Star Bright (Big Sky Alien Mail Order Brides #22)

Chapter 17

At the booming explosion, Darcy’s cold-stiffened hands jerked on the hover cart joystick, almost steering them into a snow drift. Luckily, the cart’s internal sensors compensated, and they just drifted lightly over the hillock, then down the back side with more grace than her own sledding skills.

Yadira’s grip around her middle tightened, a welcome warmth. “What was—?”

An impossible lightshow blasted above the trees. Huge, bright flowers of sparks ignited in the sky, accompanied by shrilling whistled and more deep booms. Independence Day in December? What was happening?

Darcy glanced at her datpad. Oh no, the violent explosions were right along the predicted path of the hopscotching ship. She had about the same experience with fireworks as she did with alien snowmobiles, but she knew even sparklers could burn incredibly hot and dangerous. And these were obviously larger shells.

But even as she flinched from the pandemonium of light and sound, she throttled the joystick as far forward as it could go, mentally cursing the sluggish pace.

She didn’t want to worry the girl behind her any more than necessary, not that the stranglehold around her belly left her any illusions about Yadira’s fears.

Which she felt herself, as stabbing as the bright lights ahead. How could she have fallen in love so quickly and completely? Not just once, but three times, with the strong, sweet male, the lovely, wounded girl, and the wild little one with his joy and enthusiasm bursting like the Fourth of July above.

She set her chattering teeth hard, leaning forward as if she could make the cart go faster.

But when the night went ominously dark and silent, all the bright blooming impossible flowers gone, her blood went as cold as the streamers of melting snow. Suddenly, she didn’t want heat and light because that meant—

Fire!

The red-gold glow should have been welcoming, but she was so afraid of what they would find. She wanted to leave Yadira with the cart, but she didn’t think she could make it through the deep snow on foot. And abandoning the girl now was no good either. The cold and fear ripped tears from her eyes. “Yadira…”

““We have to get them, now.” The teen’s voice was steady, low over the tear of the wind. “Don’t stop for anything.”

But when they burst between the severed tree trunks to where the ship was half buried in snow and melt, the girl’s grasp around Darcy’s middle clenched hard enough to drive the breath from her lungs. She would need that strength.

A small figure rose from the wreckage, waving above the snow. “Yaya! Darcy!”

“Atsu!” Yadira launched herself toward her brother even before Darcy could bring the hover cart to a stop. The girl floundered in the snow, but between her gangly teenage limbs and her natural drakling lightness, and maybe partly the overly puffy clothes, she quickly crossed the small clearing to her brother. She scooped him up out of the snow, hugging him. His dusky skin was blanched from the chill, and Darcy quickly shrugged out of her outer layer to wrap around both of them.

The boy was shaking so hard, the words chattering out of him made almost no sense, but between his gasps, Darcy caught the gist. “Your father is still inside?”

“Trapped,” Atsu sobbed. “Fire… He pushed me out, but he couldn’t follow. Said to come get you.”

Vash had known they’d be right behind him. Sucking in a breath, Darcy turned toward the downed ship. Maybe she should be more afraid, or maybe she was getting used to crashing spaceships. “I’ll be right back.”

Stinking black smoke billowed out of the hatch, so thick she couldn’t tell if the ship had broken again or if maybe monstrous claws had ripped it apart to set the little boy free.

The interior was wrecked. It seemed as if the explosion had ripped the ship apart from the inside.

“Something fell on him,” Atsu said from behind her. Because they had followed, of course; they would always be there for each other. “He couldn’t get out.” At least the boy’s voice was clear as he warmed up, and probably because he wasn’t alone anymore.

No matter what happened, she’d make sure the fledglings were not alone.

Rejecting the wretched thought, she plunged into the ship. Pieces of the new fabrication had buckled and ripped, warping into a confusing maze. It didn’t help that small bursts of fireworks kept going off. If any larger shells exploded…

She wanted to send the fledglings away, but she knew they wouldn’t listen to her, and why would they? She just had to find Vash and get them all out of there.

Somehow, through the haze and choking smoke and her panic, she sensed him, like a guiding star, always there, never mind the smoke or snow. Ignoring the dangers of the serrated rubble, she clambered and crawled and pushed her way through the wreckage. It wasn’t even that far but it felt like light years.

“Vash!”

A twisted arc of jagged metal had pinned him against a crumpled section of bulkhead, trapping him. A few boxes of unexploded fireworks were strewn nearby, their festive colors mocking the desperate situation.

His eyes fluttered open, the dazed gray as hazy as the smoke. Just as well there were no rings of fire here. But she couldn’t rely on that.

“Darcy?” He only had one arm free, but he strained toward her.

