“Get in the car,” I told Carter firmly, picking up a few rocks before doing so myself. “Tony, if the chimera gets near us, get us away.”
“Yeah, because I was planning on just sitting here and being eaten,” he replied with some totally-not-helpful sarcasm.
Instead of responding to him, I threw rocks out the window to gauge the height of the wall. My estimate came to about twelve feet. Before I could think much further, though, I felt myself get slammed back into my seat as the car started moving. Fast. I turned to see scorched grass behind us.
Directly behind us. Everything in me froze for a second, unable to process it. The chimera hadn’t even been looking in this direction the last I’d checked. Shifting my gaze towards the legimal, I caught sight of another spray of fire. I’d known the chimera could shoot flames from an impressive range, but seeing it was different. Seeing it when I was inside that range was unbelievable.
The chimera wailed, then sent a burst of flames into a random direction. A ball of fire danced through the air, orange giving way to black smoke. The next moment, she was in motion, those powerful muscles propelling her to a troubling speed—thankfully not towards us. She slammed into the invisible barrier with an impact that made me flinch. Roaring and spitting fire, the animal turned again, before breaking into another run.
I didn’t know if she was furious or panicking, but either way, it resulted in the same thing. One of the most dangerous creatures in the world, openly rampaging. And we were trapped with her.
She could kill us. She could kill us easily, if it came down to it. Had there been much else here besides grass for her to burn, she wouldn’t even have to get near us. The whole place would go up in smoke, and we’d burn along with it.
I tried to reassure myself that there wasn’t enough potential fuel for that here, but the image of fire closing in around us nested in my mind. If she hit any of us with her flame breath, it could still happen. A rising terror clawed up the back of my throat, and I fought to keep it down. Unlike Tony, I didn’t function well in a state of sheer panic.
“Jordan, I’d love to hear that plan any time now,” Tony managed to voice.
Taking a deep breath, I forced my thoughts on achievable goals instead of worst case scenarios. I had to get my team out of there as fast as possible. There needed to be something we could do.
“Jordan?” he questioned, anxiously, when I didn’t reply. Damn it, Tony, I was working on it.
Just breathe, dad would have told me, if he were here. Just take a moment to think.
I’d always turned to my family for advice, whenever I ran up against something I didn’t know how to handle. I used to freeze up with indecision when they weren’t around to help me, until one day, I started imagining what they’d tell me instead. Now, the memory of dad’s calm tone echoed in the back of my mind, bringing with it a sense of comfort and agency.
And suddenly, an idea hit me. One so obvious I didn’t know why it’d taken me so long to see it. “We have to climb on top of the pick-up. Use it to get over the wall, one by one.”
Tony would have loved to be the first one out—I didn’t even need to see the glance he threw my way to know that—but no one else could pull off the wild driving that was keeping us from being burned alive. Not unless the new guy was holding out on us, and there was no way we were that lucky.
I opened my mouth to speak, but Luca got there first. “You should be the first one out,” he told me.
Okay. Not that I was adverse to living or anything—now that he’d suggested it, I could picture myself safe on the other side of the wall, and I wanted it so badly. But seeing as how I was the one with the most field experience aside from maybe Carter, I wasn’t getting where he was coming from. “That’s ridiculous. And we don’t have time to debate this.”
“You can fire a gun,” he argued anyway.
Wasn’t that counter-intuitive? Shouldn’t that mean I should stay on the field the longest? I wasn’t going to abandon my team, even if that meant risking death via rampaging legimal for a little longer.
And thinking about it only made me want out all the more. Damn it, I had to muster a little courage. People were counting on me. I straightened my back, as if looking more confident might make me feel it, too.
Luca let out a frustrated sigh. “It’s harder for you to cover us from the pick-up. But if you can get on top of those ruins, you’ll have a clear shot over the wall. And you won’t have to worry about running away from the chimera while doing it.”
I blinked at him. “You want me to snipe a chimera with a shotgun?”
