“Where’s the key to her cage?” Mitch whispered.
She squirmed and made some muffled noises into his hand while Landon shut the door.
“I’m going to uncover your mouth so you can tell me,” Mitch said. “But I’m fast. And I’m mean. So if you yell, very bad things might happen to you. Do you understand?”
She nodded, tears forming in her eyes.
“On the count of three,” he said as if playing peek-a-boo with a child. “Are you ready?”
Her answer was muffled, but understandable. He lifted his hand from her mouth by a half an inch. She swallowed but didn’t say anything, slinking back further onto the desk.
“You’re going to have to do better than that, Alex.”
“If you hurt me, you won’t get out of here alive.” Her words were shaky. Probably because she knew what he was capable of.
“You know about me, right?” he asked. “What I am?”
“I know all about your kind.”
“Sure. You probably learned a lot from the bastard you have hung up on the wall in that other room, right?” He was shocked that her eyes could get any wider. “Yeah, we met. Nice guy. Not a big talker though. And, frankly, he needs to eat more.” He leaned towards her. “Did you run out of puppies and orphans?”
“Even if you kill me, I’m not telling you anything.”
“Huh.” Mitch looked at Landon and shrugged. “Okay with you if I kill her then?”
“Where are all of your records?” Landon asked. “This can’t possibly be all of them.”
“Again with the paperwork,” Mitch said, rolling his eyes. “She already said she’s not going to tell us anything, Landon. So I vote we kill her now and figure it out later.”
“He really will kill you,” Landon said, not a trace of humor on his face. “And he won’t care. Do you know how we got inside? Carter got us in. And now Carter’s dead body is stuffed into one of the rooms down the hall. Do you want to protect this place so badly, you’d die to do it?”
“It’s not ‘this place’,” Alex blurted. “Do you actually think that this is it? This is a facility. One of many.”
“How many?” Landon asked.
She didn’t speak until Mitch reached up and smoothed out the collar of her shirt, pulling it taut against her neck, casually wrapping his fingers around her windpipe. “Five, I think.”
“See how good it feels to be honest,” Mitch whispered, enjoying the terror in her eyes.
She swallowed and took a deep breath. “But even if you find them all, it won’t matter.” Her voice grew more confident, perhaps because she knew nothing she said would change the outcome of the situation. “Because the bastard who is in charge doesn’t work in shitty offices like this.”
Mitch smiled at her. “Where’s the key?”
She scooted even further onto the desk, her legs no longer touching the ground. But with Landon blocking the door, unless she had a trap door somewhere, she would never get far enough away.
“Hurting me or this facility won’t do you any good,” she said. “Even if you cut off an arm, the beast still lives.”
“Hmm…” Mitch said, stroking his chin like he cared. “What if I pull off every motherfucking appendage like I was plucking a chicken? And then rip off its head with my teeth? Will that be enough to kill the bastard?”
“Let me go.”
“Give me the key.”
She stared at him, blinking occasionally, sweating profusely.
“You don’t have a lot of options here, lady.” He flicked his head towards Landon. “It’s two against one. And we are mean sons-of-bitches who aren’t afraid of hurting a girl.” He glanced at Landon. “Am I wrong here? Even you’d hit a girl if you had to, wouldn’t you?”
He shook his head. “Not normally, no. But I’m not sure she qualifies as a girl. And I’m not sure anything about this qualifies as normal.”
“That’s fair.” Mitch turned back to Alex. “So what’s it going to be?”
“I don’t have the key. The guards do.”
Mitch sighed. “Well, that’s not very helpful.”
Then she laughed. The ugly, hateful laugh of someone who could be described the same way.
“Something funny?”
“You might want to leave now.”
She had no idea how misplaced her smug smile was. And how eager he was to wipe it off her face for her. But peering around her, he cursed his stupidity. Her hand was coming out of a drawer. A drawer that undoubtedly had a silent alarm trigger in it.
