"Nick?" The sound made tears press hotly against the backs of my eyes. Her voice was hoarse and weak but it was her. It was her! "Nick! It's you, oh my god, it's really you!"

Screw caution, nothing was going to hold me back from this. I ran at her, throwing my arms around her shoulders, meeting her for the best hug I'd had in my life (Sorry Sheira). Mum held me tight, tight enough to achieve that feeling like you're about to be crushed to death even though she had almost no strength left. Ah dammit, there go the floodgates.

I'm not sure if those tears were from relief though. She was so thin. I could feel every bone digging sharply into my skin. Rage flickered within my chest, a sudden urge to snap Molly in half like a twig. I had this insatiable desire to kebab the Lovecraftian reject, grill her to medium rare and feed her to a great white shark. There are great whites in this country, right?

Mum stepped back, claw-like hands clutching at my arms, either for stability or shock it was hard to tell and gazed at me with shiny eyes. Her hair hung limply at her cheeks and her eyes were sunken into her head like a Halloween pumpkin but she when she smiled her face lit up and the pain simply faded away. My beautiful Mum was right in front of me again.

"How?" She choked back a sob. "How are you here?"

She wiped the tears from my eyes with a ragged sleeve. She hadn't done that since I was really little. Wave two, activate. "I promised Dad I wouldn't let anything happen to you. I wasn't about to fail on that. Besides," I shrugged, "no one messes with my family."

Mum smiled sadly, "You're so like him...Too stubborn for your own good."

Never had a truer statement been said. I laughed weakly, "you have no idea."

Mum pulled me close again and I closed my eyes, just for a moment so I could picture the shabby flat kitchen. I could hardly remember it, it seemed like aeons away. Like another world. Well, technically it was another world if you really want to be pedantic.

Wiping her eyes and her voice cracking, Mum turned to the raggedy bed and called out, "Maxie! Lilah! Come see who it is."

With my heart pounding like a drum the bed shifted and from under it crawled two tiny figures. Great, and I'd just stopped crying too. They were both filthy, like a day after playing in the flower beds of Hyde Park, but luckily didn't appear to be hurt. They were still wearing their school clothes. They weren't as skeletal as Mum either, which could only mean that she'd been giving them her meals instead of herself.

Lilah, pushing her matted hair out of her face, gasped and shrieked, "Nick!"

She ran to me arms outstretched, tears streaming down her face. The rage sparked again. She was limping. A sobbing Maxie stumbled on the uneven cobles, his knees were already scraped red and raw, but still ran, jumped and wrapped his spindly legs around my waist. I scooped up my baby sister and held her tight too, willing my body temperature up. They were both freezing. But they were alive, and at the end of the day, that's all that mattered.

Maxie had buried his ice-cold nose into my neck while Lilah clutched at the fabric of my jacket like a baby joey clinging to its mother. They were both howling their innocent little hearts out, a sound that made my flaming one shatter into a million pieces. Maxie stirred and flinched. He'd caught sight of the two figures in the doorway.

"Hey! Don't worry, these are my friends." I set them both down but they still cowered behind my legs. Mum observed the two strangers with curiosity. I smiled reassuringly and gestured to the two of them, "this is Shadow and this is Sheira. They helped me get here," I explained to my family. They were still petrified though as when Sheira carefully and slowly stepped into the cell the two kids recoiled into a corner. Considering what they'd been through, who could blame them?

Mum stepped forwards bravely, her hand extended. She smiled faintly at my friends, took both their hands and shook them warmly. "Thank you. Thank you so much for making sure he didn't get himself killed."

"No problem ma'am," said Shadow politely. "Even though your son seems to be a magnet for trouble."

"You have no idea what we've been through," Sheria added.

"I'm not sure if I want to know," Mum muttered and I felt the back of my neck burn. "But I'm sure you'll tell me later Nicholas."

I'm doomed. If the Harpy doesn't get me first Mum will.

Ignoring the parental death-stare and Mum asking Sheira how close to death we'd come (You really don't want to know Mum), I knelt down in front of my two shivering siblings. Their uniforms had been thin and worn to begin with. Both of their shoes were scuffed and ripped up at the toes while their jumpers were nothing but two lines of wool held together by determination and magic. The threadbare rags they'd wrapped around themselves may have prevented hypothermia but they were still far too cold. I grinned with an idea. "Want to see something cool?" They nodded excitedly.

