Deadly Intentions (21 page)

She started back down the tunnel at full speed, stopping short after a few hundred feet when she heard the sounds of footsteps running toward them. She cocked her head to the side to hear better. There were several people coming.
 

She looked at Mateo. “Are there any side tunnels here that we can duck down?”

The pinched look on his face gave her the answer before he even answered.

“No.”

Jolene’s heart hammered in her chest as the running footsteps got closer. Glancing behind her, she could see the other guards advancing.

They were trapped.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Fiona gasped for breath as they ran up the tunnel. Her body wasn’t conditioned for running uphill and it was taking its toll. Glancing behind her, she could see the tunnel was clear. The guards hadn’t caught up yet, but they’d be on them soon.

Up ahead, Eliza had stopped just before a sharp turn in the tunnel and was holding out her hand in a signal for them to stop. Fiona gladly complied, bending over and resting her hands on her knees to suck in a breath.
 

“Someone’s up ahead of us!” Eliza whispered.

Panic gnawed at Fiona as she glanced behind them. “And the others will catch up any minute.”

“What should we do?” Celeste asked.

Morgan closed her eyes for a second. Fiona assumed she was trying to get in touch with her gut feelings to give them some guidance. She knew that sort of thing took time, but she wished her sister would hurry—time was one thing they did not have.
 

Morgan opened her eyes and barked out the order. “We’ll fight off whoever it is up ahead. Maybe we can overpower them by the time the ones behind us catch up.”

“Good idea.” Fiona had already taken out one of the red crystals. She hefted it in her hand, feeling the power of the small orb. “Let’s whammy them with this right away.”

“Okay, but aim well … we only have one more left.”

Fiona nodded. Raising the energy ball in the air, she charged forward, rounding the corner at full speed … and then skidded to a stop, not believing who she had come face to face with.

“Jolene?”
 

“Fiona!”

Jolene looked past Fiona at her sisters and aunt. “What are you guys doing here?”

“Trying to rescue
you
. Are you okay? What happened?” Fiona turned to look at her sisters. “Morgan, can you believe this?”

But Morgan wasn’t paying attention. She was staring oddly at the white haired woman in the wheelchair. Fiona had barely noticed the woman out of the corner of her eye because she’d been so intent on Jolene. She turned to see what had captured Morgan’s attention and her heart crashed.
 

“Mom?”

Fiona looked wildly from Jolene, to Mateo, to Johanna and then back at her sisters.

“There’s no time for questions now! Mateo’s urgent voice pulled her back to the present situation and she saw their mistake. The hesitation had allowed the guards to catch up on both sides of them.
 

They were trapped in the middle with nowhere to go.

Kaboom!
 

The floor under Fiona’s feet rocked unsteadily and she lurched against the wall, flinging her hand out to steady herself. She noticed with relief that the blast had slowed down the guards.

“What was that?” Celeste asked.

“They’re blasting the exits closed so we can’t get out!” Mateo answered.

Kaboom!

This one was stronger. Rocks showered down from above, hitting some of the guards and even knocking a few out. Fiona looked around to make sure no one on her side was hurt. She tightened her hold on the red crystal—they still had guards advancing from both sides and she’d need to make sure she threw it at precisely the right moment.
 

Then she noticed a dark area on the wall slightly behind her. She leaned back to inspect it and a blast of cold, salty air smacked her in the face. It was an opening!

“Over here!” She motioned for the others to follow her, her heart soaring—this could be their chance to get away.

She scurried through the opening … and came to an abrupt stop right in front of the biggest hole in the ground she’d ever seen.

Icy fingers clenched her heart as she peered down into the hole. It must have been five hundred feet deep. A quick look around the room told her it was a dead end. There were no exit tunnels—just the hole. Up above, a large metal circle sat directly above the hole, like some sort of sewer grate. Fiona pulled back fearing the metal piece would open, dumping out gallons of sewer water that would wash them all down into the hole.

“Go back!” Fiona screamed. She turned to backtrack but it was too late. The guards were already at the opening.
 

The only way out now was to jump five hundred feet to certain death.

