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  Fearless

  Bird of Stone Series

  Book Two

  By Tracey Ward

  Fearless

  Bird of Stone Series

  Book Two

  By Tracey Ward

  Text Copyright © 2014 Tracey Ward

  Edited by Amy Jackson

  All Rights Reserved

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the author, except as used in book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Characters, names, places, events, or incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to places or incidents is purely coincidental.

  For my one.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter One

  Nick

  When I was nine years old, my dad bought me a remote control helicopter. He took me to the park near our house, where he taught me how to fly it. He said I had a natural feel for flying with nerves of steel and an intuition that couldn’t be taught. He told me I should be a pilot. It’s one of my favorite memories of being a kid—just him and I out in the open, the electric whine of the chopper buzzing overhead.

  Then he died, and I never flew anything again.

  Not until now.

  Watching the giant bird soar against the wind, hesitate high and heavy in the sky, then drop with a force unnatural and ungodly in this world is a feeling I can never describe. I can sense the wind rushing around it the way I can sense the tides in a dream. That’s how I know I’m getting better. I’m getting stronger.

  I would be afraid if I had any sense. If I had the option to feel it.

  “Nick.”

  Alex’s voice brings me around, pulling me out of myself. It’s full of pain and fatigue. It’s no mystery as to why: she’s covered in blood from a shoulder wound, not to mention the cuts all over her hands. She wavers precariously on her knees, threatening to keel over. I turn toward her to help her up, but before I can make it a single step her face contorts with fear.

  “Nick!” she cries.

  I don’t turn to see it. I already know. I can feel it in the dizzying rush of the fall. The feeling tips me over and drops me to the ground like a drunk on a Tilt-A-Whirl. I don’t even try to fight it. I can’t pull either of us out of this nosedive.

  “Get down!” I shout to her as my face rushes toward the asphalt.

  When the explosion hits, it shakes the ground just as I connect with it. I feel the heat of fire igniting behind me. Glass crackles as metal groans under pressure, both protesting the heat of the flames. Then as quickly as it happened, it goes nearly silent.

  I risk a glance behind me.

  The sleek surface of the stone bird shimmers under the flames. Waves of rippling heat distort it, making it look like it’s moving, but it’s done. I know because I’m not with it anymore. I can’t feel it—and considering it crashed face first into an armored truck, I’m grateful. And angry. I’d rather have brought it in easy than face-punch the ground with it.

  “I’ll give you high marks for the flying,” Alex calls, “but your landing was crap.”

  When I push myself up off the ground I find her lying on her back, staring at the ceiling.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Fan-freakin’-tastic. How are you, Nick?”

  I rise slowly, ready for injuries or the exhaustion that’s destroying her. I don’t feel anything.

  “I’m pretty good, actually.”

  “That didn’t wear you out?” she asks in amazement, lifting her head to glare at me.

  “No.” I’m way ahead of her. It’s weird. Pulling the Jabberwocky from the dream drained Alex to the point of collapse, but bringing the bird to life was easy for me. Exciting even. It was like a high, one I’m still buzzing from. “No, I’m wired. I could run a marathon right now.”

  “Not fair,” she groans, pulling herself into a sitting position. She stares down the tunnel for a long time and I wonder if she’s fallen asleep sitting up. Finally, she says weakly, “We have to go back in there.”

  “No.”

  She looks over her shoulder, the glare returning.

  I sigh internally. “No, we do not need to go back in there,” I amend gently. “I know you want the files, but it’s not worth it. You don’t even know if they exist.”

  “They do. I know they do. He’s a dinosaur. Trust me, he has hard copies.”

  “So what? Say we find these hypothetical files. What then? What are we doing with them? Are we hunting these people down?”

  “No, not hunting them. We’ll find them and tell them we understand what’s been done to them. Maybe we can help them.” She shrugs casually but it looks staged and awkward. “Who knows? Maybe they can help us.”

  I kneel down in front of her, trying to reason with her eye to eye. “We need to help ourselves first. Besides, how do you know all of the people in those files want help? If you had shown up at my door out of the blue saying you were a science experiment too and we should form a support group, I’d have either shot you or called the cops ‘cause you’re crazy.”

  She chews on the inside of her lip, debating. I sit silently as I let her mull it over. When her eyes eventually find mine, I know she’s going to argue. But the moment that I know I’ll cave—that doesn’t come until I hear her voice.

  It’s soft and full of emotion—full of things I don’t understand, but they're there haunting her eyes. “You know there’s at least one person in those files that’s like me,” she reasons. “Someone that’s scared and confused and struggling to get by with this power they can’t explain and can’t control. Someone cast out onto the streets by people who couldn’t cope—and what if they didn’t have someone like Cara?” Her voice catches when she says her sister’s name. Her eyes shine with unshed tears.

