by Sue Duff
Allison leaned against the back door, donned thick rubber gloves, pulled out a canister from the bag, and pressed the nozzle. Liquid jetted in and around the lock. It froze in an instant. She looked at him with a hint of excitement and whispered, “Isn’t liquid nitrogen wonderful?”
How he would have loved her as a science teacher, Patrick mused. He hit the lock with a rubber mallet from the bag. The knob fell to the ground with what would have been a loud clang if Allison hadn’t had the forethought to catch it at the last second in her gloved hands.
They waited for an alarm to sound. Nothing. Patrick opened the door, and they entered the building.
“Now where?” Allison said.
“I vote down. Up didn’t work out so well last time.”
They made their way along a basement hallway. Patrick’s naïve assumption that they came unnoticed crashed when a red blink caught his eye. It came from an overhead security camera. A door opened farther down the central hall. Patrick pulled Allison back around the corner then stole a peek. A man in a white lab coat spoke to a uniformed security guard.
The scientist’s voice was terse. “Harcourt ordered a lockdown. From now on trust only our people. As long as we control the lab, no one will be able to use their powers against us. Grab our men and any extra guns you can and bring them here. Be quiet about it. I’ll secure the building from the lobby.”
Footsteps approached. Patrick peered around the corner. The guard wandered off with a raised walkie-talkie but the lab coat headed their way. “Hurry,” he said, “get something out of the bag that I can hit him with.” Patrick kept watch.
She placed something heavy in his outstretched hand. Shocked at the weight, Patrick stared at the rubber mallet.
“You said something to hit him with,” Allison said.
“I meant one of the chemicals.”
She frantically searched in the bag. “That’s not what you said.”
The man turned the corner and hesitated. He glanced at her lab coat.
“We’re trying to find the bathroom?” Patrick said.
Allison grabbed the mallet and struck him on the head with a thump. He stumbled, dazed.
Patrick reared back and punched the scientist. His head twisted and slammed into the wall. He went down in a heap at their feet. “Oww!” Allison clamped her hand over Patrick’s mouth and the rest came out mumbled. He bit down on his tongue and shook his throbbing hand.
When he quieted, she stuck the mallet back in the bag. “Now what?” She looked at Patrick with determination.
“We take that control room.”
{63}
Ian pushed away from the rock that broke his fall and was greeted with shooting pain in his side. He moaned and slowly got to his feet. Lightheaded, he leaned against the crevice wall. He felt around. He found himself alone on a narrow ledge. The wolf that fell in with him was not so lucky if silence was any indication.
“Ian!” Rayne shouted.
“I’m here,” he yelled. “Where’s the last wolf?”
“I don’t know. I think I’m alone up here. Where’s Saxon?”
He cleared his mind and tried to connect. Nothing. He searched for a discernable heartbeat, anything. Silence answered back. His throat tightened. “I don’t know.”
“Are you all right?”
“I think I cracked a rib or two.” He swallowed another moan when he drew a deep breath.
“Can you shyft?”
I don’t dare, he kept to himself, heeding Dr. Mac’s warnings of how dangerous it could be if injured. “Be patient, I’m going to try climbing out,” he hollered. When he stepped back, his foot slipped off the narrow ledge. He leaned in and searched for any handhold or outcropping that would support his weight. The top of the crevice was a few feet above him.
A rock’s edge felt solid enough, and he curled his fingers around it. He dug the toe of his boot into a narrow slit then held his breath, dreading this next move. Ian pulled up as grinding bone sent a shock wave of blistering pain across his side and surrounding chest. He persevered with each new handhold and made it high enough to roll onto the upper ledge.
Drained, Ian lay panting while the pain took its time to be-come bearable. Blood oozed out of the bite marks and trickled down his arm.
Scrapes approached along the cave floor. “I’m coming,” Rayne said.
A growl came from the opposite side of the crevice. Sombra’s dark shape stood. Its head lowered with snarling menace.
