Free Ballistic: Icarus Series, Book Two by Aria Michaels Page A

his eyes locked with mine. I shook my head as I walked over to him, and tore the tape free in one yank.
    “You stupid bit—,” he screamed, but Falisha silenced him with a quick tap on the shoulder with the barrel of the gun.
    “Uh-uh,” Falisha grunted.
    “I’m sorry. Please,” he ground out. “Please, you need to let me go.”
    “What we need is a place to hide,” I said.
    We had wandered through here hours ago, but I didn’t recall seeing any place safer than where we were at that moment. It was too hot to go above ground, and most of the exhibits down here in the basement were housed in rooms with pass-throughs or glass barricades; neither of which would do much to protect us against those things. Whatever they were.
    “We have to go, Liv,” Zander said.
    “What about him?” Falisha nodded at the man strapped to the chair.
    “What about him?” Jake shrieked. “We don’t owe that son of a bitch anything .”
    “But…but…I—I can help!” Tim begged, his eyes searching the group for a sympathetic face. “Let me go and I will help you.”
    “Don’t listen to him, Liv,” Jake said. “He’s crazy.”
    “Help us, how?” I stepped forward.
    “Liv,” Jake reached for me. Zander caught his hand and shook his head.
    “You don’t help people.” I narrowed my eyes at him. “You left all those people to die. You shot my friend. You are a selfish, unstable, vile little man, and I don’t trust you.”
    “I know where you can hide!” He screamed at me. “There’s a safe place. Let me go and I…I’ll tell you where it is. I swear, please.”
    “How do I know you’re telling the truth?” I asked him.
    “You don’t,” the man said. “But you are out of options, right?”
    “Tell me,” I said. “Tell me first, and I will let you go.”
    “You’re lying,” Tim sobbed, and he began struggling against his ties once again. “You are going to leave me here.”
    “I won’t,” I said. “I wouldn’t.”
    “Promise me,” he said his eyes boring into mine. Tears dripped from the end of his nose. “Promise me you will set me free, and I will tell you.”
    “We are running out of time.” Zander’s jaw clenched. His eyes flashed, and he rubbed anxiously at his chest. “We need to move, Liv.”
    “Promise me!” Tim shouted.
    “I promise,” I said putting my hands on the arms of the chair, so my face was less than an inch from his. “Now, tell me.”
    “ Liv! ” Zander’s fists clenched, and he jerked his head to the side, his darkened eyes narrowed with the strain.
    “There’s a safe,” Tim said in a rush. “A vault, actually.”
    “Where?” Zander growled.
    “It’s behind the tapestry in the Renaissance Room.” Tim jerked his head toward the table that had fallen on us earlier. It rested against a large wooden door painted to look like a drawbridge. “Gabe and I found it before you showed up. We stashed our supplies in there.”
    A loud crash echoed through the foyer as the stack of crates we had braced the door with crashed to the floor. The clacking of the creatures’ teeth and the scraping of their claws as they scrambled against the vinyl tiles reverberated around us like a laser in a mirror hall. The demons rounded the corner and spilled out into the vestibule. They rushed at us in a black wave of talons and teeth. The leader of the pack leaped through the air toward us, its vestiges of loose skin allowing it to glide as it honed in on its target. Jake.
    Ty snatched the creature in mid-air stopping it short of its intended prey, then slammed it onto the floor, and crushed it under his boot. Jake’s eyes were wide, and his jaw dropped as he stared down at the thing that had nearly attacked him.
    “I don’t think so,” Ty growled down at it, the thing’s bones crunching under his weight. “Ugly little sss-critter.”
    No sooner had he fended the first of the beasts off that another leaped towards us, and another. Jake swung his backpack in the air and