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I yanked the ropes off my other wrist and then my ankles. Once they were free, I grabbed the gag around my lips and yanked it to my neck.
The one around my chest was attached to two hooks in the wall, so all I needed to do was slip under it.
Fingers scraping against the cement floor, I tried to struggle upright, but my bleeding ankle gave out. I grabbed the wall for stability, lowered myself to my knees, and crawled across the floor to Misty.
She’d been whispering for me to stop as I’d escaped the restraints, and now, she was telling me to get back over there, but I ignored those pleas. She was convinced we had no way to fight, but as long as my mouth wasn’t gagged, we had something just as valuable as a gun.
“Sh-sh-sh,” I whispered as I grabbed her wrists and began untying the rope. “I’m Brooke. I’m Ria’s sister. Do you remember me?”
Her worried words dulled as she blinked up at me.
“We’ve been looking for you,” I whispered. “But we can catch up once we’re home, alright? Just stick close to me and stay quiet.”
“He’ll kill us. You don’t understand. He’s so strong, and he has these teeth, and they—”
“He won’t,” I said. But the teeth thing confirmed that he was a Werewolf. “Just trust me, okay?”
“Brooke, he’s—”
“Misty.” I took her face in my hands and whispered a quiet incantation. I didn’t like casting spells that took away someone’s free will, but to save someone’s life, it was worth the lack of consent. When I finished it, I said, “Are you ready?”
Slowly, she nodded.
“Can you walk?”
She nodded again.
“Then I’m counting on you to keep me vertical.” I struggled onto two feet, using the wall for stability. “Don’t let go of my hand, alright? No matter what happens, you hold onto my hand.”
Due to the spell, again, all she could manage in response was a nod.
Relying on her strength for my left foot, we waddled to the door. I closed my eyes and murmured another incantation—this one to see what was on the other side of it.
A hallway of concrete. There were several doors—some metal, some wooden—along the path, and a stairway sign a few doors down. Chipped, dated linoleum lined the floors, and chunks of debris laid over every inch. At the end of it was a window almost as large as I was tall, overlooking an arched bridge. Which told me where we were. An abandoned building not far from Waterfront Pier.
That bridge was only twenty-five minutes from my house, and—traffic depending—half of that to the closest police station.
Shit, part of me considered running to that window and jumping out of it. It’d be a gnarly fall, but I assumed the morion stones were in or close to this room. As long as I was far enough away from them, I could teleport the two of us home and come back with the cops once I knew Misty was safe.
But the rational part of me said whoever did this wasn’t dumb enough to line this room and this room alone with morion. He may have been, but I was too cautious of a person to take that risk.
Instead, I devised a new plan.
Open the door with a spell, cast another for fire, and hold it in my hand until we made it a few flights down where we could jump from a window and—hopefully—not die. Fire was more likely to kill a Werewolf than a blade or gun was. If he charged us, I’d aim for his eyes. Blind the fucker and no amount of strength mattered. It’d take minutes, if not hours, for them to heal, so as long as we moved fast out of this building, I’d be able to teleport the two of us to safety.
So I did so.
Once the door clicked open, we limped down the hall to the stairway, trying to keep our steps as quiet as possible. I kept glancing to my right as Misty led the way in a catatonic, zombie like state, trying to teleport to no end every few seconds.
The click of the door was louder than I’d hoped as I pushed the bar open. But we continued down the stairs as quietly as we could. The pain along my wrists and shooting up my left leg made silence close to impossible, but by the time we’d made it to the floor marked with a large 2, I debated charging through the door and darting through the window.
Ground floor would be better. I had to force myself to rationalize it, but it made more sense. Jumping out a first story window was the safest option.
As we rounded the bend on the last set of stairs, the big number 1 coming into view, a sensation of relief coursed through me, disintegrating the pain that’d taken hold with each step.
Carefully, fingers moving like butterfly wings in flight on a windless day, I slowly pushed open the door.
As we tiptoed through the threshold into the dimly lit hallway, I scanned overhead for an exit sign. One reflected on the end of the hall with an arrow pointing right.
