Read Online Close Contact by Katherine Allred - Free Book Online

voice was tinged with awe. “It was like you vanished.”
    “Don’t be ridiculous,” I snapped, turning my attention to the soldier. Zin, was he dead? Had I really gone into overdrive? My heart started pounding again, and my head joined the party.
    I’d never exhibited any abilities beyond what was normal for GEPs before. But then, moving at super speeds wouldn’t have done much for me on a dance floor, and nothing had ever frightened me enough to trigger an automatic reaction, either.
    What else was I capable of that I’d never had occasion to discover?
    Pushing the confusion away, I leaned down to check the man for a pulse. To my relief I found one. I certainly hadn’t meant to kill him. I hadn’t even meant to hurt him. It was like my body had reacted with no conscious direction from my mind.
    “You! Halt!”
    The voice came from the hall on the other side of the still open door, accompanied by the sound of pounding feet. Three men were charging toward me, swords drawn and murder in their eyes.
    “Run!” Lillith yelled in my ear. “But don’t go into overdrive. It’s dangerous!”
    I didn’t hang around to argue. Besides, I’d read Kiera Smith’s journal, too. I knew what the physical results of going into overdrive would be if I kept it up. Without stopping for my cloak or pouch, I took off along the side of the wall, only to be brought up short by an angry screech from Peri.
    Whirling around, I was just in time to see her eyes go bloodred with rage as she dove at the front-runner, beating him with her wings, her small talons scratching his face.
    Oh, Zin. She was trying to protect me.
    “Peri,” I yelled. “Follow me!”
    She shot into the air, barely avoiding a wildly swung sword, and came after me.
    Once I was sure she wouldn’t attack again, I turned and kept running.
    “They’re gaining,” Lillith informed me grimly. “You need to find a place to hide.”
    I rounded a corner, too busy to reply, and saw a door ahead with a lamp shimmering over it. That door was my only chance. If it was locked, I was screwed.
    Still on high, I grabbed the handle and wrenched. To my stunned amazement, there was a splintering reverberation and the wood tore loose from the hinges.
    Holy scritch, had I done that? Maybe the wood was rotten.
    “Stop gaping and go !” Lillith yelled at me.
    The sound of feet hitting the cobblestones, mixed with loud yells, had me squeezing through the gap between the door and the frame. Once inside, I paused long enough to see that the hallways made a T with its stem stretching out directly in front of me. Since that was the obvious choice, I turned right, for all intents doubling back in the direction I’d come from.
    Peri zipped by over my head and darted into a smaller side passage just as the yells of my pursuers were answered by others already inside. They seemed to come from all directions at once, and I slowed as I followed the dragon bird into the dimly lit corridor, trying to determine where the soldiers were located so I wouldn’t run straight into them.
    “Lillith, which way?”
    “I can’t see you anymore,” she wailed. “Try to find an empty room you can lock from the inside. Maybe you can hide and wait them out.”
    Wonderful, just wonderful.
    There were three doors along the hall and I tried each in turn. All were locked, and for a second I was tempted to try tearing one of them from its frame. Unfortunately, that would be a clear indication of where I was hiding.
    The castle was like a maze, halls extending in every direction with no rhyme or reason. I chased Peri through three more turns, by now so disoriented I didn’t have a clue where I was. But I had to go to ground, and soon. The noise of the soldiers was getting closer, and it came from both behind and in front of me. Somehow, they had neatly boxed me in.
    Only one more door lay between me and the next hallway, and I could hear the sound of many feet coming from just out of sight in the passage. Peri