Page 449 of Shadowblood Souls
Panic flares through my thoughts in the split-second when I’m captured, and a bolt of heady defiance races up in its wake. In the back of my mind, I see Dominic slumped on the hospital bed, waiting for us.
Dominic, who healed me even when he thought he should hate me. Dominic, who was the first boy to ever kiss me without a disaster. Who showed me I could be loved without everything I cared about falling apart.
I will not lose him. I refuse to loseanyof them.
A flare bursts within my skull, and this time it’s as if my brain itself shrieks, hunger and fury and desperation melding together in a silent, mouthless wail of vengeance.
The man holding me down buckles with a pained grunt. I taste the crack of two ribs and the puncture of a spleen before the understanding catches up with me that I’m really doing this somehow.
I’m screaming without even opening my mouth.
I jerk around, lips clamped tight, my mental shriek expanding to collide with the other four guards on this side of the doorway.
One of them has his gun under Zian’s chin. I break his hand.
The other two have converged on Jacob. As I fracture one’s pelvis so he drops to the floor, Jake twists his hand, and the other man’s knees give beneath him.
Not a killing strike. We haven’t disobeyed our orders.
Two of the rifles soar out the doorway into the night. Andreas is tossing them away so there’s no chance of the guards turning them on us again.
I start to reach for another but hesitate, unsure how easily I can keep my hold on our opponents with this newfound dimension to my power.
Jacob and Zian kick the other weapons out of the train. Zee pauses to stare down at me. “Riva?”
I have to control the men inside the smaller room too. I close my eyes and push my awareness and my mental shriek beyond the wall.
There. There. They seize up in the grip of my power, pain flooding me just from their bewilderment and fear.
I wave a hand vaguely toward the door. The guys leap forward.
Jacob and Zian haul that door open inch by screeching inch. They each tackle one of the guards inside, smacking them hard enough in the right spot to knock them temporarily unconscious.
Which is a good thing, because a headache is starting to expand through my brain with the effort of the telepathic scream.
“Fuck!” Jacob snaps from inside. “There are too many goddamn security boxes in here. Which one is the hard drive in?”
Zee must scan them with his X-ray vision. “Here,” he says. “But I don’t think—the door on this thing is too small and thick.”
He hesitates, and I can’t help looking up even as I pin the remaining injured men with my power.
Zian blinks. Then his eyes spark, and a glowing line sears through one of the panels embedded in the inner wall.
Our wolf-man’s powers have grown in new ways too. The line crackles through the metal in a rough rectangle, which Jacob yanks out with his telekinesis the second it’s complete.
Andreas reappears. “Come on. We just passed the marker by the side of the tracks. Let’s get out of here!”
Zian tucks the sleek metal case of the hard drive he’s retrieved against his chest, sheltered by his arms.
Jacob turns in the doorway to look toward the car behind us. “Griffin! We’re leaving.”
Zian stiffens for a second and then slings one arm around me too. Squeezing me against him with as much care as he gave our cargo, he leaps into the brush along the side of the road.
He hits the cushioning of the shrubs shoulder-first, his brawn sheltering me from the worst of the impact. As I scramble up, three more thuds sound in quick succession.
The silent scream fades from my mind as the train whisks the guards away from us.
I let out a rasping sound and clear my throat so I can speak. “Everyone okay?”
