The door where Olezka had entered opened, and another contender walked into the ring. Two guards entered behind him and dragged Cyril’s body from the ring, leaving two long grooves in the sand where his heels dragged behind his lifeless body. As much as my heart wanted to mourn the loss of Cyril, we were still in danger. Ana would tell me to push it aside for now and deal with the threat in front of us.
The new contender was smaller than Olezka but still muscular. He was shirtless and very human. There was nothing about him that marked him as para. Olezka’s nostrils flared, and his brows pinched, and I could tell even he was confused.
His opponent didn’t waste any time before launching an attack. After landing a heavy fist into his jaw, Olezka stumbled from the impact. Once he had delivered the killing blow to Cyril, Olezka’s fire had extinguished, and he was weakened. Olezka couldn’t hide the flash of puzzlement as the man landed the hit. The man bounced backward with a wide smile, revealing normal, human teeth.
“Dreamscape is a powerful weapon... when harnessed correctly,” Key insinuated as he watched the fight unfold with a new look in his eye that scared me. He looked ravenous.
Panic settled in as Olezka, still weak and exhausted from his battle with Cyril, moved slower. The human landed more and more bruising punches. It got worse when the male found the discarded knife. He sliced at Olezka, moving faster than a human should be able to, blurring before my eyes. Olezka tried to counter his moves, but his attention was split between the fight and me.
Olezka’s opponent slipped behind Olezka, dropping to the floor as he sliced him behind the knee, making Olezka drop to the ground with an agonized hiss. My heart fell along with him, but then my anger exploded as I watched him inflict more injuries upon my mate. My blood heated with each stab of the blade. Olezka moved slower and slower. I didn’t understand what was happening – this male was only human! Then the meaning of Key’s words hit.
Dreamscape is a powerful weapon… when harnessed correctly. That bastard dosed Olezka with something before they threw him into the ring, weakening him. Fire poured into my veins, lighting me from the inside out.
He did this!
“Dose her!” Key yelled, but my vision went red, and I was past the point of caring.
My body became my own as liquid fire raged through me. Anger burned away the remaining hold of Key’s command, and my body prickled with a sensation that could no longer be contained. Not after watching Cyril fall, not when my mate was suffering. They were drugging him, making him weaker and easier to beat, to torture me and force Ana to do their bidding.
I would save Olezka, no matter the cost.
My assigned guard clamped down on my arms, but the heat I felt burned to the levels of heat that were reflective of Olezka’s hellfire, and he pulled back with a grunt of pain. When I turned, Key’s face twisted into a snarl.
“Dose her again. Now!” Key yelled, but whoever held the syringe was slow to the punch, whereas I acted purely on instinct.
My body knew what to do even if my mind didn’t. Fire exploded from my hand into a ball toward Key. He deflected it, but interest sparked in his eyes.
“Hellfire?” he whispered, awed. “Keep her contained.”
I was surrounded, but my eyes remained on Key even as he slipped out of the booth and walked back through the crowd the way we’d entered. His guards dodged my attacks and kept me cornered in the booth. My brain went haywire, my thoughts bouncing everywhere to the point where I couldn’t focus until I remembered that I’d planned for this.
I had a plan.
The plan.
Chapter 21
A Couple of Days Before
“Stop reading over my shoulder,” I growled, flicking Cyril.
He had taken me to a library so we could work as quickly as possible without interruption, but he was getting on my very last nerve. We only had a couple of hours before we had to start getting ready for the next part of our plan. He knew the location of the main fighting ring… sort of. He was able to get me the IP address, which was all I needed to work my magic.
I finally leaned back and cracked my knuckles, pleased by my progress. “It’s a kill-code. It’ll shut everything down while we escape, but it will only work for a certain period of time. We need to make sure all of us are together when it happens; not to mention that we’ll have to haul ass out of there.”
As an extra failsafe, one Cyril wasn’t even aware of, I was working on a code that would alert Kallan to our location if something went wrong.
