He let out a cry of pain and staggered.
Scarlet darted through the crumbling marble arches, past the cherubs with their broken arms, past the shattered chandeliers and broken tile floors. She flew down the marble stairs, focusing on the huge doors that would lead to the street. If only she could get out of there. Into public. Into the real world.
As she hit the lobby floor, the silhouette of another man moved across the exit.
Her feet skidded to a stop, landing her in the square of pale sunlight from the hole in the ceiling.
Pivoting, she ran for the other staircase, the stairs that went back down to the depths of the opera house.
Above, a door slammed shut, and there were footsteps pounding and she couldn’t tell if it was one set of footsteps or two.
Sweat coated the back of her shirt. Her legs ached, her burst of adrenaline fading.
She rounded a corner and barreled into darkness. The main room had once been used for important guests of the opera house and a series of doors and hallways led to every corner of the sublevel. Scarlet knew the halls to the right would take her back to the prison cells, so she veered left. A drained fountain basin filled the space between the two stairways that led to the upper level. The bronze statue of a half-dressed maiden lingered in an alcove atop a pedestal, one of the few statues that seemed to have survived so many years of neglect.
Scarlet ran for the opposite staircase, wondering if going back up to the lobby would be suicide—and yet knowing that to be trapped down here was no alternative.
She reached the bottom of the stairs and her foot hit the low ledge of the fountain. She stumbled, crying out.
Ran was on her before she hit the ground.
Fingernails dug into her shoulder, flipping her onto her back amid the tiny broken tiles of the dry basin. She peered up into his glowing eyes, the eyes of a madman, of a murderer, and she remembered Wolf onstage at the street fight.
Fear clamped her throat shut, strangling a scream.
He gripped her shirt and lifted her from the ground. She grabbed his wrists, but was too petrified to fight as he brought her face toward his. Scarlet nearly gagged on the stench of his breath, like rotten meat and blood—so much blood—her grandmother—
“If it wasn’t such a repulsive thought, I might take advantage of you here, now that we’re all alone,” he said, and Scarlet shuddered. “Just to see the look on my brother’s face when I told him about it.” With a roar, he threw her at the statue.
Her back collided with the bronze pedestal and pain exploded through her head, knocking the wind from her. She collapsed to the ground, grasping her chest, trying to draw air back into her lungs.
Ran crouched before her, ready to spring. His tongue swiped out over his canines, coating them with strings of saliva.
Her stomach lurched. She kicked at the ground in an attempt to push herself into the small space between the statue and the wall. To disappear. To hide.
He sprang.
She cowered against the wall, but the impact didn’t come.
Scarlet heard a battle cry, followed by a heavy thud. Snarling.
She lowered her trembling arms. In the center of the cavern, two forms tangled with each other. Jaws snapping. Blood dripping over taut muscles.
Eyesight blurring, she managed to ease in a breath, glad to feel her chest expand. Reaching overhead, she gripped the statue and tried to pull herself up, but the muscles in her back screamed at her.
Clenching her jaw, she worked on tucking her legs under her and battled against the pain until she could stand, panting and sweating against the bronze goddess.
If she could just get away before the brawl was over—
Ran pulled the other man into a headlock. The opponent’s glowing emerald eyes pierced Scarlet, for one heart-stopping moment, before he flipped Ran over his head.
The ground vibrated from the impact, but Scarlet barely felt it.
Wolf.
It was Wolf.
Forty