Page 264 of Shadowblood Souls
The man wavers for a second and then leans toward a glass pane on the console. A flash of light washes over his face. He jabs a few buttons, and the symbols marking each of the cells blink from red to green.
“There. It’s done. Now don’t?—”
Zian brings his fist down on the man’s head with athwackthat makes me cringe. But even as he tumbles off his chair, I can see the angle and the impact were only enough to knock him unconscious.
“Tie him,” Andreas urges.
I’m already springing over. My claws slice off a few strips of the man’s shirt.
I tug one piece of fabric through his mouth as a gag while Jacob and Dominic hurry to secure his wrists and ankles. Then I scan the screens again.
“No more guardians. Everyone else must be outside.”
Dead or still dealing with our shadowkind allies.
Jacob smiles grimly. “Let’s get those kids out, then.”
My heart thudding with a mix of adrenaline and joy, I dart with the others to the opposite door. A stairwell awaits on the other side.
The guardians know better than to put all their faith in an elevator and the electricity that runs it. I’d rather not count on it either.
We hurtle down the stairs as fast as our feet can carry us, Zian’s head swerving from side to side as he listens for sounds of pursuit.
On the third floor, we shove out into another hall that leads into the cavernous room I saw on the surveillance. Our footsteps echo eerily through the vast, darkened space.
But there’s light up ahead. The gleam of florescent bulbs shines through the window on the door at the far end.
I push myself faster. We have to get the younger shadowbloods out of their rooms and all the way back up to the surface.
We have no idea when reinforcements might be arriving.
The hall beyond the window lies empty. Zian shoulders the door open.
We spill into the hallway, our gazes whipping over the dozens of closed doors we unlocked upstairs.
And half of those doors fling open as a horde of hidden guardians charge out to meet us.
Thirty-Five
Riva
Ayelp of warning breaks from my throat, as if the guys won’t have seen the threat in the same instant I did. I propel myself backward?—
And bang against a set of steel bars that’ve just dropped from the ceiling to cut off our access to the doorway.
They’ve locked us in. Was this a trap?
We all duck low instinctively to make ourselves smaller targets. Tranquilizer darts whiz through the air only to be smacked to the side by a wallop of Jacob’s telekinesis.
I have only a second to register that the guardians are wearing something odd under their usual helmets before one of them tosses a hissing cannister our way. A plume of blue smoke gushes up into the air around us.
Gas masks—that’s what they’re wearing. They think they can knock us out this way instead.
Zian sputters and aims a brutal kick at the cannister, sending it spinning past our attackers. The smoke wafts away from uswith another push of the invisible force Jacob can conjure, but a hint of dizziness prickles through my mind.
Several of the guardians let out startled shouts, shaking their heads as if trying to clear them. When I glance at Andreas, his eyes have flared red.
He’s confusing them with projected memories. But there are so many of them, more tramping out of a door at the other end of the hall.
