Page 26 of The Tree of Spirits (Paragons #2)

TRAPPED

“ I said, get moving!” one of the armored fiends shouted down the line in his deep, smoky voice. “Or else?—”

He didn’t get a chance to finish that threat. A thunderous boom shook the building, swallowing his words.

“The Knights are attacking the forcefield,” said the other male soldier. He was standing at a window, peering outside through a gap in the curtains. “And the Watchers are standing ready on our doorstep. The moment the forcefield goes down, they’ll storm the building.”

“Are there any other exits?”

“Only back through the basement into the jewelry store. And they’re standing by outside the shop too, just in case we try it.”

The armored fiends huddled up to discuss what to do.

“So much for us being their security guarantee,” Bronte commented, glancing at Dante. “The Knights and Watchers aren’t holding back just because we’re inside.”

Asher squeezed through the crowd, making his way to us. “That’s because the Rebels are in here.” He glanced at the three armored fiends. “The General wants to take them out at any cost.”

“They aren’t Rebels!” I protested.

Kylie sidled up to us. “Then who are they?”

“I don’t know.” I shook my head. “All I can tell you is I’ve seen that armor before.”

“Yes, at the Tournament,” Bronte said impatiently. “We’ve been down this road before.”

“The Tournament isn’t the only place I’ve seen people in this techno armor.”

Dante blinked. “Where else have you seen it?”

“In the Park, two days ago. Some guys— these guys, I’m pretty sure—clashed with the Watchers, the Rebels, and a bunch of creepy commandos from the Brotherhood.”

“Sounds like a real party,” Nevada commented.

“Yeah, it was so much fun that I nearly got blown up.”

Dante rubbed his forehead. “Wait, you were at the Battle in the Park?”

“Uh, yeah,” I said with a small, forced smile. “Did I forget to mention that?”

Dante looked at me like I was a girl made of glass who’d decided to charge at a dragon.

“Well, never mind that.” I waved his worries aside. “We need to focus on the matter at hand.”

“Yeah.” Nevada tugged on her braids. “We’re stuck in here with them .”

One of the fiends was watching us. Closely. It was the one who’d choked me.

“We’re not stuck,” I whispered to my friends. “There’s another exit in the building, down in the basement. I found it a few days ago when I was looking for a place to store supplies. In one of the storage rooms, there’s a ladder that leads up to the street. We just have to get to it.”

“Ok, so how do we get away from them ?” Kylie murmured, her lips hardly moving.

“You don’t.”

We looked up to find the supernatural in the broken armor looming over us.

“How...” Kylie’s mouth fell open.

The fiend tapped her helmet. “Super hearing.” She lifted her voice, calling out to the other two, “There’s another exit out of the building.” She pointed at me. “And she knows where it is.”

The smoky-voiced fiend stomped up to me. “Lead us to this exit.”

I swallowed hard.

“Fine.” He grabbed Nevada with one hand, hefting her off the ground. Electricity sparked on his other hand. He held the sparks in front of her face.

Nevada closed her eyes. Her lips pressed together.

“Wait!” I shouted out. “Don’t hurt her.”

“Show us where the exit is, and I won’t have to.”

“Ok!”

The fiend lowered Nevada to the floor. He leaned in toward me, so close I could see my reflection mirrored in the visor of his helmet.

“This way.” I started walking, my steps unsteady.

I headed back down the staircase, but at the bottom, I went left instead of right. I led the way down a gloomy hallway with storage rooms on either side, all the way to the big room at the end.

I started humming nervously.

“Are you sure about this?” Dante whispered to me. “I don’t remember seeing any ladder down here.”

The other Apprentices were right behind us.

The fiends brought up the rear. On the threshold of the room, one of them exclaimed, “There’s no ladder!”

I whistled, and a gust of wind knocked the fiends back into the hallway. The door slammed shut, locking them out of the room.

“He’s right. There’s no ladder.” Bronte angled an accusatory stare my way.

“I know,” I grunted, shoving a heavy crate in front of the door. “I lied about that.”

“Savannah Winters is a liar,” Zoe sneered. “ Big shocker there.”

“Would you just stop?” Kylie snapped at her. “We have bigger things to worry about than you proving how mean and petty you are.”

Zoe thrust a finger in my face, but she kept her gaze locked with Kylie’s. “She lied to us about there being an escape.”

I batted her bony hand away. “No, I lied to the fiends. I wanted them to overhear me.”

“But why? Now we’re trapped!” Bronte threw her hands in the air.

“I needed to get us safely away from them.”

“Uh, hate to break it to you, Winters, but we won’t be safe for long.” Asher nodded at the rattling door. “I’m pretty sure if those guys can knock through a concrete wall between buildings, they can knock down a door.”

I moved toward the back wall. “I just needed to buy us time.”

