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“Stop!”
I skidded and tried to look innocent in my bright orange jumpsuit. “Oh uh . . . hi.”
“You Lost Ones are all the fucking same! Get back in your cell!”
He jabbed the prod toward me. I sprang back. I could maybe get around him, but I’d have to be fast—
The guard jerked upright, a look of shock on his face. His back arched, his eyes bulged, he grunted and bucked as though possessed, then dropped to his knees, shuddering. I kicked the prod away, and looked up to see a swathe of purple light filling the corridor, and then the demon it belonged to rounded the corner in full sparkly sex-god glory.
Oh . . . The guard wasn’t dying then, just real . . . excited.
“Kitten, the Fucking God has arrived! Also, this is the most fun I’ve had since a lock-in orgy at Razorsedge. Free orgasms for everyone.”
“Zee!” I flung my arms around him, ignoring the pleasant tingles the touch sparked all over me.
“Hello, Kitten . . . I am on fucking fire! Watch me burn.”
“But how . . . the wards?”
“I’m guessin’ the fire alarm disabled some of ’em. Nobody wants inmates burning to death. Bad fucking PR. No idea who triggered the fire alarm—fuck, what if there is a fire?”
There wasn’t a fire. “Tom Collins is here,” I told him.
“Oh, fuck.” His eyes lit up. “This party’s gonna get wild.”
“Syros is too, but he got away. I thought he came this way, but if you’re here, I guess not. Let’s double back.” Zee jogged along beside me. “How’d you get out of your cell?”
He grinned brilliantly. “Orgasmed my way out. Humans will do anything once they’re puddles on the floor.”
“And Victor?”
“No idea, but I bet he’s working on something.”
We might have a chance, might actually pull this off . . . We just needed to find and stop Syros. If he stayed within the wards, he’d be as restrained as the rest of us.
After racing down the corridors, we eventually came to a grated door wedged open by the unconscious guard sprawled through it.
“Not my handiwork,” Zee said, stepping over him.
“Syros.”
A few more switchback corridors delivered us to some kind of internal foyer. A guard bolted, running from the room where the door was swinging shut. I sprinted over, shoved it open, and stumbled inside.
Syros stood at a bank of screens. He whirled when I entered, and brandished a cattle prod he’d taken off the unconscious guard. “Good, you’re here. You know, I’m starting to think you’re somehow behind this chaos—” His eyes widened as Zee entered the room behind me. “Stay there! Or I free every single criminal in this prison, and I know even you don’t want that, brother.”
I shrugged. “Actually, I’m okay with it. Zee?”
Zee shrugged too, making his wings bounce. “Meh. Have at it. Half of ’em shouldn’t be in here anyway.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be the good guys?” Syros scoffed. “SOS Hotel heroes?”
Yeah, being official heroes had sounded good, but the shine had worn off. “Honestly, we just kinda want to be left alone to run our hotel.”
“Yeah, this hero schtick is crazy bad for my mental health. My therapist says it’s all about balance. He was making a drink and sprinkling coke over it at the time . . . but the point is, being bad is sometimes good. So you go right ahead and press that big ol’ red button, let all the Bad People out. We’ll watch.”
“You know there are Lost Ones behind these bars who wanna chew up this world and spit it out?”
“Then you’ll have company,” I said.
