Bo and the Beast (Book #1) (Completed)

46. Two Worlds Collide

A harsh buzz filled the air, growing louder with each second. Bo and Adam looked around, trying to pinpoint the origin, but seeing nothing. Bo half-turned, wanting to ask Adam what was happening, when she felt a vibration against her stomach.

Leaping backward, she swatted at her middle. Her hands brushed against the bottom of her shirt, where the vibrations seemed to originate from. She stared as a small section of the hem of her shirt suddenly began to glow bright red. The light pulsed, and as Bo pressed down on the hem, she realized it was both the source of the vibrating and the buzzing noise. Realizing that, she knew exactly what it was.

"A tracker, from my home," she said, looking up at Adam as he stood by her side. "Someone must have put it in my shirt without telling me before I left."

"Why is it doing that?" he asked, nodding at the now flashing light.

"It means it was triggered remotely by someone," she said.

Adam's face blanched and his head whipped around to stare at the mist wall. Just as he did, an alarm went off like the ones when she'd tried to escape. The air split with the shrieking, drowning out the buzzing of the tracker. Bo slammed her palms over her ears.

"We need to get inside," Adam shouted, grabbing her arm.

"Why? What's going on?" she yelled back. The alarms were so loud she felt them in her bones. Each blast melded with her heartbeat, knocking it just slightly off beat so that she always felt like her chest was flopping over and over again.

"This tracker turning on means that we can be found, Bo," he said. "We're moving, but with that device transmitting our precise coordinates, we're as vulnerable as if this mansion was sitting out in the open."

Militia, bandits. Her mind raced through all the groups that she'd never want to face alone and injured. Even with Adam by her side, they wouldn't be able to hold off a militia squadron, or a bandit syndicate on their own.

Adam headed back up the lawn, heading for the house as fast as his wounds would let him, and Bo trailed behind him. As she walked, she became aware of a strange buzzing in the ground. It wasn't the alarms, but something different. A vibration that shook through her boots and made her jaw clack against itself. It was almost as if the land was moving beneath her feet.

Her head snapped up to see Adam racing the last few yards to the house. She stumbled as the ground suddenly lurched to the left, like she was riding a hopper and it went on without her. Her legs flipped out from under her and she landed with a thud on her back.

"Bo!" Adam yelled from the doorway, waving her in. She grimaced and climbed back to her feet, swaying as the ground became unsteady under her legs.

Adam jumped off the porch and ran to her side, snatching her arm and helping her to keep up with his long stride as he brought her to the doorway. She was just clearing the last step when she stopped dead. Adam jerked to a stop as well, brought to a halt by her refusal to move.

"We need to get inside where I can set the forcefield to not let in anyone-"

"If the militia and bandits were able to activate my device, it means they know what the passwords to our devices are," Bo said, her face going numb. "They'd only know those if they found them out at my home."

Adam's jaw clenched. "There's no other way they could get them?"

Bo shook her head. "They wouldn't even know about this place if someone from camp hadn't told them."

"We'll stop them from coming through, and then we'll see what we can do about helping your camp, okay?" He tugged on her arm and she finally went with him.

Bo sent up a silent prayer that her family hadn't been murdered in her absence. If she'd run away only to leave them open to an attack, she'd never forgive herself.

"Don't stop," Adam said. They were feet from the doorway.

They didn't make it inside.

The ground heaved, lurching them into the side of the house, pressing against the bricks as the ground heaved and bucked. Adam threw an arm over Bo's shoulders, pulling her closer to him as a chunk of the porch ceiling broke off and slammed only a few inches away from her leg. She yelped and ducked under Adam's curved chest, trying to reach the steps and the relatively safe front lawn.

"Someone's jamming the signal of the phasing technology!" Adam roared over the rumbling of the ground and the blaring of the alarms. "They're plucking the house right out of the air! We'll be ripped to shreds!"

Bo stumbled like a drunkard, trying to get off the porch. Adam tried to help her steady, but one step forward only equaled five in an unorganized circle to just keep upright.

"I didn't know I had that tracker on me," she shouted. "Please, believe me."

"I know," Adam said, more preoccupied with dodging a shower of bricks that fell from higher up the wall. He managed to shield her with an arm, but Bo still felt the sting as one smashed into her shoulder.

They gave up trying to reach the lawn, and instead huddled in the heavy doorframe. Bo thought she remembered something of the sort from a book on earthquakes, but she couldn't quite remember. Right now she just clung to Adam's side as he towered above her and blocked most of the powdered mortar that rained down on them in clouds.

"They're going to be coming in only a few seconds," he said, his voice strained. "I can't reach the controls, so they're free to enter once they get the house to stop moving."

Bo nodded. "If we die, however it might happen, I want you to know that I consider you as human as the rest of us. We're both going to fight for the side of you that is capable of love, no matter what happens."

Adam's jaw worked as his face swam in emotions. He opened his mouth, trying to speak but not finding his voice. Bo stared at him, realizing just how much she didn't want to lose him now that she had finally found the real him. So, while Adam searched for his words, Bo did away with hers altogether. Leaning onto the tips of her toes, she pressed her lips to his and threw her arms around his neck. He stiffened for only a second, before his arms pressed into the curve of her back and he lifted her off her feet. Her back pressed awkwardly up against the wall, her hair was filled with mortar dust, her shoulder throbbed from a brick, and yet she couldn't think of anything else but his mouth on hers. They poured what little time they had left into that one kiss. His chance at humanity, and the future they might have had, all converged in an instant as their lips met, creating a moment all their own in the chaos around them. This was not Aston's ambush of a kiss in the camp. This was something Bo wanted, but something that bewildered her just as much as it delighted her.

As they parted, both of them breathing heavily, Bo already missed that charge of electricity that his skin made on hers. But she had only a few seconds to grab his hand, before the grounds gave one final lurch that sent everything sliding in a wave to the left. The house groaned, the dust from the bricks falling in a thick cloud.

Neither of them saw the chunk of wall until it was already bearing down on them, falling too fast for either of them to jump out of the way.