by Bec McMaster
"Low."
"If you do this, then you need all the help you can get," Sage warned. "Give us another five minutes, then hit the armory with us. That will give you everything you need to free him."
"Done. And then I'll go get McClain." Mia exchanged a grim smile with Zarina. Trust or not, Zarina was the best person to get her what she wanted—access to the warg cages. "You want out? Then you're with me. That's the deal."
"I didn't agree to that."
"No," Sage said, backing Mia up. "But you're not a very popular person with a lot of the people we're about to free, so I don't think you have much of a choice. Earn your redemption. If you can't bring Mia and McClain back, then we're not taking you with us."
Zarina's jaw dropped.
Twenty-Six
ADAM LANDED IN the center of the stands, among a couple dozen startled reivers. He'd cleared the fence, which meant he was halfway there. Now to take out those generators.
One of the reivers gaped at him, then drew a knife. Adam lashed out blindly. He was lost in a fog of rage and fury, lost in the claws of the warg within him. It wanted blood, and he wanted out. Both purposes meshed for the moment.
"Kill him!" someone screamed.
And they came at him like a flood. A flood of reiver scum that he actually welcomed.
By the time he came back to himself, he was standing in a pool of torn bodies, with a knife in his hand. He couldn't remember how he'd gotten it, but his arms were drenched in blood, and there were various cuts and grazes up his arms and along his ribs. As he looked down, they healed almost miraculously.
The warg was too close to the surface right now. The pewter medallion around his throat flared cold, as if in warning.
The rest of the reivers hung back from him. Sanity wasn't usually a prerequisite for reiver membership, but he'd just cut down at least twenty of them and now they were wary. Whipped curs, the lot of them.
"Come on," he spat, curling his lip a little as he darted toward a pack of them.
Bullets ripped through the air as the reiver on the gun turrets swung the massive repeating rifle toward him. Reivers went down beneath its hail, and Adam threw his arms over his head as he ran.
"Stop!" Vex screamed, as reivers bolted from him.
The cover fire fell silent. Clearly she wanted him alive.
The reivers in front of him scattered, and then his path was clear to the enormous generator tower that ran the fence and the lights. The giant generator was solid steel welded together, but the cables that lit the fences ran through the air above him. If he could take one of them out, then Colton could clear the fence.
The only problem was that they were live wires.
Adam leapt from stand to stand. He'd made a promise to Mia, and he intended to keep it. But to do that he needed Colton.
"Shoot him in the legs!" a woman bellowed, and Adam glanced at Vex's box. Half a dozen shotguns were trained on him.
The reivers around him scrambled to grab him. He lashed out with claws that had sprung from the tips of his fingers, seemingly out of nowhere. A partial shift. He'd seen Luc Wade use claws like these in the past, but he'd never been able to control it himself. Never wanted to. This time he took advantage of them.
Raking through flesh and bone, he lurched forward, diving low as shotgun fire echoed. Reivers screamed as they were hit. Adam kept going, using their bodies to cover his own passage.
A reiver leapt at him from above, an axe in his hand. Adam sidestepped, grabbing the man by the belt and arm and hauling him in a low circle around him. He let go just as they hit maximum velocity, and the reiver flew through the air.
The reiver hit the wires, his weight snapping them from the top of the tower. He hit the ground, jerking and screaming, froth forming on his ragged lips. Instantly the static buzz of the arena's fence went silent.
Problem solved.
Adam turned, but the ring was empty. His heart skipped a beat.
Colton hadn't waited around to see how he escaped. Instead he'd vanished back into the tunnels, the treacherous cur.
Now what?
"You cowardly bastards!" Vex had a whip out and was using it to slash and cut at her reivers as they tried to flee. She cast it aside in frustration, then locked gazes with him. "Five hundred gold pieces to the reiver who brings me that filthy warg's head!"
That slowed the pack of reivers. Some of them kept running, but others turned, greed lighting their eyes. Five hundred gold pieces was more than most of them had ever heard of. Hell, it was more than he'd ever dreamed of.
