Page 562 of Shadowblood Souls
I buck at my attacker with all my supernatural strength, but they’re already heaving away off me. Zian barges toward him with a wolfish snarl.
Devon has clambered partway into the helicopter. He raises his hand toward the warped blade as another of the former inmates hauls himself right onto the top of the aircraft to reach it.
As heat flares from Devon’s hands with a ruddy glow, softening the metal, the guy up top wrenches the propeller back into its proper shape.
I push myself toward them. If they get that thing in the air—if we can’t even try to talk sense into them?—
Then Tegan leaps between us Firsts and the chopper, her mouth opening wide.
I’ve seen the twelve-year-old use her power once before—to help us escape the guardians on the island facility. Then, she only emitted a puff of noxious smoke just large enough to cover a narrow path.
Now, a rippling haze billows out of her with a heave of breath. It rushes toward us, stinging my eyes and burning my lungs in an instant.
“You don’t get to stop us!” she shouts. “No one gets to hold us down ever again.”
I crumple, coughing and wheezing. Zian slumps beside me.
And the rumble of the helicopter’s propeller reverberates through the clearing.
I hear Sorsha muttering curses, but no more fire streaks through the air. Between Nadia’s light and the toxic haze, she’s probably afraid she’ll end up incinerating us rather than the escapees.
I’m not sure I’d even want her to try. The adult shadowbloods might be hardened criminals, but the kids… There’s got to be a way to shake them out of their madness.
A soft pressure wraps around my wrist—the curl of a tentacle. As the whir of the helicopter fades into the air, a breeze gusts through the smoke, washing the worst of it away.
Dominic kneels beside me, his other tentacle extended toward Jacob’s sprawled form, a bush he must have uprooted clutched in his hands. With a surge of tingling energy, the pain in my lungs recedes.
The second Jacob’s bones have melded back into a regular arm shape, Dominic reaches toward Zian and Sorsha. His mouth tightens, and the shrub in his hands withers even more.
Jacob rolls into a sitting position, swiping at the blood left on his face from the healed cuts. “Fucking hell.” Then his gaze fixes on something across the clearing from us, and his stance goes rigid.
Booker hurries over, his eyes wide. He motions to a girl who looks to be about fifteen, who’s hugging her skinny frame tightly.
The teens hesitate several steps from our cluster. Booker’s gaze darts between us. “We—we can come with you, right? Ididn’t want— I don’t know what they think they’re going to do— Those guys scare me.”
From the way he talked to Nadia, I suspect even she scares him right now.
I swallow against the dryness of my throat. “Of course. That’s what we wanted fromallof you.”
My gaze travels around the concrete yard, taking in the corpses of the guardians and Balthazar, the streaks of blood and ash, and the aching absence of all the shadowbloods we meant to save. A wave of despair crashes down on my spirits.
The battle was supposed to be over. We destroyed all our enemies. So why does it feel like we only created more?
I wet my lips, the flavor of cinders filling my mouth. “And now we have to figure out where we go from here.”
Eighteen
Zian
The door for the cell Riva directs me to is locked. But the dim building in the middle of nowhere, northern China, has looked abandoned from the moment we showed up. Griffin confirmed that he couldn’t sense any human emotions inside other than the boy we’re here to save.
So I aim my searing vision at the door without any concern about triggering an alarm. Really, after walking through the silent hallways where the air is almost as still and icy as outside the grim gray walls, I’dwelcomea chance to actually fight.
Riva’s apparently been talking to Ajax since well before we arrived, in her head. He directed us to his cell.
He must be able to see my progress, but he doesn’t risk breaking my concentration until the narrow slab I’ve carved out of the steel door topples out into our waiting hands. The light catches on his dark brown face amid the thicker darkness beyond, and his voice slips into my mind without any movement of his lips.
You made it. Thank you.
