I was out of my seat in a single powerful movement that would have taken me by surprise had my arm not taken that moment to fling back with the rawel still clasped firmly between my fingers. The device pulsed like a living heart in my hand and I felt its power surge through me like a shot of adrenaline. The feeling of being absolutely invincible slammed like a fist in my gut. It exploded through my veins. I would have cried out if I wasn’t moving again, moving with a speed that seemed to slow the rest of the world. I was already braced by the time the soldier realized I was no longer sitting, and worse, no longer restrained. I watched his eyes widen, his jaw slacken, and his body swing towards me. But he wasn’t quick enough.
My arm came sweeping down. Ten feet of metal shot through the distance dividing us. It lashed across in a silver blur and looped around his neck twice. His weapon dropped with a noisy clatter to the ground as he threw up both hands to claw at the chain cutting into his windpipe. His eyes bulged as the skin of his face became crimson. His massive body slumped forward on his knees, eyes still watching me, disbelief alight in them. I yanked back on the chain and he dropped forward, motionless.
The chain instantly released. It slithered toward me like a vacuum cord getting sucked into the machine. A moment later, it was back to its regular size and rested harmlessly in the palm of my hand.
“Whoa…”
Pushing aside my awe, I ran to the fallen soldier and searched for a pulse. I didn’t exhale until I felt the steady patter. Getting quickly to my feet, I stuffed the rawel into my back pocket. It was followed by the phone and debit card before I darted for the door.
The holding place I was being kept in was tucked at the very back of the station. It was far enough away from the road that all I could make out were the clouds of black smoke rising from the ground. But in no way did that save me from hearing the gunfire, the horrific screams and the sound of something dangerous pushing back. My heart raced in my throat as I searched for some sign of where they might be keeping Isaiah. But all the shelters looked the same and I never saw which way they took him when we got separated.
“Where are you?”
“Go!” came his almost immediate response.
“This would go a whole lot faster if you just tell me!” I snarled into the air.
A second later, I heard the distinct sound of automatic gunfire from a shelter nearby. I was running towards it even before I could rationalize my actions, or the fact that I was unarmed. I burst through the door and stopped.
Isaiah looked up at me, his expression very unamused. He stood over a fallen soldier, hands still tied at his back.
“I told you to leave,” he muttered.
“And I told you to shut up.” I marched across the distance and unhooked the dagger strapped to the soldier’s belt. I broke the plastic ties restraining his hand and was about to return the knife, but decided against it. “We need to go.”
Isaiah didn’t argue. I wasn’t expecting he would.
“Any idea what’s going on?”
I shook my head as we left the shelter. “Whatever it is, it’s happening by the road.”
He squinted in that direction. His nostrils twitched. He sniffed. Then he said the one name I was dreading.
“Garrison.”
I was suddenly so glad I didn’t leave the knife. “How did they find us?”
Isaiah grabbed my free hand. “I don’t know. Come on.”
Keeping between the shelters, we ran for the trees forming a tight U around the camp. Our feet slipped on packed snow, making enough noise that the entire world could probably hear us. We ducked under low branches and tried to avoid risen roots. I was cold, wet and terrified, and avoiding and dodging were beyond my abilities. So I stumbled, staggered and crashed through the brush like a bull through a china shop. Isaiah’s patience toward me was impressive.
We didn’t disappear through the foliage like I first assumed we were doing. Instead, I found us standing at the top of a small hill, overlooking the road and the train of vacant cars standing bumper to bumper into the far distance. People were running in all directions like ants at a picnic, only with more panic. Some had tried to maneuver their vehicles around the blockage, only to wind up even more stuck. If anything, their attempts only further cluttered any hope of escape.
“What are we doing?”
Tugging me down to a crouch, Isaiah scanned the valley below us with narrowed eyes. “Finding us a way out of here.”
“What about the car?”
He shook his head. “They took it to the back of the compound to get searched. The only way we’ll get it out is if we drive through that warzone.”
