Page 7 of Prince of Wrath

We’re in.

Thanks to Alfie, we found another entrance on the opposite side of the street from the one we saw in the camera footage. Not the main access point or the abandoned gas station they had been using as a mouth to swallow people whole, but a secondary exit hidden under an office building that looked like it had been emptied in a hurry years ago and left to rot afterward. The windows above us were blind with dust, and the whole district had the hollow silence of a place people used to live in a long time ago. 6:45. The street outside is as good as a ghost town. Ideal.

Matt parks in the shadow of the building with the headlights off and the engine running low enough that I feel the vibration through the soles of my black combat shoes more than I hear it.

“Still sure you don’t want me there?”

I sigh. “Wish you were, but he said no cops, no one else but me.”

“What if I hide?”

“I can’t afford that risk.” I could have ignored that, and on any other day I might have, but Ella is somewhere beneath us waiting for me, and we are in a bad enough situation that I can’t afford to make it worse. Hence, I will not have my friend die in a basement because I was too afraid to walk into it alone.

Staying in the car, his face stern and impatient with that heat guys like him carry when they are deprived of a kill, I circle the hood, checking the gun at my back and the spare magazine inside my jacket. My silencer is already fixed, cold and familiar beneath my palm, and a blade strapped to my thigh. Just in case. Killing used to be the line I refused to cross. The last proof that I was not my father, that the violence in me could be caged, disciplined, civilized into something useful.

Morals are great for people who can afford them. My Ella happens to be five floors under me, in a particular hell I should have protected her from. So violence, I’m afraid, will be required. And whatever mercy I thought I still owed this world died somewhere between the moment I saw the brand on her skin and the moment Cole told me he would burn her alive.

Matt and I exchange a nod as I turn my back to the metallic door, a rumbling echoing in my ear.

“All clear,” Alfie grumbles in my ear, his voice thin with distance and static. “At least from what I can see. I’ve looped the street cameras, and the motion sensors near the south door should ignore you for the next four minutes, assuming nothing resets, which it absolutely should not do, unless the system is older than it looks, and it does look ancient, so I guess, yeah, that should do it.”

“Useful information only,” I grunt.

Alfie exhales. “Right. Sorry. I’ve dismounted this door. It’s a generic system type, so you should be able to open it. I’m guessing this is the only one with this system, since it’s a far-back entrance. They must only use it for unimportant stuff and have other secret passages to escape in an emergency.”

“Can you see those?”

“No, they must have added additional signal jammers to make it impossible to detect them. Just be careful, boss; that shit’s a maze.” I step in, closing the door behind me, entering enemy territory with nothing but anger and the kind of violence I have spent years pretending did not belong to me. Fifty meters later, I encounter another door.

“There’s one heat signature behind it. Could be a generator, could be a human,” Alfie warns, the reception getting worse as I carry on into the depths of this underground. It better be a bloody generator. “Door unlocked,” Alfie says quietly as I ignore my brain telling me to back away from immediate danger. The door opens onto the back of a tall, broad-shouldered man wearing dark green combat gear. His radio halfway to his mouth, I land a fist right in his face, taking him by surprise, then cross the space between us before he can make a sound, catch his wrist, and drive him back against the concrete. The blade finds him before his voice does. For half a second, he fights like a man convinced he still has a chance. Then his weight drops against me, hot blood spilling over my hand, eyes wide, and I hold him there until life leaves his legs.

“First one down,” I announce, my heart pumping into every cell of my body. I drag the guard to stop the door and keep it open. His pulse is gone under my fingers. I stare at him for a second longer than I should, waiting for guilt, for horror, for my father’s reflection to rise from the dark and grin at me. Nothing comes—no shame, not even a slight hint of regret. Only Ella’s name, beating harder than my pulse. Perhaps this is who I have always been. The difference is that my father hurt people because they were weaker than him. Because he liked the sound of fear, cruelty made him feel taller.

I am doing this because every second wasted is another second she spends in hell. That distinction will have to be enough for my brain and my therapist will have to deal with the aftermath of it. All I want is to shout her name and hear her scream in response, telling me her location. For the first time since I met her, I hate the silence that was forced into her. Outside, it’s our own dialect, but here…here it’s a blade sharp and unforgiving, tearing us apart. She could be ten feet from me and I wouldn’t know it. The air grows colder as I descend. I carry on, running into this maze with the eagerness of a starved man knowing he will find food after climbing a mountain.

Footsteps come closer, confident, echoing down the corridor I am walking toward. Shit. I look behind me. Nowhere good to hide. The guard rounds the corner with his radio already in hand. But his eyes hit mine, and all I can do is curse. Lunging at him, we begin a deadly hand fight. I catch his wrist and drive him backward into the corridor he came from. His back strikes a pipe with a hollow clang loud enough to make my stomach drop. He sucks in air to shout, and I hit him under the jaw with the heel of my palm, snapping the sound into a grunt. Thank God I learned all of Matt’s techniques over the years, otherwise, I would never have made it here. This one is strong as hell and not giving up as easily as the others. His hand slides beneath my vest, shoving hard enough to create the space he needs to reach the knife strapped to his belt. Too late. Pain explodes in my ribs. The blade scrapes along them, mostly stopped by the vest but sharp enough to cut through fabric and skin beneath. It burns bright down my side. I step into him and drive my knee to his thigh, take his balance, and slam him hard against the concrete. He comes back at me, furious, snarling, alive for one second too long. My gun lifts between us and my silencer coughs against his chest. His breath leaves him in a wet, broken sound, and he sags against me. I lower him while blood warms my side under the vest.

“Everything okay?” Alfie asks.

“No. Not exactly.”

“If you go back to Matt right now, he can drive you to a hospital, and-”

“I’m not going back without her,” I groan, adrenaline hardening into pure tenacity and drowning out the worst of the pain.

“Right. Sorry, sir.” For the first time tonight, I hear how young he is.

“You’re…you’re doing fine,” I tell him.

“Yeah?...Yeah. Thanks.” When he speaks again, his voice is calmer. “Stairwell thirty meters ahead. Camera above the door, fixed angle. Stay left, close to the wall. If you drift center, it will catch your shoulders and maybe your face.” I carry on, playing this delicate dance of rushing toward the fifth floor down while trying not to set off any alarms, while trying not to get killed.

Out of breath, holding my bleeding rib, I make it. A big old five written in white paint on the wall, opening to a series of doors, the last one at the end facing me. And everything in me tells me she is there. Behind that door that seems to open with a keypad. The code Natalia, Cole’s niece, gave us months ago better work, because if it does not, I am fucked. I step up to the keypad, my ribs pulsing beneath the vest, and my fingers leave a faint smear of blood on the first button as I enter it.

11 40 64.

Numbers I kept because paranoia has saved me more often than trust. For a moment, nothing happens. Twenty excruciating seconds later, the lock clicks open to a vision of pure horror.

Cole stands on the other side with Ella’s back crushed against his chest, one arm locked around her throat and a gun pressed so tightly to her temple that the skin dents around the barrel. Her hair is tangled over skin that hasn’t seen daylight for too long. There is a bruise along her jaw, another at her throat where his forearm holds her, and her eyes find mine with such force that the room seems to tilt around us. My gaze locks on her branded V on her shoulder.