Page 23 of Not Today, Satan
Tightening my jaw, I place my finger over his cracked lips. “I’m getting you out of here, but you need to keep quiet. Can you do that?”
He nods, his mouth whispering against my finger like a kiss. He’s taller than me, so I have to stand on my toes and press my body into his as I reach for his shackles. Every part of me that touches him buzzes, like he’s charged with electricity, and I struggle to maintain my focus on the locks instead of on how we fit together like those puzzles Father once brought back from Earth.
He rests his head on my shoulder and breathes, “Thank you,” into my ear.
Tingles shoot up my spine, and I drop the pin I’d loosened back into the lock. No wonder I’ve been warned to stay away from humans. Being this close to them is confusing. Even my own body won’t listen to me.
“Don’t thank me yet,” I say through clenched teeth, wrapping my fingers around the pin again. “And for the love of demons, stop talking.”
Father gave up on having locks on shackles when souldiers kept losing the keys. Most shadelings in this lot are too weak to release themselves anyway. All it takes is wiggling the heavy pins out of their latches and Nathan Reynolds drops forward, both of us collapsing under his sudden weight against my body. We slam to the ground, and the air blasts out of my lungs.
He stares down at me in surprise, and my mind flashes to the moment we were in this very position in my bedroom. How does this human keep ending up on top of me?
“Move.” I shove him off, and he rolls onto his back. When I’ve caught my breath, I stand and brush off my dress. He’s still panting on the ground, but his wounds are already starting to close. “Do you think you can walk?”
He nods and holds out his palm. I frown at it before understanding what he’s asking of me. Taking his hand, I pull him up with a grunt. He wavers on his feet, so I sling his arm over my shoulder.
Guess I’m doing the walking for both of us.
Although I don’t know this lot well, I do know that the exit we need is in the opposite direction from where I entered. We stagger together, Nathan Reynolds heavy as a bag of coal at my side.
We make it to the edge of Lot Thirteen without anyone stopping us. It helps that the demons here are preoccupied with so many shadelings. This is, sadly, one of our busier lots, but at least it works to our advantage now.
The exit mirrors the entrance—a massive floor-to-ceiling steel door so heavy no human could open it on their own. Demons can open them, though, which means I can get us through, save for the two souldiers guarding the door.
Dammit. We have this many guards, yet this random human managed to make it all the way to my room?
I bite my lip and shove Nathan Reynolds behind a boulder with a shadeling chained across the front and crouch beside him. “How did you get out of here before?”
He’s still half conscious, but he smirks a bloody grin. “I’m charming as hell. Ha ha. Get it?” The daggers I shoot at him with my eyes kill the giggle in his throat. He swallows, and his face grows serious. “But also, the guards liked me. They thought my jokes were funny, and they’d unchain me sometimes to give me a break. That day, I noticed the door wasn’t fully closed. So first I made them laugh, then I got them bickering over a riddle. They were so distracted arguing about the answer they didn’t notice me leaving.”
I blink. If that’s all it took to escape, maybe those souldiers did deserve their punishment. Just laughing at Nathan Reynolds’s cheesy jokes may have been enough for me to toss them into the river myself. “I think we’ll have to distract them again. But you can’t pull that same stunt. I’m sure they’re watching you extra carefully.”
What else can I use as a distraction?
My gaze lands on the shackles that tether the man in front of us to the boulder. Like Nathan Reynolds’s restraints, they’re held together with a metal pin behind the stone. I scrunch my face in thought.
I’m not sure my idea will work. And if it doesn’t, I’m calling attention to us and sealing my fate. But I didn’t come all this way to give up now.
I reach for the pin.
“What are you doing?” Nathan Reynolds whispers.
Shushing him, I pull the pin from the latch. “Watch.”
I hold my breath and wait, sweat building on my neck.
The moment the man’s chains fall, he staggers toward the souldiers—the same demons who torture him daily. He lets out a guttural yell and charges. They draw their batons and rush at him, hopping on his back and pinning him to the ground.
“Now,” I say.
Adrenaline surges through me as we dash for the doors, me half dragging him by the waist. I pull the handle with ease and push him through the gap, following close behind. The door slams at my back before the guards even look up.
Nathan Reynolds stops to catch his breath, but I yank him forward. “We have to keep going.”
I don’t stop to think about what I’ve done as we cross the bridge that leads to the outer banks and start up the staircase to the cliffs of Lapis.
It’s too late now, anyway. I’ve broken Father’s biggest rule by freeing a shadeling. I’m done for.
