TWENTY-FOUR
A
BLAST OF HEAT PUSHED me back, throwing me toward the door
from which I’d just emerged. For a moment I thought something had
gone wrong with the portal and I was trapped between worlds,
tumbling into oblivion, and would soon be burning alive. I couldn’t
see. Thick smoke filled the air, stinging my eyes, filling my
lungs. I shifted forms, wanting to call out to the Searchers, but I
dropped to my knees, coughing, grasping in front of me
blindly.
“Calla!” A hand
grabbed my arm, jerking me sideways. I could just make out Ansel’s
face through the smoke.
“You have to get out
of here,” he hissed, drawing me farther from the
portal.
“What’s happening?”
I said, choking on the smoke. At last I could recognize my
surroundings. I was back in Purgatory’s bare entrance. Flames
jumped along the walls, gutting the Searchers’
hideout.
“There are two more
by the staircase!” I recognized Ethan’s shout.
“Keep moving,” Isaac
yelled a second later. “Don’t let them corner you!”
Ansel pulled me into
a crouch on the floor as a dark shape slipped in and out of the
smoke plumes a few feet away from us. Fear slid beneath my skin
when I realized it was a wraith.
“Keep still,” Ansel
breathed into my ear.
My heart slammed
against my ribs. Where was Shay?
I heard screaming
but couldn’t tell if the sound came from a man or
woman.
Adne and Connor’s
silhouettes were illuminated against the light of the
portal.
Connor flinched at
the heat and began to cough. “What the hell?”
I saw the wraith
turn, moving away from our hiding place but slithering toward them.
Ansel tried to hold me back, but I pushed him away, lunging toward
the confused pair.
“Run!” I shouted,
slamming into them, knocking them away from the glowing
door.
Adne scrambled from
beneath me. “Oh my God. What’s happened?”
“They found us,”
Connor said, drawing his swords. “The Keepers found
us.”
“Adne? Connor?”
Ethan loomed out of the smoke, cradling an unconscious Sabine in
his arms. Isaac had joined beside Ethan. Both of them brandished
weapons, but their faces were bleak.
“Damn it.” Connor
peered into the smoke.
“What happened?” I
asked, staring at Sabine’s limp body.
“The building is
coming down,” Ethan said, thrusting his hand toward an immense pile
of debris. “A whole section of the roof fell right as we came
through the door. She was hit in the head. I lost the wolves trying
to get out of the way. I don’t know where they are. They may have
been buried underneath.”
“Incoming! Ethan,
back up!” Connor held his swords low, but his eyes went flat and
hopeless as the wraith approached. “Calla, stay behind
me!”
“Adne, open a door!”
Ethan screamed. “Get us out of here!”
The wraith was only
a few feet away now.
There was still no
sign of Shay or the rest of the pack. Were they buried under the
rubble? Had they already been taken? Who led this attack? How had
the Keepers found Purgatory?
“We aren’t going to
make it.” Connor grimaced, placing himself between our huddled
group and the wraith.
“Some of us are,”
Isaac murmured. He shoved Connor back and leapt onto the
wraith.
“No!” Ethan shouted
as inky shadows wrapped around Isaac while the rest of us stood
frozen in horror.
Isaac made no sound.
His body only crumpled in on itself as the Keepers’ creature took
him.
“Adne!” Connor moved
between us and the horrible sight.
“It’s open!” Adne
shouted. I turned to see a new door shimmering behind
her.
“Go!” Connor jerked
his head and Ethan, with Sabine, bolted through the
passage.
“You too.” Connor
took Adne’s hand.
“I won’t go until
you do,” she said.
“This isn’t a
discussion,” Connor said. “If we aren’t there in two minutes, you
close the door. Understand?”
Her eyes brimmed,
but she nodded and vanished into the doorway.
“Shay!” I screamed,
desperately peering into the smoke for any sign of him or the
others. “Ansel!”
“Through the door.”
Connor reached for me, but I darted away. “They came for
him. They’ve probably already taken
him. You have to go now!”
“I’m not leaving
them!” I yelled, coughing as smoke tore at my lungs.
Several dark shapes
appeared in the shifting gray clouds. Connor swore, looking from me
to the door.
“I don’t know how
many more wraiths there are, but we can’t wait to find out.” He
took my arm, drawing me back.
“Please,” I sobbed.
“I have to find them.”
The silhouettes of
four wolves materialized from the smoke—speeding toward us. My
choked cry became a shriek of joy. Shay shifted forms and his arms
were around me, pulling me tight against him. Then Bryn, Mason, and
Nev stood beside him, their eyes wild and faces pale.
“Thank God you’re
okay,” Shay whispered, pressing his face into my hair. “We’ve been
running through the hideout like some crazy maze, dodging the
wraiths.”
“Where’s Ansel?”
Bryn was crying. “All the smoke, I couldn’t track his scent. . . .
I couldn’t find him.”
“I don’t know where
he is.” My stomach knotted. Had I abandoned my own brother to
wraiths?
“Get your asses
through that portal!” Connor ripped Shay away from me, shoving him
through the glimmering door. “We have to get it closed before the
other wraiths find us.”
“But—” Bryn began,
eyes moving over the smoke, searching for any signs of
Ansel.
Mason and Nev
shifted forms again, sniffing the air and whining.
“That’s it,” Connor
hissed, reaching for Bryn. “No more waiting.”
“I knew you’d leave
me behind.” Silas’s voice cut through the smoke.
“Bastard.”
He was slumped over
Ansel’s shoulders. My brother stumbled forward, supporting the
Scribe’s weight.
“Ansel!” I searched
his body for signs of injury. “Are you okay?”
He nodded, not
raising his eyes to mine.
“You hurt?” Connor
asked Silas.
“Fell down the
stairs when they showed up . . . I think I twisted my ankle. Lucky
this one came along,” Silas replied, nodding at Ansel.
“Get him to the
other side,” Connor said, turning away stiffly from the Scribe, but
I saw relief wash over his face at Silas’s appearance. “We’re all
leaving. Right now.”
Ansel kept his eyes
on the floor but nodded, dragging Silas into the shimmering portal.
Bryn rushed after them. Shay kept his arms around me and we moved
toward the door together with Mason and Nev at our heels. Behind us
I heard a crash, followed by a thundering blast. An explosion threw
us forward, ripping me from Shay’s arms. I faded out of
consciousness as I watched the bodies of my companions falling into
the portal’s light like shadows flickering against the
sun.