Page 127 of Delinquents Turned Fugitives
A fourth guard appeared.
My team became locked in a battle as the vampires snarled and writhed under the net, getting tangled in their animalistic panic. Evan—in grizzly form—had to roar and slash at them in order to prevent them from attacking in their frenzied wrath. Only Callum maintained his head, shooting fireball after fireball at the guards.
But outside of Callum, the stairwell was chaos and it was nearly impossible for me to continue the laser without burning the vampires, who tried to use their inhuman speed to rush up the stairs but ended up just topping over one another.
Why were they acting so crazy?
There had to be a reason.
I turned on my infrared vision and spotted an amulet in one of the guard’s pockets.Shit.Who knew what it was, since it only showed up on infrared, but I was guessing it was some kind of adrenaline booster—something that would make the guards brave enough to rush at a horde of vampires and make the vampires wild enough to forget their magic as they panicked.
My heart raced and my hands shook. “Amulet!” I warned. “Pocket.” That was all I could get out because my body started to shake so hard.
Malcolm ran up a step or two in front of me and lobbed something small and metallic toward the second floor. Immediately after he threw it, he tossed a sheet of ice in front of Callum.
Boom.
Crrrrrrrrrkkkkkk.
It sounded as though the entire second floor was crackling, like paper rustling … or ice cracking.
Malcolm melted his shield and I could see the walls of the second floor, and everything and everyone up there, were coated in three inches of ice. The guards’ frozen expressions haunted me, but only for a moment, because I saw their hands flicker with flame. Just the tiniest flame. They’d be able to melt the ice, and escape … probably.
But in the meantime, they couldn’t attack. We could finally get out of this stairwell and reach our goals.
My hands stopped shaking and my heart slowed. I felt like I might keel over in relief.
But relief revved right back up into terror as I felt a knife slide across my throat, the tip digging in next to my windpipe. A voice in my ear growled, “Hayley Dunemark. I knew I was right about you.”