Ian got to his knees as the red eyes vanished. His pulse slammed to a halt. He listened but silence confirmed his worst fear. The wolf had shyfted. Ian ignored the pain in his chest and scrambled to his feet. “Rayne, head for the cave entrance.”
“I’m not leaving you,” she said, her voice close.
“Go, I’m right behind you.” He grabbed his side. “Hug the cave wall and keep moving no matter what.”
Sombra’s shimmering eyes reappeared a couple feet ahead of Ian. When they turned toward Rayne’s retreating steps, Ian yelled, “I’m the one you really want.”
Sombra’s body struck squarely. The impact jarred Ian to his back, and he hit the ground at the rim. Ian grabbed its front legs and kicked upward. Crack. Something in the wolf’s leg snapped as momentum sent the beast flying overhead and down into the crevice—but an instant thud told Ian that Sombra had landed on the narrow ledge he’d just escaped.
The wolf whimpered and shook its head with snapping jowls.
Ian shoved the nearby unconscious wolf over the edge and it landed, knocking Sombra off into the pit. Ian raised his hand. Concentrating all his energy into his fingertips, he focused his core power on the ceiling above, desperate to send a rock, anything, crashing down on the wolf before Sombra could recover and shyft.
A bullet ripped into the cave and struck the ceiling. Massive chunks rained down.
{64}
The guard remained at his post, guarding the door. Patrick jerked back and leaned against the corridor wall. “Come on, pee, grab a smoke, something.”
Allison peered up at one of the security cameras. “Why haven’t they sent anyone to get us?”
Patrick grinned. “And spoil the show?” She gave him a quizzical stare. “Face it, do we look threatening?” he said.
“We can’t stall much longer.” Allison pulled a test tube out of the pack. “We have an arsenal with us, remember? I vote we start using it.” Her look of confidence melted some of his reluctance.
He reached in the bag and pulled out the gas masks, handed one to her, and donned the other one. Patrick took a deep breath, and a whiff of rubber filled his nostrils. He grabbed the test tube then peeked around the corner.
He stepped out and threw the chemical grenade at the guard’s feet.
With a loud clink, it bounced then rolled toward the man without breaking. The guard stopped it with his boot. Their eyes locked.
A security guard appeared from another hallway. Patrick dove behind the corner as a spray of bullets sent bits of plaster spewing across the floor beside him.
“Intruders!” someone shouted.
“So much for our arsenal,” Patrick griped.
Running footsteps headed their way. Allison grabbed another test tube out of the bag. She dropped it at their feet and stomped on it. The splintered glass gave way to billowing smoke. She kicked it toward the guards. They grabbed their throats, choking.
Patrick bent low and side-slammed them against the wall. They collapsed to the floor directly over the rising gas.
“Nice move,” Allison shouted through her mask as they paused at the door. She held out another tube. “Linebacker?”
“Tight end. Third string, varsity.” He eyed the tube. “You’re better at that than me.”
She pulled out the passkey. “Damn it!”
“What?” Patrick peered at the panel through the foggy faceplate. “I thought you said you could get us in?”
“This won’t open a retinal-scan lock.”
A shot str
uck the wall next to them. From down the hall, the tear gas cloud dispersed. A guard rubbed his eyes while waving his gun in their direction.
“Call for backup,” the other one choked.
The door opened. Patrick and Allison fell into the room. It swished shut.
Allison rose to her knees with a test tube in her grip and pulled back to smash it. Patrick grabbed her arm. “Wait!”
Tara beamed at him from the console across the room. A vent cover dangled over her head.
“Where the hell have you been?” he said, pulling off his mask.
“Duh, bad guys.” Mara indicated the unconscious men at her feet.
“I’ll see your bad guys and raise you hell hounds any day,” he said.
The door opened and a man in a white coat appeared. Mara knocked the scientist back into the hallway with the butt of a rifle. “You didn’t waste any time making friends.” She slapped a button on the wall. The door shut.
“We were never that close,” Patrick said. A bullet dented the metal door. He and Allison scrambled away.
