Page 12 of The Power of Six (Lorien Legacies 2)

“This is suicide. Remember for a second that I’m not an alien. ”

I drop to a knee in front of Bernie Kosar. “You have to take this shirt,” I say to him. “Drag it across the ground as fast as you can, for two or three miles. We’ll cross the river so the bloodhound loses our scent and follows this one instead. Then we’ll run some more. You should have no trouble catching up to us if you fly. ”

Bernie Kosar transforms into a large bald eagle, takes the shirt into his talons, and speeds off.

“No time to waste,” I say, gripping the Chest in my left arm so I can swim with my right. Just as I’m about to jump into the water Six grabs my bicep.

“Sam’s right; we’ll freeze, John,” she urges. She looks afraid.

“They’re too close. We have no other choice,” I say. She bites her lip, her eyes sweeping the river, and turns back to me, giving my arm another squeeze.

“Yes we do,” she says. She lets go of my arm, and the whites of her eyes glisten in the dark. She pushes me behind her and takes a step towards the water, then tilts her head in a gesture of concentration. The bloodhound barks, closer than before.

She exhales slowly. At the same time she lifts her hands out in front of her, and as they come up, the waters of the river begin to part right there before us. With a loud rushing sound, the water foams and churns as it recedes upward to reveal a muddy path five feet wide that cuts across to the other bank. The water hovers, looking like a wave ready to crash. But instead it hangs suspended while icy mist coats our faces.

“Go!” she orders, her face strained in concentration, her eyes on the water.

Sam and I jump down from the bank. My feet sink and the mud comes nearly to my knees, but it still beats swimming in forty-degree temperatures in the dead of night. We tramp through it, taking big steps and struggling to lift our feet from the heavy mud. Once we’re across Six follows, rotating her hands as she passes through the massive waves ready to crash into each other, waves of her own creation. She climbs up the bank and then lets it go. The waves smash down with a deep hollow thud as though someone has just done a cannonball into it. The water rises and falls, and then looks no different than it did before.

“Amazing,” Sam says. “Just like Moses. ”

“Come on, we have to get into the trees so the dog can’t see us,” she says.

The plan works. After just a few minutes, the dog pauses at the riverbank and sniffs wildly. He circles several times and then rushes after Bernie Kosar. Sam, Six, and I take off in the opposite direction, just inside the tree line but near enough to still see the river, going as fast as Sam’s legs will permit.

The sound of men’s voices yelling to one another reaches us for the first few minutes until we outrun them. Ten minutes after that we hear the first whir of a helico

pter. We stop and wait for it to appear. A minute later, a spotlight shines high in the sky a few miles away in the direction Bernie Kosar has flown. The light sweeps the hills, shining one way, rushing the other.

“He should have been back already,” I say.

“He’s fine, John,” Sam says. “He’s BK, the most resilient beast I know. ”

“He has a broken leg. ”

“But two healthy wings,” Six counters. “He’s fine. We have to keep going. They’ll figure it out soon, if they haven’t already. We have to stay ahead. The longer we wait, the closer they’ll get. ”

I nod. She’s right. We have to keep going.

After a half mile the river takes a sharp turn to the right, back towards the highway, away from the hills. We stop and huddle beneath the low branches of a tall tree.

“Now what?” Sam asks.

“No idea,” I say. We turn in the direction in which we had just fled. The helicopter is closer now, its spotlight still sweeping back and forth across the hills.

“We have to leave the river,” I say.

“Yes, we do,” Six says. “He’ll find us, John. I promise. ”

We hear an eagle’s scream high in the treetops not far off. It’s too dark to see where he is, and perhaps too dark for him to see us. I don’t think twice about it, even if it will give away our position—I aim my palms towards the sky and turn my lights on, letting them shine as brightly as I can for a full half second. We wait, listening with our breaths held and heads craned. And then I hear a dog’s pant, and Bernie Kosar, changed back into a beagle, comes charging up from the riverbank. He’s out of breath but excited, his tongue falling from his mouth and his tail whipping in the air a thousand miles an hour. I bend down and pet him.

“Good job, buddy!” I say, planting a kiss on the top of his head.

And then it happens, a quick end to a celebration that was only just beginning.

While I’m on bended knee, a second copter shoots up over the hill behind us, instantly hitting us with its bright spotlight.

I bolt to my feet, blinded at once by the glaring beam.

“Run!” Six says.

We do, sprinting up the nearest hill. The helicopter drops down and hovers so the wind off its rotors beats against our backs and causes the trees to bow. The forest floor is a haze of debris, and I drape my arm across my mouth to breathe, keeping my eyes squinted to alleviate the stinging dirt. How long until the FBI is called?

“Stay where you are!” a male voice blares from the copter. “You’re all under arrest. ”

We hear shouts. The officers on foot can’t be more than five hundred feet away.

Six stops running, which causes Sam and me to do the same.

“We’re toast!” Sam yells.

“Okay, you bastards. We’ll do this the hard way,” Six says under her breath. She drops the bags, and for a second I think she plans to make Sam and me invisible. While I have no problem with leaving the bags behind, what does she expect me to do with the Chest? She can’t make all of us invisible and that, too.

A brilliant stroke of lightning splits the night sky in two, followed by the deep groan of rolling thunder.

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