by Laken Cane
“Start tracking the woman. I’ll find you after I stash this kid.”
“Stash him good,” Alejandro told him. “He’s the warden’s son, and we may need to use him before the night is over.”
I clenched the baton. “I’ll track Madalyn after you take me to where you glimpsed Angus. I want to see him.”
Clayton shook his head and started to turn away. “No.”
“Clayton!”
He stopped but didn’t turn around. “You need to trust me.”
“I do trust you.” Tears burned my eyes. “But if one of the men were asking you the same thing, you wouldn’t hesitate.”
“You’re not one of the men, and he would not want you there. I won’t add to his problems by taking you to see his…” He hesitated.
“His what?” I dashed angry tears away. “His beast?”
“His darkness,” he murmured. “And all that it contains. Track the woman, Trinity, before it’s too late.”
He loped away with Jamie Stone, and I stared after him, torn. But in the end, I lifted my nose to the air and did what he wanted me to do.
I caught Madalyn’s scent. Then, with images in my head that were probably much worse than Angus’s reality, I began to track the woman who could help me lead him out of hell.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I was worried about Silverlight.
Worried, rather, about being without her. That she might be lost to me. What if she drilled herself so far away I’d never find her? What if that was what she wanted?
The demon who’d possessed her, once upon a time, had probably thought she would belong to him forever. Maybe he’d believed she wanted to be his. Then she’d been taken and when he’d discovered her once again, she’d been more than happy to try to kill him.
So maybe she wanted to get away from me, as well.
With Silverlight, I could destroy the enemy. I could defend myself. I could be victorious in a fight. I could kill.
Not because I was a badass, but because she was.
Without Silverlight, what was I, really?
But before such thinking could get me into trouble, I straightened my shoulders and lifted my chin. I was a bloodhunter. That’s what I was. Silverlight gave me the advantage, and that was an indisputable fact. But I was a bloodhunter, with or without her. “I am a badass.” I glared at Alejandro when he turned to look at me.
“Of course you are,” he agreed.
I yanked my cell phone from my pocket. I should have called the judge sooner, but I’d wanted to make sure Madalyn was still there. That they hadn’t spirited her off the island again, or worse, thrown her into Lake Crane to drown.
But she was there, on the island, and I needed the judge to come and tear the place apart. I needed him to give me Angus.
Neither Clayton nor Al said anything, but I could feel their worry. Things could go to hell in a hurry and none of us wanted to be stranded on Byrd Island when they did. Especially not Clayton. When supernaturals stepped foot on the island, they were taking a risk. If they were found there, they became the property of the island.
Finders, keepers…
The judge answered immediately, his voice tight with expectation. “You found her?”
“I did.” I kept my voice calm. “I haven’t reached her yet, but she’s here. You have to hurry.”
“Where are you?”
“On Byrd Island. They have her on the island, Judge. I don’t know what they’re doing with her, but—”
“They found out,” he murmured, his voice cold and rusty and full of death and realization. “I’ll kill them. I’ll kill them all.”
Then he was gone.
They found out…
What had they found out?
I shook my head and continued following Madalyn’s trail.
I realized five minutes later that I wasn’t following Madalyn’s scent—I’d been unconsciously following the vampire’s fog trail that drifted along the ground.
But her scent was still there, and I shifted my attention from the vampire to the woman immediately. Seconds later, I realized why I’d been so caught up in the fog trail.
The vampire on the island was Amias Sato.
Part of me had known it the second I’d spotted his trail, but I’d been too distracted to grasp it. As soon as I understood the master was there, I felt the familiar, reflexive rage, but it was almost immediately buried beneath an avalanche of relief.
Amias would do anything to keep me alive. He would have my back.
So why was he not showing himself?
Clayton slipped from the shadows to walk beside me. He held an electroshock baton in one hand and a gun in the other. I didn’t ask if he’d taken them from an already dead guard or if he’d killed one himself.
“The master is here,” I told him.
Both he and Alejandro gaped at me.
“Amias?” Clayton asked. “He’s on the island?”
I nodded. “He’s the vampire who killed the checkpoint guards.”
“That evens the odds a little more,” Al said. “We’ll have a better shot with five of us.”
“Four,” I said. “There are only four of us.”
He looked uncomfortable. “I guess I was counting Angus.”
I smiled. “You’re right, then. There are five of us.”
Something in his return smile made me wonder who was hiding behind those sweet, calm eyes. Someone I hadn’t really seen yet, I was sure.
Madalyn’s scent reeled me through the night, growing stronger with each step I took until finally, I felt as though I could have closed my eyes and reached out to touch her.
Only…
“She’s inside the Byrdcage?” Clayton’s voice was a low rumble as he stared up at the wall surrounding the back of the prison.
I put my palm on the stone. “I don’t know if she’s inside the prison. I just know she’s somewhere behind this wall.”
“How do we get in?” Alejandro asked. “We can’t go to the front and ask politely.”
The sounds of revelry had grown from a muffled rumble to a more distinct roar; somewhere behind that wall, Angus was forced to fight for his captors’ entertainment.
