The Glass Man - Lila Gray Book 1

Chapter Ten

My body shook. On the physical side, searing agony replaced my feet even though the glass had been removed from them. On the psychological side, my mind wouldn't stop feeding me images of what my life would be like at Rourke's mercy. After a moment, I let it go. The tightness in my throat relaxed. No time to lose it. If I didn't figure out how to get away, nothing mattered. If I didn't get out, I would have failed my mother.

I looked down and found one end of the chain attached to the shackles on my ankles, and the other end looped around a cinder block. That might work. I swung my legs back and forth until I could gather the slack part of the chain around one ankle. After several tries, I lured the block close enough to hook it with the top of my foot. Grunting with the strain, I dragged it closer, flipped it on its side, and stood on it. My feet screamed, pressed against the rough surface. So much for Rourke sharing his healing energy with me. A distant voice in my head was trying to tell me something about that, but I shut it out. No, I wasn't going there.

Sweat poured down my skin as I stood there for a while, shaking off dizziness. Shock trying to drag me into the darkness again. I clung to the waking world, to the memories of my mother.

"I will not fail you," I said to her ghost.

Composed once again, I concentrated on pushing my toes against the block, but it didn't boost me enough to get my teeth around the pin. I used my arms to pull myself the rest of the way. The top of the pin—slick with blood flowing from my wrists—sat flush with the shaft. Before I moved it even a little, my arms gave out, and I fell back to the floor, missing the block. My shoulders threatened to pull out of their sockets, and a new wave of sickening pain cut into my wrists. "Fuck!" White crept into the edge of my vision. I was going into shock again.

Glass exploded inward from the window at the top of the wall in front of me, and a clipped scream tore out of me. Flares of light invaded the room, a multi-color starburst, before it faded. What fresh hell was this?

When the light went back to normal, Liam stood naked before me. He was beautiful, all hard lines, all hills and shadows, his bright eyes full of lethal intent. He crouched like a feral, hungry beast, his wary gaze sweeping the room. The sight of his nudity raised my temperature until anger took over and jacked it up more.

The upstairs door crashed inwards, and shouts rushed down the stairs. Liam searched through the mess of glass on the floor from the window he'd broken and yanked a gun from a pouch laying there. He fired at the stairs. Sebastian and Rourke retreated.

"You're dead!" Rourke bellowed from beyond the upper door. A clip snapped into a gun. "Have you lost your damn mind? You can't shoot while Lila's down there, you imbecile. Those bullets have iron in them."

What did iron have to do with anything?

"Figures it had to be you," I said to Liam. "I guess it gives me a chance to even the score."

"Shut up." He reached for the shackles.

"Don't touch me."

Liam shook his head, flexed his jaw. "I thought the goddess had forsaken me, but now I know she's had a purpose for me all along. Now, do you want to get out of here or not?" He fired another shot at the door, where the other two men continued to curse at each another.

That was the second time one of these punks had referred to a goddess. Were they some sort of freakish cult? So Liam was a nutbar along with a lying, scheming, dirt bag. I forced my scowling face back to neutral. Stay and wait for Parthalan, or let the dirt bag put his hands on me? Yeah, not much of a choice. Liam would get his later.

"Fine," I said.

He pried up the pin on my left wrist, while I pulled myself up and chewed on the right pin. When he finished, he freed my ankles, then helped me with the last pin. I fell to the floor with a wet slap, right into my own congealing blood.