Page 88 of Iron Crown

She looked like she hadn’t showered in weeks. She smelled like it, too, but now that the back doors were open, the place had aired out a little bit. Still, the scent of humanity clung to the place.

“You’re safe,” I said, reaching up to see if I could undo the latches and locks that kept her caged. But they didn’t open or budge. “We’re going to get you out.”

“Please,” she said, her big brown eyes terrified. I detected a faint Slavic accent. “Don’t send me back home. They will just send me back here.”

She shook her head, her body shaking, as she collapsed even more into herself.

“I think we need to call the police,” Blink said to Yuliya over the radio. “This is well beyond what we can handle.”

I looked around, as all of them seemed to shiver at that news. At least the ones that seemed to understand English.

“No!” One of them screamed. “No police! They will just cage us again! Please!”

“They will find us!”

“They will just kill us,” another wept.

“The police know we’re here,” came a loud, booming masculine voice. “They know. Theyalreadyknow. If they don’t, then someone else does, and they’ll throw us right back in here.”

He was a lithe, Hispanic-looking man, his curly black hair down to his shoulders, his eyes fierce.

“They make me fight in their death matches, and there are plenty of your cops and politicians there,” he huffed. “The rest of them?”

He gestured to the others in their own cages.

“They’re there to be beaten for show.” He shook his head.

Blink and I listened, Amadol went to someone else who was saying a prayer in a language I did not understand.

He came to his knees and quietly began speaking to them in that same language. After their conversation, he looked up at us.

“She’s confirming it. There’s an underground ring where they’ve been made to fight—if they’re lucky. Others are sold for the more… expected reasons.” Amadol was trying to be subtle, but we knew what he meant. “She doesn’t speak English, so I think they’re all telling the truth.”

“Let us out of these bars,” said the first fighter, the one with biceps the size of grapefruits, “And we’ll fare better on our own. Or die. Which is still better than what they have for us.”

Blink didn’t look away from him as he thought. Then he ran a palm over his face, scratching at his own jawline.

He looked at me and quietly said, “We can’t release them, because they will run. That’s no fate for them.”

He shook his head, stepping out.

He ran his hand through his hair, trying to figure out what to do.

There were at least fifty people in there, assuming everyone was alive and that none of the sleepers were dead.

“Yuliya,” he finally said, his voice low. “Can you get a transport bus here? Send at least a dozen others. Maybe Charlotte MacClanahan. She’s got a good head on her shoulders and can take care of people. She’ll know what to do.”

Then he came to me, his hands balled in fists. “We can’t leave them, which means our main element will have no backup whatsoever.”

“But…” I said, not sure what I wanted to say, other than I felt like they needed backup.

If not now, soon. Another shockingboomrocked the ground, and the shipping container tilted from the pressure of the explosion. Then several others followed in quick succession, as a plume of smoke reached up to the sky.

“Shit,” I said, my heart racing. My palm ached. “God damnit, I need to go.”

Another car came around, the driver’s window down. We all tensed as it slowed, our hands lightly grazing the places we kept weapons hidden on our bodies.

“That you guys?” The driver, an older man with gray hair and a big flannel jacket, asked, pointing to the distant smoke.

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