“We get in the way Clayton got in.” I looked at Clayton. “Take us in.”
He didn’t want to, but he had no choice. Saving Angus meant that I might have to see him, and right or not, that was how it had to be.
Still, he hesitated.
“Clayton,” I snapped. “I know a lot about Angus. His fucking every female in the city is about as bad as he gets and still, here I am, trying to rescue him. I don’t care about saving his pride. I need to save his life. Now let’s go.”
He stared at me, his eyes shadowy and unreadable in the tall lights surrounding the prison. “It will hurt you, even if it doesn’t change how you see him.”
And at last, he turned abruptly and strode away, following the wall away from the Byrdcage. Resistance was in every stiff line of his body, but he would do what he had to do.
Alejandro stayed behind me, quiet and watchful, his gun in his hand.
I felt like I’d downed a dozen pots of coffee and was going to jump out of my skin and run screaming through the night at any second. My heart beat too fast, my lungs couldn’t drag in enough air, and my entire body trembled just slightly. Just enough to let me know I was close to losing control.
I needed to lose control. I needed to scream and fight and work off some of that nervous energy, not creep through the night, my breath held, as I waited for the prison to discover the dead bodies Amias had left behind.
Despite what I’d told Clayton, I was afraid to see Angus.
I didn’t want to see him beaten and bloody and fighting for his life. I didn’t want to see his violence and his desperation. I didn’t want to see him whipped into submission by the humans who held him.
But I would.
We entered a dark, recessed area in the wall, almost at the very back of the prison, and Clay
ton pointed.
I squinted into the darkness, finally seeing the crumbled brick and the small, gaping hole in the wall. “How did you find this?” I was amazed. If I hadn’t known it was there, I would never have seen it.
“Shit, man,” Al murmured. “He didn’t find it. He made it.”
And we both stared at an uncomfortable Clayton. “Miriam is making me stronger with each resurrection,” he said, not looking at either of us. “I’ll go through first to make sure it’s safe on the other side. It won’t be long before they discover the missing guards and sound the alarm.”
I swallowed hard. I was surprised they hadn’t sounded the alarm already, but it appeared as though weekends were more relaxed and most of the employees were either inside the Byrdcage or at the fights, screaming and yelling with insane, depraved joy as the supernaturals were forced to kill each other.
“What a shit place,” I whispered.
Clayton wiggled his way through the hole in the thick wall, and I waited a few seconds before following. On the other side, we waited for Al to squeeze through the opening.
I pulled in the air, hesitated, then sniffed again. Madalyn’s scent was there, and stronger than ever, but it carried something that worried me. I smelled death in her scent. I smelled weakness.
“She’s dying,” I realized, stunned. “God, Clayton. She’s dying. Right now, right this second, we’re losing her.”
“Lead us to her,” Al said. “Quickly.”
But darkness descended over me as we trotted between squat buildings, drawing ever closer to the sounds of fighting and cheering, and at the center of it all was the strong scent of the dying woman.
“There,” Clayton said, indicating a large structure a few yards ahead of us. “That’s where they have Angus.”
“Madalyn is close,” I whispered, full of terror, “and she is dying. What are they doing to her, Clayton?”
“I don’t know,” he answered. “I don’t know.”
The building in which they held the fights was a rickety old warehouse, perhaps used once upon a time to store things—but now it held only viciousness and horror.
We spotted two armed guards standing at the entrance, smoking cigarettes and laughing.
“How did you get inside?” I asked.
“I didn’t. There are missing boards over the windows.”
“Show me.”
“We should wait for the judge.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But we’re not going to. By the time he gets here, it might be too late. We’re here for a reason. I have to keep going, Clayton.”
We didn’t make a sound as we crept forward. The loudest sound was likely the beating of my heart.
We slipped around to the side of the building, to where yellow light slipped through cracks and gaps in long, broken windows.
Clayton led Al and me to one of those windows, and then he stepped aside. He said nothing, just waited for me to step up and peer inside.
At the exact second I pressed my face to the boards and looked into the building, a deafening siren split the air. Buzzing alarms, urgent shrieking siren, immediate flurry of activity. I jumped back, gasping, thinking I’d somehow set off an alarm by touching the building.
But it wasn’t me. The dead guards had been found.
Still, those inside, after a moment’s silence, began to yell, “Finish it! Finish it!”
They weren’t going to let anything stop the fight. Money was involved. Greed, hunger, and evil were involved. And the fight would go on to the end.
Once more, I pushed my face against the rough wall and peered inside.
The room was cavernous and huge and contained only folding chairs, standing humans, cages, and a platform. Guards stood around the arena, holding enormous electroshock prods and guns.
The scent of beer, cooking meat, and blood wafted through the cracks of the building, causing me to gag even as tears obscured my vision.
I blinked them away furiously and forced myself to stare at the gory horror inside.
I saw Angus.
Oh yes, I saw him.
I understood why Clayton had wanted to shield me.
And I wished I had let him.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The world was chaos.
