The Forbidden Trilogy(162)

Her leg swung out but once again he blocked.

Round and round, with each kick and punch she threw, he blocked and knocked her off balance. She'd never fought anyone so strong, so skilled and so fast.

She couldn't predict his moves by watching his torso, like she could with other fighters. He was lightning fast and impossible to anticipate.

Still, she refused to give up. He was good. Too good. But she could beat him. She had to.

With another leap, she surprised herself by landing a side kick into his chest and knocking him to the ground.

Using a kick-up, he pushed off his hands and jumped up before she had time to register that she'd knocked him over. No time to think. She had to keep fighting.

Another kick. Another punch. Lucy kept attacking, furious that nothing she did impacted this guy at all. He was like a wall.

No matter what she did, it didn't seem to matter in the bigger picture. In that moment, her whole life felt as futile as that fight. They fought Rent-A-Kid, but now look where they were. They escaped, but they still weren't free. There were more prisoners. More problems. It was never going to be enough. Nothing they tried to do would ever end this.

Lucy lost focus as her hopelessness took over. She attacked off-balance, and with a small flick of his wrist, Beleth sent her into the mud again, this time pinning her with his foot on her chest.

This was it. The end. Lucy hoped she'd done enough to make way for someone else to finish the battle against Rent-A-Kid.

"IPI will stop you." She surprised herself, unafraid in the face of death. She felt calm.

Beleth dropped down, pinning Lucy with his knee instead of his foot.

The air in her lungs dwindled. His bulk was too much for her petite frame.

He didn't sound angry when he spoke, just certain. "IPI is responsible for so much blood. Now they seek to erase their past. They will fall, before the end."

She gasped through the pain. "What past?"

Beleth increased the pressure on Lucy's chest with each sentence. "Who do you think first noticed the paranormals, first contained them when their powers lost control? Who do you think first experimented on them to better learn what they are?"

As Beleth finished, he lifted his knee, and Lucy inhaled deeply, each breath sending spirals of pain through her bruised ribs. She coughed as air flooded her lungs.

Could IPI really have done all of that? Could they have been like Rent-A-Kid?

Beleth towered over her. "You have a strong spirit, stronger than most I've known. I do not care for Mr. Steele's offer, but I do agree with him that you are an asset not to be wasted, so I'll make you my own offer. Agent Simmons has set up a base on the other side of the island. She appears to be your reinforcements. Likely, you know her. She's been with IPI since nearly the beginning."

Lucy knew her, of course. She'd been with Morrison when they showed up to help the Rent-A-Kids after they broke out of the school, and Beleth was right, she was her reinforcement.

Beleth looked straight into Lucy's eyes. "Kill her. And I'll let all the children go and spare your life... and your brother's."





Chapter 77 – Drake



Toby's finger twitched. Could that happen after death? It did in movies sometimes, but what if....

Drake hurried over to the small boy and checked for a pulse. Nothing. Defeat settled into him, but just as he was about to pull his hand away from the boy's neck, he felt it. Small, sporadic, but definitely a pulse of life.

"Toby, wake up. Toby, can you hear me?"

The boy moaned and coughed weakly, but didn't open his eyes or acknowledge Drake in any other way. He needed to find a phone, call for help. He searched the beaten down house until he spotted an old rotary phone in the kitchen.

Who uses these anymore? He picked up the receiver, but it was dead. Toby's mom probably hadn't paid the bill in a long time, by the looks of things.

Outside! He'd passed a pay phone down the street. Drake hated to leave the kid in such a state, but he had to get medical help immediately.

The run to the pay phone seemed to take hours, but in reality only took about three minutes at most. The graffiti-decorated phone booth looked as abandoned and out of service as everything else in this neighborhood, but Drake couldn't allow himself to believe that the phone didn't work. It had to. When the dial tone on the other end confirmed his hope, he sighed and hit 9-1-1.

The nasally voice of a woman bored with her job greeted him. "This is the 9-1-1 operator, what is the nature of your emergency?"

"I need an ambulance right away. A boy and his mother OD'd on some drugs. I think she's dead, but he's still alive, though barely."

Drake searched for street signs and relayed his location as best he could. Then, despite the empty pleas of the emergency operator to "stay on the line until help arrives," Drake hung up and ran back to the house, praying to long dead gods that Toby was still alive.