“Don’t move. I need to make sure nothing else is going to fall on you.” A quick glance around told her how precarious the situation was. Between the broken metal and unexploded shells, everything could go horribly wrong at once. He couldn’t shift without impaling himself, and from the glazed look in his eyes, she wasn’t sure he had the strength or control at the moment. But she knew she didn’t have the muscles to bend the lancing remnants away from him.

“Darcy,” he whispered. “Get the fledglings out.”

“No,” Yadira said, in a clear, unwavering voice. “I let you bring us here without saying anything. I won’t let you send us away again.”

“I smell the fuses,” he said in a pained voice. “Not everything is burned and could go off at any moment. Get out.”

“I don’t suppose you can shift smaller.” Darcy cupped her hand around his jaw. “We just need to move you enough to slide you out.”

“Yadira can do it,” Atsu piped up. When they all looked at him, he linked his fingers together and raised them over his head. “Like this. Her beast is strong enough but still small enough to get underneath and push on those girders.”

“No,” Vash said, the tone stern but the emphasis behind it too breathless, as if something was broken inside him.

“I can’t,” Yadira cried. “You know I can’t.”

“Yada, it’s all right.” Vash cut a hard look at Darcy. “Take them out. I will shift and push everything aside.”

If he could do that, why hadn’t he done it already? But she couldn’t call him out, not in front of the fledglings.

His eldest child had no such compunction. “Then do it,” Yadira challenged. “But you can’t do everything, can you? You couldn’t save Ammi, and now you won’t let me save you.”

“Yadira.” His voice broke and whatever else he was going to say was lost.

Darcy couldn’t stand another moment. “Together,” she said fiercely. “All of us.” She reached out and took Vash’s hand. It was colder than it should be, as if he had already given up. “I’m going to pull. Atsu, you have to be ready to run, all right? Yadira—”

The girl was already stripping off her outer layers, piling everything on top of her brother until he was as round as Santa Claus. When she stood only in her nightshirt, with her thin arms wrapped around her, her green eyes snapped with latent fire. She crawled in next to her father, placing her narrow back on the girder that pinned him. If there was worse farther back in the shadows, Darcy couldn’t see and didn’t want to know. This was their chance.

Vash’s gaze locked on her with despair. “Darcy…”

She squeezed his hand hard then slipped her fingers up his forearm, their wrists pressed together. “Ready?”

“Until this very moment, no.” His lips quirked just the slightest. Oh wonderful, now he learned how to pull off a convincing Earther smirk.

The stink of fireworks and something sharper—blood—pinched her sinuses as Darcy settled her weight and engaged her core. She’d have to move fast and steady, and hopefully not do more damage. “Yadira, you need to shift back to your smaller shape and throw yourself this way immediately once the girders move.” As if the girl’s difficulties with changing would be improved by this stress.

“I will.”

To Darcy’s eyes, the girl’s shift was nothing like Vash’s, seeming both lightning fast and painfully slow. Much like puberty, she thought wryly. The delicacy of the wings that sprouted and unfurled from her shoulders was matched by a blatant strength: a girl who had been bound in her shell too long and was finally breaking free.

The instant the girder cleared Vash’s shoulders, Darcy was pulling. He managed to uncover his other arm, revealing a wound in his forearm that gushed blood. His hand was limp, so he could only wedge his elbow along. He only progressed a few inches toward her when he grimaced. “My leg,” he gasped.

Before Darcy could reset her grip, Yadira had wedged herself farther into the wreckage. “No,” Vash whispered. But it was too late.

The drakling shoved again at the twisted metal, and with a horrendous squeal, the tangle started to stretch apart.

Cursing and pulling with everything she had, Darcy inched him away from the mortal danger—away from his daughter. No, all of them would emerge from the wreckage this time. That was the only possibility.

“Yadira,” she called. “Out of there. Now.”

For half an instant, she thought the girl would sacrifice herself for what she’d lost before, but then with a sharp cry from the small drakling’s throat, Yadira was shrinking, the girders coming down around her again—

Vash lashed out with his wounded arm—that was suddenly a drakling wing. The heavy vane tangled around the girl, hauling her out of the collapsing tomb.

Darcy wrenched backward, hearing her own shoulders pop with the strain, but she didn’t feel anything except a wild and fierce determination that they would live. Her senses narrowed to the power she needed to move Vash with Yadira in his winged embrace toward Atsu yelling, “Go, go, go!”

Probably it was the go-go-go that did it. They tumbled out, sprawling in the snow as the girders groaned behind them, the uncured bulkheads collapsing.

“We did it!” Atsu crowed. The ship exploded behind them in a riot of roman candles. “Happy New Year!”