Page 334 of Shadowblood Souls
As Jake’s twin awareness leads him around the bend in the opposite direction from where Andreas came, the other guys fall into step with us. We point every shadowblood kid we pass toward the entrance, hoping they’ll listen, and hustle onward.
“We have to be ready,” Jacob says. “I don’t think Griffin can push emotions on more than one or two of us at the same time. You see it happening to someone, jump in there and interrupt him.”
Zian frowns. “I don’t want to hurt him.”
A shudder runs down my spine. “None of us do. But we’ll all be hurt if he can track us down for the guardians again. Knocking him out would be better for everyone in the long run.”
Two guardians appear in the hallway up ahead. Zian barrels forward to crash into one; I cut the other down with another truncated shriek.
Then Griffin emerges from a room just beyond their broken bodies.
He looks at the corpses and then at us, and like so often now, I can’t read the slightest emotion in his gaze. But he can obviously tell what’s going on.
“You’re breaking out,” he says in that new, vacant voice of his.
Jacob grabs his brother’s arm. “And you’re coming with us. Get moving.”
I tense, waiting for Griffin to put up some kind of fight. But after a second’s hesitation, resolve tightens his expression. “All right. I just need to get Lua. I can’t leave her here.”
Lua?
My momentary confusion is broken by a meow from just inside the doorway. Griffin shoots Jacob a look of appeal, and his twin nods.
Griffin’s fast about it. He ducks into the room and emerges within a matter of seconds, a backpack slung over one shoulder and a cat’s white-furred face poking from the unzipped top.
As we hurry toward the entrance, I check the other guys. I don’t see any sign of him warping their emotions.
Would he have grabbed his pet if he was only planning to turn the tables on us at the right moment? Or is it just to convince us to trust him?
I turn and narrow my eyes at him. “No argument? You’re happy to join us?”
Griffin blinks at me. “I don’t know if happy is the right word, but it’s become clear that none of us are better off staying here.”
It has? Since when?
As much as I’d like to badger him with questions, this isn’t the time for it.
A particularly young-looking kid with spiky white hair flits past us toward the entrance, his body seeming to stutter as he blinks out of view and reappears a few feet farther ahead inan instant. I catch sight of Celine braced in the doorway to her room, her expression taut with worry.
I wave to her as we pass. “Come with us. There’s room for everyone who’ll come.”
At least, I hope there is.
She wavers a second longer and then sprints ahead of us. Her dark hair swings as she veers into a room near the entrance, but she’s returned by the time we’ve caught up.
I guess, like Griffin, she had something here she didn’t want to leave behind, although I can’t see any sign of what that was.
A dozen or so younger shadowbloods are gathered on the dusk-draped ledge outside the entrance.Is that all?a voice in the back of my head murmurs, but I don’t let myself dwell on my disappointment.
We have to get the kids who were willing to flee out of here ASAP. That’s what matters most.
Especially because feet are thundering in the halls behind us. The guardians must be regrouping, preparing to recapture us.
There’s no time to go back and try to convince the others to join our escape if we want to escape at all.
“Up the path!” I shout over the racing of my pulse, jabbing my hand toward the narrow, shadowy track that weaves back and forth up the mountain over our heads.
Jacob and Andreas push to the front of the crowd, dragging Griffin with them.
