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“Wake up!” shouted so close to Callan’s face he jerked away.
Pain clawed up his arms, dragging him back to consciousness as much as the loud voice and someone shaking him. He opened his eyes and saw the sky peeking through branches.
“Get up!” Kaz stood and pulled on Callan’s arm.
A burning pain raced up Callan’s shoulder. He snatched his arm back. “Do you want to die?”
“No, but you must if you’re not going to get up and fight. You have only minutes until moonset.”
Callan shoved himself up to a sitting position and looked around. The woods surrounded him. Kaz was here. The TecKnati camp ...
He launched to his feet. “Where’s Rayen?”
“She traded herself and that computer for you,” Kaz snapped, eyes accusing Callan over the trouble Rayen was in.
Callan shoved up into Kaz’s face, his voice threatening to maim. “I told you not to bring her back. How could you leave her in that place?”
“If you had told me the truth about Mathias, I might have had a chance of talking her out of it.” Kaz shoved him back.
Callan didn’t retaliate. Something was seriously off with this conversation. “What does Mathias have to do with anything?”
“Rayen told me what happened to Mathias and that you two were sworn to secrecy, but you should have told me that Mathias hadn’t abandoned the village.”
Callan shoved both hands over his face then back over his wet hair. Thylan liked to zap him with a charge of electricity when he was saturated. “There was no reason to tell you until the right moment.”
“And when would that have been?”
Callan had never seen Kaz this angry. “Tomorrow. I was going to take you with me when the time came so you would see what happens just as I had to watch Mathias. Then you would understand why I have held his confidence.”
Kaz raised his fists, shaking them at the universe. “Tomorrow? Have you lost all track of time? We’ll talk later. The wraiths will be showing up any minute now.”
“No, they won’t.”
“Is this not your BIRG Day, moron?” Kaz shouted at him.
“Today? No. My BIRG Day is tomorrow.” Callan put it together and fury ignited. “You told Rayen it was today? That’s why she traded herself so I wouldn’t be defenseless against the wraiths?”
Confusion wiped the anger off Kaz’s face. “It’s not today?”
Murdering your best friend was generally frowned upon, but Callan had never cared about what society thought before so why hold back now. “You get the date wrong every year. Jornn was born today just before midnight, and I was born six minutes later.”
Kaz muttered, “I don’t recall you correcting me.”
“I did when we were little. Later I stopped because it didn’t matter to me. Jornn and I celebrated together.”
“Then it’s your fault I told Rayen the wrong date,” Kaz spat back. “If anything happens to her, the wraiths will have to stand in line behind me.”
Rage blinded Callan so fast he just reacted and lashed out a kinetic hit that slammed Kaz back twenty feet into a tree. “I want her out of there now! You, I’ll deal with later.”
Kaz banged into the tree and groaned. Then he dropped to his feet, rolled his shoulders and came walking back over. “I’m not done with this.”
“Neither am I,” Callan made clear.
“How do we get to her?”
“That’s not going to be easy.”
“Why?”
“Because the TecKnati have run a narrow grid around the perimeter of that metal building. Thylan doesn’t trust putting the grid beneath the floors of the building.”
Kaz snorted. “Doesn’t trust their technology? I’d say he was intelligent if Thylan wasn’t SEOH’s son. What do you think they’re going to do with the computer?”
Callan stared off at the camp in the distance. “SEOH wants the computer sent back to ANASKO so he can destroy it, but Thylan thinks he can make it work for time travel in both directions. He’s determined to outsmart his father on this.”
“Rayen says it’s just a computer with no special ability.”
“That will keep Thylan from harming her for a while, but not for long.” Callan’s hands trembled with just thinking about her inside there, subject to that animal, Thylan. Getting Rayen out of that camp and to safety came before all else.
Callan forced his emotions into the hole where they would stay out of his way and not distract him. “We’ve got to find a way to enter the camp without them knowing so Thylan doesn’t turn on the laser grid.”
