He took my hand and surged past me, hauling me behind him. We exited the newly formed opening just as the horde pressed into the room. The second we were out, I pulled my hand free.
“Run, Maddy!” I yelled. She forced her head through the hole that seemed to be closing rapidly around her. One arm pushed free, then the other, her claws digging into the ground for leverage. Her neck strained as she tried to haul her lower half through. “She’s not going to make it,” I whispered in horror. “She’s not going to make it!”
As panic surged inside me, Rhys, Aidan, and Sarah sprang into action. The trio launched a magical assault on the building, their united front enough to buy Maddy time to drag herself through the building’s maw. As her tail slithered free, I caught a glimpse of the horde and Janie, standing right behind Maddy with something I couldn't quite make out in her arms.
Something that became painfully clear right before the hole that Maddy’s dragon had ripped open sealed itself shut.
I had zero time to process anything because Aidan had my hand again and was dragging me behind him as he, Rhys, Sarah, and I all ran toward the woods in the distance. Dark and ominous woods that were not part of the Wadsworth estate.
We were finally free, but that freedom had come at a hefty price.
A scream erupted behind me, and I dared a look over my shoulder just in time to see Maddy’s reptilian eyes right behind me. With a nudge of her snout, she launched Aidan and me onto her back with Sarah and Rhys. I clutched her iridescent scales as tightly as I could as she soared high into the sky. A horrific sound split the air around us, but this time, it wasn’t my sister. The four of us spun around to see the reformatory quaking in the distance as its frustrated cry chased us away. We had bested the magic of the building, and it was far from pleased.
My heart seized at the thought.
“What’s wrong?” Aidan asked, his lips at my ear. “This is what we wanted.”
Maddy’s dragon took a sharp dive toward the edge of the woods, and Aidan’s arm wound around my waist. He held me tightly until we landed with a thud at the forest’s edge.
“She needs to work on her landings,” Sarah grumbled as she lowered herself to the ground. Rhys jumped down and walked in front of Maddy. Aidan scooped me onto my feet, then leaped down with me in tow. I darted around to Rhys’s side and stared at the face of the majestic beast who’d just saved our lives; a part of my sister I still didn’t fully comprehend but loved so fiercely it was hard to imagine. She snorted at me, smoke billowing from her nostrils, then scrambled away to put space between us. Worry shot through me until I saw her scales wavering and her limbs shrinking. She’d wanted space to change.
Adrenaline shot through me as I tried to remember if she’d be naked once she was done, and I was relieved to see her indigo dress reappear in all its glory as her skin reknit and she stumbled to stand.
“Maddy!” I cried as I rushed to help her. She was physically exhausted from all she’d done. Her emotions weren’t going to be much better.
“We did it,” she coughed. I swore I saw smoke escape.
“No, you did,” I said as I pulled her to me. “You, in all your scaly awesomeness.”
“Yeah,” Rhys said as he approached. “You were amazing.” I released Maddy and stepped back so he could hold her. The way he locked his arms around her made me smile. He’d fallen for her hard—but really, why wouldn’t he? She was a magical anomaly of strength and power wrapped into a smart, beautiful being with the heart of a dragon. Literally. He was lucky to have her, as far as I was concerned.
But I was biased.
“Is everyone okay?” she asked, surveying us all to make sure her reptilian side hadn’t harmed us in the escape.
“Everyone seems to be intact,” Aidan replied.
Then the moment I was dreading came. Maddy’s brow furrowed as she searched the vicinity, looking for something she’d never find.
“Wolfy...”
My heart sank to my shoes as the image of Janie holding the mini-wolf in her clutches flashed through my mind. How he’d shouted something I couldn't hear. How time had run out before I could try to help him. He’d been an ally from the beginning, when he’d had little reason to be. My sister’s mentor, who had helped bring forth her dragon, the very being that had just busted us out of Wadsworth. But more than all that, he’d been her friend.
And I knew the news that he hadn’t made it out would break her.