I snapped my fingers, the friction sparking the flame on my hand into a ball the size of a grapefruit. I heard Mum gasp and then I realised that showing off my newfound powers to two kids who had been tormented and held hostage by people who could do the same thing wasn't the best plan on my end. They screamed so loud my eardrums popped and scrabbled behind Mum for safety.

Well done Nick. Never have kids unless you want to mentally scar them for life.

Mum came to her tactless son's rescue. "It's alright," she soothed, "its still Nick."

"Just with superpowers," Shadow added helpfully. "They bad guys have powers, but so do the good guys. Your brother is one of the good guys. A superhero!"

It was like if Sheira had suddenly become a dunce. I was floored. Shadow had never been that nice to me. Come to think of it when we'd first met he'd said that my kid sibling could die for all he cared. Maybe he did secretly like us now.

I crouched down before them the ball of fire cupped in my palms. Slowly and nervously Maxie and Lilah untangled themselves from Mum's legs and approached. I spilt the ball in half so my hands were alit and glowing, warmth flowing from my fingers. I made one hand go out and then did the coin behind the ear trick with a dancing flame with Lilah so she giggled.

I lifted my hand to my amulet and drew my thumb against the pleasantly warm metal. With a burst of heat and puff of smoke, Flame landed onto the icy stone, his mane flickering brightly. Waves of inviting heat rolled off his fur. The kids shrieked. I looked up at Mum. She was grinning.

"This is Flame, he's also my friend. He's very nice, very cuddly and very warm."

My blazing big cat trotted up to the little ones. Maxie took a tentative step forwards and raised a pudgy fist up to Flame's nose. Flame licked Maxie's outstretched fingers, drawing a giggle from him. Before long the two of them were leaning heavily against his fur, laughing for the first time in god knows when. Lilah ran his hands gently through Flame's mane, marvelling at the fact it didn't burn.

"Don't worry," I reassured them. "It's just like Shadow said, the people out there are bad, but there's a whole world of good out there too. And two of those good guys are my best friends."

Sheira blushed furiously as I looked over at the two of them. A funny expression had crossed Shadow's face. His mouth was hanging slightly open and a slight pink tinge had grown on his cheeks. Id rendered him speechless, but I wasn't making that up to reassure my siblings. I trusted these two with my life and my family's life, and that was the highest compliment I was capable of giving someone.

Maxie, realising that he wasn't going to be eaten, went to follow suit when out of nowhere his tiny body curled as an attack of coughing seized him. It was horrible. A guttural hacking cough that rattled in his lungs like a dying man's last breath. Flame had to brace him with a paw to stop him from collapsing as I watched, paralyzed with fear as my little brother's knees buckled. I'd only heard that once before. The memory clutched my heart in terror.

"I don't like the sound of that," Sheira muttered.

Shadow took out his multi-tool from the inner lining of his jacket and flicked it into a stethoscope. With a little encouragement from Mum, Maxie allowed Shadow to listen to his lungs, even when another coughing fit took him over.

As Shadow rose his expression was grim. "The little one is really sick," he explained to Mum. " I mean, I'm no doctor, but I know what pneumonia sounds like."

"Its the mould," Mum explained. "Like at Brauner," she reminded me.

Brauner Estates, even the name made me angry. After our stint in the homeless shelter, we just about managed to snag a council house thanks to Maxie and Lilah holding priority status. From the pictures they showed us it didn't look too bad actually, clean gardens, tidy houses, we thought we'd got lucky.

Course they'd failed to mention that this picture they'd shown us was taken in 1987. It was a complete dump, worse than the homeless shelters but we couldn't do anything about, no matter how much Mum screamed and begged. It was dirty, crawling with cockroaches and bed bugs and the police were called every night. I'm pretty sure someone even got murdered on our street.

Then the winter came.

The only place you could have found more mould was at a microbiology lab. Black and green mould coated the walls in a centimetre thick layer in some places (Trust me, I measured it). The leaky roof and no heating made it a thousand times worse so it was no wonder that the kids got sick. Lillah developed a permanently runny nose, snuffles that never seemed to go away, but Maxie?

