Curses and Convicts (Prisoners of Nightstone Book 3) Read online

  “I’m pretty sure. Ninety percent.” The words hung between us, then I added, “Maybe eighty.”

  She let out a long groan.

  “Hey, have a little faith in me.”

  A disbelieving smile crossed her lips.

  “What’s that look?” I demanded.

  “It doesn’t matter. I don’t want to fight. We could be dead in ten minutes.”

  “Great, so say whatever you’re thinking. Low stakes. If we die you don’t even have to apologize.”

  “Oh, I’m definitely not the one who has to apologize.”

  I barked a laugh. “So I have to apologize?”

  “Do you have to apologize?” Her voice was disbelieving. “No, you don’t have to apologize. You have to grovel. Look what you did to me.”

  “Imagine how bad it would be if you weren’t here. We wouldn’t know we needed to evacuate everyone.”

  “If I never came here, no one would need to be evacuated. Is that really the tact you want to take?” She sounded exasperated.

  But even though we were up against impossible odds, she also sounded more at ease than she had a few moments before, despite the fact we were rushing through Nighstone toward the poisoned side on a crazy mission. It seemed as if bantering with me relaxed her the same way it relaxed me.

  It had to be crazy for her, having her incredible supernatural powers blossoming so quickly. Anyone else would probably be lost, but she just kept on going.

  There was noise to our left. Quick as instinct, I looped my arm around her waist and dragged her to the side. The two of us pressed back into an alcove. Her chest heaved against mine, her breathing ragged, as I held her tightly. Despite the danger, my cock stiffened in response.

  Dangerously close, there was the clatter of boots across the metal walkway. Guards.

  She looked up at me, and for a second, I thought there was panic in her eyes. Then it cleared, and the next second, her hips rocked forward against mine just barely. The sensation of brushing against my hard cock sent a jolt of desire through my body, and her eyebrows tilted upward above those beautiful eyes. She was mocking me even here, while guards ran down the walkway outside.

  “We’ve got to get back to the wall,” one of the guards barked to the other.

  They either knew the kill switch had been activated, or it was about to be. They were trying to get out of here before they met the same fate as the prisoners.

  They had guns and I should be more careful, but rage spiked through me.

  I swung out into the walkway just as they reached me, jumping up to grab the metal bar that ran under the walkway above. Their surprised faces were a blur in the second before I kicked the lead guard in the chest, knocking him back into his buddy. The two of them slammed into the ground.

  Before they could react, I planted my foot on the chest of the nearest guard and yanked his gun out of his hands. Nas was already scrambling to the second guard, yanking his weapon away while he was still stunned.

  I shot the second guard in the leg, then swung back to shoot the first. They screamed in pain, clutching their wounded legs. They wouldn’t be escaping Nightstone now.

  “If I were you, gentlemen, I’d hop on the radio and tell your higher-ups not to murder Nightstone,” I said.

  None too gently, I stepped off the chest of the first guard and leapt beyond them. We still needed to move, to be ready to protect the prisoners of Nightstone from the kill switch.

  We left them behind and raced on. If they were willing to participate in the murder of all these people, their fates should hang in the same balance as the prisoners. More shifters and vamps streaked past us occasionally, headed for the courtyard too. Not everyone was guaranteed to make it.

  “Why did you do that?” Nas asked me. “You used to be one of them. You could have been one of the guards here if the Black Guard had sent you here.”

  “Then I would’ve deserved that fate too.”

  She stared at me, her lips parting, as if she wanted to argue with me.

  We turned a corner, and the twisted metal gate at the entrance to the poisoned zone came into sight.

  Suddenly, Nas pushed me hard, throwing her body into mine. I wrapped my arms around her waist as she slammed me into the wall. I was startled, but I knew she had a reason. Quickly, the two of us ducked behind some wreckage. Her chest heaved against my arm as she tried to quiet her breathing.

  She must have had some vision, because just then, guards came racing by toward the poisoned zone.

  “We’ve got to get Bane before they’ll let us out of here,” one of them said.

  Bane? Why the hell was I so important?

  “Fucking Bane.” The other one snapped.

  Nas’s lips curled up in a faint smile.

  “People like you,” Nas mouthed at me.

  “I’ll deal with it,” I mouthed back, reluctantly disentangling my body from hers.

  I stepped out into the corridor to face the two guards running toward the poisoned zone. Their faces changed into alarm as they saw me.

  “You’re looking for me?” I asked, raising the gun. I waited until their guns swung up toward me, then shot the first one in the chest.

  “Bane!” Nas screamed. “We’ve got to get out of here!”

  The next second, I smelled the scent of electric burning.

  The kill switch had been activated.

  Nothing mattered now but getting to the poisoned zone, where the grid beneath had been damaged.

  The ground beneath us electrified, but I was already grabbing Nas around the waist and leaping with her to grab the beam under the walkway.

  The guard squeezed off a shot that went wild, ricocheting around the metal structure, as he screamed. Someone hadn’t been wearing regulation boots. The ground sizzled beneath us, slowly rippling toward the other side of Nightstone, where it would kill anyone left behind.

