Page 132 of Grave Beginnings

A howl erupted from somewhere deeper down the hall, then skittering claws sounded; a shifter, maybe? Or a couple dozen of them? The air turned thick, darkening at the edges as the fracture spread, draining power from me to break everyone free.

Ezra lunged through the doorway and grabbed Jonah up in his arms. The crayons scattered, but the kid remained silent as Ezrahauled him over a shoulder like a sack of potatoes and raced for the door.

“Run,” Blue-hair said, backing away as something dark burst from a room four doors down, tendrils of darkness reaching for us.

“Fuck,” Angel cursed, catching Ezra’s arm to steer him in the right direction as we ran.

The hall became a nightmare of supernatural critters, spirits, and shadows, racing in both directions. And I had set them all loose. Angel raced with me on his back, the others following, zigzagging around things I couldn’t begin to explain.

“There it is,” Angel said, veering toward a far door. Claw marks glowed around the edge of the doorway, but inside the frame, all I could see was an inky well of darkness.

“Shit,” I said as Angel tightened his grip on me, the other two grabbed onto me, and we all went sailing through the doorway.

My gut churned and heaved again, stars sparkling around the edges of my vision.

Noise spurted through Ezra’s earpiece loud enough for me to flinch as the world lurched, my stomach flipping. We crashed back into the mortal world and the lobby of the apartment building. We’d made it.

For about three seconds, I reveled in our freedom.

47

“Hands up!”

Blinking away the stars in my vision, and the nausea, I registered the circle of SED units, weapons trained on us. Ezra already had his free hand up, the other locked around Jonah’s small frame. Blue-hair cursed under his breath. Angel shifted, his grip on me tightening like he could shield me from the bullets with his body alone.

“Angel?” Victor called.

“Alive,” Angel agreed. “Can we get med support?”

Everyone moved, weapons lowering as the rest of our team headed our way.

Then reality split at the seams. The door behind us widened, as if trying to reclaim its lost prize. Victor and Kerry surged to snap us out of its reach, but something else spilled out, separating them from us. The first creature looked like a Rodent of Unusual Size, right out of the movie. Someone screamed as it skittered by. Then there was something with too many teeth, legs, and chitinous limbs, like some landbound squid.

“I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore,” I muttered into Angel’s shoulder. “And the wildlife is pissed.”

Everyone scattered, getting out of its way, while others shouted at each other to catch it. But those were only the first of many. The SED units scrambled, shouting orders asthingsemerged from the rift. They were beyond beast or real recognition, the horrors spilled free as Angel threw us to the side, Ezra and blue-hair rolling with him to avoid the eruption of nightmares. Angel took the brunt of my weight with a grunt as he kept himself between me and the floor.

Agents dove for cover. Victor called out commands, but no one fired, as their group was too close. Groups of SED broke off to race after creatures escaping into the mortal realm. I only half heard some of the comments shouted about the dangers of some of the beasts.

“We need to close that,” blue-hair shouted over the screams and chitinous skittering.

“How?” Ezra asked. “I can’t even see it, other than the things leaping from it.”

Blue-hair pointed at me. “He opened it, he can close it.”

“I… What? I must have missed that chapter in the employee handbook. ‘Advanced Rift Management: 101’.”

“When you broke the barrier to free the kid,” blue-hair said. “It freed them all, and this is the easiest doorway for them to escape that prison.”

The tear vomited out another nightmare, something with too many eyes and a mouth splitting it in half, filled with shark-like rows of teeth. It wriggled, trying to free itself as if the tear were too narrow for it to fit through. The Veil stretched and wobbled around it as if the thing would tear a larger gap between the worlds.

Holy fuck!

Blue-hair growled, “Now is not the time to be coy.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. “I have no idea what I did.”

“Fine,” he said as he lunged around Angel, reaching for me.Then his hand was on my face, fingers digging into my jaw, tilting my head back. His lips crashed against mine—not a true kiss but a demand. I gasped as his mouth sealed over mine. It might have seemed like a kiss to observers, but my gasp was at his suction of my power.