by Lee French
“Easy, easy.” Andrew hugged her. “They’re using some kind of mind control. I’m the antidote.”
Bobby wanted to hear everything she had to say, just not right now. He sent his dragons back to their search and threw himself into one racing to the top floor. They streaked out into a hallway near the elevators, where he saw Andrea pacing impatiently. The dragons crawled across the ceiling, trying to go unnoticed. Though she couldn’t disintegrate people, that wouldn’t stop her from disintegrating the elevator.
He watched in horror as panels in the ceiling slid down to reveal guns. The elevator dinged to announce its arrival before he could come up with a plan. Bobby dove inside it the moment the doors opened with the rest of this small group. Five dragons pushed on the second floor button frantically as bullets flew through the air. Fortunately, everyone had already ducked down, probably Kaitlin’s doing.
The doors slid shut, cutting off the gunfire. The first two hits made small dimples in the metal doors. The next two thumped in farther, somehow meeting less resistance. Bobby could see how this was going to go and threw himself back downstairs, calling his dragons together and re-forming most of himself near Jayce. “Elevator! It’s about to fall.”
Jayce opened his mouth, then shut it and sprinted for the elevator, with Bobby right behind and calling out for Stephen. The three men cranked the doors open and looked up.
“I’ll slow it down.” Stephen jumped into the shaft and flew up while Bobby helped Jayce brace himself so he could stop the falling car and hold it.
How were they going to get Andrea to Andrew? It sure wasn’t going to happen with them all standing around waiting for disasters. “Keep everyone together,” he told Andrew, pointing at him to make sure he knew that was his job. Before he could respond, Bobby burst back into the swarm and streamed up to the top floor.
The swarm poured out through the same vent as before and streaked towards Andrea, now standing at the gaping hole where the elevator doors should be, peering down the shaft. He would never get a better chance. The swarm shoved her, hard, and watched her fall. Someone down there would catch her. They had to. She screamed up enough of a storm, they wouldn’t be able to ignore her.
In that moment, watching her swallowed up by the darkness, hearing her terror, he knew what they had to do. The swarm dove after her and noticed she stopped screaming with a sound of confusion. Anita caught her. Dragons flew around her and out through the gap as Riker and his men climbed down and helped everyone else.
“Andrew, take care of Andrea soon as you can.” Bobby re-formed again, feeling like he kept going in circles. He’d had about enough of that. “Lizzie, you remember how I said not to blow up the building?”
“Yes.” Lizzie pouted at him with a sullen nod.
“Forget it. Set the whole damned thing on fire.” He watched her face light up with glee.
“Bobby,” Andrew said as he hurried to the elevator, “we’re kind of in the building right now.”
“Yeah. Not for long. Blow out a window, and we’re getting outta here.” Pointing down a hallway, he stayed put while she ran off. “Time to get outta here. Jayce, Stephen, and Anita’re gonna ferry whoever they gotta. You see anybody what needs to be helped out, you help ‘em out, but get ‘em straight to Andrew. We ain’t playing this maze of death crap, and we’re getting our people back.”
He picked Sebastian up, who hugged him around his neck. “You wanna take a ride with the dragons? ”
“Is Mama coming?”
“I’ll be right behind you,” Lily said, smiling at them both.
Lizzie shouted, “Fire in the hole!” She sounded positively rapturous. An explosion rocked the building.
“That’s my girl,” Dan smirked, the last one out of the elevator. The second he got clear, Stephen and Jayce let the car go. Everyone hurried to find Lizzie. She hadn’t gone far, and the size of the gaping hole in the side of the building surprised Bobby. The pile of rubble strewn across the ground below it attested to how much force she put into the fireball that caused it. He could see chunks of masonry at least fifty feet away.
As soon as she saw Dan round the corner, Lizzie ran and jumped into his arms, planting a kiss on his lips as he spun her around. Bobby ignored them in favor of peering out through the hole. He saw a small horde of animals converging right where they’d land if they jumped out from here. Tiana must be nearby, which meant— Something green and painful tagged him in the shoulder. Sebastian, protected by the wall, was fine.
