“Kitty.” I squeezed her waist, trying to make her more alert. “I need you to try and walk.”
She didn’t even acknowledge I’d spoken.
Struggling, I made it into the other room, her feet dragging the entire time. They’d said as soon as I’d signaled, they’d be here in less than five minutes. Where were they? Fate and the guys should’ve been storming in by now.
I’d have to choose. I’d never make it down all those stairs but wasn’t willing to wait here for them, either. Fate had said I’d die by my neck being slit. If that were true, I wasn’t going to get shot full of holes in an elevator. Choice made. I rearranged Kitty onto my back, holding her on with her arms in front of me and dragged her into the hallway.
I hit the down button and looked upward. “You got me involved in this mess. You’d better get me out!”
The doors opened seconds later. I propped Kitty up under the floor buttons, so she wouldn’t take any bullets if the doors opened to fire. I leaned slightly over her and hit the lobby button.
It was the longest elevator ride of my entire life. Malokin wouldn’t make it this easy. I looked at the walls of the elevator and I wondered if instead of saving her, I’d dragged Kitty into a metal coffin. It occurred to me now that I knew the means of my death, not hers.
Three floors.
Two floors.
The doors started to open to the lobby without gunfire, and I felt a glimmer of hope that we were going to get out of there. Relief started to bloom inside of me, and I let out half a cry from the excitement that not only did I have Kitty, but we were both alive.
“Kitty, you gotta help me and get up.” I’d deal with the lobby people, but it would be easier if I wasn’t dragging her the entire way. And where was my backup? Could they have missed my signal?
Either way, it didn’t matter now. Kitty wasn’t budging, and I needed to get moving. She wasn’t going to make this easy on me. “Hey, cat girl, get your ass moving!” I felt bad for screaming at her after everything she’d been through, but she needed to wake the hell up. We could both easily end up dead. Until we were miles from Malokin, I wasn’t going to feel safe, lobby full of people or not.
She didn’t even look at me. So much for tough love.
In my concentration on her, I hadn’t bothered to assess anything beyond the lobby hallway, but now the smell of smoke drew my attention.
Where were the people in the lobby? Why didn’t I hear them? I poked my head out of the door that was trying to close.
There was nobody there; no one behind the desk, even. But beyond it, on the street where I could see through the makeshift barred glass doors, was absolute mayhem.
The building across the street was a roaring fire, flames shooting ten feet out of the broken windows. People were running in every direction, with sticks and makeshift weapons in their hands. What the hell had happened?
I kneeled down in front of Kitty with a renewed sense of urgency. I grabbed her face between my hands. “Get. Up.”
Her eyes, which I thought were deadened a while ago, now showed so much pain that it made me physically weak myself. A tear escaped and drifted down her cheek and I wiped it away, not wanting to see it there.
“Kill me.”
My jaw dropped open, but I couldn’t speak. What had they done to her that was so bad that even in the face of freedom, she preferred death?
“No. Do you hear me? You’re getting up and coming with me. Neither of us are dying today.” I yanked her arm around my shoulders again and dragged her slowly out of the elevator with me. “If you want to die, you do it by yourself. You aren’t pulling that shit on me. You hear me?”
She didn’t answer and I didn’t care. I’d carry her all the way to South Carolina on my back, if that’s what it took. Hopefully, it wouldn’t.
Once I got us out of the elevator and behind the receptionist’s counter, I dug my phone out of my pocket and scrolled down quickly to Fate and dialed. When it went straight to machine, three times in a row, my hand started shaking. The cell towers were down.
A banging sound drew my eyes to the glass doors, and I peeked out from our position. Men and women, from every walk of life, were starting to ram the doors. A metal garbage can smashed into the glass. A long crack appeared, but it was still intact, even if it wouldn’t be for long.
I shoved the phone in my back pocket and shook out my hands. It was all me. There was no time for nerves now.
