Wild Wolf (Darkmore Penitentiary Book 4)

Mayhem was the prettiest word I knew, and I embodied it now, my little friends giggling in the bag that was swinging from my fist as I selected one of the feisty fire bombs and preparing to toss it at a nasty-looking man who had just slapped a duck and was frantically gathering things into his briefcase. What had that duck ever done to him? It flapped away with a quack of outrage and I saluted it.

“Catch!” I yelled and the man’s hands flew out automatically to snatch the pretty little fire bomb from the air. My giggly friend went boom, blasting the man into the arms of the stars and beyond, my air shield only just snapping over me in time to protect me from the flames and accompanying spray of body parts.

“Sin!” Ethan barked from behind me and I whirled like a ballet dancer, hurling a fistful of flames into the surrounding marketplace. Stalls were set ablaze, the many cursed and dangerous wares exploding in flashes of colour, and screams swirled through the air like choir music while blood flew and chaos descended. This was exactly how I pictured Christmas morning, flash-bangs and adrenaline galore.

“Sin.” Ethan grabbed me by the shoulder as my gaze locked on a woman who was clutching a selection of dried-up fingers in her arms, racing for freedom. Where did she get those fingers? There weren’t any nice people who touted fingers about like that so she had to be bad to the bone.

“One second, my old chum,” I said to Ethan then bowled my latest fire bomb after the woman, the little explosive bouncing at her heels then going bang with an explosion that made my ears ring. “Damn, I love that sound, the way it shakes and shudders my eardrum is a special kind of treat.” I stuck a finger in my ear and Ethan grabbed me by the shoulders, forcing me to look at him.

“Did you take these bombs from Rosalie?” he snarled.

“I didn’t not take them. But don’t worry, sugar, I left her something better in their place. She’ll thank me for it later. Now let’s get inside and blow this shit hole to kingdom bum.”

“Come,” he corrected me.

“Later baked potata, I can’t just go blowing my load right now, I’m saving it for the after party.” I skipped away from him, racing toward a doorway where a few guards were gathering their wits. They turned to us, magic crackling at their fingertips as they prepared to fight, but I’d already rolled one of my friends between their legs and as I pointed it out, their eyes bugged a second before they were blasted to hell. I raced inside while pieces of them rained down around me like dandelion seeds caught in a summer breeze.

“Where’s Hastings?” Ethan cursed, looking around for our little guard friend.

“Hiding under a table probably. Let him be. He’s just a babe. We’ll fetch him later,” I said and Ethan nodded, not wasting any more time as we forged on.

Magic blasted our way from the fleeing crowd in the entranceway and I wrapped a tight air shield around us, their strikes of air, water, fire and earth not nearly powerful enough to break through. Ethan started blasting Fae with water, sending them flying into walls and freezing them in place to clear our path.

I cast a fire-nado into existence, sending it out to sweep through the crowd and cause untold destruction. The Wolfy boy’s strikes were efficient and brutal where mine were wild and unpredictable, making us an unstoppable force united. I tossed a giggly bomb onto the stairway that people were fleeing up and the whole structure groaned as I blasted a hole in it.

“We have to get our goods,” a pretty boy with fluffy gold hair called to an older gentleman, grabbing his arm and towing him towards a concealed door. He shoved it open, revealing a set of steps heading underground and they slipped away down it like moles down a hole.

I caught Ethan’s arm as he stabbed an ugly man with an ice blade who had made a bid to kill him, tossing the body away and shaking my friend. “I am feeling very squid-like all of a sudden.”

“What?” he blurted, trying to turn from me to engage a group of Fae who were running at us with roars of anger and magic building in their palms. I tossed a blast of fire their way and their screams zig-zagged through the air while my eyes remained on Ethan’s shiny blues.

“I have an inkling, see?” I shoved him toward the open doorway. “Down there’s where they keep the good stuff, I reckon.” I tossed him through the door and cast an air shield behind us so no one could follow before sprinting down the stairs into the dark. And it was dark. As dark as an unwelcoming asscrack, but my inkles were growing and I knew we were going to find ourselves somewhere real interesting in a moment or three.

As we wound through tight corridors, a sound grew up ahead, a cacophony of sorts, birds and monkeys and shrieking animals I couldn’t put a name to. All kinds of wild things waiting for me to reach ‘em.

My heart pumped harder as I burst through a door, finding cage upon cage, stacked as high as high could go. There were rows of them, stretching away into the nevermore and I growled ferally as I took in the magical creatures contained within bars. I saw me in there. That crow-looking thing, I could see my own eyes in its eyes. Its struggle my struggle. I’d been right where he’d been. A crow-thing in a cage, all sad and yearning to be free. To do what crow-things did best and be crow-like.

“Fuck these fucking fucklings,” I hissed, aiming my ire at the people who had done this. Not my crow-thing. Or that horse-goat over there. Nor that group of three-legged celery-looking birds in that corner.

The snap of a lock made me turn and I found my Ethy-baby breaking open a cage with a wedge of ice in his hand.

“I knew I liked you for a reason, Wolf boy,” I purred. “You see in these creatures what I see. You’re just like that pygmy shrew-thing over there. You resemble him and he resembles you.”

