Something didn’t seem right, and dread whispered over her skin. Why weren’t the prisoners fleeing the building? She clutched the gun tightly. She wasn’t trained to use it, but she’d managed to shoot through the glass earlier.

Her breath came faster as they approached the shattered doors, footsteps crunching over the glass. The flashing red lights cast a garish hue over the abandoned security desk. Behind Caine, Rosalind tentatively stepped through the lobby, her gun raised.

A rhythmic sound, metal against wood, grew louder in the stairwell, and the door swung open, releasing noxious black smoke.

A bearded man stood in the doorway, his chest bare. Copper boots encased his feet, and he wore a red hat, dripping with gore. Blood ran down his chin. Fear coursed through her mind. A redcap.

The man’s pale eyes landed on Rosalind. “I’m still hungry, and you look delicious,” he growled.

When Caine stepped closer to the demon, his body crackled with magic. “Get out of here while you still can, redcap.”

Behind the demon, two large, black dogs bounded through the doors, their eyes glowing yellow. Hellhounds. At least some prisoners were making it out.

The redcap glowered, baring his long, yellowed teeth. “I’ll eat elsewhere.” A moment later, he sprinted from the building, metal boots clanking over the ground.

From the prisons below, screams pierced the walls, and the sound curdled Rosalind’s stomach. Gods, what is happening down there?

The building smelled of burning wood and fumes, and Rosalind covered her mouth with her shirt. Tammi must be terrified right now.

Caine pulled open the door to the stairwell, glancing at her as smoke billowed past. “Please be careful down there.”

She stepped into the stairwell, her heart squeezing in her chest as she glimpsed two guards’ bodies lying crumpled at the bottom of the stairs, their throats ripped out. Blood pooled around them—no doubt the red cap’s most recent meal.

As he descended the stairs, Caine chanted a spell, and tendrils of magic curled around him. Through the security doors, the prison corridor glowed orange, but as Caine chanted, the air grew damp. Thunder rumbled through the walls.

At the bottom of the stairs, he pushed open the doors, just as heavy rain began falling from the ceiling. Red lights flashed over the halls, and the acrid smoke burned Rosalind’s eyes. Something felt wrong. Where was Josiah?

Rosalind followed after Caine, and the deluge he’d created soaked through her clothes. The air hissed with dampened fires, and she rushed to the first open cell.

A thin, ginger woman stood shivering in the center of the room, her green eyes large. Her feet were bare, and she wore a ragged white dress, the fabric now singed. Around her, the rain doused a circle of fire, and tiny licks of flames still lingered over the scorched floorboards.

A sharp ache pierced Rosalind’s chest. Apparently, this was the Brotherhood’s primitive back up system in case technology failed. This explained the gasoline stench that always pervaded these rooms. It only required a simple mechanism—something to drop a lit flame from the ceiling when the electricity cut out, trapping the prisoners with fire.