Beta Read Free Page B

quickly as possible with a resigned expression.
    He’d known that the spells wouldn’t just melt the locks. He had planned on killing the prisoners all along.
    But these were non-violent offenders.
    “Oh no,” she breathed.
    Deirdre snapped a kick at the back of Reuben’s head. She didn’t aim well enough to bring him down, nor did she hit him hard enough to cause damage. She only managed to knock him away from the charms.
    She hurled herself at the wall of switches. It was easy to tell which would unlock the cells because of the helpful, convenient map.
    Deirdre started flipping.
    Reuben smashed into her back. His hands tangled in her hair, yanking so hard that she felt like her scalp was going to rip off.
    She yelped, grabbing his hands. “Let go!”
    “I can’t let you release all those silver-suckers.” His breath stank of pennies, hot and wet on her cheek. He freed a hand to fumble at the holster on her hip.
    Deirdre drove her elbow into his gut. He stumbled away and took what felt like half of her hair with him.
    Niamh had just permed Deirdre’s hair straight again that morning. It had taken hours.
    She jerked the Sig Sauer P226 Nitron out of her holster and fired it into Reuben’s other foot.
    He dropped with a cry. But he wouldn't give up that easily. He reached into the collar of his shirt and pulled out a pentacle necklace that glowed with magic.
    Outside in the cellblock, people were still screaming. Innocent prisoners were dying, melting from the force of the detention center’s magic, and it was because Deirdre had accidentally done the wrong thing.
    Again.
    The witch flung the pentacle toward her. He opened his mouth, prepared to speak another word of power.
    Deirdre shot him in the chest before he could trigger the magic.
    Blood sprayed.
    She didn’t pause to watch him fall.
    Hands shaking, she shoved the gun back into her holster, flipped the rest of the switches, and then ran to the window. Most of the locks on the cell doors disengaged. The doors opened wide and bodies spilled out.
    Some of those bodies were still moving.
    But so many of the cells didn’t open. The melted locks ensured that. Inside, prisoners flamed with the glow of dark magic, thrashing as their skin melted over their bones.
    Stark managed to wrench one of the doors off by its hinges. Magical flames gushed out, splashing over his cargo pants.
    Deirdre needed to help. She couldn’t let the prisoners die like that.
    She ripped Reuben’s keycard out of his pocket. He didn’t react to being touched. Blood was puddling underneath him, spreading outward by the centimeter. Facedown on the floor, he looked indistinguishable from any of the guards that Stark had killed on their way into the detention center.
    Deirdre raced into the hallway. Alarms blared outside the master security room, most likely triggered by something Reuben or Deirdre had done. The sheer volume of it made her brain throb inside of her skull.
    Those alarms were even louder inside the cellblock, as though they thought that they could prevent prison escapes simply by deafening everyone. The sound muted the screams of the shifters still trapped inside their cells.
    Deirdre shoved her way through the escaped convicts to reach Stark, who was struggling to rip the door off of another melting cell.
    The shifter inside was consumed in fire. Electric flames clung to his skin, wet and sticky, eating away at the flesh to expose glistening red meat underneath.
    Deirdre had allowed Reuben to do that.
    She shouldered up beside Stark and gripped the other side of the door. He acknowledged her by saying, “One…two… three !”
    They pulled hard at the same time. The metal bent. Reinforced hinges wrenched out of the wall. And the bars came off.
    Deirdre leaped into the cell. The instant she crossed the threshold, her body was consumed by heat, powerful and suffocating. Sticky blue fire splattered from runes on the walls. She dodged as much of it as she could, grabbed the