Ethan’s gaze slid to the shrew in question. It had four bucked teeth protruding from its mouth and eyes that stared in different directions.

“You’re one and the same,” I whispered, then clapped his scowly face on the cheek and turned to start breaking open cages.

I broke my crow-thing free first and he squawked his thanks, flying up to land on my shoulder. I smiled my biggest smile at him. He had a beak that was brightest gold and his eyes were a dreamy pool of violet, but the rest of him was jet black, his feathers as smooth as silk.

“I love you, Crow-thing, I truly do.” I kissed him quick then turned to release his friends. My friends. Our friends. We were an army now. An angry army of animal-things with Ethan and I mere soldiers in their battalion.

“Rise!” I called as I cracked another cage open with air magic and released a bunch of mini-pony-cat-things. “Be free. And kill – kill your captors! Kill them all!”

Our system was efficient, the cages snapping open time and again until the corridor was alive with running creatures. I ran with them, skipping and spinning as I went, as majestic as the magical animals I danced with. We turned a corner and found a line of guards running our way, shouts of alarm escaping them as the hoard of animals galloped their way.

A group of winged monkey-things slammed into the first guard, shrieking and clawing at his face. The next was mowed down by a horned tiger-thing and the last met with my own fury, fire swirling away from me and consuming the woman’s head, eating her up until she was gone, gone, gone.

Ethan started cracking open more cages and I helped him, focusing on my air magic and sending it spiralling down the narrow corridor, ripping the doors clean off to free our new friends.

Crow-thing squawked on my shoulder and I squawked in response, following a line of rabbit-things towards the next turn. The corridor we stepped into was darker here, the cages bigger. Things leered out of them, big dangerous beasties with hungry eyes and sharp teeth.

“Not these,” Ethan said, catching my arm.

“Oh but these are the killers of the crop,” I purred. “They mirror our souls so very well. We can’t leave them here to rot.”

I paused before a bear-like creature with antlers and curved canines that hung from its mouth.

“That’s a corlash bear,” Ethan breathed in warning, telling me this animal was deadly.

It growled at me in warning and my shivers were timbered.

“Oh yes,” I whispered. “I wouldn’t leave you here in the dark, new friend.” I broke the lock on his cage, opening it wide and stepping back.

Ethan gripped my arm tighter, tugging me aside as the bear-thing stepped out into freedom, sniffing the air and assessing the two of us. He towered over us both, his eyes full of rage, but he didn’t turn it on us, an understanding passing from one monster to another. He turned and raced away up the corridor and I blasted more cages open, letting the bigger beasties run after him, beasts with claws and fangs and feral needs that would be unleashed upon the wicked Fae who lurked in this here hell hole.

“Wilder,” a voice rasped behind me and I whirled around with Ethan, finding a cage I’d missed. A big one. One that was as dark as the pits of death and I wondered if the thing inside it was eating the light around it.

I squinted into the gloom, my goosebumps goosing as I sought out the monster within which knew my name. He lunged, a hairy arm with a clawed hand swinging for me through the bars and slashing against my air shield. I saw his face as he stepped out of the gloom, this hulking creature like a yeti, only worse than that. Far worse with his gnarled face and long limbs. But I knew his features, recognised them from the depths of my mind.

“Gustard?” Ethan balked, recognising him too. “What happened to you?”

If this had happened to Gustard then what the fudge had happened to our Lion boy? I glanced at the surrounding cages but didn’t spot a yeti-Roary anywhere so that was good. Unless it was bad.

“Shadowbrook,” Gustard hissed, his eyes snapping onto him. “Open.”

He seemed to be capable of only one word at a time, his voice altered too, deep and growly, like it belonged to an animal instead of a Fae though he looked just as wicked and twisted as always.

“Open!” He bellowed, shaking the bars of his cage.

I reached for it, but Ethan slapped my hand away and I pouted at him.

“He deserves to rot in there for what he did to Rosa,” Ethan snarled.

“I know,” I said, turning my gaze back on Gustard. “I was only going to make his living space a little less comfortable.” I touched the bars, bending them with my air magic and turning them red hot too as they buckled in on him, making Gustard roar in agony.

“Looks like the punishments of death are finding you in the living realm, Gussy,” I hissed. “You’ll rot here. Rot like an apple in a well and no one will look for you.”

I gave the space one more look in case Roary was lurking in a corner but there was no sight of him here or anywhere.

“If that’s Gustard,” Ethan breathed fearfully looking around too. “Then what-”

“I learned a long time ago that there ain’t no worth in worrying about the could-bes, kitten. Right now we know nothing and we won’t know it until we know it. So let’s not get all tangled in the could-bes. Okay?”

Ethan arched a brow at me like he was surprised. “That’s actually pretty smart,” he admitted, all surprised. Rude. I was known for my cunning plans and wily mind. But right now we had better things to do than squabble over his lack of faith in me.

“Then let’s get back to the chaos, eh?” I turned from the still shrieking Gustard, petting Crow-thing and following Ethan into the dark, twisty-turns of the passages beneath this forsaken place. And I knew with a certainty that set my blood alight, I would see it fall before I left its shores.