My pulse races as I step inside and let the door quietly click closed behind me, plunging me into darkness. I think about the girl in the closet and wonder if the basement will hold more fun surprises. I hesitate, but then a set of male voices echoes through the lobby and a bolt of fear goes through me. I want to run, but I force myself to tiptoe down the stairs.
My feet finally hit the floor. The scent of musty cardboard and gasoline fills the chilly air. After a moment, my eyes adjust to the dark, and the silhouette of storage crates and boxes set against a brick wall comes into view. I dash over and shove aside a stack of boxes, then climb behind them. I sink to my butt and wrap my arms tightly around my drawn-up knees. My whole body shakes, but not from the cold.
Someone screams.
The girl’s voice is so loud it’s like she’s right in front of me instead of a whole floor up. There’s the sound of a struggle, and then, just as quickly as it began, it’s over and the eerie quiet is back.
The girl in the closet—something awful has happened to her. And if she hadn’t been hiding there when I came in, that awful thing would have happened to me.
The door at the top of the stairs creaks open. I slap my hand over my mouth, stilling my breath even as my heart races. A shaft of light slants onto the basement floor. I shrink into the wall, trying to make myself invisible in the dark. Boots clomp down the stairs, then across the concrete. Through the space between the boxes I see someone pass by just feet from me, cracking his knuckles loudly. He stops. I hold my breath until my lungs feel like they’re going to explode. A silent tear trails down my cheek. This is it. This is how it ends.
Then the footsteps begin to retreat.
I don’t want to breathe, don’t trust myself to breathe until he’s clear of this room, but when his boots stomp up the stairs, my face grows so hot that my cheeks prickle with lack of oxygen, nausea overwhelming me until the need to exhale is too much. The air puffs out of my mouth in one huge rush.
The footsteps pause.
Shit, shit, double shit.
In a flash, a man’s face appears above the boxes. His mouth pulls into a grin when he sees me. The guy looks wild, feral, and ready to rip me apart with his bare hands.
I scream.
8
With one sweep of his forearm the guy shoves the heavy boxes aside and then yanks me up by my wrist.
“Let go!” I pull and twist against his grip, but his fingers clamp my arm like a vise. I dig my heels into the floor as he marches steadily across the basement, but he doesn’t so much as glance back at the girl he’s dragging behind him.
I drop to the ground, so it’s like my captor is a mom dragging a screaming toddler through a grocery store. He grunts and takes a few labored steps with my dead weight in tow before swinging me easily over his shoulder so that I’m upside down. Blood rushes to my head, my face mashed into his dirty canvas jacket.
My stomach warms with the promise of magic. I call it down to my fingertips only to come to the realization that moving objects and flying aren’t going to help me out of this particular situation. I try to summon the wind power I used on Jezebel in my room, but no matter how hard I concentrate, my body doesn’t react.
Panic takes over, and I give up on magic, straining instead to grab on to the banister as he carries me up the stairs. All I get for my effort is some serious palm burn. When we reach the top of the stairs, I try to latch on to the doorframe, but my fingers can’t catch purchase. The lobby carpet flashes beneath me, and then we burst into the pale outside light.
“Help! Somebody help me!” I scream.
“Quiet,” he orders, a hint of a Spanish accent coming through.
“Screw you!” I shout back.
“Have it your way.”
I open my mouth to scream again, but this time, no sound comes out. I scream at the top of my lungs. I scream until my face is red and hot and I can’t scream anymore. But the only sound is the distant crackle of the fires. Icy fear shoots down my spine.
I beat and pound against his back even though I know it’s a waste of effort, until he unceremoniously drops me into the back of a van. The wind is knocked out of me when I land on my injured arm, my mouth yawning open in a silent scream.
“You’re hurt,” he says.
He reaches for me, but I scuttle back on the dirty carpet, cradling my arm against my body.
Someone kicks me.
“Watch it!”
I gasp. The girl from the closet cowers next to a sweaty blond guy who looks no more than fifteen. They’ve both got their hands tied behind their back.
My captor grabs the fleshy part of my good arm and pulls me out of the van. I get my first good look at him in the dim light of dusk.
He’s got close-cropped dark hair, blue eyes, and straight, white teeth that stand out against his darkly tanned skin. He’s average height, but beneath his jacket, his shoulders are broad with muscle. He could be eighteen or twenty-eight. I don’t know.
He shrugs out of his jacket, and in one swift motion reaches back and pulls his shirt over his head, revealing a stomach absolutely ripped with muscle. A trail of hair leads from his belly button to the boxer briefs that peek out over his pants.
My God.
It takes me a half second to snap out of it and realize it’s not such a great thing when an angry prison inmate takes off his shirt in front of you.
I frantically search for an escape route, only to feel fabric wrap around my injured arm. He’s…binding the shirt over my wound.
I—I don’t get it.
I look up at him for an answer.
“I don’t want you bleeding all over my van,” he says gruffly.
“Yeah, right, Cruz.” I glance over to see a guy in a trucker hat coming around the corner with a cocky strut.
“You just wanted to show off for the chick.” This comes from a dark-skinned guy in a blood-splattered tank top who jogs up the alley.
“Laugh it up, pendejos,” Cruz answers, without so much as a glance over his shoulder. “I bagged three. That’s a record. How many did you get?”
Silence.
“Exactly,” he says. He pushes me back into the van, then slides the door closed. A moment later, he’s climbing into the driver’s seat. He turns the key in the ignition, and the engine rumbles. Latin club music fills the van.