Page 6 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

Three

Jacob

I wake up too early, as always.

The room is pitch black. A faint burn still hums through my muscles from a workout that wasn’t quite exhausting enough to knock me out all the way until morning.

They never are. I always find myself here in the dark, the firm mattress beneath me and the faint whir of the air filtration system overhead.

One more day I’ve made it to. Another day more than my brother got. Twenty-four more hours of useless existence under my belt.

The thoughts float through my head like shards of ice on a thawing river, freezing cold all the way through. I’m a void as endless as the total darkness of my cell.

Griffin would have told me to go easier on myself, to not let the past get to me. But Griffin is gone, and my awareness of the facts of my existence doesn’t stir up my emotions anyway. It’s simply the way it is.

Someone around here needs to see things clearly.

I close my eyes and focus on the rhythm of my breaths. Inhale. Exhale. Over and over. As repetitive as our days here are.

In an hour or two, the overhead light will blink on. A tray of breakfast will slide through the compartment on the door.

I will eat, and then I’ll be tested, and then I’ll eat again, and then I’ll train. Then back to the cell for dinner. Then the lights go out.

Going through the motions, watching, waiting. Collecting all the little details that might someday add up to enough to make a difference.

I’m just thinking that when my chance arrives out of nowhere with the blare of a warning siren radiating through the walls.

I jerk upright on the bed, my heart thudding only a little harder than normal but my entire body gone rigid.

The alarm wails on and on through the darkness. Something’s gone wrong.

The guardians have been disturbed, their plans shaken in some unexpected way.

It’s an opening—it’s exactly what we’ve needed.

At least, it will be if I can make use of it. This time, the first step in the tentative plan we’ve stitched together in fragments of conversation over the past few years depends on me, not my brother.

It should have been me all along. If it’d been me, maybe I’d have been the one who?—

My mind snaps around the errant thought like a steel trap, shutting it away. I shove to my feet and step toward the door.

There, I tip my forehead against the cool metal surface, listening to the sounds from the hall with all my might.

I don’t have Zian’s keen hearing or his ability to see through solid surfaces, but the people outside are making enough noise that I catch faint markers of their presence through the blare of the siren.

In the first moment I home in on the sounds, heavy footsteps are thundering down the hall by my door. By the time I register them, they’ve passed too quickly for me to reach out and catch hold.

I grit my teeth and strain my ears even more.

Is the situation bad enough that more of the facility’s staff will come running, or has the opportunity already slipped through my fingers? This is the first time since we gathered all the pieces we needed for our plan that we’ve had our jailers at a potential disadvantage.

Who knows when it’ll happen again.

As I listen, I press my fingers against the door as well, flexing my sense of my power from within my skull through my chest and arms. I need to be ready. And pulling this gambit off is going to take all my strength—all the strength the guardians have left me with.

Since we arrived at the new facility, we’ve all found our talents, even the ones we’d kept hidden, have been weighed down. Restrained. Something they’re putting in the food or the air must be dulling us, taking the edge off the weapons inside us.

The guardians thought they could prevent us from staging another rebellion. But they haven’t blanked us out completely. No doubt they’d have to send us into a total stupor for that, and they want us alert enough to jump through their hoops and carry out their orders.

It’s taken longer to pull a scheme together than it would have otherwise, but we’ve made the most of the diminished skills we still have.

Nothing else reaches my ears except the continuing screech of the alarm. The emptiness expands inside me again, tugging at me to give up, to lie down on the bed, to return to the void.

But I owe my brother. I owe it to him to make every last person who hurt him pay.

What else have I held on this long for?

So I stay there, the metal a firm pressure against my forehead and fingertips, energy twining through my veins.

And then I hear it: a muffled holler and the thudding of more footsteps.

The slightest smile curves my lips. I push my hands harder against the door, let the sounds form a picture of the man running down the hall, and hurl all my concentrated will at the figure outside.

My nerves lurch as my talent slams home. I can feel him now, caught in my power like a fly stuck in a spider’s web.

He flails against it, one foot skidding on the tiled floor, his head thrashing from side to side. But all I need is one finger.

At my full strength, this would be easy. As it is, sweat beads on my forehead and trickles down the back of my neck with the effort of yanking him over to my door.

My jaw clamps so tight my teeth ache. Deeper twinges run through my shoulders and down my spine.

The guardian bangs against the other side of the door. My forehead furrows as I focus on keeping his body there while I drag his hand toward the keypad of the lock.

The mechanisms inside it have some kind of safeguard I haven’t been able to override with my telekinetic ability, at least at my current dulled state. No more keycards—they were too easily stolen. So we had to steal the codes instead.

I’ve seen the outside of my door a thousand times. I fix the image of the keypad in my mind and jab the guardian’s index finger at the sequence of six numbers Zian was able to watch them tap in through the wall of his own cell down the hall.

They kept us farther apart this time, but not quite far enough.

