Playing With Fire - Katie MacAlister [62]
‘‘One down, one to go . . . but no time left,’’ I murmured almost silently.
A sound at the door had me stuffing the gold lump into my bodice before hurriedly replacing everything in the chest.
I shadowed and was almost to the window when all hell broke out. Brilliant blue-white fluorescent lights— bane of doppelgangers since they eliminate all shadows— lit up the room like spotlights. I reached the window just as the window alarm suddenly came to life, a grid of lasers glowing red as they made a crisscross pattern across the glass. I had a horrible feeling they were there for more than just sensing movement.
‘‘You!’’ a man’s voice bellowed behind me. I didn’t need to look to tell it was Kostya. I just leaped for the window, slamming open the glass and ignoring the horrible searing sensation as the lasers burned through my clothing to my flesh. Kostya yelled something, but I wasn’t about to stay to find out how he dealt with intruders to his lair—I threw myself out the window, my arms and legs cartwheeling as I plummeted to the pavement below.
The shock of hitting the ground stunned me for a few seconds, but luckily, self-preservation had caused me to shadow as I fell, aiding the darkness to keep me hidden from Kostya as he leaped out after me. I managed to roll a few feet away until I was wrapped around a cement post that supported a heavy chain fence to keep pedestrians from tumbling the few feet into the river.
Dimly, I was aware of the fact that Kostya passed within a foot of me, where he was joined by another person. My brain was still muzzy from the fall, but it had enough sense to know I couldn’t lie there and wait for them to step on me. I half slid, half rolled down a shallow slope into the river. The cold water hit me with the force of a semi-truck, but it served the purpose of yanking me into full consciousness.
The Thames River isn’t my idea of an ideal swimming location, and especially not when it’s the part of the river that runs past industrial areas. I kept my face out of the water, oil, muck, and gods only knew what else had been pumped, dropped, or otherwise deposited into the river, swimming silently away from the warehouse. The laser burns on my chest and arms screamed in agony as the water hit them, but the sound of Kostya and his companion as they called to each other behind me kept me moving despite the almost overwhelming need to curl up into a ball and pass out.
Time passed. How much time I don’t really know; it all tended to blur into one long moment of pain and discomfort that stretched into an eon. At some point, however, I found myself clawing at a set of slimy stone steps that led out of the river to a small area that overlooked the river.
‘‘Need some help?’’ a man’s voice asked from the darkness.
I froze for a second when I realized I wasn’t shadowed any longer, eyeing the man who stood in the pool of light cast from a streetlamp.
He looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t quite place his face. I took a step closer, and I relaxed a smidgen as I saw he wasn’t a dragon.
‘‘Um . . . yeah. Thanks.’’ I took the hand he offered, grateful for his strength when he helped me up the narrow, slippery steps.
‘‘Take a tumble into the river?’’ he asked when I stood at the top, shivering with shock, cold, and pain, my hair dripping horrible slimy blobs onto the pavement, my clothes reeking of waste of so many forms, I couldn’t begin to separate them into individual elements. I was filthy, stinking to the skies, with bloodstains clearly visible on my clothing despite the swim.
‘‘Something like that, yes,’’ I muttered, uselessly trying to brush off the worst of the mucky residue left by the water. ‘‘Thank you for your help. I’ll be all right now.’’
‘‘My pleasure.’’ The man had a pleasant face with dark blond hair, blue-gray eyes, and one of those little clefts