startled. I glanced behind me as I skittered a few steps farther from the wall. But no crazed blood drinkers came stalking through it. Instead, a horrid, nails-on-the chalkboard screech began.
“They’re clawing at the wall,” Malcolm said in a hushed tone, his light blue eyes wide with horror.
My mind flew a mile a minute, as quickly as my racing heart and my feet, which bolted across the room toward the hall. I stuck close to the guys but glanced over my shoulder every two seconds, expecting that horde to come bursting out, fangs extended, talon-like nails ready to slice my flesh apart.
Goosebumps rose on my arms as I extended a hand, ready to blast light back at the vampires if they broke through.
I tried to squelch the panic in my stomach with practical questions. What the hell was going on? Why had we gotten through that wall so easily? Why couldn’t the vampires? Why hadn’t that mist done anything to us? Why hadn’t there been more magic? Where was the security?
This was all too easy and that was bad. That meant it was a trap.
Unless … whoever entered and left the lab had to have a Darklight with them, just like the vault.
Had Ginny been the key to getting in and out?
But why wouldn’t there be more obstacles? Had Claude and Ginny disabled all of them on their way down and failed to reactivate them? If they had, what the hell was that mist?
We thundered down a dark hallway and then through another open office space. The guys’ longer legs meant they quickly outpaced me. My worries about how this was too easy came to a screeching halt when Evan and Malcolm started blasting shadows in front of us with ice—shadows shaped exactly like guards with damned security belts. Ten of them.
Fuck.
Evan and Malcolm’s ice shards were thin, easily blocked when the guards created flame shields in front of themselves. Then I could see their grim, determined faces, the Pinnacle badges glinting orange on their chests in the light of their fire magic.
How did they find us?
Maybe there had been more cameras in the other office. Maybe they were invisible. That would make fucking sense.
Dammit.
I raised my hands, intending to blind the guards, but Malcolm was faster. He yanked a soda can out of his shirt and hurled it at them. Immediately, a horrid smell filled the air—he’d used one of the stink bombs he’d prepped for the Unnatural Ball.
The guards’ eyes watered—one of them dry heaved—but none of them lowered their weapons.
“Don’t think that worked,” a grizzled guard said with a nasty grin. “Now put your hands up!” He centered his gun on Malcolm’s chest.
My entire body tensed.
Malcolm raised his hands in compliance, but then his right fingers started to fold down.
“Preschool, help—”
The guard fired at Malcolm, sending my heart off a cliff—but Gray found enough energy to blast the bullet with wind and send it whirling toward the ceiling.
At that same moment, the can burst open and Malcolm yelled, “Air!”
The can erupted with turquoise colored magic. A delayed-activation spell hit the guards and swirled through the air toward us.
Gray stopped dead, lifting his hand. His entire body shook as he shoved a wall of air at the guards, sending turquoise sparkles back toward the Pinnacle puppets.
But they wore fucking magic shields! What was Malcolm thinking? A stink bomb was one thing, but a spell to directly attack them? Their shields would have amulets and counterspells already written. It was a complete waste.
Suddenly, the guards bent forward, eyes on the ground … in a position that looked very fucking familiar.
Déjà vu hit me as the guards began to twerk. Their asses moved so fast that their entire torsos vibrated. One man twerked so hard that he pulled the trigger on his gun and a bullet lodged in the floor tiles.
The utter absurdity of the moment and the spell made me burst into laughter. Beside me, the guys did the same.
Z embraced the moment, his brown eyes dancing. “Shake that thing,” he started the Sean Paul lyrics but laughter cut him short several times.
Andros smacked him over the side of the head. “Move.”
His smack snapped us all out of our amused trance.
We tore across the floor, not wasting our chance.
We didn’t leave a moment too soon.
Because behind us I heard the soundtrack to a scary movie start to play. A haggard set of growls echoed down the hall, then the click of claws on the tile.
Gasps of “Holy shit!” and