Inner Predator: Unleashed

Chapter 3

Now we just have to figure out which way gets us the hell out of here. I come to a stoplight and study my options anxiously tapping my fingers against the steering wheel.

“Which way?”

The man sitting in the passenger seat is of no help. He’s as lost here as I am. Actually, he looks a little worse.

“Are you ok?” I reach out and place a hand on his arm. When he looks at me, it’s like he’s snapped back into reality. He still doesn’t look great but at least I don’t have to worry about him going catatonic on me now.

“Who are you,” He asks slowly.

“Aurora,” I say though I know it hasn’t really answered his question. He wants to know how the hell I did what I did considering most fae aren’t trained in the art of escaping high security prisons.

“Jackson,” he says stiffly.

The light turns green and not knowing which way to go for sure, I drive straight ahead. It appears to be the right choice, a couple miles down the road a gate comes into view. Unfortunately it’s blocked closed and has more uniformed men posted in front of it.

“Fuck,” Jackson says aloud, voicing my own thoughts.

“I can help,” the little girl in the backseat says. Her voice is still small and weak, but she sounds sure. Jackson and I both look back at her. “I can,” she promises. “I’m a mage. I can teleport.”

“Can you bring us with you?”

“I-I don’t know,” she admits and I think she might be on the verge of tears. “I wanna help. I can try. I can only go places I can see though, so I can only get us past the men.”

“Ok, then. It our only option.”

I pull the car over, hoping not to call too much attention our way. Then focusing my attention beyond the gate, I look for a good point in the distance. There’s mostly desert, no signs of a town or city anywhere close by.

“You see that tree way out there?” I point through the windshield to the farthest tree I can see. Penelope squints and then nods. “Ok, that’s where I want you to go. Take Jackson first and then come back for me.”

“Ok,” she says sounding unsure of herself.

“You can do it, ok. I promise,” I tell her.

She nods and then reaches out a hand to Jackson. He takes her much smaller hand in his and I watch as they fade out of sight in front of me. A smile curves my lips as I start to think that we’ll actually make it out of here. I sit in the car and wait for Penelope to return. And wait. And wait.

Something went wrong. It was too much for her to travel with another person. I knew it might be. Most mages don’t start teleporting until they hit their teen years because it takes such an extreme amount of focus. There’s a small part of me that just wants to rest. Go to sleep. Who cares if they catch me.

But I do. I care. I don’t want to go back there. I want to go somewhere where the color white does not exist and if I ever come to this place, I want the reason to be destroying it. Making sure to stay out of sight, I push open the car door and find a good-sized rock nearby.

Hopping back in the driver’s seat, I pull the car back onto the road so that it’s facing the gate. There’s a good quarter mile of road to the gate, so I’m hoping the car will be able to pick up some speed. I open the door and Glamour myself invisible then place the rock over the gas pedal and watch as the SUV drives toward the gate, gaining speed with every second.

Diversion created, I run to the left. The fence blocking the base from the free world is tall and capped with barbed wire. I’m not looking forward to attempting to scale it and I definitely regret the days I wished my life was more like James Bond movie. It’s way, way overrated. I grab onto the cool metal and start to climb. The fence it chain linked, until the top where the barbed wire is. And it’s at least ten feet tall.