“I’m so dead,” I half-moaned. “She figured it out.”
And most likely used a combination of her dragon and human forms to escape. Had my life not been on the line, I’d have admired her smarts.
I stalked back to the cage’s front, and stared down at the bags, the spilled drinks. The scent of warm fried chicken drifted up to tease my nostrils, but my hunger had long since taken a hike.I have to get out of here. He’ll blame me no matter what. He’ll think I helped her.
As I fully intended to let her out, my dear old dad wouldn’t be far from the mark.
Heavy tread descended the stairs.
“Oh, shit.”
I gulped, looking around wildly for a place to hide. In the wide space, under the bright lights, therewasno place to hide. I stood as exposed as a lone tree on a barren hilltop. Nor did I have any doubt at all who that tread belonged to.
Arnaud.
He stepped onto the cement, his expression open, curious, no doubt wondering what I was doing there. He glanced down at the bags on the floor even as he strode decisively toward me.“What’s up, Magnus? I’m here to tell Jade I got a message from her old man telling me to go fuck myself.”
“Dad.”
Arnaud stepped around me.
As I had done, he stared at the impossible. The empty cage. No Jade sitting inside it, waiting to be told her old man was an asshole. Waiting to be tortured so her screams could be recorded. Yet, he didn’t walk around as I had, wondering.
He looked straight up immediately.
He then looked at me.
“Mother fucker,” he murmured. “You helped her escape.”
“No, no, I didn’t, I swear. I brought her dinner, I just got here, I found the place empty –”
His flattened hand caught me hard across my face. The blow snapped my head around, my neck joints popped painfully. Dazed, I rubbed my stinging cheek, gazing into his dead eyes. Flat. Emotionless. Inhuman. The eyes of a killer without a soul.
“Dad,” I began. “I didn’t –”
“You betrayed me,” he said, his voice as flat and inflectionless as his gaze. “I don’t tolerate traitors.”
The words barely left his mouth before I acted. A dirty thing to do, I know, but my father planned to kill me right then and there. I’d little choice if I wanted to survive the next minute.
He still spoke when I kicked him hard in his precious jewels.
Urking, doubled over, his face turning a deathly shade of gray, he gave me my prime opportunity.
I chopped the side of my hand into his neck, just below his ear, and stepped back as he fell.
Panting, I watched him writhe on the cement, thinking I should kill him. I knew I should. He’d planned to kill me. He’d never stop before Jade and I laid skinned at his feet. Murdering him now, in cold blood, would keep us both alive for a long time.
I couldn’t.
I came from his blood, but mine didn’t run icy as his did.
Instead, I spun and ran for the stairs.
“Bastard,” Arnaud croaked just as I reached them.
He acted when I refused to.
The bullet splintered the wood railing to my right, the gunshot echoing around the basement.Shit!I lunged further up as a second bullet nearly took my head off and sank deep into the door the moment I charged through it.
