Page 14 of Delinquents Turned Fugitives
I didn't know if he was talking to me or to himself but I didn't waste energy asking. I just tried to hold on tight and ensure I didn't bounce a ton to mess up his rhythm.
His arms were massive. It felt like I had climbed a tree. Except a tree wouldn't clutch my ass quite so firmly.
Andros hurried forward to join the other guys. I tried not to notice the metallic scent of blood on his shirt.
I glanced over his shoulder to see Callum's pale eyes as the nude vamp slowly ascended the stairs we’d just come up, Ginny draped like a bride across his arms, her body limp and her neck twisted at an odd angle. Her eyes were dull and blank.
I gulped. If my theory about needing a Darklight to walk through that wall that led to the lab was true, then clearly the Darklight didn't have to be alive in order to activate the magic.
That could be how the vampires got through.
Callum’s gaze traveled toward the windows. When he saw the moonlight, he grinned, his teeth a sickly pink instead of pearly white—coated with blood.
I didn’t know whose blood it was.
Oh God, what have I done?
“Hurry," I breathed in Andros' ear, pushing aside his sweaty dirty blond locks in order to whisper as softly as I could.
It didn't matter. Callum's eyes found me in the dark office and cast a horrid chill down my spine.
He dropped Ginny's body in the doorway, retracted his claws and let them transform into hands—something I'd never seen another vampire do—and then stepped lazily over her unmoving form. He said, "You're lucky there were several down there for them to drink. And this one's a gift for you. It will hold them up. But if you don't move faster, you're going to see the other side." His eyes landed briefly on the wounds that striped my neck and I watched as he licked his lips.
I froze.
Then Callum streaked past us and around a corner, leaving nothing but a flash of white skin and a burst of wind in his wake.
Adrenaline, testosterone, magic—something—spurred all of my crew and they hoofed it even faster. Andros skidded around the same corner that Callum had turned and we found a dead guard in the vamp’s wake.
The man's neck was painted red. That splash of color was all I noticed as Andros charged by him.
Another nightmarish gift from the vampire.
Suddenly, the floor in front of us turned to ice. Andros slid, nearly toppling over and crushing me.
Evan and Malcolm both pointed their palms at the floor. But nothing happened. They were out. We slipped and slid across the ice as more bullets flew our way from a guard on the far side of the room.
I heard Evan grunt and my eyes dashed over to him. He clutched his side. A ripping sound and a roar filled the room as he transformed from a man into a bear, his face lengthening into a snout, his teeth elongating, his entire body growing even larger as magic encased his body, ripped his clothing, and healed his gunshot wound. He turned, prepared, I was certain, to attack the guard who'd shot him.
Out of my peripheral vision, I spotted Callum sinking his fangs into the guard's throat.
Was he helping us or simply sating his bloodlust? I couldn’t tell.
Grayson nearly ripped the exterior door off its hinges. Our crew exploded outside, and poured down the steps of an emergency exit, Evan at the rear, still growling.
As we ran out into the open, heading across a grassy area toward our escape vehicle, a cleaning crew truck that stood idling in front of a building across the street from the Pinnacle, I limply extended my palm. I tried to pull shadows around us and hide us from view—television crews were already parked down the street, reporters standing in front of the shifters who hadn’t yet been rounded up by Pinnacle police. Overhead, there was even a helicopter with a spotlight. Currently, that beam was focused on the shifters.
But any moment, it could turn and catch us.
My magic merely flickered like television static. The shadows came and went as fast as the eye could blink.
I couldn’t hide us.
That alone, was bad enough.
But then Andros lurched to a complete and utter stop—his skin turning a deep, unnatural shade of blue.
