Thanks. Keep an eye on him, RS.
On it!
“Slate's okay but unconscious,” I said to Odin. “It looks like Vivian's drugging them.”
“It would have to be a pretty damn powerful drug to take down a Lóng and a Gargoyle,” Odin mused.
“There are such drugs, believe me.” I grimaced.
“Oh, yes.” Odin cleared his throat. “Of course. Well, at least we know she hasn't hurt them.”
“Yet,” Cerberus added cryptically.
Someone smacked him.
“Dude, as if that hurts me.” Cer snorted.
“Distress my wife again and next time, I will make sure it hurts very much,” Declan warned.
Cerberus shut up.
“This floor is clear,” Odin headed for yet another flight of stairs.
This stairwell was narrow and lined with bare wood walls. Cerberus and Gage had to angle sideways or scrape their shoulders to get up it. At the top, we stepped into a single room, not a corridor—the attic. My boots thudded strangely on the floor. Odin fumbled for a light switch and a few seconds later, overhead fluorescents buzzed on behind protective cages. The rectangular space stretched ahead of us in an empty expanse of bolted metal plates. Ceiling, walls, and floor were all lined with the same thick metal. They weren't placed evenly either but had a hodgepodge look with some odd crevices between them. At the end of the room, behind a length of bars, were Verin and Slate, both sprawled in unconscious heaps.
“Slate,” I whispered and headed across the room. “Verin.”
Odin snatched my arm and dragged me back, “Everyone get out now!”
We backpedaled into each other in our shock and haste but before we could reach the door, another metal plate slammed down over it. Cerberus beat against the metal and a blue shimmer rippled over it—a ward.
“Fuck me,” Odin murmured as he swung around, his gaze going everywhere at once. “Prepare yourselves for a lot of sharp things coming from all directions.”
“What the fuck is this, Odin?” Cerberus looked around, more curious than concerned.
“It's a fucking slaughter room!” Odin hissed. “The bitch is trying to kill us all!”
As Odin shouted, a massive blade swept out of a wall and came straight for his head. Declan swept out a hand as Odin ducked and a shield appeared to block the weapon. The blade sliced right through Declan's manifestation, then retracted back where it came from.
“Everything's warded,” Odin jumped to his feet and into a crouch, his arms out to his sides. “The best you can do is get out of the way.”
“And then what?” I asked as a spear shot down from the ceiling, just missing my shoulder.
I jerked away, my hand automatically lifting to shoot a flame at the hole the spear disappeared into. But, of course, it did nothing to the warded metal. The only damage done was to me; using Fire on its own, especially when I was in such a wild emotional state, destabilized it. I had to spend precious seconds calming myself and reining in my magic. To my left, Cerberus yipped as a circular blade sliced his bicep. He launched himself furiously at the wall the blade had disappeared into and started clawing at it like a wild thing. All to no effect.
“We need to get to the other side.” Odin waved across the room. “You see that switch right next to the cell? That's the shut-off switch.”
“There's a shut-off switch in a slaughter room?” Cerberus asked in bafflement. “What the fuck is the point of that?”
“It's an incentive to make you run the gauntlet,” Odin snarled and nodded toward the space before us, where weapons intermittently shot out of the walls, ceiling, and floor.
“Lovely.” I rolled my eyes.
“This is probably why she grabbed Slate,” Banning grumbled. “He could just shift into Gargoyle and deflect everything.”
“Not these weapons,” Odin argued.
But Banning had given me an idea. Maybe Gargoyle skin wouldn't be tough enough to deflect the blades but what about something more magical?Something even harder than stone.
