I would have ordered Malcolm to stop, but my need to hand off the serum was more pressing.
My fingers swiped over a hard male chest, and I grabbed onto the fireproof suit covering it. I hunched my posture like I was scared and tried to turn sideways so that Claude wouldn’t see me fumble with the pouch that held the vial.
“Take it!” I muttered.
Though Gray’s hand reached for the vial, he didn’t grab it quickly enough.
Ice shot toward me again. It sliced the side of my neck repeatedly—giving me five striped ice burns that ripped the breath from my body. His magic rapidly shifted and I found my free hand ensnared in a frosty block. I quickly shoved the vial back into my shirt to protect it as I wailed in pain. The cold burn shot up my arm—and crying just made my neck wounds blaze, so I just shut the hell up.
Next to me, a dark hand rose, palm pointed at Claude. “Get outta here,” Gray yelled, pushing my hand down from his chest and pushing me toward the wall of ice, which had started to melt. Evan stood beside it, his huge football player sized frame shaking as he burned a hole in the blocks.
We couldn’t leave that way. Evan and Malcolm, our Icefires, wouldn’t have the power it took to let us ascend the ladder to the surface.
I opened my mouth to retort, to tell both the guys to stop, but suddenly, Claude started to gasp.
I still couldn’t see clearly from the original ice burn to the face, but I could tell easily enough that Grayson was sucking the oxygen out of Claude’s very lungs—the rich boy side of him gone and the brutal biker gang member side taking over. “Get her outta here,” he barked at my team, gesturing at me with his free hand as he used his Force power to control the air. His long, beautiful eyelashes curled back as his deep brown eyes narrowed in concentration.
I felt Evan’s hand touch my frozen arm gently and use his fire magic to melt the ice around my clawed fingers. I could tell it was his hand by the way he interlocked our fingers after the ice had faded but didn’t squeeze. Evan always treated me like I was precious.
I blinked up at him, the glare in his dark blue eyes and the set of his pale jaw telling me he was moments from shifting into his Unnatural form, turning into a grizzly bear and attacking them. While part of me wanted to let him, another part just wanted to get the fuck out of here, which would be easier if he stayed human.
Z stepped up on my other side and whispered through the shadows, “I really want to grab your boobs, but I’m thinking we better run instead.”
Even though my eyes still smarted and I was breathing raggedly from Claude’s other attack, I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. In the midst of darkness, Z’s ridiculous humor was a light. He grabbed my good hand, the one still linked to Evan, and tugged us away.
“Wait,” I told the two of them, my voice scratching. I dug in my heels—I needed to mention the door frame that I’d seen. I needed to hand off the vial so I could go help Gray win this fight and end Claude.
I’d only ever planned to be a thief, not a murderer. But plans change.
2
A blinding white-and-lavender light pulsed and filled the room, destroying everyone’s vision.
Fuck.
I shoved a hand over my tearing eyes to clear them and turned to look at the source.
Behind Claude, his secretary stepped into view, her palm shining as bright as a spotlight. The light transformed into laser beams and the bright red lights hit Grayson in the face. He groaned, dropping his hold on his Force magic, allowing Claude to breathe again. The older man fell to his knees, gasping for air.
Not dead, unfortunately.
My eyes swung back to the woman who’d pretended to be a student at MAD, pretended to be my friend. Ginny still wore her blood-red gown from the Unnatural Ball, though it looked rumpled, as though she and Claude had stopped for a quickie before coming down here. Gross.
The Pinnacle’s highest ranking Darklight lowered the beam from Gray’s eyes and clicked her tongue.
“Naughty Hayley, shouldn’t be stealing things,” she chided with a nasty grin.
I pushed back the fury that threatened to roll over me like fog. I didn’t have time to kick myself for the fact that somehow, we’d tipped them off.
We have to get out of here.
I yanked away from Z and Evan and bolted forward, hand raised, ready to clock her and kick Claude in his paunchy gut. I didn’t even care that I was rushing into a two-on-one fight.
They were down here. They hadn’t called in the Pinnacle guards yet, which meant they didn’t want to be found just as much as we didn’t.
Are they here for the serum too?
There were six of us and two of them, odds I liked less than a minute ago, when it had been Claude versus all of us. But still, our chances were good.
It didn’t matter that our natural-born powers were decimated and weak. We could still physically best them, set them up to take the fall for this heist, even. I had no problem framing Claude.
He deserves it.
Behind me, my guys all rushed at the pair, just like I did.
From where he knelt, Claude shot flames at the guys, but my crew was all wearing our fireproof gear. My guys didn’t even bother to use magic to shield themselves this time, just went at him like animals.
We were getting desperate.
I watched my crew out of the corner of my eye, saw Claude’s haughty expression change to grim determination, which meant he realized his flames had done nothing.
Good.
My fist bashed into the side of Ginny’s face and, as I watched her head snap sideways and heard her groan in pain, I felt like the tide was about to turn.
But hope was ripped away when Ginny snapped her fingers and next to her, a figure coalesced out of thin air. A man—a ghost. Not my father.
This specter was tall, with long hair and a scar on his chin that gave him a pirate vibe. His ghostly clothes clung to him, a white-collared shirt and black slacks that were so generic he could have died any time in the past century.
“Meet my other boyfriend, Hales.” Ginny’s sentence wasn’t even finished before the ghost lunged for me.
The fucking psycho was with a dead guy? I didn’t have time to even think of a sarcastic remark about that as I ducked to the side and then tried to skirt around them, adrenaline rushing through my head in a way that made me feel high.
A ghost? No wonder they’d fucking found us. That damn ghost could have been trailing us the entire time.
Wait, wouldn’t Dad have seen him? I wondered. Wouldn’t I?
I didn’t know enough about ghosts and how they fucking worked—I’d only ever interacted with Dad, only ever said hello to a ghost in a graveyard once before that—but the fact that they had a ghost on their side made this shit twice as dangerous. We had to get out of here, and fast. We couldn’t face the fiery tube we had used to get down to the vault. We’d be sitting ducks for possession tucked inside a tube of flame, all too easy for him to force us to roast ourselves—we had no choice. My crew and I had to go through door number two and hope that whatever was behind it was better than the way we’d snuck in.
I heard thundering footsteps behind me. It had to be the guys since I was still so close to Claude and Ginny.
But none of my crew were Darklights. They couldn’t see the full spectrum of light the way that I could. My guys couldn’t see the ghost. They didn’t know about that threat yet.