"Dead or alive?" asked a vicious-looking woman wearing a fur vest, and painted stripes of white across her pale skin.
"Do I look like I give a shit?" Vex snarled. She paced the platform, then her face smoothed. "Actually. I want him alive. I want to do the honors. There'd be nothing better than a matching warg fur for my bedroom floor."
Jesus. Adam looked around. He needed a weapon. Snatching up the electrocuted reiver's axe, he hefted it just as twenty or so of them turned on him.
Adrenaline had kicked him along this far. He wanted out. And he wanted to find Mia, to make sure that she and the others were safe. That stiffened his trembling arm as exhaustion began to make itself known. He'd have to cut them down quickly, or else he'd start to lag. Having the warg right beneath his skin was both exhilarating and draining.
Adam stalked across the timber stand. Vex and her reivers were between him and the exit. He could go back over the fence, but there was no way out at the end of that tunnel.
Shit. He'd backed himself into an unintentional corner. Of course, he'd also expected to have Colton at his back right now.
"What are you waiting for?" he asked, as the female reiver crouched low and stalked him.
She grinned, revealing rotting teeth. "She said she wants you alive. That doesn't mean you have to be in one piece. I'm going to cut off your balls and wear them in a pouch around my neck, wolf-man."
She attacked, coming in low with her own axe. Adam jumped her swing, and buried the sharp end of his own axe in between her shoulder blades. She went down with a scream, and then the rest were upon him.
Weapons flashed as they swung at him. Adam cut and hacked, kicking reivers in the face when they got too close, and then slamming his heel on vulnerable ribs when they went down.
There were too many of them though. His arm started to shake, his ribs burning with the pulse of his lungs. One of the reivers he'd downed grabbed his heel, and Adam took the full brunt of a baseball bat right in the ribs. Then there was a giant trying to rip his head from his shoulders.
Move, he screamed at himself. Or die.
Grabbing hold of the bastard, he drew his fist back for a punch, but the reiver's eyes widened at something over Adam's shoulder, and he started scrambling to get away.
What the hell?
Wargs scrambled up the fence like monkeys, launching themselves into the crowd from the top of the wire. Reivers screamed as some of the wargs went full shift, rending with claws and teeth.
Colton hadn't fled. Instead he'd gone back into the warg cells and set them all free.
They tore through the crowd, a wave of monstrous fury that cut the reivers down with impunity. Vengeance, hot and bloody, and suddenly the sounds of reivers reveling in the spill of blood—warg blood—turned to shrieks of pure fear as the reivers found their own blood wasn't quite as entertaining.
He'd never been a bitter man, but there was a small part of him that enjoyed the sudden turnaround.
Adam punched the reiver in his grip, and turned to survey the chaos. This changed everything. Suddenly he wasn't one man battling against dozens, he was on the winning side.
Colton landed beside him.
"What took you so long?" he demanded.
"Slight fucking problem with the guards." There was blood splashed across Colton's cheek. "And I thought you could handle a few reivers."
"Are you insane?" Adam breathed, looking around at the wargs. Nothing would s
top them now. Wargs were monstrous at the best of times, but after being tortured and forced to fight? They'd be insatiable. "There are still slaves here. Innocent people...."
Colton's dark eyes narrowed. "None of these wargs asked to be a monster. They were innocent too, once upon a time. And I'm not going to leave them to rot here so the reivers can get their fun. Some of them might be monsters, but they deserve a clean death, not to be a fucking spectacle."
Adam grabbed him. "Mia's out there."
Colton's fist curled in his collar. "Then you better get to her before they do."
His heart kicked in his chest. The crowd was running, screaming, being mowed down by a flurry of vengeance. And a part of him liked it. A part of him reared its ugly head and smelled the blood in the air. Yes. Hunt, it whispered.
Adam reined it in. Mia, he told himself, forcing his lungs to work steadily.
Mia, the warg echoed, as if it wasn't quite certain what to think about her.
Adam shoved his way through the crowd of reivers. They were all trying to get through the narrow exits, and that was where they died, packed in like schools of fish. Vex and her party vanished through her personal exit, and she'd left her guard behind to hold the wargs at bay.
