Dani took her weapons back. She sheathed the knife behind her belt and gripped her spear. Her hands and arms were bloody, her jaw set. Lynn had snapped Skeever out of his bloodlust, but Dani seemed to use it as fuel. “Time to go.”
Lynn followed her down the hallway and rallied her own energy. Dani was right; they would be fighting their way out of this, and Lynn knew weakness would equal death. She gripped the handle of her tomahawk and focused on the task at hand.
There were windows at the end of the hallway, but the walls were blind.
A tall, broad figure rushed around the corner.
Lynn startled and raised her tomahawk.
Dani stepped out, and the spear left her hand.
With only a few feet between her and the figure, they didn’t have time to dodge. The spear struck them straight in the throat. The figure went down instantly.
It was a middle-aged man, Lynn saw as she came closer. He wore a leather chest piece, and he’d tied his long hair into a ponytail. He tried to breathe around the blood that filled his lungs. Lynn knew she would never forget the look of absolute horror on his face or the fear in his eyes as she passed him, but for now he was just one man down.
Dani yanked the spear out while he still shuddered. “Do you want the left or right?”
“L-Left.” Lynn didn’t want to split up, but she understood the need to. This way, they could ensure that even if their captors hoisted the gate, they would always run into one of them.
Dani turned right without sparing her a second glance. She stalked down the hallway, away from Lynn, like a hunter in search of prey.
Lynn’s gut clenched. Let’s hope there aren’t too many of them, though. Else we’re dead. She turned the other way and channeled her own hunting skills. There was reason to believe she was going to live through this: if their captors had to rely on wolves for protection, they were either weak, small in numbers, or both. She could still wind up dead if she let herself be caught off guard, though. Lynn focused on any sound that rose above the rain and on any scent not blood or mold. She scanned the hallway for movement but saw nothing. The entire right wall was made of windows, but the world outside was as dark as her heart felt. She reached down and gripped her knife in her left hand and renewed her hold on her tomahawk in her right. With a big breath, she pushed forward.
The offices had been raided long ago and were now deserted. Lynn worked to slow her heart rate and breathing; she needed to be able to think clearly. Just like Dani, she’d kill anyone she came across. Survival today was only possible if she took the lives of others.
She moved slowly, checking every room and every niche. The first of the offices was small. It held just a single desk that no one was hiding under. The rest of the hallway’s doors led into one big room with at least a dozen desks, most of which had been upturned and ransacked. She weaved through them.
The rustling of her clothes and the creaking of floorboards was drowned out by the rain that beat against the glass.
Her shoulders hunched like those of the wolves they had just put out of their misery. Logic dictated there had to be someone here. The wolf that had first attacked her had come from the left, and the man from the right. He couldn’t have released both wolves from their prisons at once, so the logical conclusion was that there was at least one other person here.
She passed another desk and stepped aside to peer under it. Nothing. Another desk, then another. She kept her back to the wall and studied every shifting shadow. Even pulling out a chair to check for people under the desk revealed nothing.
Once she came to the end of the room, she slipped back into the hallway and chanced a glance in the direction Dani had gone. The hallway was empty. Lynn turned back to the unexplored section of the passage. She had to focus on herself.
With her back against the wall, she peeked around the corner. In the seconds she allowed herself to poke her head out, the only thing she registered was a large metal cage, now empty. She stepped out and took a moment to admire it. Someone had put a lot of effort into making an iron cage that could have housed three wolves easily. Whoever had captured the wolves had padded the cage with a layer of grass and sand. Both were coated with dried and fresh blood.
“Bastards!” Abusing an animal into aggressiveness and then using it to do your dirty work. It was a brilliant setup but also completely without honor.
Only when Lynn walked closer to the cage did she see two doors. One was marked with a skirt-wearing figure, while a figure without a skirt graced the other. Listening at the door would be useless with this rain bearing down. She carefully put her knife away before she pushed the door with the skirtless symbol open. It was dark inside. The little light that fell into the room from behind her revealed a single cubicle and oddly shaped fountains—or something similar—along the wall. She let the door fall shut without entering.
The second room was a nearly identical copy in both décor and emptiness. There were no fountains here, and two cubicles instead of one. She carefully lowered herself to the ground to peer under the dividers.
The door of the cubicle flung outward. A figure lunged from within and rushed her way. Something metallic flashed.
Lynn’s breath caught. She dropped her tomahawk so she could grab at the attacker’s wrist as the woman lunged. They hit the ground hard, and Lynn gasped for air. Long, brown hair obscured her vision.
Her attacker smelled like wolf, smoke, and sweat. She was breathless already.
Lynn tried to push the woman off with her knees, but her attacker was heavier.
The woman grunted as she tried to push the knife down. She was missing a few teeth. The scent of rot hit Lynn as the woman exhaled. Her eyes held a glint of madness.
Lynn’s arms trembled as she tried to fight the force applied by the woman above her. She was going to lose: her attacker could put all of her weight behind the motion, and Lynn had just the muscles in her arms. The realization filled her with renewed vigor to break the stalemate. She groped for another way to get the woman off her. Her arms threatened to buckle, which gave her the barest smidgen of an idea. She didn’t have time to think about the stupidity of it; she had to go for it—or die.
Lynn lessened her struggle just a bit. This brought the woman closer as she leaned her entire body over Lynn’s to put weight behind the blade. The sharp tip of the knife stopped inches above her chest when Lynn pushed to stop the descent of the blade. Every muscle in her body tensed. Her heart pounded wildly, and cold sweat pricked on her forehead. She needed to time this exactly right or risk impaling herself on the knife and doing the woman’s work for her. Just as her arms were about to give out, she pushed up with her abdominal muscles and slammed her forehead against the woman’s skull hard enough to make herself see stars.
“Fuck!” The woman sat up over Lynn’s abdomen and gripped her head.
The knife fell to the floor.
Elation burned hotly in Lynn’s system: this was her chance. She swung her tired arm out and brought it down against the woman’s ear with as much force as she could muster.
The stranger yelped and lost her balance.
Lynn tilted her hips, bucked her off, then scrambled to get control of the knife.
The woman’s eyes widened. She rushed to grab it as well.
Before her attacker could close her hand around the knife, Lynn gripped her wrist. She threw her body into the other woman’s until she was sprawled on top of her, and they writhed together on the floor, trying to scratch and bite any part of the other that came close enough to reach. This was fighting at its most animalistic: bare survival without thought of tactics or a next move.