Page 37 of Ramshackle
Acracksounds behind door number three.
I rush to that one, grabbing the metal handle and yanking it from the door as a small sword. The door falls open without the latch, and I witness a whip slice across the back of someone tied frontward to a standing X. No, not a whip. It’s a woman’s length of hair that she’s controlling to shape into a whip.
“No…” Dane breathes beside me. He’s staring at the figure strung up in front of the woman.
Her long blonde hair is pushed over the front of her shoulders. Whatever she was wearing is torn to expose her bloody back. A quick glimpse at her face seizes my lungs.
“Rae!” he shouts and lunges into the room.
I curse and chase after him.
The woman with whip-like hair spins around. Her hair splits and combines to form multiple whips that fly at us. I grab Dane and throw him behind me. The metal at my wrist and up my arm merges together and drops to my hand, reforming into a second sword that I use to slash and cut the hair.
Dane runs around me to her front. “Rae! Raegan, wake up! It’s me! It’s Dane!”
An unfamiliar voice chuckles on the other side of the room, but Raegan and the X block my view of them and Dane.
“Grab him!” the voice demands.
Son of a bitch!
I pivot, readying to dash to Dane, when the woman with the hair shrieks, “Got you!” Her hair wraps around my wrists and yanks me off my feet.
Dane gives a battle cry. “Gordon! I’m going to fucking kill you!”
Fuck.
“Dane!” I yell.
The other voice laughs, and I hear a thump and grunt from Dane.
Kellan roars into the room like a bull.
My swords slice through the hair that annoyingly keeps growing back. I land on one knee, then throw myself at her. She sends more hair, this time honed to points. I sharpen the blades and swing them one after another, spinning in a circle to keep cutting through the hair until I reach her. The blade of my sword catches her collarbone and drags down to her hip.
She screams and falls to the floor.
Another cry rings out through the room, drawing my attention back to the door where Jackson has entered. Past the hair woman is a man I hadn’t seen yet, now also dead on the ground.
“More are on their way!” Reid shouts from the doorway.
I hurry to the door to see what we’re up against and curse viciously. Did Gordon call them somehow? Two dozen people, at least, and there’s a high likelihood they all have gifts like the hair girl. Kellan and Jack face off against Gordon. Dane’s trying to cut Raegan free with the shuriken blade Jack had used to kill the unknown man.
We’re not going to get out of here if we stay to fight them all. Neither Jack nor Kell is landing a blow on Gordon, which means he’s just stalling them until the others show. His grin is wide as he lets them fruitlessly try to harm him.
“Get ready to take us home,” I tell Reid before joining Dane. I transfigure my smaller sword into a perfectly sharpened knife and slice through the leather binding at Raegan’s ankle. “Kellan!”
I’m prepared to call for him again since he’s in the middle of a fight, but he must see what we’re doing and stands behind Raegan in an instant. His hands settle against her upper back and her thighs as I cut through another strap.
“No!” Gordon bellows. Jackson dives between him and us, throwing everything he has at the evil scientist to see what might stick.
I bend down to free the second ankle and then start on her wrists.
Gordon yelps as if one of Jack’s weapons struck him, but I’m too preoccupied with making sure Kellan has Raegan in his arms to look.
“Reid! Jack!” I grab Kellan and search for Reid. He’s being blocked by the same man who’d struck us all with lightning and kept us from Raegan the last time.
Come on, Reid!
