Our eyes lock in the dark for only a millisecond as another boom of thunder shakes the building, the walls rattling almost visibly.
Rumbling echoes from beyond the walls, rushing closer like a wave. A cacophony of crashing, rattling, and breaking. It happens in no more than two seconds, but I see it. I watch as the ceiling above el diablo splits, and it all comes plummeting down.
Survival instinct holds me in the doorway, covering my head with my arms, shuddering with fear, though I force myself not to move. A memory of something I learned as a child flashes…
During an earthquake, you stand in the doorway, because the frame will protect you.
Except this isnotan earthquake.
The fucking sky is falling.
The entire ceiling collapsed, right on top of us.
Oh, shit.
I’m afraid to open my eyes, but I do, and for a moment my heart lurches painfully. Foolishly. I’m not supposed to care if he dies…
Which I don’t. I was going to kill him.
Did a storm and this building really steal my revenge? Are you kidding me right now??
But then I spot the cot, all mangled beneath some rubble. It looks like he flipped it at the last second… To protect himself, and Ren, but only out of happenstance.
I hear him coughing, debris shifting as he moves under it.
Shit… I have to go.
I can’t kill him now. In seconds, this place will be swarming with officers and inmates, injured people and commotion.
Plus, he knows I’m here. The jig is up. Unless he suffers short-term memory loss, The Ivory is well aware of my presence on this island now.
Better make it count.
Stumbling back out into the wreck, I’m dazed, possibly in shock.
But the adrenaline of narrowly avoiding death only surges me forward.
Back to the mansion I go.
All I’ve done all night is run back and forth. It’s ridiculous.
Climbing out of the ruins, I suck in air and cough, wiping dust and dirt from my face with the spray of rain. But I don’t wait for anything else to go wrong. I leave behind the death and destruction, running past the fallen guard tower, through the woods already crawling with voices.
As I reach the mansion, a pop draws my attention to the sky.
Fireworks.
Biting my lip, I watch the colors fizzle, as if it’s a celebration, not a state of emergency.
Alabaster Penitentiary has fallen! Its reign of terror is no more!
But as we know, toppled tyranny is only the beginning.
The walls of purgatory are down… and all hell is about to break loose.
“Is that any way to treat your favorite client?”
Pinning him to the cot he’s chained to in solitary for being an insufferable pain in my ass, I drop the gravelly revelation onto Warren Xavier’s lips.
