AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I muttered my acceptance under my breath before adding, “Be careful, okay? The building isn’t going to stay standing forever. We need to do this fast and get the hell out of here.”
“I wasn’t planning to move in.” She sneered and pulled a gun from her duffel bag. I briefly feared she might shoot me right then and there, but she grabbed the door and held it open.
The great bonus of Morgan’s plan was that it meant neither of us needed to help the other, and like she’d said, I now only had to check half as many floors. The first ten I checked yielded nothing except burning ruins, and I was beginning to get disheartened. If I didn’t find the elevator soon, I wouldn’t be able to continue the search. The halls had already begun to fill with smoke, and as I made the run from stairwell to stairwell, passing the bank of elevators on each floor as I went, the smoke was starting to follow me.
On the twentieth floor, I hit pay dirt. One of the elevator doors had been forced open, either by the pressure of the blast or someone prying it apart. I managed to get it open wider, expecting to find the elevator behind it, but instead the black abyss of the elevator shaft was all that waited for me, its maw open wide, ready to gobble me up if I took one wrong step.
The cables groaned dramatically, and I glanced up.
The elevator car was just above my head.
“Genie.” I wasn’t sure she’d be able to hear me, but I hoped like hell if she could, it might give her some hope.
The elevator was stuck between the twenty-first and twenty-second floors, but if the doors on the twenty-first floor weren’t bowed in, Morgan might not notice.
“Genie, I’m coming.”
My panic-driven motivation blotted out logic. I should have gone to the stairs and run up one floor like a normal person. Instead I stepped out onto the elevator ledge and scanned the surrounding area for footholds. I was reaching for the cable when two strong hands grabbed me around my waist and hauled me back into the hallway.
I flailed, throwing my elbows back to make contact, and managed to thrust my arm hard against something bony.
“Fuck.”
I was quickly released, and I spun around to face whoever had gotten hold of me.
“Lucas? What the hell were you thinking?”
“What was I thinking? I was stopping you from falling twenty floors to your death. What were you thinking, climbing out there like that?”
“Genie’s stuck in the elevator, and I’m not sure how long it’s going to hold.” I said all this without a pause for breath, my words tumbling out one after the other in a messy, incomprehensible sentence.
“You’re not much good to her if you try to climb up from the bottom.” He took hold of my hand, and this time I didn’t pull away. We ran towards the stairs, and he led the way up to the twenty-first floor.
Morgan was lying on her belly in front of one of the elevators, the doors barely open. She was speaking, but I couldn’t make out the words.
“Is she in there?” I skidded up beside her, dropping onto the floor so I could see what had drawn her focus. The main brass doors had been pried apart about a foot, and the interior elevator doors were open maybe twice as wide.
Genie was sitting in the corner of the car, her head tucked between her knees and her arms wrapped over herself. She was shaking so hard I could hear the tremors against the walls of the elevator.
“Can we get these open any wider?” I tugged at the heavy door, but Morgan grabbed my hand to stop me.
“See the way it’s bowing out at the top?” Following her gaze, I noted the obvious structural damage the door had encountered, the brass tops of the doors angled in steeply. “I’m worried the car is tipped in. If we open the doors any wider, it might fall.”
I released the door immediately and got my face as close to the gap as I dared, not wanting to risk shearing it off if the elevator were to suddenly fall. Did I have magic in my new arsenal for this? I could burn up a thousand corpses like they were candles on a cake, and I could lift impossibly heavy objects. There had to be a use for Aubrey’s skills here.
“Genie, can you hear me?” I was worried she was so deep into a state of shock she wouldn’t be able to move. I had no idea whether or not the elevator could support the weight of two people, and if I had to climb in after her, there was no guarantee either of us was going to make it out again. “Genie, baby, I need you to look at me.”
Her whole body gave a shudder, and she let out a small, petrified mewl, but she lifted her head. “S-S-Secret?”
I’d never seen her more scared. When I’d first met her, she, along with my ancient great-grandmother, helped to save me from a pack of feral werewolves hoping to turn me into a breeding machine. Even then, with the Loups-Garous hot on our tails, she had been fearless.
Letting her stay here with me had been a mistake. I should have made her turn the car back around and hightail it out of New York at the first sign of trouble.
The problem was, I saw a lot of myself in Genie. She was a sweeter, better version of me, but there were other similarities. If I’d told her to leave, she would have stayed anyway, putting herself at even greater risk. And if I’d left her behind during the raids, she would have been in this position anyway. Albeit much higher up in the building, and possibly worse off for it.
“Hi, hon.” I tried to keep my voice soothing and in control, but it was hard not to lose my shit when my baby sister might plummet to her death at any moment. Lucas had gone to the elevator two doors down and was gingerly working to pry the doors apart while keeping a careful eye on us. I knew if anything were to jostle or move, he would stop in a heartbeat, but I was still nervous.
“Are you g-going to h-help me?”
