Page 7 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

Four

Riva

A nother burst of flames licks up from a branch I’ve torched. I drop it on the heap of twigs I hastily pawed together and dash away.

Shouts ring out from within the compound. Guardians are charging over to the fence and through the gate to investigate the several fires I’ve already set, which are crackling and pluming smoke up toward the starry sky. The wavering orange light glints off the bars of the fence.

The fires might be enough on their own, but I want to bring as many of the staff as possible out of the facility. I don’t know how long it’ll take for me to get the guys out; I don’t know what new security measures are in place.

The fewer bodies with guns standing between me and my goal, the easier it’ll be.

I pull one of the pistols from my stolen purse and aim it at the treetops. I haven’t gotten to practice my gunmanship in years, so the kick when I pull the trigger propels me backward with a jolt of surprise.

My aim is still true. The bullet smacks into a thin branch and cracks it at its base. It plummets to the ground, the crash of its landing punctuating the boom of the shot that split the air.

I don’t want to waste bullets, but it’ll work in my favor if the guardians think there’s a whole army of hostiles out here.

Darting in a semi-circle around the area where I lit the fires, I shoot five more times in quick succession, from spots farther apart than any one normal person could have traveled in that time.

Then the chamber clicks with a hollow sound. Empty.

I shove the pistol back in the purse in case we need it later once we can get more ammo, push the strap so the purse is pressed against my back again, and dash all the way around the compound to the pine I picked out earlier.

The gate stands open, but guardians are barging out through it—and I know without seeing it that at least a couple of them will hang back to stand guard. Trying to enter that way would send me straight into their midst.

But while they’re all busy with the chaos I’ve created by the east end of the compound, no one’s keeping watch over the southwest corner.

The tree comes into view up ahead. I sprint straight to it, flicking my claws from my fingertips, and leap at the trunk.

My arms wrap around it several feet above the ground, my fingers curling and claws digging in for a better hold. I brace my knees against the bark and scramble upward until I reach the branches. Then I start pushing off them to propel myself up faster.

As I near the top, the narrowing trunk sways with my weight. I swivel around it, take a split-second to confirm my distance from the fence, and then fling myself out into the air.

My braid whips out behind me. My back arches and legs splay to position myself in the perfect landing position.

I soar right over the barbed wire and electric cables and land with a soft thump in the grass far behind the aboveground structure.

A swift roll diffuses most of the impact of the landing. An instant later, I’m on my feet again and racing toward the building.

When I near the concrete wall, I slow to a prowl. Sticking close to the building, I slink along it and peer around the corner toward the lone entrance and the gate beyond it.

As I expected, two guardians have stationed themselves on either side of the gate, which is now closed while various other armored figures rush around beyond the fence near the growing blaze.

As I hoped, even the two by the gate have their attention fixed on the forest rather than on the building behind them.

They think the threat is still out there. Suckers.

The door to the building stands half open, another guardian in the typical helmet and vest poised there as if waiting to see if her help will be needed too. I’m going to have to go through her—and fast enough to cut her off before she can sound a warning.

Her and anyone else who might be in the hall behind her.

My muscles coil. My jaw clenches. I don’t have time to simply knock her out and truss her up for safekeeping like I did during our first escape.

She isn’t a person. She’s an obstacle between me and the men I need to set free.

She’s one of the people who’ve treated us like objects to be tested and tormented for as long as any of us can remember. Why should I see her as more than an object herself?

I wait until her head turns away from me, tracking the continuing shouts from that end of the compound. Then I lunge.

I slam into her at an angle to send both of us tumbling into the hall, the door thudding shut in our wake. One clawed hand clamps over the start of a scream shooting from her mouth; the other slashes through her throat, hard enough to sever the artery.

Blood spurts up. Her body goes limp.

No one races to her rescue. I grasp at the first door within reach and shove the corpse into what looks like an equipment closet, swiveling her as I go so that her pants wipe away the worst of the blood on the floor.

Nothing to signal an intrusion to any other guardians who run by.

Now I’m alone in the hall. An alarm is shrieking, warning lights flashing red down the edge of the ceiling.

I can’t let the clamor shake my focus. The control room has to be around here somewhere, most likely on this floor. They’d still keep it as far from the holding cells and the training rooms as possible, wouldn’t they?

I lope down the short hallway, setting my feet as quietly as I can. One door opens to a meeting room with a boardroom-style table and chairs.

The next one gives me my jackpot.

Rows of monitors loom over consoles set up all around the square space. Warning messages blink on several of the screens.

To my surprise, the room is empty. Did I really freak out the guardians so much that they didn’t leave anyone behind to monitor the facility from inside?

I grab one of the chairs and wedge it under the doorknob to hold off anyone else who might try to enter. My gaze darts over the controls.

There—the outer systems. It’ll be good to have the gate fixed open when we make a run for it and the electricity in the fence turned off in case we have to take a more roundabout route.

