Cristo continued laughing maniacally, and I stepped on his hand even harder until I felt the bones crack beneath my boot.
“Fucking bitch,” he snarled.
Incensed, I fell on top of him and clasped my hands over his. With every ounce of power I had within me, I drew out his core light. It happened so fast that his eyes widened with shock. With the last drop, a white flash pulsed between our hands, followed by an audible snap.
“Give it back!” he shouted, realizing I’d stolen his immortality. “Give it back!”
His filthy light coursed through my body like a plague, and I instantly wanted to vomit. Instead, I stood up and wiped the blood off my hand.
“It’s not so funny when someone takes something from you, is it?”
With Cristo now a human and easier to subdue, Viktor led everyone out. Shepherd, however, stayed behind with the ex-Mage. When Viktor closed the door, he stood with his back to it, arms folded as a scream erupted from inside the room.
Not the scream of certain death. The scream of horrors untold.
Chapter 22
I followed Blue and Christian down a narrow hall. Niko remained with Viktor to gather evidence while we searched for the baby.
Christian stopped beneath a metal ladder that went through a round hole in the ceiling. Blue went first. I followed close behind and, once I reached the top, looked around at a kitchen with stainless-steel appliances.
“Who pays the electric bill?” I wondered aloud, not even certain how they managed to get electricity down here.
Christian emerged and stepped off the ladder. “Lucifer. Now let’s get to work. There are only three rooms up here. A bedroom, kitchen, and a study. I can’t hear anything, so I’ll check in here while you two figure out the rest.” He turned on his heel and began pulling at cabinets.
Blue gave me a curt nod. “Let’s go.” She cruised through the study and went straight into the bedroom. The doorways all faced each other, so you could walk straight through each room.
I entered the study, which had books filling the built-in shelves, and headed toward the wall on the right. I didn’t know what a hidden safe looked like, but I remembered the one at Darius’s home and what had triggered it to open. Books flew off the shelves as I littered the floor with the classics. None of the shelves or lower cabinets activated a secret door when I pushed and pulled on them, though I still wasn’t certain if the safe was a room or an actual safe. I ripped the TV out of its cubby and smashed it on the floor.
“In here!” Blue shouted. “Hurry!”
I raced into the room and gripped a wooden post on Cristo’s four-poster bed. He had some nerve tucking himself away in a room surrounded by wood paneling, gaudy paintings, satin sheets, and a liquor cabinet. Meanwhile, children were ripped away from their mothers and sold as slaves—all so this man could have a flat-screen TV. Where had all the money gone from his crimes? Had he blown it on vacations and prostitutes? Truth be told, I didn’t care. I’d tracked down criminals for years, and most of them either hoarded their money or wasted it on expensive restaurants and extravagant cars.
Blue yanked on a brass picture frame to the left of the bed. “Nobody bolts an ugly painting of a bridge to a wall. He doesn’t have any other paintings in the house but in here. Can you help me?”
When she dragged the nightstand away, the table lamp fell to the floor.
“Try pushing on it,” I said. “It’s probably a simple trick.”
Christian walked into the room, his stride purposeful. “Let me have a look.” He gripped the frame and effortlessly flung it across the room.
“Show-off,” I muttered.
We stared at a keypad on the wall, a handle to the right of it.
Blue swept her hair back and leaned in. “Six one six, nine five nine.”
Christian took his time pressing each number carefully. When finished, three beeps sounded, and a mechanism clicked behind the wall.
“That was too easy,” he muttered.
When the door opened, we slowly walked inside. A battery-operated lantern hung from a hook by the entrance, casting light on the mint-green walls and mahogany floor. To the left, a single-size bed and white blanket. Across from the door, a toy box overflowing with dollies, blankets, and stuffed animals. Crayons and drawings were scattered on the child-size table in the corner—the ghostly remnants of children.
