help, but there was still work to be done. I got the engine running and backed out of our spot. “I want you to try to get anyone from Cassius’ place once we’re clear, Leith or whoever. I don’t care. He needs to know what’s happened, and they’re our best bet at finding him. I can get everyone in Phoenix on a group call. Then I need to call someone from the Tribunal. Hopefully, the security system here got something out, or everyone on the outside is in the dark.”
I hit the gas and pulled out of the parking lot, hitting fifty. On the long road out of the prison, I reached seventy. I flew past the unmanned guardhouse, not paying its emptiness any mind. They must have been called to help with the breakout. Korey was right; I needed to turn my thoughts to who got out, not who was being killed and detained on the inside.
“Kaliya?”
I didn’t know why he sounded confused that my eyes focused on the road. I didn’t want to end up rolling in the desert, so I needed to stay on track.
“Kaliya!” There was more urgency.
“What?” I growled.
“Look!” I saw him out of the corner of my eye and how he was hunched over to look out the top of the front window. I followed his eyes up and saw the storm brewing.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I muttered. The sky had been clear earlier, not a cloud in sight. Now, there were dark clouds brewing, and lightning flashed as I watched. “Levi.”
“Levi?”
“Leviathan. His real name is fucking Levi. He’s a witch proficient in weather magic, and the only one who knows how to summon it on such a mass scale. The reason he was being kept alive was so others could figure out his techniques. Witches don’t like when people die, and they’re the only ones who know how to do something.” I had my qualms with why most of the northern cell block inmates were allowed to live.
“Tornadoes don’t happen naturally in the desert, do they?” he asked softly. I narrowed my eyes on the sky and noticed the swirling as well.
“They’re not common, no.” Fury and fear coursed through my veins like a drug, creating a trip I didn’t want to be on. “Hold on. Make sure your seatbelt is on.”
I took my hands off the wheel quickly and clipped myself in before grabbing the wheel again. We watched the tornado touch down just to the north side of the road, two hundred yards ahead of us.
“Kaliya…” I never thought I would hear Raphael genuinely afraid of anything because of his rapid healing, but it was there. No one wanted to get tossed hundreds of feet by a tornado while in a metal death trap.
“Let me focus,” I said, trying to blank out my emotions. I needed to keep a level head. “I can get us around it, and once we pass it, it won’t catch up. Promise.”
I saw him nod jerkily, even got the chance to note how pale his tawny skin was looking. I could only imagine I looked the same.
I floored the gas, holding the wheel so tight that my knuckles went white. The tornado swirled, picking up cacti and other vegetation from the dusty desert. One hit the front end of my BMW, but it didn’t throw me off course as it smashed into thousands of pieces.
I veered right as the tornado drew closer, desperately hoping my wheels stayed on the ground. I went off the road, bumping over the rocks of the Arizona landscape. I was going over a hundred now, and losing control would be easy. Once I tricked Levi into sending his tornado off the road again, I turned back toward the road and found the pavement again. We bumped roughly as I turned to head down the road again, the tornado storming after us.
“Are you sure you can outrun it?” Raphael asked, looking through the back window once we were on the road again.
“Yes.” I kept my foot on the gas and let the speed climb. One-twenty. One-thirty. One-forty.
My BMW would only hit one hundred and fifty-five miles an hour if it was standard. Mine wasn’t standard. I could push it to nearly one-eighty, having taken off the limiter most German cars had.
I reached one-seventy when Raphael sank into his seat and relaxed. We flew through the barrier, barely noticing it, and I knew we were free from the current warzone.
“Do you think we’ll see any more on the road back to Phoenix?” he asked. I could hear a shake in his words, but there was no faulting him for that. He was very well composed otherwise.
“No,” I answered softly. “We’ll be home in about an hour and a half if I keep speeding, maybe faster. They won’t have vehicles, but they’ll move fast. Dawn tomorrow is probably when we’ll see them pop into the city. Thankfully, that gives me time to lock the city down.”
I reached out and started hitting names in my contacts with my touch screen dashboard. Once I collected as many as I could think of—leaders of different species factions to business owners with no allegiance—I hit call.
They all started answering within a ring.
“Why are you calling me, Kaliya?” the vampire Mistress snapped.
“What’s going on?” Paden asked at the same time. There was a moment of silence as they realized they were in a group call.
“What’s wrong, Executioner Sahni?” the thick, deep voice of the Phoenix werewolf Alpha asked next, taking his chance. He and I had no real opinion of each other, so it was always professional between us.
“Hold on, I’m waiting for more to answer,” I said quickly. I looked at Raphael and mimed texting with my fingers, then mouthed Cassius. He nodded and got his phone out to reach out to our only friends.
“Well, well. Never thought I’d get a call,” a fae said with a laugh. “What’s going on?”
Others answered and quickly realized they were all in the same call. There had to be eight people on by the end, and I knew a few of them didn’t like each other, but it wasn’t common that the local Tribunal Executioner reached out en masse. Not everyone was even on the call. I didn’t know phones could only allow so many people at once.
“Okay. Here’s the deal. I need all of you to help spread the word. Phoenix is going Code Black—”
“Who got out of the prison?” Paden demanded sharply.
“Who didn’t is a better question,” I said quickly. “Both cell blocks were breached. In the mayhem, most of the northern cell block inmates were smart enough to just disappear. I’ve only encountered three of them since the initial breach, and only two of those have been taken out. The guards of the
prison are handling the containment, but the southern inmates were essentially starting a war on the grounds when Korey told me to get out. Communications went down, and someone needed to make sure everyone was ready for the coming storm.”
“Oh gods,” someone said in a hushed, disbelieving, somewhat frantic way. “Oh, gods. Love, lock—”
“Wait for me to finish,” I growled. “Send everyone to their homes and lock the doors. They’ll be getting to the city probably by dawn. Some might get in faster. I don’t know what the Tribunal knows yet, so I need to let you go with that and get ahold of them. Once they’re in the loop, expect news from them as I’ll probably be on the front line, cleaning this up.”
“Of course. Godspeed, Executioner Sahni.” The werewolf Alpha hung up without another word. Most quickly said goodbye after that, hanging up to get ahold of their people and lock their doors. Some would work all night to redo and strengthen their magical protection. Most would make sure their weapons were close.
I knew a foolish few would try to run. If they flew in the next two hours, they would be able to evacuate the city, but the rest were going to get trapped in a city with no real idea what kind of storm might hit them—literal or figurative.
“No one is replying,” Raphael said, still texting.
“Just give them time. They’ll hear about this soon enough from their other friends if we can’t get to them.”
“Should we go to them? Cassius’ house is safe, right?”
“It is, but so is my condo, and I want to be at my own place. If things get hairy, we’ll head there.” I didn’t tell him it irked me that the thought of going to Cassius’ mansion and hiding was a better idea than anything I had planned.
Does he think I’ll be allowed to hide during this? I guess the answer to that lies with calling my bosses.
I looked through the Tribunal contacts I had, wondering which one I should go to with the news. I needed someone I knew would answer and take this seriously. They all would, but something was beginning to bother me, and I couldn’t put my finger on it.