Page 123 of Angel Lost

“I’d rather be in jail than have you married off to that incestuous fuck.”

“Mom will have you killed, Kai. My way, we both got to live. Now you’ve screwed it all up.”

They stand nose to nose, both red in the face, screaming. Neither backing down.

There’s a tap on the viewing glass and I freeze, unable to see through the one-way pane. Seconds later footsteps march down the corridor outside and an angel bursts into the room, Nyx in tow. The angel I attacked. The one I flirted with.

He looks at me, then the emergency button beside him, then at his weapon. I see his decision milliseconds before he acts. His finger tightens on the trigger, and he swings his gun up, straight at me.

Point blank range.

Without warning, a thin electrode wire wraps around the angel’s neck, pulled with such force it bites in, slicing flesh. Garroting him. A spray of blood erupts inches from me, gushes into my hair, my face, my eyes.

The angel topples forward infinitesimally slowly. He crumples to his knees then falls forward to his face at my feet. Behind him, Zephyr stands, wire in his grip, staring at his own bloody hands.

“I killed,” Zephyr says, the wire dropping to the floor beside the angel. “I killed another angel.”

I step forward, trying to take his hand, but he recoils from the blood, from me. His eyes are wide, watery, full of self-loathing.

Shit.

I try again, and he backs away until he hits the wall. This is going to hell. Swinging around, I grab for Nyx. “What is wrong with you?”

She shakes her head, pressing her lips together.

“Davina has you so wrapped around her finger, huh? You? Even you?”

She flinches at that.

“There are kidnapped kids here. There are rooms upon rooms of failed gifted. Open your eyes.” I drop her wrist, pushing her away in disgust. “I guess I should have known. All the red threads. You have them too.”

Zephyr’s head snaps up, although he avoids looking directly at me. “Say that again?”

I sigh, trying to step into his line of sight, but he twists away, like seeing me might make him kill again. “A lot of the students are very loyal to Dean Davina,” I say. “They’re tied to her with threads. I can see it, when I’m in the ley lines.”

“Redthreads?”

“Yeah. Even Kai. I mean, you have one to Farrell. I trace the air…you to Farrell to…well, it loops away.”

Zephyr looks directly at me. “That, Lorelei, is my slave bond. It loops away to his fucking father. Which means…”

My jaw drops. “The bitch!”

The collective gasp in the room tells me they all got there half a second after me. “The students are slave bonded?” Holy shit.

“We have to get out of here,” Farrell, ever practical, says, taking charge. “Even more so now that we know that. We can’t rely on anyone. Not if they’re directly under her control.”

“What do we do with Nyx?” I ask.

Farrell barely glances at her. “Kill her.”

Nyx looks like she might faint.

“Farrell! You’re scaring her.”

“I’ll do more than that,” he says. I edge between him and Nyx and Zephyr steps up beside me.

“Always with the violence, Farrell,” he says.

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