by Carly Morgan
It took every ounce of Kaelia’s willpower not to cut out his tongue with her dagger. That would shut him up. “Look, I think you’re a little confused on who’s in charge here,” she started.
“Lover boy comes with me,” Evan concluded anyway. “You can take the old man.”
Kaelia rolled her eyes. She didn’t have time for this, not with freedom so close to her fingertips. “Fine. Whatever. Wesley comes with me to the top of the waterfall, and the two of you hide out at the basin of the river. I’ll take out as many as I can with the arrows, and then we’ll ambush the rest of them from different sides.”
“What about the flags?” Lux brought up the obvious.
Kaelia sneered. “We grab them and run!”
“Whoever gets a flag, gets a flag,” Evan decided. “Once they become available, it’s every person for themselves.”
“Deal,” Kaelia said shortly. She wasn’t worried about that part. She was getting one of those flags, and with her supersonic speed, she’d outrun and outswim the other two easily back out to the cavern. She would never have to set foot in Krakian again. “Just make sure to stay clear until I’ve unleashed all my arrows. I only have eight of them. I’m a pretty decent shot, but not perfect.”
Evan rolled his eyes. “Then why are you on sniper duty?”
Kaelia wasn’t about to let him mess this up. “You want to wrestle this bow away from me and appoint yourself? Go for it.”
Evan’s face fell, disgruntled. “Jeez, you got a real attitude problem, you know that?”
“So I’ve been told.” Kaelia spun towards the waterfall. “Let’s do this. See you back at the cavern.”
Wesley followed behind her obediently, while Lux and Evan blazed off in the opposite direction. Sweat dripped down Kaelia’s forehead, stinging her eyes, but she was too preoccupied to wipe it away. It had to be the hottest day yet since she came to the island. Of course. Of all days.
“You okay?” she eventually asked Wesley, wishing she’d saved the coconut for him. His skin was very red from sunburn, and his eyes appeared glazed over. He was the only one of them who didn’t carry his own weapon.
Somehow, he found it in him to smile, and he nodded nearly happily at her. “Never thought I’d spend my last hours, following behind a beautiful half-naked woman on an island paradise like this. You’re just like an angel, really, leading me into heaven.”
Kaelia turned quickly, her face heating up with embarrassment. Well, at least the old guy knew how to make the best of a dire situation.
Climbing up the rocky embankment to the waterfall flooded Kaelia with memories of Callan. They’d made this same climb, and then dove off the edge of the cliff hand in hand. They’d kicked to the surface of the water together, never letting go, and he had hiked her up in front of his hips and kissed her for a long time under the waterfall, his erection springing up against her thigh. To enter her, he’d simply stretched her tiny bikini bottom away from her leg, and fucked her like that in his arms, the back of her head dipping back into the cool, clean surface of the river.
Stop, she commanded herself suddenly. Stop getting distracted. She would see Callan soon. As soon as this was over. And it was almost over. She would be the winner. She’d have freedom. She’d have whatever she wanted. And what she wanted most was Callan, she’d do anything to get him. Kaelia crouched behind a jumble of moss-covered rocks, and she took her first shot.
The arrow emitted a faint whistling sound as it soared through the air and plunged itself deep into Grady’s left thigh. Perfect. Her intended mark. The lot of them were all scrambling around trying to figure out where the arrow had come from when she grabbed another and drew back the bow string. She hit a second one in the shoulder, and a third one in the side. They were all shouting now, but her cover was blown. Elgren aimed his crossbow in their general vicinity.
“Duck,” she told Wesley, and shoved him down behind their rock pile. She leaned over him, and the loose arrow screamed over her back. The problem with crossbows though is that they took a little while to load. Kaelia let loose two more arrows before Elgren even had it properly cranked. She ducked again, this time to the left.
Kaelia checked her arrows, three left. She had unleashed five of them, though only four hit their marks. Elgren was still unwounded and so were several of the others, now picking up their weapons and dropping into fighting stances and surrounding the flags. She could kill them. It would make things easier for her, Lauza had been right. It was the smart thing to do. But she wasn’t too keen on taking the advice from a serial killer. She’d leave them alive as long as she could.
