Dusk Avenger (Flirting with Monsters #3) - Eva Chase Page 0,19
couldn’t imagine him harassing a child, even if he did let his sense of humor come out when it came to the real villains.
He watched the second guard amble off with a mischievous glint in his eyes. “I could have them marching through the halls singing Christmas carols if I wanted to.”
I elbowed him again. “As much as I’d like to see that, it won’t get Snap out. You can start your carol group once the cages are open.”
“Oh, fine, you spoilsport.”
He gave me a fond peck on the temple with a tenderness I hadn’t been expecting. The incubus and I had gotten about as intimate as any two beings could be, but lately he’d had more standoffish days than not. Even after last night’s celebrations, he hadn’t made a single come-on to prompt an invitation into my bed.
I wasn’t totally sure what was going on with that or with this brief PDA, but puzzling over it could wait for later too.
It was just five minutes to noon now. We sauntered back toward the door to the inner sanctum, and at twelve on the dot, Ruse knocked with a one, one-two, one beat. A signal he’d arranged with his new friend he’d been calling the Tiger King, the ropey-limbed guy who opened the door with a rasp of its lock a moment later. He wasn’t wearing his own armor—Ruse had instructed him to shed it before he let us in.
“I haven’t said a word to anyone,” he murmured as he ushered us into a brightly lit, white-washed room packed with glass desks and computer equipment. Ruse gave a restrained shudder, now surrounded by the silver and iron embedded in the walls. “A couple of the guys might give you some trouble—I don’t think they’re in on the bigger picture. I’ll bring them over like you asked, and you can decide—”
What he thought we were going to decide was lost with the click of the door at the other end of the room. I caught a faint whiff of chemicals with the breeze that emerged, my body tensing with the understanding that the lab—the experiments, the captives, Snap—lay that way, and then the two figures who’d appeared in the doorway gave a shout of startled concern.
“What are you doing—who are these people?” one demanded, striding forward. Both of them were drawing their guns. Okay, then. Plan: Peaceful Intrusion had just gone down the drain.
“A hand with your colleagues?” Ruse said to his charmed guard, his voice thrumming with renewed energy.
The guy leapt at the guard who’d barreled toward us with some kind of karate chop that sent the other man’s gun flying from his hand. The third guard’s gun hand jerked up—and Thorn leapt from the shadows in full brawny glory, smashing his fist down on the man’s arm so forcefully I heard the crunch as the bone shattered.
The charmed guard had wrestled his other colleague to the ground and was now shoving off the guy’s protective helmet. “It’s for your own good!” he was declaring. “There’s so much they haven’t told us—so much we haven’t seen…”
Thankfully, he seemed to be too busy wrenching at the ties on the guy’s vest to see the next swing of Thorn’s fist, which drove the warrior’s crystalline knuckles deep into the underside of the third guard’s jaw. The man slumped with a bloody gurgle, no de-armoring necessary.
I leapt in to help remove the last of the second guard’s protective gear. The second he was free of silver and iron, Ruse’s cajoling voice rolled out again.
“There’s so much at stake—we have to hurry. These monsters are toxic, but they’ll burn away if we drive them out into the sunlight. Quickly, quickly, before the people who wish to keep them here and protect them can stop us from doing what is right.”
The appeal to the man’s hatred of the shadowkind worked so well it made my stomach turn. He sprang to his feet and dashed for the door to the lab area without another word from Ruse. The sight of the mangled flesh on the body Thorn had dragged out of the way didn’t exactly inspire my appetite either, but in that moment it wasn’t hard to remember why my qualms about taking the bashing-their-skulls approach had worn thin.
We pushed into a larger room full of steel tables, shelves of lab equipment—and a full wall of silver-and-iron cages. There had to be at least thirty smaller ones and then several larger enclosures at the end. They