Starling Read Online Free Page B

and old gym equipment. As the others ran past her and descended into the darkness, Mason hesitated, her claustrophobia threatening to overwhelm her fear of their attackers. She glanced back at where the young man stood poised to defend against the next surge. She could barely see him in the gloom, but she knew when he’d turned his head and was looking directly at her. She knew in that moment that his eyes were ice blue.
    “Go!” He urged her on.
    “I can’t,” Mason whispered, her gaze locking with his.
    His sword arm dropped to his side and he stood there, still as a statue, sculpted by the white-gold flashes of lightning. The sudden calm at the eye of a maelstrom.
    “Yes,” he said quietly. “You can.”
    She glanced back at the hole in the floor. “I can’t ....”
    “You’ll be all right. I promise .”
    She looked back at him. Somehow Mason had heard his voice over the cacophony of the storm, and she felt, very suddenly, like she stood in an empty house with all the windows open. A comforting, imaginary breeze told her that there were escape routes. Ways out. Freedom. Peace and protection …
    “Go,” he said again.
    She nodded and spun on her heel, ducking down into the storage cellar. Toby reached up behind her and pulled the trapdoor shut. A fraction of a second later, something heavy slammed onto it, and they heard howling. The stranger had bought them time to make it safely down into the storeroom. And now he was out there defending them.
    She turned her back to the door and tried to block out the sound of the fighting. The darkness was suffocating. Mason heard one of the others scrabbling around and suddenly the screen of Rory’s cell phone lit up. He held it above his head, the thin blue glow pushing feebly against the blackness of the storage space. Huddled behind a rack of shelves, Heather was wild-eyed and panting like a scared animal. Mason had never seen Heather Palmerston afraid of anything . Then again, she doubted Heather had ever watched a man behead someone. Some thing . Then again, neither had Mason.
    Toby jammed his scaffold pipe diagonally through the ring handles on the door, effectively barricading them in. The sounds of fighting continued above them for several long minutes, and then stopped abruptly. They waited, but the only things they heard were the wind and the rain that poured straight down in through the gym’s roof. Toby wordlessly held out his hand for the cell phone. Rory handed it over, and Toby felt around on one of the shelves and found a flashlight. He clicked the switch and a pale beam of light rendered the details of the cellar in stark black and ash gray and turned their faces ghastly white.
    For a moment, everyone just stood around. Then a heavy knock on the door overhead made them all jump.
    “Let me in,” came a gruff voice.
    “No way, man!” Rory exclaimed.
    Toby hesitated.
    “Let him in, Toby!” Mason said. “He just saved us!”
    The fencing master stood there, torn.
    “Toby?” Heather looked at him.
    “Aw, hell …”
    Toby wrenched the pipe out of the door’s ring handles as Rory shook his head in disgust. The stranger heaved the door open and climbed down, pulling the door shut behind him. At the bottom, he leaned heavily on the stair ladder for support, breathing harshly. In the beam from Toby’s flashlight, all of the contours of his body stood out in sharp relief. He looked like a Michelangelo sculpture, Mason thought.
    “Bar the door,” he said.
    “Do it,” Toby barked at Rory, handing him the metal pipe. “And somebody else find Beowulf here some pants.”
    “It’s Fennrys Wolf,” the young man rasped. “And yeah … pants would be nice.”

III
     
    N obody moved.
    Mason turned her head from side to side and saw that both Heather and Rory sported identical deer-in-headlights facial expressions. Heather’s chest was rising and falling in rapid, gaspy breaths that whistled raggedly in the darkness. Rory didn’t look like he