“Let me at her!” bawls Slaughter. “I’ll make her scream, make her weep. She’s mine when we get in there—mine.”
The madness in his eyes and the rage distorting his face send chills over my skin. All my glee over my success fades as I realize that I have at least seventeen hours left to go. So much could happen in that time—including them breaking in and torturing me to death. Ravager said they would kill me quickly if I got in their way, but that was before I started hurting them.
These are lawless men, and I’m stoking their rage to heights it wouldn’t have reached if I’d just stepped aside and let them take what they want.
It’s too late now. This has gone too far. It’s an all-out war.
“I thinkIshould get to kill her,” says Grisly. “Look what she did to my face.” He points to the blood dripping from over a dozen wounds in his cheeks and chin. One of them is perilously close to his eye. His clothing is torn in countless places, each hole bloodstained.
“Your face already needed improvement, Griz,” says Ravager. “You’re lucky none of them hit the wrong spot on your throat. Let’s just get inside and then we’ll see who belongs to whom.”
Slaughter is still seething, but he quiets as Ravager approaches the lock again.
With one foot on the doorstep, Ravager eyes me. “You done, love? Any more boiling water you’d like to pour?”
I shake my head innocently. “I’m all out.”
He believes me, the trusting fool. Again he crouches by the lock, but before he can insert his tools, I drop a heavy tankard from the window right onto his head.
“Fuck!” He falls sideways. “Bitch!”
“Dumbass,” I retort. And then I have to duck aside, because Grisly unslings a crossbow from his back and sets a bolt in place. He yells in pain while he’s pulling the drawstring. His hands must have been damaged too, despite his gloves. Fae-Hunter traps pack a nasty punch.
“Try anything else, whore, and you’ll get a bolt through the eye!” Grisly shouts.
“Needle, you’ll have to pick the lock,” says Ravager. “I’m seeing double.”
“Right, boss!”
Needle has escaped injury so far, but that’s about to change. I pick up the sphere and dash to the central stairs, hurrying down them so I can witness what’s going to happen.
Earlier, I pulled a thick metal wire out of a contraption I found on the third floor. I have no idea what the device I took it from was designed to do, or why it wasn’t shielded, but I needed that component, so I took a chance.
The wire now extends from the inner workings of the front-door lock to the trigger mechanism of a live lightning trap we obtained from the Fae-Hunters. When Needle pokes his metaltools into the lock, he makes contact with the wire, tweaking it just enough to set off the trap.
I reach the main hallway of the first floor just in time to see lightning shoot from the trap, along the wire,and through the lock. There’s a strange keening noise, a sizzling sound, and a wet rattle—then silence.
My heart is beating so fast I can barely breathe.
Suddenly I’m reluctant to look into the sphere and see what happened. Instead I cautiously approach the lightning trap. It’s still active, still connected to the lock by a crooked bolt of live lightning that jerks and sparks, much like a white-hot snake that’s being held in place by its head and tail.
When Ravager speaks, I hear him through the sphere and through the door. “Needle… oh fuck.”
My mouth feels dry as sand. I swallow hard and force myself to gaze into the sphere I’m holding.
The eyes of Annordun show me what I already knew I would see. Needle’s body lies on the doorstep, inert, blackened, and smoking.
He’s dead. I killed him.
Some callous part of my brain whispers,One down, three to go.
“This fucking bitch,” wheezes Slaughter. “We’ve got to get in there.”
“Obviously we can’t go through the front door,” says Ravager calmly. “It’s not safe to pick the lock. And whichever point of entry we choose, she’ll know. She can see and hear us anytime she likes, isn’t that right, love?”
I don’t respond.
“We can blast in,” suggests Slaughter. “Blow a hole through the front of the place.”
