Chapter 39

Oh…shit.

After screaming songs from Broadway show tunes for all of fifteen seconds, Nicki saw Stefan burst into the overseer's cubby—and then had seen the guard attack back, which certainly hadn't been part of the plan.

She'd stopped shouting but stared hard as she watched Stefan and the guard go at each other, jolting out of her reverie only when a thick rod of some sort crashed through the window and came hurtling to the concrete floor. It landed with a loud clang that reverberated off the concrete walls.

The men went nuts in their cages, even more so than when they'd seen her appear, a dervish in their midst. Her gaze jumped from them to the guard and Stefan fighting above her. Then a metallic roar started and she whirled, turning with delight as she heard the immense garage doors lift up.

But that wasn't the only sound of popping and scraping to accompany the screams and howls of the caged men.

She turned back long enough to see the men's cages burst open like toy jack-in-the-boxes. Half the men surged out immediately, the other half lumbering more slowly. All of them were aiming for her, screaming their heads off.

"Shit!" She turned and sprang forward, scrambling off the table as the men surged across the concrete. They were all impaired to some degree, their movements slow and jerky, and she thanked God for whatever inhumane treatment they were receiving that had turned them into shambling zombies. But even shambling zombies were dangerous, and she'd given them a target. She dashed across the floor, the warehouse now lit up with whatever lights Stefan had hit, but her feet betrayed her, catching against another pile of chains. She sprawled to the floor a few feet shy of the open garage door, momentarily dazed.

And then…was that an actual roar she heard, over the melee?

She didn't have time to focus on that. She scrambled back, trying to regain her footing as the first man reached her. She got a vague sense of a tattooed, scarred face leering down at her as the prisoner lunged forward, but before he could touch her another man shoved him away, hard. This new man was younger than the first by a good ten years, and looked less wild. When he reached for her, she let him pull her up. "Run!" he shouted—once again his mouth forming the word oddly, for all that she could understand it easily.

But it was too late. The rest of the men were on them, and Nicki turned in the crush of them, dwarfed by the mass of humanity that rushed at her, either trying to stampede over her or grab her hair, her arms, her clothes.

One man swung at her and connected, and she crunched again to the pavement. As she struggled to get up, a surge of dizziness swamped her. She gasped, trying to focus, to fight—but her eyesight dimmed and her throat closed up.

She went down a third time.