By himself he wouldn't have been able to escape, but with the wargs set free.... He couldn't help admiring Colton's sheer ingenuity.
"This way," he said, and started leaping up the stands toward Vex's exit.
"You want me with you?" Colton called incredulously.
Adam turned. "Help me get Mia and the others out, and the debt you owe me is cleared."
It ached to say it. Nine years of betrayal stretched between them. Colton had been Cane's little bitch-boy, a warg who hadn't voiced too much protest when Cane took him and Eden. A part of him struggled to forgive that moment when Colton had thrown Eden inside the hut with him, sentencing her to die unless Adam gave them what they wanted.
But this needed to end, one way or the other.
Colton's expression wavered, an inner fight that Adam could barely guess at. "Okay."
It felt like the air changed around them. Never friends. Not even true allies. But no longer enemies.
Hell if he knew what to call it.
By the time Colton joined Adam, the reivers had found some composure. Shots rang out, a hail of bullet fire that ripped through both reivers and wargs alike. Adam shoved Colton closer to the back of the stands. They were going to have to jump. Far below them, the rooftop of the tin shanty gleamed in the hot afternoon sun.
"This is your brilliant idea?" Colton demanded.
"We'll both survive the fall."
"If I break a leg, I'll haunt you until the day you die," Colton shot back, and looked down again, his temples darkening with sweat. "I hate heights."
Vertigo crawled in Adam's gut. He didn't really want to do this either. But the choice was taken from the pair of them when a shot clipped the makeshift timber stand he stood upon.
"Now!"
Launching himself off the top of the stand, he felt gravity kick in a second later, with a gut-plummeting whoosh.
Arms windmilling, he tried to prepare for the landing. His boots hit the tin roof with a jarring impact, and he went straight through.
A table shattered beneath his weight. Adam flipped off it and tumbled into a ragged heap on the floor just as Colton plummeted through with a scream.
The shanty collapsed around them. Metal screeched as the tin sheets on the walls tumbled against each other, and dust sprang up. The roof caved in, and Adam shoved an arm over his face as one of the timber roof beams fell toward him. It clipped his arm, then slammed into the floor next to his head.
Silence.
Dust.
Everything hurt.
"You still alive?" Colton groaned. Tin shifted in the corner.
"I'm still... trying to decide." Adam focused on breathing. The fall had taken the wind out of him.
Colton lost it, and laughed. "You son of a bitch. That was the stupidest fucking thing I've ever done."
Wincing, Adam pushed the beam aside, trying to drag his legs out from under the section of roof that had fallen. His lungs shuddered. Something in his side ached like someone had stuck a hot poker in it. Cracked rib?
"We're not out of here yet," he warned. "We need to get moving."
"I'd much rather lie here for a few more minutes."
There was no time for that. Shots ricocheted outside, and the sounds of dying screams echoed through the streets.
Mia was somewhere in the midst of it all.
Adam hauled himself grimly to his feet. "No rest for the wicked. Come on."
Twenty-Seven
“ARE YOU SURE you’re up for this?” Mia whispered loudly as Sage broke open the fuse box that kept the armory door shut.
“More than sure,” Sage growled. “I am going to burn these motherfuckers to the ground.”
Okay. Her pacifist sister with her sunny disposition and constant smiles had vanished. Maybe Sage needed to work through her anger. Maybe destroying Rust City would be the perfect thing for her. Mia contemplated her sister’s face, her gaze lifting to Jake’s. He frowned at his wife’s back, but then nodded to Mia. He’d watch over her.
Zarina shook her head. "I think she's caught some of your stupid, or something."
Sage tugged wires out here and there. "Nearly there."
"This will get us into the main warehouse," Zarina said, "but the ammunition is kept in a separate locker within. Guns are easier to get your hands on round here, but the ammo's the real deal. Bullet trade dried up after the border dispute down south three months ago."
"How many guards inside?"
