Flicking my wrist, I let the webs drop away from him, including the ones around his mouth. I wanted to hear his screams. I wanted to give them as a gift to my mates.
Oz scrambled to his knees, two bloodied stumps of arms pounding against the glass wall. Our eyes locked. His body trembled with his inevitable death. And then I hit the button.
My face was lit up with the glow of flames. My ears were filled with Oz’s harrowing wails. Spector was pounding against the entrance, but their efforts were drowned out by the sound of the guard’s burning death.
I watched as he turned red and bubbled, his skin coiling up and then turning to ash. I stared in rapt attention as his body melted before me, turning his tissue and organs into a pasty puddle on the floor. His eyes rolled back. His screams went silent. He died long before the flames fully consumed him, but I didn’t tear my eyes away until he was nothing.
“Shit,” Crow murmured while pulling at my arm. “We have to get out of here.”
There was no way out. Let them come with their relics. Let them beat and abuse. I was fucking done with Spector and their games. My men were indestructible. No relic or threats could scare me away.
I burned Oz, but next, I’d burn this building until it was nothing but steaming rubble.
My spider hummed with appreciation as my men circled the training room, looking for a way out. Tomb tried to pull me out of my trance. “Motley. Wid! Come on,” he urged. “They’re smashing through the doors.”
My spider rose up on her haunches, breaking past my empty lips to scream her indifference and lack of fear.
“Let them, Tomb. I’ll ruin them all.”
The doors opened with a blast of sudden force, and guards swarmed the room with weapons raised. Wind blistered my cheeks as an elemental sent a gust of air at me, trying to barrel me toward the wall. Tomb grabbed my wrist and turned to stone, weighing us down.
Crow called on his legions of birds, and soon, flapping wings and sharp beaks circled us, waiting to attack.
I didn’t feel fear. I felt strong and secure with my mates at my side. This was what my spider wanted. She wanted to save her males, stand beside them with honor, and face the evil organization trying to hurt them.
“Stand down!” one of the guards screamed over the screeching caws of Crow’s demonic birds. Fuck Spector. I wouldn’t stand down. I’d never be a prisoner again.
One of the guards surged forward, and Crow weakly lifted his arm, sending his birds into a flurry of attacking chaos at the man. They picked at his skin and gouged his eyes. My spider laughed within me.
More guards filtered into the room. We were outnumbered. “Stand down right now!” another screamed.
“No.”
Pushing power, I threw my arm up, and webs braided together faster than I could watch. By the time I closed my fingers around the corded webs, I’d created a whip that was at least twenty feet long. I forced my hand with a powerful sweep, sending the whip across the room and catching several guards in its wake. A crack rent the air, and the impact of the whip left bloodied slashes across every inch of skin that it touched.
Gunfire sounded, and burning pain tore through my right shoulder, and I dropped hold of my whip. I cried out and stumbled to the ground, trying to keep my head down away from the flying bullets.
But then Tomb was there, his body of stone blocking the assault from hitting me again. I tried to lift my right hand to direct my webs again, but I hissed in pain at the effort as blood oozed from my wound. Using my left hand to press against it, I forced myself back to my feet and focused on the rest of the guns still firing at us.
I was slower, but I managed to send a net flying, knocking a gun out of a guard’s hands. With another, I shot a string out like a slingshot, knocking it away from his hold. To a third one, I managed to wrap his chest in a spool of strings, trapping the gun so the muzzle was jammed beneath his jaw. One pull of the trigger, and a bullet would be kissing his brain.
But Tomb was still getting littered with more gunfire, and a bullet managed to graze off him and hit me, this time into my left thigh. I fell to the floor, a gasp of pain tearing past my lips as more blood pumped out of me.
Guards closed in around us. My pulse pounded in my ears as a furious scream wrenched from my throat. I sent a stream of webs in front of us, trying to catch anyone I could, but I was sloppy. Slow. The guards managed to jump out of the way. There were just too many of them. My mates may be indestructible, but I hadn’t tested if I was. And right now, I was losing way too much blood and had expended too much power.
“Enough!” A familiar, dominant voice broke through the mayhem, making everyone pause.
Risk strolled through in his chariot of Armani, sending guns flying out of the guard’s hands with effortless blasts of hellfire.
Tomb and Crow went rigid when he broke through the line of birds and stopped in front of us to look down his nose at me. “I leave you alone for one hour, and look at the scene you caused, little pet,” he said through clenched teeth. I bet he was furious with me for compromising his cushy business opportunity.
“Don’t call me that,” I snapped.
His dark eyes flickered with fire as he looked down, catching sight of the drops of red that surrounded me. “I do hope that’s not your blood littering the floor. I take
