Birthright

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

Alex took in the Crimsons' base with critical eyes as they pulled her and Kray out of the truck. A bunch of residential buildings and businesses. No fencing, no guards posted on top of the taller buildings, no patrols marching up and down the narrow streets. If she didn't know better, she'd think they were very lax in security—but somehow, they'd managed to track Kray across a stretch of twenty miles of wasteland, even though he'd escaped by teleporting away.

These thugs were cocky, certain of their capabilities. That would explain why they hadn't bothered to handcuff Alex and Kray. They were assured the two teenagers couldn't escape.

She spotted the scrawny Crimson kid, the one who seemed to trail after Rousseau everywhere he went. He was gifted, no doubt. Probably the reason these Crimsons could track people so well. Some Sansers were, as she'd studied in her Sen Specialty course last semester. Their Sen was able to help them do things no other human being could. Like Kray and his planeshifting ability—a remarkable power that she'd only heard of in one other person: Cirdelf of the Kenar Thagi, the man responsible for bringing Sansers to earth.

"Move," a Sanser man barked at her, jabbing the butt of his rifle into her shoulder blade and nudging her toward a bank with a rusted red sign.

She flinched as pain reverberated through her chest. Thankfully the blade hadn't nicked anything vital or she would've been dead by now. She would've been dead anyway if Kray hadn't acted fast and stopped the bleeding.

Alex watched his back as he walked ahead of her. His gray t-shirt was dirty and soaked through with sweat. It clung to the hard muscles in his shoulders and back, emphasizing the band of strength around him. Even now, with everything that had happened, he walked with steely resolve that was completely unfamiliar to her. This wasn't the boy she used to know. This was a young man who'd faced unimaginable things and walked away stronger because of them.

Hard to believe only an hour ago she'd kissed him. And he'd kissed her back. Her chest squeezed with something other than pain. Something that felt like liquid warmth poured through her organs and blood vessels. It made her go soft in a way she couldn't afford right now, so she looked away deliberately and focused on their predicament.

The thugs pushed her and Kray into the bank and over to a corner occupied by worn brown leather couches. The room was bare, stripped of its ancient relics, and the windows were barred. These people's idea of a makeshift jail, she guessed as two guards stood on either side of the door.

Rousseau was talking in a low voice to a thin, dark-skinned Sanser woman with a semi-Mohawk. Soon as he stopped and nodded, she dashed out of the door, trailed by two other armed men. No doubt she was a messenger, sent to deliver a message on foot. Cell service was nonexistent out here in the middle of nowhere.

Alex's eyes flickered to the rifle in the hands of the man closest to her. She was familiar with these outdated weaponry. Her father had made sure she'd gotten private lessons with them. She calculated how many moves it would take to disarm him and get the rifle:

Punch him in the solar plexus, followed by an upper cut to the chin while tugging the weapon free. Shoot the man in the dirty Hawaiian shirt before he can maneuver his pistol in her direction. That left Rousseau and the disgusting man that Kray called Craters. Maybe if she started with Rousseau soon as she seized the rifle, threatened to kill him, the others would back off. But he was a Sanser: he could easily erect a barrier and stop her bullets.

Before she could work out the problem, Craters came over to where she sat on the couch and smacked the back of his bony hand across her face. Her mouth filled with blood as her teeth sliced through the inside of her cheek. Beside her, Kray went tense. She could tell he was fighting the urge to come to her protection. It blew her away, that he'd want to do that after everything she'd done to him, but she gave him a warning look anyway, relieved when he held back his temper. He'd get himself killed if he tried to stick up for her.