Page 589 of Shadowblood Souls
The horror rolling through my gut is bad enough. I can’t imagine the clash of emotions that must be gripping them.
On the other side of the building sprawls the field where we had our occasional outdoor training sessions. After so much time out of the guardians’ clutches, it’s strange remembering how much of a novelty it used to be to breathe this fresh air, to take in forest scents rather than the dull, heavily filtered air of the underground rooms.
Zian flexes his shoulders, looking both determined and uncertain. “We’ve got to go in, right? Make sure it’s empty so we can use it.”
I swallow thickly. “Yeah. Where are the controls for the electricity?”
Jacob makes a dismissive sound. “We don’t need to worry about the controls. All I need is the wire…”
He prowls along the edge of the fence with his gaze fixed on the ground. He must be prodding the earth below with his powers, because as he comes around the left side of the facility, he pauses and smiles. “There it is.”
Jake closes his eyes. His arms twitch with the invisible effort he’s extending.
A faint sputter is the only sign that anything has changed. But when he steps back with an air of satisfaction, the next twig Andreas tosses has no effect at all.
As Jacob stalks back to the gate to coax it open, I study Rollick. “Do you want to stay out here?”
His mouth tightens, but he shakes his head. “If we’re going to use this place to make this our last stand, I want to know exactly what we’re working with—and be able to make suggestions to craft that plan as carefully as we can. I think I’ll follow youfrom the shadows from here on unless I have something to say, though.”
The gate glides open, and the demon fades into the patches of darkness at its foot. The six of us tramp inside, heading across the asphalt toward the sole part of the building above ground.
I’m doing my best to keep my mind entirely focused on the steel door and concrete wall ahead of me, but my pulse still hitches as we pass the exact spot where Griffin and I stood in our one fleeting minute of freedom.
I can’t hide the agony of that memory from him. He slips his hand around mine with a subtle squeeze that says more than any words could.
The guardians tore us apart, but we found our way back to each other. And now we’re going to make sure that their legacy of pain and destruction ends completely.
Zian scowls at the door. “I could bash it open or cut out the lock.”
Dominic cocks his head. “I think it’s better if we don’t leave too obvious a sign that we were here. They might not have the resources to pay much attention to this place anymore, but better safe than sorry.”
Jacob crouches down by the doorknob. “I think I can disengage this lock too. Let me just get the feel of it…”
There’s a grating sound and a sharpsnap, and his mouth twists at a wry angle. “Well, I had to force the issue rather than leaving everything in one piece. But at least no one canseethat it’s broken.”
“I’ll keep checking for any sign of emotional responses nearby,” Griffin says. “But there’s definitely no one on the ground level.”
Jacob grasps the knob and pulls the door open. As we step into the white-washed hall on the other side, the sense of history weighs down on me even more suffocatingly.
The lights were off, but they flicker on at our arrival, provoked by the movement. Dominic lets the door thump shut behind him as he brings up the rear.
There’s nothing on the first floor except a storage room on one side and what looks like a breakroom for the guards who’d have once cycled through patrols on the other. The shelves in the former stand empty other than a few innocuous basics like a box of garbage bags and a few containers of sunscreen.
The breakroom doesn’t look as if anyone’s relaxed there in quite a while. A thick layer of dust coats the plain table and chairs. When we peek inside the cabinets, we find a couple of bags of coffee beans with a best before from years back and assorted sweetener packets.
Zian sucks in a breath. “They really just abandoned the place after they took us out.”
Dominic responds with a terse chuckle. “They must have figured that if we could almost escape, it wasn’t really secure. Better not to risk bringing any other shadowbloods here.”
The guardians wanted to imprison us forever, though. We only need to keep the rampaging shadowbloods contained for a matter of minutes.
My stomach knots tighter with each step we take down the stairs. On the next floor down, we find the door to the control room standing ajar.
The consoles Griffin and I manipulated to open the way for our escape hold just as much dust as the break-room table. I swipe my finger along the corner of one screen. “I don’t think anyone’s been in here in a long time. They figured the fence was enough to make sure they didn’t need to worry about random hikers intruding.”
Zian looks as if he’s suppressed a shudder. “Does that mean we don’t have to bother going farther down? I hate this place.”
The same resistance twines through my muscles. My nerves clang with alarm at the thought of walking down the hallway of cells where we lived for most of our lives, of stepping into the gymnasium where we spent so many days training.