Maxie's lungs have never been great. When he was born he was half the size of Lilah and weighed less than a bag of sugar. When I first saw him I thought he was a doll rather than a human being, I could even hold him in one hand he was that tiny. He was in intensive care for two weeks afterwards and even now he goes to the doctors twice a year for a check-up.

Anyways, the council only moved us out after he was hospitalised with pneumonia. It damn near killed him and he's been asthmatic ever since. I bet my last penny that being locked in a cold, draughty, damp prison cell hasn't done him any favours. If Shadow was right about the pneumonia...no, I didn't want to think about it.

He coughed again. Mum was wrong, this was worse than Braumere.

"The little one needs a hospital," Shadow muttered. "It's like he's got a mining lung disease."

Sheira frowned. "Civilisation is an hour away. Our best exit involves creeping through a castle brimming with hostiles I might add. It was difficult enough with us three, what about with two sick kids?"

"That's a good point," Mum sighed. "We need to get them out first. I'm strong enough to walk, strong enough to fight. They are most definitely not."

Sheira leant against the edge of the stone wall, eyes fixed on the unnatural snowstorm. The cold was her forte after all. I watched curiously as she took a pebble and dropped it over the edge. It hit the snow, scattering a cloud of powder. A tiny indentation in the otherwise pristine white.

"I have an idea," She said and with a quick gesture summoned Ice. She shook her fur happily, the only one who was comfortable with the mind-numbing cold. "Ice, do you think you can carry these two," gesturing to Maxie and Lilah.

I got what she was doing. Ice crept up to the awestruck twins and gave them the once over with her piercing gaze. She nodded curtly. "They are both small and light. They would not slow me down. Where would I take them to?"

"The Edinburgh Camp," Shadow said. "Do you know the way?"

Ice smirked, a very strange sight for the unprepared. "I know my way around the wild boy. you may be old but you do not know the world as I do."

"I believe my friend, that is called a burn," I laughed at Shadow's stunned face. Judging by his expression, and lack of a comeback, he hadn't been called 'boy' in over a thousand years.

I took a little bit of persuasion and a few tears to load the twins onto Ice's regal back. Rightfully they were terrified, after all they'd gone through they didn't want to leave Mum, but it was the only way. Normally Ice was cold (No pun intended) and quietly ferocious, but with the kids, she changed. She licked at their wounds and bruises, flicking her tail around their shivering forms protectively.

We'd managed to guess that the winter wonderland would cut out after a few hundred meters and then it was just a straight run back to Edinburgh. Ice reckoned it would take a few hours to get there and back, especially considering she would be bringing the entire raging fury of the base with her.

With one final, heartbreaking hug from Mum and myself, Ice with her precious cargo was crouched by the edge. Sheira knelt in front of her and gently kissed her beast on the forehead. "Take care of them and yourself," Sheira whispered. "Make sure they're being taken care of at the infirmary."

Ice responded by gently licking her face. "The same goes to you, my dear." For the usually regal and somewhat haughty Ice, her voice was more tender than I'd ever heard before. "I'm coming right back, I promise that I'm not going to leave you."

Then, with a flick of her bottlebrush tail, Ice twisted and leapt from the crumpled wall and into the raging blizzard. Her paws effortlessly carried her over the snow, more like flying than anything our stupid human awkward feet could achieve. We watched her, the icy wind whipping around our frozen forms, sprint across the mountains until pop! With a pale flash Ice, and her precious cargo had vanished.

Sheria clutched at her amulet, desperately calling out to make sure they hadn't been vapourised. Her furrowed brow relaxed. "They're out, they're safe. Whew, that's a relief."

"Imagine if it was an electrified wall. They would have been messy." Shadow said, and I swear he said it with a completely straight face. Git.

I went to aim a kick at him but my mother, my brilliant, wonderful, fabulous queen of a mother, got there first. Despite a near foot in height difference she walked right up to him and clouted him sharply around the back of the head with enough force to send him stumbling. Then came the glare. The glare that all parents learn the moment they have kids. That look would have sent Atila the Hun running for the hills.