What exactly was the guy imagining? This was a short-range weapon. One that we’d brought along to scare off legimals, or if it really came down to it, slow them down while we escaped. Both of which would have been totally feasible plans, under normal circumstances, when all our pathways for escape weren’t mysteriously blocked off.
Luca glanced between the chimera and the ruins, eyeballing the space. “That’s hardly sniping distance.”
“Less chatting, more getting a workable plan together!” yelled Tony, unhelpful with the thinking part of the problem as ever.
Believe it or not, Carter was still taking pictures of the chimera, even though he’d already demonstrated that he was scared too. Well, at least he wasn’t likely to curl up in a ball and start crying anytime soon, which was more than I could say for myself or Tony.
“Okay, look,” Luca said, reaching into his backpack—a real one, like those huge ones used for backpacking. And pulling out a rifle, of all things. “You can use one of these, right?”
I didn’t even know he’d stored any weapons in the holding station, which held your guns for you while you were in the safety zone. The fact that someone had let him have one, even out here, seemed like a serious case of negligence. I mean, he clearly didn’t know how to handle it.
“I am going to pick a better time to question you on why you have a rifle at all, let alone inside your backpack,” I informed him. “At least tell me it isn’t loaded.”
“It’s not.”
Despite my disbelief that anyone would do something as senseless as stuffing a firearm in a backpack—how did the people at the holding station not catch that?—I felt a bit of hope at the sight of the weapon. We could work with this.
“Yes, I can use it.” Basic proficiency with an assortment of firearms was an educational requirement, where I came from.
Carter put down his camera and stared at the rifle. It seemed the sight of an actual gun could get through to him in a way that a rampaging chimera didn’t. “Whoa, wait. We’re going to shoot her?”
Luca and I just stared at him. Tony couldn’t, but his jaw definitely dropped.
“What I mean is, that should be a last resort, right?”
“Did you notice the part where we’re surrounded by an inferno?” Tony snapped.
“Hey, I don’t want to die either, but killing her isn’t the best way to deal with this situation. She doesn’t deserve it, and it’s a bad idea anyway. If we can just get away from her—”
“What do you think we’ve been trying to do?” Tony interrupted, just shy of screaming.
“Agitating legimals makes things worse,” Carter tried again.
And in most situations, he’d be right. Getting away was the priority, and attacking a wild animal came with its own set of dangers. But there was magic involved, magic worked by people. In the back of my mind, there was this dawning realization that someone was trying to hurt us, maybe even kill us. And whatever plan that someone had come up with, it’d seriously limited our options, leaving behind only bad ones.
“She can’t get much more agitated than this,” I told him, trying to sound sympathetic. “And we need to do whatever it takes to get ourselves out of here. If that means providing cover or a distraction using a weapon, then we have to. This isn’t just an encounter, Carter. We’re trapped.”
Those words echoed a little in my mind after I spoke them, and s
eemed to hit the others hard, too. We’re trapped. So much for keeping morale up. I sucked at this leadership thing.
Carter took a moment, then nodded. “I don’t like it. The chimera is just as trapped as we are, and this isn’t standard procedure for dealing with dangerous animals in the wild. But I guess I can’t deny that this isn’t a standard situation anymore. If you have a plan, Jor, I’m in.” It was strangely disheartening to hear that from Carter.
But then all eyes were on me, and I didn’t have time to dwell on it.
Chapter Three
IT WASN’T A GREAT PLAN, especially since we were trapped with a panicking, rampaging chimera. It went against every instinct that told me to keep moving, to stay as far from the legimal as possible. The idea of stopping, for any reason, was terrifying. But we had to try to escape. Or it was over.
I kept my eyes on the chimera, hoping for an opening. She couldn’t keep this berserker thing up. How much fire could she shoot out, anyway? There had to be a limit. How was she even producing it?
I watched, and waited. The chimera was a blur of speed, sporadic puffs of fire escaping from her to leave a trail of ephemeral orange in her wake. She would run until she rammed into a piece of the wall with a shuddering thud, pick another direction, then run again.
