“Down!” she shouts, and I let my legs collapse beneath me.
My butt hits the top step, and then she’s shooting.
The bullets fly over my head as I bounce down a few more steps, and I hear a gurgled cry from the man who’s been chasing me.
I duck my head, sliding down a couple more stairs, as the woman shoots once more.
My ears are ringing, but I still hear the thud of a body hitting the floor behind me.
I slide to a stop and open my eyes.
The woman is still standing on the landing, where the flight turns back to go down to the second floor, and from my spot on the steps, we’re nearly eye level.
She lowers her gun and smirks at me. “Cassandra, I presume?”
A noise between a laugh and sob bursts out of me, and I scramble down the last few steps and throw my arms around the woman.
Her body tenses against mine, and I quickly let go and step back. “Sorry. Sorry.” I brush the rogue tears off my face, forgetting and wincing at my bruised cheek. “You must be Karmine. It’s really nice to meet you.” I sniffle.
The intense woman looks at me like she isn’t quite sure what to do with me, then she lifts a radio to her mouth.
The noise of gunfire downstairs has intensified, but I still hear her words.
“I have the butterfly.”
CHAPTER 117
Hans
Karmine’s voice plays through my earpiece, and the world quiets around me.
Cassandra is safe.
I fill my lungs with air.
I won’t be okay until she’s in my arms. But that’s fine. Because I still have some people to kill.
A large man peeks out from around a doorway ahead of me.
Like this guy.
The big man who carried my Cassandra, kicking and screaming, onto that fucking plane ducks back into the room he’s hiding in.
He starts to shut the door like a fucking coward.
I take two sprinting steps, then drop into a baseball slide.
My boots hit the door just as it’s about to close, forcing it to swing open as I slide into the room.
These stupid marble floors are good for something.
My target staggers backward from the door slamming into his shoulder.
He’s holding a gun, but it’s not at the ready.
Mine is.
My first shot goes into his right shoulder. Where ball meets socket.
He drops the gun.
My second shot goes through his right hip. Again, exactly where the joint meets.
It’s a lot of pain for the body to stand against. Especially a body as big as his.
He drops to his knees.
Anger and disbelief contort his features.
I switch my gun into my left hand.
“You touched what’s mine.” I reach behind my back with my right hand.
“And now you’ll pay.” My fingers close around the grip of the katana secured to my back.
It pulls free from the sheath with a satisfying swoosh.
The man’s eyes widen. And his mouth opens. And then he helpfully holds his hands up for me.
My blade arcs down between us, and I sever his hands from his body.
Nobody touches my Butterfly.
The man screams.
And I breathe a little bit easier.
Turning my back to him, I step out of the room and shut the door behind me, but not before locking the handle.
He’ll bleed out soon enough.
CHAPTER 118
Cassie
Karmine pulls a second gun from a holster at her hip. “Here.”
I look at it and then at her. “Um, I don’t know—”
She shakes the handle end toward me in a hurry-up motion. “Just point and shoot. No matter what, it’s gonna work better than a chunk of fucking mirror.”
Oh. Right.
I drop the towel-wrapped mirror piece on the steps and take the gun.
Karmine flips a little thing on the side of the gun, exposing a little red dot. “It’s live and loaded. Don’t point it at my back, and follow me.”
I nod and grip the gun tightly.
Karmine spins, and I admire how perfect her braid is as I follow her down the steps.
My feet are sore from running on these stupid hard floors, my butt hurts from the stupid stairs, my face aches, and my scalp is still throbbing, but being here, in the presence of this badass woman, I feel a little badass myself.
Karmine stops at the open entrance to the second level, standing guard, and waves me to go past her down the stairs.
I hurry down the steps on my bare feet and mentally pat myself on the back for taking my socks off. Boots would obviously be better, but I never would have made it to the stairs, to Karmine, if I was sliding all over the place.
I wait on the middle landing for Karmine to pass me, then follow her again.
The noise is louder down here. So loud I can feel the vibrations.
It feels like I’ve been dropped into the middle of an action movie.
The staircase we’re on isn’t a grand one ending in a foyer, but rather one that spits us out in the center of the house, in the middle of that endless hallway.
We’re almost to the main level, and all I can see from here is a knocked-over decorative table next to a closed door and then the hallway disappearing on either side.
I’m right behind Karmine, and I take the last step without seeing the shattered porcelain all over the floor.
Little shards dig into the soles of my feet, but before I can recoil—or cry—the door opposite us flies open.
Karmine shoves me to the side just as bullets slam into the stairs we just descended.
“Go down!” Karmine shouts at me as she flattens herself against the wall, returning fire.
Down?
I look behind me and see that the stairs continue down into the basement.
Oh hell no.
I hesitate for one second, but then a hailstorm of bullets chips away at the steps above and I decide the basement is a perfectly fine place to go.
The first step sends bolts of pain through my feet.
I want so badly to reach down and brush away the pieces that are embedding themselves into my feet, but when Karmine shouts something about backup, I decide to suck it the fuck up and keep going.
Hans ran after me with a bullet hole in his leg. I can walk with some broken pottery in my feet.
I slip on the final step, my soles now slick with blood, but I keep my balance and peer around the edge of the wall.
A gross, prickling feeling covers my body.
This level isn’t like the other ones. Instead of marble and chandeliers, the floors and walls are smooth cement, and the ceiling has recessed lighting, giving off a dim glow. And instead of one long hallway, this one breaks off in three directions. Left, right, or straight. And after a few yards, the halls turn. Like they were designed to be a jagged maze.
This just went from action movie to horror film.
I have to fight against the urge to curl up in the corner and wait for Hans.
He knows I’m here. Karmine knows where I went. Once again, I just need to keep myself intact until Hans can find me.
“Fuck you!” Karmine’s shout echoes down the stairs, and I rock paper scissors in my mind and take off to the left.
I try to shift my weight off the balls of my feet, but pretty much my entire body is sore, so I end up hobbling.