Page 162 of Shadowblood Souls
Then a spurt of flame roars into being partway down the stairs.
We jerk to a halt, gaping. A glint of movement catches in the corner of my eye just in time for me to yank Dominic down.
Another dart streaks by, inches from his head.
Then dark vines ripple out of nowhere over the top of the wall. Swallowing a yelp, I aim a punch at one that looks ready to snatch at us.
My hand flies straight through it, my knuckles banging against the concrete.
I stare, and something clicks in my head. “It’s an illusion. How?—”
As my head spins, there’s only one explanation I can think of. I bob up just for a second, my gaze searching.
Most of our talents require seeing our target, if not being directly within reach. Whoever’s responsible is probably nearby.
There. By a bus shelter beyond the end of the driveway, a girl who doesn’t look like she could be more than sixteen is poised with a guardian on either side of her.
When our eyes lock, her mouth drops open. Then I’m ducking low again to avoid a barrage of darts.
“There’s a guy on the other side of the street,” Zian mutters to me as he crouches at the back of our pack. “Akid, but he’s doing something.”
I swallow thickly, a difficult task now that my mouth has gone totally dry. “They really did make other shadowbloods.”
There are kids out there, teens just like we once were, and somehow or other the guardians are forcing them to attack us.
What kinds of torture havetheybeen through across their lifetimes?
Jacob swings his arm, and a few more bodies thump on the ground beyond the stairs. But he can’t focus enough to do a ton of damage when he’s dealing with a whole army of them at once.
The flames lick up toward the sky, but they haven’t expanded beyond their patch. Andreas jabs his forefinger toward them.
“Just charge right through them and keep going until we get to the car,” he says. “Same plan as before.”
Jacob pushes the attackers back, Andreas confuses them, and Zian and I rip apart anyone who gets through them. And Dominic is here to patch up whatever wounds our attackers deal out along the way.
We all nod and dash forward.
The guardians have been keeping their voices down, but more mutters and footsteps carry from beyond the staircase. We hurtle onward.
I veer to the side so the fire only flicks across my limbs with a brief searing before I’m past it. Then we’re out in the open.
Jacob swings around, darts flicking this way and that with the movements of his arms and head. They clatter against the side of the building or plummet to the ground rather than hitting us.
A few of the incoming guardians stumble, their hands flying out as if to grapple with something only they can see, but more are rushing toward us.
Zian barrels straight into one who’s wielding a taser. He roars, his distorted wolfish muzzle protruding from his face, and wrenches his thick claws straight down the man’s torso.
I duck under the swipe of a baton and plunge my own narrower claws into my attacker’s gut. As I yank sideways to ensure this one won’t come at us again, blood and bits of flesh splatter me.
I leap and tumble, slashing a throat here and kicking out hard enough to break a thigh bone there. I’m only vaguely aware of Zian fighting alongside me and the other three guys racing to the car.
The engine roars. The sedan zooms toward us and screeches to the side, the trunk ramming into another guardian who’d just lunged forward.
The back door whips open. Dominic beckons us from inside.
I punch the nearest attacker with a crunch of shattering jaw and fling myself into the seat.
Zian springs after me and fumbles to haul the door shut in his wake. Andreas is already slamming on the gas pedal.