While Sheria and I tried and failed to hide our grins, and Shadow retreated in fear of his life, Mum straightened her tattered rags and nodded towards the opening we'd climbed through. "We need to worry about ourselves now. Do you have a way out?"

Sheira, having wiped the smirk from her lips, nodded and zipped through the hole. "It's a secret passage in one of the kitchens. They don't know about it."

"Excellent."

"But, uh, we might have blown up an entire room and now it'll be crawling with people." I subconsciously winced at the realisation that now our exit was effectively blocked.

"Less excellent." Mum chewed her bitten nails. It was a bad habit that signified she was thinking or nervous. Like me and my fidgeting. She followed Sheria out into the corridor and glanced down the spiralled staircase we'd climbed to get here then, strangely, walked over and started examing the wall next to it.

Oh please tell me you haven't gone loopy.

"There may be another way out..." She muttered. "But don't get your hopes up. A few weeks ago we managed to escape, albeit briefly, thanks to this girl showing us a secret passage–"

"Juliet," I said before thinking.

Mum narrowed her eyes suspiciously, like the time when I was five years old and broke a lamp and had sworn blind I hadn't done it. Guess how well that went. "How do you know that?"

How do I explain this without sounding insane? Then I remembered that my mother had played host to an elemental spirit so in the grand scheme of things... "I think I have some sort of visions- I'll explain later, what did she show you?"

Still giving me a weird look, she tapped out a pattern on the ancient weathered stones. Left, right, right, up, down, down, up, left. Like something out of freaking Harry Potter, the wall shuddered, froze and pulled itself apart like the maw of some ancient beast. Centuries-old dust and rubble cascaded worryingly down in great dirty clumps.

"I have no idea," Mum said, "if the exit is being guarded."

Deathtrap corridor with a possibility of having one or two, bored cold guards outside exit, or wide-open room crawling with people who want us dead? Gee, I wonder what we'll go for.

"I'll take the point," Shadow confidently crossed the threshold into the death tunnel. "Stay close and don't fall behind."

"You don't need to tell me twice," Sheira muttered under her breath, hugging close to his heels.

"Hey, Nick?" Mum whispered once the darkness had closed in around us and the only light was provided by the glow of Flame's mane. "That girl, Juliet, did you...do you know what happened to her?"

I exchanged a queasy look with Flame, my brain all too happy to replay the image of Juliet becoming soup. "She died," was all I managed to come up with.

Mum didn't respond to that. Was it the fact that I couldn't meet her eyes or Flame rubbing his head comfortingly against my side that spoke more words than I ever could. Before she inched her way past me to join up with the convoy she hugged me briefly round the shoulders, her hands trembling as she planted a soft kiss on my cheek. When we got out of this I think we were due a heart to heart about the stuff I'd seen, after all, she'd been through this too.

That being said Juliet had been right about the secrecy of this passage. The castle, while dusty and decrepit enough to give a maid a heart attack and would result in a housing inspector dying on the spot, wasn't that bad. While not being clean the rest of the castle was used and showed that, it was tidy-ish and organised-ish, more out of necessity than anything else. Like a university students desk. It was functional and that's all you needed.

This, on the other hand, was disgusting. Sewers wouldn't have been much better. London's sewers after St Patricks Day would have been more hygienic. I tried in vain to not breathe in. All I'm saying is that something has definitely died in here. It stank.

This went on for what felt like miles. A secret network built into the foundations itself. A labyrinth of rotting stone. Some sections had been discovered. Torches braced the walls and footsteps of dozens of people tracking back and forth were clear to see. On the other hand, some bits, like the route to the tower, were blocked off by cave-ins that we had to squeeze round to pass. Others were completely blocked off by their collapsed ceilings.

It was only Mum's memory and Shadow's excellent night vision that even allowed us to get through unseen and unheard to the solid brick wall before us. It looked ordinary in every way except that when I reached out to touch it I could feel sigils carved into the stone. Mum warned that they'd been discovered a mere minute after leaving the safety of the tunnels and, with Shadow peering through the dark, we confirmed our worst suspicions.

The exit was guarded. Evidently, Molly's overinflated ego prevented her from thinking that no one would be dumb enough to attempt the same trick twice, and yet here we were. There were only two soldiers, both armed with spears and no Beasts visible. After the incident on the train, I made him double– no, triple check to make sure we weren't about to bite off more than we could chew.