Until the one time when she hit the wall, and paused. She backed up, then ran into the same bit of wall again. Then again. And then she was ramming herself continuously against the same barrier.
Which kept her contained in one general area. This was our chance.
“Park!” I instructed Tony.
He swerved up to the wall, rattling my bones with the way he clipped it. Rolling to a stop, he made no move to turn off the engine, just kept his foot on the break.
Luca had convinced us to send me over first, so I was up. Hopefully, this wasn’t a terrible mistake. But we had to take this chance. If only everything went right in this next moment, I would be safe. I climbed into the back of the pick-up while the guys tossed over the rifle and ammo—which was not an ideal safety decision, and one I wouldn’t have made if we weren’t literally dodging fireballs. Carter gave me a boost so I could climb onto the roof of the car.
The roof felt flimsy beneath my feet. I balanced myself gingerly, reaching out towards the wall to steady myself. Sliding my hands up the rough surface, I waited for the edge to give way. To find out how high this thing actually was, to know what exactly I was climbing. I felt it stop at about the height of my neck, and let out a breath of relief.
Until that moment, I wasn’t positive I’d be able to climb over it. But this I could handle, no problem. I braced myself to jump.
And then the worst thing that could’ve happened, did.
The car beneath my feet started moving, even as my hands remained on the stationary wall. My balance wavered, and somewhere in the back of my mind I processed the sound of the chimera’s roar. Above anything else, I felt this sense of dissonance, that this couldn’t really be happening. That I should be descending down to the other side of the wall by now, to safety. I wanted that feeling of being past the danger so badly, I couldn’t believe it wasn’t real.
It all happened fast, within a few critical seconds that changed what should have been a success into a disaster. I felt myself tumble off the back, the momentum taking me past the side of the pick-up. In that instant, I knew I’d land on the ground. I had only a fraction of a second to fear breaking something in the fall and facing the chimera on my own.
One thing flashed through my mind. This visceral feeling of guilt. My parents and my brother, Tommy—they’d thought they were sending me off to safety. I was going to get them out, find a way to bring them here too. My family’s only hope for escaping the escalating danger was me.
And I was as good as dead.
Something grasped around me, digging painfully into my waist and changing my trajectory. I landed roughly in the back of the car, practically on top of Carter and Luca. I didn’t even know how, and I didn’t care. An overpowering, all-encompassing relief rose up in me, and not even the knowledge that I could still die stifled it.
I was alive.
When I came out of my daze, I realized Luca’s arm was around my waist. He’d been the one to pull me in. Luca, the new guy, the untried guy that was supposed to be the weak link in this chain. He’d reacted fast enough to grab me as I was falling off the pick-up, taking the risk that he might fall off himself.
Wow. I hadn’t given him enough credit.
We all disentangled ourselves wordlessly and spread out. Luca rubbed at his face, which provided an explanation for the sharp pain in my elbow.
“That was awesome,” Carter said, fixated on our newest team member with something approaching awe. “I can’t believe I didn’t get it on camera.” It was such a purely Carter thing to say that I had to suppress the urge to laugh.
But then Carter glanced back towards the weapon and ammo we’d tossed over the wall, beyond our reach and getting farther away by the second. His eyes met mine and I understood that we both knew exactly the position we were in. That the banter was just a pretense to keep us rational.
“Yes, I’m glad I’m alive, too,” I said with the appropriate level of snarkiness, happy enough to join in. “Thanks, Luca.” Luca nodded.
The chimera crouched not far from where we’d left our stuff, staying in place for the moment. Maybe she’d worn herself out. I really, really hoped so. Because I needed to catch a break.
The last fiasco didn’t exactly inspire confidence, but we didn’t have another plan. Reluctantly, I admitted to myself this was as good a chance as we were going to get. “We’re trying again,” I said, forcing the words out over the shortness of breath I felt at the thought of that fall, that moment before Luca had pulled me back into the vehicle. This had better work, because I couldn’t handle it if it didn’t. Even if Luca miraculously managed to catch me again, I’d probably have a breakdown on the spot.
