Page 110 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

Zian roars. There’s a gristly tearing sound and a thump that’s probably an arm or maybe a head torn right off.

These people want to destroy us. They’ve always wanted to destroy us, even if only our free will and our spirits.

They managed to slaughter Griffin, but we won’t let them take another one of us.

An arm swings upward with a flash of an unexpected blade. I throw myself between the fallen guardian and Jacob just in time to deflect the slash so it only glances off his cheek.

My claws rake across the woman’s throat, and she slumps with a gush of blood. When I glance up, Jacob swipes the thin scarlet streak from his cheek and offers me a smile that reaches all the way up to warm his cool eyes.

Yes, we’re a team now—all of us.

The five of us push into the space beyond the steel entrance. Dim light illuminates a short hallway with a door on either side and an elevator at the end.

A helmet glints in the crack where the door on the left is pushed ajar.

Before the guardian there can pull the trigger on his weapon, Jacob’s power batters him into the tiled floor. Zian crushes the man’s head under his heel as we storm past.

We burst into what’s obviously the control room, screens mounted all across three of the walls over a long console of controls.

The guy seated in front of the console whips up a gun, but it flies from his hand to smack against the wall. Jacob and Zian loom over the guardian while the rest of us hang a few steps back, Andreas keeping watch by the door.

“Where are you holding your experimental subjects?” Jake demands. “The ones with powers, like us?”

The man’s panicked eyes leap to the screens and back to us. I scan the footage projected from various security cameras around the building.

There’s a vast training area that looks more like a cavern than a room. Hallways full of more doors.

No one stirs in any of the images. Have we really eliminated the entire staff of this facility already?

If that’s true, then all that stands between us and getting the kids out is this prick.

But we might need him. We don’t know what codes or keys it might take to open the cells our fellow shadowbloods are locked inside.

“I—I—” the guardian stutters, and then squares his shoulders, his mouth clamping tight.

Jacob raises his hand, his fingers curling toward his palm, and I have a sudden vision of what he means to do. How he could strangle the life out of this man as easily as clenching a fist.

But we don’t need to. The guy is unarmed, defenseless—and I’d like to leave one person here knowing that we’re so much more than monsters.

“Wait,” I say, quiet but firm.

Jake grimaces but eases to the side as I prowl forward.

What I can see of the guardian’s face around the plates of his helmet pales. He swallows audibly, but he still doesn’t speak.

I pin him with my stare, every muscle braced for action. “I don’t want to?—”

I cut myself off, realizing what I was going to say isn’t true. And maybe the truth will mean more, even if it’s not as pretty.

“No,” I correct myself. “I do want to hurt you. A whole lot of me would like to make you feel just a fraction of what you and the people you work with put us through.”

I flex my claws for emphasis. A shriek tremors in my chest, eager to feed off the pain I’ve denied it so far in this battle.

The man remains silent, but his jaw ticks with a restrained flinch.

I take another step closer to where I could scrape my claws across his face if I decided to.

“I want you to know that. I want you to know that I’m holding myself back from what I’d like to do right now, because no matter what you people put in me or did to me, I’m not a monster.

I can believe there are people out there who’d care if you died, who don’t deserve that pain. I can have compassion even for you .”

“I’m not going to help you,” the guardian rasps out.

I shrug, staying tensed. “That’s up to you. We’ve broken out of places like this twice before. We can manage it again without you. We know to leave your eyes and your hands and your face intact in case we need those to unlock the system. The rest of you…”

Leaning in, I hook one claw under his helmet and flip it right off his head. His fear saturates the air, so pungent I wouldn’t be surprised if the others can smell it now too.

“I’m giving you the option,” I say. “If you want to survive another day to see those people who care about you, who maybe you care about too, you can show us how to find and open the cells. Or we can kill you and then figure it out anyway. The only thing that changes is whether you live. That’s your choice. ”

Jacob inhales roughly behind me but doesn’t argue with the bargain I’m attempting to strike.

I don’t know if it’s going to work. The man’s posture has gone even more rigid in his chair.

But then Andreas speaks up from the doorway, even but with a hint of his cajoling tone.

“Chloe would miss you an awful lot, don’t you think? And what would she tell Ava? Is this job really worth losing them —leaving them alone?”

The man can’t suppress his wince this time at the names Drey has pulled from his memories. His face turns an even more sickly shade.

“Do whatever you’re going to do to me,” he spits out. “But don’t—don’t touch them. They had nothing to do with this.”

He spins his chair toward the console. My teeth grit at the thought that he’s only acting because he thinks we were threatening his family—but he’s doing something.

I really shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, should I? I’m getting what I wanted even if not exactly the way I wanted it.

And he’ll know that I meant my promise when he walks out of this building alive.

His hands dart over the controls. He points to one of the screens—a blue-print style rendering of a hall lined with small rooms on either side.

Uncomfortably familiar.

“That’s where they are. Three floors down, past the training complex.”

“And unlocking the doors?” Dominic asks.

The man wavers for a second and then leans toward a glass pane on the console. A flash of light washes over his face. He jabs a few buttons, and the symbols marking each of the cells blink from red to green.

“There. It’s done. Now don’t?—”

Zian brings his fist down on the man’s head with a thwack that makes me cringe. But even as he tumbles off his chair, I can see the angle and the impact were only enough to knock him unconscious.

“Tie him,” Andreas urges.

I’m already springing over. My claws slice off a few strips of the man’s shirt.

I tug one piece of fabric through his mouth as a gag while Jacob and Dominic hurry to secure his wrists and ankles. Then I scan the screens again.

“No more guardians. Everyone else must be outside.”

Dead or still dealing with our shadowkind allies.

Jacob smiles grimly. “Let’s get those kids out, then.”

My heart thudding with a mix of adrenaline and joy, I dart with the others to the opposite door. A stairwell awaits on the other side.

The guardians know better than to put all their faith in an elevator and the electricity that runs it. I’d rather not count on it either.

We hurtle down the stairs as fast as our feet can carry us, Zian’s head swerving from side to side as he listens for sounds of pursuit.

On the third floor, we shove out into another hall that leads into the cavernous room I saw on the surveillance. Our footsteps echo eerily through the vast, darkened space.

But there’s light up ahead. The gleam of florescent bulbs shines through the window on the door at the far end.

I push myself faster. We have to get the younger shadowbloods out of their rooms and all the way back up to the surface.

We have no idea when reinforcements might be arriving.

The hall beyond the window lies empty. Zian shoulders the door open.

We spill into the hallway, our gazes whipping over the dozens of closed doors we unlocked upstairs.

And half of those doors fling open as a horde of hidden guardians charge out to meet us.