She stole the words right out of Shea’s mouth.
The student gave Delia a dirty look but didn’t argue when the woman met his eyes with a fierce glare of her own.
A high-pitched roar echoed through the mist, forestalling any more debate.
Reece and Shea turned, their senses tuned to their surroundings. They shared a grim look.
“A sixer,” they said together. More than one, if Shea had to guess.
Damn, that was not good. Deriving its name from its six limbs, it had claws the length of Shea’s arms and a preference for human flesh. It preferred to disembowel its prey, keeping it alive to torture until it grew bored. If it caught them, they were goners.
To make things worse, it was impossible to tell where the sound had come from. The sixer could be five feet from them or fifty feet away.
Reece didn’t waste any time arguing. Neither did the students, the sixer’s roar doing what Shea’s words couldn’t, convincing them of the urgency of their situation.
They set into a fast walk, the pace not quite a full-out run as they wove their way through the low visibility.
“Shouldn’t we be running?” someone asked. Their voice was frightened, and for that Shea didn’t snap at them.
Shea repeated a mantra her mentor had taught her so long ago, “Slow is quick and quick is good.”
Her instincts might be telling her to run, but her mind knew falling and breaking something right now would end her just as quickly as the sixer hunting them. They had time. Panicking would shorten that time.
After several heart-pounding minutes, the mist lightened and the small stretch of land leading down to the Keep and its bridge appeared before them.
“Almost there,” Reece said.
They didn’t dare stop as they made their way down the hill, the rope still stretched between them.
They had almost reached the bridge when a rock cascaded from above. Shea looked up at the mist and the rocky cliff visible through it. A sixer stood silhouetted against the mist, its baleful eyes locked on their group. Behind it, three other sixers stalked into view.
“Reece, we’ve got company!” Shea shouted.
He glanced back, his face focused and alert. “We’ll make it.”
She sure hoped so. It would really suck to die so close to safety.
At that moment, Dane and Peyton darted out of the mist, sprinting toward them. The sixers’ eyes shifted to the closer prey.
“Oh no,” Shea whispered.
She released the rope, turning to face Dane as she unsheathed her sword.
Trenton ran a few more steps before realizing she wasn’t behind him. “Shea!”
“We can’t leave them,” she said.
He glanced at the sixers and the two who were running for all they were worth for the bridge.
“I’m going to be remembered as the Anateri who let his charge get killed,” Trenton said in resignation.
“We won’t leave the bridge,” she promised him.
They had a chance at the bridge where the narrow confines limited the number of sixers who could attack them at once. It also channeled their attacks so they wouldn’t be surrounded.
“You’d better not, or I’ll kill you myself,” he threatened.
Braden had stopped a few feet down and gave the two of them an aggravated look before walking back to them.
