Page 535 of Shadowblood Souls
He steps toward the door. I don’t know whether it’s even locked, but if it is, he makes quick work of the deadbolt.
He shoves the door wide with an invisible burst of energy, and I spring over the threshold.
If Balthazar’s desk had been set right across from the door, I think I’d have killed him that instant. But all I see in my first glimpse of the room are a pair of matching bookcases—which Sorsha promptly sends up in flames.
As I spin around, catching sight of the desk next to the door and the burly man behind it at the edge of my vision, Balthazar jerks to his feet. He slams his broad hand down on some control I don’t have time to scrutinize.
Before I can process any more than that, a piercing shriek that has nothing to do with me splits through the air. It rattles my eardrums and scatters my thoughts, smashing straight through my focus.
I lose my grip on my power. My hands clamp instinctively over my ears as pain spikes through my skull.
In that first moment, I can’t see the others, only feel their own agony radiating through our bond. Then the air wavers around me.
Our invisibility is faltering. I catch sight of Dominic’s grimacing face, Sorsha plugging her ears with her fingers and whipping around with a sway of her feet?—
As we pop into sight, Balthazar is disappearing. His head is just ducking under an opening where he kicked aside a rug beyond his desk.
Bursts of fire shoot up from the desk and the rug, but the deafening siren has obviously shattered Sorsha’s concentration too. She staggers and then aims a hostile look at the device sitting on the corner of the desk.
Another rush of flames shoots up there, and the sound squeals out.
“Come on!” Jacob says in a ragged voice, and lurches toward the trap door Balthazar vanished through.
Sorsha leaps after him and swears. I understand why when I jump after them a moment later.
We’ve ended up in a thin tunnel carved into the mountain. A tunnel where water is spraying from fixtures on the walls and ceiling, like a fire sprinkler system gone haywire. The pale lights spaced several feet apart along the passage glint off the droplets.
Sorsha sputters and swipes her wet hair back from her face. “I can’t send a blast of fire after him through this. Now Ireallydon’t like this jerk.”
I push past her and Jacob. “I’ll try to get to him.”
My pulse racing, I dash across the slick stone floor. My supernaturally powered muscles can propel me forward faster than anyone other than Zian, and the water can’t interfere with my banshee scream if I project it with my mind.
As I hurtle onward, my soaked clothes dragging at my limbs, my irritation grows. It fuels the new shriek building in my lungs.
Balthazar can’t get away with this. He can’tget away. I have to stop him.
We’re so fucking close.
I shove myself off the tight walls and around a corner—into a widening of the tunnel that’s almost a room. And six figures step out in a line, blocking my way through.
I jerk to a halt, staring through the continued spray at the determined faces forming a barrier between me and Balthazar, however far ahead of us he’s gotten.
There’s Nadia, her thick black pixie cut slicked to her skull with the water. And Tegan, the little twelve-year-old whose perpetually wide eyes gleam with a hardness that makes my stomach clench.
Devon stands with them too, and three other teens I vaguely recognize from the island facility but whose names I never learned. Fellow shadowbloods.
Why are they looking at me likeI’mthe enemy?
“Move!” I gasp out. “I’ve got to catch up with him.”
“We have to do this,” Nadia replies tightly. A familiar silver manacle gleams around her wrist—around all of their wrists. “We can’t let you go after him.”
Sorsha and Zian hurtle into the room behind me. I can sense the other guys not far behind.
With a jolt of panic, I fling out my arms. “Don’t hurt them! They’re the ones we’re here to save.”
Except the shadowblood kids seem to have the exact opposite idea.
