Jude
LET HIM TEAR ME LIMB FROM LIMB IF HER HEART KEEPS BEATING.
We exit the office.
Two hallways, one on each side. One is darker, older. The other curves around. Raphael sends Seth to scope out the route while he unfolds a map he took from Alden’s office under the flickering emergency light, his eyes moving like a hawk over the lines. “North hallway has more bodies. Five, maybe six armed. Could be more.”
Seth returns shortly, confirming. “Seven guards stationed outside patient doors. Four of us. It would be risky, but?—”
“No,” Raphael directs us to the opposite hallway. “We won’t lose the element of surprise. This is longer, but there’s an exit to the main yard.”
“Any idea where she is?” Seth wonders.
Raphael shakes his head.
Vincent glares, brandishing his fist. “For all we know, he could have her in his bedroom, doing god knows what.”
“I doubt it,” Raphael says. “The Prophet wants a show. Whatever he’s doing to her, it would be a public spectacle.”
“Especially with Rory in the equation,” I acknowledge.
Seth swallows hard, his jaw clenching at the thought of his partner. Rory might be a pain in the ass, but he’sourpain in the ass. Kinship brother. And Seth’s bond with him runs deep.
I press a hand against the wall as we take the corner, my fingers coming away stained with soot and dust. It’s an old medical wing, looming ahead—forgotten, gutted, and abandoned—but I can still smell the antiseptic beneath the decay. That sterile stench never really fades.
Raphael doesn’t look at me, but I feel the unspoken judgment brewing behind his silence. That same judgment he wore at the fire watch tower. When he tried to control me. Twist me. Dominate me.
But I didn’t let him.
Not because I’m stronger—because I’m not. I’m not the killer. I’m not the predator.
But Briella needshimto be.
So I have to be what he can’t. The one who still gives a damn about what she feels when this is over—if we get that far. The healer who will do whatever it takes to save her.
Raphael traces a finger across the map. “We take the east hall. Back corridor. Leads through the old trauma wing. Minimal guards. No patrol routes loop that far out.”
Seth scoffs behind me, heavy boots scraping tile. “And that helps us how? You think we’ve got time for a damn tour of horrors while she and Rory are screaming in some basement altar?”
I heave a sigh. Normally, Seth isn’t like this. Always the one finding the silver lining. But even he has his breaking point. Right now? It’s shredded to the thinnest line.
“She’s not in the east wing.” I keep my tone calm to diffuse the tension like I always do. “But theywillsend the rest of their muscle toward the fire we’re about to start.”
He glares at me. “You’re wasting time.”
“No.” I move toward the nearest supply closet. “I’m buying us a distraction. Every guard chasing smoke is one less standingbetween the Prophet and us. You want a clean shot? Let me work.”
Seth gets ready to argue, but Raphael cuts in, folding the map tight. “Let him. We’re short on variables. We need any edge we can get.”
His voice is quiet, but steel-tempered. The first sign of affirmation from him. Or a simple acknowledgment.
He’s back to command mode now. Ice where there once was fire.
Good, I think.She needs that part of him. The sharpness. The monster he’s buried too long.
The supply closet is sparse. Not enough for what I need. So, I lead them through the side corridor, the tiles turning from sterile white to grimy brown. Half the overhead lights are dead, casting everything in a stuttering red pulse. We pass rusted gurneys and doors marked with faded words like “Isolation” and “Triage Overflow.” It gets colder—like the walls remember the screams.
I stop at a rusted metal cabinet half-sunken into the wall, kneeling to twist the latch. It’s stuck, but after a hard wrench, it cracks open with a groan of protest.