****
I blinked, and the memory faded, jarring me back to the present and my current circumstances. I craned my neck, searching for a clock. I’d set the failsafe to start at midnight, but I had no clue what time it was now. The timing felt very Cinderella-like, but I’d intended to give us enough time to grab Cyril’s sister and Olezka. As it stood, Cyril was dead; his sister was gone, and Olezka was being forced to brawl in Key’s twisted fighting rings.
It should have been the three of us busting his sister out.
The guards in Key’s booth closed in on me again. I tried to let the fire take over me as Olezka did, but it didn’t work. It remained focused in my hands. Using what I had, I hurled a ball of flames at one of the men. Somehow, these humans moved like paras, faster than possible, easily dodging my attacks.
One guard managed to slip behind me, wrapping his arm around my neck. Thinking he had me immobilized, the other two rushed forward. I lifted my hands to scrabble at the arm crushing my windpipe, but the other two each took an arm, halting me. I tried to thrash out of their hold, but the guards held me tightly. Knocking my head back with the intention of breaking the man’s nose behind me, I misjudged his height and hit his chin instead.
He snarled, “Hold her steady,” as he reached for something in his pocket.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw another syringe clenched in his hand. Screaming, I renewed my efforts to break free, twisting my hips and kicking my legs out, trying to hit shins, groins, knees, anything. The two holding my arms twisted my skin, leaving it irritated and pinched.
“No, no, no,” I muttered as the syringe inched closer. The muscles and joints in my shoulders screamed with pain as I continued to pull away, almost popping my arms out of their sockets. Before I could make another move against them, the needle pierced my skin. Numbingly cold fluid rushed through my veins. Within seconds, my muscles weakened, and I dropped like a lead weight in their hold.
“Take her to the boss.”
My head lolled to the side, my chin hitting my chest, and I saw my mate. Olezka watched us instead of his new opponent. He was bleeding from many wounds, and despite his attempt not to, he was swaying. His body looked to be on the verge of shifting, but it appeared as if he couldn’t release his beast. My heart pounded in my chest, knowing the drug they’d injected him with was the culprit. If we got separated again, we would lose our one chance of escaping together.
One of the men tossed me over his shoulder and followed the path Key had taken. My fingers started to tingle as the numbness of whatever they’d injected me with started to fade. Hmm, strange, I thought. It seemed my body was starting to fight the effects of Dreamscape.
As we approached the door that led out of the arena. I had to resist the urge to look back at Olezka and expose to the others that the drug had little effect on me. His anguished roar overpowered the cheers and jeers of the crowd. His opponent moved faster than a human should, blurring from side to side as he inflicted harm on my mate. I was filled with blinding rage.
“Olezka!” He refocused on me and caught my eye for the split second before we walked through the doorway Key had gone through and it clicked shut behind us.
The guard tossed me on the ground. When my ass hit the hard tile, my vision blurred for a second. Once it cleared, I glanced around the room, bewildered. It looked like a locker room, but instead of lockers, there were holding cells running along one side, only one of which was occupied. A face that was achin
gly close to the one I’d just left behind stared blankly at me with only one eye. Illarion. My stomach dropped.
Key stepped forward, stealing my attention from my mate’s brother. He sneered down at me, “Put her in the cell next to him, and then we need to leave. If her mate doesn’t die in the rings, he’ll come for her.” Key strode over to a desk situated in the middle of the creepy preparation area.
“Should I dose her again?” a deep voice asked. I turned to look and saw the same beautiful, creepy fae from the lab where we found Solace stepping out of the shadows. He was dazzling from a distance, but seeing the insatiable lust in his eyes unnerved me. Most fae were stunning, and that was putting it lightly. More often than not, paras were prettier than average humans so they could attract their prey. Even so, there was something off about this fae. He wore a calculating look in his eye like, at any given moment, he would split you navel to throat just to see how your insides worked while you still breathed.
