Page 52 of Inside the Wicked

I killed him.

I don’t deserve to look at Ana, but I have to know she’s safe. The only light in this hell is that she’s alone again. So still and peaceful.

The gun is in my hand one second, then flying across the short space to crack off Micah’s skull the next. He doesn’t expect it, and I lunge for him, slamming him to the wall. I get one good punch across his jaw before I’m pulled off by two guys. One lands a punch to my gut, the other across my face, until I’m spitting blood on the floor like Micah, but it was fucking worth it.

“You’re going to pay for that,” Micah snarls, peeling himself up.

I don’t care. About anything anymore. Ana will find a way out. Xoid will keep her safe even if I never get back to her. It’s a pitiful, weak thought. I think about how she would scold me for it, and I laugh. I haven’t heard the sound from myself in months, and though it’s delirious and strange, I laugh some more.

They’re about to unleash their anger on me, and I brace myself for it, but the impact slamming into me doesn’t come from anyone in the room. It comes from the roomitself. Stone, debris, and clouds of smoke. I come to fairly quickly—at least I think I do. I push a slab of rock off my legs, and I groan, getting to my hands and knees.

Someone steps over the small mounds of crumbled wall, and I look up. I don’t know who the fuck I’m staring at, but he plucks the cigarette from his mouth with a tattooed hand, strollingin here like he’s arrived fashionably late to a summer fucking barbecue.

“Apologies for the dramatic entrance. I have a thing for explosives—gets the chaos going,” he says, so lax and amused, but not with the kind of sadism Micah possesses.

“Who the fuck are you?” I wheeze, getting to my feet.

“My name is Silas Balenheizer.”

My blood runs cold. I don’t realize we’re not alone until he holds out a hand and someone places a gun in it. To my shock, he extends it to me.

“I guess you could say a little bird sent me.”

The impact of the blast was nothing compared to what slams into me at this.

Oh Ana, what the hell have you been up to?

I don’t have time to consider the impossibly of how Ana managed to get a Balenheizer on her side. “Where the fuck did he go?” I snarl, looking around, but Micah’s body isn’t in the debris.

“Who?” Silas asks, taking another drag of his cigarette.

Ignoring him, I stumble over the debris and check down the halls.That damned rat.

“Infiltrating this place was like walking into a child’s playground. But I imagine there will be backup soon, and I don’t like wasting unnecessary resources,” Silas says.

I store Micah’s name high on my list of people to find and kill. He might even have earned himself a spot above Forthson.

Silas has guys around us, but some of Lanshall’s are still around. We duck behind walls when shots are fired at us. I don’t wait around for anyone else to get the job done—I have three fucking months’ worth of pent-up rage to unleash, and so I take my chances after a quick look to determine there are three motherfuckers at the end of the hall.

Ducking out, I time my maneuver perfectly to hit one guy between the eyes when he tries to get a gauge on my position. The other two are on my side of the wall, a better angle for Silas and his guys, but I step out brazenly, darting across to the wall as they fire at me. I keep moving so they can’t get an aim, advancing before they can scramble an accurate shot, until they’re swallowing my bullets instead.

“Glad to see you’re not all talk, Kaiser,” Silas says. He finishes his cigarette and flicks it onto one of the bodies. Their clothes catch flame, and he walks past them without a care in the world. “There’s more where that bomb came from, so we’d better get far and fast.”

CHAPTER 23

Anastasia

Igroan, waking as if I partied far too hard last night.Did I drink too much at Lumina?

No ... I never got inside.

I lick my bone-dry lips and try to gather some moisture in my mouth, which feels like sandpaper. Whatever they used to knock me out was powerful shit. My panic is there, it’s just that my body has all the motivation of a rock to move, so I can’t lunge up and start pounding on the metal door.

Metal.

Where the fuck am I?

The walls are cushioned in what I think is soundproof foam.

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