Page 88 of Petals for Vicious Secrets

Ciaran moved his hand and Hope knew it had not only tickled her skin but also every other member of the three groups.

Dark green ink.

Dark. Green. Ink. And that handwriting…

Hope gasped, looking at Ciaran, unable to read the blue eyes staring right back at her.

It couldn’t be. It certainly couldn’t be.

Another prickle on her forearm, and the message was golden this time.

That must be Lenna and her group. Which meant that Brendon, Carson and Ayla hopefully would arrive soon. Less than a minute had passed when the ticklish sensation was followed by a silver handwritten sentence:

This was it. Hope grabbed her favorite daggers firmly, the side of her mouth curling upwards at the familiar adrenaline sensation rushing through her veins. Whichever deaths happened from now onwards, she would have no remorse or guilt.

Her back was on the edge of the wall, cornering both corridors. Ciaran was next to her, his biological biceps against the leathers of her own biceps. She didn’t wait to read Ciaran’s message. She didn’t need to.

As soon as she felt the prickling sensation on her skin, she stepped forward, using the first part of a heartbeat to locate the closest two targets in their Cardinal-red uniforms, and the second part to send her blades flying. They simultaneously struck home, the first roixer down with a blade crossing his neck from side to side, and the second with a blade across his still-opening mouth.

On the other end of the corridor, Lenna and Jake were standing over a couple of other roixers who were choking on the floor, grabbing their throats and kicking desperately in silence.

“So cruel, Jake,” Lenna whispered, something similar to a frown on her face, “to make them suffer like that.”

Lenna closed her hand and exhaled dramatically. Jake looked at her. “What did you try to do?” His voice was also low, presumably to avoid alerting the roixers inside the security vaults that they were about to be attacked.

“Take their hearts,” Lenna said, with both hands on her generous hips. “But it didn’t work.”

“Feral, Brachyan,” Jake’s voice was low and graver, and was he…? Yes, that was definitely a proud grin. “Organs can’t be Taken, but they can be Harmed.”

Next to Hope, Ciaran moved his arm, and the roixers stopped moving. “This is not the fucking place or time for one of your lessons.” His voice didn’t leave room for argument.

Ayla, Brendon, and Carson entered through a door right in front of the vaults.

“Did we miss all the fun?” Brendon asked, disappointment in his eyes.

Someone was trembling next to Hope, and she didn’t need to look to know it was Nina. She couldn’t even imagine what she would feel being so close to her brother, after having risked her own life so many times in order to be with him and keep him safe. She would have held Nina’s shaky hand, but Hope was just cleaning her bloody blades on the red uniforms of her recent kills.

Sasha chuckled, “These panoms are too desperate to kill.”

Indianna walked towards the door of the security vault closest to the end. As soon as the rest gathered around her, she whispered, “One roixer and three healers inside of each vault.”

Two more roixers to kill, in total. These four had gone down like flies. Nice and easy.

Jake and Lenna went towards the door of the other vault, in case the roixer inside came out to see what was happening.

As she felt Ciaran right next to her, Hope nodded to Indianna, who touched the badge against the door of the security vault and moved to the side as the crystal door opened wide.

Hope’s daggers left her hands as soon as she located the target.

Except there wasn’t one roixer in there. There were at least two dozens, and all but the four whom her daggers and Ciaran’s powers had just killed were looking at them, as if they had been waiting patiently for their arrival. And behind them, immobile in a bed, a white-haired man was peacefully unconscious.

58

Lenna

There were roixers fucking everywhere.

One second, Lenna and Jake were in front of the closed door of the security vault, ready in case the beings inside noticed the kills next door and wrongly decided to be curious. The next second, that door had opened, and she couldn’t count how many roixers were there because there were so fucking many.

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