Page 503 of Shadowblood Souls
Am I supposed to be horrified by how quiet her vicious skill has become? All I’m filled with in that moment is awe.
“Let’s go!” she says, urging me ahead of her with a tight grin, and hefts the other end of the sapling to help me carry it.
Andreas’s voice carries from up ahead. “We’re all still conscious and wrists intact. Something must have stopped the manacles from working.”
Or someone. I glance toward the room we just left, which is falling into darkness as we hustle down the steeply sloping tunnel on the other side with Zian’s torch.
Is Toni going to be able to get out of the villa alive? I can’t say I feel exactlyfriendlytoward her, but she did help us at least a little in the end.
We might be dead already if she hadn’t directed us to this passage.
As the floor veers even more steeply downward, I run my free hand along the lumpy wall to help keep my balance. “I guess this is taking us right down the hill?”
“I hope so,” Riva says. “This has got to be the secret route for the shadowkind, and they could climb partway up the cliff through the shadows. But somehow I don’t think Balthazar would leave the very bottom unprotected.”
No, that doesn’t fit his typical M.O.
The tunnel swerves sharply to the right. We hurry along the turn, our footsteps rasping over the stone.
And then the ceiling crumbles with an unearthly groan.
Rocks pelt down on us. Riva tackles me to the ground, sheltering me as well as she can with her smaller but tougher body.
There’s an oof and a dwindling of the light as Zian must drop his torch while he shields the others.
Griffin’s voice breaks through the clatter of falling stone. “Jake!”
I wrench around on the rough floor. A few feet from the guttering flames licking along the broken branch, Jacob lies slumped, his forehead streaming blood and smoky essence where a particularly large rock bashed him.
There’s another rumble, and the ground shudders beneath me. Panic shoots through my chest alongside an unnervingly cool sense of certainty.
I have to be a hero here after all.
Jacob’s knocked out, but he isn’t dead. The energy of his powers still hums when I reach toward him.
My fingers curl around the sapling alongside one of my tentacles. I thrust my other hand upward just as another shower of rocks rains down on us.
They bounce off the invisible wall I just cast around us, pushing the air into a barrier with the telekinetic power I borrowed from Jacob.
I need to heal him too, but not until I’m sure the rest of us aren’t going to get our heads smashed open.
My nerves wobble with the striking of the jagged rocks—all of them bigger now. The effort of holding the shield in place is already wearing at my own energy.
So I’ll just have to draw what I can out of the sapling. Killing so that we can live.
A faint twinge flutters through my strange appendages, and I know that means they’re creeping a little longer from my flesh. But the flash of revulsion that comes with the thought isn’t the only thing I feel.
It’s kind of incredible, isn’t it—the way I can boost myself or any of the others whenIchoose how I use my powers? I have to remember that.
As a thrilling stream of renewed energy courses up through my tentacle into the rest of my body, the last voice I’d want to hear reverberates from an unseen speaker.
“Did you really think I wouldn’t have other fail safes in place?” Balthazar says, his voice taut with derision and maybe anger as well. “I’ll bury you all, you traitors.”
A chill lances up my spine. I don’t know how long I can maintain this shield before I’ve sucked all the energy out of my one source.
And if he collapses the entire tunnel, it won’t matter. We won’t have any way to get out.
I suck in a shaky breath, my mind scrambling for a solution—and Riva pushes herself away from us, scrambling over some ofthe stones that’ve fallen farther up the path. Her voice peals out into the dimness.
