Lore vs. The Summoning by Anya Breton Read Free Book Online Page A

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    Rolling onto my stomach allowed me to get up in stages. First I slid back to my knees, which though tender were surprisingly strong. Then I pulled upward into a full kneel. With the help of the wall I got to one foot, wavering sickly from what was probably a full-blown concussion. I rested against the wall for a half a minute until my stomach protested. Instinctively I bent over, saw there was a waste bin there, and puked the rum, drugs and half a ham and cheese sandwich on top of the Twinkie wrapper it held.
    "Let us out," someone whispered. It sounded suspiciously like the girl that had sold me out.
    I silently muttered, bitch . She could wait. My stomach was still rolling from the bit of spring training I'd partaken in. And there were more important things to do first -- like scope the place out. I wasn't going to parade the group of...
    My eyes swept back over the pound-for-woman to find that there were five women in the dozen cages the bastards had. They were in varied poses. One had her arms clenched around the bars with her face pressed to it as close as she could get. She stared at me with determination in the pale eyes that peered beneath frizzy wheat colored hair. This was the one that had sold me out and she looked like she was willing to do a whole lot more to get free.
    A young woman who couldn't have been legal drinking age cautiously watched me from the side of her cage, one of the cages that had been below mine. I suspected she was the one who had asked me about Tracksuit's death. She'd be the first I'd let out. Another woman sat in the middle of her cage, knees pulled up in a yoga pose with her hands rested on them like a Zen master. She'd be the second to last because I suspected she could handle waiting. The others were understandably freaked and silent. I'd make judgment calls about them later.
    I nodded to them all but immediately regretted it. It had hurt. If I got brain damage over this someone was getting resurrected by a necromancer so I could kill them all over again.
    I tested my legs to see if they could hold my weight now. The pins and needles sensation would have been harder to bear if I hadn't had worse pain elsewhere. I shook it off, passing my weight from my right hip to my left and back until it was more bearable. Then I started for the Rhino.
    The keys were surprisingly easy to find. He'd dropped them on the floor beside the cages once he'd gotten my lock unfastened. My lips turned down when I realized that I could have rested a little longer.  
    To keep the cluttered key ring from making too much noise I stuffed it into the pocket of my jeans. "I'll be right back," I told the women and then I started for the door.
    "Don't leave us!" The sell-out shrieked behind me.
    I suddenly wished I'd been given the power to make people unconscious because she was going to alert someone before I could get them all out. I hurried through the pound door into an exterior room. There were three narrow windows high on the left wall as if we were below the ground in a basement. Little light was coming through them.  
    It was still night. Maybe I hadn't truly spent two hours in the cage. I'd guessed but usually I wasn't half bad at judging time.
    The fact that it was night out wasn't necessarily a good thing. There could be vampires on Chet's payroll. My power didn't work on vampires. Could I get the women out and then stall until daylight?  
    First things first, I had to find the exit.
    We were definitely in a basement. The exterior room I came upon when leaving the pound for women was long and narrow, too long to be a residence. It was thankfully empty of everything but old furniture, machinery and canvas-covered items I probably didn't need to know about. From the smell, coating of dust and look of the walls I guessed we were in one of the older buildings in the city. That didn't narrow the location down much.
    I crept through the room to the door at the other end. With my hand stretched in front