Resolve swelled inside me as I met Omen’s eyes. “Ready when you are.”
I skirted pools of blood and gore on my way across the room, the stench of ruined human flesh making my stomach churn even more than it already was from my nerves.
Just focus on the doorway. Focus on the beings in need on the other side.
In just a few more minutes, I might have Snap with me again.
Ruse’s voice rose and fell in lilting tones as he and his increasingly charmed companion followed me. The doorway Omen had revealed led to a narrow flight of stairs down into a second, hidden basement.
As I descended, cool air licked over my skin, raising goosebumps on my arms. A chemical scent tickled my nose.
The room we emerged into had clearly been prepared in a rush. Crates and cardboard boxes had been shoved into stacks on one side somewhat haphazardly. The rest of the room was full of what looked like huge freestanding lockers, similar to the one the Company had brought to their hand-off with the collector. Their outsides gleamed stainless steel, but I’d be willing to stake my life and my love of curry on there being plenty of silver and pure iron embedded inside.
They were locked with keycode panels on the right side of the doors. Those gleamed less severe shades of gray, the base of the pad silver and the keys iron. No one on this mission would be able to touch them except me—or our charmed guard.
I jerked the guard over to one, my eyes watering in the glare of the overhead lights. Ruse came along too but with a grimace at the toxic vibes the metals must have been giving off around us.
“Do you know the codes?” I demanded.
“No,” the guard said. “None of us—they were so strict about that—but I believe—it should all be on the computers. I don’t know the password for that either—”
He’d motioned to a flashy, high-tech set-up on a desk in a corner beyond the cells. “Rex!” Omen barked.
The werewolf appeared a moment later with one of his lackeys at his side. “On it,” he said, and gave the guy a shove toward the computer.
Thanks to his tech guy’s expertise, we shouldn’t need to run off with any equipment, only grab the data before destroying it—and hopefully the data on every computer in Bane’s network as well. The lackey dropped into the chair and launched his digital assault with a clatter of the keyboard.
I turned back to Ruse and the guard. “They’ll figure out that we’re down here sooner rather than later, even with the doorway closed again. We should get this guy to divert the others—to say he’s seen us moving to a different part of the house.” Might as well make as much use of the dude as we could.
As Ruse cajoled the guard into giving frantic commands over his radio, the guy at the computer raised his hands with a brief whoop. “And we’re in! Codes for the cages, where are you…?” His fingers resumed their clattering.
Omen frowned at the blank steel sides of the cells. “How will we know which code is for which cage? They don’t appear to be conveniently numbered.” He snapped his fingers toward Ruse. “Get that man back over here.”
Ruse nudged the guard toward us. The man drew in a shaky breath. “How can I help?”
Omen’s fiery eyes had simmered down now that we’d reached our goal, but they lit with a new glint that might have been partly amused at the guard’s cooperative attitude. “These metal boxes have got to be labeled somehow. How do you tell which is which?”
The guard’s head bobbed in eager agreement. “There are dots on the sides of the keypads. Blue first and then red.”
I squinted at the edge of the panel and made out the little flecks of paint now that I knew to look for them. “This one is 3-5 then.” There had to be close to twenty of the things in this space. I glanced toward the computer guy. “Do you have those codes for us yet?”
“Working on it, working on it.” He tapped vigorously, sucking his lower lip under his teeth. The spines that poked from his hair at the nape of his neck quivered.
Thorn and Rex both vanished into the shadows, I assumed to fend off any guards who headed this way despite our efforts. I paced, my chest constricting.
Omen cast me a baleful look. “Too much excitement for you, mortal?”
“No,” I said. “I just want us—all of us—out of here.” He should know as well as I did that every passing second might mean fewer shadowkind freed—might mean our plan failed altogether. Last time we’d only managed to get him out before we’d had to run for our lives.
“There!” the computer guy said with obvious relief. “Okay, I’m going to start the virus uploading while I read out the numbers. The code for cage 3-5 is 6-9-0-2.”
I braced myself as I typed in the code. Omen had already moved to the next cell, dragging the guard with him. He bent close, flinching just at being close to the toxic metals, and read off the number on the keypad there. The metals in the keys would have burned him—or any of our other shadowkind companions—too badly for him to use them, but at least we could free the captives twice as fast if the guard was punching in codes too.
As the lock thudded and the cell door in front of me swung open, Ruse stepped up to peer inside with one of his warmest smiles but wary eyes. Shadowkind didn’t tend to be in a friendly state when they’d been locked away for who knew how long.
Even starker light filled the inner space from a panel up above. A streak of darkness quivered in the center of that light where the captive being had drawn its least substantial form in on itself. I couldn’t make out any of its features, but somehow just looking at it, I knew we hadn’t found Snap—not yet, anyway.
“Please, my friend, make your escape,” Ruse said, extending his hand. “We’re getting all of you out of here. And feel free to enact a little revenge on your captors as you flee.”
The patch of shadow hesitated and then sprang from its confines with a shudder of knobby haunches and a clicking of scales. I didn’t wait to see how it would react to its newfound freedom—I was already rushing to the next cell.
Omen and I volleyed numbers back and forth with the tech guy, and one by one the cell doors gaped open. After the first, I leapt to the next the moment the lock clicked over, not waiting to see who might be inside, as much as I might have wanted to.
A couple of the freed beings lingered in the room, watching our progress: an emaciated fae man hunched by the stack of boxes, shivering, and a shifter woman with cat-like irises prowled back and forth with darted looks toward the staircase as if she wasn’t convinced it was actually any safer up there than down here. The others vanished straight into the shadows.
“Don’t hang around here too long,” Ruse called to them. “Take a few jabs on your way out if you like, but don’t give these bastards a chance to snare you again.”
We were down to the last few cells when voices crackled from the charmed guard’s radio loud enough for me to hear. “The east basement! All units head there now!”
Shit. They’d realized we’d made it this far. “The rest of the numbers, fast!” I shouted, darting to another cell.
As the computer guy rattled the digits off, my fingers flew over the keypad. There were only two cells left. The guard hesitated as Omen urged him to open the cell they were at, and the hellhound shifter snarled.