“Maddy—” I started calmly, doing all I could to mask my sadness so as not to increase hers.
“Cece, where is he? I can’t hear him.”
“Maddy—”
“Just tell me!” she yelled, and I flinched at the panic and fear rolling off of her in waves.
The others looked as though they’d just realized what the likely answer was. All but Sarah shared the same expression of grief.
“It wasn’t until after you’d made your way out that I saw him,” I said, tears welling in my eyes. “I saw the horde and Janie...she had him in her arms…then the exit sealed shut.” She stared at me silently, eyes wide and vacant. “There was no time to get to him,” I explained. “I’m so sorry, Maddy. You know I would have done something if there had been time.”
“We have to go back,” she said, snapping from her daze. “We have to save him.” Anger overtook her sadness as she ripped free from Rhys’s arms and stormed off in the direction of Wadsworth.
“Maddy,” I called after her as I ran to catch up. “Maddy, you know you can’t do that.”
“I can’t leave him!” she yelled as she wheeled on me. “I won’t leave him!”
“I don’t want to leave him either, Mads, but we cannot go back in there. We won’t get out alive again.”
“Neither will he!!” she screamed, her voice cracking with emotion. “He won’t last in there without me—”
“Maddy,” Rhys called, but she was having none of it.
“No—no, Rhys! I won't do it.”
“You have to,” Aidan finally said, his voice stern and commanding, though I could feel his sorrow as clearly as I felt my own. “Because that is what he’d want you to do, and you know it.”
Tears streamed down her face as she shook her head in denial. But I could feel the niggle of acknowledgment in her energy, reluctant though it was.
“Maddy,” I said softly as I dared a step nearer, “if we’re to have any shot at getting Wolfy out, we have to figure out how to destroy whatever is possessing that building.”
“I can’t lose him, Cece,” she whispered as the reality of her predicament fully settled upon her. And in that moment, I did what any big sister would do when their younger sibling was hurting.
I told her what she needed to hear.
“You won’t, Maddy,” I said as I wrapped my arms around her again. “I promise.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Maddy
As much as I wanted to race back inside the building and snatch Wolfy from Janie’s clutches, short of shifting into my dragon form and going on a full rampage, I knew it would be a suicide mission. The thought of the building locking me or any of us inside again…I shuddered. Not happening . We’d escaped, and we weren’t revisiting that nightmare unless we had a plan.
Cece seemed to think that destroying whatever possessed the building would free Wolfy. I hoped she was right.
I stood staring toward the reformatory highlighted in the moonlight, picturing pale faces pressed against the windows, some with mouths gaping open in silent shrieks, others clawing at the smooth surface. The horde couldn’t escape—or so I hoped.
Little guy? I called in my mind. Wolfy?
No reply. I gnashed my teeth and stomped back and forth, my shoes compressing the overgrown grass. We were some distance away from where Wolfy had tried to teach me about myself, where I’d flown for the first time. To think that I’d been scared of what the unknown parts of myself might mean. My dragon seemed the least of my worries now. Fear for what might happen to my fri
end grabbed hold of my bones and shook me.
Are you okay? I said in my mind. I’m scared for you, buddy. Wolfy, please...
“He isn’t answering,” I told the others, my voice breaking. “What if she’s hurting him?”
Rhys put his arm around my shoulders and kissed my forehead. “It’s gonna be okay. No idea how, but it will.”
“We have to have faith that Janie won’t do anything to him,” Aidan said.
Yet . The one word Aidan wasn’t saying.
“Janie grabbed him for a reason,” Rhys said. “Maybe to control us, keep us in line.”
Aidan stared toward the building. “It’s to make us help the being possessing her. It said it needed us…”
Sarah’s lips thinned. She rose to join us from her perch on a crumbling stone wall and studied the building that seemed to be watching. Waiting. It seemed poised to...I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
“How did the wolfling end up with you guys?” Sarah asked. “Didn’t it belong to the headmaster? I saw it in his office all the time.”
“We adopted each other,” I said, having no wish to share anything else. I’d be stupid to trust Sarah with more than the most innocuous information.
