Page 13 of Delinquents Turned Fugitives
Andros smacked him over the side of the head. “Move.”
His smack snapped us all out of our amused trance.
We tore across the floor, not wasting our chance.
We didn’t leave a moment too soon.
Because behind us I heard the soundtrack to a scary movie start to play. A haggard set of growls echoed down the hall, then the click of claws on the tile.
Gasps of “Holy shit!” and “No!” pinged off the walls around us like pinballs as the guards saw what was coming. Gunshots blasted through the air—but not in our direction. The shots were aimed behind us.
The vampires had reached them.
Bile erupted up my throat when I heard the first horrified scream, a high-pitched, truly terrified sound that ended in a gargle.
Shit.
I forced my legs to scramble faster.
Fire exploded behind us, heat licking at my back and curling my hair as the guards fought the monsters with whatever magic they had left. The unnatural shriek of a vampire reached my ears.
I was tempted to look back.
So tempted.
But that would slow me down.
The goosebumps that rose on my skin and the shivers that crept up my spine told me that I was seconds from death—any tiny mistake might be the end of me.
I kept my eyes forward.
Evan was in front of me, just to my right, his straight dark hair matted to his head. He reached back and tried to form an ice shield, but he was too spent to put out more than a puff of frost. We all were depleted. Even the surge I’d felt when I thought I was on the brink of death was waning. So instead of fighting the wall of fire created by the guards, instead of trying to magic our way through it, we let our suits do the work. We simply kept running through the blistering orange wall, hoping that it kept the vampires at bay. Smoke seared my lungs and my eyes started to stream and I struggled to keep the physical tears I couldn’t help from becoming emotional ones.
So close.
We were so damned close. We just had to get out of the building.
An alarm started to blare in my ears.
“Faster!” I croaked through the grey haze that filled the top half of the hall.
I couldn’t tell if my command, or the fact that we could still hear claws on the tiles, spurred the guys forward.
Another door.
Another stairwell.
Fuck.
My leg muscles burned. I growled as I pulled myself up onto another landing, the nerves in the hand Claude had frozen still stinging. I stopped for a second to catch my breath and looked around. Another bland open office space met my eyes, along with at least four security cameras. But across the way, I saw windows and the shadows of shrubbery.
We’d reached the ground floor.
My knees trembled and my legs tumbled out from under me. My body had reached its tipping point.
A calloused, blood-stained hand swept me up and I gazed up at Andros as he hugged me into his chest.
"Almost there," he muttered. "Almost there."