  Any argument I had is drowned in them.

  I let my head drop forward in defeat. If I were in the field, I would have slung her over my shoulder and run her to the waiting helicopter. No questions, no debates. No tears. I’d be back at base by now, waiting for the next call to come in. We’re in a war zone here but I can’t play by the rules I know. I’m working with a whole crazy set that I’ve seen on TV or heard about from Walters, but I have no idea how to work with them. All my knowledge is secondhand—and just because I’ve seen someone play piano before, that doesn’t make me proficient.

  Hell, I don’t even think I can even play “Chopsticks.”

  I lift my head, already nodding reluctantly. “Alright. I’ll go back and get the files,” I tell her, standing. “Let’s get you in the Jeep. You can lock the doors and stay inside until I come back.”

  “I’m going with you,” she insists stubbornly and with surprising strength, as though her stubbornness gives her some sort of boost. Like crack.
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  “No, not even up for debate. You’re wounded and exhausted. You’ll be more trouble than help.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “I had to wheel you out in a chair,” I remind her. “How is that not going to be a problem?”

  Alex lets me help her stand up, though she immediately sways on her feet when I let her go. I wrap my arm under hers, pulling her in close to me to keep her standing. We’re chest to chest, my eyes looking down into hers with an expression that is painfully easy to read.

  See what I mean?

  She looks annoyed, but she nods. “All right, I get it. I'm weak.”

  "Not weak,” I amend. “You’re tapped."

  Once we’re both loaded in the car again, I turn it around. The headlights sweep weakly over the oily sheen of our bird burning outside the cave. It’s engulfed in fire, the vehicles around and smashed under it feeding the flames. But our bird is untouched. It sits in the middle of the mayhem unaffected, stoically refusing to burn.

  It makes me proud somehow.

  “How are we going to get out of here?” Alex asks suddenly.

  She’s resting her head against the window. Her hair is falling all around her pale face, her hazel eyes hovering half-closed. She looks so frail it makes me anxious to bring her back into the lion’s den.

  She brings up a great question. I briefly entertain the thought of resurrecting the bird and flying us out of here, but there are two problems with that: One—it’s frigidly cold. We’d probably die from exposure alone, especially when you account for windchill and the colder, thinner air up high. Which brings me to number two—the thinner air. I could lose consciousness. Even if I daydream for a second, we’re dead. We’ll drop out of the sky into the sea like… well, like stones.

  Not to mention I can’t feel it anymore. When I try to connect to the bird, all I get is a lot of nothing. When I touched it before I could feel the energy on it begging to come out. The air around it was different when I focused on it. It was charged. Now there’s nothing but dead space. Once I lost contact with it, I think that was the end of that stone.

  So how do we get out?

  “How did you get here?” I ask her. “A plane, right?”

  She nods, but she looks doubtful. “I really don’t think that plane is still here. Dr. Evans took off in it at the first sign of trouble, I just know it.”

  “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

  I do an inventory of what I’ve seen so far. Most of the vehicles outside are toast. This Jeep is still good, but where will it get us? To an empty airstrip? If there’s a radio we could call for help, but then what? Where does that land us? I’m AWOL and neither of us has a plausible story for how we got here or what’s happened. And odds are we’re going to get Russia on the radio, not the US.

  Hard pass on that.

  “Nick.”

  I don’t want to look at her because I know what she’s going to say. It’s exactly what I’m thinking and I don’t like it.

  “I know,” I eventually tell her, glancing her way. “I don’t want to do it—”

  “But it’s our only option. You have to inject me. I have to go under and try to Slip us out of here.”

  “All we know is those serums knock you out. We don’t know if they can cause a Slip or not.”

  “I know they helped me dream with you. We have to try—and even if they don’t help me Slip, maybe I can bring something out. A plane or a boat or something.”

  “I’d have to go under with you to create it first.” I shake my head firmly, my eyes hard on the dark road ahead. “All I need are the stones. Those are easy for you. Don’t pull out anything else big. No more monsters, all right?”

  She doesn’t answer me. I sneak a peek at her to find her lips pressed tightly together, so I keep my mouth shut as well. I wait longer than usual but still she says nothing. It’s when the demolished face of the clinic comes into sight that I start to feel anxious. Or annoyed? It could be hunger, I don’t know.

  Chopsticks!

  “We’re on the run now,” she finally answers, her voice low. “There are people who will come after us. People who have abilities like ours.”

  I chuckle faintly. “No one has abilities like ours.”

  “Liam does. He can do what I can, only he can control it.”

  “He can Slip anywhere at any time?” I ask dubiously.

  “Not anywhere, but any time, yeah.”

  “Where can’t he go?”

  “Anywhere he’s never been. He has to go to a place before he can Slip to it.”

  I frown. “That’s pretty limiting. Why can’t he move the way you can?”

