Chapter 29
Flynn heard Kira gasp. He pressed close to her, his hand clamping over her mouth. “We knew he was making hellhounds,” he murmured.
Kira tore his hand away, clearly furious with him. She hissed, “We didn’t know he was making a goddamned army. God, Flynn! He used my sister for this. My blood! He’s turning the House of Al-Maddeiri into an army of monsters. If he brought them to Earth—to any world…”
It would take the military to fight them off. Missiles and mortar fire.
Or dragons…
Unless all the dragons were dead. Oh, fuck. The poison.
That’s why he was making the poison.
“We have to destroy them,” Kira said.
He could feel the need in her—to stop her blood being used for something so foul and evil. He could also feel the desire in him to make all her wishes come true. Even if they were wishes of blood and fire and death.
But his job was to protect her, and rescue her family. He had to keep his emotions under control.
“We didn’t bring enough explosives,” Flynn said. He wished to god they had. “Right now, we have to stick to the mission. Get your sister and brother out. Without them, he can’t make more. Then we can let the Shifter Council and the draken clean up this fucking hellhole.”
And if they didn’t, he’d come back and blow the place up himself.
“The Council doesn’t have jurisdiction here,” Caitlyn said, crouching next to them.
Flynn said, “This is a bubble between worlds. No one fucking has any jurisdiction, and no laws cover it. Which has worked to Ragnor’s advantage all these years, and is about to come back and bite him in the ass. The Council needs to know about the threat to our world. And then the draken can burn this place to ash, no questions asked.”
Flynn gazed down at the rows and rows of hellhounds, feeling the rage building inside him. Those creatures had been made from shifters: wolves and bears and big cats.
Shifters like his crew. Like him. Twisted and perverted, their souls stolen before they were born. Generations turned into evil, soulless killing machines.
This fucker made Alexander Grant look like an amateur. And Flynn was going to kill him personally.
He gave Sloan and Caitlyn most of the C-4, and instructions on what to do with it. “Set the charges, signal when ready. If you run into problems, give the emergency signal,” he told them. “If anything goes wrong on our end, head back home. You know who to contact. Ashley, Harrison, and the Silverlake pack. They’ll come in and shut this place down.”
Sloan said fiercely, “We’re not leaving without you.”
Flynn didn’t argue. When the fuck did anybody in his damned crew do what he said? “Then we better make sure nothing goes wrong.”
Sloan and Caitlyn took off, and Flynn and Kira headed around the balcony to the dusty niche that had once been the Minstrels’ Gallery. Where musicians played for parties and grand balls.
They were silent in the shadows, Flynn keeping his ears pricked for any sound besides the low beeping of electronics and soft hisses and gurgles from the feeds attached to Mayah, as that evil bastard Ragnor took her blood to feed his sick dreams of glory.
But there was nothing. The wizard must be asleep somewhere else. He had to sleep, didn’t he? Flynn just hoped there were no magical wards in the lab, to alert Ragnor if someone came inside.
As they reached the bottom of the staircase, Kira scanned the room for wards with her dragon vision, and shook her head.
“Nothing warded but the cage, as far as I can see.”
Flynn either. Whether it was the bracelets or his bond with Kira, he could see the shield around the cage as well. And the faint sheen of magic surrounding the clear tubes leading from Mayah to the collection tank.
Were the tubes shielded by magic? Or was he seeing the magic in her blood?
They stepped onto the stone floor and froze, poised for an alarm to go off. When none did, they ran silently across to where Mayah was sitting.
Flynn checked her neck for a pulse. It was faint, but there. Kira started unhooking the tubes and wires, working carefully so as not to hurt her even more.
Behind him, Flynn heard the dragon stirring. He turned and saw one of its huge eyes open, glaring at him with rage and hatred.
Fucking awesome. They were going to rescue an enraged, insane dragon and set him free. Maybe that muzzle wasn’t such a bad thing after all.
While Kira worked on her sister, Flynn began searching the lab area. There were a few paper notes and files, all of them with recent dates, none of them conveniently labeled “My Evil Plan in Excruciating Detail.” And a quick look at the main computer capacity showed that downloading the hard drive would take too long.
He planted some C-4 and a detonator on it instead.
He checked his watch. Sloan and Caitlyn would only be a quarter of the way through their mission.
He went back to Mayah, unbuckling the restraints holding her to the chair. She was starting to regain consciousness, moaning softly. Flynn could barely stand to look at the stitches holding her mouth shut.
He’d seen enough cruelty in his life to turn him against humans and shifters both, forever. But there was something about sewing someone’s fucking mouth shut that made his stomach roil.
He found a pair of small surgical scissors and cut through the stitches. There wasn’t time to remove them, but at least she could open her mouth.
