Page 96 of Break Out the Girl

00:06:55

“BURT!!”

Our wolf lets out a slight whine, he’s hurt—but still a whirlwind of teeth and fury deep in his battle.

00:05:39

“SHANE!”

The super snake's moving slower than normal—like he’s got lead in his coils.

POW.

Both their vibrations suddenly get extra wibbly, making my digging hands falter. I quick glance around and I see they're both pinned down.

00:05:07

Hells bells—I’d like to phone a friend, please.

Wait just a minute…Shane’s new bestie! I’d tucked him away in the oak branches and left him quivering like a cornered quail. But the man has two good digging hands.

00:04:01

It takes precious seconds to retrieve him. He grabs a sturdy stick, and starts stabbing away at the soil, loosening it. I’m scrabbling like a dog after the best bone in the world, flinging piles of earth between my goat-legs. “Here we go dig the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush.” My voice cracks.

The song isn’t helping.

00:03:42

Three minutes and forty-two seconds.

The world record time for running one mile—Josh Kerr ran like the wind.

Wind!

“KITTEN!” I scream aloud, and then once again through our special gold bungee cord.

KITTEN!

35: AURORA

Below me, huddled in a deep, rain-filled drainage ditch, are two young girls.

Shivering. Terrified.

Their thin silk garments are plastered to their blue-with-cold skin.

And though my brain is desperate to keep searching for Sky, I can’t leave them. Not with the two evil men who are closing in on them from each side.

Both carry items; tasers, rope, knives, cuffs—and both wear bloated, self-satisfied, eager expressions.

The girls don’t have a chance unless I stay to help. Luckily, my innate nature knows just what to do.

A sudden contraction of my core, fueled by my disgust and anger, draws all the ambient air around me into my center. The sudden atmospheric vacuum makes the temperature in the glade plummet, the hunters' breaths instantly turning to white fog as the pressure drops.

Condensing my weightless form into a sharp, twisting tornado of silver-white whipping wind and howling static, my rotating form generates a localized electromagnetic hum, crackling with raw, miniature lightning.

I slam down directly between the ditch and the hunters.