I squeezed his shoulders tightly and took the leap into the abyss with a frail rope to hold me if I fell. “Are you going to help me escape?”
“How?” The question was asked with difficulty. “I can’t even help myself.”
“Let me guess, your boss is thinking of terminating me? That he doesn’t trust me?”
He gasped and his eyes filled with tears. “Yes, I think so.”
“And when they do that? You die as well?”
His lips trembled. “How do you know? How could you possibly know?”
I tightened my grip on him. “I know your name, Eligor. I know what you are. I have hunted your kind before, and I have killed them.” I bit the words off as the current swept over the banks of the river, the rage rising.
“You’re going to guide me out of this place,” I said softly, pushing the intent into his mind, backward through our connection.
He nodded slowly and then faster as if it were his idea. “Yes. I can do that.”
“You see, now that I know what you are, I understand how this works. I understand the ties that bind your kind and mine. You are going to help me get out of this shithole. And you are coming with me.”
He would have the information I needed to find my boy.
His jaw flapped. “I’m . . . coming with you?”
I nodded. “Wait here. I’m going to gather two others and then we will go. It will be our best chance to work together.”
He slowly nodded. “I can guide you if you get lost.”
“Don’t leave this room.” I stood and he didn’t move. I held a hand out and he put his hand in it as if we were making a pact. I grimaced. “Give her to me.”
“Her? The gun?”
“She’s mine; she was always mine.”
“But she is bonded to Easter.” The confusion in his voice was almost comical, but he handed her over to me. My gun. The gun I’d sent with Easter to help her on a journey into grave danger because we were friends and I’d wanted her to succeed. A loan, it had been a loan and these idiots thought Easter had bonded with the gun.
Dinah, bound up with the soul of my long-dead sister. She was a sidekick like no other.
“Hello, lovely,” I said as the grip slid into my palm. She shivered but said nothing. I tipped her up and saw the wad of wax jammed into her barrel. “That blow out with the first shot?”
She shivered twice for yes, and I turned from Eligor. “Stay.”
Things were about to get . . . messy. We were getting out of here one way or another. My mind was no longer bound with having to be careful. The plans I’d been running through whenever I meditated came fully alive.
I stepped out of my room and walked down the hall to Cowboy’s room first. His door was unlocked and I pushed it open. He was still flat out on his face.
He would have to be last, then.
I paused, considering Easter.
She is broken beyond repair. You can’t save her. Eligor’s voice was soft but audible in my head. It is forbidden to speak to our charges. We are not to bond with them even though our lives are twined and the fate of one becomes the fate of the other.
“Well, that other one had no problem speaking to me and apparently neither do you.” I turned away from Cowboy’s room and strode toward the stairwell that would lead me down to Peter’s lair. A few turns of the hall and I was there, approaching the guard. He smiled when he saw me, and I was glad it wasn’t George. I would save him to the last to kill, and not because he was a nice guy. No, he was one of the worst.
“I’m going to check on him. I feel bad that I got him into trouble earlier.” I kept my voice low and penitent.
“How you survived out there is beyond me,” the guard said. He didn’t have a nametag on, and he just waved me down the stairs. I hurried, skipping stairs where I could, all but running down them.
Be careful! Eligor’s warning caught me off guard and I nearly fell.
“Shut up!” I snapped.
Sorry, you were running so fast! I wasn’t sure you’d be okay!
“That you, George?” Peter called out. “I’m being good. Honest.”
“I’m not. Keep it quiet, Dinah,” I said as I lifted Dinah and sighted down the barrel of the gun. The chains that held Peter exploded on his left side as I squeezed off the first round, the boom muffled with her built-in silencer. The thick steel door should’ve blocked any sound. The second round took the right and he was free except for a bit of chain dangling from each wrist.
“Fucking hell, you could have warned me!” he snapped.
“Can they see through your eyes?” I asked.
“Shit. Maybe.” His eyes snapped shut.
Awesome. I grabbed his hand and dragged him up the stairs.
“What happened to meeting tonight?” he asked as he hurried after me, navigating the stairs easily even with his eyes closed. Of course, he was a creature of the night so that worked in his favor.
“A new player,” I said.
“Who?”
We reached the top of the stairs and the guard turned toward me, his eyes widening as I lifted Dinah.
“Me,” Dinah said as I squeezed the trigger. The bullet caught him between the eyes and dropped him backward like a tree falling. I bent and scooped up the key cards on the guard, the Taser, and a set of vehicle keys that looked promising.
“Never liked Chevrolet much, but it will do.” I tossed them in my hand and then tucked them into my pants pocket.
“Dinah, nice to have you back,” I said.
“Bitch, where the hell have you been, fucker?” she snapped, shivering in my hand as I led the way back to my room. “Seriously, I’ve had wax jammed in my barrel for a motherfucking year!”
“I didn’t know you were here,” I said, checking around a corner before tugging Peter after me.
No alarms had gone off yet, but it wouldn’t be long.
Two more corners and we’d be back in my room.
I checked the next hall and jerked backward. “Fuck.”
Oh . . . that felt good to say out loud.
“What?” Peter was right up against my back and he took a deep breath. “Shit, is that Easter?”
“Yes.”
“Well, let’s get her and get the fuck out of here!” Dinah said, thankfully quietly.
“It’s not that simple. She’s not Easter like before,” I said. “They broke her.” There was no time though, we had to get past her. “Smoke bombs left?”
“Yeah, I’ve got two,” Dinah said.
“Do it.”
Her inner workings clicked over, changing out her ammunition. That was the beauty of a soul-possessed gun—the usual rules didn’t apply. I stepped out around the corner with Dinah raised. “Get down on the floor.”
Easter turned to me, her green eyes wide. “What?”
“DOWN ON THE MOTHERFUCKING FLOOR!” I bellowed the words and the river in me crashed outward and upward, bringing with it all the darkness, all the death I’d survived and dealt out. The names of the lost were engraved on my heart, the ones I’d fought for and the ones who’d fought for me. I strode toward her and she dropped to the floor, but her eyes stayed on mine.
“I’ll kill you,” she said as calmly as if she were telling me she liked my outfit.