He blew out a breath. “You called for backup?” He ran his hand over his face. “Hey, Landon! She called for backup.”
“Oh.”
“This isn’t a normal situation, right?” he asked.
“Right,” Landon said.
Mitch smacked his hands together and briefly put them to his mouth as he thought about what he needed to do. She’d now made herself a liability, a loose end. One they couldn’t worry about once the real fighting began. But despite the promises he’d made to her, and his desire to cause serious, chronic pain to whomever he could, he wouldn’t kill her.
“So…um…” he said. “I’m gonna hurt you.”
She cringed and tried scurrying backwards, but Mitch grabbed her by the collar and yanked her towards him.
“Yep. I’m gonna hurt you, and it’s…um…it’s gonna…hurt.” He grabbed the first thing he saw—some kind of paperweight-thing that people kept shit down with, and tried to remember which part of her head he could hit without causing permanent paralysis. Because they might need her to do more than drool at some point in the future.
The ‘no’ was cut off even before the ‘n’ had a chance to fully form in her mouth. Her body slumped to the side and fell onto the floor like a Weeble-Wobble that had done its very last wobble.
“Why the hell did you do that?” Landon growled. Then he took a plastic liner out of the trashcan and started shoving papers into the bag.
“Why the hell not?”
“Because we could have used her as a hostage. But a hostage isn’t as useful if the other side thinks she’s already dead.”
“Well, how the fuck was I supposed to know that? It’s not like I do this kind of thing often.”
“It doesn’t matter anymore. We need to get ready for war.”
“At least she told us about the key.”
“We already knew one of the guards had a key.”
A second later he heard the pattering of little feet. Okay, not that little, and they sounded more like thunder.
“True, but at least she let them know where we are. So basically, they’re bringing the key to us.”
“And that’s a good thing?” Landon asked as they headed into the hallway. They needed more room to maneuver and more than one way to run if things went badly. They took off in the opposite direction of where the footsteps were coming from, which thankfully, was towards the room where Eden was being held.
“After being inside the cage room and having death sound better than a Corona on the beach somewhere, excuse me if I see a silver lining in everything else.”
“I’d rather have a Corona on the beach,” Landon said.
“If we get out of this, I’ll buy you as many as you can drink.” Without stopping, Mitch reached out and pulled the fire alarm. And then the blaring started—a screech that would easily kill a dog. Wouldn’t bother Hyde01 though—he was probably just singing along with the goddamned thing. Or maybe he was howling.
”Why the hell did you do that?” Landon shouted.
And then it started to rain. Water poured out of the overhead sprinklers, dousing them as if they’d just come off the beach during a hurricane. But in this case, there would be no calm. No eye of the hurricane to take a breather in.
“Electricity and water don’t play well together,” Mitch said, shaking wet hair from his eyes. “Especially amped-up-special-edition Tasers with no wires.” Then he kicked off his boots. “So if they shoot me again, I
plan on sharing the charge with everyone. ‘Cause that’s the kind of guy I am.”
For some reason, Landon looked horrified.
“Relax, cop. It’s just a bluff…mostly.” He slapped Landon’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, I’m also totally okay with you shooting whoever you want to. How many bullets do you have left?”
“Not many.” Landon tapped his holster. “We’re going to have to hand-to-hand it.”
“How many times have I told you? I’m not giving you a hand-job!”
“And how many times have I told you that your jokes aren’t helpful?” He stretched his arms, probably testing how much freedom of movement he’d have in wet clothes. “And you’d better not taunt them into shooting you. Because I don’t want to get electrocuted today.”
Dripping wet, five guards came ungracefully and cautiously down the hall. Landon and Mitch stopped as they neared the door to the cage room, eyeing ways out. Three. Making this a lose-lose-lose situation for Mitch. One direction led away from Eden, which he had no intention of using until she was with them. The other direction involved going through the impending crowd of muscle. And, of course, the door in front of them led into the room of no return.
“You know I can’t go in there, right?” Mitch asked.
