Chapter 138

Everything hurt.
Cadon opened his eyes, trying to remember what had happened and where he should be, but his head felt like it had been hit with a sledgehammer, his back was killing him, and his legs were on fire.
A dust cloud circled around his head. He tried to lift it to see where the dust was coming from, but his head wasn’t too cooperative. Rather than struggling to look around, he lay it back on what felt like concrete and turned his head from side to side.
Then it all came back to him.
He’d been in an air duct in Alcatraz that had collapsed onto a catwalk, which had also collapsed, and now, looking straight up, it appeared that he was on the bottom floor of the prison. All around him were bent pieces of metal, silver flashing, and rusty railing.
The sounds of gunfire and explosions sounded from down the hall from where he was lying, and he remembered that he needed to get out of the building. The boat was going to leave without him. It seemed like there was something else he was forgetting, too.
Cadon heard a groan and the picture of a face came into his head.
“Mallory?”
She was a human. A fall like that could kill her. He started to sit up to try and find her, but then he realized he couldn’t get up at the moment because she was lying on top of him.
Once again, Cadon lifted his head. This time, he was looking at a pair of purple eyes. “Are you all right?”
“No,” she said. “Everything hurts.”
“I’m so sorry.” He wasn’t sure what he was apologizing about. She’d been the one to decide to go up into the air duct. He’d just followed her. But still… he had promised her she wouldn’t get hurt. From the sound of it, he’d lied to her.
Another explosion made the floor beneath them rattle. “We need to get out of here,” he told her. “Can you move at all?”
Again, Mallory groaned, but then, she lifted off of him and rolled onto the ground next to him, sitting on her bottom with one hand on the floor and the other on her head. She couldn’t weigh more than a hundred and ten pounds at most, so carrying her out of here would be no problem, assuming all of his bones were intact.
With her off of him, it was easier for Cadon to get up. Pushing off of the ground, Cadon sat up and looked around. He didn’t see any Vampires or Hunter Assassins, so that was something. Every movement brought more pain to his battered body. If Mallory had landed on the floor, she would be dead. He must’ve figured out a way to shield her from the impact while they were falling.
“Is anything broken?” he asked her.
“I don’t think so.” She was holding her arm, rotating her wrist, like it was hurting her.
“Good. We need to move.” Using his IAC, Cadon contacted Brandon. “What’s going on out there?”
“There you are! I thought we’d lost you. We’re about loaded up. The bad guys have stopped coming out of that other building and are headed for us on the beach, trying to stop the boat from taking off.”
“Great,” Cadon muttered. “Can it wait about three minutes? I’ve got a human with me.”
“Say what now?”
“I know.” He didn’t even know how to explain.
“Probably not. I’ll see what I can do.”
“Shit,” Cadon muttered aloud. “We need to hurry.” He got up and offered her his hands. She only took one since her other wrist was hurting. “Can you get on my back?”
“Like a baby monkey?” she asked, wrinkling her nose.
“We need to move faster than your human legs can carry you.”
Mallory sighed, but when Cadon bent his knees so that she’d better be able to hop on, she didn’t protest. She leaped up and wrapped her legs around his waist, her hands around his neck. He hoped he didn’t have to shoot anything. He’d lost his main gun, but he had others in various places on his body.
Holding onto her forearms, Cadon took off for the front of the building, hoping he didn’t run into any Vampires and that they didn’t miss the boat. He could swim to San Francisco if he needed to, but there was no way Mallory could, and even if he carried her, the water was too cold. There were too many obstacles, like rocks and debris. And potentially sharks.
And he didn’t feel like punching sharks in the jaw at the moment.
Cadon dodged around pieces of the building that had recently fallen over or fallen down from above them, either from age or the recent explosions, trying his best to keep track of how the loading of the ship was going. It looked like the last of the prisoners was getting loaded up, and then his team would get their weapons tossed aboard before they climbed on themselves and headed out of there. It was all going so quickly, he didn’t know if they were going to make it.
Then he saw a group of Vampires coming toward them.
They were running, guns drawn. There had to be about ten of them at least. As soon as they saw him, they began to fire their weapons. Cadon ducked around a center pole in the middle of the hallway. “Brandon, can you do anything about this?” He hoped his uncle could see what he was talking about through the IAC.
“Uh, not easily,” Brandon replied. “I can take that section of the roof down, but I can’t guarantee it won’t fall on you, too, and did I hear you say that you have a human with you?”
“Yeah,” Cadon said, hearing the footsteps come closer. “Mallory, hop off,” he said aloud. She did, but he could feel the nervousness radiating off of her. ”Stay back.”
She nodded and he ducked around the beam. Pulling a Glock that hadn’t gotten lost in the fall, he began to take aim at the Vampires.
Like most of the others he’d encountered that day, these went down pretty easily. But there were so many of them, and more were coming. “Can anyone come and help me out?”
There was no audible answer, but as Cadon continued to shoot the closest Vampires to him, the sound of another gun, a bigger gun, a semi-automatic weapon, hit his ears as Elliott came blasting through the front door.
The Vampires fell in droves, exploding into ash. “Go!” Elliott shouted. “I’ve got ‘em for now!”
Cadon picked Mallory up again, but this time in his arms so he could shield her with his body. If he got hit by a bullet fired by a Vampire, it could kill him, but at least the Healers could heal him if they got there in time. That wouldn't happen if Mallory got hit. They could save her through their medical skills, but their healing powers would likely do them no good when it came to putting a human back together.
Elliott’s fire was enough to hold them back. Cadon managed to get outside just as the boat was beginning to push off from the shore. “Heather!” Cadon shouted, spotting the Hybrid near the back of the boat. “Can you get her over there?”
He couldn’t hear her, but he saw Heather curse under her breath. The next thing he knew, both he and Mallory were leaving the ground. It was a sensation Cadon would never get used to.
Mallory, on the other hand, began to freak out. She wrapped her arms tightly around his neck and buried her head in his shoulder, screaming.
“It’s okay,” he assured her. “I’ve got you. You're fine.”
“Why are we floating?” she said against his neck.
“Heather’s a Hybrid. She has some pretty amazing skills.”
“What if she drops us? I’ve already fallen far enough today.”
“She won’t.” Cadon’s feet hit the boat, and the glow of Heather’s magic dissipated. “You’re all right,” he assured the girl in his arms.
Letting go of her, he turned back around to assess the situation on the shore. All of their equipment was on the boat, and all of their personnel had made it safely off as well--except for Elliott.
“We need to stop!” Cadon shouted, running toward the boat captain.
“I don’t stop,” he said in broken English. “I go.”
“No, you stop,” Cadon said, realizing that he was a human. What kind of a human would take this job? Someone who was in desperate need of money, he supposed.
“Boss say go,” the captain said.
“I’m the boss!” Cadon didn’t want to have to pull a gun on this guy, but he also didn’t want his uncle to have to swim all the way to San Francisco because he went back in to help him.
The boat captain looked Cadon up and down and then laughed. “You no boss. You… baby.”