“Listen to me,” I said to Kitty, as I kneeled down on the marble surface next to her. Her eyes flickered to my face. “I don’t want to die here. Do you hear me?” She nodded. “But I will not leave here without you. So if you want to die, you’re going to kill me, too.” The words were harsh, but I would’ve said worse to get her moving.
More tears started coming down her face but I couldn’t let them affect me. “Stop crying and help me get out of here.”
She shook her head then looked down at her legs. “I can’t walk.”
“What do you mean?” I looked down at her jean clad legs in confusion and then felt along them with my hands. I didn’t need to search for the answer very long. Halfway up both shins, my hands ran across the reason for her claim. They were no longer straight bones, but each had an unnatural angle. They’d been broken intentionally, in the same place and the exact same way.
I forced my lips together to keep from crying out at what they’d done to her. I shouldn’t have been shocked but was anyway. Who knew what else they’d put her through? Pity was what I felt, but I couldn’t let it show. Pity could be a death sentence, right now.
Another crash against the door jarred me back into the immediacy of the moment. I leaned over to see what the status of the lobby doors were. There were five people, two women and three men, trying desperately to get in, and it wasn’t to seek shelter. They seemed crazed.
Crawling underneath the counter, I dragged Kitty to the cramped place beside me. “There are people that are going to break in at any moment. We need to stay quiet.”
Once they passed, I’d get us out. I needed to get to the next block over. We had a contingency plan; if anything went wrong, we’d meet at a small diner there. I just hoped if we made it, the others would too.
Glass shattering on the marble proceeded feet trampling in, as three sets ran past and two ran right towards us.
I held a finger over my lips to Kitty, who nodded. A knife in hand, I was prepared to fight our way out of here, if necessary.
Two pairs of feet came to stand in front of us. When they paused, I had no choice but to jump out. I couldn’t wait until they found us. With so little maneuvering room, we’d be sitting ducks.
It was two of the men, and they appeared even crazier up close. They both lunged at me at the same time. I didn’t think they even knew what they were doing, but if it came to them or me, I wasn’t planning on waiting until the bloodlust left their eyes to ask if they’d had a bad day.
It wasn’t just me, either. The idea of what Kitty had been through enraged me, and I wasn’t letting her die now, after all she’d been through. I used the rage I felt for her—for what they’d done to me—to make short work of the two threats. I lashed out at the one on my right, slicing his stomach open, and spun immediately to my left, opening up the other man’s neck.
I turned back to Kitty. The woman who’d just been traumatized by monsters was looking at me like I was the scary one.
“Kitty, I had to kill them. I couldn’t take the chance of not getting you out of here. If you’d seen their eyes, it was us or them.” Standing in a puddle of my victims’ blood as I spoke wasn’t any great help toward calming her down. Everything I said was true, though. There had been something deadly when I’d met their stare.
“We’ve got to go,” I continued, too nervous to reach for her yet.
When she reached out a hand to me, I choked up but tried to hide it. She was going to be okay. If I could get us out of here, she’d be the Kitty I knew again, one day.
&nb
sp; With my help, she crawled out from under the desk, but she still couldn’t stand. No one had come into the lobby in the last few minutes, but a steady stream of looters and people were passing by the door. It looked like a war zone out there. If they were all like the two I’d just encountered, I’d have to fight our way out of here, and I’d never be able to do it carrying her. I’d have to go alone and get help.
“It might be safer to hide you somewhere and come back.”
“No,” her grip, even as malformed as it was now, was tight on my arm. “Kill me then but don’t leave me here.”
Where Malokin might still be close by. I knew it was what she was thinking, but I didn’t say it either.
“Okay. We’ll go together.” I should’ve probably said die together. It was the epitome of stupid to try and get us both out of here like this, but I couldn’t leave her, either. “Wrap your arms around my neck and—”
“Hey, chickie! Looks like you need a little help.” I heard Bobby and spun around to see the other two Jinxes with him as well.
