Page 97 of Break Out the Girl

Got you, motherfuckers.

The men shriek, throwing their arms up as my winds whip the freezing rain into a blinding, razor-sharp twister. I spin faster, the friction throwing off sparks of gold and lilac light, tearing the rifles straight out of their hands and flinging them into the undergrowth.

Fuck dragon fire.

I am the storm.

But just as I prepare to flog them permanently into frozen nothingness, a violent, agonizing yank detonates against my ribs.

London.

His connection to me is vibrating with a sudden, suffocating wave of unadulterated panic.

He needs me.

He needs me right NOW.

Fuck.

Gathering every ounce of my remaining velocity, I expand outward with one final, deafening blast of compressed air. The shockwave hits the hunters dead in the chest, lifting them both off their feet and throwing them backward into the briars like broken dolls.

Run girls. Run.

Before the mud can even settle, I’m away in a silver flash.

I launch myself through the dense timberline, cutting through the now torrential rain. Trees blur into vertical streaks of green and black as I track the pull of the bond, flying faster than my human mind can compute, desperate to bridge the distance.

Bursting into the dark glade, the sheer chaos of the scene hits like a smack in the head.

Blood, mud, rancid acid and frightened sweat. The latter comes from an older man who is digging at the earth with London.

Tally is staggering onto his feet, while François is trapped under a giant, mutated dog-creature. Tally’s golden fur is caked in filth and stained crimson where jaws have torn into his shoulder. François, in snake form, is sluggish, straining to get free.

Fuck.

I look to London. He’s frantically scrabbling in the mud. And that’s when I see it—a black box flashing green digits. An electronic countdown clock.

00:02:14

00:02:13

Gravity slams into my bones as I shift back, my feet slipping as I rush toward the shallow trench they’re digging. “Move! Get back!” I gasp, thrusting my hands forward as London and the stranger scramble out of the way.

I tap deep into the storm inside my chest, throwing my arms upward to try and manifest a violent, localized updraft directly over the rectangle of loosened earth.

I’ll suck away all that heavy clay.

Fuck. It’s not working.

The rain has turned the earth into a heavy, thick, unyielding sludge. My winds merely whip the surface water into a frenzied spray, scattering mud across the ferns but leaving the weight of clay firmly in place.

Air cannot lift this. It needs claws. It needs hands.

00:01:45

Panic, cold and sharp, pierces my heart.

“TALLY!” I scream over the howling gale. “You need to dig her up right now!”