The monsters fell back as the intersection reared up to meet me. Still, I wasn’t about to take anything for granted. I skidded and swerved to take the correct path, the safe path, while maintaining my momentum. The stone walls either side of me grew smooth, the ground unbroken.
This was the right path.
No monsters tracked me.
It was safe to take my paw off the accelerator.
I slowed my pace, biting back a cry as I allowed the Lycan to fall away like a winter coat no longer needed.
Fuck, now I was naked. Not good. My daggers were gone too, but it was fine. My Lycan was with me. There was no point hiding her now. If Henrik was watching, he’d have seen me in my beast form. The cat was out of the bag.
Focus, Quinn. Which way now? Shit. My mind was scrambled. Left or right at the next intersection? I couldn’t remember, because the image I’d been holding in my head was now blurred and messy. Was this a result of the shift?
I came to a halt, unsure and exhausted.
Howls and skitters, screeches and shrieks, grew closer. The monsters of this maze were recovering their equilibrium and waiting for me to fuck up again.
At this point it was fifty-fifty. I took a deep breath and made to take the right-hand path.
“Psst!”
My head whipped toward a dark-cloaked figure on the opposite path.
“This way,” she said. “Follow me.”
It was a risk, because if the cloaked figure was a monster luring me from the correct path, then I was fucked.
“Please, you saved my sister. Let me help you,” she said.
“The kid’s okay?”
“Yes.”
Mind made up, I jogged toward her. She shrugged off her cloak, revealing a slender build, curly dark hair, and a single eye in her forehead. She shoved the cloak at me. “Put this on. It’ll mask your scent a little.”
I obliged and followed as she led the way through the maze. “We have to be quick. The cloak will help, but the better trackers will still pick up on your scent.”
“The monsters?”
“No. The monsters are the least of your worries.”
“The oddities?”
Her jaw flexed. “Is that what they call us out there?” she asked.
“What is this place? Who are you?”
“This place is a prison and we’re the prisoners.” She headed straight at the next turn.
“Henrik’s prisoners?”
“Yes.”
“But why?”
“He gains power from us, from our existence, and this place is one big siphon. Every so often he sends in fresh blood. If the monsters don’t claim it, then my people do. If the offerings are lucky, they’re integrated; if not, then they provide sustenance or sport.”
The sustenance part was self-explanatory, but the integration part, not so much. “What do you mean when you say integrated?”
She shot me a quick glance. “Used for procreation or recreational sex. We keep outsiders as pets or food.”
“But you’re helping me.”
“You saved my sister’s life. The stupid child knows better than to go into the maze, but she must have followed me inside to hunt.”
“Hunt?”
She looked shifty.
“You were going to hunt me.”
“Yes. My family is hungry. I know the maze well and I didn’t want to risk the monsters getting to you. I planned to cut you off before you exited, if you exited, because then the second hunt would begin.”
We cut straight at the next intersection.
“Almost there,” she said. “They’ll be waiting at the exit but there is an underground escape route they don’t know about. A shortcut I made for myself.”
I had so many questions, so many things I needed to know. “Where did you come from? Faerie?”
Her smile was wry. “Faerie isn’t the only otherworld place of magic. Earth was once saturated with the stuff, and we…our kind weren’t called oddities back then. The world was much more than vampires, shifters, and demons. And there were bigger wars than the ones fought between those races.” She stopped and cocked her head. “Shit, they’re coming. Quick.” She tugged me toward the wall and then crouched, running her fingers along the edges of the flagstone to gain purchase before lifting it away to reveal roughly hewn steps beneath. “Go. The passage will lead you to the exit portal.”
“There’s an exit portal?” Relief washed over me. “Why don’t you come with me? You and your sister?”
She shook her head sadly. “The portal is lethal to our kind. A doorway we can never use.” Voices drifted down the path toward us. “Go!” She shoved me, almost angrily. “Go before I change my mind.”
Hugging the cloak close, I dropped into the darkness. My savior pulled the flagstone back into place, leaving me in darkness. I felt my way along the tunnel until the darkness grew gray and the ground tilted up, until I was scrabbling out of a hole into a clearing filled with soft amber light.
The portal was an oval glow a foot off the ground. This was my way out.
“There it is!” someone yelled.
I didn’t wait to see who.
I ran at the portal and leapt through.
I landed on all fours, palms pressed to smooth marble. I was back in the assembly hall with Henrik on his throne, gaze fixed hungrily on me.
His Mageri, Balthazar, stood to his left, beside what looked like a full-length mirror, except the glass was black. His expression was unreadable.
“That’s a magnificent beast you have,” Henrik finally said. “But your compassion almost got you killed.”
“My compassion is what saved my life.” I clutched my loaned cloak tighter around me. I was no stranger to being naked around Lycans, but for some reason, being naked around Henrik felt like a violation. “I completed your run, now where’s my father?”
“Safe,” Henrik said. “Your father and your escort were released as soon as you leapt through the portal.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it.” I headed for the exit, but Tarquin and Peter appeared to block my path. “What is this?” I glanced back at Henrik. “We had a deal. You said if I passed your run, you’d let us go.”
Henrik smirked. “I said I’d let your father go and release your pack from its debt. I never said anything about your freedom.”
The Faoladh inside me rose to the surface, infusing my voice with a powerful, gravelly resonance. “You have no grounds to keep me here, and if you try to hold me, there will be blood.”
Henrik sat forward in his seat. “I would like to see her again, in the flesh, not through a magic mirror.”
My gaze flicked to the dark mirror to his left. So that’s how he’d watched the events of The Run.
“Trust me, if I let her off the leash right now, she’ll be the last thing you see.”
Henrik didn’t look fazed; in fact, he leaned back in his seat to illustrate just how relaxed he was about my threat.
“Balthazar?” he said. “Would you care to explain?”
The Mageri cleared his throat. “This room is warded. Lycans can’t shift in here.”
“I’m not an ordinary Lycan.”
“But you are Lycan, and the novel beast inside you is connected to that,” Balthazar said. “But please, don’t take my word for it.”