I glanced over his head to where another explosion formed a mushroom cloud into the air where the war had moved closer to the camp. Several of the tents were now on fire and half the soldiers had been dispatched to put them out with buckets of snow. We were far enough away that I didn’t actually worry about getting shot, but it was still too close for my liking.
“There!”
I followed Isaiah’s pointing finger to a gap between two cars. At first I thought he meant one of the cars and I was about to ask him how he was going to try and get it out of the mess, when I spotted the thin gleam of metal on the ground, next to a black boot.
“That’s a little close to the action, isn’t it?” I said, estimating roughly twenty feet between the motorcycle and the warzone.
“Got no choice,” he said. “Stay here. When I grab the bike, run down.”
I gave a nod that I understood and watched as he slid down the side of the hill and did a crouching roll behind a minivan. I held my breath as he dropped to the ground and peered around the side. No one was paying him any attention. Most of the people trying to get out of British Columbia were too busy scattering into the nearby woods. Those remaining were either soldiers or Garrison’s men and they were too busy with each other to notice Isaiah scuttling for the fallen bike.
Snow melted into the kneecaps of my jeans, dampening them even further. I tried to adjust my weight, not sure why. Part of me probably hoped if I went on my side, the snow might not soak into my clothes. It didn’t work that way. I cursed Archer vehemently. This was all his fault. We could have been in the car, driving safely out of that province. But he had to be a coward. Because of him, we lost the car, the camping gear I still wasn’t sure what we were supposed to do with as I had never been camping a day in my life, and my clothes. My new clothes that I hadn’t had for more than a month.
“Crap!” I bolted upright as I was struck with another realization.
Amalie’s diary. It was in my duffle. In the car. I needed to get it.
“Fallon, don’t!”
“I can’t leave it behind!” I shot back. “I’ll be careful and really quick. Get the bike.”
Ignoring his demands to stay put, I scurried away from the ledge and made my way quickly back to the campground. I tried to follow Isaiah’s low crouch, but after pain sparked up my back and along my knees, I tossed that idea aside. Stealth had never been my strong suit anyway.
It was a whole lot easier sneaking back into the camp when everyone was preoccupied somewhere else. All available bodies were too busy fending off the threat to worry about someone sneaking in. But even then, I kept close to the shelters and checked every corner before making my move. The area hadn’t seemed that big when we had first rolled up, but the majority of the domes were clustered further back, away from the road. There were no outer perimeters, no electric fences or guards stationed around the back except a heavy wall of forestry, which surprised me. It made me wonder what was back there to ensure such confidence. It didn’t matter. I wasn’t there to give security advice. I needed to find the car.
I picked my way carefully towards the back where Isaiah said the car was being kept. I counted eight burnt tents, several unmoving, smoldering bodies and about a handful still left fighting. Our side, which was the side not Team Garrison, was losing … badly.
“I found he
r!”
I recognized that voice even before I whirled around—Yuri. Big, mean and a little more than pissed off at me for taking out one of his eyes, the man was not someone you wanted to meet at the best of times. His ability to multiply was probably the reason Garrison’s side was winning. I’d seen him split into ten versions of himself. Odds were he could do more.
“Hello little girl,” he chortled in that thick Russian accent of his. “Did you miss Yuri?”
Like getting my nails ripped off by white hot pliers.
My gaze swung over the area behind him. Any moment now, others would be joining him. If I had any chance of escape, it was to act now.
Throwing back my arm, I flung the dagger as hard as I could. Without waiting to see if I got him, I spun on my heels and ran. My wet sneakers slipped on snow when I rounded a corner. I barely caught myself on the edge of a tent before pushing off and resuming my headlong scramble away from the bull thundering after me. Winter air surged down my throat and pumped shards of ice into my lungs. My throat burned. Months of running and I was still lousy at it.
