I'm running like fuckinghell.
The knife is slick in my fist, Stephen's blood warm and wrong on my fingers, and I don't look back because looking back is how people die in horror movies and this isnota fucking horror movie even though it's doing a spectacular impression of one.
The rehearsal theater has three exits.
I know this building. I'veperformedhere.
Stage left wing. Down the corridor. My combat boots hammer the stone and my lungs are burning because the chloroform is still in my system turning my muscles to wet sand.
Behind me, Stephen screams.
No words. That wouldn’t be unsettling enough. He’s just making raw, animal,furioussounds that echo through the theater as he chases me into the corridor.
I take the first corner hard, my shoulder slamming into the wall, and keep going.
The corridor splits. Left goes up toward the main lobby. Right goes deeper into the building, toward the dressing rooms and storage and the labyrinth of underground passages that connect the opera house's various stages.
Left. Up. Out.
I go left.
Footsteps behind me.
Fastfootsteps.
The fucker canmovefor someone who just took a knee to the dick and a knife to the eye. Guess even a neutered alpha is still a fucking alpha.
I push harder. My thighs are screaming. The binder is crushing my ribs with every gasping breath and?—
There's a fucking body on the floor.
I almost trip over it.
The guard is crumpled against the baseboard, his tactical vest torn, his face a mess of blood and bruises. His earpiece dangles from its cord. His sidearm is gone. Hisarmis gone.
What the?—
I leap over him.
Ten feet further, another one.
This one's worse. Slumped against the wall, his arm bent at an angle arms don't bend at, his jaw slack and his eyes rolled back. Blood smears the wall behind his head in a wide arc, like someone used him as a fucking paintbrush.
Holy shit.
What the fuck happened?
My boot hits a blood splatter.
My foot slides out from under me and I go down hard on one knee, catching myself on the wall with my free hand. My palm connects with the stone andslides—more blood, a long smear of it, still warm—and my stomach lurches.
Oh my gods.
I gag.
Wrench my hand away. It's coated red. Thewallis coated red. The floor is coated red. There's a trail of it—twotrails, actually—one from the guards and one from whoever did this to them, leading from the stairwell in a wet, gleaming path that paints the emergency strips crimson.
Rex.