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Periclum ran into the storm on four feet, leaving his sword behind.
Liliana saw the huge lion with the tattered remains of a lab coat flapping like a cape disappear into the gray of the rain, but she ignored him, sprinting all out for the window he just escaped through.
The soldiers pursuing her rounded the corner.
Inside the room, Pete uncurled from around Siobhan. “Are you okay?” The shelving units they’d slammed into tottered. Shelves collapsed forward, broke completely, or tilted. Cardboard boxes and plastic storage containers slid, some crashing to the ground around them.
The sprite ran her hand through her soggy red hair, wiped blood that was dripping into her eye, then climbed to her feet. “Right as rain. You seem to have a habit of saving me from hairy beasts.” She grinned down at Pete and offered him a hand up. “And how are you feeling this fine day?”
“Like I got hit by a flung fairy?” Pete smiled up at her and rubbed his chest in obvious pain where her small body slammed into him.
After sidestepping a falling box, she slugged him in the shoulder. “Keep up the name callin’, and you’ll be back in the doghouse.”
“Sergeant, get the SET squad mobilized immediately,” Colonel Bennet ordered. “Find Periclum, and either take him in, or take him down. He doesn’t leave this base.” Colonel Bennet winced. “And turn off the damn base alarm.”
“Yes, sir.” Sergeant Giovanni punched buttons on her wrist phone and spoke into it rapidly.
“I’d sure like to know what exactly was going on here,” Detective Jackson said.
The Colonel gave her a hard glare.
Jackson raised her hands in a placating gesture. “When you’ve got a few minutes to spare, of course, whatever isn’t too classified.”
Liliana made it to the window just as the soldiers chasing her opened fire again.
A bullet slammed the spider-kin sideways as she jumped.
Liliana landed badly in the lab as Pete struggled to his feet, groaning, one hand in Siobhan’s and the other braced on the damaged shelf behind him.
The spider-kin staggered to her feet, holding her bleeding side just above her hip where the bullet hit.
“NO!” the spider seer shouted at Pete as he stood. She ignored her wounds, stumbled across the broken glass and caustic chemicals, leapt over the broken tables, and dodged under the colonel’s long arm as he reached for her.
She stepped on Pete’s bent knee, making him yelp, then leapt and caught the open-topped box marked “ELEMENTAL METALS” as it fell from the top shelf. The glass containers inside rattled together.
As Pete had curled protectively around Siobhan, Liliana curled around that box, praying she could cushion the landing with her body.
“Oof.” The wind exploded out of her as she landed on her back on the ground, the big box cradled carefully. Pain shot through her injured side, but that didn’t matter. Thick glass bottles clacked hard against each other when she hit. She tensed every muscle, waiting to be immolated in chemical flame.
Nothing happened.
She risked a quick look. Two of the bottles had chips and spiderweb cracks, but they were all intact. She closed all her eyes and dropped her soaking head back on the chemical-covered floor littered with glass shards.
I made it.
For a while, she just lay there, panting for breath and shivering in a slowly spreading puddle of her blood. Not only did her side hurt, but her thigh felt like it had been seared with a hot fireplace poker. Or three.
After a few seconds of silence aside from her own labored panting, she cracked one human eye. Everyone stared down at her, looked at each other, then back down at her.
She was too tired and sore and cold for the staring to even make her uncomfortable. Or maybe it didn’t matter as much being stared at when her friends were the ones doing it.
“Stand down,” Colonel Bennet ordered when the men who shot Liliana reached the window. “Sergeant Giovanni and I have the situation under control. And turn off that damn siren!”
Doctor Nudd stepped forward and took the box out of the exhausted spider-kin’s hands. “Oh my,” he said. “Good thing that didn’t fall and break in here. If the elemental sodium had come in contact with the water and acid on the floor, it would have set fire to the entire lab.”
Pete peered at the labels on the bottles. “Actually, once ignited, the phosphorous, potassium, and magnesium powder would probably have blown this entire section of the building up. What idiot stored these together?” He grinned down at the spider-kin and extended a hand. “Glad you could join us, Lilly.”
Chapter 18
