The sheer panic of not being able to tell from what direction danger is coming completely steals your ability to even try to save yourself. And in that moment, you feel utterly powerless. Utterly vulnerable. Utterly alone.
Surviving soldiers say they would just run blindly toward what they hoped was safety, never knowing if their next step would be their last.
And now I have an inkling of what they went through, and it is the most terrifying experience of my life because of the total and complete inability to guess where the next hit is coming from.
What happened with Lia was frightening, but this is devastating. Completely soul-crushing.
One after another, bones fall from the cavern ceiling, no rhyme or reason, no pattern, nothing. It’s utter chaos. As each bone slams into a bone pile, fragments fly in all directions, and before long, Mekhi, Flint, and I are cut all to hell.
Still, no bone has fallen on us, so I count it as a win.
But I know it’s only a matter of time. We need to get the fuck out of here—now.
“Can you carry him?” I ask Mekhi. “Just fade to the front of the Boneyard with him over your shoulder?”
“Yeah, of course.”
Mekhi grabs Jaxon and fades toward the front of the Boneyard, while Flint and I both shift. Then we take to the air and race toward the entrance.
“Get moving, Grace!” Hudson growls as another bone comes crashing toward me.
I’m trying, I snap, pushing my wings as hard as I can.
“Try harder,” he snaps back. “Or you’ll die in here.”
Like I don’t know that?
Flint deliberately pulls above me—I think to block me from flying bones, which I hate because it means he’s made himself more vulnerable. That knowledge has me struggling to go faster, and we plow through the air, desperate to get to the exit.
But bones are falling in earnest now, from every direction, and shrapnel is flying up every time a bone crashes to the ground. The noise is deafening, and fear is a metallic taste in my mouth. The need to survive is a visceral tug deep inside me, a desperation that claws at me right beneath my skin.
The fact that there is nothing I can do about it makes everything worse. No choice I can make that might make it better, no path I can try that might lessen the gravity of the danger. I have no choice except to pray that I get out of this alive.
So in the end, I do the only thing I can. I take a deep breath and surrender to the lack of control. Let it beat against my heart like a wild thing. And then I just fly.
Flint drops behind me right at the end, and the two of us shoot through the narrowing entrance of the Boneyard—one after the other. We collapse on the ground near the landing pad—where everyone else is waiting…also on the ground.
I can barely breathe. My heart is about to pound out of my chest, and I’ve never been so exhausted in my life. A glance at Flint, and everyone else, shows they aren’t doing much better.
Jaxon is starting to stir on the ground, thank God, and as soon as I can breathe without coughing, I crawl over to him.
“Are you okay?” I ask, smoothing his hair back from his face.
He shakes his head like he’s trying to clear it. “Yeah, I think so.” Things must come flooding back, though, because he sits up in a rush. “Are you all right?” He glances around, then demands, “Is everyone okay? What happened?”
“You got hit in the head with a bone the size of a house and passed out,” Mekhi jokes.
Jaxon looks stunned…and also mortified and furious with himself. “I passed out? In the middle of all that? How could I do that to you guys?”
“Umm, you didn’t do anything. You got hurt,” I answer him. “It happens to the best of us.”
“Not to me. It’s my job to protect you.”
“It’s our job to protect one another,” I tell him, waving an arm to encompass everyone.
He looks like he wants to say more, but finally he just shakes his head like he gives up. Which is probably the smartest move at this point, since he’s dealing with six other paranormals—all of whom are used to holding their own in any given situation.
“It’s not that you aren’t a total badass,” I tell him with the best straight face I can manage. “It’s just that we’re all badasses.”
“Amen to that,” Eden says from where she’s slumped next to Mekhi.
“And it’s a good thing,” Xavier says. “Because we’re going to have to do this whole thing again tomorrow.”
“What? Seriously?” Macy rests her head against her drawn-up knees.
“We didn’t get a bone?” Jaxon groans.
“We didn’t get a bone,” Xavier confirms. “Being under fire from a dragon skeleton changed everything really fast.”
“Shit, I had one. I must have dropped it when I fell.” Or maybe it’s when that first bone almost took me out. I can’t remember. All I know is I had a bone and now I very much do not.
Jaxon looks completely embarrassed as he says, “I’m sorry, guys. We dragged you along on this expedition from hell for nothing.”
“First of all, you didn’t drag us along,” Flint says. “We came willingly. So stop beating yourself up. And secondly…” He reaches into his pocket with a wicked grin and pulls out a delicate-looking bone about the length of a pencil. “Toe bones still count as bones, right?”
“Hell yeah, they do!” Eden tells him with a whoop of delight. “You did it!”
“Umm, I think you mean we did it.” Flint shoves the bone back into his pocket for safekeeping, then reaches down and helps Jaxon to his feet. “And not to sound too much like a giant baby, but can I suggest we get the hell out of here before the next we’re-all-gonna-scream-and-die activity begins?”
Macy giggles and says, “I’m with you on that one. Luckily, I’ve already got”—she pulls out her spell book—“a portal back to school ready and waiting. Before we left, I made sure to do the spell that opens up our dorm room as the other side of the portal, remember? Because honestly, I don’t think I could do that dragon ride again, guys.”
“I could literally kiss you, Macy,” Xavier says, and I can tell my cousin has no idea how to reply…even though she is suddenly all smiles.
87
All the Right Moves
I wake up to Macy dancing around the room with her headphones in. She’s still in her pajamas, and I can see a ton of cuts and bruises on her arms and upper back—thank you, Dragon Boneyard—but she looks happy. Really happy, and I don’t blame her.