Page 96 of Caged Kitten

But I’d rather process with her than apart.

After all, I wasn’t the only one suffering. Katja carried her own trauma, and the thought of her trudging through all that misery alone made me ache. We needn’t talk, needn’t whisper a word through the mousehole, for us to champion the other’s path to recovery.

“Okay, so, right…” I strolled out of my cell, mindful of the sunbeams streaking out of the ones around me, and then folded my arms. “Is there a plan, or…?”

Or were we just making it up as we went along?

“This little darling is going to take us out the front door,” Fintan insisted, giving his captive a jostling for good measure. The warlock shut his eyes tight and flinched away from the knife tip poking into the soft underbelly of his chin. “They have charms to open and close the ward issued exclusively for the guards.” Hooking an arm around the warlock’s neck, Fintan used the other to jerk up his black sleeve from the cuff to the elbow, revealing the ancient symbol for Mercury, the god who walked every road, on his pasty forearm. “Tattooed on their skin—keys to the ward. Clever, no?”

While I could see the logic in that, there was still one giant, obnoxious elephant in the room.

“And when do you intend to do all this?” I motioned to the sun cutting across the block from Katja’s cell window, the beam sprinkled with dust. “In case you haven’t realized, it’s sunny as hell today.”

“We’re going to cover you with our jumpsuits and just go,” Katja offered, tugging at her purple lapels. “It’ll be temporary, but you’ll be fully covered… and then we can figure it out outside the ward.”

“Touching.” It might have sounded sarcastic, but I had to bite back a genuine smile—because they had considered me and all my failings. They weren’t going to leave me behind, even if I slowed them down. Still, this plan was weak at best, and I wasn’t about to risk it—wasn’t about to risk her, my bite looking fresh as ever on her throat, the memory of it both painful and exhilarating. “But I’m not thrilled about the, er, just figure it out part.”

“For fuck’s sake, you dark cloud,” Fintan growled. “It’s the best we’ve got, so stop moaning and just get on with it.”

Elijah’s eyes narrowed. “Fintan.”

“He has a right to express his concerns,” Katja said tersely, shooting the fae a glare to match her mate’s. She then looked to me, her fear spiking within the connection we shared—vampire and victim, those puncture wounds refusing to heal, tethering us together for longer than anyone who came before. Perhaps forever. In a way, we shared what she and Elijah had: a mental, possibly even spiritual link, wherein we could communicate without saying a word.

Her expression faltered when I gritted my teeth, mild annoyance sparking on my end. “How thoughtful of you, allowing me my opinion about the thing that will kill me instantaneously—”

“Come oooonnnnnnnnn,” Fintan droned, nodding back to the door with a long, drawn-out groan. “This is a waste of time. Someone just put a bag over his head and be done with it.”

“Fuck you, fae.”

“It comes from a place of love, vampire,” he purred, blowing me a kiss over the sniveling warlock’s shoulder. “Just move your ass already and we—”

A shrill cry detonated over the cellblock, sirens of varying pitches and intensities exploding from the ceiling speaker. I clapped my hands over my ears, but that didn’t stop the horrendous noise from slicing through my skull. Elijah felt it just as severely, the intensity forcing his eyes to roll back into his head before he folded over with a snarl. Doubled in size again, Tully flung himself away from Katja and rocketed into her empty cell like a missile, leaving his mistress to suffer the assault alone. Her knees buckled, and Katja plummeted to the ground, wrists shoved against her ears, hands in her hair, eyes wide with panic.

Xargi had so many sirens—but this was new, something of Guthrie’s design, no doubt. Something to subdue everyone, so calamitous that I felt the sound vibrations in my marrow. Fintan had even abandoned our ticket out of here, but the warlock couldn’t withstand it either, rolling around on the ground, lips moving like he was screaming for someone to make it stop. I dropped to one knee just as a cool, viscous liquid dribbled from my ears—my eardrums had burst. They stitched themselves back together, vampiric healing abilities slow but present even with this damn collar, but then they burst again, another spurt of dead blood splashing against my palms.

When the shrieking stopped, it felt like the blitz again, my hearing muffled even with the bells ringing, ringing, ringing inside my skull. Shadowy figures darted across the remnants of the cellblock’s busted main door, and seconds later someone hurled a dark, round disc into the room. I blinked, stunned, as it clanged and bounced across the floor, wondering if this truly was wartime.

“Grenade—”

The flash bang exploded in a hail of light and sound, tossing me onto my back and making Katja screech. Her terror reverberated through me, brighter and more focused than anything else, and I fought hard to blink the spotlight out of my eyes. The ringing between my ears intensified, and I rolled onto my stomach and twisted forward just in time to see another grenade tossed inside, detonating before it landed in a cloud of thick, black smoke. Through the swelling darkness, I spotted it: the door repairing itself, splintered wood and jagged metal floating off the ground and zooming back into place, magic thickening in the air as the guards sealed us inside.

The fog would either kill us or render the rest of them unconscious—and I couldn’t allow for either. Staggering to my feet, I tugged my jumpsuit over my nose and mouth, but as the black expanded, all-consuming, it sapped the energy from my limbs. I needn’t breathe, but it still wormed its way inside me all the same, turning my legs to jelly. The cellblock slid in and out of focus as I stumbled forward a few paces, then collapsed again. Beneath the smoke line, I saw them—my people. Katja on her back, head lolled to the side, eyes open but vacant. Elijah shuffling toward her, pupils like slits, his inner dragon fighting to protect him, to save his mate…

He offered a hand to me, the beast inside recognizing a friend, a brother, and I reached back. Beside them, Fintan pushed up on wobbly arms, only for his face to go slack seconds later, and when his elbows buckled, that regal nose met the ground in a horrendous face-plant. Bone cracked noisily on impact. Elijah lilted onto his side, body sprawled over a limp Katja, dragon’s eyes on me, hand still stretching, fingers grasping…

No. It wouldn’t end like this.

Get them in a cell. Barricade the door. Bash open a window and hide in a shadow. Let the fresh air clear their lungs.

Plan.

Teeth gritted, gums aching, vision tinged red, I summoned every bit of strength left at my disposal and hauled my body forward. Silver lining: the smog had turned so thick, so heavy, that it blotted out the sun. Even as the others faded from view, I crawled in their direction, desperate to take Elijah’s hand, to throw Katja over my shoulder, to haul Fintan along after us—

A familiar set of locks clicked and clunked open. The darkness ruffled with the whoosh of the cellblock door. A red beam blazed through the black, a dot appearing on my shoulder.

Whump.

Someone fired a wooden projectile, and I hissed—bared my nonexistent fangs—when the stake buried itself into my right shoulder, slicing through flesh and bone and muscle like I was made of butter. Pain exploded through my every cell, followed by a swift and violent sedative lull that knocked the wind out of me.

I was gone before I even hit the ground.

---