20
You FUCKER, Iris thought.
As soon as Keith said that Blake had run away, Iris knew exactly where he had gone: down to the basement, to activate the security system. Any normal person would have gone straight out the back door, but Blake wasn’t normal. He had tried to kill her for the deadly sins of eating ice cream and watching trashy movies.
He would never run out of the house. If he did that, people would know there was a scandal.
Blake was going to hide everything until the last minute, no matter what it cost.
He’d already sacrificed Iris once. Now he was ready to do it again, and this time he was going to drag Keith into it. Well, she wasn’t going to let him. She was going to break them out of this cold, joyless prison of a house, and she was going to take the truth with her.
Her instincts kept telling her to turn human again so she could have an actual conversation with Keith, but if she did that, she’d pass out.
They couldn’t make a plan. They would just have to hope they were on the same page.
Okay, so the house was locked up tight as a drum until Blake unlocked it. Iris didn’t know the security code. But from what she could remember, there was no secret exit, so Blake wasn’t getting out of here either. He wanted them to all stay bottled up in here until he could kill them.
Well, at least that meant this wouldn’t turn into a long, drawn-out game of hide and seek. Now that he’d triggered the security lock-up, Blake probably wanted this confrontation just as much as they did.
Iris needed to signal to Keith, to tell him where Blake was. She whinnied softly until he looked at her and then pointedly tapped one hoof against the ground:He’s down there.
Keith nodded. He lowered his head, positioning his horn the way a knight would’ve positioned a lance. He was ready to fight.
Iris rubbed her head against his neck—her unicorn appreciated the warm, horsey smell of unicorn Keith as much as Iris had appreciated the scent ofhumanKeith—and then kept heading for the basement.
Unfortunately, it was impossible for a horse to walk quietly on marble floors. Let alonetwohorses. Their hoofbeats were so loud and echoey that they were almost deafening.
There was no way they could sneak up on Blake, but there were a lot of ways he could sneak up on them.Hecould still get around in his human form. Keith had wounded him, but he wasn’t completely down for the count.
Blake was smart enough to see his advantage, and he used it.
If Iris hadn’t been turning the corner right as Blake barreled up the stairs, he could have shot them both before they even knew he was there.
But shedidturn the corner, so she saw the flash of the gun in his hand right as he was raising it.
Iris acted on instinct, shoving Keith out of the way. The bullet flew by, and there was a sudden, blinding pain in her ear. Blake had clipped her.
I’ve had enough of you leaving me with scars.
She felt Keith’s sides heave against hers, and then he was pushing her back, trying to protect her. He charged right at Blake, who went the color of old cheese when Keith deflected a bullet with his horn:zing!
Blake broke and ran for cover. They had speed on their side, but he could round corners more tightly than they could, and he knew the house like the back of his hand.
Still, they were going to catch him. She could feel it. He couldn’t outrun two horses for long, and if he shifted, he’d be giving up his gun. Then it would just be unicorn-on-unicorn and two-against-one, and there was no way he’d win that fight.
He wasn’t going to get another opportunity like the one he’d had coming back from the basement. This was over for him. Why couldn’t he realize that?
He took off upstairs, which Iris resentfully acknowledged was a good move. She could climb those stairs even in her shift form, but her unicorn wasn’t used to it, and Iris could tell it was skittish. It balked a little as Iris placed one hoof on a step.
These are narrow and slick, it said nervously.
I know. But we have to get him. Otherwise Keith will go up without us, and he might get hurt.
Her unicorn hated that prospect too, so it stopped distracting her as she carefully put one foot in front of the other and climbed the very-non-unicorn-friendly staircase. Beside her, Keith did the same, and the sweat on his face and near his mane told her that his unicorn wasn’t thrilled about this either.
Blake had gone around the corner, out of sight. Would he come out firing again?