In the end, it was Sheira and Shadow who like batters up to the plate, darted out to whack the two guards around the heads with enough force to knock a bull out for the count. Those two guards didn't know what hit them. Sheira's received a solid rod of ice to the back of her dome while Shadow's didn't get the time to cry out in shock as a heavy hammer collided with his temple before blackness wrapped itself around his face and nose. He struggled briefly as he was pulled back into the tunnel but was helpless but to succumb to unconsciousness.

We pulled them both back into the darkened tunnel, Shadow quickly bound and gagged our new prisoners while I checked if they were both alive (Banged up, with one hell of a headache due tomorrow morning, but otherwise unharmed). Mum wordlessly stooped and collected a spear for herself, bouncing it expertly from palm to palm. The image of her on the walkway, trident in hand brought a grin to my face. Cautiously, the four of us abandoned our hiding place and crept out into the silent corridor. Right, so far so good.

First port of call is where the hell were we? I have no sense of direction to speak of, the only reason I can wander my way through the Tube is by muscle memory, and the décor wasn't helping. It was too regal to be servants section or somewhere with heavy foot traffic and the blue and silver threaded carpet was clean, even if it was a little with a little ragged with age. But in no way did it match the sweeping grandiose of the central staircase or converted great hall. It was also warm. No windows were shattered and there wasn't even a hint of a draught.

It was also completely dead. Devoid of people in every way. Even when Shadow inevitably phased through a wall he came back just as confused.

"Guest rooms I think. This is just where they put everything they didn't need. Hasn't been touched in six months by my best guess," he picked at a piece of rubble on his clothes.

Flame, in equal parts bored and curious, was sniffing round corners. Maybe he was trying to pick up our scent while the humans got increasingly more worried that we were utterly lost. He never wandered out of my sight so when he froze, tail stuff and ears pointed straight up, I felt my mind squeak out a vague thought of mild panic.

I wandered over to him. "What's up?" I asked.

He sniffed the air for a moment, unsure. "I can smell you," he muttered.

"What?" Me? Perhaps he was picking up our trail but I didn't recognise any of this. "How?"

"It might not be you per se. It's like how Sheira smells cold, and Shadow is musty. Its like smoke. Like you."

News just in, Shadow smells the same as that towel that's been forgotten a back of a laundromat. But other than that vital piece of information, there was something more important there. As he added a moment later the smell was-

"Familiar."

Which in simple means one word. Trouble.

"Show me," I commanded.

Flame padded forwards on silent feet, following his nose around a corner and into another corridor. He veered left, sniffing at each door in turn before halting in front of one of them, the same alert position etched into his body. Erect ears, narrowed eyes, hunched shoulders.

I took a moment to examine it. It was ordinary. Plain and simple, nothing fancy like the elaborately carved ones downstairs. Dust was almost mixed into the sheen. It was grotty and grimy and left a mark on my fingertip when I wiped it.

A golden glint caught my eye. I bent down to examine the door handle, a typical golden ring with a latch. It was as mucky as the rest of it, the glow was faded and dim, except for a small strip at the base. I placed my hand over it like I was going to open the door. It fit perfectly.

I dashed as quickly as I could to tell the others what I found.

"How do you keep finding stuff?" Sheira hissed. "It's unnatural at this point!"

"Maybe us Hayden's are just lucky," Mum suggested.

"Fair point. You've never lost so much as a key," I replied. It was true though. If we weren't so adept at getting into trouble we'd make excellent Hufflepuffs.

I showed them the door that Flame had pointed out and the polish marks on they handle where copious people had pushed it open. There was no sound from within, but Flame's instincts and the fact that we didn't have anything better to do, more than fuelled our collective curiosity.

Brandishing Incaendium like a torch (My mother unable to hide her shock, evidence being "Where on God's green Earth did you get that?") I lifted the latch and prodded it open with his pointy end. With a creak that could have belonged in a sound effects gallery, the ancient hinges swung open.

It was bright inside. And warm. Since no one had taken the time to instal electric lights into this place, the room was illuminated by tall white candles mounted into those old fashioned candelabra's (or was it candelabrums?) you see in Disney movies. Plush decorations and comfortable furniture were scattered across the carpeted floor, while a fire crackled pleasantly in its wall-mounted home.

