Finders Keepers (31 page)

“The girl is obviously out of her head with pain.
 
Let’s take her to one of the bedrooms where she can rest comfortably and we can assess her injury,”
Jalx
said soothingly.

Ellie caught Sky’s cheek in her palm and stared straight into his turquoise eyes.
 
“Don’t let them take me.
 
All they want is power.
 
Pinstripe, I care about you.
 
They don’t.
 
Please, believe me.”
 
Her voice cracked.
 

Sky was perfectly still for one moment and then he released his hold on her and twirled.
 
In the split second it took for him to turn around he changed forms.
 
Glossy black wings extended and then a large black crow flapped toward the ceiling.
 
Circling around, it dive-bombed
Jalx
.

Everyone in the room froze for one second watching the bird and then pandemonium broke out.
 
Jalx’s
three guards moved into the room.
 
One slammed the door shut.
 
Another picked up a fire poker and went after the bird, trying to beat Sky out of the air.
 
Jalx
screamed, “Keep him alive you idiots.
 
We need him alive!”
 
Another took the cover off the grand piano and threw it like a butterfly net.
 
He missed, but barely.
 
The fabric caught Sky’s wing and the crow cartwheeled in the air.
 

While Ellie watched the action in frozen horror, Lola slunk up behind her.
 
She saw Lola just as the girl’s elbow came crashing down toward her head.
 
Ellie rolled away and the brunt of the impact smashed into her collarbone.
 
The explosion of pain in her shoulder stunned Ellie momentarily, but when Lola jumped on top of her, instinct kicked in and she fought back.
 
She landed a hard kick to Lola’s stomach and Lola staggered backward, but it wasn’t enough.
 
Shrieking, Lola tackled Ellie.
 
They both crashed into the ground with Lola on top.
 
She pinned Ellie and wrapped cold, thin fingers around Ellie’s neck.
 
“You will never be queen, you little human trash.”
 
Lola’s saliva speckled Ellie’s face.
 
If Ellie had had any breath, she would have screeched like a banshee, but her airway was cut and she struggled against the blackness that enveloped her.
 

“We never liked you.”

Suddenly Ellie could breathe again and she gasped, then choked.
 
Lola was pulled off of her but not before the blonde clawed great gouge marks across Ellie’s neck.
 
The twin goblins that Ellie had only seen once before had hold of the spitting, scratching, flailing Lola.
 

“You were mean,” the one on Lola’s right said.

“And cruel,” her twin sister added.

“You thought you could just boss us around like your own personal peons.”

“My hair is not flat.”

“And I am not built like a reindeer.
 
It’s about time you got a taste of your own medicine.”

Ellie rolled onto her side.
 
There were more pairs of feet on the floor than there were before.
 
Lots of pairs of teenage sneakers.
 
The
calvary
had arrived.

The gang outnumbered
Jalx
and the three guards.
 
Even when two more of
Jalx’s
men showed up, they were no match for the younger, angrier generation of goblins.
 
The couch was tipped over.
 
The thin stick-like goblin with silver hair raised one of the antique chairs over his head and then broke it across the top of
Jalx’s
.
 
Sky tackled
Jalx’s
bent over form, now back in goblin form, and held him down while two others bound him with curtain cords.
 
Zak bounded up on top of the flat of the piano and then leaped from the top of it to take down one of the new guards.
 
Taylor was in the middle of it swinging a baseball bat that she’d gotten from who knows where.
 
It wasn’t hard to tell why she was the captain of the
Colverville
High varsity softball team.
 
And then there was Luke, who somewhere along the way had lost his wide-eyed Disneyland stare, and was demonstrating his amazingly toned muscles by taking on two of the guards himself.
 

Ellie scooted toward the door which had been left open when
Jalx’s
reinforcements showed up.
 
Pushing past the pain and the dizziness, she moved to her hands and knees and crawled between the bodies and broken furniture.
 

Once out the door she used the wall to pull herself onto unsteady legs.
 
Slightly hunched over, but still conscious, she walked down the hall with the tall, arched ceilings.
 
One step at a time.
 
One foot in front of the other.
 
It seemed impossibly long to where she wanted to go but she just kept moving.
 
Her body begged for her to stop, but her mind urged her on.
 
The last time she saw Gibbs, she wasn’t even sure he was breathing.
 

The trap door was where she remembered it, in the floor of the kitchen, under a striped rug.
 
She fell to her knees and pushed the rug back revealing a lock.
 
Of course it was locked.
 
Ellie fell backwards onto her rear end and stared at the door.
 
She didn’t even know if he was down there.
 
How long she sat there, she didn’t know.
 
