Page 224 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

We hurry past it and send it sliding shut in our wake.

The hall on the other side provokes an uncomfortable twinge of familiarity. The carved stone surfaces look an awful lot like the passages that wound through the mountain at the island facility where we were held by a different former captive.

Clancy wasn’t quite as insane as Balthazar is, but he was just as eager to use us for his purposes. I can’t say any of my memories of him are remotely happy.

Griffin takes the lead, with tiny nudges of our emotions that give us a sense of where to follow him. At his mental touch, the side doors strike me as dull, the hall ahead of us more enticing.

I stride forward, tuning out the memories of being trapped—both physically and emotionally—as well as I can. Even the mineral scent in the air stirs up more recollections of our former island prison.

Another man comes striding along the hallway toward us, and we flatten ourselves against the wall to let him pass. There’s no point in causing more of a commotion than we need to if we can avoid notice completely.

We turn a corner and come to a stairwell. As quickly as possible, we slip past the door and follow Griffin’s eager signals down, two floors lower.

My mouth has gone dry. I wet my lips and try to estimate how much time has already passed. Fifteen minutes? Twenty?

How much longer do we have until our disguise falters? Andreas’s powers aren’t an exact science.

If only I had a watch… Of course, I wouldn’t be able to see it.

The thought brings a brief spark of amusement that’s quickly swallowed up by my nervousness. We dart out into the hallway Griffin indicates and trail after him to the left.

The stone-walled hallway down here is narrower than the one above, the ceiling lower. My chest constricts with the growing sense of them closing in. An image of the windowless room Clancy kept me trapped in between training sessions floats in the back of my mind.

I broke free of that place, and we’ll break out any shadowbloods trapped here too. After we’ve dealt with our most psychotic captor for the last time.

Griffin’s progress ahead of us slows. My body tenses in anticipation.

Then he stops completely, right by a plain white door that looks just like the other doors dotting the hallway. But his certainty that our target waits on the other side flows into me with his power.

Now it’s up to the rest of us to see the final part of the plan through.

Mostly, it comes down to me.

I think of Balthazar’s uncaring expression while fourteen-year-old Lindsay bled out on his villa floor. Of the plastic case that enclosed Dominic while he left my tentacled guy in a coma for weeks.

Of the rocks falling on our heads in a passage even narrower than this one, one last attempt at caging us in and preventing our escape from his beautiful prison.

A brutal vibration grips the base of my throat. I focus my mind on it and reach out to touch Jacob where I can sense him standing near me—my signal that I’m ready.

He steps toward the door. I don’t know whether it’s even locked, but if it is, he makes quick work of the deadbolt.

He shoves the door wide with an invisible burst of energy, and I spring over the threshold.

If Balthazar’s desk had been set right across from the door, I think I’d have killed him that instant. But all I see in my first glimpse of the room are a pair of matching bookcases—which Sorsha promptly sends up in flames.

As I spin around, catching sight of the desk next to the door and the burly man behind it at the edge of my vision, Balthazar jerks to his feet. He slams his broad hand down on some control I don’t have time to scrutinize.

Before I can process any more than that, a piercing shriek that has nothing to do with me splits through the air. It rattles my eardrums and scatters my thoughts, smashing straight through my focus.

I lose my grip on my power. My hands clamp instinctively over my ears as pain spikes through my skull.

In that first moment, I can’t see the others, only feel their own agony radiating through our bond. Then the air wavers around me.

Our invisibility is faltering. I catch sight of Dominic’s grimacing face, Sorsha plugging her ears with her fingers and whipping around with a sway of her feet?—

As we pop into sight, Balthazar is disappearing. His head is just ducking under an opening where he kicked aside a rug beyond his desk.

Bursts of fire shoot up from the desk and the rug, but the deafening siren has obviously shattered Sorsha’s concentration too. She staggers and then aims a hostile look at the device sitting on the corner of the desk.

Another rush of flames shoots up there, and the sound squeals out.

“Come on!” Jacob says in a ragged voice, and lurches toward the trap door Balthazar vanished through.

Sorsha leaps after him and swears. I understand why when I jump after them a moment later.

We’ve ended up in a thin tunnel carved into the mountain. A tunnel where water is spraying from fixtures on the walls and ceiling, like a fire sprinkler system gone haywire. The pale lights spaced several feet apart along the passage glint off the droplets.

Sorsha sputters and swipes her wet hair back from her face. “I can’t send a blast of fire after him through this. Now I really don’t like this jerk.”

I push past her and Jacob. “I’ll try to get to him.”

My pulse racing, I dash across the slick stone floor. My supernaturally powered muscles can propel me forward faster than anyone other than Zian, and the water can’t interfere with my banshee scream if I project it with my mind.

As I hurtle onward, my soaked clothes dragging at my limbs, my irritation grows. It fuels the new shriek building in my lungs.

Balthazar can’t get away with this. He can’t get away . I have to stop him.

We’re so fucking close.

I shove myself off the tight walls and around a corner—into a widening of the tunnel that’s almost a room. And six figures step out in a line, blocking my way through.

I jerk to a halt, staring through the continued spray at the determined faces forming a barrier between me and Balthazar, however far ahead of us he’s gotten.

There’s Nadia, her thick black pixie cut slicked to her skull with the water. And Tegan, the little twelve-year-old whose perpetually wide eyes gleam with a hardness that makes my stomach clench.

Devon stands with them too, and three other teens I vaguely recognize from the island facility but whose names I never learned. Fellow shadowbloods.

Why are they looking at me like I’m the enemy?

“Move!” I gasp out. “I’ve got to catch up with him.”

“We have to do this,” Nadia replies tightly. A familiar silver manacle gleams around her wrist—around all of their wrists. “We can’t let you go after him.”

Sorsha and Zian hurtle into the room behind me. I can sense the other guys not far behind.

With a jolt of panic, I fling out my arms. “Don’t hurt them! They’re the ones we’re here to save.”

Except the shadowblood kids seem to have the exact opposite idea.

Nadia’s eyes flash with an unsettling light. “Go back! Get out of here!”

“I can’t,” I retort, tensing to push between her and the others. “I have to?—”

I move to spring in mid-sentence—but the young shadowbloods beat me to the punch.

It feels like a punch: the blaze of light that rushes at us with the thrust of Nadia’s arms. My vision blurs to gray, and a blast of air sends me crashing into Zian.

A rumble sounds behind us. Dominic’s voice calls out, taut and frantic. “There’s more water coming—enough to flood the tunnel!”

Hasty footsteps pound away from us. I stagger, blinking hard and seeing nothing but drifting blotches. A gush of water gathers around my feet.

Jacob swears and stumbles past me. “Zee—how close are we to the surface? Can we break through the wall?”

Zian must be as blind as I am, but apparently his X-ray vision still works well enough for him to judge. “Not far. Hit it hard!”

I fling myself after them, lending my own strength to the task. Jacob slams out his telekinetic talent and Zian batters the stone surface with both his arms and his searing eyes.

The rumble rises. The wall cracks and crumbles.

Just as the roar of the wave reaches the room, we burst out into the cold night air. I snatch at my sense of Andreas’s presence and Griffin’s. Dominic latches on to us with his tentacles.

The water rams into us from behind, sending us tumbling partway down the rocky slope in a jumble of limbs. My butt jars against a boulder.

I rub my eyes, fragmented vision returning. As I shove myself to my feet, I spin toward Griffin.

The look on his face as he pushes the drenched strands of his hair away from his eyes makes my heart sink. He turns his head toward the mountainside.

“Balthazar’s gone. He’s already too far away for me to clearly track him.”