My heart slammed into my throat. Someone had sounded the alarm.
CHAPTERTHIRTY-TWO
“Help the prisoners!”
Just as I gave the instruction, at least half of our rescue party burst into the hallway, their chests heaving.
Dasha, now in her human form, stiffened as she sniffed the air, and then barreled toward me, her gold eyes wide.
“Guards?” I asked.
She nodded. “Lots, from what I can hear and smell. They’re coming from the top. I think some people are fighting them in the stairwell, but I smell gunpowder, so the guards came armed.”
I gulped down a lump rising in my throat. “Hopefully our friends can keep them at bay long enough for us to get the prisoners out. Then we can help as we fight our way up.”
“Here, wolf, take this shifter.” Francis stormed over and handed an inmate to Dasha.
She took the man’s weight and offered her other arm. “I’m strong enough for two.”
Her mates did the same, and I left the others to sort out who would carry who.
I continued blasting down doors, glancing over every few seconds to find that the vampires had followed the shifters’ lead, taking a prisoner under each arm. Since they were less physically inclined, the fae supported one inmate each.
My heart hammering with each step, I hurried to open the last five doors on my side. Two more held prisoners, shaking and sobbing in the back of their cell. The last three held corpses.
Tears pricked my eyes as I stared down at the last woman. She was young, no more than four years my senior, and probably still an emissary spy, if she’d followed the usual climb up the PIA ladder. And here she was, dead. All because she was working to make the world better.
Although intellectually I understood that there was no point in saving her, I couldn’t help myself. She was small, smaller than Eva even, so I bent over and picked up her thin body. In death, she weighed nothing.
When Francis noticed that the prisoner I carried was dead, he shook his head. “You can’t. We have to fight our way up the stairs, and we need your hands free. Not to mention, once we get outside, you’ll need to run on your own. The wolves are already carrying two people each.”
“I left two,” I said, my voice wobbly. “But Ican’tleave her. She deserves more. A burial—or whatever her kind prefers.”
Distantly, because I was very distracted, I heard Tabitha moan in my head. She clearly didn’t approve of my decision either.
But I didn’t care. I wasn’t sure what sort of magical this girl had been, but it didn’t matter. I wasn’t leaving her. She deserved a death ceremony.
The person on Francis’ back whimpered, and the other in his arms let out a moan. Francis shifted his gaze from me to the people he carried.
“You,” he said to the one in his arms. “We want to take this girl’s body back. Normally I wouldn’t ask this, but—”
The man gave the smallest nod. “Bring her,” he croaked, likely seconds from death himself. “I’ll hold on if I can.”
Francis took the corpse out of my arms and crushed her up against the man just as the sound of gunshots ripped through the air.
“We have to go!” Diana yelled. “Eva and Odette, up front.”
I scrambled to the door. Eva arrived at the same moment I did, and we paused only long enough to give each other a nod before pulling the heavy door open.
Two bear shifters, one grizzly, one polar, were in the stairwell. With dinner-plate sized paws and claws at least five-inches long, they lashed out at armored guards trying to charge down the steps. Behind them, Lyon and Grahn shot aether at the soldiers.
The fae parted when they noticed me, but the bears didn’t budge.
“We have to move!” I screamed loud enough to get the bears’ attention.
One shot a look back at me and released a roar. The other’s paws swiped faster, more viciously, and the guards scrambled back.
“Make space!” Eva yelled, and the bears squished their massive bodies to the side.