“Sounds cute, though impossible.” Smirking, she strode a few steps closer to the woods before turning to face us. “If the wolfling is a hostage, and that’s a stretch, we don’t have anything to offer in exchange.”
Cece came up beside me. “We’re not giving up on him.”
“Do you have any ideas?” I asked with hope blooming in my heart.
She gave a little jerk of her head. “Not yet, but give me time.”
“Can you sense him?”
“No.” Squeezing my hand, she leaned into my side. “But I’ll keep trying.”
“So…” Sarah said. She kicked some grass and strode over to stand in front of us. “As lovely as it is to stand around outside the walls of Wadsworth, I assume we’re not camping out here tonight? Because I don’t sleep on the ground, exposed to nature”—she eyed the woods with distaste, then turned her gaze upward—“and those don’t look especially friendly.“ She pointed to dark clouds crowding across the sky, lumbering across the moon. “It’s time to make some decisions.”
Lovely . Rain was the last thing we needed right now.
“We’ll walk into town,” Rhys said, as though that had been the general assumption.
“And do what?” I asked, flicking my hand toward the building. “I feel like we spent years trying to get out of that hellhole, but we never talked about what we’d do after.”
“I need to see my parents,” Rhys said. “I’ve got questions. They’ll be able to tell me where Gramps is, if nothing else. He’ll have information about Wadsworth. My parents and Gramps...don’t get along well, and he hasn’t spoken to them for a while.”
“So we’re really walking into town?” Sarah asked in disbelief.
“We don’t exactly have a car, and I doubt you want to hitchhike,” Rhys said, and she scowled. “It’s not far. Just a few miles.”
Sarah groaned. “ Miles ?”
“You with me?” Rhys asked me.
“Yup.” My gaze went to Cece, and she nodded. We couldn’t stay here. Worry about Wolfy would burn through my insides like battery acid, and short of storming Wadsworth, there wasn’t anything I could do to free him right now.
Rhys took my hand and we skirted the field, keeping well beyond the magical boundaries of the property. No need to be sucked back in against our will. As we passed Sarah, who remained in place, frowning, Rhys waved toward her. “You’re welcome to stay here if you want. I’m sure you can find some soft leaves to sleep on.”
She grumbled and fell in behind us.
Cece put her arm around my shoulders. “Try not to worry. I think he’s going to be okay.”
“Are you still unable to sense him?” I asked, my throat tight. I could barely force the words out.
“I’m not feeling much,” she whispered. “Just...a weird sense of peace.”
That made no sense. “Not fear?”
“Nope.”
“You don’t think they’re...hurting him?”
She shrugged. “I don’t believe so.”
I’d have to be satisfied with that.
“Aidan, why don’t we locate your outcast friend?” Sarah asked. “I bet he’ll put us up for the night.”
“I’m not going to track him down right now,” Aidan said. “He has a place on the western side of town, but I don’t believe I—or any of you—would be welcome. Finn has been a bit cagey since he was cast out of Faerie.”
“Fine.” She said it slowly, her voice rising with irritation. “Then maybe we can get a hotel room. Hide out for the night or whatever. We can’t forget about the Council. You didn’t earn any points with them at the dance. I bet they’ll know we escaped and will soon be looking for us. And I don’t imagine they’ll be pleased.”
“That plan would sound better if we had money,” Aidan said.
“You can come with me if you want,” Rhys said. “To my parents’ house. They have room for us all.”
“And they won’t call the Council on us?” I asked.
“Mom and Dad won’t. And with any luck, my uncle won’t be around.”
That was an interesting way to put it. Families were weird. Look at mine. If I showed up at my dad’s place a few towns over, he wouldn’t exactly greet me with open arms.
But really, the Council had fled the building. And even if they caught us, where would they take us? Not back to Wadsworth, at least not until they’d reestablished control. Good luck to them if they decided to take on whatever was in there.
