“No.”
We both stood up, and I held the door while he quietly stepped out and ran for cover, still missing one pant leg.
I sat back down with only a two-inch gap to watch the action and finished off my water. When I bent over to set the empty bottle down, something whizzed by and hit the cinder block behind me, making a pinging sound on the floor.
A silver dart rolled into the shadows, and my eyes widened. When I braved a quick peek through the crack, I spied a man aiming a gun at me. I ducked just as another dart struck the wood door.
“Shooter!” I screamed out, lowering the hatch door. It slammed shut, and chaos erupted outside.
Fuck dove calls; this guy was trying to take my head off. I didn’t have time to cup my hands and blow out a warning. I gripped the handle overhead and pulled hard.
Four shots fired, and Katharine yelled, “One down!”
Pregnant or not, my family was up there. Torn between two decisions that could save lives, I raised the hatch door and peered out again. Austin ran by, disappearing into the fog, but everyone else was gone.
“Dammit!” I whispered. “Too big to climb a tree, too fat to run.”
My breath caught when a man in black stepped out from behind a tree and into a strip of sunlight that had pierced through a breach in the branches overhead. He was hunting Austin, and my eyes fixed on the serrated knife in his left hand.
I shoved my gun through the crack, aimed, and fired. The man went down, and I shot again, his body twitching. “One down!” I cried out, feeling like I could do a victory dance if it weren’t for the fact I couldn’t stand up in this damn hole. I slammed the hatch door shut, a rush of adrenaline surging through me.
When the door wrenched open, I raised my arm and fired the gun. April flew onto her back, and I trembled in horror.
“No!” I emerged from my hideout and fell at her side.
She grimaced, blood staining her left shoulder. “Don’t worry, I’m immortal,” she rasped.
“I shot you!” I exclaimed.
April reached for a strip of sunshine, and it danced on her fingertips. After a few moments, she sighed and sat up as if nothing had just happened. “You owe me, then. Next time I play hooky from work—”
I pulled her collar away from her shoulder. Her smooth skin had only a smear of blood, but there was no wound. I poked my finger through the hole in the fabric.
“Charlie taught me how to heal months ago. Just don’t tell Reno you shot me.”
I sat back in stunned silence.
Her hazel eyes sparkled with humor. “You change into a wolf. Why should this be any stranger?”
“Why aren’t you at your post?”
She wiped the dirt off her pants and stood up, helping me to my feet. “Austin and Jericho are creating a diversion so we can change locations.”
“How many did we get?”
She looked back at the body. “That makes ten I know of. I got two.”
“You’re not even armed.”
“I told you I don’t like weapons,” she said in a huff.
April gathered my gun and bag, and we walked in an easterly direction.
I slowed my pace a step and glanced to my right, noticing the hole in the back of her shirt.
April locked arms with me. “The energy blast I can do is pretty nifty.”
As we climbed a short hill, I struggled for breath. We’d rehearsed different locations to move to based on how the rogues might attack. Reno also didn’t want to lock us in one spot, thus making it easier for the rogues to pick us off.
Several minutes of hiking, and I would have thrown my heavy backpack into the river had it not been filled with needed supplies.
I gripped the strap on April’s pack and yanked her aside. “Careful, there’s a trap on your right. See the mark on the tree?”
“Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention.”
We continued walking. “Remember where you are at all times, even if we have to run. One of Prince’s friends helped construct them, and some of them have steel traps at the bottom.”
“Don’t move,” a man said from behind. “Stay right where you are.”
Sticks and leaves crunched beneath the tread of the man circling around us. When he came into view, his gun was aimed right at my chest.
April stepped in front of me and held up her hands. “We’re not armed.”
Well, that was a complete lie. Especially considering her hands could rival any weapon.
“How many of you are there?” he asked. His eyes were barely visible behind blond lashes, and his skin was so ruddy that he looked sunburned. But it wasn’t his stout physique that made me nervous—it was the fresh blood on his pants when he had no apparent wounds.
April scanned the trees above where fog erased the sunlight. She could only heal by the light of another Mage or the sun. It was possible for her to use our energy, but she’d never risk putting my life in danger since taking too much could kill me.
“Throw your bags on the ground,” he ordered.
We both slid the straps off our shoulders and tossed the camouflage packs to our feet.