When our lids lifted it was to the light-filled almost empty gym and the ropes on all sides threw shadowed lines across five pairs of feet. Silver looked around to verify all of us had made the jump in one piece then shook our hands free to break the circuit. So they’d only busted up the bulbs in the other room not this one? I tilted our head back until it felt like our windpipe might flatten closed but couldn’t spot any foreign objects in the beams above. Maybe this room wasn’t rigged to blow?
James started to speak and I put a finger across our lips for silence, making sure everyone could see it. With an index finger I poked our sternum and then waved goodbye before closing our eyes again to picture a shower stall in the women’s locker room. If Shiva was in the room or any other Axsian foe they’d realize someone had ‘ported in but not immediately where. At the last second a gut wrenching urge hit, forcing me to reach out blindly and grasp Corinne’s hand. We were both small and could easily fit in the cramped confines of a curtained stall but we hadn’t intended on taking a passenger. Without the added oomph of Kara and James this ‘port was a little more rough than the first one had been. Hopefully, Corinne wouldn’t give our position away by puking uncontrollably.
Silver added, “At least we’ll be somewhere with a drain.”
As our eyes opened, cream colored tiles swam into focus inches in front of our face and Corinne’s fingers spasmed in ours. She started to gag and Silver whipped a free hand up to cover her mouth. Pressing lips against the fine hair covering her ear, Silver whispered an urgent, “Don’t. Swallow it and breathe through your nose but don’t.”
Corinne’s irises were swimming in a glassy sea of white but she swallowed with a wet clicking sound and her nostrils flexed as she struggled to retain control over her rebellious insides. Hate flared out from her in waves and Silver kept our hand tight against her lips and chin until a little more color returned to her cheeks.
From outside the stall beyond the half closed curtain blocking our view of the locker area came a familiar masculine voice. “I know you are here, Gesweor. Come out now and I will not kill this little boy.” A small sound of protest followed that statement and it sounded like Reb before another voice broke in to shush her.
We peeled our hand from Corinne’s mouth and motioned past the curtain then back to ourselves. He’d called us cousin, what a joke. I could feel our light field covering Corinne’s rigid form as we broke contact completely. Sometimes rapid mutation and accelerated evolution were handy. In this case it meant we could separate and remain hidden. She nodded stiffly that she got my meaning and we slid single file out of the shower stall and past the partially open curtain without making it move a millimeter.
On top of a bench to our right Ray stood with Shiva behind him. A massive brown hand gripped the back of our nephew’s neck, ringing it like a collar. Shiva’s eyes danced crazily side to side as they strained for any betrayal of our presence and his face turned more fully in our direction. Silver had to close our throat as a wheeze of surprise crept up our windpipe. Corinne didn’t make a sound beside us so perhaps she’d seen worse in her life but we doubted it.
The left side of the towering alien’s face was a ruin of burned reddish-pink raw flesh, weeping pus and blood.
Chapter Twelve: Tick Tock Boom
Maggie shifted position, distracting us from the horribly disfigured Shiva to the left where David stood pointing a gun at her head with tear stains on the neckline of his scrubs. Reb was wedged against our aunt’s legs and staring in fascinated horror at the looming dark ‘man’ holding on to her twin. Shiva’s nictitating lens flickered incessantly. If Cora Harris was in the mix somewhere we couldn’t see her from our vantage point.
Silver’s focus snapped in tight as she touched Corinne’s arm with the back of our hand then followed with a finger tap to the other girl’s temple before closing our eyes. I was staying put to monitor things until they returned from their Web tête-à-tête, so I lifted our lids as soon as I sensed the pressure change of my twin’s absence.
Shiva yelled so loud in the cramped confines that everyone present jumped. “Show yourselves!”
The fingers around Ray’s neck tightened and his little face began to turn red. I started to speak just to stall for time as I quietly moved forward, but before the first words could leap from our lips another voice sounded from the doorway that was out of sight. As a distracted afterthought Shiva’s grip loosened, letting Ray breath raggedly.