  “I don’t know. They said they started the experiments on him later in life. He was way older than I was when they started on me. I guess his brain didn’t open up as much or something. He wasn’t as spongy as me.”

  “All right, so we can’t go to England.”

  “Or back to Nebraska.”

  I snort, throwing the Jeep into park just outside what used to be the front of the building. “Why would we?”

  “I have money there. Cash. We’ll need it.”

  I look at her hard. “Hold on. Not only do you want to go back inside this crumbling building full of killers for hire, mad scientists, and X-men, you want to go to your house too? A home they know the address for? One they’ll probably have staked out by the time I step out of this Jeep?”

  “We’ll need money,” she insists.

  “I have money.”

  “On you? I pulled you here while you were sleeping. Do you have your wallet with you?”

  I clench my jaw. “No.”

  “We won’t be any better off having me Slip us to where you were stationed in the desert than we will be going back to Nebraska. I can Slip us in, and with a little luck, I can Slip us right back out. Easy.”

  I can’t help but laugh. None of this is going to be easy. I haven’t thought about the long-term of how this is going to play out. I haven’t had time. Right now I’m just worried about getting her out of here, sewing up that slice in her shoulder, and cleaning the glass out of her hands. But I don’t know where we’re going from here, and there’s a clinic right in front of me.

  “Hell,” I curse, staring at the building.

  I go to open my door. I’m going to come around and pull her out with me. She’ll have to walk behind me, holding onto me for support, but she’s coming with me. I don’t have a good feeling about leaving her behind, especially with her as tired as she is. She could Slip on accident, and who knows where she’d land. Plus, everything I need to patch her up is right here. If only I had a g—

  “Hands in the air!”

  My eyes snap forward. Two guards have appeared from inside the clinic. Their guns are trained on us.

  One on me. One on Alex.

  The gun trained on Alex—that strikes a chord with me. I know this note.

  I’m angry.

  “Alex, get down,” I tell her calmly, watching the guard carefully. His hand is shaking. He could easily intend a warning shot but drill home a kill shot by accident. “Get on the floorboards. Go dead weight and drop down as quickly as you can.”

  “They’ll shoot you if I move.”

  “They’ll miss.”

  She chews on her lip nervously, watching the guards.

  “Get out!” one shouts again. He’s starting to sound frantic.

  This is going bad quickly.

  “All right,” Alex agrees hesitantly. “I’m dropping down. Three… two…”

  I put my hand on the door handle. I prep to pounce. I watch the guard.

  “One.”

  I don’t wait to see if Alex does it. I trust her enough not to worry. Instead, I focus on throwing open my door, dropping to the ground, and hurrying along the side of the Jeep to the back.

  A single shot is fired. It strikes like flint in my veins, igniting a fire as I hear it connect with the metal body of the Jeep. I remind myself that Alex should be fine. A bul
let will have to pass through the entire engine block to hit her. With one wild reflex shot, the odds of that are slim to none. But if they keep it up, if they hit her, they aren’t walking away from this.

  “Hands up! Come out now!”

  They’re practically screaming. These guys are terrified.

  I crouch down behind the Jeep, looking for loose debris. It’s not hard to find: half the front of this building is lying in rubble on the ground at my feet. I pick up a large piece of concrete, wishing it was another of Alex’s stones. This one sits heavy in my hand, rougher than the rock had been and only about a fraction as helpful. But if I use it right, it’ll be enough.

  I move slowly along the back of the Jeep until I’m peeking around the passenger side. Both guards are still standing with their weapons drawn on the car. They aren’t far away. It’s a pretty short distance to run. I know at least one of them will fire at me, but I’ve been shot at before. Being shot at is fine. It doesn’t bother me.

  It’s being hit that I’d like to avoid.

  I settle in low on my toes and fingertips, feeling like a sprinter about to burst off the line. I bounce a few times, coiling that strength and energy in my body. After manipulating the stone bird, I’m riding high. I wasn’t kidding when I told Alex I feel great. I feel better than I’ve ever felt in my life. I feel like I’m still flying. Like I can do anything.

  After taking a few deep breaths, I reach up high, arc my arm holding the stone back, and then snap it forward. The piece of concrete flies high over the heads of the guards before exploding into small fragments and dust against a ravaged wall.

  I don’t pause to think about how incredible it is that I was able to throw it that hard.

  I also don’t wait to see if the guards will turn to find out what’s behind them. These two are scared out of their minds. They’ve seen things no man should ever see on this earth, and not only are they convinced they have two demons hidden in a car in front of them, they fully believe the boogeyman could be breathing down their necks behind them.

  As I launch myself forward, they both turn and fire shots into the unarmed wall. I’ll only be able to tackle and take down one of them, meaning one will still be armed and panicking. That’s the part where I might get shot.