Page 37 of Ignited Spirits
At my words, Steve starts struggling against the magic holding him in place. He’s clearly not in favor of me murdering him, but I wasn’t really asking him.
“It’d be easier and less messy to just knock him out and stash him somewhere.” Bishop mutters a spell under his breath, and a bolt of blue magic shoots straight for the guard.
Steve braces himself for the impact, but it doesn’t make much difference. As soon as the magic hits him, Steve seizes before his eyes roll back into his head and he goes limp. Levi lets his power fade away, so Steve falls to the ground in a heap.
I wince as he hits the floor hard, but I don’t feel too bad, because he’s a council guard after all.
Rhys reaches into one of the pockets in his black cargo pants and pulls out some zip ties. I blink at him because it’s pretty strange to casually carry restraints around, but I guess they come in handy sometimes.
Once he’s done tying up Steve, Rhys stashes him in a corner behind some furniture. After Aiden shoves the phone in his pocket, we make our way to the door. He’s the first through, and the rest of us follow him like lost little ducklings.
Only occasionally consulting the council app, we finally find the stairs. Unlike the rest of this wing so far, the stairs aren’t brightly painted or well lit. Instead, they’re a deep black abyss that leads to who knows where. It could be my dad, our doom, or a council lemonade stand. Who knows?
Taking a deep breath, and hoping I’m not leading everyone to their deaths, I follow my mates down the stairs and into what’s probably a council trap.
CHAPTER 13
IZZY
“Are we there yet?” I ask for the millionth time. I pretend my voice sounds like the badass I aspire to be instead of a petulant child.
“Nope,” Rhys says, his voice lined with exasperation. “We’re on floor fifteen, one floor below the floor you last asked at.”
Sighing, I shut my mouth because asking a bunch of times doesn’t make this go faster for anyone.
Instead, I focus on Archer’s tall, muscular form in front of me. I keep my gaze on his light blue tee instead of all the spiders and other creepy crawlies I can hear scurrying around us. Although, in the dark I can’t see much of anything, which is probably a good thing.
We considered using magic to light the way, but that would make it easy for anyone else in the stairway to spot us. We’d be sitting ducks in this narrow stairwell, so we’re dealing with it being dark.
Luckily, my wolves and Levi can see much better than Bishop, my brothers, or me. They’re leading the way and making sure the rest of us don’t fall to our deaths.
For being such a large prison, with supposedly state-of-the-art security, they sure don’t maintain their stairs well. It’salmost like they don’t want anyone moving between floors or something. Although, I think they have bigger problems if prisoners are in the stairwell.
Here’s hoping we can use a rift to get out instead of climbing back up these billion and one stairs.
Walking in silence for a couple of minutes, we eventually reach the bottom of the stairs. I can see light shining through the bottom of the door, so I prepare to be momentarily blinded when we open it.
Levi throws up another defensive shield before he hesitantly pushes on the door. I brace to be confronted with a bunch of council goons, but there’s no one there.
We cautiously step out into the barren hallway.
Unease slithers up my spine and raises the hairs on the back of my neck as we shut the stairwell door behind us. Everything about this place feels wrong, but I can’t quite put my finger on what it is.
Unlike the last one, this corridor isn’t bright, white, and clean to the point of being sterile. Instead, it’s lit by a few bare bulbs spaced few and far between. The crumbling concrete on the walls, ceiling, and floor is stained and dirty. By the amount of dust and cobwebs, it looks like no one has been down here in years, let alone a few days ago to bring my dad here.
I look down the hallway and count seven doors, and none of them have signs to indicate who’s in there. They don’t even have viewing windows, just solid concrete slabs at the entrance.
“Do we know which cell Dad’s being held in?” I whisper, not wanting to talk too loudly and draw attention to us.
Rhys shakes his head. “No. We just have to go through each cell and hope we find him that way.”
Aiden rubs the back of his neck as he stares in apprehension at the cells in front of us. “Won’t we be letting out all sorts of bad people?”
I raise my eyebrows at him. “Do you really think the council imprisons bad people? I can think of many, many terrible people in Hawthorne Grove who do truly awful things. None of them are in danger of being imprisoned. People like me, though? We’re who end up in maximum security cells before being executed. So, no, I don’t think we’ll be letting out anyone evil.”
In fact, I think there’s a high likelihood we’ll be letting out good people who did nothing wrong other than be different.
When Aiden doesn’t say anything else, I walk up to the first cell door. I put my hands on the cool, smooth surface and press my ear against it, hoping I can maybe hear who’s behind the door. As expected, I can’t hear anything other than my own heartbeat.
