Page 52 of Claimed

Then the man grinned, his eyes going a little unfocused. “Watch out for the monsters, pretty. They gobble up the weak.”

Monsters?She ripped her gaze away from him and kept moving. Was the old man being serious or had he lost his grip on reality? How long had these men been kept here—and who among them were still sane? She scanned the walls, picking out details in the shadows, but though there were several large entryways leading deeper into the building, there were no more cages. Plus, she wasn’t picking up on the distinctive reek of animals, just of men. If she could just?—

“Aiggghhh!” Another man suddenly shrieked from the center of the cages, the howl so unexpected that Nicki almost jumped out of her skin. His companions seemed to be used to it. The one on the right of the wailing man curled more tightly into a ball, the one on the left said something harsh in return. The man kept crying out, but it was clearly a common occurrence, and Nicki used the distraction to get into position.

She stopped as her toes hit something thick and metal—chains, but far too heavy to lift. Beside her on the table was a cattle prod, and her lip curled to see it. Barbarians.

But there wasn’t anything to cause noise, like cymbals or aluminum cans. She was going to have to cowgirl up and do her best work…and she had to do it now.

Drawing in a deep breath, she ran forward and started shouting.

Thirty-Eight

Stefan had eased through the doorway on the second floor when he heard Nicki’s cries. He was on an open catwalk that led to an enclosed overseers’ room, and though the door to that room was closed, it had a window. He saw the guard jerk up his head from a drowse and lean on the counter, distracted by the chaos below.

Then Stefan burst through the door.

The man half-turned as Stefan smashed into him, but the room was so tight that the guard couldn’t get his gun around in time. Stefan sent the weapon skittering across the small space with a fast, jabbing punch. The man wasn’t completely without protection though—Stefan’s first strike grazed his shoulder and he realized that the thick material overlaid even thicker muscle. The guard had a padded vest and steel-toed boots, and his hands were thick and beefy as he whirled.

He snarled in rage and rushed Stefan.

Stefan dodged his first attack and dived for the control board, rapidly scanning the buttons with the Turkish inscribed beneath them. Unfortunately, complete words had long since been worn off, leaving bare scraps. He hit a few buttons and nothing reacted in the room beyond.

The guard reacted, though. With a snarl he picked up a thick baton and instead of running with it at Stefan he flung it. It arced in a deadly rush and Stefan ducked, the beam crashing through the window and dropping a story to the floor below.

That’s when Stefan heard the howls.

His momentary distraction gave the guard an opening. He attacked, his thick, meaty hands clawing up Stefan’s clothing and locking around his neck. Stefan flung himself back onto the console and braced himself against it, but he couldn’t get enough purchase to dislodge the ox. The man dragged him over the controls and then Stefan saw it—a separate panel with newer buttons and levers. The doors were new, too—that’s where the correct buttons would be.

He didn’t waste any more time. He caught the man in a round-house punch that knocked him off balance long enough to allow Stefan to flip around. In rapid succession, he hit the buttons on the top and bottom level, everything he could find before he risked a glance out at Nicki again. She’d dashed off the table, yes, but she wasn’t alone.

The cages had all sprung open as well.

And deep within the bowels of the building, an unearthly roar sounded.

Thirty-Nine

Oh…shit.

After screaming songs from Broadway show tunes for all of fifteen seconds, Nicki saw Stefan burst into the overseer’s cubby—and then had seen the guard attack back, which certainly hadn’t been part of the plan.

She’d stopped shouting but stared hard as she watched Stefan and the guard go at each other, jolting out of her reverie only when a thick rod of some sort crashed through the window and came hurtling to the concrete floor. It landed with a loud clang that reverberated off the concrete walls.

The men went nuts in their cages, even more so than when they’d seen her appear, a dervish in their midst. Her gaze jumped from them to the guard and Stefan fighting above her. Then a metallic roar started and she whirled, turning with delight as she heard the immense garage doors lift up.

But that wasn’t the only sound of popping and scraping to accompany the screams and howls of the caged men.

She turned back long enough to see the men’s cages burst open like toy jack-in-the-boxes. Half the men surged out immediately, the other half lumbering more slowly. All of them were aiming for her, screaming their heads off.

“Shit!” She turned and sprang forward, scrambling off the table as the men surged across the concrete. They were all impaired to some degree, their movements slow and jerky, and she thanked God for whatever inhumane treatment they were receiving that had turned them into shambling zombies. But even shambling zombies were dangerous, and she’d given them a target. She dashed across the floor, the warehouse now lit up with whatever lights Stefan had hit, but her feet betrayed her, catching against another pile of chains. She sprawled to the floor a few feet shy of the open garage door, momentarily dazed.

And then…was that an actualroarshe heard, over the melee?

She didn’t have time to focus on that. She scrambled back, trying to regain her footing as the first man reached her. She got a vague sense of a tattooed, scarred face leering down at her as the prisoner lunged forward, but before he could touch her another man shoved him away, hard. This new man was younger than the first by a good ten years, and looked less wild. When he reached for her, she let him pull her up. “Run!” he shouted—once again his mouth forming the word oddly, for all that she could understand it easily.

But it was too late. The rest of the men were on them, and Nicki turned in the crush of them, dwarfed by the mass of humanity that rushed at her, either trying to stampede over her or grab her hair, her arms, her clothes.

One man swung at her and connected, and she crunched again to the pavement. As she struggled to get up, a surge of dizziness swamped her. She gasped, trying to focus, to fight—but her eyesight dimmed and her throat closed up.