Leopard 05 - Savage Nature

he reached for the handle, still watching Saria. She should have already been on the balcony.
    “What’s wrong?” It was impossible to ignore his stomach, the terrible churning, and he knew he was going to be sick very soon.
    “It won’t open. Somethin’s blockin’ it.” She tried her shoulder, but the door wouldn’t budge. Saria pressed her hand to her mouth, suppressing a cough. “I feel sick, Drake.”
    “Me, too, baby. We’ll get out of this.” Drake crawled back to her. Smoke was coming in under the hallway door, which meant the fire was probably in the hallway, although the sprinkler system hadn’t come on and the door wasn’t hot at all. Puzzled, he tried the balcony door. Something was holding it closed from the outside. “Get back, honey,” he ordered and made his way to the chair.
    He had to stand to get a good swing at the thick glass, but he called on his leopard’s strength and smashed the glass. Fresh air poured in. He was careful to break off the jagged pieces before allowing Saria through the broken glass.
    She staggered to the railing, coughing, turning back to look at the other balconies. “All of them are blocked, Drake. We’ll have to open them for the others. They might not be awake, or they’re tryin’ to crawl through the hallway like you would have done to warn everyone.” She bent her head and vomited, over and over.
    Drake did the same, emptying the contents of his stomach. Strangely, it made him feel a little better. “I’ll go left. You go right, but Saria, don’t you go back into the inn.”
    She sent him a wan smile, wiping at her mouth with the back of her hand. “I’ll be careful.”
    Drake leapt up, caught the edge of the roof and somersaulted up to run along the outer edge to the next balcony. Sure enough, the door had been barred from the outside. He glanced down to the lower story, expecting to see flames or smoke, but it didn’t look as if the fire was burning on the first story at all.
    “Evan.” He yanked the board from under the knob and opened the door. Thick black smoke billowed out of the room. “Evan!”
    He waved his arms to try to dispel the smoke before running into the room. Evan was sprawled half on, half off the bed as if maybe he roused himself enough to know there was a problem, but couldn’t quite wake up. His leopard was probably roaring at him, desperate to break through the drug in his system. Lifting the man in a fireman’s carry over his shoulder, Drake took him out of the room and dumped him on the floor of the balcony.
    Evan coughed a couple of times, enough that Drake could see he was waking.
    “I have to get to the others, Evan. As soon as you can, help Saria. She’s working her way down the balconies on the right side. Understand?”
    Evan nodded, drawing in a deep lungful of clean air. He signed that he was sick, bent over and expelled the contents of his stomach.
    Drake glanced over to the balcony where Saria should have been. The French doors were wide open with smoke pouring through them, and Saria was nowhere to be seen. He cursed aloud, knowing she’d gone inside despite his orders to stay out. He hesitated between going to the next team member, or going after Saria. As he turned toward the right, stepping up onto the railing in preparation for a leap to the roof, she appeared in the doorway, dragging Jeremiah behind her.
    Drake didn’t wait. He went up onto the roof, but ran to his left, to the next room where, once again, he found the door barred. Anger was slowly building, now that he was fully awake and the drug was wearing off in the clean air. He ripped open the door. Elijah crawled toward him, dragging a chair behind him. The smoke was particularly thick in the room, thick and black, as if he were much closer to the source than Drake’s room had been. Drake could see that Elijah had been violently ill in the room, which had probably allowed him to rid himself of the drug in his system and wake up enough to know they were in trouble.
    The moment Drake flung open the doors, Elijah clawed his way onto the balcony, coughing and gasping, and mad as hell. “Someone tried to kill us, Drake. This was no fucking accident.”
    Drake nodded his head. He’d already come to that conclusion. “You all right? I have to get to Joshua.”
    Joshua was in the last room at the end of the hall, nearest the circular library at the top of the stairs. If the smoke was coming from there, that would make Joshua closest to the