***

“We can take these guys! Our power is stronger together!” Jolene held out her fist and the sisters placed their hands on top for a quick second then broke free.

Jolene pointed at one of the guards. An arc of white electricity shot out from her finger toward him, vaporizing him on the spot.

“Looks like someone’s been practicing,” Morgan said.

“That, and I took some booster juice.” Jolene pointed at another guard who somehow managed to avoid the deadly energy stream.

Morgan didn’t have time to wonder what her sister meant by ‘booster juice’ because a guard was climbing through the opening toward them. A quick glance at him and her intuition told her he had a weak jaw.

“Celeste—his jaw!” Morgan pointed and Celeste spun around kicking out her heel, landing it square on the guy’s jaw.
 

Snap!
 

Morgan felt a split second of smug satisfaction as the guard staggered backward, clutching his jaw. But the satisfaction didn’t last long. More guards were coming through the opening toward them.
 

To her right, her mother sat helplessly in the wheelchair. Morgan could feel her anguish. Mateo stood in front of Johanna like a human shield. He threw his hands up and a wave of red unfurled like someone had pulled the end of an invisible carpet and shook it. Two more guards fell backward and lay still on the floor.

“Hold on!” Fiona yelled. She whipped the red ball into the rest of the crowd of guards, who collapsed like bowling pins as slices of red-hot energy ripped through them.

“Let’s go!” Morgan grabbed Eliza and pushed her forward. Celeste, Fiona and Jolene scrambled away from the deadly hole and back into the tunnel.
 

With her sisters out in the tunnel, Morgan stepped back through the opening into the room to help Mateo get Johanna’s wheelchair over the rubble of rocks in the doorway when a voice behind her chilled her blood.

“Not so fast.”

She whipped around to see a man in a nicely tailored charcoal suit standing there with nine of the biggest, angriest looking guards she’d ever seen. The guards looked to be wearing some kind of high tech armor in matte black with blue neon lights at the joints and big, clunky guns strapped to their sides.
 

But that wasn’t the worst part.

The worst part was that the guy in the suit was holding Luke in front of him, the point of a shiny steel knife jabbing right into the middle of Luke’s throat.

***

“Luke!” Morgan’s heart twisted and she started toward him, but Eliza pulled her back.

“Let him go, Bly,” Eliza yelled.

Morgan stared at the man. So
this
was Dr. Bly, the man Dorian had told them about. She felt a cold finger dance up her spine at the sinister look in his eyes.

“Oh, you want me to let him go?” Bly mocked her. “Sure, just hand over Jolene and Mateo and we’ll call it an even trade … you can keep the old one, I’ve used her up.”

Morgan paused, trying to buy time. The anger was building inside her and it seemed to be heightening her gifts. She could see the vulnerability in the guards and, if she was smart, she would have capitalized on that, trying to take out a few of them, but the anger she had for Bly was welling up like a tidal wave she couldn’t control and she could see his vulnerability was his eyes.

She launched herself toward him, her fingers out like claws, intending to scratch his eyes, but before she even reached him, one of the guards thrust his hand out at her.
 

A beam of energy flew out of his special armor, hitting her square in the chest. The breath rushed out of her lungs and she felt like she was trying to run under water. Everything slowed down as she fell backward, toppling into Celeste, who lurched forward at the guard with a perfectly aimed karate kick that ended in a sickening crunch.

Morgan tried to clear her head from the energy drain. Everything was happening too fast. Jolene and Mateo were fighting off the guards on her right. Eliza was busy trying to disarm the guard near Bly and Celeste and Fiona were ganging up on a guard to her left.
 

She glanced over at Luke just in time to see him haul back and elbow Bly in the ribs. Bly dropped the knife and Luke broke free, running over to Morgan’s side.
 

“Are you okay?” His eyes were dark with concern.
 

Morgan nodded. She let him help her up, anxious about wasting any time—by the looks of things her sisters desperately needed their help fighting off the guards.

Luke let out a whistle, which momentarily confused Morgan. When Cal, Jake and Buzz came running down the tunnel, she realized the reason for it—they’d been waiting for his signal all along.

