“Say you love me!” Rose screamed.
“She was even worse when she was human,” he said to Layla. And with that, Mickey Petty turned his back on her and walked from the room. Stenciled to his jumpsuit was State Prisoner. His last thought trailed behind him. Worth every damn year.
Fury exploded in Rose’s mind.
Mickey had betrayed her. Mickey had killed her. Mickey had sent her to Hell.
The burn took her whole body, and she shook, gripping the immovable bars for support. She shrieked when her blood turned to acid in her veins. A rush of searing cold washed through her body, snapping and spinning her cells.
“Stay calm,” someone called, but they weren’t talking to her.
New bone stretched her toughening skin. She threw her head back as the change crunched her features. No more pretty eyes. No more winning smile. The transformation crackled across her other arm, took her belly, her pelvis, her weak leg. Made her strong.
Worse, Mickey said? She’d show him worse. All of her went bad.
Layla turned and asked the lead soldier, “Will the cage hold?”
“It should,” he said. But his mind answered, Thank God Talia and the kids are on their way to New York.
That was all the hope Rose needed. She launched herself horizontal and kicked a bar with the full force of her altered legs. The bar dented outward.
“She’s like a lizard hulk!” a soldier shouted.
Rose jacked her legs at the bar again. It squeaked into an outward triangle, just big enough. Mickey owed her an explanation.
Rose watched as Layla drew a gun from her waist and fired point-blank. Cold-blooded was what Layla was. Shoot a prisoner in a cage. No honor in that.
The soldiers followed Layla’s lead. Rose was dinged over and over again, but the only bullet that hurt was the one that pierced her skull. Even that didn’t slow her.
Rose wrenched the bar out of place. Where is he? She used the bar to bat Layla out of the way.
Where is that liar?
She bounded knuckles, feet, knuckles, feet through the door of a wide, open room dominated by a long conference table. Her husband was backed up to a wall, surrounded by soldiers, which she swatted aside while taking a bullet to the eye. Another bullet bounced around her teeth in her mouth.
Blood made her tongue lazy. Her nose itched from her new foul smell. Rotten. Like her love.
She snorted like a beast in Mickey’s face. “You did this to me.”
His jelly chin quivered, but he didn’t tuck it. Took him twelve years to find his spine.
“You always looked like this,” he said. “Now everyone else can see, too.”
Rose fought a sob and knew the wetness streaking her face was tears. She could feel the violence gathering around her. Men organizing to kill her, while they thought to protect her murderer. One shouted, “Lie facedown on the floor!”
The room was thick with their mind chatter. One man seemed in control of them all. Bring her down fast, heart and head, he thought.
“On the floor, now!”
Heart. Rose punched Mickey’s chest to see if he had one. It was a puny, slimy thing, just like him. Too bad it stopped.
Mickey dropped to the floor. Ungrateful man. And here she’d given him her best years.
Something hit her from behind and her left shoulder was alight with pain.
Use the Benelli, a soldier thought behind her.
Rose shuddered as eight successive blasts thudded into her side. She couldn’t feel her fingers. That whole side of her body had a sparkly singe kind of sensation that made breathing hard.
If they weren’t careful, they might just hurt her.
Mickey dead, now that Layla had to go, the one who started it all. No wonder the gate was so intent on getting rid of her. Layla was poison.
Rose struck the window above Mickey. The glass came out in one funny big piece, with a whole lot of wall attached to it. Another fat shot struck her back, and she was propelled outward, skidding across a wide veranda on a slick of her own blood.
She managed to climb on top of the railing, but shots drove her over the side and into the bushes at the building’s base.
“Circle around!” the leader shouted.
They were murderers, all of them, not to face her in a fair fight. If she died, her soul died, too. The end of Rose Petty. Forever. kat-a-kat-a-kat: Go back. Kill Layla Mathews. Now. The gate needn’t worry. Layla was going to die. And not because the gate told her to kill the bitch. This was personal now.
Rose made for the trees, loping fast on all fours. The ground exploded beside her, showering her with soil, but she kept going. This was Layla’s fault. Run. Hide. Heal.
Oh, Mickey.
That Layla was going to pay.
Chapter 18