4-8-9-1-3-4. The lock beeps, and the sequence of multiple deadbolts rasps over.

My muscles tremble with the effort it’s taking to maintain my hold. I yank the man to the side, heave open my door to the full blare of the alarm and flashing red lights, and lunge at him.

It takes all of a single heartbeat to slap my hands against the guardian’s chin and the back of his skull beneath his stupid metal helmet. One more beat to wrench his head to the side hard enough to snap his neck.

For all the training we’ve done, all the tests of our strength and speed, all the practice with weapons and targets, I’ve never actually killed someone before. Animals, yes, when the guardians forced me, but never a human being.

For a second, staring down at him in the pulsing crimson light, I brace myself for a surge of emotion—any emotion.

The man crumples on the floor with a clank of his helmet, and I feel nothing but a muted sense of satisfaction. The job is done. He got what he deserved.

I don’t think Griffin would approve of that reaction either, but I’m the one here, so we’re doing things my way.

I’m not really done, though. I step away from the guardian and race down the hall to the room with Zian’s number.

Seeing his own code was easy, but he didn’t have any way of entering it. I poke the buttons with the other sequence of numerals he gave me.

He’s waiting, no doubt as revved up by the alarm as I was. The second the lock disengages, I jerk myself to the side, which is a good thing, because the next instant Zee’s brawny frame is barreling past it.

He skids to a halt on the tiles outside, looming over me as his chest heaves with panted breaths. Normally he’s only a few inches taller than my six foot even, but his partial shift has given him more on top of that, his muscles bulging wider.

Tufts of fur ripple across his neck and shoulders, the same black as the short-cropped hair on his head but scruffier. Tips of fangs protrude over his lower lip.

He whirls around with a growl, scanning the hall. Tension flexes through his limbs. But when he whips his gaze back to me, a tremor runs through his body.

He contracts just slightly into the still intimidating but more human guy I grew up with, the fur and fangs vanishing.

“The others,” he rasps, his dark brown eyes alight with wild intensity.

As I nod, I’m already moving. We dash together to the nearest stairwell, Zian charging a little ahead but reining in the full speed I know he’s capable of.

We hurtle up the stairs to the next floor, where Andreas’s cell is. He scooped a guardian’s memory of tapping in the keycode right out of the prick’s head.

Whatever guardians were stationed on this floor, they’ve already charged off to deal with the emergency. I punch in the code and throw open the door.

Andreas lopes out, his usual easygoing energy keyed up enough that he bobs on his feet when he comes to a stop in front of me. His dark gray eyes catch mine with a flicker of a ruddy glow totally separate from the flashing lights.

“Better get Dominic,” he says, offering a tighter version of his usual grin.

At the same moment, a guardian strides out of a room just a few doors down. His head jerks toward us, and a shout bursts from his throat loud enough to compete with the siren.

His hand flies to his com unit, but Zee moves faster. The massive guy all but soars across the tiles and bodychecks the guardian into the wall with the full force of his beastly strength.

The man sags to the floor with a dent in his helmet that turns the side of his head concave. Blood trickles out from beneath the metal to pool on the floor.

Zian stiffens, his teeth bared, his hands quivering at his sides. I freeze up, recognizing his struggle and not having a clue what the answer is, but Andreas is already loping to join him.

The leaner guy hooks his arm around Zian’s burly one and nudges him toward the stairs. “Nice one, wolf-man. Can’t get out of here without denting a few cans.”

A halting chuckle that’s half snarl erupts from Zee’s chest, and he hurries with us to the next floor.

We had to rely on Andreas’s skill to get Dominic’s code too. It was a hell of a lot trickier than retrieving his own, since Drey has to see the person whose memories he’s rifling through, and he can’t pick and choose what he sees other than narrowing it down by other people present.

It was only a few months ago after over a year of trying that he finally caught enough small fragments to give us all the numbers.

We’re just one level below the main one now, and a heavy thump reverberates through the ceiling. The flashing lights jitter—and a matching quaver of sensation echoes through my nerves.

I pause in the hall, scanning our surroundings while Andreas does the honors with Dominic’s door. I can’t identify the feeling that just came over me, but it’s holding on, prickling into my skin. It isn’t simple apprehension.

Dom darts out, his ever-present trench coat pulled tight around his slender frame and half of his dark auburn waves falling out of his sleep-rumpled ponytail to frame his tan face. As we set off toward the stairwell once more, my fingers curl toward my palms.

“There’ll be more guardians upstairs, almost definitely,” I say, pitching my voice to carry over the piercing wail. “We’re going to have to mow through all of them.”

Zian raises his fists, all traces of his momentary uncertainty vanished. “Not a problem.”

Another odd flash tickles through my nerves. I frown. “And…”

Andreas glances back at me from where he’s leaping up the stairs just ahead. “And what?”

“I don’t know,” I admit. “But just be ready. I think there’s something else. Something… new.”