LAILAH #2
Some of the people closest to us yawned and rubbed their eyes, letting their weapons fall to their side.
Others turned on the person standing next to them in a rage that was more aggressive than what they were giving us.
The bad part was when we got too far away and they weren’t near the bubble of emotion Parker was giving out, they returned to normal.
Let me tell you, when they figured out what he did, they were not happy.
Knowing that I didn’t have a lot of energy to spare for myself, I expanded my shield enough that I didn’t have to worry about an arrow or something taking Parker out from behind, but I couldn’t do more than that as I added to his power bank.
“We’re almost there, just hold on a little longer,” Parker shared. “Let’s just hope they don’t cut off the stampede of people and lock us in here with them.”
“One thing at a time, Parker. Get us out then we’ll figure out the rest,” I directed, shoving him to keep him moving as I felt him hesitate. “Don’t you dare quit on me.”
“I told you that wouldn’t happen this time. I’ll get us out,” Parker snapped.
“Don’t you dare get pissy with me when you have only yourself to blame for me having doubts in the first place. Especially, in a situation like this,” I shot back.
With a roar, Parker shoved back three men who tried to charge him and split us up.
“Right now might not be the best time to have this conversation, don’t you think?
How about when we make it out of this alive, you can yell at me all you want about how badly I fucked up?
Trust me, I will be happy to listen to whatever you want to say. ”
He was right. This wasn’t the time or the place for our personal drama when all we had was each other to count on.
“Hold on tight. I’m going to see what this new weapon can do,” Parker warned before he lunged forward, spinning his staff as fast as he could.
The flames on the ends grew with the added wind until it was a giant wheel of fire that turned every person to ash as it touched them.
It gave us the last upper hand we needed to spill out into the hallway.
Parker twisted and grabbed my hand, running off into the hall, slamming people into the walls as we went.
The smaller space made it easier for us to manage, instead of being surrounded.
He seemed to know where he was going so I just hung on for the ride as I was dragged away with possessed people hot on my heels.
Now that I wasn’t powering Parker the same way, I created a shield and thrust it behind me, creating a barrier that they slammed into, making me smile as we turned a corner at high speeds.
“Where are we going now?” I demanded as I almost slammed into a wall myself.
“As I was being led to that room, I memorized everything so I could get back to the others. They had us in individual rooms like that one, so it’s impossible to use our powers to get out if we managed to bypass the poison they gave us.”
“Wait, so even if we free the others, they might not be able to use their powers? How does that help anything?” I asked, frustrated. Makoto seemed to have covered all his bases.
Parker glanced at me over his shoulder. “As the love of my life told me—one thing at a time. The first step is getting to someplace that I can shut the security system down, or at least the cameras. With them blind, it will help to keep us hidden as we break the others out.”
“And I’m guessing you have a clue to where that would be?”
“Sure do. They brought us to their command center when we first got here, to have us debrief them about the situation with Pride. If we can get into the room, I should be able to do most of the things I need to,” Parker informed me, confidence in his voice.
It seemed that Parker had a solid plan. I just couldn’t help but worry that this was too easy.
Makoto ran the top private military in the Eastern Hemisphere.
There’s no way they couldn’t just shoot us on site and end this whole thing in a second.
Sure, it could be that the Dark Lord wanted us to live but that might have changed since our last encounter in my dreams. I wasn’t his scared little puppet anymore.
I’d cast him out and purged his hold on me.
I decided to do the scariest thing I could right now and trust that Parker could do all that he said he could.
We reached the end of the hall and Parker kicked open a door leading to stairs going up and down.
He pulled me up a flight of stairs to another level but this time he let go of my hand and motioned for me to keep quiet and to wait.
I nodded my agreement as he slipped out the door.
Standing there holding my breath, I tried to listen for any sound of what might be happening on the other side of the door, but it was too thick for me to hear.
Then the door was yanked open and there stood Parker, a little worse for wear with a split lip but otherwise just as he left.
“Come on, it seems they weren’t expecting us to get out of that training room.
With the amount of possessed people he has on the base, most of the men must be down there dealing with them.
Demons don’t give a shit about who you are or if you work on the same team.
If they’re pissed, they’ll kill you,” Parker said, wiping his lip with the back of his hand.
Stepping out into the hall, I saw three men knocked out and their hands cuffed behind them. “You dealt with all of them on your own?” I asked, impressed and equally worried for him. “They could have killed you! What if one of them pulled a gun on you?”
“Easy, Trouble. They apparently are under orders not to kill us unless it’s the only option,” Parker assured me. “Although to be safe, I did take their guns away from them. Here, you keep one so you can watch my back.”
I took the handgun, checking to make sure the safety was on so I didn’t accidentally shoot my foot or something. Jay made sure I knew how to handle a gun since we didn’t always just deal with demons who were trying to kill us.
“Come on, the room is up here and we don’t have much time until they notice the guys in the hall.”
The large double doors in the middle of the hall must be where we were headed and just as we reached them, a man stepped out with his gun at the ready. Parker must have anticipated this possibility and got a shot off first, killing the man.
“Shots fired on the third floor. I repeat, shots fired on the third floor,” a man yelled from inside the room.
Parker wasted no time moving into the room and shooting the two men in there before I even registered there were people.
I always saw Jay as the soldier of our group, but the reality was that all five of them had the same training.
Yeah, it was meant to deal with demons but right now, these men were our enemy and helping the demons take over the world.
With those two dealt with, Parker settled down before a computer and started to type in gibberish.
“That makes sense to you?” I asked, peering over his shoulder.
Parker grinned. “This is my first language, that of computer code. It’s complex but I recognize the style of code so it shouldn’t take me too long to make some tweaks and get us hidden for a while.
Who knows, I might be able to have their doors unlocked before we get there. It would certainly save us time.”
“War room, come in.” A walkie-talkie crackled. “War room, come in, report your status.”
Well that wasn’t going to happen, and I doubted they had a woman working for them at all so it wouldn’t help for me to pretend. “How much time did you say you would need?”
“War room, if you do not report then we are sending backup your way.”
“Looks like this will have to be good enough. I just need one more minute to shut down the cameras and the lights....”
As he spoke, the room went dark, the only light coming from the computers and blinking lights of electronics in the room. A hand grasped mine, twining our fingers together, letting me know it was Parker. “Come on, Trouble, let’s go get the others.”