“Yeah. I know,” the cop said, his eyes never leaving the guards.
“So that’s not really a healthy direction to take this fight.”
“I know.”
“And once I beat the key out of one of these motherfuckers, you need to still be well-enough to get her out of the cage.”
Landon looked at him. “Yes, Turner. I understand. Now stop your yapping and get ready to defend my frigging honor.”
Mitch smiled, knowing how annoyed the cop was going to be about the next thing that came out of his mouth. “This is a good bonding thing, huh?”
Landon’s brows slammed together. “What the hell are you talking about? We’re about to get killed.”
Before Mitch could truly enjoy the moment, the guards arrived, tiptoeing like toddlers on ice, gliding across the sheet of water already covering the floor. Probably shouldn’t have opted for those fancy, thin-soled loafers from Bad-Guys-R-Us.
And of course, one genius pulled out his weapon.
“No Tasers!” someone yelled, before the genius killed them all in one big electric chair.
“Do you understand how electricity works?” Mitch wiped the hair out of his eyes and pointed to the puddle they were all standing in. “You shoot your little toy there, and it won’t matter if you hit me or the water. We’re all gonna get zapped. And trust me when I tell you that it is not amusing.”
CHAPTER XXXI
Before the fight began, Mitch wished Carter hadn’t messed with the camera feed. Because the footage would’ve been hysterical. Grown men slipping and sliding like some bad ‘Bambi on Ice’ show. After the first fist was thrown, they became more like out-of-control dads at their kid’s hockey game. But the guards weren’t stupid or impulsive. And they didn’t stand around, waiting for Mitch and Landon to knock them off one at a time. They divided to conquer—three for Mitch and two for the cop.
Since Mitch had kicked off his shoes, they wouldn’t dare tase him. But being barefoot also gave him more traction than the other men had. He should’ve had Landon follow suit. The guy was holding up his end. But he was also being forced backwards. Then a guard slipped past him and went into the room where Hyde01 and Eden were.
“Stop them, Landon! Where’d you learn to fight?”
After the cop ran in, another guard followed. But Mitch couldn’t. Once he passed that fucking doorway, he’d fall into a fucking Hyde-induced trance again.
When he heard Eden yell, he let out a stream of cursing that even shocked him. Maybe Landon could use him as a shield to hide behind. A shield that wouldn’t be able to move or fight back. So more like a pylon in the middle of a lightless and lifeless road somewhere.
Eden’s shouts were suddenly overtaken by the most horrendous howling he’d ever heard. Hyde01. It had to be the bastard calling out to whatever evil he was a part of, excited by the violence in front of him. Like it was some kind of pay-per-view show. Except this wasn’t for money, this was for life.
Mitch stood at the door, his hands at ten and two, his body pressing forward. Fuck. He grinded his teeth together. Fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck. Could anything else work against them? Landon was going to get his ass kicked. They still didn’t have a key. The siren was ravaging his ears, broken up by what sounded like rapid-fire thunder or heavy-metal drums. And the goddamn water wouldn’t stop pouring.
Suddenly Mitch’s big dilemma became a nonissue. Someone plowed into him from behind, throwing both of them into the godforsaken room. He waited for the pull, the force that would freeze him to the floor. But all he felt was an asshole’s fist near his kidney. He flipped over, his legs knocking the guy over and sending him the rest of the way to the ground.
Freed momentarily, Mitch felt it. A pulse within him, forcing him to turn towards the monster, an invisible master directing his every movement. Eden called his name, and was powerless to respond.
Super heroic, asshole. He tried to fight the impulse, he really did. With everything inside of him, he fought. The guard landed another good blow to Mitch’s side. Easy shot when your opponent can’t fucking move. But the pain gave him something he didn’t expect—control. He slammed his fist into the guy’s belly, laughing hysterically. Just because he could feel his goddamn body, and it was his own.
