Page 6 of Lower World
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Unease crept into Johnathan’s feverish gaze when Dominic gave me a short, sharp nod. He would’ve been long dead if he hadn’t been smart enough to pick up on clues to alert him that something was going on. Unfortunately for him, nothing could’ve prepared him for the sort of freak I was. His cunning was what kept him alive and in the good graces of the Council for as long as he’d been alive. That made him a jerk, not dumb.
It hurt, however, to notice the way Dominic tensed when I cleared my throat. The shifter might’ve been willing for me to use any means necessary to get information, but that didn’t mean he liked it. If anything, he seemed on edge and ready to attack if I turned my curse on him. I didn’t blame him for not trusting me. I understood more than he would ever know.
It just didn’t sit well with me.
All the fragile progress we made when it came to trust was gone and we were back to life threats. Not for the first time, I wondered what I’d done wrong to have this much bad luck in life. Humans liked to complain about their fate or lousy fortune. In the best case, they only had to deal with it for eighty, ninety years. I, on the other hand, had centuries on my plate. Realizing I just stood there stuck in my own head, I offered Dominic a tight-lipped smile.
I almost jumped out of my skin when a shrill scream came from above us.
I could see in Dominic’s face he was about to kill Johnathan, not trusting he would stay tied down here if we left, so I made a split-second decision. Moving with speed my kind was known for, I wrenched Johnathan’s head, breaking his neck again. He went limp on the chair, but I couldn’t waste time. Alice was in trouble. The most terrifying scenarios played in my head as I broke through the trapdoor and bolted through the house like a demon on steroids. Dominic’s muttered curses followed in my wake as the shifter rushed to join me. My ears strained to hear my friend’s heartbeat, and I veered toward the small living room.
The trapdoor for the basement was on the floor of the tiny kitchen, so I didn’t have much space separating me from Alice. A foot from the entrance, I stopped dead in my tracks, every muscle tensing when my knees bent. Dominic barreled past, bumping into my shoulder and making me stumble to my right. That placed us in the perfect position to surround the Atua that had his hand wrapped around Alice’s throat, her back pressed to his front while she clawed at his wrist as he grinned at me from next to the broken window. I’d never seen this male before, but his bare chest, leather pants, and the damn pendant sitting inconspicuously on the hollow of his throat told me everything I needed to know. His shorn dark hair glinted like oil in the yellow light of the lamp, and although he was grinning, there was not an ounce of humor in the harsh lines of his face.
Dominic snarled deep in his chest.
“It’s me that you want.” Proud that the panic didn’t reflect in the tone of my voice, I did my best to straighten from my fighting stance and look resigned. “I’ll come willingly, let the human go.”
The guardian of the Syndicate narrowed his glossy blue eyes at me, his look telling me he didn’t believe a word coming out of my mouth. The plate-sized hand around Alice’s neck tightened, as well, and she made a whimpering sound that shredded my heart. Her face looked almost blue from lack of oxygen because the idiot couldn’t understand how fragile humans were. My skin prickled from the power blasting out of the shifter, who was too still for anyone’s good. I felt his shift coming and was shocked he wasn’t already down on all fours.
“Don’t be stupid.” A movement from outside the broken window told me we were probably surrounded by at least a dozen Syndicate members. “She is human and of no significance to you or the Council. Sure, you can kill her, but that will only piss me off. You see, I like my food alive. If she dies, so would you, and so would all of your buddies.” Holding my gaze steady on his, I allowed one side of my lips to quirk. “Let. Her. Go.”
If possible, Alice paled more when her wide eyes landed on me.
I had no idea what I looked like in that moment.
All I knew was my heart stopped beating when I saw her struggling in the guardian’s grip, and the blood in my veins was curdled into mud. Dominic was muttering something under his breath, but I couldn’t hear a damn thing from the white noise in my head. I blinked twice when the Atua spoke.
“You come with us and the human lives.” His voice was raw as if his vocal cords were ripped and not fully healed yet. Knowing those ancient idiots, I had no doubt that was the case.
“That’s not how this shit works.” Tuning into Alice’s heartbeat, I wanted to rip his head when I realized it was skipping beats, stuttering, and slowing down. “I will give you one last chance to do the right thing so all of us can walk out of this alive. Let the human go, now.”
Dominic cleared his throat, and I eyed him from the corner of my eye. What in the worlds was wrong with him? When he moved after being unnaturally still from the start, all of us tensed, but he only rubbed a hand over his mouth. That’s when I heard what he had been muttering the whole time.
“Talk.” It was barely above whisper, and I wasn’t sure the Atua didn’t hear him as well.
My mind was spinning. Talk? Talk what? Isn’t that what I’d been doing since we got here? Was he planning something and needed me to buy him time? Alice had no time for him to strategize, or didn’t notice? All that spun through my head in a split second before what he was asking hit me like a metal pole to the face.
“Let her go.” The words were out the next second, thrumming with more power than ever before.
The Atua’s fingers snapped open, his eyes glazing over.
Alice dropped on her knees, cradling her neck and hacking for all she was worth. Dominic shifted, and a black blur took the guardian down, blood spraying from his throat in an arch that splattered on the walls. Some of it ended up all over Alice, and she choked, crawling on hands and knees toward me. I snatched her from the floor and tucked her behind my back just as I heard it.
The whisper of metal leaving its sheath.
“Oh, shit,” Alice croaked, grabbing fistfuls of my shirt.
The black panther snarled, the ferocious sound lifting all the tiny hairs on my body at attention. He glided away from the dead guardian, whose head was holding onto the rest of him by a thin flab of skin, and positioned himself between the broken window and us. Ears pinned tightly to the back of his head, he lowered, his tail lashing in jerky snaps behind him.
“Alice I need you to find a place to hide until I call you out.” Reaching for the dagger I now always kept strapped to my thigh, I pulled it out and took a step forward to help Dominic.
“No,” the human snapped stubbornly.
Before I could hiss back at her, she was gone from behind me, and I released a sigh. It must’ve been just a delayed reaction from earlier since I had no doubt she was in shock. Any normal person would be if monsters invaded their home. My steps faltered when her pattering footsteps became louder instead of fainter, but at that moment, guardians poured through the broken window like ants after stomping on an anthill. Snarls and grunts filled the house when the panther pounced on them, instantly crushing a couple before they had a chance to crawl all the way inside. It left them draped over the windowsill like dollies, their blood from the sharp edges of the glass making dark puddles on the floor.
The front door burst into splinters, and I turned on my heal, darting at the small entrance to intercept them. Fangs bared, I slashed, punched, and kicked, bending at unnatural angles to avoid swords and daggers the guardians aimed at my head. There were so many of them. Too many for the two of us to fight.