Kaelia loosed her three remaining arrows in a consecutive stream, and then turned to Wesley, breathless. “You ready?” she asked him.
He blinked at her. She supposed she probably should have told him the plan. “Ready for what?” he said slowly. “What do we do now?”
This was it. Do or die. Kaelia took a deep breath, and launched herself over the rocks. “Now we jump!” she yelled, and dove straight off the cliff.
She hit the water just as cleanly as her arrows had sailed, and swam down deep to the very bottom. She hovered there for several minutes, holding her breath, as calm as a puffer fish waiting for its prey among the reeds. She knew the longer she stayed down there, the more likely it was that they’d think she twisted her neck the wrong way and drowned, making her sneak attack all the more unexpected. But she also knew Lux, Wesley and Evan might follow her into combat soon, and she couldn’t let them go it alone.
She leapt snapping from the water like an alligator, dagger in the air. Chaos surrounded her. Elgren was in combat with Lux, another one was fighting Evan, their swords clanging. Kaelia went for Elgren first, flying over Lux’s shoulder and grabbing him between the ears, headbutting his forehead against hers. Elgren fell, and Kaelia’s lips curled into an unexpected smile. That had felt better than she expected.
But more were coming. Kaelia ducked, twisted, and dodged, tripping and kicking and smashing the heel of her hand into noses. It had been awhile since she’d fought like this, and she was rusty, but all the training she had done with Callan was paying off. Their enemies fell one after another, scattering the ground with weapons. Finally, the only ones left were too wounded to do much but favor their injuries. Kaelia whirled, her eyes searching out the flags.
Evan was already there, his fists closing around the black pieces of fabric. Time seemed to slow down, and for a second Kaelia felt confused. What was he doing? Why was he taking all of them?
“No!” Kaelia screamed, flying through the air and grabbing him around the middle. “What are you doing?”
“You think I’m an idiot!” he yelled back at her, trying to shake her off. “You think I don’t realize you can swim faster than me, run faster than me? You can have your flag back at the cavern, but you’re not getting there first!”
Rage flooded through Kaelia, but just as she was about to rip the flags out of Evan’s hands and hurl him into the river, a flash of pain seared across the back of her leg. She turned to see what had caused such an inconvenience, and one of those spiked balls went whizzing by her, taking off a chunk of her shoulder. She gasped. Blood was pouring out of her. Grady was advancing towards her, swinging another flail by the chain, her arrow still in his thigh. This time when he threw the flail, she ducked.
Without taking another moment to contemplate it, Kaelia ripped the flags from Evan’s fist and tried to run. But she stumbled. Evan tackled her. “Get off!” she screamed, but she couldn’t fight him. She was too preoccupied by the pain in her leg, her shoulder. He was ruining everything.
An instant later, he was dead, a javelin impaled through the side of his neck. She looked up, and Lux was there, offering his hand. “Kaelia,” he said, though his voice was hazy, and his face kept going in and out. “Let’s go.”
She almost had it. She was hurt, but she could still take his hand, still stagger to safety. But something else grabbed her foot. Grady. She should have
killed him. Why didn’t she kill him? She tried to propel herself away, but he yanked her out from under Evan, and slammed her body against the ground. She cried out, the pain searing through her body. She searched around frantically for some way to defend herself. Where was her dagger? Had she dropped it?
“All right, super girl.” Grady loomed over her. “No one to protect you now.”
He picked up a nearby spear and cracked it down over her other leg, the one that wasn’t already hurt. Kaelia felt a crushing sensation. What was happening? How had she lost everything so fast? Grady was circling her, wielding the spear, his face seething with anger. Kaelia closed her eyes, willing herself to move, to get away. What was going on? Why couldn’t she move? She had to move. Had to get away.
