The Quest by Adrian Howell Read Free Book Online Page B

parents were simply out of the house when the invasion began. The Knights had been rounding up these strays in the basement of NH-4 and preparing for their evacuation when the Seraphim swarmed the building. In the confusion that followed, more than half of the children gathered there had been taken by the Angels, including the siblings of several members of our group.
    This group kidnapping of Guardian children didn’t make a lot of sense to me since, without a master controller, the Angels couldn’t convert their captives. I wondered if the Angels were hoping to use them as leverage on their parents.
    Only two of our escapees had psionic powers. Aside from Rachael, there was the tall boy who had challenged me in the park.
    “I’m Steven,” he said gruffly. “I’m eighteen, and I’m a pyroid.”
    I already knew that there was a pyroid aboard, but with everyone packed so closely together, I hadn’t known it was him.
    I looked at Steven crossly. “Why didn’t you say anything back in the park when Terry asked for people with combat powers?”
    He shrugged and looked away. “I didn’t feel like it.”
    “I see,” I said evenly. “Well, next time your life is in danger, we’ll discuss how we feel about it before deciding whether or not to save you.”
    Steven snorted loudly and refused to look me in the eye. It didn’t bother me. I knew a coward when I saw one.
    Once I had everyone’s name, I returned to the copilot’s seat and resumed looking out for power lines. Alia stayed in the cabin for a while longer before coming back and sitting in my lap again.
    Terry occasionally brought the airplane up to two hundred feet or more, but for most of the flight, I could see the ground passing swiftly beneath us. The kids in the back were still visibly unsettled by what they saw through their windows, but we had to trust Terry. There was no one else to do this. Time passed slowly.
    “The sun will be up soon,” said Terry, raising the plane higher off the ground. “Here, hold the yoke for me.”
    The first time she said that, a little after takeoff, I had thought she said “yolk” and wondered aloud what egg she was referring to. After much laughter at my expense, Terry taught me that the “yoke” was the steering-wheel-like flight control she was gripping in her right hand. There was one in front of me too, for the copilot, and I held it steady for Terry whenever she needed to do something with her hand that she couldn’t do with her hook. Terry didn’t want to risk using the autopilot at this altitude.
    I gently pulled back on the yoke, keeping the nose of our overloaded plane slightly up, and watched the altimeter needle climb to the 150-foot mark. Terry opened the map we had found in the cockpit and flipped back to a page she had been studying earlier.
    “We’re almost there,” said Terry, putting down her map. “Give me back the controls. I need to make a course adjustment.”
    Terry was aiming for a low mountain range not far from the God-slayers’ training camp she had helped destroy with the Raven Knights last year. According to the map, just inside the mountains was a little lake surrounded by forest. Terry planned to ditch the plane there, sinking it to hide our tracks. Then we could hike back to civilization and make for a small Guardian settlement Terry knew of that wasn’t far from there.
    It sounded like a good plan until you looked at the fine print.
    First off, I wasn’t sure how the younger kids were going to swim to shore if Terry sunk the plane too far from it. And what of the baby?
    Second, I had looked at the map too. It was a solid forty-mile hike back to civilization, and we had no gear, food or drinking water. Half of the kids were in their nightclothes, and it wasn’t just Alia who was lacking proper footwear. Though no one else was barefoot, some of the kids were in light sandals while two had made their escape wearing indoor slippers. We weren’t in any way fit for