If I hadn’t been so busy holding up Kitty, I would’ve kissed every little devilish face. “How—”
“We’ve been watching you,” Billy offered. The three of them stood in front of us, skateboards in one hand and guns in the other.
“You’ve been watching me? Why? For how long?” And how did I never notice them there?
“Ever since we saw you with that loser,” Bobby explained, as Billy and Buddy alternated between watching the entrance and taking in the situation inside.
“But why?”
“First we were just nosey, but man you’ve got some interesting shit going on. It’s like your life was made to order for our own amusement.” Bobby’s little blond eyebrows hiked up his forehead. “I mean, that mental breakdown thing you did the other night? Whew, that was a real show. Oscar worthy, is all I can say.”
“Yeah, your life is like our ultimate inspiration,” Billy said. “You’re so jinxed, and we didn’t even touch you. Really, you’re like textbook screwed, these days.”
“Whoa,” Buddy said, from where he’d stopped to stand near Bobby. “Kitty, you look like shit. If this is what retirement looks like, fuck that.”
She was leaning against my back so I couldn’t see her face, but I felt the shudders go through her, shaking her too-thin frame. I started throwing the Jinxes the evil eye, but then I heard her laughter. The sound had me torn between laughing and crying in relief, to hear something other than despair coming from her.
“Come on,” Bobby said. “Let’s get the hell out of here. Buddy, you take Kitty’s legs and…”
When Bobby’s voice trailed off, I looked up to see what was wrong, but it was something right. Fate was walking into the building with his men. Their clothes were black and sooty, like they’d just walked through the fires of hell.
Fate didn’t stop until he was less than a foot from me, his eyes roving every inch of my frame until they settled on mine again. His hand reached out and smoothed a piece of hair away from my forehead, and then dropped quickly, as if he was surprised he’d done it.
“You look okay,” he said.
“I am. What happened?” I asked.
“Malokin bombed half the buildings within a two mile radius, including the one we were in,” Fate explained, as he lifted Kitty from my grasp and handed her to Lars, who was next to him.
I caught a glimpse of Lars’s gloriously long black hair, now partially singed.
Noticing where my attention had gone, he said like the diva I hadn’t known he had in him, “Don’t ask. I’m not ready to talk about it, yet.” Then he bestowed the brightest smile I’d ever seen on Kitty.
“I thought you retired?” Kitty asked, once in Lars’s arms.
I’d forgotten that they might know each other. Lars, Bic, Angus and Cutty had all once been employees. If we got out of here, I was going to have to pick Kitty’s brain. Maybe I’d get to finally find out what they’d done in their previous employment.
“You ready?” Fate asked me.
“To get the hell away from here? You have no idea.” I scanned the lobby, but one face was missing. “Where’s Paddy?”
“When it started going bad, we made him leave, just in case.”
I nodded.
“Everyone ready?” Fate called to the group and received various acknowledgements.
When he moved to the front of the group, preparing to head into the fray, I stepped up beside him. Fate’s hand tugged me backward, pulling me behind him, instead.
“What are you doing?” I pulled my hand out of his grasp and moved forward again.
“I want you to stay behind me, in the center.” His hand darted out to push me backward again.
I jumped out of his reach. “Did you notice the dead bodies? I’m perfectly capable.”
I thought he was going to fight me, but he didn’t even look upset when he said, “Promise to stay by my side?”
“Promise,” I replied quickly, thinking this was too easy. Maybe he was trying to fight his controlling ways.
“Cutty, you’re taking the lead,” Fate said, then looked at me. “Don’t forget, you promised.”
“You tricked me!” The knife in my hand wasn’t going to see much action, buffered on every side as I was.
“In my defense, you do make it easy.” It was hard to stay mad when he smiled at me like that.
We all started moving forward, and even the most crazed people moved out of our path when they saw us coming. The guys said the police had set up barricades around the perimeter of the rioting and bombing. Fate knew exactly which way to go to leave the area without the police or media seeing us.
