Dusk Avenger (Flirting with Monsters #3) - Eva Chase Page 0,20

all blazed with artificial light, thin shapes of shadow jittering in its glare.

Snap had to be in one of those big ones. “Open them up!” I said to the guards. “Come on, let’s go!”

“You heard her,” Ruse added with more voodoo in his tone. “All of the beasties out, and then we’ll drive them into the daylight to vanquish them for good.”

“We don’t have the keys or the codes,” the guard said with an anxious stammer, waving to the cages. The large ones had keycode panels—the small ones only little locks with holes.

Ruse spun on his original ally. “You said you had access.”

“To the rooms! You didn’t ask about the cages before.”

He hadn’t wanted too much detail in case one of the guards let our plans slip ahead of time. Shit.

Omen rippled out of the shadow. “Who has them, then?” he demanded, but a surge of fury and frustration seared up through me, burning all need for that question away.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said tightly, ignoring the prickle of pain that came with my power. “I can open them.”

I grasped one of the little cages, fire flaring from my palm. The metal warped like the pop can melting the other night. With a yank, I opened a gaping hole in the interlocking bars.

With enough space now to pass by the toxic metals, the shadow within flitted past me without so much as a thank you. That was fine. I didn’t need one. Gritting my teeth, I grabbed the next cage and poured more of my searing power into my grasp.

“I don’t know if this is going to work on the big ones,” I gritted out. Those had solid walls, no bars. I had no idea how thick the metal was there.

“The computers,” Ruse said with a brisk gesture toward the other room. “Both of you, get on those devices and see what you can find. And if there’s nothing useful there, then—”

The door to the largest cage in the row swung open with a mechanical whir. None of us had been standing anywhere near it. I wrenched the cage I’d been holding open and jerked around, my hands rising to face some new threat, but the figure that emerged was completely the opposite.

A tall, slim blur of shadow solidified into Snap’s golden-haired, green-eyed form. He stared around him in a daze. My heart leapt, the impulse to engulf him in a hug ringing through me—but he was out now and there were still dozens more creatures to save. I settled for shooting him a smile of pure gratitude and reached for another cage.

Omen swiveled around, his body tensed, his lips curled as being surrounded by so much of the aversive metals was wearing on even his vast stores of strength. “Someone did that on purpose—someone knows we’re here. They’re watching us.” His head snapped around toward the guards. “Is there another room?”

“I… don’t think so,” the first guy said uncertainly.

Thorn frowned. “This space doesn’t seem large enough to account for the dimensions I charted from the outside. There should be more… there.” He pointed to the wall beyond the lab tables where a fridge and a couple of large cabinets stood. Clenching his jaw, he flexed his muscles—and charged straight at the wall.

I’d seen the warrior smash through concrete and brick before, but never anything quite like this. As his massive form crashed through not just plaster and beams but plates of silver and iron too, his flesh hissed. Smoke puffed up from the wounds. A groan escaped him, but he’d managed to bash a big enough hole for us to stare through into one more white room with desks, computers, charts and maps on the walls, and two figures in lab coats staring at us wide-eyed.

“You should leave here now,” one of them spat out, her hands clenched at her sides. “We’ve notified the rest of the Company. There’ll be dozens of people here ready to fight you off in a minute.”

She only cared about saving herself, then, not capturing us? Was that why they’d freed Snap—in the hopes we’d take just him and leave before we found them? I could respect that sense of self-preservation, but that didn’t mean I was going to cater to it.

“They’ll have the keys,” I said, with a wild motion to the guards. “Grab them, help me get these open.”

The two charmed men charged through the smashed opening to comply. As the scientists yelped in protest, I heaved another cage open by my