My mind snapped back into my own head just as his body juddered and the light left his eyes. Fuck, that had been too close. Way too close.
When I was certain he was dead, I peeled my hands off his neck, and he collapsed bonelessly to the floor.
The silence that followed was obscene. My breathing filled it, ragged and too loud.
When I bent to search him, I spotted the military-green rucksack wedged beneath the table. I grabbed it and hauled it forward. Relief struck me when I found the key in the third pocket I searched.
I stood, wiping clammy hands on my jeans, and looked at the two corpses: Beeks with his knife-torn throat; and Kerr, eyes glassy and mouth frozen in mid-curse.
I battled with it – my conscience, my job, my role in their deaths. They were bigots who had stirred up hatred and racism, who had believed all creatures deserved death. They had killed a member of the Symposium, a father and a husband, all to stir a bit of bad public feeling towards the ogres.
I pushed the guilt down, put it to rest. Neither man had been good. The world was no worse without them. In fact, the world was a better place now that they’d been ripped from it, even if at the cost of my soul.
That was the job.
Park it.
The flames from Beeks’s fire licked at the walls, with the leftover office boxes ablaze. I could put it out, but the fire was growing, and it would take time – time I didn’t have if I was going to save the men hanging by their wrists in the basement.
I walked past Beeks but nudged his body as I went by. Damned head injury was making me woozy. I pulled myself back up and froze. I’d knocked Beeks’s shirt a little as I’d fallen into him, and there, on the exposed skin of Beeks’s shoulder, was the same symbol that had been on the pendant in my dad’s hand.
The Domini.
Bloody hell. Beeks was one of theirs. What did that mean? I couldn’t think. My head was pounding and I felt dizzy and sick. The start of a concussion thanks to Kerr. Or perhaps the end of it too thanks to the car wreck.
I knelt and searched Beeks’s body again, turning off the phone I found and pocketing it.
My heart was pounding as hard as my head. Beeks hadn’t been the planner, had never been. He’d answered to a higher power. I licked my lips and shook my head in disbelief, which was a mistake because my head and neck fuckinghurt.
I grasped the key in my hands and hastily headed back downstairs to where two bleeding ogres awaited my triumphant return. Above us, the fire grew.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Hanlon and Maktel were waiting, pale but alive. The surprise on Maktel’s face when I walked in irritated me. Had he thought I was going to ditch them despite my promise?
‘Took your time,’ Hanlon said gruffly, which, given the blood on his chest, was heroic cheek.
Maktel looked at the keys in my hands and the blood on them, then at my face, reading more than I liked. He said nothing.
‘Let’s get you two down,’ I said briskly, business as usual.
The ring held half a dozen keys, each etched with various runes. I found the one that hummed when it kissed the chain’s lock and turned it. The wards unwove and the lock clicked open. Maktel dropped to his feet in a controlled fall, landing with a grunt of pain.
We went through the same dance with Hanlon. He staggered as he fell, and I reached out to catch him, trying to hide theslice of pain from my protesting ribs. Hanlon tried to pretend he hadn’t nearly face-planted, stepping away from my steadying hand. I pretended not to notice.
‘Our captors?’ Maktel asked, voice neutral.
‘They’re done,’ I said evenly. ‘All of them.’
They both gave me one of those long looks, no judgement on either of their features.
We moved upwards and outwards.
The smell of smoke thickened in the corridor. Tired and in pain, I gathered my intention and hissed a small ‘draught’ that coaxed the flames back into the side room, pulling air away from them and starving them through the crack under the door. It wouldn’t hold the fire for long, only long enough for us to get out, and that’s all I cared about.
Coughing on the smoke, we reached the exit without encountering anyone else. Angie had known about the plans, had been in on the discussion, but of the five of them, she was the only survivor. The only one who hadn’t got her hands dirty in some way or another.
Outside, the night air slapped me sharply. I needed it as the smoke and pain were making my thoughts thick and slow like molasses.