“Unfortunately not, Alastor,” Key answered blandly. “I don’t wish to have this human ‘accidentally’ expire on us. For the time being, she is more useful alive than dead. Soon, I will allow you to use her for whatever you desire.”
My guard grabbed my arm, yanked me to my feet, and pulled me to the cell beside Illarion. Once the door opened, he flung me inside and slammed the door shut with a resounding clang.
“This human needs another dose, though,” Key noted, watching the guard who’d just thrown me into a cell.
The man blinked in rapid succession, his loose shoulders tightening and his hand twitching as he fought to swim his way to the surface of his drugged state. Alastor, the creepy scientist fae walked over with a fresh syringe and injected the man with another dose in his arm. The guard immediately went slack, back to the mindless drone he was before.
When Alastor took a step back, a tiny twitch in his lips made me refocus my attention on the human. The man’s body spasmed, stilled, then spasmed again. He suddenly dropped, and his head bounced off the tile floor.
Key sighed and glanced at Alastor with an annoyed but indulgent smirk. “Alastor, I told you before not to overdose them just so you can record their overdose symptoms. At this point, we don’t need to dispose of them.”
I twitched, ready to stand, scream, or do something, horrified by the way they were speaking so callously of him.
“Don’t,” Illarion, who had not spoken or moved since I arrived, whisper-growled. Still slightly feeling the drug's effects, I rolled over toward his cell to face him. He growled out a firm, No.
Key turned to look at us but, thinking it was only a series of growls from a crazed beast, thought nothing of it. I refocused my attention on the human, who writhed on the floor in front of me. Foam bubbled from his mouth, and his body seized painfully. I knew a seizure that strong could kill him if someone didn’t roll him over. Key didn’t care, and Alastor watched with a hungry expression that made me sick to my stomach.
It might have been seconds or minutes, but it felt like months before the man’s jerky movements slowed and he stopped twitching. His chest didn’t rise again.
“Their deaths are so unpleasant. You see how he soiled himself? Distasteful.” Alastor stepped closer to the man and peered down at his still form. “Key, may I have the body?”
Key waved a hand in the air dismissively. “Do as you please. We will extract what we can from Cyril’s body and start producing more of the latest strain of the drug.” He sat down at the desk and started going through the drawers, searching for something.
The clock in my brain ticked. It had to be getting close to midnight.
As if answering my prayers, the lights flickered.
Key stopped what he was doing and glared in my direction like I was the one who caused it. I mean, I did, but he had no way of knowing it. The lights flickered again, but this time, they stayed off longer than the first time. It appeared to an outside observer to be a series of power surges, which was the intention. When the lights finally came back on, Key was standing beside the desk.
“Has the hound been dosed?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Get him out of the cage now. We will leave immediately. Grab one of the human guards.”
Alastor walked over to a keypad beside Illarion’s cell door and had started typing in a passcode when the power went down again.
“Manually release the hound,” Key snapped. “We will leave through a portal instead. I have a feeling this troublesome human has something up her sleeve. I’ve underestimated her one too many times,” Key snarled.
Alastor stepped over the dead body on the floor like it was nothing as the lights flickered again. According to the plan, it should only happen once more before it went into a full shutdown.
Alastor unlocked my door, leaving it open a crack. I didn’t move from my place on the floor. He was more hesitant as he started to manually unlock Illarion’s cell. Illarion turned his head and peeled his lips back before turning back around and pacing the small cell.
Key took notice of his agitation and walked over to the cells. He stood in front of my door and opened it a little wider then pulled out a gun and pointed it at me with a soft click as he flipped off the safety. Key kept his gaze on the hellhound, his one eye watching us as he paced.
“How could you possibly have enough strength to fight the drug? You should be under my command, beast. You might have fooled us into thinking you were compliant once, but I will not tolerate it again. If you do not do as I asked, I will shoot her. I’m positive Alastor would love a chance to perform a bit of surgery he’s been studying,” Key warned.
