The Havoc Chronicles (Book II): Unbound Read Free

exaggeration. It took up an entire city block and extended several stories upwards. It was my own personal haven. I could spend hours there and never get bored.
    Together we wandered through the rooms browsing through thousands of titles packed onto row after row of shelves.
    By the time we’d finished, it was getting late and we decided to head home. A thick fog had rolled in while we were inside, turning the night eerie and damp. The night air surrounded us and coated us with moisture as we walked back to the MAX stop.
    With the fog as thick as it was, we accidentally missed our stop and had to get off one stop farther than we’d intended. It was only a few blocks so we decided to walk rather than wait for a train back.
    “Thanks for tonight,” said Amy as we walked. “I know you have better things to do than hang with me, but it felt good to be back together again. No boys getting in the way of our sisterhood.”
     Before I could reply, a large man stepped out of a nearby alley holding a knife in his hand. He wore jeans and a black hooded sweatshirt pulled over his head, obscuring his face.
    “What are two attractive young ladies doing out here all alone at night?” he asked, casually holding his knife as if he were simply going to use it to clean his nails. His voice sounded merely curious, but it was glaringly obvious he was trying to intimidate us with his presence and physical size.
    Amy hesitated, but I grabbed her arm and began to steer her around the man. The sound of a click from behind brought us up short.
    “The man asked you a question,” said a raspy voice from behind. Amy let out a soft gasp as a second man stuck the barrel of a gun in my back. She looked up at me, her eyes bulging and terrified. As girls living outside of the city, this was the kind of situation we had been warned about our entire lives but never actually expected to encounter.
     I tried to turn around, but the man grabbed me by the back of the neck and steered me towards the alley. After the first moment of initial shock I became more annoyed than anything. I was a trained Berserker. I had fought Osadyn and hundreds of Bringers and come out with hardly a scratch – I didn’t count the fact that I had practically passed out from exhaustion afterwards. I could take out both of these creeps with nothing more than my thumb.
    The only thing that prevented me from ‘zerking right then and there was Amy. As a Berserker I was bullet proof – at least in theory, I hadn’t ever tested it out – but Amy wasn’t quite as durable. If I ‘zerked, the guy with the knife might hurt Amy out of panic. Also, I might have a hard time explaining to her the whole glowing freak thing.
    Behind me I heard Amy’s muffled squeal as the man with the knife dragged her along into the alley with us. The man with the gun shoved me up against a wall, and the man with the knife did the same to Amy.
    The man with a gun held me and Amy at gunpoint, while the man with the knife retrieved a paper bag and pulled out a roll of duct tape. He placed it over our mouths and bound our hands behind our backs.
    While this was happening, I took a closer look at the man with the gun. He seemed to be in his thirties with long brown hair and a scar on his neck almost like a gruesome necklace. He wore jeans with a dark sweater.
    But the thing that struck me the most was his eyes. Cold and hard, they showed neither mercy nor pity. His mouth was turned up into a smile – the sick creep was enjoying this.
    He noticed me watching and leered at me, licking his lips in hopes of frightening me. And if I were a normal girl it almost certainly would have worked. But I was anything but normal. I gave him my best flat stare to show him that I would not be intimidated.
    “Oh, you are a feisty one,” he said walking closer to me. “This is going to be fun.”
    While he was distracted with me, Amy had been scooting closer to the mouth of the alley. Her mouth was taped and her hands