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I did not think of that in the moment. “Even more reason to leave now. Revenge is not worth your life.”
“It just means we don’t have much time,” she mutters. “I’m off my game.” She shakes her head, and her eyes slice in my direction. “Can you go back upstairs and leave me to it? Watch in case others show up?”
My hackles rise. I will not leave her alone. There is danger here. What if she opens the door and another rifle waits, pointed at her on the other side?
“I will not leave you.”
“This isn’t working,” she snaps, her fingers shaking as she fiddles with the blasting caps. “I can’t focus with you here!”
I huff out, feeling her frustration in my chest and feeling the press of the time she spoke of.
“Move out of the way,” I say.
She shakes her head. “What are you talking about? I need to concentrate.” Then she curses, her fingers working expertly at the wires. Outside, I hear the wail of sirens. She is right; I made a mistake letting that man leave. I have imperiled her revenge. And also her life.
So I reach out, grasp her by her waist, and, though she screams at me angrily, I lift her bodily out of the way, placing her in the stairwell. “Stay,” I command.
“I’m not a dog!” she snaps.
“I will remove the door and take this man to the nether realm,” I say roughly. “Stay here so you are not harmed.”
I thrust the backpack at her, pulling out a gas mask and handing it over.
She crosses her arms over her chest, but she must see that we are out of time, so she takes the breathing mask and backpack. “I’m so pissed off at you right now!” She hurries several steps up the stairs, crouching with her arms over her head. Good.
I go back to the door, turn my back to it, and smash the explosive device with my elbow. It feels good to let the fear in my chest outwards into action. The explosion blast knocks me forward, almost but not quite off my feet.
“Kharon!” Ksenia’s voice calls.
“I am unharmed,” I say, turning to look at the door. While a large indent was blasted into the door, it has still not been penetrated. I find one of the other explosive devices on the floor, so I pick it up, hold it against the door with one of my many hands, and smash it again with another elbow.
Again I am knocked forward.
When I turn back this time—
Gunfire explodes out of the small hole that has been blasted through the door. Fury. All I feel is fury. My fears were founded. This gunfire would have been aimed at my beloved’s face had I not been here!
I roar, reach in with my hand, and tear the twisted steel until the door comes away with a horrific metallic squeal, revealing a small, square room.
I wave away the billowing smoke from the blasts, only to be greeted by the flash of more gunfire. Stinging bullets pelt my chest, and I growl, even more infuriated.
“Bring him to me,” Ksenia calls.
I want to end him right now. Through the haze of smoke, I can just make out the shape of a slim, pathetic man. Roaring so he can know some of the fear he caused my beloved when he attacked her and killed her father in a place they felt safe, I stomp into the small room. I grab the man by his neck, yanking his pathetic weapon easily out of his grasp with one of my hands and tossing it into the corner.
Behind me, a noise sounds—some mechanical song ringing on a loop. I hear Ksenia’s voice asking something in response. Words I can hear but don’t understand about why I didn’t tell her I brought a sell fone in the pack.
I don’t respond because I’m a little busy finally laying hands on her uncle. He cries out and gurgles in my grasp, eyes wide and terrified as he’s lifted into the air by a force he cannot see.
I am pleased by his fear. The animal inside me I have not let out in many years feasts on his terror. My rage builds, waiting to be unleashed in satisfaction like it was upstairs. I will be what I was born to be again and send this creature to—
But just then, a high-pitched scream sounds from the corner of the room. I turn to see a small child in a dressing gown looking terrified as I raise the man I can only assume to be her father high into the air by his throat.
Chapter Thirty
KSENIA
What the hell? Is that a kid?
I hold the still-ringing cell phone I dug out of a front pocket in the backpack and run down the stairs.
I can only blink in shock when I see Kharon holding my uncle by the throat, staring at a little girl cowering and crying in the corner. She can’t be more than five years old if that.