The gate should wait until I have the guys with me, to give the guardians outside as little warning as possible. But I tap at the screen to turn off the flow of electricity through the cables.

That command doesn’t require verification. Is that because someone with security access was using the controls recently enough that the system isn’t asking for it again—or will the holding cells be a special case?

I’ll have to try and see. I was counting on there being someone working in here for me to use.

But if I need a fingerprint for verification, I can always drag that woman out of the storage closet—or her hand, anyway. Hopefully she’s got clearance.

I hustle around the spread of consoles—and jar to a stop.

There’s the display showing the holding cells. It looks just like the one from four years ago. Except… four of those cells are already lit up and blinking, yellow against the blue lines of the layout.

Lock disengaged.

And beneath the numbers for each of the cells, there’s a five-letter label in all caps. JACOB. ZIAN-. ANDRE. DOMIN.

My guys. They’re already out.

How—is that why the control room staff left? Did the guardians realize I was behind the chaos outside and run off to drag the guys someplace more secure?

Where are they now?

I scan the displays for any that might give me a clue of where to go. My eyes snag on one in the corner with what looks like a blueprint lit up with little glowing dots. A few of them are moving?—

The doorknob rattles. Before I can do more than spin toward it, something rams into the door with enough force to send the chair flying and pop the hinges.

The door crashes to the floor. A big, brawny figure barges in and stalls in his tracks, staring at me.

It takes me a second to recognize him with the four years that’ve transformed him from a buff teen who still had a touch of softness to his features into a hardened, musclebound man.

But that peachy brown skin, those angled cheekbones, and the dark brown eyes glued to me now—they’re all my Zian, so familiar and even more stunning than I remembered.

He takes my breath away. My heart thumps faster.

My voice comes out in a hoarse whisper. “Zee?”

Zian looks startled and confused but also almost… upset? Nothing in his face reflects the surge of relief that I felt the moment I realized I’d already found one of the guys I came for.

Before I can figure out what to make of that or say anything else, two more familiar, gorgeous men burst into the room behind him.

“What’s the hold-up?” one of them is demanding, and my heart leaps at Andreas’s familiar jaunty tone, even if there’s a terse note in it right now.

He jerks to a stop too, his tight curls swinging at his temples. The other man beside him goes completely rigid, as if the sharp angles of his face and his pale blond hair were carved out of marble.

Jacob. It’s the first time I’ve seen him since Griffin died, and the echo of his twin shines through his face so vividly that I can’t help flinching with that past pain. His gaze sears into mine, he raises his fists?—

And then Andreas is pushing ahead of both of the others, his expression a little wild but his voice insistent. “Zee, grab her and bring her. Jake, come on, we need the gate.”

Jacob nods with a sharp snap of his chin, tearing his attention away from me. He and Andreas leap to the controls, and Zian springs at me.

My thoughts are too muddled with a mix of joy and bewilderment for me to dodge him.

Why would I need to dodge him? We’re blood.

He snatches me right off my feet as if I weigh nothing at all and tosses me partway over his broad shoulder, his bulging arm wrapping tight around my waist. The heat of his body radiates all across my skin, his musky smell filling my nose and sending a tingling through my veins alongside the hum of adrenaline.

I want to hug him, to sob in relief that I’ve found them, that this is happening, but at the same time nothing about their reactions makes sense.

Why did they look at me like that? Why haven’t any of them said a word to me?

But I don’t know what they’ve been through on their end getting this far into the escape. And we do need to get out of here as quickly as possible.

I bend against Zian’s massive frame, making myself as easy a burden as possible.

“I have—” I start to say, but my offer of weapons is cut off by Andreas’s crow of victory.

“We’re out of here!”

All three of them dash from the room without another word. The last of my four, the one I’d just started to worry about, gapes at us from where he’s been waiting in the hall.

“What—?” Dominic says, and Jacob interrupts him with a swipe of his hand through the air. He points toward the door.

Nothing else is spoken. The four men barrel out into the night with me in tow.

I’d insist on being put down, but I can’t say for sure that I can run faster than Zian, especially when I haven’t trained at long distances in the last four years. My guys seem to have a definite plan already, and making a fuss could throw the whole thing off.

But as we hurtle across the field and through the gate, Jacob hurling both of the guardians there into trees with a shove of his invisible power, my stomach knots.

Yells careen through the night. The guys charge off the road into the shelter of the forest.

Zian’s arm stays tight around me, his grip almost hard enough to bruise. His scent has flooded my lungs, but it can’t wash away my uneasiness.

Bobbing with his strides, I stare down at the expanse of his back in the navy tee he’s wearing and try again. “Zee?”

He doesn’t answer. Doesn’t give the slightest indication he’s even heard me.

I don’t understand.

I didn’t know what to expect from our reunion, but it wasn’t this. And all my instincts are quivering with the growing certainty that there’s something I’m missing.