“Masha.” I jerked my thumb over my shoulder. “We gotta go.”
“Yeah,” she mumbled. “There might be a problem there.”
“No time for teenage angst, sweetie,” I said. “Up and run, now. This is a one-time special offer.”
“It’s not that,” she said. “I’m not feeling so good after that injection…” She tried to stand and her stance was drunken, her knees buckling after a few seconds.
“Crap,” I hissed under my breath and came into the cell, grabbing her by one arm and hauling her against me.
“You hold on to me and don’t let go, no matter what. Understand?”
“I feel sick,” she said, her head lolling against me. “I’m seeing everything double…”
“Hey!” I said, grabbing her chin. “I know you’re stronger than this, Masha. Your father told me what hell you can give. Now suck it up and walk with me or we’re both going to die in here. You want that?”
“No…” she moaned.
“Didn’t think so. March.” We made an odd creature, half-stumbling and half-running down the hall.
It wasn’t difficult to find the way back to the door I’d come in, but getting out would be another matter.
We were in sight of the security cage when my grand plan shattered like an ice sculpture in July. A burst of automatic gunfire pocked the wall over my head with divots. Masha slid to the floor with a scream and I followed her, covering her body with mine.
“It’s not that easy,” said Mikel, walking over to us, his Kalashnikov hanging loosely from his crooked arm.
“Haven’t you learned by now?”
“You should be less worried about me and more worried about your boss,” I said. “He wasn’t looking so good when I left him.”
Mikel frowned, turning over the possibilities. I was patient. If brains were computers, he’d still be running Windows 98. “Grigorii is a witch,” he said finally. “This is just a bluff.”
“Steel isn’t great for magick-users, and witches can bleed out,” I said, my eyes on the rifle. “Just like their hench-thugs.”
Mikel glared. “What does that mean?”
I lashed out with my foot and knocked the rifle from his grasp, grabbing it as it slid to the floor. “It means that I meant what I said,” I told him. Mikel threw up his hands, but I drove the butt of the Kalashnikov into his face and heard bone snap. I took the clip out of the rifle and dropped it, my heart thudding with the thrill of neardeath.
“I told you,” I said to Mikel.
He leaped at me again, with surprising fortitude for a plain human who’d just had his face smashed in. Not bright, but sure as hell persistent.
I fell as he grabbed my ankle, and gave a cry as a sharp sting drove through my calf. Mikel had a knife and he was raising it to slash me again.
“Luna!” Masha’s small hands grabbed me and pulled me backward, into a small, dark box that smelled like rat poison.
“You can’t run from me!” Mikel howled, but a door rolled shut and we began to descend, lights blinking past to show floors as the elevator dropped us into the belly of the lab.
“Where does this go?” I demanded.
“No idea,” Masha said. “The lower floors are closed off because they’re, like, a safety hazard. No one goes down here except Dr. Gorshkov. It’s where the file room is.”
“You figured out a lot in two weeks,” I said.
“Not much else to do.” She shrugged. “Except think about how my mother was probably going insane thinking I’d run off with my boyfriend.”
“Your mother was worried sick,” I said. Masha snorted.
“Whatever.”
“You know, Masha…” I started, and then sighed. She coughed, a wet sound that indicated a deep infection, then shrugged at me in the dimness.
“What?”
“I was a lot like you,” I said. “And believe me, there’s plenty of time to make stupid fuckups about men and partying and your life in general when you’re out of the house.”
“I can’t believe you’re giving me a stern pep talk in a condemned elevator while we escape from some freak with a machine gun,” she muttered.
“Blow me off if you want,” I said. “But if I’d given my mother a little less stress, I wouldn’t be a were, and I wouldn’t be here, and believe me, sweetie, neither would you.”
The elevator ground to a stop and Masha pulled herself to her feet. “Finally.”
The door rolled back to dampness, darkness, a slow dripping far in the distance. I felt along the wall and found a panel of switches, which I flipped at random until the lights hissed on. One fizzed and went out immediately, water causing a shower of sparks.
“Comforting,” I said. “Reminds me of my office at home.”
“Your office is in the basement?” Masha snorted. “Who’d you piss off?”
“Bomb shelter,” I corrected. “And too many people to count.”
The elevator started to go up again, and I cursed. “Mikel. Come on, we need a place to hide.”
We followed the precarious light trail through a maze of corridors, each danker and mustier than the last.
“My dad talked about you,” Masha said. “When he came back. Said you were a real bitch and broke his heart over stupid reasons.”
“Your dad always did have a way with words,” I muttered. My calf was sticky with blood and I stopped to examine it.
“Are you okay?” Masha said anxiously, bending close. I gave her a look and she backed away, the tough teenager face back in place. “I mean, if you croak, who’s going to take on that freak with the assault rifle?”
“It’s only a flesh wound,” I said, giving her a smile. She didn’t react. “Monty Python and the Holy Grail?” I sighed. “Never mind. Sometimes I forget that you grew up in a country devoid of decadent Western ideas.”
“What’s next, an ‘in Soviet Russia’ joke?” she said. “You Americans seem to love those.”
“Not bad,” I said. “You’ve got a real mouth on you. I did, too, at your age. Still do. Don’t lose it. A
