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Everyone turned as a group, swapping hands. Travis took the lead, switching places with Malakai. Darien was able to track only one person at a time, and right now he was tracking Travis.

“Can you see okay?” Travis asked as they started walking, back the way they’d come. Toward the door to the stairwell that they’d passed without even realizing it.

“I can see fine. In about twelve yards, you’re going to hang a right.” A beat of tense quiet as they all walked the distance, then Darien said, “Right—now. Turn right.”

Travis fumbled for the handle and opened it.

It was hell navigating the stairs when they couldn’t see, but they did it—all nineteen floors. When they came out on the ground level, Travis exhaled in relief. They weren’t in the clear,though—not yet. The building was huge; even just the ground floor would take a while to navigate.

The door to the stairwell had just clicked shut behind them when Darien said, “Travis—Travisstop.”

Everyone froze.

Darien whispered, “Don’t fucking move.”

A guttural growl ripped through the dark. Closer than Travis cared to admit. He held still?—

The reek of an exhaled breath wafted across his face, the smell so sour it made him gag.

“IT CAN FUCKING SEE YOU!”Darien’s warning shredded the speakers.

Something sharp punched into Travis’s gut, and he was thrown into a wall.

In the controlroom at Blackwater Penitentiary, Darien hung his head in his hands, knee bouncing as he listened to the screaming, the roaring, the shouts of pain.

“Come on,” he muttered, fisting his hair. “Come on, guys—comeon.”

Jewels screamed Travis’s name.

Bodies hit the walls and floor.

Max shouted in pain. Bellowed for Dallas— “Where’s Dallas?Dallas, where are you?”

The only sound missing was gunshots. They couldn’t fire in the dark, not when they were blind and just as likely to shoot each other as they were the monster. And, even if theycouldshoot it, this particular monster had been birthed from the Void. A creature with a black stone in its head. The same breed they’dfought at the carnival, the same breed Darien had killed at the harbor.

More shouting, more screaming, more roaring, coming not just from the phone speaker, but deep in the prison, too.

On the security cameras, Darien saw that the cell doors were open on several floors. The prisoners had escaped and were running rampant in the hallways. Slaughtering the guards, each other.

He clutched his stab wound, applying firm pressure. His vision went out of focus, and he fought the urge to faint.

Stay alive. He had to stay alive.

Just a little while longer.

Malakai couldn’t geta read on this bitch. And he had been thrown into the walls so many times, he could scarcely breathe.

He slammed into the floor, landing on his fucking face. The impact nearly sent him spiraling into oblivion.

The air peeled apart as claws swiped for him?—

He rolled.

The creature’s claws punched into the floor—right where his head had been, Malakai would bet.

He pushed to his feet, rallying his magic—and with a mighty roar that rivaled the monster’s, he blasted this bitch’s head into a pulp that misted his face. The floor trembled as its body collapsed.

He took a second to breathe. Check himself for injury. And then he gritted out, “Everyone alive?”