Page 457 of Shadowblood Souls
Weird.
With apprehension creeping over my skin, I stay close to the floor as I ease over. My slim fingers probe the edges of the tile.
It shifts—and swings around on a hidden hinge.
A square of thicker blackness gapes open on the other side. I reach my arm in, and my fingers encounter only smooth, cool walls falling away into the darkness.
It’s some kind of hidden passage. Leading where?
What am I even doing here if I don’t find out?
My hand rises to my chest, reaching for my now long-gone necklace and the reassurance it offered. I’d almost forgotten that one small thing Balthazar took from me in my anger over all his other crimes.
I might not be able to get it back, but I have to take every chance I come across that could point us to our freedom. I ease forward into the hole in the wall.
Like with the window in the western wing I squeezed through what feels like years ago, like the air ducts I wriggled through what must be centuries ago to investigate an old facility, I’m the only one who could investigate. None of the guys could possibly contort their larger bodies to fit into this space.
After the first couple of feet, while I still have my hips outside, my groping hands mark a widening of the passage. Still not enough that anyone but me could fit through, but giving me enough space to be sure I won’t get stuck.
Not enough to turn around. If I hit a dead end, I’ll just have to count on my supernatural muscles to push me out backwards.
Or hope I can yell loud enough to summon Balthazar’s people to break me out.
I think of those options in an attempt at reassuring myself, but my lungs still constrict as I squirm farther into the passage. A thread of nausea winds through my gut.
I don’t like being clamped in like this. It reminds me too much of both the heavier shackles I’ve worn and the past times when even my guys saw me as an enemy.
The passage continues forward for only a short distance before it slants downward. I follow it, breathing shallowly, the thud of my pulse echoing in my head.
The minutes slip by with the rasp of my clothes against the surfaces around me. I can’t tell whether the sides of the passage are made of stone or plaster.
Then my reaching hand jars against a dead end just in front of me. My heart lurches in the split-second before I register the edge of another square imprint carved into the passage floor right before it.
I flick out my claws to pry the panel out and lean it on the narrow lip between the opening and the end of the passage. Ever so carefully, I lower myself into the space below—head-first by necessity.
I was on the first floor when I found the secret tunnel, so I must be in some kind of basement now. One we haven’t found any direct access to by conventional methods.
No windows let in any light. It’s as if I’m dropping into a pool of total blackness.
Hooking my feet so that I won’t plummet right to the floor, however far down that is, I stretch my arms in every direction. My fingers brush a wall to my left.
They trail along it and bump over a light switch.
I hesitate for a few seconds, but there’s no sound in the stillness around me. Not a breath or a creak.
I’m going to take this gamble.
With a flick of the switch, a pale light floods the room I’m descending into.
I’m dangling only a few feet above a cement floor. The room holds no furnishings, only stacks of cardboard boxes that must have been here a while from the layer of dust on most of them.
But not all. My attention immediately latches on to the two at the top of their stacks that must have been recently opened. And opened regularly, I’d guess, since they don’t have so much of a streak of leftover dust on them.
Next to the light switch stands a door that must be the normal way of getting into this room. It’s firmly closed. No one bursts in at the sudden flare of light that might have shown under it.
I curl myself and jerk my feet free so I can flip onto the ground.
The first thing I check is the door. The handle doesn’t budge—locked.