“Time for what?” Dutch demanded, his voice wavering.

I brushed my hand against the wall’s concrete surface. “To get everyone out of here.”

Dutch turned to Asher. “Uh, she realizes there’s still no exit out of this room, right?” He looked up at the solid ceiling. “I knew it! I knew she would be the death of us all!”

“Because you are contributing so much to the escape plan.” Dante crossed his arms and glowered at him.

Nevada came to stand beside me. “We trust Savannah.”

“Thanks, guys. So I take it that means you don’t mind being my guinea pigs.” I gave them a hopeful smile.

“I guess that depends,” Dante said, looking uncertain. “Guinea pigs for what?”

“For some magic.” I set Nevada’s and Dante’s hands on my shoulders. “Hold on tightly.”

I waved my hand through the air, drawing the teleportation symbol. I had only half a second to pray that this would work before I felt the familiar rubber-band snap! The three of us shot forward.

The next moment, we were standing on the street, at the back side of the conference center. I’d done it! I’d teleported! And this time, I’d actually ended up where I’d intended to go. I’d teleported through solid concrete, rock, and earth. This was so cool.

“Are you ok?” I asked Dante and Nevada.

They only gaped at me in shock, not saying a word. Though they did look a bit green. Must have been the vertigo. It wasn’t so bad for me this time around. The dizziness had already faded from my head, but the two of them did not look great.

“Stay here. Hold on to something,” I said, then teleported back into the basement.

“Whoa, Winters!” Asher said when I popped up beside him. “How did you do that?”

“Magic.”

“Magic?” he repeated.

“Yeah.”

He looked at me like I’d just grown a few extra heads. “Where did you learn how to teleport?”

“Long story. Now, come on. Next two people. That door won’t hold forever.”

All the Apprentices rushed at me.

“I said two ! Not all of you!” I grabbed the nearest two hands, planted them on my shoulders, and teleported out of there.

The second I got back to the basement, the door burst open. Fantastic. I hummed my wood song, fast and loud. The crates in the room all started flying around in circles, bombarding the fiends, pushing them back from the doorway. The fiends fought back with fire and steel.

In the meantime, I got a few more pairs of Apprentices out of the basement. But it didn’t take the fiends long to destroy the wooden crates that were protecting us. One of them unleashed a noxious potion. It smelled like spoiled milk and unwashed feet. An unnatural breeze blew it toward us.

That dark, ominous cloud now separated me from Kylie, Asher, and two other Apprentices—and the fiends who held them. Two Apprentices, Bronte and Dutch, stood with me, in the cloud’s path.

“Go!” Kylie shouted at me. “Get them to safety!”

I hesitated.

“Don’t do anything stupid, Winters,” Asher coughed, then kicked one of the fiends.

I grabbed the Apprentice on either side of me, then teleported us to the street above. The last thing I saw as my spell shot us out of there was Kylie and Asher passing out on the floor from the potion’s stinky fumes.

“Whoa, what are you doing?” Bronte demanded, jumping into my path.

“Going back into the basement.”

“Back into the basement?” she repeated in disbelief. “Are you insane? You don’t have a helmet to filter the air. So if you go back there, that potion will knock you out in like two seconds.”

“I’ll be fine.”

Dante caught my arm as I tried to move toward the building. “She’s right, Savi. You can’t go.”

“There are still four Apprentices trapped in there with those fiends!” I struggled against his hold, but my brother was really strong. And really, really stubborn. He didn’t yield a single millimeter. “Let go, Dante.”

“No.” His eyes locked with mine. “If you want to get back there, you’ll have to teleport. I’ll get dragged along with you. And then the fiends will get both of us.”

“You are so annoying,” I snarled at him.

“Love you too, sis.” He blew me a kiss.

I snarled some more.

“Are you done throwing a tantrum?” he asked me calmly. “Ready to be sensible?”

“Yes,” I cut out.

“Good.” He released his hold on my arm. “Because we have to get the wounded to safety.”

One look at all the wounded Apprentices around us was all it took to ice my anger.

There were a lot of wounded. Most of their injuries were minor—cuts, bruises, a bloody nose, a twisted ankle—but a few of them were in pretty bad shape.

One Apprentice must have been hit by the door when the fiends blasted it open because the gash on his head was not pretty.

And three Apprentices had jagged shards of wood poking out of their skin, up and down their arms, their legs, their torso…

My stomach soured. That was my fault. If I hadn’t sent those wooden crates after the fiends, they never would have blown them up. And those Apprentices wouldn’t look like human porcupines.

“We need to get the wounded to the Knights,” I said.

“Maybe the Knights got the fiends already,” Nevada suggested with a cautious smile.

So we hurried—or, in some cases, hobbled—around to the front of the conference center.