I ducked down another opening, then another. It was like running through a maze of domes. I suddenly had a very clear image of how Theseus felt trying to escape the Minotaur. Only I didn’t have Ariadne to help me make it through the labyrinth alive.
Rounding the final set of tents before the road, I came to a skidding halt. The ground vanished beneath my feet and I slipped onto my backside. Ahead of me, dark and looming, Yuri number two smirked down at me with his one good eye. Behind me, Yuri number one dogged my steps at a leisurely pace and I realized with slight annoyance that he’d been toying with me. He had deliberately cornered me into a trap.
“Fun time is over,” he said, cracking his hairy knuckles. “For you.”
I scrambled to my feet and backed into the tent, trying to keep an eye on both of Yuri, which was hard to do without wrenching a neck muscle. They had me boxed in. My hand crept to my back pocket, to where the rawel was tucked away. I still wasn’t sure how to use the thing, but it had saved me once. Maybe it could do it again.
“Don’t be stupid,” Yuri number one warned. “Put your hands up like a good girl. Do it!” he growled when I hesitated.
Outnumbered, I did as he said. I put both hands up.
Yuri number one laughed. “Mr. Garrison will be so glad to see you again. He has a special surprise.”
I didn’t want to know what that surprise may be, but I didn’t say so.
“I got her. Bring car.” It took me a moment to realize he was talking into a throat mic. His dark, cold eye bore into me while he spoke. “Now we wait,” he said to me. “What do you think we should do, hmm? I still owe you for what you did to my eye.”
“It looks good on you,” I said. “I can do the other one if you like.”
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. After that, I really should have at least foreseen the backhand before it crushed in one half of my face. Instead, I found myself face down in the snow, spitting out blood and trying to blink my eyeball back into my skull. My stomach roiled with the pain. But I wasn’t allowed a small shred of dignity where I would be left alone to nurse my wounds. I was grabbed by the back of the neck and lifted nearly off the ground.
“Still think you’re funny?”
If I was ever going to be sick, please, God, let it be now, I prayed as I hovered inches from his face.
“Now that is no way to treat a lady.”
I was dropped unceremoniously to the ground as both Yuris turned, weapons drawn to confront the new voice in our little party.
Archer, rawel in hand, strolled into our mix. He glanced from one Yuri to the other, head cocked to one side, eyebrow arched over the frame of his glasses.
“Yikes, what happened to you two? Mother drop you on your faces one too many times?”
Yuri one and two, no longer stunned by the unexpected intrusion, bristled. “Get out of here!”
Archer twisted the corners of his mouth downward in feigned displeasure. “See, I can’t. She,” he said as he jabbed his rawel towards me, “kind of belongs to me and I kind of need her back, preferably alive.”
Belong to him? If my head hadn’t been buzzing still, I would have pitched a snowball right at that stupid face of his.
“What is this?” Yuri barked.
“An intervention.”
Without missing a beat, Archer raised his free hand, brought it to his mouth and blew. Nothing. Not a sound. Not even air escaping his lips. Yuri one and two burst out laughing as Archer dropped his hand back to his side.
“Run home, boy,” Yuri said, shaking his head. “You don’t belong here.”
Archer seemed unfazed by their mockery. He’d gone very still, very white—whiter than usual. His hands balled at his sides and he took a very small step back. I thought he was running again, the coward. Then I heard them, the rabid howls of dogs. They swelled through the air, a cacophony of rage. Both Yuris seemed to still at the sound. They cast alarmed glances at the sky like it was about to burst open and rain dogs, but neither made any attempt to run. Me, on the other hand, I scuttled to my feet, my heart wedged in my throat as I tried to find the source of the noise.
“Where are you?”
I pushed aside Isaiah’s panicked prodding into my mind, and not a moment too soon.