Through the cacophony of the screams, the cheers, the thumps, and the alarm, another sound intruded.
Helicopter.
“Here come da’ judge,” I said, half hysterical.
“Touch her,” Clayton ordered, and Alejandro immediately stepped up behind me, pressed his body to mine, and slipped his arms around my waist.
“We’ve got you,” Clayton said, grimly.
Angus wasn’t Angus, not really.
He stood on the platform, shifted to his bull. Huge, black, bloody. Vicious.
He’d been fighting for hours and hours, I believed. There were dead bodies littering the floor, and even as I watched, a man with a hose began washing the blood down the drain in the middle of the platform.
Neither Angus nor his opponent paid any mind to the human washing away the blood. They circled each other, both bloody, wounded, and silent. Deadly. If I could have seen Angus’s eyes, I would have seen nothing but mindless rage. He was in the kill zone, and his captors had put him there.
I wondered if he’d be able to pull himself out again.
His opponent was a bear shifter, as large as Angus, but his soft growls were full of pain and his fur was flat and wet with blood. He wasn’t long for the world.
He dropped to all fours and backed away from Angus, and one of the guards reached up with his electric prod and rammed it against the bear’s hip.
The shifter screamed as sparks flew, and the fresh scent of cooking meat joined the older scents of countless burnt shifters and fighters that hung in the air.
The audience broke into cheers, their bloodlust so overpowering they completely ignored the screams of the prison alarms. They wanted to see the fight through to the end.
They wanted to see pain and death, and then they wanted their money.
Angus shook his head, his huge horns flashing as he stomped the floor. And then, as the bear tried once again to back away, Angus charged.
“Angus please no.” I shoved my knuckles against my lips, against my teeth. But I knew he had no choice. It was kill or be killed.
He gored the bear, his lethal horns spearing the beast through the chest. It was fast, the bear’s death. Angus withdrew his horns, backed up, and roared. In his voice was every bit of the pain that death caused him. Every bit of the rage at the humans. The only thing louder than his pain and rage was his absence of hope.
Alejandro pulled me back against him and slapped his hand over my mouth, and only then did I realize how loud my sobs were. Despite the discordant, earsplitting sounds around us, someone might have heard.
A woman’s sobs would have stood out in the sea of depravity and bloodlust. In my voice was only the sound of a broken heart.
Finally, I peeled Al’s fingers away from my mouth and pressed my face once more to the boards. Surely now they’d lead Angus away. Surely now they’d be finished with their depraved games.
But they were not. A door opened across the room and four guards led a man into the room. A man so large he towered over the handlers, his thick muscles bulging as he moved. One of his parents had been a giant, most likely. He wasn’t as large as a full-blooded giant, but there was no doubt he had giant blood running through his veins.
He had thick cuffs around his neck, his wrists, and his ankles, and his head and face were covered by a rusty metal mask. The handlers dragged him through the doorway by the chains attached to his cuffs and wrapped around his body.
Another man followed, striking the enormous man with a whip every few seconds. Not because the man was resisting, but because every strike of the whip caused the room to erupt in a frenzy of excited approval.
I put my dazed stare back on Angus. He’d shifted back to his human form, and had dropped to hi
s knees, his head hanging. His hair had grown even more since I’d seen him last, and it hung long and thick over half his face.
He was defeated.
He didn’t look up, not even when the dead bear was dragged away.
Not even when one of the guards, prod in hand, jabbed the end against Angus’s bare flesh and zapped him.
He had burns all over his body.
A couple of guards rushed through the entrance door, murmured something to another man, and I watched as the man strode to the front of the room.
He stood in front of the stage, his hands up until the room quieted. And that took some time.
He wore a suit and an unmistakable resemblance to Jamie Stone.
The warden.
“Fights are over for the night,” he said, and the audience immediately erupted into boos and angry stomping.
The warden waited for the room to quieten, and when it finally did, he explained. “Four of our guards were found murdered. By vampires. I don’t know how they escaped, but a search is underway as we speak. Go to the hall, my friends. You’ll be safe there. Eat, rest, and prepare for the battle between the bull and the giant tomorrow!”
He beamed at the audience, and as I watched, hatred choked me. I couldn’t breathe through it, but I didn’t care. I would kill the warden. I would kill the watchers. I would kill the guards.
The humans began to exit the room, unsure but not yet afraid.
Warden Stone, surrounded by guards, hurried from the room via a side door. He’d tried to hide it, but he was afraid.
I’d forgotten Madalyn.
But then, a strange sound, a sound like moaning wind, drifted through the air, and when I lifted my nose to catch it, Madalyn’s scent wafted once more into my brain.
I needed to find her, because I wasn’t sure the judge would give me Angus if I didn’t have her in hand.
I couldn’t leave Angus, though.
Handlers shoved the giant toward another door I hadn’t even noticed until it began to rise. I glimpsed the enclosed bed of a truck, its door open and waiting. A ramp extended from the truck’s bed like a tired, heavy tongue.
My attention was taken by Angus, then. Men rushed him, cuffed him, and dragged him across the floor to join the giant.