In Someone Else's Skin, Margo Collins [best books to read for women .TXT] 📗

Her slow, wide grin looked absolutely evil.

“You should follow their instructions,” she said, raising one eyebrow. “My guards have my absolute confidence. I won’t question their actions—no matter what they have to do to get you to obey.”

The last thing I saw, craning my head around as the guards shoved us out of the room and back down the hall, was the cruel twist of Queen Amalya’s smirk and the glint in her eyes as she watched us go.

I turned and watched the Queen all the way out the door. Her expression stayed aloof, slightly amused.

I half hoped that she saw in my eyes the vengeance I was already planning to take upon her.

THE GUARDS LED US BACK down the winding body of the building, all the way to the end. There, we stepped into what turned out to be an elevator. It took us down—the lamias in this world might not build up very high, but they did build downward, into the ground. We exited in a space that mimicked the one above, a serpent-shaped building. But this one had locked doors in between segments. I was reminded of mental hospitals where I had visited clients, with their multiple layers of security, making escape difficult.

Getting out of here was seeming less and less likely.

This floor was different too, in that the walls were not decorated with beautiful mosaics, though also tiled. These tiles, though, were smooth and plain.

I guess it made sense for them to build down for a dungeon—after all, even if we broke through a wall, it was much more difficult to dig through dirt and rock to get to the surface than would be to jump down to the ground from a higher level.

All the same reasons that people had been building dungeons on my world for centuries.

And now we were going to have to arrange a prison break.

All the way to the cells, I kept repeating a list of things that needed to happen.

One. Break out of lamia prison.

Two. Get rid of magic cuffs.

Three. Find the lamia babies.

Four. Take the lamia babies back.

Five. Get out of lamia stronghold.

Six. Escape back to my earth.

It was looking more and more daunting the longer I considered it.

And when we got to the level with the cells, I realized there was another item to add.

Seven. Kill the werewolf who had kidnapped the baby.

The cells themselves were small spaces with totally clear walls made of something like plastic. Inside, they held a plastic pole from floor to ceiling that appeared to be of a single piece with the walls—probably for lamia prisoners to coil around. A small water fountain bubbled up from the floor in one corner and in the other were what looked like toilet facilities—little more than a hole in the ground with a molded plastic seat. A long bench, again molded from the same materials as the walls, stretched along the back wall, presumably for human forms, with a stack of bedding.

The three of us were ushered into separate cells.

Mine was next to the one that held the werewolf, currently in his human form—presumably barred from shifting by the same magic that held my own shift at bay.

I had been right. It was the same man who had jumped through to another dimension holding one of the other newborn lamia babies.

One of my babies.

I hissed at him, despite my inability to shift. He responded in kind, showing his teeth in a creditable imitation of his wolf’s snarl. I held his gaze for a long moment before I said quietly, “Why did you take the infant?”

“We don’t want your kind in our world.”

“So your plan all along was to dump them on some other world?”

He laughed, the sound echoing hollowly through the prison dungeon. “Hell, no. We’re going to raise them to fight against any more of your kind that show up.”

Chapter 6

My anger bubbled up inside me, fighting against the magic cuffs that held my shift at bay. “So really, you don’t want any lamias on your world—unless they’re under your control. That’s what you really mean.”

The wolf’s snarl mirrored my own. “Sounds about right.”

“Man, that’s all kinds of fucked up,” Coit drawled from where he sat on the plastic bench in his own cell across from the wolf’s.

In a cell across from mine, Shane was busy examining the room for potential weak points.

Deliberately, I turned my back on the werewolf.

“Find anything?” I asked Shane quietly.

He shrugged. “Not really. Looks like the whole thing was manufactured as one piece and dropped down in here. The doors seem to be the only point of weakness.”

I took the three steps over to my own door and examined it.

It swung on hinges made of the same thick, clear plastic material. But unlike the rest of the cell, it had to have been attached separately.

I didn’t know how that might help us, but I logged every detail into my memory, hoping it might come in handy later.

We have to get out of here.

No. Getting out of the cell would have to be a secondary consideration.

Getting out of the cuffs needed to come first.

“Shane,” I called out, keeping my voice low to try to avoid drawing attention from anyone who might be nearby—though I didn’t know enough about this world to be able to tell if they might have electronic surveillance on us.

“Hm?” The herpetology grad student responded absently, still absorbed in examining the hinges in his own cell.

“What can you tell me about the cuffs?”

He glanced up sharply. “Is there something special about them?”

I flicked a glance toward the werewolf, who wasn’t looking at us—but something about his posture made me think of an animal with its ears pricked up in interest. He was definitely listening to us.

“They’re dampening my ability to shift,” I finally responded.

“Coit, come over here,” Shane called the other human to the clear wall dividing them. “Turn around so I can see your hands.”

Coit dutifully stepped up and turned his back against