Spit flying, hair on end, six large German Shepherds came flying around the corner. Their jaws, lined with rows of serrated fangs, snapped. Mad lust raged behind their eyes as they tore right for us, devouring the distance with vehement hunger. I tried to scream, but everything had shut down in fright. I had no recollection of being grabbed and dragged until I found my feet moving, pounding the ground as howls, these ones human, ripped through the air.
“Run!” Archer snarled at me, giving my arm a jerk when I stumbled.
Jolting out of my paralysis, I pumped my legs. Curiosity propelled me to glance back once, just once, to see and I instantly wished I hadn’t. The quick glimpses of spattered blood, torn fabric and flesh I caught through the coils of hair that swept across my face made my stomach churn. I had no love for Yuri, but getting eaten by crazed dogs wasn’t how anyone should go. Except maybe Garrison.
“Where’s Prince Charming?” Archer demanded, dragging me around several tents and stopping once we were far enough away.
“By the cars.”
Archer swore. “The place is surrounded. I don’t know how they knew you were here, but Garrison has sent half his army to find you. The soldiers are on their last leg. There’s only a handful left. They won’t make it.”
“Can’t you do something?”
He shook his head. “I can’t use powers, not unless you want half the non-human world coming down on our heads. Plus I’m not technically allowed to harm humans.”
“Are you kidding me?” I cried. “You killed thirty people back at the diner and you just sicced those dogs on Yuri—”
“That’s different,” he cut me off. “I didn’t do it. I made someone…” he trailed off. Something seemed to dawn across his face. “Find Isaiah. Get out of here.”
I grabbed his arm before he could get passed me. “What are you doing?”
He smirked. “Giving you a distraction, Princess. Go.”
Not giving me the chance to push him, he disappeared from sight between two shelters.
“Isaiah?”
Several disturbing minutes of silence followed. I frowned and mentally paged him again. Still nothing. My stomach knotted. My hands began to shake. Had Garrison gotten him? Had he been hurt trying to get me? Was he … no. I would have felt that. I would know. But still, not knowing had my mind torn to pieces.
Abandoning thoughts of escape, I delved in the direction of the road. If Garrison had him, he would be there, possibly right in the center where I would see him. Garrison would want me to see him, would want me to know I had no choice but to surrender, which I would. But I wasn’t stupid. I didn’t just blindly run into the fray. I crouched behind a mound of snow
that had been plowed off the highway into a giant heap alongside the road and peered over it, careful to keep low.
Archer had been exaggerating about the army. There were roughly fifteen figures standing in small groups along the highway, surrounded by abandoned cars and scorched trees.
I recognized Jolie, the time stopper, and a boy of about eighteen who could make daggers appear out of thin air. I spotted Gaston and Mistral almost instantly. They stood in the open, consuming everything thrown at them while returning fire … literally. Balls of flames burst to life in their open palms. The orbs made wide arches through the air and exploded in a shower of hot embers upon contact. But they weren’t the reason the military was having such a hard time destroying the threat.
Maggie was there.
Adorable, eight year old Maggie with her riot of Shirley Temple ringlets and china doll features. But it was her eyes that stole away from the innocent little girl appearance. They were cold and dead. She stood in the line of fire in her pretty pink dress, her hands held loosely at her sides as she stared back at the soldiers. She was the reason no one from Garrison’s group was bothering to take cover from the rifles, automatic weapons, or even the tanks. Everything the soldiers threw at them was soaked into the invincible shield Maggie had put up around them. So try as they might, the military really had no chance. The stench of burning flesh tangled with the overpowering aroma of blood. It swirled through the air, clinging to the snowflakes that had begun to fall. Tattered halves of human remains lay strewn like a carpet of horror on a battle field of death.
“Oh God…” I breathed, clapping both hands over my mouth.
So many lives lost because of me and they would never know I was the reason Garrison was there. I was the reason he attacked all those innocent people. They all died unknowingly protecting me while I hid like a coward.
I was the personification of death and all who came near me were marked to die.
Touching Fire (Touch Saga) Page 27