Page 98 of The World Undone

Some of the protectors were smart—they saw the hallway floor striped with the blood and intestines of their peers and they disappeared down random halls, through doors that closed shut with the sound of heavy bolts after them.

But there were more pouring into the hall.

I let the darkness I usually did my best to shove down float to the surface.

An arrow shot past my head, crashing into a man attempting to strangle me. He dropped, eyes wide and glassy.

I recognized the syringe in his neck, and my limbs temporarily froze, my body recognizing the memory before my mind did.

But there it was. The rancid scent of the poison clinging to my nostrils with the etchings of a memory that wouldn’t fade, no matter how deep I tried to bury it.

The protector passed out, likely dead from the strength of a poison meant to knock out demons of a much higher caliber.

They weren’t trying to kill us. They were trying to capture us.

Max.

They wanted her alive.

My stomach tightened with anger that rolled all the way up my throat, until I felt one inch away from breathing fire down these halls and burning them all alive for simply being in the same vicinity as her.

“We need to get out of here.” I punctuated each word with a hit, flinging the unorganized protectors into the marble walls. “Too many, this is just going to get sloppy. We don’t have time.”

Max nodded, grabbed Ro in front of her and tugged him deeper into the hall, away from where the thickest parts of the horde of protectors were emerging.

I spun around, searching for Haley, but she was dragging her body towards me, eyes heavy, moving far slower than she should have been.

A syringe was buried deep in her leg. It was already dead, immobilized, unable to carry her weight.

I took a deep breath, weighing our options. Better to leave her and keep going. That was the plan. That was always the plan.

One glance at Max’s wide eyes as she fought to pull her brother through, and I couldn’t do it.

“Keep going,” I yelled to her, “we’ll meet you there and then you can shift us.”

Before she could argue, I charged back into the throng of protectors descending on Haley. I wouldn’t use Max’s fire until I absolutely had to. That was the rule. Until we absolutely needed them, we needed to keep the lines between our bonds free—keep her magic available for when it was the last option, desperately needed.

I slammed two protectors’ heads together, feeling at least one skull fracture from the pressure. A knife nicked my arm, but I was too quick for them to sink the blade in properly.

It was annoying more than anything, fighting them. They were like bees, easy to crush and relatively harmless individually, but when you had a hive dropped on you, it was more difficult to deal with. Impossible without getting stung a few times.

Another arrow, no doubt laced with a sedative whizzed close. Haley shifted in front of me slightly so that it buried in her shoulder, instead of mine. Just as I got to her.

Those were the only real threats in this fight. The best chance these assholes had at winning against us.

At the question in my eyes she only smirked. “Better one of us get hit twice than both of us taken out. Go. Help the girl.”

Even with her body slowly resisting her, she’d taken no shit. Her clothes were coated in blood that I could smell didn’t belong to her, her eyes bright with adrenaline, face streaked with gore and the desire for revenge.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll leave you behind later,” I mumbled, sweeping her into my arms before I took off at a run none of them could match.

Didn’t stop them from trying.

As soon as I turned the corner, I found Max and Rowan. She hardly waited for me to come to a halt before she wrapped her arms around us and shifted us out of the mess.

When we rematerialized, Haley was practically frozen in my arms. Her dark eyes were the only sign of life as they broadcasted her animosity through to me.

“Sorry, friend,” I whispered. And I was. I wouldn’t want to miss out on the fight either. And I knew what kind of hell this particular kind of prison could be—where even your own body turned against you, trapping you.

---