We hit the sidewalk in front of the reformatory and turned right. Lightning flashed over the woods, making the sky glow for a second, and I counted. One, one-thousand...two, one-thousand...
Thunder cracked around us, making me jump. The storm was only two miles away. Not far enough.
Our shoes whispered on the pavement, and other than a few cars passing and a dog barking in the distance, the world seemed to sleep. Or wait. I didn’t like the sensation of someone’s gaze drilling into my spine. My skin peppered with goosebumps, and my heart jumped around behind my ribcage. I’d feel better once we got to wherever we were going.
My chest ached, and my footsteps slowed.
“Aidan?” Cece said from beside me, though she didn’t look back, as far as I could tell. “I thought you had unfinished business?”
“I do, which is why I need to return to Faerie. To my family’s estate.”
She sucked in a breath and traced her finger across the dragon pin. “So you’re leaving?”
Silence.
“Yes.”
“Not without me, you’re not,” Sarah said.
“What about you, Cece?” I asked.
“I’m not sure,” she said, “but I know one thing.”
I tilted my head to better read her face but it was nearly impossible in the dark. “What?”
“We’re staying together.”
As I opened my mouth to reply, another bolt of lightning was followed immediately by a crack of thunder, leaving me no time to count. Rain poured down from the sky, as if someone upstairs had opened a dam. No pretty, dancing raindrops for us. Dark clouds crowded out everything else, and the night wept. Or raged.
“An umbrella would be nice,” Sarah groused. “I’d kill for one right about now.” She flicked her hand, and the rain seemed to part above her head and fall onto the ground beside her. “Better.”
“Don’t waste power,” Aidan snapped. “We might need it. I’m doing the same.”
She snarled and let the rain fall onto her again.
“Once we get into town, we can find a way to my parents’,” Rhys said. His fingers squeezed mine. I wanted to go with him, but I also wanted to stay with my sister, and it wasn’t clear that she would come with us. Cece hadn’t said a thing about Aidan’s plan to go to the fey realm. Would she want to go wi
th him? Not that he’d offered. She kept her head ducked, and her clothing, like mine, had soaked through with cold rain. Her purple hair hung limply around her face.
Aidan stepped forward and dropped his black jacket over Cece’s head, then tucked it around her shoulders, buttoning it loosely in the front. It wasn’t much, but it would protect her from the fury lashing out at us from the sky.
After tucking the chair leg between his knees, Rhys started to remove the t-shirt he’d picked up in the induction room, but I stilled his hand. “You can’t walk around without a shirt.”
“I don’t mind.”
“We’re trying to avoid detection. A naked chest in the middle of a rainstorm won’t help.”
“We’re not exactly doing anything to stay out of sight,” Sarah pointed out. “We aren’t lurking in the shadows or skulking from one tree to the next. And we’re wearing freakin’ ball gowns.”
“Maybe they’ll think we were at a prom,” Cece said.
“Sarah is right about the Council. We have to assume they’ll be after us,” Aidan said grimly. “What’s left of them, that is. They won’t like what we’ve done, and they’ll—”
“Seek revenge?” I asked.
“Probably.” His arm went around Cece, and they strode ahead of us. I loved how protective he was of her, but how would he keep her safe if he left for the fey realm?
To our left, on the opposite side of the street, people had cut chunks out of the forest and plunked small houses into the clearings. A swampy, low area encroached all the way up to the road on our right. The croaking of frogs was interspersed with the pattering of rain hitting the marshier areas, plus the random stick breaking. Figures we’d pass through the creepiest part of town.
And there weren’t enough streetlights. We’d step into the light beneath one, and my breathing would ease, only to lock up again when we plunged back into darkness. While I was grateful to have my friends—and even Sarah—with me, I’d be relieved when we reached wherever we were going. Speaking of which…
I turned to Rhys, but before I could speak, an approaching car slowed to a stop at the curb beside us. Someone needing directions? No window rolled down. With the storm, I could only make out a dark sedan.
Rogue Reformatory: Breakout (Supernatural Misfits Academy Book 3) Page 5
