The Guardians (MORE Trilogy) Read Online Free PDF Page B

ground. He finally focused on Caleb and seemed to square his shoulders. “He said you could . . . teleport us?”  
    He’d said it more as a question than a statement, and Caleb grinned. It wasn’t the first time he’d had such a reaction. “Yeah. We’re going to have to get close, I’m afraid.” He waved the boy over and turned him around. Men generally tended to be more comfortable if they weren’t face-to-face. “Cross your hands over your chest,” he said, folding his arms over Evan’s firmly. “This will be quick, only a few seconds, but take a deep breath and close your eyes. It can be a little disorienting.”
    Evan nodded.  
    Caleb could feel his heart racing under his arm. “It’s okay,” he said. “Try and relax and it will be over before—” Caleb stiffened at the familiar tingle of a Race presence nearby. He cursed under his breath.
    “What is it?” Evan asked.
    “Someone’s coming,” he whispered, his hold on Evan tightening in urgency. “Brace yourself; we’ve got to go now.”
    They shifted, reappearing in an empty field. Evan staggered as Caleb’s knees buckled and he leaned into him.  
    “Sorry,” Caleb said, his voice cracking as he reached into his pocket for some R-cubes. “That was a long one. I need a minute.”
    “Are you okay?”  
    Caleb chewed and swallowed with a nod. “Yeah. You?”
    Evan nodded, still looking a bit stunned. He turned around in a circle. “Where are we?”
    “About fifty miles north of—damn.” Caleb shot to his feet. “They’re here.”
    “Who?” Evan paled. “How?”
    “I don’t know. Balaam was wrong. They must have a shifter . . . and a tracker of some kind.” He reached for Evan. “I won’t be able to get us far, but we need to shake them. I’m going to try several short shifts instead of a long one.” He popped another cube. “Ready?”  
    Evan closed his eyes, his hands trembling under Caleb’s. “Ready.”
    Caleb took a deep breath and shifted, beginning to wonder if this was one mission he would fail.

    They made it to the Guardian Colony, Caleb dead on his feet and leaning heavily on Evan as they approached the gate. He remembered little of the next twelve hours, spending them sleeping, for the most part, and waking only to consume some cubes and water, and a little soup on occasion, before exhaustion took him again.
    When he finally woke, Bel was there by his bed, waiting to ask him about what had happened. Unfortunately, Caleb didn’t have any answers. He hadn’t seen who’d pursued them as far as the Canadian border before they had apparently lost him, or them , and although they’d waited anxiously for Protectors to close in, there had been no attack.  
    Someone, somehow, had tracked him, and Caleb couldn’t fight the fear that he and Evan hadn’t escaped that person, but that he or she had let them get away.
    “But why?” Bel had asked when he expressed the thought out loud. “It doesn’t make any sense. If it was Protectors, why wouldn’t they have taken you, or even followed you here?”
    Caleb didn’t know, and at that point, he found he didn’t care. All he wanted to do was recover and head back to Allenmore, perhaps utilizing more conventional travel options for the trip home. He wasn’t anxious to shift again.
    Three days later, he left the Colony, happy to see Evan fitting in well with some of the others his own age. He’d learned the boy had been orphaned by a car accident, leaving him miraculously uninjured. The fact had led the Protectors to close in on him, but at least this time, the Guardians had won. The boy was free. Caleb had succeeded in his mission.
    He hugged Bel, nodding to Gideon in farewell, but still not comfortable with a more demonstrative gesture where the Guardian leader was concerned.  
    Perhaps in time.  
    Rebuilding that relationship, or rather, building it, would definitely take a lot of time. He turned quickly and shifted away from the Colony without