Hotbloods 6: Allies

Navan nodded. “Good to go.”

“Good. I’ll go for the outer edge of the alchemy lab. Navan, you go for one of the lab chimneys if you can. Bashrik, you take the far side of the lab. Stone, you can help me—I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

We headed out of the ship, the biting Siberian weather nipping at my bare skin. I was wearing a full Fed military suit, as everyone else was—with the exception of Stone, who’d drawn the camo markings onto his own clothes, claiming he “already wore enough black to get away with it”—and it kept out most of the chill, which I was grateful for. It was only my face that felt the cold wind as we hurried across the clearing, skirting around the edge of the dome. I kept one hand on the shimmering surface, feeling it out as we raced along. The last thing I wanted was to accidentally hurtle inside the barrier, coming face-to-face with a blue-suited rebel.

After ten minutes of running, I signaled for the others to stop. Taking a deep breath, I poked my head inside the barrier, taking a good look around to catch my bearings. There, just a short distance ahead, were the outer walls of the alchemy lab. I could see the chimneys belching out their disgusting smoke. All around, blue-suited shifters and coldbloods wandered about the place, going about their daily duties, with no idea of what was about to happen.

I ducked back out. “The lab is just in front of us. Bashrik, you press on to the far side with Navan. Try and get as close to the bunker as you can. Stone, stick with me.”

Navan dipped down to kiss me on the lips before hurrying away with his brother in tow, disappearing around the edge of the dome. I stepped forward, before glancing over my shoulder at Stone. Right now, he was too valuable to take inside the barrier walls.

“You wait in the trees for my signal,” I said. “As soon as those bombs go off and we get Orion into the open, I’ll call for you.”

He grimaced. “Nah, I ain’t no coward. I’ll come and blow up some stuff with ye. Ren’d want me to."

“We need you alive, Stone. That means you need to sit out the pyrotechnics, okay?” I insisted. “Lauren would agree with me. We need you to be a surprise to them. If they spot you, we might be in trouble.”

“Nah, they’d not know what I am!”

“I’m not risking it, Stone.”

The transmission of our comm devices crackled. “Stand down, Stone. Await Captain Idrax’s instructions,” Commander Mahlo confirmed.

“Stone, do as she says,” Lauren interjected, her tone decidedly nervous.

He flashed me a reluctant look. “Fine, but ye better believe I’ll run in, if ye don’t call me soon enough.”

“Noted.” I smiled anxiously, watching him run into the tree-line before I crouched through the invisibility barrier. There were blue-suited guards on duty, casually strolling around the perimeter, but they didn’t see me as I crouched low behind a control post, waiting for them to pass by.

As soon as they did, I raced for the alchemy lab, pressing my back flat against the nearside wall, hugging the shadows. Close to where I stood, I noticed several piles of shoes and clothes stacked neatly in a line, alongside heaps of valuables. The sight of the bizarre mounds made my stomach lurch. Evidently, these were all waiting to be thrown in the furnace, once the shifters and coldbloods had searched through for anything they might want.

Feeling the anger rise through me, I plucked one of the bombs from my crossbody belt and started to turn the timer, setting it for five minutes. Lifting the comm device to my lips, I relayed the information to the rest of my bomb squad in a whisper.

“Set bombs to detonate in five minutes.”

I’d just rolled the first bomb toward an empty patch of ground a short distance away, when I spotted a familiar face. Wearing a patch over his missing eye, Lazar was hobbling between Orion’s bunker and the alchemy lab. I ducked down, feeling suddenly exposed.

“Your uncle is here,” I whispered bitterly to Navan. “I have eyes on Lazar.”

“As soon as Stone freezes everyone, I’ll make him pay for everything he’s done,” he whispered back.

“And I’ll help!” Bashrik added sourly.

However satisfying it would be to see Lazar suffer, he wasn’t the one we were here for. Time was running out, with the shield due to go up in twenty minutes’ time, and Orion and Ezra were nowhere to be seen. I hadn’t expected them to just come sauntering out into the open, but I’d hoped to catch a glimpse of them somewhere, especially if what Commander Mahlo had said was true. They were in stockpiling mode, which could only mean one of two things: they were panicking about something, or they’d figured something out and were preparing to make a final move. Either way, that kind of event required a leader to get everyone organized—so where was he?

A strange hum bristled through the air. Fearing I might’ve been spotted, I crept back into the shadows.

“Could you stop flitting about for a moment!” Lazar snapped, speaking to the person who had been humming. The two of them were just beyond the edge of the wall where I stood, my view obscured. If I peered around now, they were sure to see me.

“To hum, I have fun,” a voice replied, high and eerily sweet. I knew that voice.

“Yes, well, this isn’t the time for fun,” Lazar muttered.

“Perhaps it is. You try?”

I dropped down to the ground and dragged myself to the edge of the wall, daring a look around the side. Lazar was standing at the entrance to the alchemy lab, his one eye staring furiously down at the colorful figure of Mauve—the crazy fae who’d almost killed me outside the Fed outpost. She was the one who’d stolen my blood sample and tried to make an elixir out of it, resulting in the whole thing backfiring and killing everyone inside the outpost. How had she even gotten here?

“Mauve, get back here,” Lazar insisted as the fae wandered around, laughing to herself in that creepy, high-pitched giggle. “If you want to help, you have to actually do something useful!” It seemed as though he was trying, and failing, to control the fae, and she didn’t care one bit.

“The sun. It is nice here.” She sighed, lifting her face to it.

Lazar growled and rolled his eyes in exasperation. “What in Rask’s name was Orion thinking, bringing a nutcase back here from who knows where?” he muttered, half to himself.

The fae shot him a cruel look, a bitter smile twisting up her mouth as her hands moved slowly. She rose up into the air, glaring down at him. A moment later, Lazar flew several feet through the air, Mauve’s telekinesis throwing him off to the side, while she floated away without a care in the world. He landed in a heap, almost directly in front of where I lay. I stayed perfectly still, praying he wouldn’t look to his right and see me.

Grumbling a string of expletives, Lazar scrambled to his feet, brushing the red dust and dirt from his blue pants. To my relief, he didn’t look at the spot where I was, but turned around and headed back toward the alchemy lab. I stayed where I was a few seconds longer, wanting to be sure he hadn’t seen me.

“What was that about?” Bashrik whispered through the comms.

“You remember that crazy fae who nearly killed me?” I said.

“Yeah,” Bashrik and Navan chorused.

I sighed heavily. “Well, she’s here.”

Her presence sent a shiver of terror up my spine. After our last encounter, I would’ve been happy never to cross paths with her again. Yet here she was, as insane as ever, and just as volatile by the looks of it. Orion must have picked her up on his way back to Earth, since that decimated outpost had been close to where he’d found me and the others.