Blue hurried to the crib on the right and peered in. I watched with bated breath as she bent over and reached inside. A foul stench burned my nose from the open trash can to the right, dirty diapers wide open inside. No wonder he’d hired someone to watch the children. He was completely incapable of caring for another individual. Just knowing he’d shut up some kids in here—no toilet or fresh air to breathe—made me want to haul ass back to that room and drive a dagger through his mortal heart.
Blue turned around, angry tears glittering in her sapphire eyes. She cradled the baby in her arms and gently rocked him as he stared listlessly. His dark golden skin lacked a healthy glow, and the only thing he had on was a baggy diaper.
“The mattress is soaking wet,” she said, her jaw clenched. “I bet he’s been crying for hours in here… all alone.”
The little guy made a dramatic grimace and began to wail. It broke my heart because I knew he was crying for his mother. Blue set him down on the bed and found a clean diaper.
The safe room was essentially a prison cell. Cristo must have used this room as a temporary holding tank until his female friend took the children off his hands.
Christian tapped his finger against the wall. “He soundproofed the walls.”
My eyes fell to the handle on the door. “Christian, why is there a keypad on the inside?”
“Perhaps he was afraid one of the children would shut him in.”
“The handle’s too high for a child to reach.”
“You’re going to be fine,” Blue said, her voice motherly and soothing. “Shh, shh. Everything’s all better now.”
The keypad suddenly began beeping, and a red light flashed. Christian stepped out of the room and punched a series of numbers. When the beeps drew closer together until they were a flutter of sound, a chill ran up my spine.
The lights in the building shut off. Seconds later, red lights popped on in each room.
Blue stood up with the baby in her arms. “What’s happening?”
“Feck me,” Christian growled. “Get out!”
Blue went out first. As I followed behind her, I noticed the panel above the keypad had digital numbers that were changing.
“What the hell is that?”
His nostrils flared. “A countdown.”
According to the numbers, we had less than five minutes to escape.
As they ran through the study, I pulled out my phone.
“Raven!” Christian’s black silhouette turned in my direction.
Viktor needed to know what was happening, and I didn’t have time to send a text to the team. I called him, and he answered immediately. “It’s a bomb, Viktor! We have four minutes before this place blows up. Get everyone out!”
My heart raced as I jogged toward Christian. Instead of descending the ladder, he opened a heavy door to the left, revealing an outside tunnel.
The baby screeched as Blue jostled him with each step. She cradled his head to reduce the bouncing, and when we reached the end of the hall, she stopped and tucked him inside her coat.
“Be quiet, sweet baby,” she said, putting a pacifier into his mouth.
“Is this how you guys came in? Are there any traps?” I asked Christian.
He pulled the collar of his shirt aside and showed me a stain of blood on his chest, the wound healed. “I took one for the team. Left is a dead end. To the right is an open room, but it’s black as night.”
“Sounds familiar. Any pillars?”
“None straight ahead. But there’s an opening in the floor in two places. Traps to the left and right, so we’ll have to jump over the holes.”
I swallowed hard. “How far of a jump?”
“Christian, I can’t jump with the baby,” Blue said. “It was hard enough by myself.”
He reached out. “Give him to me.”
She recoiled.
“For feck’s sake, I’m not going to drop him.”
When Christian collected the baby in his strong arms, my nonfunctioning ovaries sprang to life. He held the infant as if he’d held one a million times. When he brushed his thumb tenderly across the little guy’s cheek, that protective image made my heart clench.
“I’ll go first,” he said. “Follow behind me, and keep running until I say otherwise.”
We followed his lead, and the heavy door behind us eventually closed, immersing us in darkness. I could vaguely make out the grainy image of his shape in front of me.
“Stop!” he shouted, and then silence when he jumped. Christian landed with ease, the soles of his shoes sliding across the dirty floor only a fraction. “It’s fifteen feet in front of you. There are traps on either side, so there’s no way around it. Raven, you go first.”
The hole in the floor looked like an inky pool of water.
“Time’s ticking, lass.”
I pushed down my fears and ran to the edge before jumping. I was suspended in the air for only a second or two before my boots hit the ground and I rolled over my shoulder.