He wondered how this asshole had been keeping her alive, if she couldn’t eat. Intravenous, maybe? Or magic?
When Mayah was free, Flynn scooped her up and carried her over by the dragon cage, setting her down gently in a sitting position, her back against he wall. The dragon hissed.
Kira stood by the cage, hand extended. “Emon?” she said softly. “Emon, it’s Kira. We’re going to get you out of here. Can you Change?”
The dragon moved his head back and forth like a snake about to strike. He hissed again, and a growl rumbled in his throat.
He didn’t trust them. Or he didn’t understand. Flynn murmured to her, “Plan B.”
He was starting to get that crawling feeling between his shoulder blades. Like when something was sneaking up on him, and he didn’t know what.
Or when a mission was about to go sideways.
He scanned the room again. All quiet—no obvious alarms going off. No one lurking in the shadows.
They still had ten minutes before Sloan and Caitlyn would have the explosives set.
He said to Kira, “There’s a door at the back of the room—probably used to be a private salon or a card room. I’m thinking he might keep his files in there. Stay here with your sister.”
Kira looked up at him, her hand resting on Mayah’s arm. “It would go faster with two of us.”
It would, but he couldn’t ask her to leave them. “Try to talk to Emon,” he said. “See if you can get through to him.”
She nodded.
Flynn headed for the door at the back of the room. His shoulder blades were still prickling. They needed to fucking get through this and get out.
He touched his lapel mic. “Sloan, report.”
“Right on schedule,” he said. “Eight minutes.”
Too damn long.
He was right about the small salon, though. It had been converted into an office, with filing cabinets and a shiny new laptop—with a Gen-X logo on it.
They must have provided the generators, too, to run the electricity. How fucking generous of them. He didn’t turn the lights on—just used his small flashlight, easily extinguished if someone came looking.
Not that Mayah being out of her chair wouldn’t be a dead giveaway that someone was here.
Flynn checked for other exits. The place was lined with bookshelves and filing cabinets on one wall, tapestries on another. Behind one of those was a wooden door. Flynn cracked it open, then opened it wider when he only saw darkness beyond.
A staircase, going down. It gave a sharp turn to the left a few steps below him, and then descended into darkness.
No telling where it went. But it was a back door out, at least.
Flynn unhooked the laptop and stuffed it into his pack, then started going through the filing cabinets. He had to pick and choose which paper files he took—he couldn’t carry much without weighing himself down. But they needed to know what Ragnor been doing—and what Gen-X might be doing at other locations.
Flynn checked his watch once more. Three minutes.
At that moment, he heard the big doors at the front of the lab open. He switched his flashlight off, cursing mentally.
Then he heard a howl. Fucking hellhounds.
He burst out of the office and saw three hellhounds in their leather armor, eyes glowing, spread out in front of the big doors. They were all focused on Kira and Mayah.
Magic crackled around Kira’s hands, looking jagged and out of control. Flynn grabbed a grenade from his vest, but before he could pull the pin and lob it toward the hellhounds, he heard a noise behind him.
He leaped to the side, turning in the air. Ragnor burst out of the office, his face a mask of fury. Fucker must have come up the secret staircase.
Flynn landed, ready to lunge at him, but the sorcerer made a throwing motion with his right hand. Black lightning flashed, and Flynn was knocked halfway across the room, crashing into a metal table. The grenade skittered off across the floor, the pin still in it.
Flynn tried to scramble to his feet. He could see Kira blocking Mayah, trying to muster her magic. He knew he needed to get to her, but everything was happening in slow motion. His arms and legs wouldn’t work right; it was like all the bones had been taken out and replaced by ice water, cold and floppy.
He looked down and saw a dozen black darts lodged in him. Some had been stopped by his combat vest, but some had hit his chest, and he could feel others in his neck.
Icy cold oozed from them, spreading through his body. Ice, and pain.
The wizard advanced on Kira, the hellhounds blocking her from the other side. She aimed her magic at Ragnor, the blue fire flashing out of her hands, but he batted it away, laughing.
Then Flynn saw strands of shiny black appear, coiled in his hands, like ropes made out of serpents. He threw them like lassos, one after the other, and they looped around Kira’s neck.
She screamed, and the fire in her hands went out.
Flynn roared, scrabbling at the stone, trying to make his body obey. He had to get to Kira. Had to…had to save her… A vision flashed through his mind—her sitting in the chair, beautiful lips sewn shut, screaming and screaming with no one to hear her…
His radio came on, Sloan’s voice saying quietly, “We’re set. We—” His voice cut off.
Using all of his strength and willpower, Flynn moved his hand to his radio. He tapped the call button with his fingers: two short, two long, two short.
The signal for, Get out now. We’re completely fucked.