Illarion didn’t speak. Instead, he stopped pacing and watched Alastor’s movements as he finished opening the cell door and took several steps back. Olezka’s brother stepped out, snarling at Key as he kept the gun trained on me. My heart pounded in my chest, and I fought to remain still. The urge to get out of the gun’s path was strong. Just then, the lights went off again. Illarion moved like lightning, and I rolled farther into my cell to avoid the fray.
“Shut the door!” Key yelled.
Most paras could see better in the dark. It was the one flaw in the power-out plan, but we hoped the chaos that ensued would help our plan along. I shouldn’t have been able to see as well as I could, but oddly enough, I could make out three bodies moving in the room. Illarion moved fast, knocking Alastor away while wrestling with Key to get the gun.
“Open a portal, Alastor!” Key yelled. “I’ll kill her right now, hound. You must smell your brother on her. You know what will happen if I do,” Key threatened maliciously. I huddled in the corner of the cell, unable to do anything to help.
“Leave her, and I won’t kill you where you stand,” Illarion demanded, sounding like he was ready to kill them both, no matter what they did to me.
“Open the portal, Alastor,” Key instructed calmly. “You will go first, then Illarion, then me. If you try anything once we’re on the other side, I will not hesitate to kill her.”
“Agreed,” Illarion grumbled.
“Such a waste, yet again,” Key snapped, leveling a glare in my direction.
Glimmering light erupted in the room, bursting from the gateway Alastor had just opened. The light was blinding, and I was forced to look away. The others stepped through the gateway in a single file line; as Key’s left foot retreated into the portal, it closed with a soft pop, leaving the room cold and empty. Now, it was just me and the dead human guard who had overdosed from a drug meant to control him. And me.
This room must have been soundproof because as deafening as the crowd was on the other side of the door, I couldn’t hear a thing on this side. I knew the power outage wouldn’t last much longer, and my time to find Olezka and escape was dwindling. I had to hope this manufactured chaos was allowing my mate a chance to break free.
All I could think about was finding Olezka. After watching Cyril die, quickly followed by the pitiful death of this man, I needed to see my mate alive.
<
br /> I ran from my cell and pulled on the door that led to the arena, cursing when I realized it was powered by an automatic lock. I breathed in and out for a minute, reminding myself to calm down. I could hack my way out, but not while frazzled. In just a few minutes, the power restarted, and the door was unlocked.
I flung open the door, expecting to see rampaging crowds, but the arena was oddly quiet. I rubbed my eyes in disbelief at what I saw, the blood draining from my face. Mangled, broken bodies were scattered everywhere I looked. I rushed to the railing and looked down at the fighting pit. Three more opponents – though human or para, I couldn’t tell – had joined Olezka’s fight; their bloodied bodies laid on the sandy floor, lifeless.
My heart pounded in my chest, and panic clawed in my mind, destroying any sense of logic. My mind whirled with a litany of worst-case scenarios. I needed to find Olezka. I had to focus on that.
There!
I saw Olezka lying face-down, his body morphed into the half-shift form I’d seen in the Veil. My mouth went dry as I searched for a way down. I ran to the stairs and stumbled in my haste to reach my mate.
A strange whimpering sound ripped from my throat as I raced down to the lower levels. In blind desperation, I wound around and around until I made it to a basement-like level. With the failsafe in place, all locked doors became unlocked. After trying a couple of doors unsuccessfully, I managed to find the right one. Rushing inside, I slid in the sand next to Olezka, pulling on his bloodied shoulder to turn him over.
“Olezka? Olezka?” I fought the wave of hysteria that threatened to take me down as hot, blinding tears choked my vision.
Though he didn’t speak, his body was warm, which was my only indication that he was still alive. His eyes were shut, both blackened with bruises. He was covered in blood, and his nose was obviously broken.
“Olezka?”
Chapter 22
Sixx and the Incubus: The Sidekick Chronicles Page 15