Whatever that gun shot, it made his entire shoulder burn. Dragons all around the injury popped off, some of them dissolving. “Stay back! Andrea, can you get that thing? It’s Violet, so look up.”
Andrea, still near Andrew, was about to move closer when Violet swooped right up and started spraying the area with that weird green stuff. Bobby’s arm came back together and he threw a punch at her face. It probably hurt him more than her, but it distracted her long enough for Andrea to make her gun disintegrate into a fine layer of dust. Violet squealed and flew away.
“I’ll get her,” Stephen growled, a burning streak on his face healing over. He ran for the opening and jumped into the air behind her, chasing after her. Stephen and Jayce seemed to have taken the brunt of the burst she fired in, and Liam healed Jayce.
Bobby peered out again and spotted Tiana. “I ain’t keen to get chomped to death by rats and cats. Anybody got any ideas?”
A squirrel zoomed up and changed into Jasmine lying on the floor, peering out. “I can help!” She screwed her eyes shut and pressed her lips together.
Liam blinked and stared at her. “Do we want to know what she’s doing?”
“Probably not,” Jayce said with a smirk.
Kaitlin cleared her throat. “Bobby, if we set the building on fire, there are some people who’ll die in here.”
Of course there were. Nothing about this could be easy. No, that just wouldn’t be right. Bobby sighed and set Sebastian down. “You know where they are and what’s guarding them?”
“Fourth floor, four of our people, no guards. Just locked doors.”
“Alright. I got that. Stay with your Momma,” he told Sebastian.
The boy nodded gravely. “Come back.”
He ruffled the kid’s hair affectionately and gave Lily a sheepish grin. “That’s the one thing I seem to be pretty good at.” The sight of her grinning at him warmed him to his toes as he blew into the swarm again and streamed up to get to the fourth floor. Somehow, he knew it wouldn’t be as simple as Kaitlin said, so he took the time to fly through the fourth floor, looking all around for anything that might be amiss.
There were no hidden guns or trapdoors, no people, nothing. He did find some cameras scattered around, and smashed all of them. That done, he set to the task of breaking the four doors open to find Greg’s boyfriend Albert, Lisa’s husband Clive, Jasmine’s fiancee Will, and, strangely, Christopher the empath. Chris had been either drugged or controlled, he figured.
Once the doors were all open, Bobby re-formed in the middle of them. “Time to go, guys. They’re trying to—” Chris and Albert flung their arms around him and hugged him tightly. Clive and Will gave him strained, anxious smiles.
“I don’t care how uncomfortable this makes you, Bobby,” Christopher said with a teary warble in his voice. “I’m really happy to see you.”
“Um, yeah, look,” Bobby squirmed, “I’m glad you’re free and stuff, but we gotta get outta here.”
“Where’s Greg?” Albert let go first. “Is he okay?”
“I don’t know. Stairs are this way.” He avoided looking at Clive while herding them. “Jasmine’s okay, she’s helping us. Ain’t seen Greg yet.”
“What about Lisa?”
Bobby scratched his cheek and wished he had better news. More, he wished he knew Clive better so he could break it to him in the easiest way possible. So many people lived at the farm and he’d spent so little time there that he hadn’t really met everyone yet. He opened his mouth
to say something, not sure what it would turn out to be.
“You’re not getting out.” Although well timed, Bobby curled his lip at this distraction. Sam and Greg stood side-by-side, blocking the hallway. Sam had her arms crossed over her chest, showing a completely uncharacteristic amount of confidence. Though she had no weapons Bobby could see, he figured she meant to use his dragons. Greg, on the other hand, had adopted a genuine mad scientist look with red tinted goggles, a lab coat, work gloves, and a really big futuristic gun held in both hands.
Bobby put up his hands in surrender. “These guys was just bait for the rest of us. I know it and so do you. Let them go.”
“Greg? What are you doing?” Albert pushed past Bobby to stand in front of him. “Did you make…a gun?”
Greg’s face contorted in confusion. “Two different kinds,” he said.
