Page 27 of Avenger of Sins

Caleb snorted. “Glad we can keep you entertain?—”

He stopped abruptly, head turning in the direction of the road. Night did the same. John strained his ears, but heard nothing. “What is it?”

“A vehicle. Something bigger than a car.” Caleb let go of his hand. “Stay here.”

He was gone in a blink, vanishing in the trees. Night might have gone with him; it was impossible to tell. John stood perfectly still, listening, until at last the distant rumble of an engine came to his mortal hearing.

“It’s a laundry truck,” Caleb said from the shadows beside him.

John startled, swinging the flashlight around wildly. Caleb blinked in the light. “Sorry—didn’t mean to surprise you.”

“It’s fine.” John lowered the light. “You said a laundry truck?”

“Yeah. So I’m thinking we reverse-prison-break this thing. What about you?” Caleb arched a brow.

John hesitated. Instinct whispered that this wastooconvenient, too cliche.

But that was ridiculous. Harlow knew Ryan was after him, but he wouldn’t suspect one of his other victims and two drakul would also be trying to get inside. Let alone to stop Ryan andsave him, as bitter as that saving tasted. This was no trap set for them.

“Let’s go,” he said.

Caleb nodded. “Turn off your flashlight and climb on my back.”

John did so, wrapping his arms around Caleb’s neck and his legs around his waist. As soon as he was secure, Caleb set off at a run, easily dodging trees and leaping over obstacles John couldn’t see in the blackness.

The headlights of a truck appeared, the engine growling as it hauled itself up the hollow. John caught a glimpse of the logo painted on the side as it rumbled past:Laundry Strategies, Inc.

Caleb leapt, John clinging on for dear life. A moment later, claws caught in steel and etheric energy bloomed around them as Gray emerged.

A flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye; then Night was hauling up the roll-up door on the back of the truck, having broken the lock. Gray swung them inside, followed by Night, who closed the door again behind them.

John flicked his flashlight back on. The back of the truck was packed with hampers filled with folded sheets, uniforms, and towels.

Gray receded, and Caleb lifted one of the sheets. “Well,” he said, “at least it’s clean.”

The ride in the truck, hidden beneath a layer of laundry, seemed to take forever. Caleb listened intently to each shift of the truck’s gears, noted when it slowed to a stop, then sped up again. Waved through a checkpoint? Were they inside the Armaros compound now?

“Calm”,Gray said.“These humans cannot harm us. And we will not allow them to hurt John.”

It wasn’t that easy, and they both knew it.You’ve learned to lie to yourself. Good job; you’re becoming more human all the time.

“There is no need for insults.”

The truck slowed again, and his sensitive hearing picked up the groan of motors and the creak of moving steel. Heavy doors of some kind? Where the hell was the truck taking them?

The truck moved forward again, but this time the engine raised a strange echo, as if they were in an enclosed space. A garage? If so, it was an awfully big one.

Eventually, it came to a stop. The engine shut off; the driver’s door opened and then shut again. Footsteps walked away…then silence.

How long to wait? Presumably someone would be coming to unload the truck soon. On reflection, it seemed a weird time of night to get a delivery of clean laundry…but what the fuck did he know about it? He’d never worked in laundry services; maybe this was perfectly normal.

Either way, they shouldn’t dawdle too long. Once the driver’s footsteps had faded into silence, he tossed the folded sheets aside.

“Let’s go,” he said.

Night emerged from wherever she’d been hiding, and John rose from the hamper beside Caleb. As he helped John out of the oversized hamper, Night rolled the back door up.

The sight outside the truck was unexpected to say the least. Caleb had assumed they’d be in some sort of garage, pulled up to a loading dock. Instead, the truck sat within a cavernous space that appeared to have been carved out of the mountain itself. Rough rock walls formed an enormous tunnel, running from a pair of huge steel blast doors—currently closed—to a distantdead end, barely perceptible even to his enhanced sight. Pipes and conduit ran along the walls in neat rows, and some kind of bulkheads segmented its vast length, though all appeared to be open at the minute. Smaller doors led off the massive tunnel, regularly spaced across from each other.

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