After another minute, he understood. If he fought, if he felt, he would be free. Pain was now his ally—giving it and receiving it. After another punch, he had the insane desire to kiss the guy on the receiving end. But he didn’t. Because that would probably freak the guy out so much, he’d stop fighting.
“I need to keep fighting, Landon!” he shouted.
“Glad to hear someone’s happy about it.” The words came with a grunt.
In the thin glimpses of time Mitch wasn’t pummeling or being pummeled, he looked for Eden. Then he saw his true enemy—the one Hyde hungered for. Hyde01. A beast for a beast.
The thunder Mitch had heard earlier was actually the sound of old-man-Hyde slamming one of his cuffed fists against the wall behind him again, stretching as far as the short chains allowed and then hammering it back. His other hand was dripping with blood, already freed. The cuff hung meekly from the chain, still closed. Slick with blood and water, the bastard’s hand had managed to wiggle its way out. And now he was working on the second. But it didn’t matter. He would have to find a way to chew through the steel bars of his cage before he became a real problem.
Mitch blinked rapidly, needing the space between them. Yeah, because eyelids are enough. No, the pain was far more effective. He silently thanked the guards for their assistance in the matter.
“Don’t!” he shouted as one of them reached for his Taser. Ah yes, this moron.
“Let me out! I can help you fight!” Eden screamed.
“Just a sec!” he called back.
“Damn it, Mitch! I can take care of myself. Stop being so goddamned macho and let me help!”
“This is not me being macho. This is me not having a key!” He shook his head, blinking away blood and water from his eyes.
“Well, get it!”
Seriously? “Excuse me,” he said to the guard he was fighting. “But do you have a key to my girlfriend’s cage?” The moment the guy’s expression changed to ‘why the fuck are you talking to me,’ Mitch threw his next punch. It was a bit too hard. The look of confusion and the man attached to it flopped onto the floor. “Sorry, babe! I don’t think he had one on him.” He kicked the unconscious man’s arm out of the way as the next guard moved forward. How many fucking guys were there? Five or five hundred? Damn it, eventually he was going to run out of them, and then he’d go immobile.
“Well, check him!” Eden said. “One of them has to have it!”
“I’m kinda busy.” He jumped to th
e side the guy swung—just enough to get knocked but not enough to get knocked out. “By the way, when this is all done, you and I are going to have some words.” She didn’t even leave a note.
“Fine,” she yelled back. “Just hurry up and get it done then.”
“I found it!” Landon called, standing up from the guard he’d just downed, holding a key.
“Show off,” Mitch grumbled as he swung for his opponent’s jaw. Then he saw the guy’s face go from pain-and-determination to shock-and-terror. It might’ve been flattering if his reaction was in response to him, but it wasn’t. He was looking over Mitch’s shoulder. Mitch kicked him in the gut and spun around at the same time, wanting to know what was behind him.
Another guard had had the key. A bright red one with a chain. Of course, the red could’ve been from the blood seeping from his neck where, assumingly, he’d been wearing it.
And it would’ve been good news, if not for the fact that the guy was most definitely, and most assuredly, dead.
And it might’ve been a bitter-sweet sort of victory, if Hyde01 wasn’t the one who’d ripped it off and was now holding said key in his enormous hand.
Mitch skittered forward, completely forgetting about the guy he’d been trying to beat senseless. The weight of every man still-standing shifted from different parts of the room to the area right around the door of Hyde01’s cage. If the room were a boat, they would’ve all gone over the side.
“Stop him!” he heard the guard shout.
No shit.
Mitch caught the bastard’s hand just as it shoved the key into the cage’s lock. “You don’t have a failsafe switch around here, do you?” Mitch yelled, holding on for his pathetic life, for all their pathetic lives. “Something to gas the motherfucker?” Only Landon came forward, putting his hands over Mitch’s.
Nobody answered. All he heard was the intermittent scream of the alarm.
“We could use some help here!”
“They’re already gone,” Landon said.
Jekyll, an Urban Fantasy Page 30
