Page 164 of Taken By the Fae

“Barely.”

He nods toward the stairwell. “Let’s go. We’re almost there.”

We hurry down the stairs, trying to keep quiet in doing so. Max stops at the door, looking over at me and pressing his finger to his lips. I nod, and he opens the door a crack.He turns toward me and holds up two fingers. Two guards are standing outside the door. I’d bet at least two more are inside the room.

“What’s the plan?” I whisper.

He shrugs. “Kick some ass?”

I glare at him. “Considering I can’t shift at all and you can’t in here, we’ll have to fight through them.” I sigh, leaning my head against the wall. Being human has its pitfalls. I’m about ready to collapse. All the fighting and running is knocking the energy out of me.

“You can stay here,” he offers. “I’ll go in, get the device, and then you and I can finally leave this place behind. What a great story we’ll have to tell when we get home.”

Home. My chest tightens. Our friends are probably looking for us.

“I can’t let you go alone.”

“I’ll be two minutes, tops.”

I bite my lip. I don’t have enough fight left in me to be anything more than dead weight. “You’re sure?”

He just grins at me.

I exhale hard. “Fine. But hurry.”

“So bossy,” he mutters, shaking his head before he throws the door open and charges toward the guards. They pull out cattle prods, zapping them to life, but Max is faster, smacking their heads together before they can touch him.

“Easy peasy,” Max calls out, probably for my benefit—or his amusement.

I open the door wider and step into the hallway as Max swipes a card off the one guard’s belt and taps it against the panel on the door. A light above it flashes green and the lock flips open. Max rubs his hands together, smiling like a kid in a toy store, and kicks the door open.

Another alarm goes off, and the room Max broke into is loud with what sounds like heavy objects being tossed around. I can only imagine those heavy objects are people, and Max is taking care of business in the most violent way possible.

I gasp when he steps back into the hallway two minutes later. “That was fast.”

“Time to go, blondie,” he says in a harsh tone, pocketing the remote detonator. “Now.”

I couldn’t agree more.

We return to the stairwell and continue downward. The alarms blaring everywhere have become background sound as we stomp down the stairs as fast as possible. Max is slowing down, but I don’t have energy to offer him. Once we’re out of here, he can go to a feeder unit and recharge.

Pushing through a set of double doors on the ground floor, we stop dead in our tracks. There, at the end of the long hallway, is a door to the outside.

Max turns to me. “Race you,” he offers with a faint smirk.

“Funny,” I mutter as we both start running. “Get ready to press that button,” I force out in between puffs of air.

“Trust me, I’ve been ready since the moment I woke up here.”

On that, we’re the same.

A door opens halfway down the hall and three men step out, blocking our path to freedom. I slide to a stop, and Max pulls me back a few strides.

“Son of a bitch,” he growls under his breath as the door we came through opens and several more guards fill the hallway.

We’re surrounded.

ChapterForty-Six

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