“Tara,” Mara protested.
“Working on it.” Tara studied the control panel. “Got it.” She punched a button.
Metal scraped at the door. The emergency lock engaged just as something heavy banged against it.
“Tell me there’s a plan B,” Patrick said.
Mara snorted. “Like there was ever a plan A.” She pulled out her phone. A sigh escaped when she looked at the screen. “I’m waiting.”
“Who made you boss?” Tara moved down the console, her finger following a line of blinking lights. A volley of bullets riddled the wall next to the door.
“Someone got their hands on an automatic, sis.”
“You’re just jealous.”
“You have exactly two more seconds before I start blasting,” Mara said. She aimed a gun at the console. “One … one and a half …”
Tara’s attention moved to another panel. “Aha.” She slammed her hand down on a red button. Across the room, the sound of a motor powered down, and lights on a circuit board extinguished.
Mara lifted her face from her cell phone. “That wasn’t the right one.”
“It turned off something important,” Tara said.
“How do you know?” Patrick asked.
“It had its own power source.”
A volley of gunfire. Chunks of the wall and door flew into the room. The door pushed inward and a uniformed guard burst inside. Mara tripped him, and he landed at her feet.
The tip of a rifle emerged through the opening and pointed at Mara’s head. She reached out, offering her gun without protest. A leather-gloved hand grabbed it. She looked at her sister.
Two more guards pushed in through the opening.
Patrick stared down the barrel of a rifle and nearly peed in his pants. He held his hands up in surrender; Allison did the same.
A green glow enlarged next to Patrick. The gun turned from him toward the expanding light.
Mara caught the nearest man in the throat with a sweep of her hand. He fell to his knees, gagging. She brought the butt of his gun down on the other man’s nose, then thrust her elbow into his gut. He buckled over.
Tara kicked the guard’s gun next to Patrick and it discharged; the bullet struck the ceiling. She took out the man with sweeping legs, knocking him into the others. The girls scooped up the weapons.
“That is so hot,” Patrick said with his arms still thrust above his head. “We’ve gotta put that in the act.”
Mara rolled her eyes.
A Pur soldier materialized with two other soldiers in his grasp, their guns at the ready. It was the same shyftor that had taken the girls from the compound a couple days earlier. He glanced around.
“That way.” Mara pointed.
He gestured and the two soldiers ran out the wrecked door in pursuit of the Duach scientists and guards.
“Good job shutting off their jamming,” the Pur soldier said. “I haven’t been able to shyft since we arrived.”
Tara tossed an I-told-you-so smirk at her sister.
“How’d you know where we were?” Patrick said.
“Our tracking chips,” Tara said.
“I was ordered to find you,” he said. “Our entire battalion is descending on this place.”
“You’ve walked into a trap,” Mara said. “This facility is set to explode.”
He held up a sat phone. “Patch me into Drion Marcus, stat!”
Mara reached out, and Tara tossed her the rifle. She turned it on the cowering Duach at their feet.
The Pur soldier turned away and spoke into the sat. A sec-ond later, he turned. “Where’s the Heir?”
“We separated a while ago,” Mara said.
“We don’t know where he is.” Tara added. She looked at Mara with apprehension when the soldier turned his back.
He stepped outside the door. Pieces of his conversation drifted into the room. “Not here … explosives … What are your orders?”
“What’s going on?” Patrick said under his breath.
“There’s a traitor in the Syndrion,” Tara hushed. “They not only set us up, but the rest of the Syndrion as well. Not everyone that’s about to rescue us—”
“—can be trusted,” Mara said.
{65}
Caked in dirt, Ian stumbled out of the cave. Rayne landed next to him with a hacking cough. Deafened from the echoing gun blast and cave-in, he couldn’t sense anything. “Move,” he choked and scrambled to his feet.
A branch the size of a man’s arm came crashing across Ian’s injured chest. It sent him reeling to the ground a few yards from the cliff’s edge. The book skidded to within inches of the precipice. Facedown in dirt and gravel, he gasped for an ounce of air, vaguely aware that someone stood over him. Choking and spewing blood from his ravaged lungs, he couldn’t breathe, much less speak.
