“Say what now?” I ask because that is absolutely not what I thought was going to come out of his mouth after finding out that someone that he obviously deeply cares about is alive.
He smirks, but becomes serious again, moving from foot to foot in agitation, before he can explain anything, Ransom and River approach.
“Is everything okay?” River asks with his eyes watching the shifting supernatural closely, and assessing his threat level.
I nod, “This is Trip. He thought Rana was dead and was a little confused when I mentioned her name. We’re all good now.”
“Awesome,” River grins and holds out his hands. “Nice to meet you, man.”
Trip takes his hand but says, “Did you guys break the seal?”
Ransom tenses, the words obviously mean something to him that it doesn’t mean to me. “What seal?”
“Shit, follow me and I’ll explain on the way. I’m surprised that the building is still here,” he replies as he starts to jog down the hallway, and we all follow him. His smile is slightly unhinged as we pass the still-burning and screaming guards. He glances back at me, “I feel like that was your work.”
I shrug, “It might’ve been.”
“I can see why Rana likes you,” he grins.
“Er, Neith, you should probably put them out so the other agents can clear the building,” River suggests.
I click my fingers, and the screaming bodies collapse on themselves, turning into dust, as my fire rushes back to me, twining around my arms and playing before it dissipates completely.
“That’s new,” Ransom says quietly as we continue to follow Trip down the hallway.
My gaze meets his, and I mouth the words, “I’ll explain later.”
We carry on following Trip, and he leads us a little bit further down the hallway. He stops in front of one of the paintings, presses something on the frame, and the wall opens up to reveal another door.“Okay, that’s a little bit cool,” River admits, and I grin as we carry on following Trip.
As soon as we’re through the door, Ransom asks, “So why do we have to break the seal?”
“To stop the building from moving again, it’s a failsafe that is built in, in case something like this happens. I’m really surprised that it hasn’t moved already. It should have,” Trip explains quickly.
We round a corner, coming face to face with some guards, and as the guards see him they instantly pale. Before they can do anything, Trip’s claw-tipped fingers strike out, tearing their throats out within a blink of an eye.
“I like you,” Ransom says decisively, like he wasn’t sure before, but this act of violence has convinced him that Trip is, in fact, his kind of person.
Of course it did.
Trip leads us through several different hallways and up more than a few staircases, managing to avoid the area where the main fight is, and we only run into a few guards that are quickly and easily taken down.
When it’s been quiet for a minute or two with no one trying to attack us, I can’t keep my curiosity in anymore. Not that I’ve really managed to keep it in for that long.
I blurt out, “So, why is everyone so fucking terrified of you, including The Owner?”
Trip glances over at me, seeming to assess me before he shrugs, “The Owner has this serum that keeps the kidnapped people under his control, he doesn’t need it for all of us. Some are just too scared to do anything but obey him, but he needed it for me. When he told me that Rana had died, I lost it. I killed several of his top enforcers and nearly killed him. He shot me with a dart full of ten times the normal dose, and the serum didn’t work on me, it still doesn’t. I don’t know why he didn’t just kill me, but he put me in isolation and tried to keep me as weak as possible.”
Torture, that’s what he means.
“I’d say sorry, but that doesn’t change anything, so instead, I’m going to say let’s go and break the seal, and then you can hunt The Owner,” I suggest with a sharp smile.
“Deal,” he replies, darkness shadowing his features as a slight growl muddies his tone. He kicks through a door on the left, and we find ourselves in what appears to be a cleaning closet of some kind. It’s a fucking big one, but I guess you would need a big cleaning closet for a house like this.
Chapter Twenty
Neith
It makes me wonder why they don’t just use magic, but then again, The Owner seems like the kind of fucker who would want to exert his power over those below him by making them do things like cleaning.
