House of Leights (Secret Keepers, #3)(38)



I was just turning to face the front when Chase barked out: “Brace yourself.” It was so unlike his normal cool and collected tone that my fear spiked immediately, and I leaned forward to try and see what we were bracing for. The road looked empty; we were on a straight, with trees on either side.

Chase hit the button to lower his window, leaning out. When he was half out of the car, I had to stop myself from reaching out and pulling him back in. What he was doing looked like a good way to get himself killed.

Leaning forward further, I kept one eye on him, and one on the road. Something caught my eye through the front windshield … like a heat haze hovering over the road. But it was cold here, so that couldn’t be right.

“What is that?” Emma asked, her voice higher pitched than normal.

Lexen leaned over the seat, staring forward. “He’s set up a transport barrier,” he snarled. “That asshole is trying to take us out using the barrier.”

“What happens if we hit it?” I asked, not sure I really wanted to know the answer.

I was already picturing us crashing into it and ending up squished into a small box of metal.

“It will transport everything that hits it to another location,” Daniel told us, hands firm on the wheel as we continued to fly toward the barrier. “Same technology as our transporter between Earth and Overworld, but less permanent. It will disappear as soon as we go through it.”

“Shouldn’t we stop?” Callie asked then, her tone suggesting we were idiots for still driving.

“If we stop, he’s going to have someone waiting to take us out,” Lexen said shortly. “This is going to be one of those double-sided traps.”

“There are fifty Daelighters in the forest,” Chase confirmed, his voice faint because he was still out the window. “The trees are telling me.”

I loved trees. Seriously. How had I been living my life without them?

“You got the barrier, Chase?” Lexen sounded relaxed, which felt wrong in this sort of situation. What the hell could Chase do from the car? Unless he was getting the trees to do something.

“Trees on Earth can’t move, right?” Emma looked between the front and back. “Just communicate in a limited way?”

That’s right, he’d told me that.

“The trees can’t move, but Chase can,” Daniel said, which seemed to satisfy Emma. But I still had no idea what that meant.

Both of my legs were bouncing so hard now that it almost felt like my chair was shaking. That might also be because Emma and Callie were jumping around as much as me. My eyes remained locked on the broad back hanging out the window. What was Chase doing?

I was watching him so closely that I noticed the moment his shoulders broadened out, filling almost every spare space in the window, and … was he getting taller? It felt like even more of him than usual was hanging out of the car, while the same amount was still inside.

Something brown flicked across the front of the windshield, drawing my attention briefly. It flicked back and forth a few times before I figured out what I was seeing. Vines? Where did the vines come from? The trees here weren’t exactly the viney sort. Mostly they were tall redwoods, their foliage high in the sky. The vines whipped in front of our car again, disappearing when they dropped below the window level. When they reappeared, they were wrapped around and carrying a large tree trunk.

“What in the world?” I breathed, trying to understand. Was this Chase? Was he commanding those vines somehow? The log flung forward with force and speed, smashing against the barrier. The moment it hit, the barrier shimmered and the log disappeared.

That’s when everything clicked into place for me. Chase was not commanding those vines … he was them. Somehow he was shooting the long tendrils from his body – something I couldn’t actually see to confirm because of his positioning out the window. Unbelievable.

We sped through the section of road where the barrier had been and dozens of beings poured in from the trees. But we were moving too fast for any of them to do more than be flung off around us. Chase remained out the window, his vines cracking Daelighters in the head as we passed them. When the coast was clear, he finally returned to his seat and I let out a deep breath. By the time he was seated, his body had returned to its normal, perfect shape. Any resemblance to a tree was gone.

“We have company on the way,” he told us, turning around. “They’re closing in on us.” His gaze lingered on my face for a moment. “Are you okay?” His voice was low, thrumming in the energy between us.

I nodded a few times, swallowing hard. “Yes, thanks to you.” I was spilling all my feels, uncaring that we were in the middle of a group. “You saved us.” He had saved me again.

His eyes ran across my face, like he was trying to determine if I was freaking out because of what he’d just done. I smiled. There was nothing Chase could do that would make him unattractive to me, certainly nothing to do with his abilities. If he was an asshole, that would be a deal breaker, but he wasn’t. None of them were. I mean, I knew there were bad Daelighters – cough, Laous, cough, cough – but the ones in this car were keepers. If humans knew these sorts of “aliens” walked among us, there would be fewer movies with little green men and more with hot gods that everyone wanted to be bonded with.

The sounds of engines revving distracted me, and Chase’s gaze shifted up and over my head, looking out the back window. I turned then too, to check on my family. Shit. Behind the three SUVs, a bunch of motorbikes had appeared.

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