Someone had been here recently.

I cautiously took my first step into the room and the others followed with similar apprehension. One of those old fashioned Victorian serving carts was parked next to the slightly tattered sofa. Flame sniffed at it as I tested the temperature of the bowl of vegetable soup, first with my charred finger and then, realising that was about as useful as a cheese umbrella, tested it with my other hand and winced.

It was as piping hot as the slop the school canteen served us that would scorch the roof of you mouth. No joke, in year eight one kid was hospitalised with second-degree burns on her tongue. Not a pretty sight. But the warm food still begged the question, who was staying in here? And, more alarmingly, where were they now?

Luckily for us, that question got answered pretty sharpish. Mum had seized the towering wardrobes door and yanked it open and shrieked when she saw the contents. Catching my shin of the edge of the coffee table (damn you IKEA) I dashed open to see what all the fuss was about and froze.

It was little girl, no older than ten, with a pig Beast curled up in her arms. Her dark skin was unnaturally pale, her eyes rounded to the size of saucers as she stared bug-eyed in shock at our group. Flame squeezed his giant head between the forest of legs and sniffed at her, "that's the scent," he growled. But he didn't need to tell me that. I'd seen her before. I even knew her name.

"Annie!" Sheira gasped. Before anyone could stop her she'd hauled the frail figure out from the wardrobe and started checking her appearance, trembling fingers cupping the little girls pinched cheeks while the girl looked on, blankly. Satisfied she was unhurt Sheira pulled her into a tight, sisterly hug. There were tears in her eyes. "What are you doing here?"

Annie shook her head and shoved Sheira away, her stringy black hair covering her face. "What are you doing here? You're not meant to be here!"

Huh?

"We've come to rescue the people who are trapped here," Sheira explained softly. "There's help coming, were just the uh...advanced party."

"You ran away," Annie sulked.

Sheira hung her head. "Yeah..."

"You left me, just like Daryl did."

The mention of Daryl's name made Sheira shiver involuntarily. "Well, I'm not leaving you now. C'mon, we need to get out of here." Sheria rose, caught Annie's hand and made her way towards the exit.

"Woah, woah, woah, hang on there princess," Shadow stepped in front of the wide-open door, "doesn't something seem a bit off to you about this?"

I hate to agree with him on this but he wasn't wrong. I got where Sheira was coming from. Yippee! we've found another trapped person and its one of her closest friends! But Shadow was making sense too. Why was Annie here? Molly had no problem keeping kids, younger than her I might add, in squalid dungeons that were exposed to worst weather Scotland had ever seen. Well, maybe not the worst but you get what I mean. Summer equals midges in this neck of the woods and those bastards are evil little flying terrors.

But I'm getting sidetracked. What I'm getting at is if Molly was happy to do all that to her enemies, why was Annie in a comfortable room with hot food and all the commodities she could need? She was well-fed, clean and unhurt down to the last stitch on her dress. Why was she up here and her brother was rotting in a cell downstairs? Better yet, why was hse here?

Sheira scoffed. "She's ten Shadow. What's she going to do?"

"Marx is eight," I reminded her.

"You once stabbed me in the ankle with a knife when you were two," Mum added. She's never let me live that one down.

"Kid's aren't innocent in the world Sheira," Shadow said firmly, "surely you'd understand that."

Oh god, she's going to kill him. Shadow towered over her but at that moment Sheira could have been ten feet tall. Her whole body went rigid, shoulders squaring and her jaw set tight as she gritted her teeth. She had to stand on tiptoe to get even close to his eye level but the burning fury and determination in her eyes were enough to make any man cower.

"I have lost so many people in my life. My family is gone, my friends are all I have left. So if you dare to think that I'm going to leave her, you've got another thing coming. But if you try to stop me, go ahead because you'll have to kill me first."

Whether it was the shock or Sheira's strength catching him off guard, Sheira easily muscled past Shadow, dragging the reluctant Annie behind her. In her arms, the little pig was squealing.

I hung back to talk to the others. "What do you think?" I asked Mum and Shadow.

Mum shrugged. "I dunno. Something doesn't fit here."