“Jordan,” Luca said, softly. Frustratingly calm. “Don’t go for the rifle until the chimera’s away from it. We don’t know what this wall is, and it might go down at any second.”
“I know,” I said. If the wall had been visible in some way, it would’ve been easier to imagine it as some kind of protection. But it looked like there was nothing there. Even after I climbed over it, it’d still look like there was nothing but empty air between me and the chimera. No way would I perceive something I couldn’t even see as protection.
The car stopped moving, and I got on top of it again, trying not to think too much about what I was doing. I put my hands flat on the top of the wall, and jumped to get enough leverage to suspend myself on it, my arms bearing up my weight. Unease crept over me as I looked at my hands, feeling the solidity underneath them but seeing straight down to the ground. To the blades of crushed grass a dozen feet below me.
Eager not to feel like I was suspended in midair, I swung my foot on top of the wall, scrambling across it and over the other side. I landed on my feet, then shifted to a sideways roll to distribute the impact. The feel of solid ground beneath me, grass tickling against my skin, punctuated the reality that I’d done it. I was over the wall. Still alive, and much safer now that there was a barrier between me and the chimera. I got up to assess the situation, catching the thumbs up that Carter flashed at me.
The chimera remained relatively calm as far as we could tell, so we sent Carter over next, while I kept watch. He cleared the wall fine, and the idea to send over a third person occurred to me, when the legimal started moving again. Tony drove off without even waiting to see if she would settle down.
I eyed the chimera’s movements nervously. Tony might have driven away, but we were on foot. If she headed over to us...seeing a chimera in all its glory up close might be great, if it wasn’t from behind an invisible wall that may or may not disappear at any second.
In the meantime, she was still uncomfortably close to the rifle that we’d oh-so-intelligently sent over the wall bef
ore me. We were useless to Tony and Luca without the weapon, but approaching the chimera was sheer absurdity. Someone had to have put that wall up around us, and if they wanted us dead, that would be the perfect time to take it down. And even if the wall stayed up, it was invisible. The chimera couldn’t see it, but she could see us. I didn’t want to know how she’d react to us standing in front of her.
So we waited for her to leave.
I took the time to map out a path to the guns, realizing that I could see the invisible wall if I wanted to. Or rather, I could see its effect on the grass. Standing right next to it, there was a clear demarcation between where the grass was crushed and where it stood freely. Even from a distance, the difference was visible enough to make out its path.
Eventually, the chimera noticed the vehicle again and wandered towards it at a more leisurely pace. I was a bit conflicted at that turn of events. On the one hand, she seemed calmer and more curious about the car than hostile to it. On the other hand, that could change at any moment, and I didn’t like that she was paying any attention at all to the rest of my team.
As she slowly headed away from the rifle, Carter and I exchanged a glance, before heading towards the weapon. I was glad it was him, here with me—he knew when to move and when to stand still as well as I did. Neither of us had to waste time with explanations.
Tony, unlike Carter, didn’t understand that sudden movements—like some of the swerving he was doing at the moment—were a bad idea. Nothing and no one could convince Tony to slow down at this point, though, so I had to concentrate on getting him and Luca out of the line of fire as fast as possible.
But by the time we reached the rifle, the chimera had picked up her pace, actively pursuing the pick-up. Which meant we needed to cover them, as fast as possible. We needed to hurry up and get to those ruins.
EVERY SECOND WE WEREN’T covering Luca and Tony felt like a moment too long. While we rushed towards the ruins, unable to do anything but run and hope, I prayed we’d make it in time. That Tony and Luca would be alright, that we’d all make it out of here alive. As soon as I was close enough to assess what we had to work with, I eyed the holes in the bricks, the large arches, looking for a good place to perch.
Terrestrial Magic (Jordan Sanders, #1) Page 3