Suddenly, Grady grunted, and then collapsed. Behind him stood Wesley, her dagger that had been in his hand now lodged deep into Grady’s back. Wesley smiled at her in that same way as before. Kaelia let her head fall back as she sighed in relief.
“All right, c’mon,” Lux offered his hand again. “Before the rest of them come to. Let’s go.”
This was it. Their freedom. Her way back home to Callan. Kaelia went to push herself up enough to grab Lux’s hand.
“Ow,” she whimpered, her expression suddenly panic-stricken. “My leg.” No. This couldn’t be happening. Her leg couldn’t be broken. Not when she needed to get back to the cavern. But she quickly realized that’s why she couldn’t escape Grady herself, and her spirits sank down into despair.
“Kaelia, now,” Lux urged her. “I can’t fight off these guys without you.”
“I can’t move,” she admitted plaintively. The calf of one leg was pouring blood. The other was mangled and broken. Her shoulder was exploding from pain.
Lux crouched down and propped her up against one shoulder, and suddenly Wesley was there on her other side, the two of them somehow managing to lift her to her feet. “Once we get you to the water, it’ll be easier,” Lux grunted. “Objects are lighter in water; you’ll practically float.”
Why did he sound so optimistic? The world was going gray. Kaelia could hardly see. She was losing too much blood. “I need to wrap the wound,” she tried to tell them, feeling as if she no longer remembered how to make words. It was too hot on this damn island. She couldn’t take the heat any longer.
“We don’t have time.” Lux’s voice sounded like it was coming from another dimension. Or maybe she was in another dimension. She could feel herself slipping there, bit by bit. “Hold on,” Lux was saying, but it wasn’t really Lux. Just the sound of his voice. Kaelia felt her feet floating off the ground as he lifted her, hoisting her over his shoulder just as she fell into a dark, hazy, never-ending nothingness of space.
Chapter 24
Callan
On the third day, she finally opened her eyes. Callan had arrived too late to the resort to do anything but hold her lifeless hand as they loaded her on a stretcher into an ambulance. Lux, the idiot, had pulled her through the water to the cavern while she was unconscious, her blood leaving a red stream through the ocean. But, as soon as he flopped her up on to the top of that submerged rock, the game was called, and the medical team rushed in. It was Wesley who gave her CPR until the paramedics got there.
She had a rare blood type, but Callan had been a match, and they’d been able to do the transfusion within the first hour of getting her to the hospital. They didn’t like him here, but the doctors said her vitals were more stable when he was around, and so they had allowed it.
Callan didn’t like being in here either. He was surrounded by enemies, and he knew the faster he got her out, the better.
“Hey.” Her eyes found him through her drug-induced gaze, and she managed to offer a small smile. “You still mad at me?”
“A little bit.” Callan stood, unhooking her IV bag from the stand. “How do you feel?”
She was looking around, taking in her surroundings, registering that she was in the hospital, that there was a cast on one leg and bandages on the other and on her shoulder. Callan noticed her circle her wrist with her fingers, the pleasure that washed over her face to find only IV needles there.
“Did I win?” she asked expectantly, and it occurred to Callan her memories of the events before she slipped into the coma might have been a bit fuzzy.
“You were disqualified,” he informed her. “But the hospital staff still made the showrunners take the tracking band off.”
“Disqualified?” she struggled to sit up, becoming much more alert now, ripping the oxygen tubes out of her nose with both hands. “For what?”
Callan realized his mistake. Better not to upset her. He’d tell her about it later.
“Come on,” he tucked her IV bag under his arm and scooped her into a cradle hold. “Let’s go.”
“Go,” she repeated, laboring for a moment to lift her head, before succumbing to weakness and resting it against the inside of his elbow. “Go where?”
“Bogota,” he replied shortly. “Or Belize.”
The guards outside her room weren’t expecting him. He headbutted one, and kicked the other one’s legs out from under him. More came for him. They were scattered up and down the hall, some of them even in disguise. Callan threw Kaelia over his shoulder, taking them out one by one. They wouldn’t shoot him. Not while he had her.