"One on active duty," Zarina replied curtly, looking around. "A few more in the back on stand-down. But we're going to have to be quick now. We're in a fairly suburban area here, and if anyone leaves the games early...."
Sparks fizzed, and Sage stepped back from the fuse box as the lock clicked open. "Electricity down. We're in," she said, setting her fingers into the handle on the door.
Jake helped her, and slowly the enormous steel door began to slide open.
Mia and Zarina went through first, covering the main warehouse with their shotguns. Crates were stacked neatly in rows. A faint light gleamed overhead, but most of the warehouse was cast in inky blue shadows.
“Hey!” Shouts echoed ahead as a reiver shook out the match he'd been lighting his cigarette with. He frowned as he saw the size of the group, then recognition dawned, and he turned and reached for something.
"Stop him!" Zarina yelled.
The alarm. Mia saw the red button now. The reiver's fingers almost brushed it, but a gun retorted and his body gave a jerk before it hit the floor. There was a small red hole in his temple.
"Got it," Jake said tersely, lowering his smoking pistol. "Get moving, guys. Someone might have heard that."
Too late. A couple of reivers burst through the doors at the back. Jake shot one of them, but the other dodged.
Zarina took the time to smash the control panel on the alarm system. "That'll slow them. It's the only alarm in this side of the building."
Mia shot the other reiver. Shotgun pellets ripped his chest open and he went down.
"Nice shot," Zarina said, dragging her along with the rest of the group.
She'd been aiming for his head. Mia looked at her treacherous hands. Still shaking. She felt so disembodied.
"This way," Zarina called, pointing them toward a smaller door. "The ammo's kept in here. Sage?"
"Got it." Sage used some sort of metal tool she'd picked up somewhere to jack open the fuse box. She cursed as one of the wires sparked and shook her fingers.
Reivers poured through the main doors behind them. They must have heard the shots. One of the younger girls tripped and went to her knees. Jake hauled her to her feet and shoved her behind a crate. He flinched as bullets slammed through the air around him, and Mia thought she might have been the only one who saw him get hit.<
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"Jake!" She jerked through the fleeing crowd to grab his arm.
"Just a... graze," he panted, shooting back over his shoulder. His eyes were wild, however. "Get them hidden, Mia. I'll cover our back."
"Sage!" she bellowed. "Can you open the next door?"
She thought she saw her sister's red head bob up through the crowd. "Trying my best."
"Can we shut it behind us? Wait until we're through though!"
"Do you think I'm stupid?" Sage yelled back.
"Let's cover their tracks," Mia said, and started shooting toward the reivers with her pistol. She'd run out of ammunition pretty quickly, so she took shots every few seconds, trying to keep the reivers pinned down behind the crates they hid behind.
Jake caught on and every time she paused, he filled the void with his own bullet, until he clicked empty. He'd lost accuracy, however. Blood soaked his sleeve.
She had to be getting close to running out herself. No time to reload the shotgun. "Sage!"
"Get in here," Sage yelled.
Then Zarina was there. "Reload," she commanded and lifted two pistols, just as the reivers started to creep around the crates in the center of the room.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
Two went down. Mia dragged Jake through the open doorway as Zarina followed them, steadily walking backwards. All of the reivers hit the floor. Mia sighed a breath of relief.
Jake panted, leaning against the wall with his hand clapped to his shoulder. Sage tried to peer at his wound, but he shook his head.
"Get what you need," Mia told everyone. Most of them were staring at her, as if a little shell-shocked. "We have to make a run for the vehicle lot, which means taking out the gun turrets on the main gate. Can anyone shoot?"
"Aye," a big man she'd never seen before said. "I know what I'm doing. Name's Trick."
"Think you can get everyone organized?"
"Will do," he rumbled, and turned to those they'd rescued from the slave pens. Ellie smiled at her and gave her a thumbs up. She'd help.
Screams echoed through the distant air. Mia, Zarina, Sage, and Jake all looked up. Light streamed through the open windows above. They were covered with wire and too narrow to squeeze through, but she could hear everything outside near the arena. Sounded like a bloody riot out there.