Cora Harris’s words were crisp as they echoed around the corner of the lockers blocking the view of the entrance. “You stop right there or I’ll shoot.”
Gerome spoke low. “Cora, it’s okay. We know about Shiva. He’s making you do this, isn’t he?”
The councilwoman’s laugh was filled with amusement. “Nobody had to persuade me to pull a gun on you and even less persuasion would be required for me to squeeze this trigger, Gerome. Shut up and go stand by your fat-ass wife.”
When they came around the corner, Cora was pointing a black handled .38 caliber revolver in a steady two-handed grip at Gerome’s back and we watched as he took in the scene. Where the hell where James and Kara? Was my uncle a distraction? Corinne and Silver needed to get back quick. David’s hands weren’t as sure or unshakable as Cora’s and he started to tremble so badly I was afraid his gun would go off, accidently killing our aunt.
My twin returned and I turned to look at Corinne’s profile. Our temporary ally stiffened as she spotted her mother holding a gun on our uncle.
Silver said, “We’re almost out of time. The bombs will probably go off before this gets resolved. Gerome’s in position. Cora’s our job and Corinne will take on David. I promised not to kill Mommy Dearest. Remind me so I don’t conveniently forget.”
I asked, “Did she make the leap that we’re two in one yet?”
Silver shot a jet of mirth. “No, she kept calling me Cass but I could feel suspicion rolling off her in waves and she noticed our extra parts. It was hell getting her to agree to let us disarm her mom but I think Shiva scares her. Plus James pulled rank.”
My twin’s share of the plan was a rapid speed fast-forward run through of their discussion and a visualization of taking the guns out of the equation. James and Kara were standing on the other side of the door to the locker room, waiting for their signal to enter. They were supposed to use their increased speed to run in and separate Shiva from Ray. Kara would grab Ray and James would engage the alien physically until Silver and I could get our job of disarming Cora done. The Lees didn’t have a light field or a shield engaged, just like Gerome, so they’d be more vulnerable. There was no perfect plan and life would never be without risk so I took in a quiet gulp of air and concentrated on the feel of it filling our lungs.
Corinne tapped our coat sleeve on the right and motioned for us to switch sides then counted down silently with her fingers from three, all the while coating us in her veneer of impenetrable energy. Adrenaline and anxiety flooded our limbs with a pins and needles sensation as if a colony of sugar ants were marching all across our flesh instead of Corinne’s shield. We put on a burst of speed and split to different sides.
Our boot slammed down on the bench, giving our position away just before we launched into Cora Harris, knocking her stiff extended arms down with our whole body and shielding the rest of the room from an accidental discharge of her revolver. It was a good thing too because the report of her pistol was loud as it went off. The bullet bounced off our protected body to smash a quarter sized hole through a locker. We landed on top of the councilwoman’s chest and Silver placed our hand against the side of her head, releasing a pulse of force sufficient to knock her out. I grabbed the gun from the floor with our free hand and crumpled the cool compact metal like an empty aluminum can before tossing it back to the tiles. Our ears were ringing and the sound of a confrontation from the other benches was only intermittent as if our auditory canal were being pinched closed every few seconds.
From behind, just as we were
about to turn and assess the situation with Shiva, I heard a female screech as something hit us and bounced off our layer of protective energy. Silver braced us with artificial strength reflexively protecting Cora’s unconscious form but the shield kept the impact from hurling us forward. Out of the corner of our eye in between the two struggles we saw Kara’s bleeding, unconscious body. Ray scrambled out of her slack arms to run toward Maggie and disappear mid-stride. A grunt came from behind and we kept crouched, scrabbling back then scooting forward again to place a finger on the side of Kara’s neck. Her pulse was steady.
James and Shiva were furiously engaged. Shiva had the longer reach but James had speed and enhanced strength. He was baiting the big alien. Shiva kept limiting his own vision by turning his head to prevent James from hitting the injured side of his face. Silver had shared the plan to keep the big alien constantly in motion and under attack to prevent teleportation. I wanted this to end before desperation or fatigue got somebody hurt or dead or the bombs went off.
