Page 266 of Shadowblood Souls
Zian braces himself in front of me, guarding me from any physical attack, smacking away a dart that careens my way. Jacob heaves one cannister and another back toward their source, his power warbling down the hall as he compels the noxious gas away.
At the back of the crowd, the new figures who barge into the hall stumble into their colleagues in the grips of memories that aren’t theirs. In the muddle Andreas is casting over them to distract them for the few instants before my scream catches hold of them too.
And Dominic crouches next to me, one tentacle wound around my bare hand, another clasping the neck of an injured guardian who collapsed on the floor after he attempted to charge us. My healer is flooding me with more and more energy even as I drink down the giddying waves of pain I’m dealing out as well.
We’re in this together, and we’ll leave together. More of us than came.
Strength thrums through my muscles. The shriek belts on and on as bones snap and tendons tear and?—
And then there’s no one left. No one who deserves my rage.
My legs wobble with the sudden rush back into normal awareness, but it’s all eager adrenaline, not a hint of weakness. When Dominic touches my side to steady me, I’ve already caught my balance with a flare of urgency.
“We’ve got to get the kids out. There could be more guardians coming.”
There’s no way the staff here didn’t manage to contact their colleagues elsewhere, right? But we don’t know if anyone was close enough to help all that quickly.
It’s better not to take the chance.
We hurry down the hall, yanking open the doors that the guardians weren’t hiding behind. I find a skinny, dark-complexioned girl who can’t be more than twelve and a stout, redheaded boy who looks maybe fifteen.
“Come on,” I say, beckoning to them. “We’re getting you out of here. No more tests. You’ll be free.”
As they stir to their feet, apprehension and hope flashing across their faces in tandem, Zian gives a shout of triumph and fishes a controller from one of the mangled guardian’s pockets. He hits the button, and the barred gate rises.
Andreas ushers two other kids out through the doorway. “Let’s take only a couple each,” he shouts over his shoulder. “We need to be able to protect them.”
I nod. “And hurry!”
Dominic directs two more kids toward the training area. As I encourage my shell-shocked charges to follow them, motioning toward the door to try to avert their gazes from the bodies on the blood-stained floor, Zian wrenches open the last of the cells and frowns.
“That’s all of them down here. Only six?”
I pause in the doorway and glance at the boy, who looks slightly less terrified than the younger girl. “Was it just the six of you in this facility?”
“I—I’m not sure,” he says. “We didn’t always train with the same people. They came and went.”
Well, six is better than none. Six is a start.
Maybe the guardians didn’t manage to make all that many more shadowbloods with Engel’s adjusted methods after all.
Jacob kicks the last of the still-smoking cannisters into one of the empty cells and yanks the door shut to seal the noxious smoke away. He turns to Zian.
“Go with them! Make sure they get to Rollick okay. I feel like there’s something else important down here—come back as soon as you’ve dropped the kids off and we’ll see what else they’ve been hiding.”
I don’t love leaving him on his own, but getting the kids to safety matters more. “Don’t go too far,” I order him.
Andreas and Dominic have already crossed half the cavernous room. I hurry my charges along as quickly as I can, not wanting to slow down the others’ escape by calling for them to wait.
They vanish into the stairwell, and we dash after them moments later. The kids finally come out of their stunned state enough to pick up to a run.
I wonder if they’ve been drugged like the guys say they were after our first escape attempt, their senses dulled.
We’ll see them free of that internal prison too.
We scramble out into the short upper hall. Muffled grunts carry from the control room where the man we tied up must have regained consciousness, but I ignore him.
Zian pulls ahead before we race outside and wedges a stone in the door to hold it open. As we approach the mouth of the cave, we both scan our surroundings quickly.
