If this is an ambush, I need to get Cas out of here now.
BANG, BANG, BANG.
“Rocco!”
I vaguely hear the sound of Teo screaming my name.
But all I can concentrate on is the rib-breaking impact of three shots to my chest, wedging themselves into my concealed bullet-proof vest.
The force pushes me straight off the stage and sends me crashing into the table below. Glass and alcohol shatter around me, but I can barely breathe, barely get enough oxygen to form a coherent thought.
Slowly, too slowly, the ringing in my ears subsides long enough for me to make out the screaming and chaos around me.
“Rocco!” Teo shouts again. He’s so close to me, yet his voice sounds like a whisper.
“Cas,” I tug at his arm. “Where’s Cas?”
“You’ve been fucking shot!”
“WHERE IS CAS?”
The shock either wears off, or the adrenaline kicks in a split second later. I scramble to my feet just as an all-too-familiar scream reaches my ears.
“Rocco!”
To his credit, Teo moves as I do, without thinking, toward Cas screams.
We scramble onto the stage in unison, ready to greet whatever we might face.
Only we can’t see a thing.
It’s pure instinct that has me dodging out of the way of the knife that swings my way. I don’t think as I grab my assailant’s armand twist hard. I hear them drop the weapon, but I have no idea where it falls.
“Ugh!” they grunt, giving me a helpful reference point for their face.
The next blow I land hits skin with a sickening crunch.
“Cassandra!” Teo shouts out next to me as I hear him stomping down on another assailant.
But it’s another female voice that shouts back. “Princeling?”
“Mia?!”
I aim a kick at my assailant’s chest, sending them falling back off the stage, and run toward her voice.
“What the fuck is happening, Mia?” I shout toward her.
“Someone’s taken…agh!” She shouts in pain, then lets out an angry growl. A second later, an unknown voice groans in sickening agony, and Mia’s gray figure emerges from the darkness. “Someone’s taken Cas backstage.”
I take off, praying to every god that might listen that it’s Martino, that he had the sense to take her somewhere safe.
Two sets of feet pound behind me, and a shaking phone torch appears to guide my path.
Around us is more gunfire, more screams, more unknown horrors that I couldn’t have prepared for. But if my paranoia was warranted, then where the hell was my backup?
“Do you have a gun?” I yell at Teo.
“I’m not firing blind. There are civilians in here!”