Morgan noticed the three men had their arms raised. She realized they were holding the Taser’s they’d brought.

Jake aimed his Taser at one of the guards and pulled the trigger. The wires shot out, hitting the guard in the middle of the chest and bouncing off.
 

“Aim for the chinks in the armor!” Luke yelled.

Buzz did as told, hitting another guard where the upper arm met the shoulder plate. The guard jerked forward, his armor sparking from all the joints, then collapsed on the floor, wisps of smoke rising from his body.

In a flash, the boys were beside them fighting off the rest of the guards. Morgan noticed they were making headway, but something wasn’t right—none of the guards had used their guns.

Morgan could see Bly struggling to his feet. He was holding his side, his face contorted in rage.

“Hit them with the dark energy!” his shrill voice echoed in the tunnel.

The guards reached for the clunky guns.

Morgan’s stomach twisted. Dark energy sounded bad and the smug look on Bly’s face told her this was his secret weapon—his ace in the hole. She reached for the obsidian amulet and held it out in front of her.

Streams of dark brown energy spewed from the guns. Morgan pushed her amulet toward the stream that was headed for her. This energy seemed to be more powerful than the energy they’d fended off earlier and it was a struggle to keep her amulet in its path.
 

Beside her, Celeste wasn’t as lucky—she hadn’t gotten her amulet up in time and the dark energy hit her in the stomach, doubling her over. She slumped to the floor.

“Celeste! Your amulet!” Fiona yelled, gesturing to her own amulet.

Celeste made a weak attempt to use her amulet to protect her from the energy stream still coming at her but was too weak. Morgan raced over, helping Celeste with the amulet, interrupting the stream long enough for Celeste to regain enough strength to be able to hold it on her own.
 

The guys were still trying to take down the guards by aiming their Tasers at the chinks in their armor, but the guards were focused on aiming the bad energy at Morgan and her sisters. Morgan felt thankful Fiona had made amulets for all of them and then came the gut-wrenching realization that one of them didn’t have an amulet.

Jolene.

Morgan glanced over at Jolene to see her dodging streams of dark energy. Mateo stood next to her, trying unsuccessfully to break the energy stream.

“Jolene!” Eliza caught Jolene’s attention and threw her her own amulet—the one Mariah Blackmoore had made.
 

Jolene caught the amulet easily and raised it toward the dark energy. Morgan watched, fascinated, as the energy hit the amulet, then clattered to the floor in a pile of black glass shards.

“Eliza! Over here!” Morgan gestured for her aunt to come over behind her where she could try to protect them both with the one amulet she had, but Eliza shook her head. She dived for the black glass shards. Dodging the brown energy streams of the guards, she ran toward Bly, lunged at him and shoved the shard into his eye.

Bly’s screams sent a shiver down Morgan’s spine and pulled the attention of the guards away. He covered his eye with one hand and pointed at Eliza who was making her way back to the girls with the other.
 

“Kill her!”

The guards trained their guns on Eliza, pummeling her with dark energy. Eliza’s body jerked backward, almost as if on a pulley.
 

“No!” Morgan heard herself scream as Eliza stumbled backward toward the hole, perching on the edge for a split second before she toppled into it. Morgan couldn’t stop herself from rushing over to the hole and looking down. Eliza’s broken body lay on the rocks below. She didn’t even have time to mourn—the guards were already turning their guns back on them. Morgan’s eyes burned with tears as she tore herself away and raised her amulet.
 

Bly was clutching his eye and screaming orders at the guards. Morgan realized the guards were gaining ground—pushing them back toward the hole. Her heart squeezed—she hoped they wouldn’t all end up meeting the same fate as Eliza.
 

Jolene took out another guard with one of her energy zaps. Mateo kept them at bay with constant rolls of energy waves. Celeste executed a few well-placed kicks. Fiona took out the last glowing crystal and held it up. Luke, Buzz, Cal and Jake kept trying with the Tasers.
 

At least we’re able to keep Bly and his gang outside in the tunnel and they aren’t pushing us further toward the hole
, Morgan thought. But she knew the standstill couldn’t last forever. Sooner or later, one of them would gain ground on the other.