Twenty minutes later, I stood in between Fate and a recently arrived Paddy. We stood on the outskirts of a larger group of onlookers, behind a police barricade. People from all over had amassed at the edge of the scene. Black plumes spread out into grey clouds before becoming a dingy horizon. Reporters questioned police officers about what was happening but only received “no comment” responses.
Lars had already left, offering to get Kitty situated. The other guys had insisted on helping. I kept forgetting they’d all worked with her and had probably missed her. Watching the four guys gather around her, wanting to care for her, was endearing. When they left, I knew she was in good hands.
“I think I just figured out who—or what—Malokin is,” Paddy said, turning to look at the two of us. “He’s Wrath.”
“Wrath, as in anger? Is that even a thing or position?” I asked.
Paddy nodded. “Theoretically, anything that has enough energy in the Universe can take form.”
When I thought back to the hotel room, it made sense. “When I was up there with him, he was trying to goad me into attacking him. I couldn’t understand what purpose it served.”
“He probably feeds off it,” Paddy said.
“But why let me go?” I asked. “He didn’t even try and kill me.” That might have been the most nerve-wracking question I had. What else was Malokin planning?
“He’s gone. For now, anyway,” Paddy said.
A stray wad of ash hit me square in the forehead, and I immediately looked for the Jinxes. They were further off to the side, and Bobby lifted his chin and nodded me over to where he was standing, away from the crowd. I obliged, still reeling from the latest revelation and embracing a reason to get some space.
Bobby’s eyes scanned the crowd I’d left by the barricade and lingered on Fate who, even though he hadn’t followed, was paying apt attention nonetheless.
“You know your loser?” He did a single nod of his head as he asked.
There wasn’t a doubt he was referring to Luke. “He’s not mine, but yes. What about him?”
He pulled a scrap of paper out of his back pocket and shoved it into my hand. I smoothed out the crumples and saw the address of the building Luke had occasionally used. One particular time would never leave my mind.
“He’s there.” His finger tapped t
he paper.
I looked at the three devious little faces that always seemed in mid-smirk. “How do you know?”
“We’ve got a tracker on his car,” Billy said. “Let’s just call it a bottle of Johnny Blue once a week and we’re even.”
They sold themselves short, but I didn’t tell them. I would’ve bought them a case every day for the chance to get my hands on Luke.
Bobby dug into the pocket of his hoodie and dug out a set of keys, which he thrust at me. “Here are your keys. If you call the guards for a door back, it’s parked at the old arcade.”
They were at the arcade, too? These guys were turning out to be worse than Malokin. “How did my car get there?” I looked at the keychain with a naked girl and looked back at him. “These aren’t mine.”
“I’m lending you my set. What, do you think we skateboard everywhere?” Bobby rolled his eyes and the other two laughed.
They had their own set of keys to my car? “You’re the reason I constantly have no gas? I thought I had a leak!”
“Hey, you can’t blame it all on us. That thing is a gas-guzzler. We can’t be filling it up all the time.”
I stuck the keys in my pocket before I spoke. “You aren’t getting these back. No more taking my Honda.”
“Sure, of course not,” Bobby said, taking and then patting my hand.
Shaking my head, I realized how stupid I was. “You have more sets, don’t you?”
They all shrugged and shook their heads as a murmur of, “No, of course not,” and “We wouldn’t do that,” spewed from their lying little lips.
It wasn’t important, right now. I knew where Luke was. I looked back over my shoulder and saw Paddy nod once. He already knew something was afoot. Fate was walking toward me.
“You had to expect that,” Bobby said. “You are his girlfriend.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Whatever.”
I walked a few feet away, with Fate heading toward me, and dug out my phone to call for a door.
Chapter 36
Your Turn
“He’s in there.” I stood on a hill above the building Luke had sometimes used. It wasn’t Malokin, but he would do. In some ways, I wanted Luke’s blood most of all. Malokin might have been the mastermind, but it had been Luke who had screwed with my body and mind on a daily basis.
JINXED: (Karma Series, Book Two) Page 22
