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Eli tore past me in a rage, leaping on and attacking one of the tigers. I shifted and went to work on the second. It slashed out with a paw, claws slicing the air in front of my face. In a lucky turn of fate, the tiger slipped on the blood coating the floor and crashed to its side. Before it had time to right itself, I lunged forward and clamped my jaws on the thing’s throat as hard as I could, shaking my head for good measure. It managed to swing a paw toward me, raking its claws painfully down my side before the cartilage of its throat snapped and crumbled between my teeth.
On the opposite side of the hall, Eli had dispatched the other feral. She knelt next to the dead Havener, a devastated look on her face as she ran a thumb along his jawline.
“Jackson? Dammit,” she muttered. “We aren’t leaving him. Gods only know what that sick fuck will do to his body.”
“Are we gonna carry him?” I asked, glancing back at Mika, who was still carrying Leif. I didn’t see how we’d make it out with two bodies.
Eli gave me a pained look and shook her head. “No, but I’m not letting Simon experiment on him. Jackson was a friend. He deserves better. Hang on.”
She put her hands on the man’s body. While she closed her eyes to concentrate, I glanced around nervously. Time had gone strange. It somehow felt as though it was going really slow and really fast at the same time. We had to get out of here, but I didn’t want to rush Eli. Kira stayed silent as well, though she looked as concerned about the time we were losing as I was.
A moment later, a strange blue flame engulfed the body, and Eli stood, backing away. In seconds, the Havener had turned into nothing but a faint cloud of ash.
“Sleep well, my friend,” Eli murmured. She turned to us and nodded. “It’s time. We need to hurry.”
“Fine by me,” I agreed. “Let’s go. At this point, we’ll be lucky to get out of here alive ourselves.”
The rest of the compound remained deserted as we drew near the entrance. Gunfire erupted again, along with the howls and roars of battle.
“Damn,” Eli grunted. “We can’t go that way. Simon’s men will be blocking the tunnel.”
I nodded and pointed down a side corridor. “From what I saw when we came in, if we go this way, there should be another corridor that connects to the one we came in. It’ll spit us out right by the door, hopefully ahead of Simon’s men. We have to hope that Crew and the others can hold them off long enough for us to get out.”
Eli didn’t look happy about the plan. To be fair, it was a shit plan. Too much unknown, too little recon, too many things that could go wrong. But our only other options were going into the fray or staying here and becoming another of Simon’s sick experiments.
“Fine,” Eli said.
“Kira, are you good?” I asked. She didn’t look good.
She waved me away. “I’ll be fine. Let’s keep moving.”
Her words didn’t have the intended effect on me. If anything, she looked even worse than when I’d found her in the midst of that vampire attacking her. Her complexion was pale, and she was sweating more than I thought was necessary, even with all our running.
Whatever Simon had done to her had taken a toll. Her wrists and ankles had telltale wolfsbane burns. She’d been druggedandpoisoned. Even with her shifter healing, it was a testament to her strength and training that she was even walking, much less running through this place.
The secondary hallway led in the direction I thought, but we’d only managed to get twenty feet down it when Simon lunged from a doorway, blocking our path. Kira and I, in the lead, skidded to a stop, the others almost running over us.
Simon didn’t bother speaking. No quick jokes, no monologue about how we’d ruined his plans. Instead, he swept a hand through the air. Magic pulsed out of him, cascading toward our entire group, except he wasn’t aiming at all of us. Only Kira.
She screamed, not in pain but surprise as she shifted into her wolf form. It didn’t take long for me to realize she hadn’t done it on purpose—Simon had somehow forced the shift. Kira thrashed her head around, eyes wide and panicked, hackles raised in terror along her back.
“Now we see her true nature,” Simon said with a twisted grin.
I shifted and moved between Kira and Simon, growling at him, daring him to try to touch her.
He smiled even wider, no fear in his eyes. “Ah, yes. You could be a nice addition to my prized collection, Mr. Rivers.”
Down the hall behind Simon, Crew and Gavin appeared, both covered in blood. Crew saw us and waved a hand. “Move! Come on.”
Knowing we didn’t have more than a few seconds, I lunged at Simon, slamming my paws into his chest and pressing him to the wall. The others, even Kira in her distraught state, took the opening I’d made and rushed past us.
Simon hadn’t even flinched as I attacked. He reached down, took hold of my front paws, and leaned in close. “Pathetic.”
Fast as lighting, he shoved a foot into my stomach and pushed me away. His strength shocked the hell out of me. A faecouldn’tbe that strong. No way. As I tumbled to a heap, the thundering sound of boots running from the opposite end of the hall echoed forth. Reinforcements for Simon.
Flipping over and regaining my stance, I bared my teeth at Simon. If I wasn’t going to make it out of here, I’d take this asshole with me.
When Simon shifted into a wolf, I could do nothing but gape at him. My canine jaw hung open in horror. I’d scented a shifter, but had assumed it was from all the others. Simon was a shifter? But he was a fae. What the hell was going on?