I spared a glance to Maggie and saw her pressed against Gerome with their legs strangely wrinkled from the embrace of their invisible children. David was sprawled on the floor, hopefully just knocked out. Corinne had made her way to her mother’s side and was feeling her neck for a pulse when the first bomb exploded.
Everything slowed down, giving the illusion we could somehow still stop the concussive force that blew us all off our feet. Either Corinne’s shield had limits or our failure to anchor our feet to the floor was at fault, but it felt like the gentle back hand slap of a giant. Shiva flipped forward to bowl James over and I lost sight of them as I tried to twist in mid-tumble and break our fall by landing with our hands.
The force of the detonations was a chain reaction of destructive, world shattering, earth shaking sound. Though we were buffered by the wall that separated the locker room from the gym, it wasn’t near thick enough to protect us. As we landed with what should have been bone cracking force on our left shoulder, sliding across the tile to slam into the base of a wall, I imagined forcing Corinne’s shield outward at the cinder block shrapnel. We could almost see it as a thin clear dome of glass or plastic as if I held a gigantic contact lens in the air. Silver drew a chunk of our power and thrust it behind as our last ditch defense.
James army crawled across the floor to Kara’s prone form since she was the closest to the edge of our hastily constructed barrier and started dragging her by an armpit over to our position, which helped. We could inch in the concave barrier saving our butts closer and increase its width. Silver concentrated on keeping the energy field steady just as the ceiling above the collapsed section of wall began to fall inward. I tried to smooth the energy like too little icing over a warm cake, but we didn’t have enough juice to pull it into a full half circle shape and maintain its structural integrity. I pulled too hard and almost lost the whole thing.
Silver yelled as she shored up a tear in the field, “Don’t do that again dammit!”
“I’m trying to keep us from being buried alive, Silver!” I yelled out loud, trying not to cough as our panic dry mouth almost strangled my words. The upside to yelling at Silver was that it called attention to what we were doing and our location. Maggie, Gerome, and we assumed the twins since they were coated in dust and only hazy outlines, crawled on hands and knees our way. Gerome pulled David across the floor by the shoulder of his jacket and Corinne had her still unconscious mother by an upper arm. Once we were all clustered together, what remained of the lights started to flicker and went out completely. Reb and Ray squealed. Our next thought was…where the hell is Shiva?
James answered the question. “Shiva disappeared right before we landed. I can’t tell the difference, but he either ‘ported out or had somebody do it for him.”
He was a freaking mind reader.
Voice cracked and raspy, Silver said, “At least that’s one less thing to worry about. Gerome, do you still have your flashlight?”
In the dark, all we could sense was the fragility of our protective film and the settling sound of rubble and dirt sliding in all around us. Our little dome didn’t enclose us completely and things were slithering in slowly at the bottom. I tried not to think about being crushed to death or deprived of oxygen. Gerome didn’t speak but light suddenly beamed in a pale circle at the faux ceiling roughly five feet over our heads at its peak.
We all looked like filthy survivors of a dirt bomb, making every pair of eyes aimed our way more pronounced in their panic. Corinne scooted closer and reached out to touch one of our exposed hands where it rested on the floor.
Silver jerked. “What are you doing?”
The blonde girl’s ice blue eyes tightened around the edges in irritation before she reached out again. “I think I can bolster the shield if we link up.”
I nudged Silver out of the driver’s seat and let Corinne grab our now extended hand. It did help. She didn’t offer that much more power but her touch strengthened or thickened the barrier, giving it a little more malleability than before. Centimeter by centimeter we crept the edge down to the floor and the whispering sound of dirt and other things sliding in ceased.