Her perception of time was skewed by the acidic burn in her stomach.
 
She dropped her head onto her knees.

On a scale of 0-10, 0 being no pain, and 10 being the worst pain of your life, how would you classify your pain?

“It’s an 8, I think.
 
It might be worse in a minute, but by then I’ll be passed out.”

A hand touched her shoulder.
 
The voice wasn’t in her head.
 
She looked up into concerned brown eyes.
 
Luke had a rapidly swelling bruise across his cheek and the knuckles on her shoulder were bloody, and he wasn’t the only one there.
 
Behind him stood Taylor, with the bat slung across one shoulder, and next to her Sky.
 
Besides a bloody lip, he looked physically uninjured.
 
It was the haggard, soul-tortured look he gave her that made Ellie’s stomach drop.

Luke said, “I’ve got to get her back to the hospital now.”

Sky stepped forward.
 
“Wait.”
 
He pulled an old-fashioned skeleton key from his pocket and kneeled next to Ellie.
 
The lock clicked open, but before Ellie could reach for the handle, Sky touched her hand.
 
“This isn’t over, Ellie.
 
Xaneth
,
Jalx
, Lola, and Sarah…they’re all still alive and will be back to fight this fight again.
 
You can walk away now if you want.
 
I promise I will take care of Gibbs better than I ever trusted him.”
 
His voice was hushed and low.
 
“I owe him.”
 

She knew what he was trying to say.
 
If she walked away from Gibbs, then she could essentially walk away from it all.
 
The star above her eye would be nothing more than a scar.
 
But if she didn’t…

She shook her head.
 
“Open the door.”

He did as she asked, but turned his face away from hers, hiding his disappointment.
 
Luke insisted he go down and check to see if Gibbs was even down there before Ellie exerted herself further, but she waved him off.
 
Taylor, who understood Ellie better than anyone, pulled the boys away from the door.
 
“Let’s make sure everyone in the house is accounted for before we go declaring victory.
 
She nodded at Ellie, and Ellie nodded back in complete understanding.
 
Maybe there was a girl nod too, or maybe they’d just cracked the guy one.
 

Luke insisted he stay behind, referring to his Hippocratic Oath, and Ellie agreed.
 
He took one look at all the blood on her shirt and swore.
 
“Let me see how much damage we’re dealing with.”
 
Ellie allowed him to lift her shirt and pull off the bandage.
 
“It’s hard to tell, but it looks like it’s clotting already.
 
You’ve got three minutes before I come down and drag you back to the hospital, so make it count.”

Ellie didn’t have to climb far.
 
Luke helped her down from the top and someone was at the bottom to lift her the rest of the way.
 
His skin was cold, but it felt like heaven against her own.
 
She reached up and touched his face.
   

“I was so afraid you were dead.”

“Just a nasty bump on my head, as it turns out.
 
Although if I stayed down here much longer I might have turned into an
Olliepop
.”

Ellie smiled and closed her eyes, leaning her forehead against his chin.
 
“Good thing I found you.”

“Good thing.”

“Ask me what my favorite thing is about goblins.”

His lips brushed her forehead and down her cheek and then came to a stop by her jaw.
 
Her heart raced.
 
He paused when she didn’t answer.
 
His warm breath tickled her neck and the bottom of her ear.
 
After a moment he answered for her, just like in their game of twenty questions.
 
“There are the obvious things like adventure, thrill, and danger and of course the occasional eye of newt tea.
 
I imagine it’s not our lovely landscape or the
very
near death experiences that excite you, although you surprise me all the time”

Ellie giggled.
 
Her lightheadedness was back but this time it wasn’t from blood loss.
 
He didn’t know about her mark yet, but she wasn’t about to ruin this moment.
 
Right now, she was, simply, happy.
 
His arms tightened around her when she swayed.
 
A voice from above called down, “One minute and counting.”
 
Gibbs scooped her up into his arms and stepped toward the ladder preparing to hand her up.
     

“It must be my mother’s chocolate chip cookies.”

 
She wove her fingers into his hair and pulled his head down to meet hers.
 
Against his lips, she said, “Wrong.
 
Again.”
 

About the Author

Annalisa
Gulbrandsen
has been writing romance and romantic suspense for the entertainment of friends and family for over fifteen years.
 
She studied English Literature, with an emphasis in Creative Writing at Brigham Young University for three years before starting a new adventure as wife to a medical student and new mother.
 
Young Adult fantasy, YA paranormal, and YA urban fantasy are her favorite genres and subgenres, and in her free time you can find her reading, writing, painting, designing, teaching, or playing with her 60 pound
goldendoodle
.