Free Sacrificed (The Ignited Series) by Desni Dantone

into their car.
    Alec maintained a safe distance, but considering the size of the small town, the van was never out of our sight. Micah and the others were close behind us. Once we were clear of the town limits and speeding along the dark and winding country road, I leaned forward to grip the back of Nathan’s seat eagerly.
    We had a good twenty minutes before we reached the warehouse, but I was anxious to stop that van.
    Who knew what was being done to that girl right now?
    “How are we going to stop them?” I asked the guys.
    Nathan glanced at Alec with a hooked eyebrow. Though his eyes remained fixed on the road, Alec grinned. No words had been passed between the two, yet they both seemed to know exactly how we were going to stop them.
    Nathan looked over his shoulder. He flinched at our sudden nearness, but didn’t back away. His eyes swept from me to Callie, and back to me. “You might want to put on your seatbelts.”
    He smiled reassuringly at the look of horror likely etched all over my face as I slid back into my seat, but it didn’t really help the nervous flutters in my stomach.
    “Kris?” I looked up from my shaky fingers as they fumbled over the seatbelt latch. Nathan was watching me. “We’ll be fine. It’s under control.”
    “Yeah,” Alec chimed in from the driver’s seat. “Totally under control.”
    With that, his foot pressed down on the gas, rocketing the Tahoe forward and closing the distance between us and the van quickly. My nails dug into the door handle as he swerved into the oncoming lane, coming up alongside the van. From my seat, I had a good view as the front end of the Tahoe angled smoothly closer to the back rear tire of the van.
    At the moment of impact, my eyes squeezed shut in preparation of a horrific wreck.
    Tires squealed, but they weren’t ours. As the Tahoe came to a quick, but controlled, near-stop and I realized we hadn’t crashed, I opened my eyes.
    Ahead of us, the van was spinning off the side of the road. It hit a ditch and flipped over, rolling once before coming to a rest against a tree.  
    Alec turned the wheel sharply, bouncing the Tahoe off the side of the road, putting us only a few yards from the wrecked van. Nathan jumped out before we came to a complete stop, and ran toward it with his gun drawn.
    Gabby pulled their car up beside us, and then she and Richie ran off after Nathan. While Gabby cautiously opened the passenger side door, Richie moved to the driver’s side and Nathan disappeared behind the rear of the van.
    Callie and I climbed out of the Tahoe, for lack of anything else better to do. We’d already been told to let the other, more experienced ones take care of securing the Skotadi. Alec paused long enough to make sure we were following orders, before he hurried to join the others. Micah walked up beside me a moment later, also banned from joining in by Gabby and Richie.
    He was practically bouncing on his toes from the excitement. I felt it too—the adrenaline rush—but I wasn’t grinning like a moron like he was. I was about to tell him so, when I was interrupted by a shout, followed closely by three rapid gun shots.
    From behind the van. Where Nathan was.
    Where Alec was now sprinting.
    Where I was now sprinting.
    Micah lunged for me but I was too fast for him. Nothing, no one, was going to stop me. Even Gabby knew better than to intercept me. I ran past her as she pulled an injured Skotadi through the passenger side door. And then she was right behind me, rounding the back of the van. 
    Its doors were wide open. One Skotadi lay moaning on the ground, with a single bullet wound to the chest. Another stood with his face pressed against the inside of one of the doors as Alec and Richie restrained his arms behind his back with a plastic tie.
    And Nathan…
    My shoulders heaved with relief when I saw that he was fine. He was inside the van, toward the front, his back to me as he knelt down in front of the human girl.
    A scream pierced the