So now the real problem presented itself—we were the only ones who could teleport. Unless Corinne could hold the barrier up by herself and we retrieved her last, Silver and I couldn’t see a way out of this. It was taking a ton of energy to hold the demolished section of the locker room at bay and it could crumble in further the longer we waited. We needed more energy soon too and Kara was still out cold. The air appeared clearer but maybe it was just our imagination. Everyone’s breathing was shallow and as if they were afraid our oxygen was about to run out.
I said, “Silver and I need a boost, James. Do you think you can position Kara closer?”
He grunted slightly under his breath as he tugged Kara and I had to ask, “How’d she get knocked out, James?” In the faint light a fist-sized bruise bloomed along the side of her jaw and her lip was split and swollen.
“I tried to distract Shiva but he caught Kara’s feint and when she switched directions to make a snatch for Ray he caught her with a right hook. I’m proud of her, though. She stayed upright long enough to get Ray out of the way and then I tossed them both out of the fray. Can you wake her up?” His eyes were pleading and Maggie eased one of the light field engaged twins off her lap and crawled forward to feel around the back of Kara’s head. Our friends flying body had probably been what hit us on the way down.
Maggie’s voice was no nonsense. “She could have a concussion. When they hit the floor I saw her head literally bounce. I can feel a pretty good goose egg and there’s some blood but it feels like the skin split from the impact and it isn’t bleeding anymore.”
Tension released at Maggie’s damage assessment and I thought at my twin, “Can you fix her up enough to be coherent so we can get more energy?”
Silver didn’t sound sure. “With Corinne helping you hold the barrier I think so but it’s going to lower our reserves fast. Maybe we’ll get lucky and it’ll still work with Kara out cold.”
Eyeing the mounds of dirt that had crept in I said, “Corinne, can you move your hand to our neck?”
His sister’s body was totally limp as James tugged her within arm’s reach, the sand and grit on the floor acting as a lubricant to Kara’s forward motion. Her head rocked to the side and a low moan escaped her lips before she snapped upright without warning. James dodged Kara’s head so fast he ended up on his butt. We heard the twins giggle over in the general direction of our uncle.
Silver tried not to laugh either but it was sort of comical. Instead of joining in her cousins’ mirth, Silver barked, seemingly out of context to some of the others in the bubble, “Y’all hush it and concentrate on peeling your bananas so we can see you again.”
Two tiny repentant voices came from Gerome’s right in a unanimous, “Yes, ma’am!”
Corinne mouthed under her breath at our side, “Bananas?”
Maggie chuckled and G
erome wiped a smear of dirt from her nose before he said, “As amusing as all this is…what’s the plan?”
Kara tilted her head back to survey the mounds of earth, bricks and crumbled support beams mysteriously floating above like a moment frozen in time. Her voice was rough as if her throat was filled with powdered cinnamon, “I guess we connect, build our energy up and get the heck outta Dodge right?”
Silver snorted, and motioning to our recently conscious friend, said, “What she said.”
James’ expression hazed with humor as he reached for our hand and his sisters at the same time. Maggie coughed a little then her and Gerome flinched as someone hailed them in the Web. If anyone had been willing to bet with us we’d have guessed Malcolm but that’d be easy money. Kara turned her back to my aunt and uncle and booty scooted into a better position with another glance at the weighty suspended earth and debris over our heads.
Silver made eye contact with Kara right as we completed the circuit to ask, “Claustrophobic?”
As the energy coursed through our bodies in a wave of cool buzzing possibility Kara gave us a long blink to say deadpan, “I am now.”
Her eyes were still a little glazed, indicating Kara’s faculties weren’t back in full effect but if Silver had anything to say about it she’d be healed up as soon as we had sufficient juice to do so. I felt my twin ramp a loop as if we were an all-natural power plant. All of us sat a little straighter and even Corinne must have been getting some bleed off because she sucked in a breath like a hiss but didn’t let go of her hold on our neck.
James spoke like a recording in fast forward, all of his words bleeding together in a rush, “Okay now what? Can you and Silver teleport ten people out of here at the same time?”
VECTOR (The Weaver Series Book 3) Page 20