  Nas’ heart was pounding against mine as she stared into my face, the two of us dangling inches above death.

  “I think I might keep you around,” she managed.

  “I’m not always a stupid asshole,” I reminded her. “Just mostly.”

  Ahead of us, the ground beyond the entrance to the poisoned zone wasn’t lit up.

  “How much do you trust me?” I asked Nas.

  I didn’t wait for her to answer before I swung my body, preparing to launch her toward the safe space.

  “Not much,” she said, but she released her grip on my neck.

  I swung myself forward and threw her toward the safe zone. She tried to land on her feet, let out a huff of air as she stumbled, then landed on her ass instead. But she was safe.

  Then I swung the rest of the way there myself, hand over hand across the bar that ran beneath the walkway, until I could drop down beside her.

  “You do trust me,” I said with a grin.

  Nas just scoffed.

  It would take time for the activated kill switch to burn through all of Nightstone. The sooner I was able to access the system and shut it down, the fewer supes would die today.

  Together, we raced across the poisoned zone back toward the guard tower.

  3

  Nasima

  I followed Bane around the corner of the buildings that had been destroyed so long ago. This area of Nightstone was never talked about by pretty much anyone, which only seemed to make it creepier. The ashy walls and caved in roof, all of it was like something out of a post-apocalyptic movie.

  The two of us wove through the cells that were now rubble, taking the most secure way possible to get to wherever it was Bane was leading me.

  I knew he was avoiding dangerous areas because we had to back track at one point to go around something. What I didn't know was if some of this had changed from the kill switch being flipped again. After all, I'd only been here once before, and it wasn't exactly under relaxing circumstances.

  When we finally reached an area that looked like it had been cleared slightly I knew this was where Bane had been com
ing to try and prevent the kill switch from ever being flipped, and to figure out how to stop it,

  He hunted around in the rubble and pulled on the edge of a blanket covered in rubble, glancing at me with a little pride shining in his eyes. With a jerk of his arm, the entire thing shifted and revealed what had been hiding underneath.

  An old computer.

  The black screen had a blinking green rectangle as the cursor, telling me exactly how ancient this machine was. Bane was already frantically tapping keys, trying to get in.

  Part of me couldn't help but be skeptical as to whether or not it would even work properly, but Bane seemed sure, so I had to trust him.

  Shocking, I know.

  I had always trusted him to an extent, it was why he caught me in the first place. It wasn't that I thought he'd betray me again, I knew his loyalties had shifted long ago when everything happened with his mom. He had done what he thought was best when it came to me. He'd been naive about it, but that's okay. If he hadn't thrown me in Nightstone then I never would have stopped taking my tincture, and accepted my visions. Plus, I wouldn't have met Ambrose or Christian and just the thought of that made my heart clench and pain stab through my chest.

  "Do you know what you're doing with that thing?" I asked as he typed furiously on the dusty old keyboard.

  I was honestly shocked that any of it still worked in any capacity. The whirring sound that was coming from the machine wasn't exactly encouraging though. Part of me was worried that we were going to tax whatever was left of it too much and it was just going to crash and never come back or something. If that did happen then we'd deal with it, I just hoped it didn't come to that.

  "Give me some credit," Bane scoffed. "What do you think I've been doing every time I came over here?"

  "I know this might be a surprise to you, but I haven't been keeping track of your every movement. I asked Christian and Ambrose to help keep you safe, but that was it," I said with a huff.

  "Sure, you had no idea what I was up to." Bane rolled his eyes as he continued typing in commands on the computer screen.

  "Honestly, I didn't. The first time I'd ever even heard of the poison zone was when I saw you here, and that was only because we thought you were getting yourself in trouble."

  He glanced up at me for a second and seemed to finally believe that I had no idea what he'd been up to. "This is the old guard station for the poison zone, it was laid out differently than your area, with the guards being on the ground floor instead of at the top of the wall. When this zone was poisoned, this area somewhat survived. It was supposed to be safe for the guards. It wasn't, Black Guard leadership lied to their people, but it didn't get as damaged as the rest of the area. So, lucky us, this computer still works. Sort of."

  "How do you know what to type though? It looks older than any computer I've ever seen before." I was genuinely curious. The thing looked like the computer I saw people using in movies from the eighties. And that was being generous.

  "I learned a little while I was in the Black Guard. It wasn't all chasing down supes, you know?" Bane shot me a wink before going back to concentrating on the black and green screen.

  I kept myself alert, and was keeping watch over him and everything around us. It felt like whatever was happening was far from over.

  "It's not letting me in the back door I'd found before," Bane muttered, sounding pissed off.

  When I looked down at him he was glaring at the screen as if he was scaring the computer into obedience.

  "I know this is going to sound counterintuitive, but try to relax. As my mother would say, more haste, less speed."

  "What the hell does that even mean?" he growled up at me.

  "Hurry but be careful, or don't be reckless, something along those lines anyway." I shrugged.

  The sound of pebbles, or small rocks falling caught my attention and had me glancing over to the opposite corner from the one we were hiding in. A chunk of the second floor that was still intact suddenly fell and crashed to the ground, startling both of us. I could feel vibrations under foot and I knew whatever was about to happen was going to be bad.

