Page 11 of Delinquents Turned Fugitives
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We flew upa flight of stairs as fast as our legs could take us. As I climbed, I hiked my left hand over my head to create shadows in front of us and block our faces from any Pinnacle cameras while I simultaneously shoved my right hand down next to me, palm facing behind us, saturating the steps with light in the hope that I could delay Callum and the wild horde he’d unleashed.
Vampires hated sunlight, or so the common wisdom said. Why? No one had ever bothered to find out, but I hoped like hell that it was true. I hoped my light would keep them back.
I pictured the pale British vamp and seethed.That bastard. I freed him!
A snarl sounded behind me. The sound crawled up my spine into my ears and sent shivers cascading over me. Shit. I doubled my pace on the stairs, whispering urgently for the guys to do the same.
“Faster, faster.” We had to outrun them. We had to.
We came upon some kind of fog on the next staircase landing. It wasn’t normal mist; the haze was tinged blue.
We all stopped short and stared at it. The mist didn’t extend beyond the top step. I looked side to side to see if the mist was coming from an amulet, but didn’t see any glowing gem. I took a deep breath. “My heist. I’ll go first.”
Andros’ huge, blood-covered hand shot out to block me. “No way, Brains. I’ll do it.” His deep blue eyes burned holes into mine. Did he think he needed to make amends for earlier?
Before I could tell him not to, the huge man stepped right into the cerulean fog.
“Crap,” I cursed as I stared intently at Andros, expecting the worst. I hadn’t heard anything about mist in my research of the Pinnacle’s protections but then, I knew nothing about this entire damn secret lab. I feared the absolute worst as I joined the guys just below the landing.
Andros’ expression morphed from horrified to confused when nothing happened to him after a few seconds. He glanced around at the rest of the crew and turned his blood-soaked palms upward in a questioning gesture. “What’s this?”
The sound of claws scraping the walls behind us, and the ragged breaths of blood-crazed monsters made me leap forward into the mist, heedless of whatever curse it held. “Who cares? Go!” I urged the others as I stumbled.
I lumbered through what felt like a wall of thick, invisible spiderwebs and I lost hold of my magic as I batted away the ethereal strands that clung to my pants, my shirt, my hair.
Seconds later, my feet hit marble flooring and squeaked forward. My eyes rose and took in a dull, mundane office space.
When I glanced backward, there was a solid beige wall where the spiderweb feeling had encased me. There was no hint of fog any longer. Was the fog part of the magic? Was it like a one-way door or something? Solid-looking on one side, penetrable on the other?
Evan’s arm appeared through the wall and seconds later, the rest of his body hurried through. He was the last of our team and his blue eyes were round with fear. “They’re close.”
Those words made my heart judder and quake.
I turned back to study the room and find the fastest way out. It looked like an open floor plan workspace. Desks were scattered all around without any cubicle walls separating them. But based on the number of rainbow-colored Post-Its and highlighters, cutesy mugs with kids’ faces printed on them, and the dictation pedals that littered the beige tile floor, this wasn’t a restricted employee area. It looked like a number of secretaries worked here. There were no windows. Were we in some kind of basement?
My eyes scanned for a fire exit sign or something, and as my gaze roamed, I wondered about the lab we’d just come from.
With an entrance here, no one would ever be able to casually walk through the wall behind us and get into that lab during work hours without the people at these desks noticing.
Unless the lab was only accessed at night.
Was that possible?
The vault was public knowledge. Everyone knew it existed.
But this entrance made me think that the lab was a tightly held secret and that most of the world didn’t know about it.
I wondered what kind of experiments they conducted down there.
A shiver licked the shell of my ear and I scratched at it, but my agitation didn’t recede. Shit. This didn’t feel right.
I glanced around and spotted only two cameras in the room. Both pointed away from our current location toward the elevators. But none focused on the room itself.
There was no damned security.
Why in the name of fuck isn’t there—
