“Get up, now,” Tan hissed.
“I told you, help me find—”
“There’s someone else here.”
Roman stopped, listening. Rain pounded against the roof. Thunder rumbled. But also: light footsteps, shuffling of clothes, shallow breathing. It was more than just someone. It was a group.
A spike of fear brought Roman back to his senses. Why had he been searching for Ruby here? Of course she would have gotten out. She must have gotten out.
“Get around them,” he whispered quietly to Tan. “Find the door. We’ll regroup outside.”
Carefully stepping over bodies, Roman crept to the side. The sounds of people moving grew louder. He tried to count the footsteps. There were at least six.
His boot found something slippery. Cursing under his breath, he stepped around it. He didn’t have to imagine to know what the hall around him must look like: a hundred mangled corpses scattered, lying alone, or stacked together, bathed in their own blood. Roman’s memory flashed back to when he had first seen the chaos an Adrenalite could unleash: the street where Stevens died.
A voice rang through the hall. “We know you’re here. Just come out and get it over with, my good man.”
Roman knew that voice, he aimed his gun in the direction it came from and fired.
For a split second, the flash of light revealed his surroundings. His heart dropped. There were over two dozen men in a semicircle around him. Gavin stood in the centre, a pistol in his hands. Roman had barely missed him.
Ears still ringing, Roman aimed again.
“We’ve got her,” Gavin said calmly.
Terror washed over Roman. His fingers clenched tight over the trigger, but he lowered the gun. “Where?”
“Outside. Come and see for yourself.”
“You’re lying!”
“Willing to bet her life on it?”
Roman’s shoulders sagged. Gavin had him, and he knew it.
“Fine. I’ll come out.” He tucked his pistol into his belt. And even though the gesture was meaningless in the dark, he raised his hands. “But if you hurt her, I swear to whatever gods are out there, I’ll—”
“No. Don’t you fucking dare make threats to me,” Gavin hissed. “Not you. Not today.”
Roman bit his tongue.
“Now, where’s that lanky boy of yours?” Gavin asked.
Roman opened his mouth, ready to lie, but paused. Someone was running towards Gavin. Then came the distinct crunch of a fist meeting a face.
“Ha!” Tan shouted victoriously from the darkness. “That was for my hair, you son-of-a-triple-breasted-whore!”
Roman groaned. “Tan. Give it up.”
“Of course, Boss. I totally surrender too. I just had to get one good swing, you understand?”
The room fell into silence. Roman hoped that Tan hadn’t just got them killed. Gavin was the first to speak, his voice was slurred — Tan must have knocked out some teeth. “You’re going to regret that.”
Roman couldn’t see what was happening, but judging by the noise, he knew that Tan didn’t put up a fight. Roman flinched with every sound; the thump of fists against flesh; Tan’s muffled groans; Gavin’s angry shouts. It took all his self-control not to rush over to his friend’s defence. But he couldn’t. If Gavin’s men really did have Ruby…
Finally, it was over. Roman’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, just enough to see the outlines of the two thugs walking towards him. They grabbed him by the shoulders and pushed him forward. Roman kept his mouth shut, afraid of angering Gavin further.
Twenty steps outside of the hall, Roman was soaked. His wet clothes clung to his skin, making him shiver. Water pooled inside his left boot, sloshing around with each step. Another flash of lightning tore across the sky, illuminating the compound. Even out here, bodies were strewn around. The rain mixed with their blood to form pale red puddles.
Behind him, one of the thugs dragged Tan by the ankle. Tan was unconscious, leaving a thin trail of scarlet; half his face was a puffy, purple mess.
Looking at his friend, Roman’s hands shook with rage. Gavin was going to pay for this.
The harsh scraping of steel against concrete dug at his ears — Gavin had taken an axe from one of his thugs and was dragging it behind him. The gangster’s deformed eye was swollen and bloodshot, his lip split and nose bent at an unnatural angle. He looked more beast than human. Gavin led them down a thin alleyway, then stopped to unbolt a steel door. It opened with a piercing squeal.
The inside was lit by a candle. Roman shuddered at the sight of it. Three thugs rested against the wall, nursing wounds. One of them — his leg a mangled mess — had passed out, his face whiter than the bone sticking out of his shin. He was covered in his own vomit. The smell was beyond foul. A thug pushed Roman to his knees. He didn’t resist.
Ruby was curled in the corner, wet hair strewn across her face. Eyes closed, her arms held her knees tight against her chest.
“Ruby!” Roman shouted at her. She didn’t respond.
Something hard thumped against the back of his head, and Roman fell forward. Gavin stepped in front of Ruby and pushed her hair out of her face, revealing a deep red bruise on her left temple. “I don’t think our fair lady is going to be waking up anytime soon.”
“Don’t touch her.” Roman fought to stand, but hands grabbed his shoulders and forced him down. He twisted and writhed. It was no use.
Gavin knelt in front of him, snarling like a feral mutt. Lifting his axe, he placed its cold edge against Roman’s neck, slowly sliding the metal back and forth over the skin as if deciding where to slice. “I thought I told you,” he growled. “Today is not the day for threats.”
Roman didn’t let himself flinch. “If you were going to kill me, you would have already done it,” he said, hoping he sounded more confident than he felt.
“Well, yes. I wasn’t planning on killing you. But when you act like such a fucking asshole…” he withdrew the axe, then grabbed Roman by the hair and slammed his face against the floor. Roman gasped. It felt like his head had split open as surely as if Gavin had used the axe.
“… it really strains my self-control,” Gavin finished. “I can only be so merciful.”
“What do you want?” Roman spat.
“I want my little birds back. And I want that fucker Candle’s head on a stick.”
Roman kept silent, eyes stuck on Ruby. Why hadn’t Gavin killed her, or him? If the bastard was keeping them alive just so he could punish them slowly—
His pistol felt impossibly heavy. Two shots left. If it came down to it, he could save Ruby and Tan from torture.
“I supposed I should thank you.” Gavin’s voice dropped to little more than a whisper. “It was you who engineered the power cut, wasn’t it? Without that, we’d probably all be dead. The blue bastards make for easy targets in the dark.”
“What happened up there?” Roman didn’t want to ask, but he had to know. “How many did you kill?”
“We killed four. Not enough. Not fucking enough!” Gavin reinforced his last line by slamming his axe against the floor. “And it was just a distraction, so that bastard could steal my birds.”
Roman’s memory flashed back the fighting hall, stumbling over hundreds of bodies. Just a distraction. A surge of anger rushed through him. He pushed himself back to his knees and looked Gavin in his hideous, mismatched eyes.
“So what are you going to do about it?” Roman demanded.
Gavin leaned forward, stopping when his face was inches away from Roman’s. His breath reeked. “Right now, I’m going to do what I should have done last time you came here. You see, I gave you the chance to bring Candle to me. I even offered to pay. But what did you do?” He grabbed Roman by the neck, fingers squeezing enough to make breathing hard. “You tried to steal Spencer from me. From me! So now I’m no longer asking you politely. You will find Candle, and you will bring him back here alive so that I can kill him myself.”