The Curse (Belador #3)(115)
Searching the room, she found a wall plate with a series of numbered buttons marked House Shields.
Casper said, “How the hell do we make sense of that without knowing which rooms the numbers correspond to?”
“We can’t. I need to warn Tzader.” Evalle lifted her hand, letting Casper know she was reaching out telepathically.
She said, We’re out of the lab and it’s on fire. Can Trey run?
Tzader answered, Yes. He’s got a shoulder wound.
Get ready to run the minute I start pushing buttons to release metal shields, because all the creatures are loose. I have no way to make sure I don’t let them into the parlor.
Do it.
She started flipping buttons.
The floor beneath her rocked with an explosion.
Casper grabbed her arm. “Got to go or we’ll be fried.”
She flipped the last lever and raced out behind Casper through several doors until they found an outside terrace thirty feet off the ground.
Evalle turned to Casper. “Can you get down as a shadow?”
“Sure, but what about you? That’s a helluva drop.” “Just go. I’ll get down.”
She ignored the wave of nausea she always felt from being that far off the ground.
Once Casper disappeared, she climbed up on the ledge and jumped, landing with her hands out, ready for attack.
Casper appeared next to her. “Come on, sunshine.”
Tzader yelled in her head, We’re out.
Evalle had started running toward the front of the house and almost stumbled with relief. Great. We are too. You’ve got to stop those monsters from getting loose. The two you faced weren’t the worst of Sar’s creatures.
We’re on it.
She and Casper raced around the corner of the house to find Tzader and Quinn on the front lawn using their kinetic powers to destroy the front of the manor as a last-resort attempt to stop the creatures advancing toward them. A truckload of bricks and beams crashed down on the howling monsters. Apparently with the sorcerer dead, and his magic gone from the house, the creatures became more vulnerable.
She hated seeing any living thing destroyed, except demons, but Sar’s creatures had been created for nothing but cold blooded murder.
Black smoke boiled out from the bottom of the house, leaking through breaks in the brick piles.
Fire was overtaking what remained of the old mansion.
Evalle ran up to Tzader as he and Quinn lowered their arms. She looked over at Trey who sat on the ground, holding his shoulder that was bleeding from where it had been gouged. But he gave her a nod that he was fine.
Quinn squatted down next to Trey, rubbing his head, but didn’t appear seriously harmed.
Tzader’s face showed the strain of what they’d been through. “What happened with Sar?”
Evalle told him everything, finishing with, “I don’t think there’s a threat to national security.”
“No, we dodged a bullet with this one.”
Their helicopter pilot called over to Tzader who walked toward the chopper that sat in perfect view, now that a fifty foot section of the wrought iron fence had been flattened for access. Casper followed Tzader to where another helicopter full of VIPER agents was just touching down.
Relieved to see her team safe, Evalle turned to look at the beautiful old home, now a pile of ruins.
A movement at the bottom of the rubble caught her attention.
Something small crawled out through an opening where the base of the porch met the house. She started to point it out to the others, but they were physically spent. She could handle one of Sar’s creatures weakened by the fire and out here where she knew her kinetics worked just fine. Walking toward the house to determine what was trying to escape, she grimaced at the heat rolling off the burning pile.
Easing closer, she realized the little thing dragging itself away from the fire-engulfed structure had bat-like wings. The two-foot tall creature had survived?
She reminded herself that Sar’s goal had been to create dangerous killing machines, but when this creature raised terrified orange eyes to meet hers, her conscience argued that this one had been marked as a failure.
Intense heat baking her skin forced her to wait as the creature put his head down and kept crawling toward her.
When it was within a few feet, she squatted down, ready to react at any hint of danger, but all she felt coming off the little critter was fear. Her empathic flashes were stronger and more frequent when her emotions were stirred up, like right now.
Sometimes you had to trust your gut.
One of the men yelled, “Something’s escaping!”
That’s when the little creature looked up, eyes rounding in terror. It started shaking.
Footsteps pounded toward her from behind. Evalle stood up and swung around, putting herself between the little creature and the VIPER agents.
One of the agents she didn’t recognize lifted his hands to attack but halted, face in shock when he saw Evalle obviously standing between him and the creature. He yelled, “Get that crazy Alterant out of the way!”
Evalle put her hands on her hips. “Touch this little guy and I’ll hurt you.”
The critter crawled into her peripheral vision and tucked up close to her legs, then did the most amazing thing.
He hooked his arm around her leg and looked up at her as if she was an angel there to save him.
She was no angel, but he was safe next to her. Tzader came charging up with Quinn, but Tzader was the one who said, “Have you lost your mind? That … that gargoyle looking thing could kill you.”