Wrath's Storm: A Masters' Admiralty Novel by Mari Carr (desktop ebook reader .txt) 📕

though not enough for him to make out the words, and then there was another scream.

It didn’t sound like a scream of fear, but more like one of rage.

Jakob started to ease the door open. Leonid tried to knock him out of the way, but Vadisk grabbed him, slapping a hand over his mouth. For a moment, Leonid’s eyes were wild, and Jakob’s heart went out to him. Vadisk held the other man easily—a testament to exactly how strong he was—and whispered something in his ear.

Jakob shot a glance at Maxim, who nodded.

Resettling his grip on the hilt of the knife, Jakob went through the door, as a vision of Annalise and Walt, the way they’d looked last night as the three of them had come together, flashed through his mind. He’d been in dangerous situations before, even faced down death, but it had been easier back then. Because he’d never felt like he had so much to lose.

There was a tiny landing, really more of a wide step, just inside the door, then stairs so steep they were almost a ladder. Lights were on in the basement, illuminating a section of the gray concrete block floor and walls.

Jakob went down two more steps, until his feet were nearly in the light, then stopped. Bracing the hand not holding the knife, he leaned as far as he could, taking a quick glance at the room and silently jerking back up before processing everything he’d seen.

Two women, one medium height with hair a color somewhere between brown and blonde, the other dark haired…and locked in a cage. Ava held what looked like a spear, but it might have been a knife taped to the end of a broom handle. Zasha, the woman in the cage, was bloody, her clothes ragged and each slice in the fabric rimmed in blood, some of it old enough to have dried black.

Was Zasha…holding a knife of her own?

Ava was standing to the side of the stairs, which meant she would most likely see any movement. The best option would be to have Maxim shoot her.

Both women were panting, Zasha occasionally letting out a little sound of pain.

Jakob looked back and held up two fingers, hoping the others, who were crowded above him, Vadisk still in the hallway since there was so little space, could see.

Jakob held up one finger, and then changed it into a gun.

Target one, neutralize by gunshot.

Maxim nodded, but Leonid vehemently shook his head, pointed at the rifle he held, pantomimed using a sight, then shook his head again.

Jakob nodded once, fairly certain that Leonid was saying they weren’t precision rifles. He didn’t want to risk his sister.

There was enough space between them, and they were close enough, that it would take only a mildly adept marksman to hit Ava without getting Zasha…unless the rifles were loaded with buckshot. Leonid called them hunting rifles. They might have scatter-shot cartridges.

Jakob gritted his teeth in frustration, and then tucked his knife back into his scabbard. This was going to have to be a surprise attack.

Repositioning himself so his hands were on the walls of the stairwell, his feet braced on the narrow step, Jakob looked over his shoulder, hoping they could read his expression, then jumped.

His palms skidded down the walls, controlling his descent to some degree. When he hit the ground, he rolled, not away from, but toward Ava.

An enraged scream was all the warning he got before the makeshift spear stabbed the floor where he would have been had he rolled the other way. Bracing his elbows, Jakob swept out one leg, taking Ava down at the ankles.

She fell, but held on to her weapon. Jakob saw the blade flashing in the too-bright light, and brought his arms up in time to protect his head. In his peripheral vision, he saw Maxim and Leonid hitting the ground. Maxim raised the weapon and snarled, “Stop.”

But Ava was in midfall, and the business end of her spear was headed right for Jakob. He saw it coming, and though it felt like it was happening in slow motion it was only a fraction of a second before the blade came down. He felt the knife bite into his arm, felt the thump as it hit bone.

Grabbing the shaft of the weapon, Jakob gritted his teeth and held perfectly still, half-sprawled on the floor, stuck that way since, until he was in the presence of a medical team, the knife needed to stay in place.

The woman in the cage snarled something, and then to Jakob’s alarm, she raised her own weapon, an exact copy of the knife currently embedded in his arm. She seemed to be planning to stab through the bars into Jacob’s foot, which rested against the cage.

Jakob made a noise that might have been a yelp of alarm—though he would deny it—but Leonid dropped down, straddling Jakob’s legs, his hands raised, a steady stream of words falling from his lips.

Jakob could no longer see the woman, but he heard her gasp, heard the soft sob as she said her brother’s name.

Maxim had Ava on her stomach, arms behind her back.

“Stop!” she demanded, sounding panicked rather than angry. “I have to finish. You don’t understand.”

The bodyguard produced a pair of handcuffs, passing them to Maxim, who locked them around the English woman’s wrists.

“Keys,” Leonid snarled. “Where are the keys to the cage?”

“No, no, no.” Ava shook her head as Maxim hauled her to her feet.

Vadisk was standing off to the side, speaking quietly into a phone and staring at the far corner of the concrete room.

“The cage isn’t part of my mission. She was being difficult. She stole my instrument and hurt me. I had to control her so she wouldn’t hurt me!”

“Fuck you, you fucking bitch,” Zasha snarled. Her voice was a cracking rasp, and now Jakob could see her lips were cracked. She needed water.

Leonid snapped something to his bodyguard, and then walked over to where Ava stood.

The room seemed to get