  "Whatever you're going to do, you need to do it now, Bane." The rumble under my feet was getting worse and as much as I wished I could get a vision in that moment to tell me what the hell was going on, I didn't want to leave Bane on his own because I was busy watching the future. I knew if it was important enough, I wouldn't have a choice though.

  "I'm trying, Nas!" He was certainly stressed, which was understandable.

  "Fucking finally," he groaned a moment later. I watched as his fingers flew over the keyboard. The last thing I'd expected from Bane was for him to be good with computers, but watching him go, he was a hell of a lot better than me.

  Every moment that passed made my anxiety ratchet higher as I could feel the air shifting and changing, but couldn't tell what was happening. The hair on my arms stood on end, and there was an electric scent of burning hanging in the air. All of it made me itch to get out of here and to know Christian and Ambrose were safe.

  "Oh, that's bad," Bane muttered to himself.

  "What?" I asked. When he didn't respond I tried to be patient after all I could see he was concentrating. Eventually it became too much though, and I demanded, "What's bad, Bane?"

  A split-second later he hit a key with a sense of finality. All the power went out. Suddenly the poisoned zone was only dimly lit from the light that trickled in from high above.

  "Did you do that?" I demanded.

  He nodded, looking pleased with himself.

  "Is that what you were intending to do?" Why on earth couldn’t this man just tell me what was going on? My anger was starting to get the better of me and I began pacing so I didn't hit him.

  He pushed to his feet and wiped the dirt and dust from his pants. "That was what I intended to do, yes."

  He pulled the blanket back over the computer and keyboard and began scattering rubble over it gently so it was camouflaged. I helped as much as I could, but stuck to the edges of the blanket so there wasn't any chance of me damaging the computer.

  "So did it work?" I asked hopefully. “Did you stop the kill switch from spreading?”

  "Technically, yes. But we've got other problems. We need to get back to the courtyard as soon as we can, but I want to make sure the ground is safe first just in case there’s still residual electricity. I don't think I can swing us all the way back and out of the door and it's nothing to do with how tiny you are, Nas, there just isn't the infrastructure there to support that kind of movement. If powering down the entire complex didn't stop it, then we're trapped here." His words sent a blade of ice slicing through my heart.

  We couldn't be trapped. I needed to get back to the others to make sure they were okay. I'd been trying to keep the thoughts from my head but now the thought of being trapped was in there and my mind was swamped with the idea of never knowing if Ambrose and Bane made it out alive. We had to get back, I needed to know what happened.

  "How can we tell if it's safe? I asked.

  Before I could reach for him Bane took off running. I chased after him knowing he was going to do something stupid.

  My heart froze in my chest as I watched him jump from the poison zone, where it was safe, well, relatively, onto the grid that until a second ago had been buzzing with enough electricity to take down a triceratops.

  4

  Nasima

  Bane's feet landed on the ground and I waited for his scream of pain as electricity ran through him, but it never came. I'd skidded to a stop at the edge and was looking at the floor like it was lava as my bounty hunter took a few more steps, testing it out.

  My stomach was in knots, and I expected any moment he'd hit something that was still powered and would crumple to the ground and I would have lost him. For good this time.

  The tension was too much and I stepped onto the floor after him.

  "What the fuck, Nas? Go back to where it's safe!" Bane growled.

&nbsp
; "You've already proven that this bit is safe," I said as I walked up to him. "Plus you said we needed to get back quickly, we can't do that if we're pussy footing around everything."

  I was practically scolding him, but I didn't care. If he said we needed to move, then we needed to move.

  "You won't be going anywhere," A man's voice called out as he stepped from behind a pillar that was a few feet in front of us. "Bane, you're wanted upstairs. I can't imagine the fun Frederick Nighstone and the Black Guard are going to have with you and your little witch. After everything you've done, you'll be lucky to even leave the Black Guard private facilities in a body bag."

  I glanced over at Bane. Private facilities? What did that mean? His face was thunderous as he looked at the other guard. The gun the guard was holding was down at his side and I wasn't sure if Bane or I could get to him before he had a chance to raise his gun and get a shot off. I wasn't about to risk Bane's life on a slim chance though.

  Bane must have had similar thoughts because he took a step forward.

  "Ah, ah. Stay right there until back-up gets here," the guard said gesturing with his gun as though it wasn't a deadly weapon.

  When Bane ignored him, the guard raised the gun and leveled it at my chest. I knew without a doubt that if he shot where he was aiming, I would probably die. Seeing that the gun wasn't pointed at him, Bane did, in fact, stop. He wasn't going to risk my life to take down the guard that stood in the way and I wanted to kick him in the shin for it.

  "Remember that time in Buffalo?" I asked, hoping he would understand what I was talking about.

  "No, none of that," the guard said, flicking the muzzle of the gun between us.

  Bane shot me a worried look, but nodded.

  "Let's do that again," I said with a grin.

  Bane shook his head. The guard fired the gun into the ceiling, making stucco and chunks of tile rain down between us.

  I flinched at the noise but Bane used the opportunity and lunged forward, grabbing the guards hand as he brought the gun back down.