“Those scientists?” he started with her conversationally as he ducked into a stairwell. “They own this major drug corporation called Plekser. Plekser has a lot of other big corporations in their pocket. SWAT teams, federal agents, the works. They’ve been waiting for your clean bill of health and a discharge note from your doctors to take you out of here. They’ve been getting pretty impatient, actually.”
“Where are we?” she asked, as he jostled her while going down the stairs. “Are we still on the island?”
“No,” Callan replied. “They choppered you back to the mainland to be treated by specialists, courtesy of Plekser.”
“But what about…” she stammered. “What about you?”
Callan shrugged nonchalantly, shifting her from his shoulders to his arms again. The cast on her leg was cumbersome to maneuver, jutting out awkwardly. “I wouldn’t leave you. We are engaged, after all.”
“You told them that?”
“They figured I was harmless, and didn’t want to stir up any drama by getting me upset, though I’m sure they would have tried to get rid of me eventually. Watch your head.”
He swiveled her body as he ran out the door into the parking lot, searching wildly about. The SWAT team swarmed them like ants. Callan knocked them out one after another after another.
“But why was I disqualified?” she asked, as he raced for a clearing on the other side of the parking lot. Callan was panting from the exertion of taking out several armed men, and she was still on that.
“Let’s just say our little friends from Plekser revealed to the showrunners it wasn’t exactly fair to put someone like you against people who didn’t have their genes spliced with predator DNA.” He paused, still searching. “Where are they?”
“Who?” she asked, straining her neck to look as well.
“Beacon,” Callan said, and then he saw it, the cruiser pulling up behind a row of trees. “Let’s go.”
“Callan?” she said, as he ran towards the trees. “I wanted to tell you something.”
“What is it?” he said, nearly impatient with her, despite spending the past three days feeling like he was going to die if she didn’t just open her eyes and look at him.
“That I love you,” she murmured, still kind of out of it, possibly from the after-effects of all the drugs they had her on.
“I love you, too,” Callan said instinctively, touched despite his distraction.
“There’s something else,” she went on dazedly, sighing contentedly as if she’d woken up from her coma just to tell him that, and now she was very satisfied that she’d done it.
He glanced down at her, and his chest swelled with ov
erwhelming affinity. He had been so close to losing her, yet she was staring at him intently now, her eyes gleaming like the onyx he’d fastened back around her neck, almost as if nothing had happened at all.
“Yeah?” he said back, swallowing down his emotions as he concentrated on getting her to the car.
She sighed and leaned back into his arms again. “Let’s not go to Bogota, or Belize. Let’s go somewhere where it isn’t so hot.”
“Okay,” Callan said, as he stowed her into the backseat of the car and climbed in behind her, and they drove.
Chapter 25
Kaelia
About a Year Later
Kaelia smiled at the guard posted outside her door as she stepped off the elevator, though he raised his eyebrows at her in dismay. “C’mon,” he cajoled. “Why do you have to do this to me? Mr. Merone isn’t going to like you sneaking past me again.”
“Then maybe you better start doing your job,” she teased him impishly, sliding around his beefy body and letting herself into the penthouse.
Kaelia threw her keys and sunglasses down and loosened her hood and scarf. The penthouse overlooking the city was always empty at this hour. It wasn’t an isolated tropical paradise, but it was a mountaintop, and Kaelia enjoyed the view every day from the floor to ceiling windows that stretched across the length of the main room. Cerulean-tinted, powdery white peaks ran jaggedly across the horizon, like giant teeth about to gobble up the sky.
She strode past the white couches and fuel powered fireplace to their own private bedroom, and stopped short when she noticed Callan, his back to her on the computer at his desk. She wasn’t expecting him to be home so early, and the sight of him still caught her breath. She came up behind him and slid a hand down his arm, bending low to kiss his neck and his ear. He’d grown a beard to match their new climate, and Kaelia enjoyed the scratchy feel of it against her soft cheek.