Page 21 of Forked Tongues Are Fun
“There it is,” Salt and Pepper muttered.
I grasped the heavy wooden leg of the chair and scooted it to the side so I could crawl underneath.
The safe clicked closed. “Since you’re going to deal with Petra, too, I’ll add an extra zero to what I owe you,” Salt and Pepper said.
I dove under the table and slid the chair back into place just as he turned from the safe.
“That won’t be necessary.” The other shifter turned and fired.
The sound rang all the way to the quick of my bones. My hands shot to my ears. I was sure I cried out, but I couldn’t hear shit.
Salt and Pepper listed to his side and clutched his shoulder, his eyes wide and accusing as he stared at the other shifter. I thought he might’ve said something, but I didn’t know what.
The other shifter, the one with the gun, appeared at the table’s side and then passed by.”Your daughter would make a shitty queen, Oliver.”
“Then why kill me?” Salt and Pepper—Oliver—ground out.
“Because you’re here.” Then he fired again, but Oliver dodged and threw himself at the wall next to the safe. He disappeared through a door-shaped opening that led into darkness, a door that hadn’t been there seconds ago.
The shooter followed, giving me another glimpse of his back, of the finely cut dark hair on his neck. Something scratched at the back of my brain, a thought about him that wouldn’t quite form before he disappeared inside.
I stared after the two shifters, unblinking, peering into the darkness beyond the door. My dragon-fire-rich blood crashed between my ears. A call like a siren’s came from down there, drifting toward me on a cool, tantalizing breeze, beckoning me closer. There was something down there I needed. Whatever it was collected at my belly button, burrowed inside, and yanked. Hard.
But what I needed was Asa, and he was stuck in a birdcage hanging from a ceiling, just minutes away from a sacrifice to these beastly stovetops. I had the key. No, I had four keys, and a persistent clawing at my gut told me they were all the wrong ones.
Something was down there. Not Asa, but maybe something that could help. Something that beat in time with my heart.
I gasped. I could feel it. Whatever connection lurked down there grew roots underneath my skin, coiled around my ribs, and pulled again. I had to follow. I couldn’t follow. I didn’t have time to. But Ihadto.
I knocked the chair out of my way and flew toward the darkness inside the secret door. This was a mistake on so many levels. I shouldnotbe setting my heel on the first step inside, damp with moisture and a trickle of blood, down into a black pit, away from Asa, and following behind a shifter with a gun. But the compulsion was too powerful that it lit me up from within. I hissed through my teeth, squeezing my eyes shut, and tried to resist. I couldn’t though. I was too weak.
“Fffuck,” I said on a half sob.
I was too weak to resist. And I hated it. I’d come all this way to save my baby brother just to fail because I was. Too. Weak.
I hated myself even more with every step I took down. A soft buttery-yellow glow lit a narrow stone hallway to my right and highlighted the splotches of blood leading that way. I went straight, because miracle of miracles, I still had a trace of sense left.
At the bottom of the steps, a long, wide hall stretched in front of me, lit with wall sconces between tall, arched doorways with iron bars. Cages, I realized.
A rush of desperate hope pushed me forward, splashing through small puddles and leaping over the larger ones. Something down here called to me with a powerful, silent pull, and it stirred a steady hum between my legs. Either Oliver or the one with the gun had implied the three shifters were dead, but both of them were too shady to believe. So were the three shifters alive? I didn’t even know them, had only just met them today, but I knew they were good. A shock, really, since I’d thought all dragon shifters were savage, power-hungry beasts, but those three had helped me. And no, I didn’t just mean the insatiable hunger between my legs. Though, yes, that too. But they’d risked their lives to save me, to help me when very few ofanyspecies ever cared enough to do that.
The cages I passed were empty as far as I could tell. Still, the unexplainable connection yanked me forward until—
“Yara.”
The voice came from my right, raspy and tired, and the sound of it loosened my chest so I could draw a breath. The first in a while, it seemed. Then I saw them, the three of them, locked inside a single cage, unhurt, but with a fierce, pissed-off gleam in their shifter eyes. Vance peered at me through the bars with his almost translucent stare as I closed the distance quickly.
“Hi,” I said lamely on a sigh of relief.
Tavis and Calhoun prowled closer from the back, a kind smile blossoming on Tavis’s face and a crafty smirk all over Calhoun’s.
“I knew you’d come to our rescue, sweetheart,” he said, a lock of dark hair spilling down onto his forehead.
“Are you all right, Yara?” Tavis asked.
“I was about to ask you three that,” I said as I rushed to the lock on the wall next to the cage, “since you’re the ones stuck in a cage.”
“You’ll need keys,” Vance said.
