GRAYSON AND ATIA HAD TO CONTEND WITH TWO MORE SEPARATE AMBUSHES, both of which cost them precious minutes and allowed Killian to stay ahead of them before his sensitive hearing caught Killian's voice on the breeze, just a bit further down the mountain, and through another corpse of trees. It seemed he had finally slowed down enough for him to tear Killian apart.
Grayson was running at top speed, Atia lagging slightly before Grayson made out the tail end of his last command,
"...Guard the entrance, all of you. Don't be afraid of them...they'll slow him down. If he makes it this far."
Some instinct triggered by Killian's words fought through his red haze of anger and made him slow his pace as he entered the trees. Grayson wanted to leap into the fray after Killian, but a warning signal was going off in his head, and he trusted this sixth sense. It had never led him astray before.