"This isn't right, Molly doesn't keep prisoners like that," Shadow gazed around the room. "Even her generals don't get treated like this, so why this kid? What's so special?"

"She was surprised we were here," theories and ideas whirled uselessly in my mind. There weren't enough piece to complete the puzzle. I remembered what Annie had said. "'You're not supposed to be here' what did she mean by that?"

"Who was she talking to?" Mum added. "Sheira?"

Sheria...so cool and logical unless one of her family was at stake. Her priority was the girl who was essentially her little sister, not the weirdness that was surrounding her. She was blind to it.

I sighed. "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Let's just get out of here."

We agreed but also made a note to keep an eye on Annie as we chased after Sheira. We didn't say anything about it when we caught up to her at the end of a junction, only pointing out the way we should go to get back into the basement. She didn't even look at Shadow.

We walked silently as the corridors became a little bit more familiar but like upstairs it was also dead as a dormouse. Whatever activity there had been not even half an hour ago had ground to a halt. No more barking voices, no more metallic clangs of machinery, even the wind had gone supernaturally silent. All was quiet except for the sounds of our muffled footsteps and the sounds of Annie's squealing pig.

Five minutes ago the overgrown sausage had been annoying, now it was just plain hazardous. It was squealing and grunting like it was being stalked by a murderous butcher. The little creature was clutched tight under Annie's spare arm but it was thrashing in her grip. Smoke puffed from its nostrils and every now and again jets of fire erupted from its sharp hooves.

"Can you shut that thing up?" Shadow hissed in a much higher voice than normal.

We should be about central now, close to the great hall and the machinery rooms. There had to be people in there, especially in the one we'd blown who were still cleaning up the wreckage. Of all the time to be quiet the time was now. However, one of our numbers just hadn't got the memo and was flat out refusing to cooperate.

"Put it in your amulet," Mum snapped at her.

Annie didn't reply. Her head was bowed, her face covered by her long hair. She'd stopped walking entirely. The pig was now screaming.

"Annie, we have to be quiet. You need to put Soot in her amulet, alright?" Sheira's gentle tone stood in stark contrast to my own racing, panicked mind.

No response.

"Somethings not right here," Shadow's red eyes flicked from door to door. "Something's wrong."

I wanted him to be wrong. Oh, how I wanted his worry to just be that. But let's just say he wasn't the only one planning a lunge to the nearest exit. I'd survived a high dive off a dam, cliff jumping out of a murder castle shouldn't be too hard after that.

"Annie...?" Sheira uncertainly placed a hand on her arm.

Soot the pig twisted in Annie's grip and sunk her tusks deep into the skin of Sheira's hand. Sheira staggered backwards, muffling a shout of pain and clutching her wounded hand. Blood was now seeping from the small puncture wounds. My heart stopped.

Please no...let me be wrong about this. Please.

The tiny Beast tumbled heavily to the ground. Soot scrabbled to her feet, taking a defensive stance in front of her master. Smoke poured from flared nostrils, flames erupted hot and angry from her fur. Tusks gnashed as she grunted threateningly at us, frozen in shock.

As for Annie? Her face was buried in her hands, her frail figure shaking as she sobbed. She was petrified, but she was also angry. Beast's show their masters true feelings and even though she was scared, backed into a corner and lashing out in fear, both Soot and Annie stood their ground.

The little girl raised her head. Her hair was plastered against her face, a face that was a mixture of terror, rage and sadness. Her bottom lip was quivering and tears poured in two neat tracks down her chubby cheeks from red and puffy eyes. But those eyes...Although she was crying there was no fear there and certainly no remorse.

We're in trouble.

Annie took a moment to look each of in the eye, her gaze lingering the longest on Sheira, the girl she'd known most of her life. She gulped, tears dribbling down her face. "I'm so sorry," she whispered and before any of us could stop her she threw her head back and yelled, "THEY'RE HERE!"

Everyone on the entire base had seemingly been lurking just behind the closed doors. No sooner had the words left the little backstabbers mouth every door was flung open and people rushed out like water from a broken floodgate. Hundreds of people who all knew exactly where we were.

"RUN!" Shadow roared, yanking hard on my collar to drag me behind him.

