A blade sliced toward me. I dropped sideways, dragging Black Robe with me, rolling as we hit the floor. With the second strike, Brown Robe drove his blade deep into his buddy’s gut. I kicked Brown Robe’s wrist, and he dropped his sword. In my hands, the burning chain went slack as Black Robe’s head toppled from his body and rolled under the cot.
I held two lengths of chain, one in each hand. Contact with the Old One’s flesh had melted the links, breaking the chain. The Old One’s headless corpse lay at my feet. The contact hadn’t done the creature’s neck any good, either.
The length of chain attached to Juliet’s shackle was the longer of the two pieces. I lashed it like a whip at Brown Robe. The Old One jumped back, but not far enough. The chain hit his face, burning through his cheek. He shrieked and flew up to the ceiling. I whipped the chain at his legs, his feet, whatever I could reach. The smoke that choked the room showed I’d hit him more than once.
Brown Robe swooped toward me. I ducked, spinning the chain over my head like a helicopter rotor. But Brown Robe wasn’t attacking; he was running away. The Old One rocketed through the door. I let go of the silver chain, snatched up the dropped sword, and ran after him.
The hallway was empty. Cell doors hung crookedly, any inhabitants long gone. I ran toward the entrance. The metal door that sealed off the cell block had been torn from its hinges. Beside it, the guard who’d walked me down the hallway lay crumpled on the floor. I passed him, then stopped where the hallway turned right. Keeping my back against the wall, I peered around the corner.
No sign of Brown Robe—except for more bodies left behind. Two here. The receptionist who’d signed me in lay sprawled across her desk. Another guard, one I hadn’t seen before, had been tossed aside like an empty candy wrapper. All three of the dead norms had been drained of blood.
Through a half-open door, I could see the building’s surveillance center. It looked like a tornado had blown through, and then someone had taken an ax to what was left.
What a disaster. After this, Juliet wouldn’t be safe from the Goon Squad or the Old Ones. I had to get her out of here. I gathered up the knives I’d left with the receptionist and returned to the cell block.
The ruined door to Juliet’s cell lay against the far wall, where the Old Ones had hurled it. A quiet moaning issued from the open doorway.
Juliet sat on the cot, her injured leg pulled up and resting on her other thigh. The silver chain trailed from her ankle. She rocked back and forth, back and forth, cradling her leg.
I went over to her. “Let me see—”
She snarled, baring her fangs, and shoved me away. Nail marks scored my arm.
“Juliet, we have to go.”
She snarled again, her eyes flaring with rage and pain but not a spark of recognition.
“Hey, it’s me. Vicky. Come on, you know me.” I stayed out of scratching range, trying to make my voice both gentle and urgent. “We need to get out of here. Those Old Ones killed the guards. The one that got away might come back with reinforcements.”
“The Old Ones,” she whispered, and I saw a flicker of the Juliet I knew. Her forehead wrinkled, like she was considering a difficult problem. “You killed one of them.”
I nudged the headless body with my toe. Yup. Killed it dead. Juliet stared at the corpse as if she couldn’t fathom what it was.
I tried again. “How badly are you hurt? Can you walk?”
She extended her leg toward me. The bloody wound where Brown Robe had tried to saw through her leg gaped. The bone, absurdly white, showed in the ragged cut. That wasn’t good. Juliet should have started to heal already.
“It’s the silver,” she said. “It slows healing. As long as that’s in contact with my skin . . .” She hugged herself. “And I’m so famished.”
She looked terrible. Purple crescents, so dark they were almost black, ringed her eyes. Her skin, always pale, looked dead white, like those guards who’d been drained of blood.
The guards. The one who’d let me into Juliet’s cell carried that huge ring of keys. One of them had to open Juliet’s shackle. Once the silver was off her, she’d gain strength and start to heal.
I hoped.
I hurried to the guard who’d fallen in the hallway. His key ring jutted out from his hip. I removed the keys and started back to Juliet’s cell. Along the way, I noticed that one of the gray metal doors was stenciled with the word Kitchen. I tried the knob; it opened.
The Goon Squad’s kitchen looked more like a break room. In its center stood a table, magazines and newspaper sections strewn across its top. There was a microwave and a coffeemaker on a counter to my right. Beyond the counter was a refrigerator.
I opened the fridge and surveyed its contents. On the top shelf sat a carton of milk, a couple of brown bags, and a Tupperware container of some kind of pasta. The next shelf down held what I was looking for: bottles of blood. Juliet had complained it was cold and watered-down, but it would give her some nourishment.
With four bottles clenched in my arms, I left the kitchen and returned to Juliet’s cell. She was still on the cot, rhythmically kicking the dead Old One with her good foot. As soon as she saw what I carried, she reached for the bottles. She downed the first two without taking a breath. I started to uncap the third, but she shook her head.
“Can you get this silver off me?”
I sorted through the keys until I found a few that looked like they might fit the shackle. On the third try, the lock clicked open. Juliet sighed with relief as the silver fell away from her skin. I dropped the shackle on the floor, away from her. A puff of smoke went up where some silver links touched the Old One’s body. I picked up the chain again, considering—it made a pretty good weapon against the Old Ones.
I wrapped the length of chain around my waist, like a belt, the perfect accessory for my ruined dress. My kind of fashion statement: Mess with me and you’re dead.
Juliet scooted forward to the edge of the cot. “I’m a bit better now,” she said. “Let’s go.”
I checked her leg. It didn’t look better. If anything, it looked worse: foul-smelling, greenish pus mixed with the blood that ran toward her ankle. I cut a strip of cloth from the fallen Old One’s robe and used it to bind up the wound.
I looked at Juliet’s bright orange prison outfit, PRISONER stenciled in bold letters across the back. Not exactly subtle. “Would you wear that thing’s robe?” I asked. “We could pull the hood forward to hide your face.”
She wrinkled her nose with distaste, but she nodded. I stripped the robe off the Old One, revealing an emaciated body. Yellow, leathery skin clung to elongated bones.
Juliet shuddered. “And to think I once wanted to join them.”
It was the first piece of information she’d given me about the Old Ones. But we didn’t have time for more questions now. Black Robe had been about a foot taller than Juliet, so I had to cut more fabric from the bottom of the robe. But once the garment was on her and the hood pulled up, she was impossible to recognize. You almost couldn’t tell there was anyone inside the robe at all.
Juliet stood and took a step. Immediately her injured leg gave way, and she collapsed in a heap on the floor. She howled with frustration and pounded the Old One’s corpse with her fists.
“Hold these.” I handed her the bottles of blood and then scooped her up in my arms like a child. I tucked Brown Robe’s sword under my arm. As I carried Juliet out of the cell, she twisted around to stare at the headless, dried-out yellow corpse that lay on the floor. Then we were down the hall, up the stairs, and breathing the frosty air of a cold March night.