Drake leered down at him and blew into a whistle with spurting saliva that muddied the cave silt on his face.
Rayne jumped on his back and wrapped her arm across his neck. She clawed at his face. “Get away from him!”
He spun around and slammed her against the cave entrance. She slumped to the ground, moaning. “Stay put,” Drake said. “I’ll get to you in a minute.” He pulled his foot back and kicked—hard—connecting squarely with Ian’s already battered chest.
A crack from deep within and Ian was robbed of the last of his air. The blow sent him rolling to the edge of the cliff. Stars went nova in his head.
Drake faced the cave. “All three of them … gone?”
“Nothing but dog meat.” Rayne pressed against the rock and stood on wobbly legs. He turned murderous eyes on her.
Ian caught the slightest bit of air and pulled it down into his burning lungs. “Not exactly a fair fight,” he rasped, spitting blood and rising bile.
“You’re gonna pay,” Drake spat and started toward Ian.
“Don’t!” Rayne screamed.
Drake paused. “Better that he watch you die.” He lifted the log like a bat and turned on her.
A snowy blanket streaked in red leapt at Drake. He dropped the log and landed hard on his back. The wolf’s snapping jaws flung blood on his face. The powerful trainer wrapped his legs around the injured Saxon, then rolled him over and straddled him, pinning the wolf to the ground with the weight of his body. Rayne lunged at him but he gripped her throat and shoved her to the ground. Drake grabbed the log and raised it high above his head.
“No!” Ian thrust his hand at Drake to stop. An emerald blast hurdled at the back of the man’s head. He stiffened. Singed hair and burnt flesh seeped from the wound, then he collapsed.
Saxon whimpered. Rayne dragged the dead man off of the wolf. Saxon crawled over and lay on the ground next to Ian. It licked his hand.
“Thank you,” Ian said in a feeble voice. Speech triggered a cough, and he choked.
Rayne knelt beside him and hid clenched fists under her arms. She leaned close. “Ugh, Ian, what c
an I do?”
His eyes fluttered for a second and then closed. Blood, mixed with spittle, trickled from his mouth. Stomach acid burned a path into his skull. The effort it took to lift his hand was too great. He wheezed with every labored breath. The wolf whimpered and licked his cheek. The sandpaper tongue brought an odd comfort with it.
{66}
Jaered followed her screams and found them just as the wolf intervened. The Heir managed to save them. Jaered pondered the new development. How long had he wielded the core blast power?
From his vantage point in the bushes, Jaered looked to the sky. Not in relief but to judge the looming crisis. The gravity of the Heir’s injuries had triggered a dramatic shift in atmospheric pressure that worsened as seconds ticked by.
The girl trench-crawled to the cliff and peered over the edge. With her back turned, Jaered shyfted next to the Heir. The wolf wasn’t fooled. It crouched at the ready with bared fangs.
She twisted around. “Get away from him!” she shouted. The wolf’s snarls grew ferocious.
Jaered raised his hand. “You need to stay back from us both.” He checked the Heir’s pulse. It was weaker than he’d hoped. “He’s seriously injured. Whatever’s left of his core is probably the only thing keeping him alive.”
Rayne got to her feet. “You had my mother’s journal. Who are you?” she said.
He pulled his phone from his pocket. How this was going to play out was up to Eve.
“Who are you?” she insisted and took a step toward him. The wolf bared his fangs and crouched deep as if about to spring.
Jaered gave her a glare full of warning. She grasped the wolf’s mane. The look in the animal’s eyes kept him on the alert. “Grab that.”
She picked up the Book of the Weir and hugged it against her.
“Report,” Eve answered.
“Code red,” he said, “the Heir.”
Silence. “What about the nearest vortex?”
“There isn’t one. I came by car, remember?” He sat on the ground and rubbed the back of his neck. “Besides, I’m not sure that will be good enough.”