I was already pegging it as fast as my legs could carry me as he did so but the boost was very much appreciated. I was running almost as fast as my mind was. Half of my mental capacity was screaming profanities at myself for being such a blithering idiot while the other half had gone fishing and had left a wailing air raid silence in its place.

How could you fall for that! It roared.

Shut up and leg it! The other half screeched.

As we bolted around a bend I glanced quickly over my shoulder. The shrinking Annie was still stood there, frozen in the exact same spot like a statue as people poured around her. Soot was back in her arms but another Beast, a wicked-looking zebra, hugged close to her side while its visored master gripped her shoulder. James was grinning as the little girl wept.

We ran even after the walls blurred. I love running, but when your lungs are burning and your muscles feel like they're pumping acid you should probably lie down for a few hours. A breather wasn't a luxury we could afford. If we stopped we'd be trapped like rats, so our only chance was to book it as fast as possible to the tunnel we'd crawled through to get here and then we might, emphasis on the word might stand a chance of getting out of here without contracting certain death.

"THIS WAY!" Sheira pointed at last to something that looked vaguely familiar.

She bolted ahead as the grandeur melted away in my blurring peripheral vision. Flame charged ahead, snarling at anything that dared to get too close. Our pursuers were making no attempt to run, they thought we had nowhere to go. Good. If they knew about the tunnel they'd be putting in a bit more effort.

Hayden's may be lucky, but it never shows up when you need it. Exhibit A: something, God knows what, probably a string of loose carpet or maybe a raised flagstone, caught my foot. I tried to catch myself but the weight on my outstretched arm caused something to snap. Exhibit B: The feeling of something being snapped in half like a breadstick was promptly followed by a sickening crack, a line of agony shooting up my arm and a howl of pain.

Bugger.

My vision blanked for the briefest moment but I could still feel two pairs of hands gripping my own. One of them grabbed my damaged, more than likely broken (Whoopee) wrist, ripping a very bird-like shriek from my vocal cords and if we weren't being pursued said person would be getting kicked. Sheira and Shadow hauled me to my feet and shoved me ahead of them, my two friends hot on my heels.

Then I saw the holy grail. The staircase. The way we'd come from. The tunnel under the paving slab. Freedom! Safety! It was within reach, just a few more steps, a few more moments as pain coursed through my body. Just a few more steps.

One more room.

A blinding flash of light erupted from nowhere, the room glowing a painful violet as the sigils carved into the walls flared to life. It was like a thousand needles pressing into my skin simultaneously, while a surge of electricity that dug into my very bones. My body was on fire but not in a good way. I screamed in pain, the others cries filling my ears.

I couldn't move.

When I was six I fell off the balcony at our old house. Dad had just bought me a new RC car and because I was a dumb kid, played with it on the balcony even though my folks had expressly told me not too. When it zoomed over the edge, because of course, it did, I went to grab for it and followed it fifteen feet down onto the soft grass. By some miracle, nothing got broken but I could remember lying there, the wind knocked out of me as I stared up at the sky, paralysed in shock while my parents screamed.

Only this time I was upright, frozen solid so only my eyes could flick from Sheira to Shadow to Mum, all trapped and motionless except for Flame whose body wracked with spasms until he disappeared in a puff of smoke. I tried to conjure a spark but I couldn't move. Trying to flex my fingers resulted in something like the feeling of my fingers being pulled back beyond their limit. It hurt like hell.

It. Was. Right. There. Our way out through one stupid door! Straining my eyes to look at at the others my heart dropped to my feet. Sheira had her mouth open, her back arched as she silently screamed. Mum was trying to push against the force, a deep vein on her forehead standing prevalent with this heer exertion. I tried to yell at her to stop, to stop hurting herself, but I couldn't speak. Only Shadow was still. Numb. What else could he do after all?

We were completely defenceless as James, his slimy grin taunting us, walked through the wall of dancing energy without a care in the world. I would have beaten him to a pulp if I'd been free, but I was trapped. We all were. Bent at the mercy of a build a psychopath and her murderous generals.

James' laughed hysterically. But I refused to hear him. His tauntings, his joy, all of it. Instead, I shut my eyes so all I could hear was the roaring flames of my own heart as one thought pressed itself heavily against it.

It's over.