My eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and I could see that both men were strung up against the walls, arms and legs akimbo. They hung from their arms, and I could spot dark liquid seeping from their wrists. All of their significant weight dragged against the cuffs around their wrists, making them bleed from the wrists and the injuries from the car wreck. Hanlon was bleeding far more than Maktel. Ogres were hardy, but blood loss would bring them down, like anyone else. They healed far morequickly than humans, but nowhere near as fast as shifters or vampyrs.
Having the men with me gave me a focus that stopped me from tunnelling into fear and despair at the echoes of the worst experience of my life.
I had to free them. That’s all there was to it. The goal steadied me, calmed me. I was an officer of the law, and this was a crime. I was Judge, Jury and Executioner, and my justice in this kidnapping case would be swift. They had kidnapped the wrong woman, even if they didn’t know it yet.
Moonlight lit the area by the ogres, so I shuffled on my bum closer to them so I could inspect my cuffs in the meagre light. All standard handcuffs had a double-lock mechanism, and magic-cancelling cuffs were no exception. I looked at the side of the cuffs to see if the double-lock mechanism had been deployed. If I could have, I would have given a fist pump when I spotted that the double-lock pin had not been depressed. The idiots hadn’t cuffed me properly. They’d slapped them on and counted it as a job well done. Amateurs.
Now I just needed to worry about the first lock, and that was child’s play. I just needed something with a hook. I cursed myself for not pinning my hair up, as I’d contemplated doing. A bobby pin would have been freaking perfect.
I cast around in the dark for anything useful, and as I moved, I felt something digging into my chest. I looked down but couldn’t see what was bothering me. I lifted my t-shirt at the neck and grinned as I spotted the problem. My sunglasses. They’d been hooked down the front of my t-shirt. During the car wreck or the extraction from the same, my sunglasses had been shattered, but the arm down my top had somehow remained there. Now I had the metal arm to work with – perfect for picking the lock.
I carefully extracted the remains of my sunglasses without flashing my tits at Maktel and Hanlon, then pushed the thinmetal arm into the keyhole. Now I needed a bend to rake the lock, so I carefully pushed the arm to one side, creating a small hook. I pulled it out, checked that I was happy with it and, as I was, pried it back into the centre of the handcuff, moving it downward to grab and disengage the single-lock bar. After a few tries, I heard the click as it released, and I could have cried. I didn’t because I was playing it cool in front of Maktel and Hanlon, but if I’d been alone, chances were, I would have bawled.
I dropped the handcuffs to the floor and closed my eyes, revelling as my magic swam back into me with welcome warmth. No, this time I wasn’t a helpless teenager. Far from it.
And there! I could feel Loki! He was in pain, but he was alive. I reached out along the bond to talk to him, but either the distance between us was too great or his pain was, because I couldn’t quite reach him. Maybe the bond was too new.
I addedresearch caladrius bondsto my mental list. Either way, Loki was alive, and he was okay. He felt distant, so I was confident he was somewhere else, somewhere far away. My captors might not have spotted him in the wreck, or maybe they just hadn’t cared. Either way, I had to get out of here and find my bird. Stat. He needed medical attention.
I blew out a breath. Loki was alive. Everything else I could deal with. Relief flooded me and I opened my eyes. I wasn’t done, not yet.
My fingers plucked and pulled at the rough knot around my feet. The fucking idiots had done an appalling job, assuming the cuffs would do the heavy lifting, and it didn’t take me long to loosen and undo the rope around my legs.
I lifted the boot leg of my jeans and grinned. The lazy pricks hadn’t searched me, and I still had my two knives concealed under my jeans. God bless incompetent criminals.
‘So unprofessional,’ Hanlon sniffed in disapproval.
‘Let’s not complain,’ Maktel said mildly. ‘At least she has a chance of getting out of here alive.’
I snorted. ‘More than a chance. I have my weapons and my magic. I’m going to crush them. And I’m not leaving without you two, either.’
‘The chains are seer-imbued,’ Hanlon said, voice flat. ‘You need a key. Even your magic can’t get us out of them.’
The iron chains shackling the ogres were made specifically to hold their kind, and the image of Robbie in those chains made me so furious that I couldn’t breathe.
‘I’m well aware,’ I managed. I welcomed the anger, drawing it into me like an old friend. Better anger than fear.
Since my kidnappers were so shit, I thought to check my pockets for my phone, but sadly they’d found and confiscated it. No way to call for help.
A noise came from the other side of the door, and I pulled both knives from my ankle holsters and caught them with my air magic, hovering them in the air. The second the door opened, my blades would shoot straight at my captor.
Light from the corridor flooded the room, temporarily blinding me. Luckily, I didn’t need my sight to kill him. I used the IR to send one blade into my captor’s heart and the other sharply into his throat.
I couldn’t confess to any surprise when my vision cleared and I came face to face with a startled Bruce Hunter.
Since I could literally use the IR to direct the blades precisely where I wanted, there had been no chance of me missing my target, and I didn’t. Hunter’s eyes widened. He let out a gurgle, and then he toppled to the floor. Dead.
I didn’t even try to fight the satisfaction that rose up in me at the sight. I stalked over and dragged his body further into the room with us. Then I closed the door to reduce the chance of anyone else hearing us. Without light flooding in from thecorridor, the room was annoyingly dim, so I searched his body primarily by touch alone, coating my hands in his blood.
‘No key,’ I reported grimly to the ogres. No phone either.
‘That means he wasn’t working alone,’ Maktel said. ‘Get yourself out of here, and call for help.’
I looked at him, and even in the modest light I could see he fully expected to be dead by the time I returned.
‘Nah,’ I said with a casual shrug. ‘I think I’ll go looking for that key. You two stay here,’ I said, humour sneaking in as it had to in stressful moments.
‘She thinks she’s funny,’ Maktel groused.