“But…you refused when those guys from the Pentagon came. Remember? Last year, two men came and tried to recruit you, to work on the next generation of weapons. You said no, that you’d never make a weapon. That was a perversion of science, that’s what you told them.”
“This is all very nice,” Sam said, “but you’re still not going anywhere. Get into that room, all of you in the one.” She shooed all of them with both lanky arms. No one moved.
“Greg, this isn’t you, it’s not who you are! Why are you doing this?” Albert stood there defiantly, his hands held out in invitation.
Sam’s eyes narrowed and Bobby had some suspicions about what she might try. He took a swift step around Albert and punched her in the face, hating himself for hitting a girl. Again. She stumbled back to hit the wall and Bobby followed her, vaguely registering that Albert grabbed at the gun, and Clive and Will helped him overwhelm the super-geek. Chris stepped aside with his hands held up, useless and panicky. Sam pulled something out of her pocket, and Bobby didn’t realize he needed to dodge it until she jammed it into his gut and jolted him with electricity.
He broke apart into the swarm, losing a few more dragons to everything Privek set up in this stupid building. That must have been what Sam wanted, because he immediately found himself fighting for control of his dragons. He wanted them to get Sam to drop the taser and keep her busy so she couldn’t interfere with the others. They all wanted to fly off into that room and stay there. Neither happened. Instead, they buzzed around in the air, doing nothing but taking up space.
“Don’t hit him,” Albert wailed as Clive slugged Greg across the chin. Greg fell to the floor, stunned by the blow, and Albert followed him down, protecting his head.
Clive grunted and shook his hand out. “Do something, Chris!”
“Like what?” Chris wrung his hands together and kept his eyes screwed shut against all the violence.
Bobby wanted to grab him and slap him. Sam wouldn’t let him re-form. At least they refused to do what she told them to. That was something.
“You do emotions, don’t you?” Will grabbed Chris’s chin and turned his face to look at Sam through the swarm. “Open your eyes and make her…I don’t know! Scared or something. Distract her. She’s obviously doing something to Bobby.”
Chris breathed fast and shallow, opening one eye tentatively and wincing away from the whole episode. “I’ve never done that before!”
Clive picked up Greg’s gun. “Try, dammit! She wants to kill us all.”
Will squeezed Chris’s shoulder. “Come on, Chris, you can do this. We need you to do this.”
Gulping audibly, Chris nodded and stared at Sam so hard Bobby thought his head might explode. She shrieked and scuttled away. Bobby got control of his swarm back and they re-formed fast enough for him to chase her down and grab her. At least he didn’t have to hit her anymore. “Good job and keep it up Chris. We gotta get ‘em both down to Andrew, he’ll fix it so they’re themselves again. Don’t leave that weapon here.”
Clive stopped fiddling with the gun, keeping a firm grip on it. “She’s dead, isn’t she? That’s why you won’t answer.”
Unable to look at him and say it, Bobby hauled Sam towards a window on the side of the building where the others should be. “I’m sorry, man. It happened in the lobby.” Considering what the dragons saw down there, he figured Sam and Greg might be responsible. He had no intention of saying so. Not when it wasn’t really their fault. “Privek and Kanik done it.” How he wished he could blame those two for everything.
Clive pressed his lips thin and nodded, then pushed Chris to get him moving. Will helped Albert pick up the still stunned Greg and carry him. At the window Bobby found, he grabbed a lamp and smashed it into the glass, shattering both. He stuck his head out to see a massive pile of squirrels converged at the base of the building with almost everyone else in the center of it. Jayce stood under Andrew, ready to catch him if he fell while climbing a rope to get down to the ground.
“I got six more up here,” he shouted down.
Stephen shot upwards and gave Bobby a smirk. “It’s possible you may never realize how much I appreciate you picking the shady side of the building for our escape path.”
Bobby chuckled as he wrangled Sam through the window and into Stephen’s hands. “Hey, man, Head Cowboy takes care of the herd. Make sure to get Andrew on Sam and Greg. They done tried to kill us. Have him hit everyone else, too, just to be on the safe side.”
“Aye, Cap’n. I can carry two at once.” They pushed Greg through and Stephen carried both down, then returned for the rest. Bobby’s swarm flew down with him the last time, and he got to see Jasmine jump up and send squirrels flying as she ran for Will and flung herself at him. Thanks to Liam, Greg and Albert got to be reunited, and Sam collapsed into a heap of sobbing as soon as Andrew touched her. Matthew lay in the grass, off to the side with no squirrels near him.
All of that mattered, just not right now. Bobby had a feeling he’d come to hate the word “prioritize”. It made him feel like a dick to interrupt everyone while they reunited and took stock and watched Lizzie gleefully blow up the building. He had to do it anyway.
Lily, he noticed, glanced at him, gave him a tight-lipped smile, then put her arm around Clive’s shoulders. He hoped she’d done that because she could tell he had something to say and needed to get it out sooner rather than later. Striding to the center of the group, he cleared his throat and found almost everyone staring at him as a result.
“Folks, we can all hear the sirens a’coming. Some of us’re still missing, and we still gotta get to Adelphi and free all them people, but there’s another thing we gotta do first. Today, we gotta let folks know we’re here and we ain’t gonna let ourselves be locked up, nor experimented on, nor treated like we ain’t worth the same as humans. If’n you don’t want to be public, get scarce. I got lots to say, and it’s gonna be heard, and that’s that, but ain’t nobody else gotta be seen or known about if’n you ain’t comfortable with it. No shame either way.”
Stephen stepped forward first. “I’m in, for all of it.” He flashed his fangs in a grin. “I can hardly wait to have teenage girls climbing all over each other to let me suck their blood.”
Jayce nodded and so did a few others. As expected, Liam wasn’t interested, and he didn’t hold it against the healer. When they were sorted out, Riker and his men stayed, along with Jayce, Stephen, Lizzie, Dan, Ray, and Matthew. None of the rest wanted to be seen right now. Several said they needed time to think about it rather than outright refusing.
Lily waved to him as she carted Sebastian off, pointing to the boy as the reason she wouldn’t stay, and Bobby nodded. He understood. He also sent a dragon with them so they’d be able to find each other later. By the time the fire department showed up, all of them managed to get at least a few blocks away and the building had become an inferno.
Ignored by the firefighters, the twelve of them stood there, watching it from the curb. “Riker, you guys sure you want to have your faces flashed on TV?”
Riker shrugged. “If we’re going to be court-martialed and charged with treason anyway, we migh
t as well try to control the media coverage a little.”
“My mom is going to kill me for this,” Hegi said with a sigh.
Bobby snorted. “You always got a place with us, even if I gotta smack heads together to make sure of it.” He turned, because the first news van screeched to a halt mere yards away from them. “Man, they musta been in the neighborhood already.”
Stephen sneered. “Vultures.”
“Says the vampire,” Jayce chuckled.
“Excuse me!” An attractive woman in a skirt suit jumped out of the van and looked right at them. “Did you see what happened? Would you be willing to talk about it on camera, live?”
Bobby smiled warmly. “Sure thing, ma’am. I done saw the whole thing, and I’d be right happy to tell the whole world all about it.”
The reporter’s eyes lit up with a jackpot smile and she beckoned frantically for her cameraman to get set up.
Chapter 15
Liam clicked the radio on in his car. Since he had his keys and the car still sat in the parking lot, he figured he might as well get it while he could. The Roadster had only one passenger seat, and he brought Clive with the rather large gun he refused to let go of. A few others took their own cars, too, he noticed, and everyone who wanted to got away from the site without a problem. Chelsea, as it turned out, regenerated slowly. Once Liam explained that to her, she flew away.
He glanced at Clive, wondering if he’d been stupid to take the only other person suffering an acute loss. They had something in common right now, so he figured they ought to stick together. Granted, Elena hadn’t been the one he lost there, so he had no idea how to relate to Clive on that level. Paul, though, had been his friend, a real friend. All his life, people had valued him for his parents’ money, or his ability to get them out of trouble or do them favors, or his looks. Paul had asked for nothing and gave everything.
